4 Ways to Serve a School

One of the simplest ways to love a city is to serve its schools. Education, among other structures, is one of the main components on which a city thrives, creates culture, and builds the wellbeing of the population. We are called to seek the welfare of a city (Jer. 29:7), and you can do no better than to invest your time and energy into a local school. The school that my wife and I serve needs a fair amount of help. We have been serving there for the last seven years. We enjoy serving there, because of the relationships we get to build with normal everyday people, and the opportunities we get to bless them. More than just the practical and social reasons, though, there are theological reasons. We get to serve there, because we have a great Lord and Savior who served us perfectly, laying down his life and dying for us while we were still sinful and rebellious. We would confess, however, that often our reasons for serving the school do not always fall in line with this truth. Sure we want to see the people of the school come to know Jesus; sure we want to see people’s lives changed and we want God to be glorified through us—all good evangelical notions.  Sometimes we might have other practical or quasi-selfish reasons for serving the school, such as for the betterment of the school, or that our kids will benefit from our time there. Those are not bad reasons. However, in the gospel we need to remember that all our motivation, strength, and the resources we need to serve, come from how Jesus served us. This is the truth by which we are often convicted and what causes us to repent and seek the best reason.

With the gospel in mind, then, here are four ways to serve and bless a school. These simple methods are transferable for any school context in any city.

1. Pray for the school 

We share this first, because it is the most important. Prayer works, because God works. It is not a magic formula, but a command and reality that God has called us to. Our family does not have a systematic way of doing this; mostly we pray when the Holy Spirit reminds us. When we take my kids and our neighborhood friends to school, we pray for them, their teachers, and the school as whole. It is an encouragement for us to just pray, because we are being reminded of how much we need his power and grace to work in and through us at the school.

2. Ask how to help and show up

We began to realize the significance of this when we first moved to our city and began serving. Derek had called around to a few schools asking how we could help. One of them had a laundry list of ways that we could serve, so we decided to show up and help there. At the time, they were doing these monthly Family Fun Night events, so we showed up to serve the meal and clean up afterward. This was a good, tangible way to serve and meet people. Also, it came with the by-product of giving us and our kids a context and familiarity for where they would eventually attend school.

Also, extracurricular clubs and organizations are great places to show up at. Our school has a unicycling club led by a family in the school. We decided to team up with the family to try it out. Initially, we knew nothing about unicycling except that you sit on one wheel and try to stay on the thing. Our oldest daughter picked it up quickly and our other two younger kids are still learning. These kinds of clubs and activities are such great ways to serve and build relationships with people. Being a part of the unicycle club as a family has been so good for us to share in outreach together (Plus, if everything else in life falls through, we can always run off and join the circus!)

Another good way to show up and help is to serve in a classroom. Colleen makes time once a week, outside of her work schedule, to serve in one of our kids’ classes. Derek has been able to come a few times to serve, and it has been a great way to connect with some of the boys. Colleen has served on the PTA board in the past. Derek currently serves on the Site Council. There are so many ways that you can show up and serve—in the classroom, extracurricular events, committees, fundraisers. Schools have so many needs and just showing up and asking, “How can I help?” will be your first step in real palpable service.

3. Give generously of your time and resources

Another way to serve a school is to give generously. Generosity is part of the definition of grace—giving extravagantly to someone who doesn’t deserve or expect it. You might bring high-quality and generous portions of food or other items to bless the students and staff. If you have kids at the school, you can send them with the best snacks or cupcakes on their birthday, or send extra money with your kids to give to other kids to enjoy using during PTA fundraisers. Bless the teachers and staff with donuts and coffee. Give them coffee gift-cards as an expression of thanks for their hard work. Or, instead of just giving material items, you can give generously of your time and energy. Spend a whole day at the school, and get to know the life of the school. Eat lunch with some of the kids. Hang out at recess and help monitor the activities there. Often it seems we give according to cultural standards of what is assumed to be expected and appropriate, which often can translate to just giving the bare minimum. However, to bless someone is to go above and beyond the normal expectation. Honestly, this is something we are still growing in. Practicing generosity is difficult, because our default mode is to give minimally, not extravagantly. We need to remember how much we’ve been given in Christ, so that we might be convicted to give generously.

4. Practice hospitality

Finally, a good way to serve a school is to practice hospitality outside of the school. Besides being a practical tool to reach out to people, it is also a command from Scripture (Heb. 13:2). You can invite kids and families into your home for the purpose of building community, shared life, and celebration together.  You might plan a fun event centered on a season, or a rhythm in the calendar year like the beginning or end of school. Our kids’ school celebrates “100 days of school,” which is a great time to celebrate with a party. At the beginning of the school year, we hosted a “Back to School Bash” party for some of our kids’ friends. It was awesome! It gave us the opportunity to meet some of the kids’ parents, and it was a great way to help bring momentum to the school year. We hope to continue with more fun events throughout the year.

In reality, our ministry at the school can feel long and slow. We often don’t get to see the fruit that Jesus is growing in people’s lives. There are some things we’ve done in the past that haven’t worked as well, but there are things we are doing now that seem to work.  Either way, we are benefiting from the maturation of disciples, as we learn to more fully pour out our lives, share our resources, and give time and energy to the school. And as we enjoy the goodness and grace of Jesus poured out for us generously, we get to funnel some of that grace to others at the school, in order that the school might enjoy the grace and presence of Jesus.

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Derek (@derekhiebert) and Colleen Hiebert and their three kids live in Parkland WA. Derek works as the Director of the Western Seminary Seattle Teaching Site, while Colleen works part-time as a nurse. They both serve bi-vocationally with Soma as missional leaders and take pride in their kids’ school.

Telling the Same Story a Thousand Ways

“He’s got one trick to last a lifetime, but that’s all a pony needs.” — Paul Simon

In preaching the gospel, we are essentially telling the same story a thousand different ways. Movie-maker Wes Anderson seems to understand this concept.

Moonrise Kingdom, one of Anderson’s most recent movies, tells a beautiful story. It’s a story of very different people who, oddly enough, have something central in common—they are all broken people who feel cast off, confused, and unwanted. The privileged 12-year-old Suzie Bishop, who lives in an idyllic New England home with her attorney parents and three younger brothers, would seem to have nothing in common with Sam Shakusky, an orphan and recently resigned Khaki Scout, who has been traipsed from one boys home to another many times over the course of his young life.

Suzie’s attorney parents—Walt and Laura Bishop—far from feeling grounded and accomplished with their giant home, boat, four children, and successful law practice, are painfully aware that they don’t have what it takes to be the parents their kids need them to be, nor the spouses they need to be for one another.

Laura is having an affair with Captain Sharp. As upset as her husband is when he finds out, he can barely react because he knows their marriage is not working. Scout Master Ward, whose job it is to keep all of his Khaki Scouts safe and productive, is shocked to discover Sam has run away, and even more surprised to find out he’s an orphan. Why hadn’t Sam said anything?

The gnawing uncertainties of life are lifted in the unifying pursuit of bringing Suzy and Sam back to where they belong safely. It is not perfect—people get stabbed with left-handed scissors and dogs get impaled with arrows. But this is not to be judged, just accepted.

“Was he a good dog?” runaway Suzie asks her companion, Sam, as they stand over the corpse of Snoopy, the accidentally arrow-pierced pooch.

“Who’s to say,” Sam intones, with the detached timber of a yogi.

The Story of Hope

As characters begin to bear with one another and learn to rely on one another, things change. Families are created or reunited. Couples form meaningful relationships. Kids learn to help other kids and bullies are overthrown. Each finds a sense of purpose and community when they accept themselves and one another.

The baseline plot won’t come as a surprise if you are a Wes Anderson fan. He has the same message in almost every film. It’s in the Tenebaum household, among the brothers seeking to mend a family in Darjeeling Ltd., and among the animals Anderson takes on in Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

It is a message that resonates with me. In a broken world, where things aren’t right, love somehow makes it beautiful. People are still broken and, at times, outlandish—but beautiful.

The Gospel Story and the Church

The reason the gospel story can be told a thousand different ways is because of its depth. The gospel tells us the core of orthodoxy, the kerygma of Jesus, the fundamentals of the faith, the statements of the Apostle’s Creed—it is the eternality of the gospel. When Peter declares that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt:16), Jesus responds, “Blessed are you, Peter son of John, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father in Heaven.” The Divine mysteriously interacts with creation and that which is eternal and unseen is made known to mere humans.

The gospel also tells the story of pilgrimage. It speaks of how we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling. But God doesn’t leave us alone in this. First, he is with us. God works within us both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil 2:12-13). We have God himself with us, but we also have his reflections—his people. The other pilgrims are with us.

A pilgrim differs from a hermit. The hermit isolates, while the pilgrim triangulates. The pilgrim heads to a fixed point—namely Jesus—and finds along the way more pilgrims. They come from different places, but join their journeys because they have a common destination. The Church is the gathering of broken people who have encountered Jesus and are journeying together with him towards home.

The gospel also tells the story of ambassadors from another kingdom. It tells of how we have become a people unique to God among all the peoples on the earth. It tells us we are a royal priesthood. We are to serve the world around us. The gospel, through the revelation of God, transforms us so that we demonstrate life in Christ—in word and deed—to the community around us. Mission and evangelism are part of the story of this same gospel.

An Eternal Story

We tell this story.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

We tell it in pulpits, at our family table, where we work. It is in how we work, why we work. We tell it in our leisure time. We tell it to our spouse. We tell it to ourselves.

Take time to hear the gospel again. Tell the story so well that you want to hear it again and again. A good message lives in many constructs and has many iterations. As we live and breath, the gospel continues. We tell the same gospel story in a thousand ways.

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Ed Marcelle (@emarcelle) is Lead Pastor of Terra Nova Church in Troy, N.Y., and Northeast Regional Coordinator for the Acts 29 Network. Marcelle holds a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies from Dallas Theological Seminary. He and his wife Diane have four children: Alfonso, Isaiah, Bethany, and Abigail. 

Redeeming Theology

I knew it was coming. The conversation was inevitably leading to one of my least favorite assertions. I thought to myself, “Please don’t say it, please don’t say it.” Too late—the familiar words spilled out of her, “I’m not into theology. I just love God and people.” I cringed. Another well-intentioned believer had fallen prey to the false dichotomy between thinking well about God and living for God. 

Theology As A Bad Word   

Believers choose to live in a certain amount of ignorance when they claim they aren’t into theology. In their defense, I know what they mean. They’re communicating disdain for the abuse of theology. Many have been recipients of ridicule from theology-mongers who insist on setting everyone straight and causing division. It only takes a few encounters with that guy for the idea of theology to be warped in one’s mind. It’s associated with abrasive people who would rather argue theological views than show Christ’s love. In many circles “theology” now carries with it a stigma analogous to a four-letter word. This creates an unfortunate gap between those who are into theology and those who love God and people.

Theology Has Been Misunderstood

This distinction is flawed. Contrary to popular opinion, theology is not defined by intellectual scholars reading books or arrogant seminarians picking fights. The term theology means “the study of God.” It comes from the Greek words for God (theos) and word or body of knowledge (logos). At its root, theology is the process of thinking about our lives in light of the faith we proclaim. It’s faith that seeks understanding. When we do theology we are attempting to understand who God is, who we are, and how we should live in view of God.

To study theology is to study God—to know him better and delight in him more accurately with the hope of glorifying him through our love and obedience. The Apostle Peter understood this connection between knowing God and glorifying him. He says that believers have been granted “all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence” (2 Pt. 1:3 [emphasis mine]). He continues by exhorting Christians to “make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge” (2 Pt. 1:5).

Therefore, believers who want to love God but not do theology may be sincere but are terribly misguided for at least two reasons:

First, all Christians are already doing theology. As image-bearers of God, humans are interpreters of meaning. Every day we receive data from the surrounding world and systematize it. If you are a believer, at some point you received information about God, the world, and your life and systematized it into a Christian worldview. Whether you acknowledge it or not, you live from this functional set of theological presuppositions.

Everything you do, every choice you make, flows (perhaps unconsciously) from these beliefs—when you process pain in light of a sovereign God, you are doing theology. When you pray with your children before bed, you are doing theology. When you tell your unbelieving neighbor about Jesus, you are doing theology. When you overcome fear and step onto a plane, you are doing theology. When you assess if a Christian should take anti-depressants, you are doing theology. In fact, when you say, “I just love God and people” you are doing so from several theological assumptions about God, man, salvation, and reconciliation.

Second, Christians’ love for God requires knowing God. We grow in our knowledge of God so we can love him, and then grow in our love for him so we can serve him. Just as a husband grows in his affection and devotion to his wife as he studies her over time, so the believer grows in his affection and devotion to God as he studies him over time. It’s the growing knowledge of a person that enables one to love him or her more appropriately.

I’ll never forget how excited my husband was during our first year of marriage when he threw me a surprise birthday party. It was sweet, but topped the charts as my worst birthday to date. He didn’t know I was an introvert disguised as an extrovert. And there is nothing worse for a true introvert then unexpectedly walking into a room full of people and calling it a party. However, over time he learned to love me well by mastering the intimate dinner together or planning an evening in on my birthday. Nothing makes me feel more celebrated than this. In the same way, knowing God and loving him cannot be divorced. The more you study God, the more you learn to love and serve him well. As you grow in the knowledge of God you will be able to celebrate and glorify him in ways he desires and finds pleasing.

Theology Is For ALL Christians

One of my passions is to see theology redeemed in the lives of ordinary disciples. I refuse to believe it’s reserved for brilliant scholars or theology-mongers. It’s for all Jesus-followers. It’s for you! How desperately the church needs good theologians filling its pews today. Can you imagine the transformation of local churches if every Christian became a robust theologian who loved God and people in a biblically informed manner? This may seem like a pie in the sky idea, but it doesn’t have to be. The change begins with you and your local faith family. Take a moment to consider the atmosphere within your home and local church. Does your family and faith family value theological reflection? Have you cultivated an environment that encourages thinking well about God? In what ways are your family and church being intentional about doing theology in the context of community?

You don’t have to be a scholar to begin implementing theological dialogue in these key areas. Take your family for example: If your wife is battling despair, ask how the gospel affects her fight of faith. If you get a bonus at work, ask your family if there is anything in the Bible that informs how you spend it together. If you’re at a stoplight and see a homeless man, talk to your kids about what it means biblically to love and serve someone different from them. Or consider your community group at church. If your group is asked to bring canned goods for a food drive, discuss why Christians should do justice from a biblical standpoint. If someone in your community is struggling with sin discuss what it means to live in the tension of being justified, but not yet glorified. If someone comes to group but not the corporate gathering, discuss why Christians should gather together for worship.

You see, there are hundreds of ways to intentionally practice discipleship through theological reflection in a manner leading to gospel transformation. My hope is that the idea of theology would be redeemed and all would come to see the value that doing theology has for every sphere of life. I echo the prayer of the Apostle Paul asking, “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him” (Eph. 1:17) so that you would come to know him more deeply and be motivated by this knowledge to love, serve, and obey him all of your days.

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Whitney Woollard has served in ministry alongside her husband Neal for over six years. She holds an undergraduate degree in Biblical Studies from Moody Bible Institute and just finished her Master of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary. She is passionate about equipping disciples to read and study God’s Word well resulting in maturing affections for Jesus and his gospel message. Neal and Whitney currently live in Portland, OR where they love serving the local church. Follow her on Twitter @whitneywoollard.

Missional Lessons for the Holidays

GOD CREATED HOLIDAYS

Cultural celebrations are not man-made institutions. Like much of God’s creation, holidays can be—and have been—distorted for all sorts of less-than-holy purposes. But what if “Santa” really isn’t an anagram for “Satan”? What if we can we redeem this holiday season, and use it for God’s work?

Seen throughout the Old Testament, and most clearly in Leviticus 23, God commanded His people to pause several times each year, simply to feast and celebrate. Here are far-too-brief summaries of Old Testament Israel’s national holidays:

• The Festival of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah) kicked off the Jewish New Year with the blast of a ram’s horn. God’s people gathered as one, as Israel kicked off each year with ten days of feasting, celebrating God, and ceasing work to rest in Him.
• The Day of Atonement was an annual reminder of Israel’s sin and God’s forgiveness. In a solemn service on the most important day of the Jewish year, one ram was killed as a symbol of appeasing God’s wrath, as another symbolized  God’s removal of sin, being sent into the wilderness never to return.
• The Feast of Booths saw Israel praying for her upcoming harvest. To visibly recall God’s past deliverance from Egypt, they lived in tents for a week. As they then returned to their homes—seventeen days in total after gathering for Rosh Hashanah—they celebrated God’s gift of their permanent dwellings, symbolic of His giving them the Promised Land.
• Passover remembers the biggest event in Israel’s history: God’s original rescue of His people, in His plaguing power over Egypt. Israel sacrificed and roasted a lamb, and still tangibly recall God’s work through readings, foods, and glasses of wine.
• Passover kicked off the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days, Israel recalled the speed with which their ancestors fled Egypt the night of the original Passover.
• The First Fruits Offering marked the beginning of the harvest. A day of thanksgiving, the celebration included offering Israel’s best produce to God, and recalling God’s power and grace in sustaining and providing for His people.
• The Feast of Weeks (called Pentecost) again pointed to God’s provision. Another offering made; more feasts occurred; more thanks shared—this time at the end of the wheat harvest.

LESSONS FROM THE STORY OF ISRAEL

This is more than a bit of Jewish history. Each feast foreshadows God’s work in Jesus’ death and resurrection. These celebrations were celebrated by Jews for centuries and by Jesus Himself. And they inform our own celebrations:

First, Leviticus shows that God instituted intentional celebration into the annual rhythm of His people. God’s people ceased from work and partied. They cooked meat—a luxury in those days—and enjoyed good drink. They made music, relaxed, and played together. They laughed and grieved together. Celebrations are right and good.

Celebrations also cut to the heart of mission: God’s people didn’t celebrate by themselves. They included those around them. Even people with different beliefs. Consider this instruction: “You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns.” This idea echoes through the Old Testament Law: “sojourners” were foreigners in Israel who joined the feasts; “servants” from various nations celebrated with God’s people; “strangers” and “aliens” weren’t Israelites but joined their events.

A final Levitical lesson is that people, events, and even milestones themselves were never the focus of Israel’s celebrations. Israel celebrated one thing, in many ways throughout each year: God. They didn’t celebrate grain; they celebrated the Giver of that grain. They didn’t celebrate their power over Pharaoh; they had no such power! They celebrated God’s power. These lessons combine to show us not only that not-yet-believers were invited to Israel’s feasts; they observed—and in ways, even participated—as God’s people celebrated God, on days God created for just that occasion.

REDEEMING THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

If Israel—geographically set apart from the rest of the world—publicly celebrated God in the midst of strangers, foreigners, and sojourners, there’s hope for us as we consider holidays. Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25, and God didn’t invent Halloween or Thanksgiving. But these and other annual days have been carved into our culture, to cease work, celebrate, and engage others. Gifts abound in December, giving us an easy chance to surprise coworkers and classmates with cookies or a brief note. And the world still rings in the New Year with gatherings and far more pomp than Israel’s trumpet blast.

Instead of celebrating this Christmas season, New Years Eve, and other occasions alone or with just-Christian friends—and instead of creating “Christian” versions of special events already happening in our city and neighborhood— let’s celebrate these occasions on mission. Let’s display the gospel through generosity, grace, conversation, and joy. And let’s declare the gospel through stories, toasts, and prayers. Sure, many cultural celebrations have long forgotten God. But we haven’t, and we’ve been sent to those who have. God is sovereign, even the fact that someone declared certain days holidays. God uses even the most broken things—and days—for His mission. How can we do the same?

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Ben Connelly, his wife Jess, and their daughters Charlotte and Maggie live in Fort Worth, TX. He started and now co-pastors The City Church, part of the Acts29 network and Soma family of churches. Ben is also co-author of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission (Moody Publishers, 2014). With degrees from Baylor University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Ben teaches public speaking at TCU, writes for various publications, trains folks across the country, and blogs in spurts at benconnelly.net. Twitter: @connellyben.

(Editor’s Note: Used with permission from the authors. This is adapted from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr. available from Moody Publishers. )

Finding Release From Our Spiritual Mistresses

God’s intention is to restore believers in Christ and turn them into new people. “If anyone is in Christ,” the Scripture says, “he is a new creation. The old has gone and the new has come.” As Christians, it is our job to cooperate with this new creation vision for our lives. Our motivation for embracing newness of life in Jesus is quite different than moralistic motivation. Religious moralists obey God’s rules to feel morally straight and morally superior, and also to earn applause from God, from others, and even from themselves. Christians, on the other hand, are able to obey God precisely because they don’t have to.

Let me explain that one.

If you are a Christian—that is, if you have anchored your trust in the perfect life and substitutionary death of Jesus on your behalf, then you need to know that God smiles over you before you lift a finger to do anything good. Christianity is different than moralism. In that unlike moralism, God’s embrace comes to us at the beginning of our journey versus at the end of our journey. He approves of us not because we are good people, but because Jesus was a truly good person in our stead. His moral straightness, his righteousness, and beauty have been laid upon us as a gift. That, and that alone, is the reason we obey . . . because it makes us want to obey. God does not decide to love us because we first loved him. No, we love God because he first loved us. That is biblical Christianity.

How idolatry works

Imagine you are a married woman and your husband tells you he wants to start dating around. “It’s not that I don’t love you,” he says. “I’m not saying that I want a divorce. You are extremely important to me. We have been through so much together. But I just think that my life would be more complete if I could also date some other women—play the field a little bit, you know?”

Absurd as this may sound, this is precisely what we do to God whenever we disobey him. Every act of disobedience flows from a desire for something or someone besides God to be our first love, our true north, our reason for being. Each of us has his/her own unique potential mistresses—whether money, power, cleanliness, control, relationships, material things, entertainment, or even a spouse or children. Whenever anything becomes more essential to us than God himself (by the way, anything is usually a good thing), it becomes an idol. According to God, our true and everlasting Husband, we become spiritual adulterers. An idol is any person or idea, any created thing that captures our deepest affections and loyalties and will—and in so doing steals our attention away from God. An idol is anything that becomes more precious to us than him. It’s not that we love the thing (whatever it is) too much. Rather, it’s that we love God too little in comparison to it.

Idolatry is the sin beneath every other sin

Idolatry is the root beneath all sin and beneath every choice we ever make to go our own way instead of following Jesus in faith and obedience. Sin, ultimately, is not a matter of behavior, but a matter of desire.

We always obey that which we desire the most.

When we desire something more than we desire God, we will obey that something if ever and whenever we are faced with a choice to obey God or to obey it. So this is what keeps us from being good in the purest sense. Our distorted over-desires escort us into the arms of adulterous lovers, pseudo-saviors, counterfeit Jesuses that put a spell on us and make them appear more life-giving than Jesus, our one true love.

How do we do this? Thanks to David Powlison and his insightful essay, Idols of the Heart and Vanity Fair, there are several diagnostic questions that can help us effectively identify and name our specific spiritual mistresses:

• What do I feel I cannot survive or function without? What do I feel I must have in order to enjoy life, be acceptable as a person, etc.? What are the things I am terrified of losing or obsessed about having?
• Where do I spend my time and money with the least amount of effort? The things we give time and money to most effortlessly are absolutely the things that we worship and serve. They are the things that we believe in our hearts will give our lives the most meaning.
• What do I think and talk about the most? Where do my thoughts go most quickly and most instinctively when I am alone in the car, when I awake, when I am alone in a quiet, undistracted place? As Archbishop William Temple once said, “Your religion is your solitude.”
• Which biblical commands am I most reluctant to obey? What do I treasure so much that, if it is threatened, I will disobey God to keep it? What is so essential to me that I will disobey God to get it?
• What things anger me the most? What kinds of people, things, or circumstances irritate me the most, and what about these people, things, or circumstances give them this kind of power over me? What, if it happened, would strongly tempt me to curse God or push Him out of my life? (Remember Job’s wife. See Job 2:9)
• How would I fill in the blank? I cannot and will not be happy unless.

Dismantling idols after they are identified

Idols are dismantled when they are first exposed and then replaced. Dismantling our idols requires that we labor in our study and meditation of Scripture to understand the many ways that Jesus fills our emptiness in a much more adequate, life-giving way than any Jesus-substitute we may be tempted to worship and serve. Replacing our spiritual mistresses means giving them a back seat to Jesus in our hearts and lives. Basically, every idol (and every sin) traces back to a self-salvation strategy. We use this strategy every time we attempt to replace something that only Jesus can provide, with a counterfeit. What does this mean for us?

It means that we must face head-on our own idols, and humbly admit exactly how the things we love more than Jesus will reduce us, empty us of ultimate meaning, and even destroy us. We must admit that our “over-desires” cannot bring us the lasting wholeness, happiness, or fulfillment (salvation!) we desire. Only Jesus can. Ironically, only when we love Jesus more than these things, we actually end up enjoying these things to a much fuller extent! As CS Lewis once said, “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.”

When our love for Jesus exceeds our love for other things, we end up loving, cherishing, and enjoying these other things even more than we would if we had loved these other things more than we love Jesus. However, if we put the gifts in the place of the Giver, our enjoyment of the gifts ends up being spoiled. Why is this so? It is so because we are made in the image of God. The human soul is so magnificent that only God is big enough to fill it. As Pascal is famous for saying, “Only God is able to fill the God-shaped vacuum in the human heart.”

Be possessive of anything but God—a romantic interest, a career, a net worth, a life goal—and you will never possess that thing. Instead, it will eventually possess you. It will have you and it will hold you . . . around the neck! This is why we are much better off when we learn to pray like the Puritan who had nothing to his name but one piece of bread and a glass of water: “What? All of this and Jesus Christ too!”

Redirecting our deepest loves

Christian growth is about learning to see clearly that Jesus will fill our hearts in much more adequate and enduring ways than any Jesus-counterfeit ever will. Using Scripture, we must immerse our minds and stir our affections with the many ways in which Jesus delivers fully and truly on the specific promises—especially the promises that our specific idols falsely make to us. For example, if we thirst for approval, only the unwavering smile of God over us through Jesus can free us from enslavement to human approval. Or, if we hunger for secure provision, only the God’s sure promise to take care of us like he does the birds and the lilies can free us from our enslavement to money and things.

So what about you? What are your spiritual mistresses? How are they working out for you?

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for his righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

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Scott Sauls, a graduate of Furman University and Covenant Seminary, is foremost a son of God and the husband of one beautiful wife (Patti), the father of two fabulous daughters (Abby and Ellie), and the primary source of love and affection for a small dog (Lulu). Professionally, Scott serves as the Senior Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Prior to Nashville, Scott was a Lead and Preaching Pastor, as well as the writer of small group studies, for Redeemer Presbyterian of New York City. Twitter: @scottsauls.

Originally posted at www.scottsauls.com. Used with permission.

The Presence of Advent

The Greatest Fear


What is the single greatest fear that most people have about the Advent season, especially Christmas Day? I doubt it has to do with finding the perfect gift. Nor does it seem like the inevitable holiday weight-gain would rank as the greatest fear. Debates over religion and politics at the dinner table might earn a higher rank but even those fights are nothing compared to a deeper fear of the soul.

I believe it to be the lack of presence. Not a lack of presents (or gifts) but a lack of presence. No one wants to be alone during this season. We sing songs about being home for Christmas. Many Christmas films riff on the theme of being separated from family and loved ones at Christmas. We cower at the thought of waking up to ourselves with no lit tree, no joyful laughter, and with nobody to share the day. Consider the very ghosts that haunted Scrooge in Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, they haunted him with lonely Christmases.  Studies indicate that depression hits widows and widowers deepest at the holidays. I can almost guess that a full 98% of people reading this article would prefer to have someone, even if they didn’t really like them, to be with on Christmas over spending it with no one at all.

What is it about Advent that reveals this fear in almost all of us? If we look at the very nature of what it means we will find the very reason being physically alone during this season troubles so many. At its core it is more than just remembering the coming of God into our existence, Advent is about the actual presence of God in our existence. It’s the one season that reminds us that God is with us. So, when we consider a season that tells us God is with us and yet functionally experience it in loneliness a massive discord hits. The discord, for most, isn’t with God. It’s within ourselves. We should be experiencing presence. We should be with others and God should be with us.

Presence on the Way

Four hundred years is a long time to wait. The United States of America has barely existed for half of that time. It would be nearly impossible to understand then the absence and silence from God for that amount of time. However, that is exactly where the people of Israel were. National culture and identity would go through an immense rewriting if it had been four hundred years since you had a prophetic word from the national center of worship activity. Certainly brief and dim glimpses of recovery and hope came and recharged everyone’s expectations but they were just that, brief and dim. Sure, they had the prophetic words of old to lean on. Isaiah did promise Emmanuel, even if that was seven hundred years ago.

Then, rumors started cropping up. Angelic visitations occurred. Barren old women conceived. Kings from the East traveled West. A nation immigrated within itself because of a census. A virgin was with child. Then, the rumors died down. Things went back to normal for another thirty years until a shabbily dressed man like Elijah began to speak for God in the wilderness. He was no respecter of persons and called kings, priests, and publicans to repent. A nation finally received a prophetic word: “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is present. God is with us. Emmanuel has come.”

Yes, Emmanuel, God with us. He was attested to be God by his words and works by doing things only God could do. God with us possessing authority to drive out sin, devils, and death. God with us doing justice, loving the outcast and the stranger. God with us dinning with the drunkards, the harlots, and the sinners. God with us clothed in the material flesh of our bodies. Emmanuel experienced the physical limitations, pains, and agonies of our condition. God with us bearing the wrath of God in our place for our offenses against God and taking our very own death-blow. God with us being laid in a tomb dead for three days, he, God with us, was miraculously raised to glorious new life again by the power of God–securing resurrection life for all who trust in him. God with us sent his eternal presence to indwell and empower us for lives of glory and mission. He hasn’t left us, in fact, God with us has come, became flesh, and lived in our very domain and gifted us his eternal presence so we would always be with him.

Advent as a Missional Teacher

This is what Advent points us towards. A seasonal reminder of presence. An annual celebration of God’s personal intervention and presence with us. Advent teaches us that God is with us and that God is for us. Advent shows us God-in-action working for his glory and for our good.  Our reflection of this reality can not leave us to merely feel good about God with us, it must propel us forward to display the God whose image we bear.

Advent becomes a missional teacher to us as we consider that God shares life with broken, messed up, needy, people of disrepute. As we increasingly consider God with us, we must ask ourselves are we displaying this reality to the world? Are we showing lonely people God with us by our presence with them? Are we enacting this good news for the same broken, messed up, needy, people of disrepute that God with us hung out with?

As much as Advent is a season for gathering with family and friends, for the church it is a missional launching point for us to inhabit and take the gospel to the world. The world sits and waits year after year for a savior. They make functional saviors of sex, power, possessions, comfort, and a billion other idols they can find. Yet, all the while being let down year after year by their little, failing, and distant gods. The world is waiting, the Savior has come, the church must be present!

Practically this boils down to one thing—be with people. In the same way God became present in the world, he sends us to go and be with the world. Be at the parties, the Christmas programs, the neighborhood celebrations, the family dinners, and the company gift-exchange. As you are with people, love them. Be the presence that the lonely, lost, waiting world is so eager to receive. Show them their Savior through your love, by the way you honor them, give them dignity, listen to their stories, and hear their hurts.

A rocket-science degree isn’t mandatory, just ask the Holy Spirit to show you someone that he can display his presence to through your presence with them, and then follow his lead. Go be present with the world because God is present with you. The world waits for God with us and we are blessed to display that God is with us!

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Jeremy Writebol(@jwritebol) has been training leaders in the church for over thirteen years. He is the author of everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present (GCD Books, 2014) and writes at jwritebol.net. He lives and works in Plymouth, MI as the Campus Pastor of Woodside Bible Church.

What Do We Mean By “Missional Living”?

When we look at the missional life of the disciples, it’s tempting to think the work they did in proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and engaging in the works of the kingdom were only done with Jesus. And while there is truth in the with, there was a much greater reality present in their time with the Rabbi. More accurately, the apostles were being led into mission. Jesus said as much, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19). Following Jesus was prerequisite to mission with him. And while the disciples ministered alongside Jesus in many settings, all the while, they had actually been led into God-­appointed missional ventures by the God­man.

While missional living could be described as something the church does with Jesus as well, it is more appropriately something the church follows him into. As we step out in faith to be a “city on a hill,” we must remind ourselves that Jesus is already at work and we are to join him in the work he has already begun to do in our cities. And in the times we live, we need to take special care to discern the time as “men of Issachar” so that the mission we are being led into is at its most potent.

Here are four ways that the local church can follow Jesus into missional living in the twenty-first century:

1. Following Jesus Into (And Out From) Worship

All missional living starts with worship and leads to more worship, both personally and corporately. Just as faith without works is dead, good works separated from active trust in the person and work of Jesus, is also dead. Entering into the mission of Jesus requires that we first enter into his rest . . . receiving his easy yoke and light burden of grace. To help cultivate this mindset, we will:

• Encourage our people to see that the only way to become like Jesus is to prioritize being with Jesus daily. Ordinary, common spiritual practices like Bible reading, prayer, and “one-anothering” community are at the center of this. Apart from (Jesus) we can do nothing.
• Emphasize worshiping God with God’s other daughters and sons each Lord’s Day—encouraging our people to order the rest of their lives around worship, versus the other way around. Do not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encourage one another.

2. Following Jesus Into The World Through Public Faith

We are called by Jesus to follow him into the world as an expression of our worship. As carriers of heaven’s DNA and the aroma of Jesus in his world, we want to carry his grace, truth, and beauty into all the places where we live, work, and play–primarily through:

• Public forums and conversations (some church sponsored and others in living rooms and public spaces) about things that matter to us and to friends and neighbors who do not believe as we do. Subjects like sexuality, race and class issues, family-related concerns, the arts, politics, and loneliness are a few examples of subject matter. As some of your own poets have said . . .
• Loving friends and neighbors well. Being intentional, thoughtful, and creative about being the “first responders” wherever opportunities to extend the kindness, love, support, and hope that Jesus did to people who were hurting, lonely and alone, and feeling ashamed. Love your neighbor as yourself.
• Parties. Showing hospitality and giving life away by opening up our church, our homes, and our lives in order to turn strangers into friends, and friends into family. We have to celebrate.

3. Following Jesus Into The World Through The Integration Of Faith and Work

Because so many people spend the majority of their waking hours working—whether as a volunteer or for hire—it is important to see vocation as a calling from God and the workplace as a primary realm for following Jesus and loving the world. We express these truths by:

• Affirming that all creative work–work that takes raw material and makes something new for the benefit of the world and the human community—is an expression of God’s creativity through people who bear his image. God created . . . and it was good.
• Affirming that all redemptive work—work that fights decay and seeks restoration of people, places, and things—is an expression of God’s redeeming grace, also through people who bear his image. All creation groans . . . eagerly awaiting freedom. Jesus is making all things new.

4. Following Jesus Into The World Through Mercy and Justice

Because the poor in spirit are called “blessed,” and because Jesus gave special attention to the poor, the weak, the under-served, the overlooked, and those living on the margins, the church must dedicate her time, energy, service, and a significant portion of her financial resources to mercy and justice efforts. We will do this by:

• Emphasizing in our public ministry the importance of the poor, the weak, the overlooked, and the under-served in the economy of God’s kingdom.
• Creating intentional, supportive space in our community for children and adults with special needs.
• Forming partnerships and providing financial support to our cities “best in class” mercy and justice organizations.

* * * *

While there are many ways to live missional in our cities, these in particular have an eye and ear towards the age we live in. They place the onus on our churches to collaborate with culture rather than cede from it. The hope is that as we pursue this kind of missional living, our churches will, in the power of the Spirit, make Jesus, as Ray Ortlund has said, “non-­ignorable in our cities.”

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Scott Sauls, a graduate of Furman University and Covenant Seminary, is foremost a son of God and the husband of one beautiful wife (Patti), the father of two fabulous daughters (Abby and Ellie), and the primary source of love and affection for a small dog (Lulu). Professionally, Scott serves as the Senior Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Prior to Nashville, Scott was a Lead and Preaching Pastor, as well as the writer of small group studies, for Redeemer Presbyterian of New York City. Twitter: @scottsauls.

Brad Andrews serves as pastor for preaching, vision, and missional leadership at Mercyview in Tulsa, OK and as a religion columnist for the former Urban Tulsa Weekly. He also was one of the ten framers of The Missional Manifesto, alongside Tim Keller, Ed Stetzer, Alan Hirsch, Eric Mason, J.D. Greear, Dan Kimball, Linda Berquist, Craig Ott, and Philip Nation. He blogs often at mercyview.com/blog.

Adapted from www.scottsauls.com. Used with permission. Brad Andrews contributed the introduction and conclusion.

Cue Transformative Discipleship

What will the world look like in 100 years? Or more specifically—what will Christianity look like in 100 years? In a 1,000 years? In 10,000 years?¹ This might be very hard for us to fathom. Thinking about the distant future is not something that we practice naturally. It takes intentional effort to think about the deep future. And here’s the thing about it: once we truly contemplate on what the world may or may not look like, we will recognize that the landscape in which we currently conduct our discipleship ministries will look nothing like the world inhabited by our future ancestors. Just think about the difference 50 years makes. Compare 1964 to 2014. Think about how the discipleship playing field has changed. Just think about the different strategies that Christians have implemented over the course of the past 50 years. Culture is always shifting. People are always changing. Christianity, to a degree, even changes. So how should this affect our discipleship-making? What can the Christian church do today to ensure that it leaves a lasting mark for the next generations of Christians? The Christian message might not need to evolve, but perhaps its discipleship-method does.

Cue Transformative Discipleship

Transformative Discipleship can be defined as a method of discipleship-making that is willing to change its form, appearance, and structure to effectively engage current culture with the gospel message of Jesus Christ.

What might this look like? In Center Church, Pastor Tim Keller helps us out:

Paul himself presented the gospel content in different ways — using different orders, arguments, levels of emphasis, and so on — to different cultures. And we should too. The gospel is so rich that it can be communicated in a form that fits every situation.

He goes on to expound upon this idea of gospel contextualization:

A contextualized gospel is marked by clarity and attractiveness, and yet it still challenges sinners’ self-sufficiency and calls them to repentance. It adapts and connects to the culture, yet at the same time challenges and confronts it.

Now what Keller calls gospel contextualization, I call transformative discipleship. The reason that I prefer this term is because transformative discipleship calls us to look at how discipleship-making methods have shifted throughout history. What this means is that we should be willing to look into the deep past and evaluate the positives and negatives of our ancestors’ discipleship-making methods. This would call us to analyze past mistakes and construct better present-day discipleship-making methods. Practically, here is what this model would emphasize:

1. Transformative Discipleship is historical.

Christians using the Transformative discipleship method would be willing to learn from 2,000 years of church history. The positives and negatives would be discussed openly, and gleaning wisdom from the Christian church’s past would be promoted.

2. Transformative Discipleship is culturally-centered.

Every culture places value on different things. That is why a versatile discipleship method is needed. The Transformative discipleship model challenges Christians to focus on the culture that they inhabit, engage with society, and learn how to best infiltrate the culture with the gospel message.

3. Transformative Discipleship is evolutionary.

This model emphasizes the importance of changing and molding the way current discipleship methods are being used within the church if necessary. As culture shifts and changes, the Christian church must practically “evolve” the ways that the gospel message is presented. This might seem commonsensical, but far too often the Christian church has not been willing to adapt its practices to fit its patrons. However, a flexible model is what Transformative discipleship is all about.

4. Transformative Discipleship is multi-faceted.

One of the key aspects of Transformative discipleship is its willingness to promote a vast variety of discipleship techniques. This mindset will promote to Christians the importance of going out into their surrounding communities with the gospel of Jesus Christ. This may look like door-to-door evangelism or perhaps simply having home groups scattered throughout the city. The transformative discipleship model is open to a number of different discipleship methods and approaches.

infiltrate culture with the gospel for the Future

If you think that there is a possibility of Christians living on this earth even for the next 500 years, than perhaps teaching the transformative discipleship method would be beneficial to implement. Instructing present-day Christians the transformative discipleship method would hopefully begin to shift our focus to how this generation and the next generations can infiltrate culture with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our teaching would shift from teaching “one-size-fits-all” discipleship methods, to teaching a transformative model that emphasizes molding the message of the gospel to fit the audience that one is witnessing too. This is what Keller has in mind when he specifically talks about gospel contextualization. I just am taking it one step further and calling the church to consider the distant past and even the far off future when teaching discipleship techniques to today’s next generation of Christians.

Again the gospel message does not change, but the methods in which we teach the gospel is always transforming and molding. Specifically, our gospel-proclaiming techniques shift and change to best fit the people groups that we are ministering too. This aligns very well with what the Apostle Paul taught:

“For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.” —I Corinthians 9:19-23

I have simply introduced a few of the ideas that a transformative discipleship method would entail. There is no doubt that these ideas would benefit from being developed more thoroughly. However, at this point, it suffices to say that the transformative discipleship model is a method that I believe should be adopted by most Christians and churches simply because it teaches current believers to look into the past, live in the present, and expectantly look to the future when discussing various facets of Christian discipleship.

^{1. J.L. Schellenberg’s book, Evolutionary Religion, has influenced me a lot when writing this article. His ideas of thinking about the past, present, and future have proven extremely useful when writing about Transformative Discipleship. I am in debt to his wonderful writing. ↩}

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Matt Manry is the Director of Discipleship at Life Bible Church in Canton, Georgia. He is a student at Reformed Theological Seminary and Knox Theological Seminary. He also works on the editorial team for Credo Magazine and Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He blogs regularly at gospelglory.net.

4 Benefits of Stories for Discipleship

Not everyone values good stories. Sometimes Christians can be the worst of all, afraid of being of the world. What we must remember is that everything we do is part of a liturgy we live in. If we are not intentionally discipling ourselves and others with the truths of God’s story then we will be discipled by other things—for good or bad. Everything you hear, see, taste, and touch is telling a story. Reading good stories is crucial to combating these destructive stories. Christians must wisely choose stories that will help them mature as disciples.

1. Stories help us shed the skin of our unbelief.

“We are narrative creatures, and we need narrative nourishment—narrative catechisms.” — N. D. Wilson

Stories in the most fundamental way remove the barrier of believing that the impossible could happen. We read of dragons, knights, wizards, looking-glasses and these stories help prepare our hearts to believe truths that could not be believed without them. God has placed in our hearts the creativity to create stories that reflect the big truths of the story he is writing. Without these smaller glimpses, we might hear his story and balk at the fantastical nature of Red Sea crossing, killing giants, controlling nations and kings, and a virgin birth, but with them we hear his story and shed the skin of our unbelief.

Perhaps you enjoy reading fiction and you’re a fan of Lee Childs’ Jack Reacher novels. I enjoy these books for many reasons, but partly because my gut wants to believe that someone will make the wrong in this world right. That someone out there will make sure those who have acted wickedly and grossly immoral will get their comeuppance. Jack does this in a limited way. He’s limited because he’s a human with his own sinful actions and his thoughts aren’t always pure. But reading these books helps me to shed my unbelief, namely that the wicked I see now will go unpunished. These stories make me hope for a final judgement. For Someone perfect, unlike Jack, to come to earth and make all things right once and for all.

2. Stories mature wonder, bringing doctrine to life.

“We are like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of ancient instinct of astonishment.” — G. K. Chesterton

The book of Romans is masterpiece of logic and doctrine. Paul skillfully demonstrates his knowledge of Old Testament theology, the life of Jesus, and how it all connects for Christians who have been made alive. What I’m not saying here is that doctrine is boring. Romans in particular is one of my favorite books in Scripture. It’s a delight to read. But stories bring doctrine to life in a way that doctrine alone cannot. Stories create wonder and awe.

Paul understands this as he wrote Romans. His doctrine is attached back to the story of Israel—especially the Exodus—and what this means for Christians who have experienced this New Exodus from slavery to life. Also, a major theme in Romans is justification by faith and many have made the point (wrongly) that justification isn’t central to the Christian faith because Jesus never mentions it. However, what they miss is Jesus lives, walks, and breaths justification by faith. Jesus brings the doctrine to life—while Paul plumbs the story’s depth. Story and doctrine are protons and neutrons that make a complete atom. One without the other and you’ve got nothing.

3. Stories lay siege to our affections.

“We are essentially and ultimately desiring animals, which is simply to say that we are essentially and ultimately lovers. To be human is to love, and it is what we love that defines who are.” — James K. A. Smith

Stories have a way of grabbing our heads and our hearts. Suppose you were an atheists reading The Chronicles of Narnia and the crucial chapter is upon you. Aslan gives himself up for Edmund. He’s tied to the stone and wickedness and evil descend upon him. The darkness weighs in on the reader as well. In those short pages the reader is driven to grief and sadness, but Aslan doesn’t stay dead. He rises victoriously. Your heart will leap for joy as Aslan lives before your head realizes what your affections have been driven to. It could be days, months, or years. You may be minding your own business when a perfect stranger intersects with you and shares another story with you. “This Man died and rose from the dead,” she might say. For a second time your heart leaps for joy within you—even if for a moment. Why is that? Why did that happen? Because C. S. Lewis’ Aslan has already prepared your heart to hear the truth of the death, resurrection, and reign of Jesus Christ. Stories matter because they lay siege to our hearts and prepare our minds. They are a narrative catechism, as N. D. Wilson says, maturing our hearts and minds to love rightly.

4. Stories brighten our sense of imago Dei.

“We know God’s character through story.” — Peter Leithart

Ultimately stories brighten our sense of imago Dei. They remind us we were created by God and placed in a story. That story continues on today and we are part of it. As imago Dei, we are more aware of what’s happening around us when we realize this. We do not have a meaningless existence. We do not serve a utilitarian purpose. There is love, beauty, and truth in this story. We must pursue these things.

We also must create a story of our own. Some of us play our part by writing stories. Some play music, paint, engineer, farm, mother or father, or pick up trash. These are all beautiful because we are all imago Dei. Tolkien reminds us of this when he calls us “sub-creators” and Lewis when he says, “There are no ordinary people.” Consider the superhero genre and one of the major fixed pieces—the mask. It could be anyone. Any of us could have these powers and be extraordinary. It could be the geeky news reporter, the teenager living with his aunt, the reclusive billionaire, or the blind man. Stories brighten the sense of the divine in our hearts.

Stories should play a crucial role in discipleship. Choose wisely. Read broadly. Let the stories grab your heart as they form you into a more mature disciple of Jesus Christ.

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Mathew B. Sims is the Editor-in-Chief at Exercise.com and has authored, edited, and contributed to several books including A Household Gospel, We Believe: Creeds, Confessions, & Catechisms for Worship, A Guide for Advent, Make, Mature, Multiply, and A Guide for Holy Week. Mathew, LeAnn (his wife), and his daughters Claire, Maddy, and Adele live in Taylors, SC at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains with their Airdale Terrier. They attend Downtown Presbyterian Church (PCA). Visit MathewBryanSims.com!

3 Ways Not to Share Jesus with Millennials

Over the course of the last six months, I’ve been communicating almost daily with a friend who was my small group leader when I was in middle and high school. We’ll call him Kurt. Kurt was an awesome youth small group leader.

What I never knew was that he also loved making techno music. Now living in Berlin and signed to a record label, Kurt is one of the most popular DJs of house music and plays some of the largest clubs in Europe.

Many in the Christian community ostracized him when he began to pursue his music career, and the people of God have been more of a judge and jury than they have been friends and family.

Since leaving the country and experiencing a myriad of cultures, Kurt’s faith has started to wane. Today, he identifies as a Christian-leaning agnostic. He believes Christianity causes good, but he’s not sold on the inspiration of Scripture and many supernatural events in the Bible, which naturally produces obstacles on the road to true faith in Jesus.

As I’ve been discussing world events and sharing the gospel with Kurt over the last six months or so, I realized many of the phrases I was taught to use as apologetic tools while growing up in church simply were not working.

Kurt is a Millennial, barely, but his situation is not unlike many older Millennials. He’s smart, engaged with culture, and open-minded. He is open to Christianity, but when people share the gospel with him and cannot answer any questions that come from their proposals, he starts to wonder if anyone actually believes what they’re saying.

When we share the gospel with Millennials, we have to understand that everything will be called into question. Glittering Christian assumptions, like the ones below, may have been sufficient in our culture when Christianity was king, but they don’t work with Millennials now.

Here are three ways not to share Jesus with Millennials:

1. “The Bible says Jesus is the only way to heaven. That’s all you need.”

If you attempt to share Jesus with a Millennial by appealing to the authority of the Scriptures alone, you’re going to sound like you’re proposing that cats wear hats because Dr. Seuss says so.

Ok, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point: if you try to prove the legitimacy of Jesus as Savior with Scripture, you’re going to immediately have to field the question, “Why should I believe what the Bible says?” and now you’ve just gotten yourself into a much more nuanced conversation that will be difficult to navigate, so be prepared.

Because of the increased secularization of American culture, you’re going to have to go beyond telling people to trust the Bible blindly—you have to explain why the Bible deserves to be trusted.

Instead of simply appealing to the Bible as the ultimate evidence one needs to believe in Jesus, be ready to defend the legitimacy of the Scriptures as reliable, historical documents, because they are!

2. “Jesus is our lover and protector. He makes life awesome.”

Have you paid attention to what happens to the disciples of Jesus? Faithful followers of Jesus rest in joy of eternity amidst the turmoil of the present.

The promises of God do not prevent pain, and pastors, don’t pretend they do.

If Millennial values hold true, and if the secularization of culture persists, the prosperity gospel is going to die a slow, painful, deserved death. Young people have experienced enough economic and institutional instability to know that life is tough, even for those resting in Jesus.

Pastors, pay attention to what your young people are reading and sharing on social media. People know the world is messed up, and they’re not naïve enough to think pledging allegiance to Jesus is going to make everything immediately better. To be sure, followers of Jesus find untouchable peace in the finished work of Christ, but that doesn’t mean life is always peachy.

Even the man who built his house on the rock had to endure the storm.

Don’t pitch prosperity nonsense. Not just because it’s untrue, but because it usually doesn’t work.

Having faith in Christ doesn’t prevent problems, but it gives us a foundation on which to stand when they come, because they will. Even more, if the storms of life leave us in a heap, the foundation of Christ is our only hope for new life.

Instead of pitching a health and wealth gospel, share the comfort found in Christ amidst life’s hardest times.

3. “The Church has been a dominant force for thousands of years, how could that many people be wrong?”

This is precisely the sort of thing you do not want to say to a Millennial to share Christ. Among many unchurched young people, particularly atheists, the Church is seen as an oppressive, money hungry organization built to be the biggest ponzi scheme in the world. We’ve already looked at the fact that Millennials are averse toward institutions, so pitching the authority of the Church because its aged institutionalism is probably not the wisest way to approach an unbelieving Millennial.

I love the Church deeply. I am committed to the establishment of the local church as the greatest force of social and spiritual change the world will ever know, but most young people are not. If you’re going to reach unbelieving Millennials, lead with the love of Jesus.

God sent Jesus (Jn. 3:16), and Jesus sends us (Matt. 28:18-20). The gospel has been missional from the beginning. The love of God fuels our love for others, and the grace of God fuels our pursuit of justice for others. The gospel is the fuel for social justice.

Instead of appealing to the dominant force of the Church, appeal to the life-changing love of Christ.

God Grows Faith in Millennials Hearts

Sharing Christ with others is almost never easy. We’re afraid of people rejecting what is at the core of our being, which makes us understandably timid. Thankfully, the same Jesus that saves sinners equips the saints to share the gospel. If you’re going to share Christ with Millennials, begin by praying and spending time with the Savior you’re sharing.

An unwillingness to share the gospel is ultimately an unwillingness to trust God and pursue the mission given to us by Jesus. The Great Commission is not a solo mission. In 1 Corinthians 3:6-7, Paul says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” God will grow faith in Millenial hearts. He will make disciples by the power of the Spirit in that demographic. The gospel is the power of God for salvation—even among Millenials.

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Chris Martin (@ChrisMartin17) is a social media facilitator at LifeWay Christian Resources in, an M.Div. student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and blogger at Millennial Evangelical where he hopes to help pastors and Christians better understand, reach, and serve Millennials. He lives in Nashville with his wife, Susie, and hopes to pastor in the future.

Redeeming Our Offices

Today, we’re re-releasing Jeremy Writebol’s everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present via Kindle on Amazon.com. You can buy your digital copy with one click $6.49.

A Bad Day at the Office

Why is it that we so deeply despise going to work? What is it about the office that causes us to prefer calling in sick, staying in bed, or hiding out for months on end rather than be doing the very thing that God called us to do with his good creation in the first place? Maybe going into the office really was the curse of our dislocation. It seems that work really was the result of our crimes.

Scripture makes it plain in Genesis 2 that work was given to humanity and work was right. But instead of work as we know it, work initially was not about providing for our essential needs like food and shelter. For our first parents, work was art. It was labor to design, cultivate, and express dominion over the established place of God. It was an effort to put decorations and details on the first place of God.

Occasionally, there are projects that I get to spend time working on that are sheer pleasure. They do not provide food for my table or pay off the mortgage. Instead they are labors of love. Tonight my daughter interrupted my writing and asked me to assemble her new LEGO stables. Some 2,000 pieces (and many of them very tiny) and two hours later, we were done. It wasn't anything I was paid to do, but it was still work. And I loved it. This is what going to the office was originally about: forming, cultivating, and managing creatively what God had made. It was art.

Then came the dislocating break of our rebellion. We didn't want to be artists painting on God's canvas. We wanted to make our own canvas. With it came the curse that now plagues our work. Instead of having everything we needed for life, we had to labor to stay alive. Where we were once amply supplied by God, now we were forced to have our cake and eat it, too. We wanted to work independently from God and he allowed it. We have to work to stay alive. This is the daily reality of our rebellion and the curse.

The office lost all of its delight. We found productivity flittered away by thorns and thistles. The soil we needed to survive was dry, hard, and unyielding. Making an existence from day-to-day, paycheck-to-paycheck became our work, and that was where work lost all its art.

Maybe this is why no one feels like going to work in the morning. Mondays are synonymous with the death of our freedom, independence, and life. Work is death and no one likes it. We spend our youth preparing to work, our best years working away, and then end up dying from our work. As the preacher of Ecclesiastes wonders, "What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?" (Ecc. 1:3). This is the blatant effect of our sin and the curse. The office is a den of death.

This is why my friends Bonnie and Brandon don't see the progress of patients recovering to complete health. It's the reason why the hours and hours Eric spends designing aircraft feel fruitless. It's why Andy works a job he doesn’t really desire so that he can put food on the table. It is why, although we seem to see developments in technology, science, politics, economics and the like, nothing seems to be getting better.

Work as Role or Identity?

Is there redemption for our offices? Although we believe in a gospel that saves our souls, could we imagine Christ redeeming our workplaces as well? Could there be salvation for the office too? Yes, but only if we look to the work of Christ. For so many, our work has transitioned itself from a role we were given to an identity we possess. Work became who we are instead of something we do.

The proof of this is found when you meet someone new. Introduce yourself to someone you don't know and the likelihood of you identifying yourself by what you do is very high. Usually we start with our name (“I'm Jeremy”) followed by what we do (“I'm a pastor”). We weigh the value of our lives by our work. The important people are the ones with the great jobs, the large incomes, the high-yield, high-capacity productions. Those who achieve their vocational dreams are the great ones. Those who fail at attaining those degrees are just "working for the man." We live and die by our jobs and their perceived successes and failures.

That's why we need a relocation. Our identity must be shifted away from what we do to who we are. We must be redeemed from perverting our role as workers into our identity as workers.

I find it wonderful that Jesus didn't come with an identity-issue about his work. He knew who he was, the Son of God. He knew what his job was, to give his life as a ransom for many (Mk. 10:45). He didn't have the two confused. And so he came, reminded of his identity by his Father (1:11) to do the work he was sent to do (1:15). He came to do the work we could not do. In substituting himself for us, he worked to fulfilled the Law at every point and win perfect righteousness for us. By standing in our place, he did the work of satisfying God's wrath and removing our sin by dying on the cross for us. In such, he glorified his father and accomplished the work he was sent to do (Jn. 17:5).

Jesus didn't take work away from us. He redeemed us from a life of finding our identity in our work. He didn't live, die, and rise to life again so that we could skip out on the office or marketplace. He lived, died, and arose to life again so that we would glorify him at our office, not worship our office. Instead of living to fulfill the identities we find in our work, Jesus gives us a new identity, his brothers and sisters, so that we can go to work, not to earn an identity but to rest from identity seeking. We go into the office as kingdom citizens to create, cultivate, develop, and design all that the King owns for the King's glory.

Who Are You Working For?

One of the most frustrating aspects of work, beyond the inefficiencies and futility of fruitless work, is the people we work for. Just as we struggle with deep authority issues in relationship with God, we continue to struggle with the authority issues we have with our employers and supervisors. Our bosses can be tyrants, ogres, and despots all in one eight-hour shift. For those of us who are fortunate enough to have a decent boss, we still buckle, from time to time, under the difficulty of not always seeing eye-to-eye. We all have bad days with our superiors.

For Kingdom citizens, the presence of the King in our workplaces deeply alters the way we see our bosses. Paul calls Kingdom citizens to see their work in this light by calling servants to be obedient and submissive to their superiors as if they were serving the King himself (Col. 3:22-24). The renovated heart goes beyond just obedience as a people-pleaser, or giving appearance as such, and calls the citizens of the Kingdom to obey with sincerity while fearing the Lord.

My fighter-jet-engineering friend Randy told me one day of a meeting with his superiors. In the meeting over the design of the jet, his boss became rather irate and excessively direct about a particular portion of the jet's design. Randy was given clear directions that the design of the jet should in every way be "from scratch." It was as if his company wanted to be the Wright brothers all over again and invent flight, this time on the scale of a fighter jet. As Randy debated for particular design similarities, his boss became more and more indignant about the uniqueness of the design. As Randy listened and considered, he knew that he had a responsibility to obey his boss and honor Christ. It didn't make sense, but it was right. It was only later that he discovered his boss’s reasons and Randy ended up benefiting his company and business by his obedience.

This is the kind of renovating work the King does. He transforms his people from rebellious people-pleasers to sincere Kingdom-servants. Work is transformed by the way we work for the ones set in authority over us (1 Pt. 2:13-25).

Working Hard, Working Well

While obedience to our superiors is a kingdom value, is this all that a renovation of our work places brings about? Are we to just be dutiful drones at the jobs in which we take no delight? Does the gospel speak to what we spend our working lives doing? Is there a Kingdom renovation to be done with regard to occupations and vocations? Can a kingdom citizen find the art in their work once again?

Like the false dichotomy of the material and spiritual, bad religion created another dichotomy with regard to our work; sacred and secular. Those that worked jobs in the sacred realms of the church were the ones who worked within a higher calling. They had the blessing of God, treasure in heaven, and a trophy of accomplishing something that lasts for eternity to put on their mantle. For the bankers, butchers, and builders (also known as secular workers), there was the glib promise that one day they could go to heaven and maybe be a worship leader and really please God. However, their vocations and their work were sub-eternal and a less than great calling. What does God need with someone who can carve meat anyway? To this day, it's not too hard to find churches and Christians who still practically affirm this position.

But the Scriptures never affirm a sacred/secular vocational divide. Rather, the word of the King is that "whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord" (Col 3:23). Those three words, "whatever you do," are a major blow to any scared/secular mentality. In those words, the King affirms the unique occupations of Kingdom citizens. Whether it's banking, broadcasting, auto sales, brewing coffee, serving tables, or working at homemaking, the King authorizes his citizens to work well in what they do. He affirms the value of every occupation that cultivates, develops, and advances his authority in his Kingdom. This includes building bridges, teaching children, accounting financial assets, diagnosing physical diseases, and baking pies.

How is this so? How does the bakery become a Kingdom place? First, by the way in which we work. Paul says "whatever you do, do it heartily." There is a way in which Kingdom citizens work for the King. They, by their presence at their work, demonstrate God's nature. They reveal the God who worked hard at the creating of all things; a God who put his full wisdom and glory and creativity into play as he made all things. By the way they work, they show an industrious, productive, intelligent God. They show a God who didn't take short-cuts, who didn't get lazy on the job, and who didn't "phone it in" in his work of creation and redemption.

Second, they also show a Kingdom value in the trajectory of their work. They work "as for the Lord." Their work is aimed at pleasing the King himself. How does an aerospace engineer design planes for the Lord? By making the best planes he can. By using the wisdom and understanding and knowledge the King has gifted him with to understand the laws of nature and develop means by which the creation can be advanced to serve people. How does a baker make pies for the Lord? By baking in such a way that the King himself would enjoy her pies. By baking with a mind to serve her fellow humanity as they delight in the excellent tastes of the pie. They both please the Lord by being creative, honest, diligent, and excellent in their various occupations.

There is a further implication of the resurrection of Jesus here for us in our work. The resurrection of Jesus was his coronation and enthronement as King over all kings. Everything is being brought under subjection to him as King (Ps. 8:6, 1 Cor. 15:27). Our work, done in the name of the King and for the King is participating with him in bringing all things under his authority. The way we develop technology, or manage resources, or develop business strategies, or cook meals, or build houses, or any innumerable sorts of occupations are bringing all things under subjection to Christ. The computer programmer who develops software to advance communication can see himself as utilizing technology for the sake of the King and the advancement of his Kingdom. The doctor who develops wise and resourceful medical practices is bringing the field of medicine under the realm of the King when she does so to keep, preserve and enhance life. The teacher who works with fourth graders is bringing a classroom of students under the dominion of Christ, but educating her class about the physical and moral laws that govern the world in which we live in. All things are brought to rest under the Lordship of Christ as the resurrected King.

As such, the renovating work of the King brings us to our offices (or classrooms or kitchens or laboratories, or whatever we call the space we work in) to work hard and to work for him. He calls us into every sphere of life and vocation to develop and deploy our gifts to show His authority and dominion over all things. He must have workers in every vocation to demonstrate all things are for his glory, even the offices that we spend our days working in. By our work we display an ever-present King in every place.

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Jeremy Writebol(@jwritebol) has been training leaders in the church for over thirteen years. He is the author of everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present (GCD Books, 2014) and writes at jwritebol.net. He lives and works in Plymouth, MI as the Campus Pastor of Woodside Bible Church.

“I Could Tell You Some Stories . . . ”

“I could tell you some stories . . . ”

Remarked Charlie, before he was cut off by his next door neighbor Barton,

“Sure you could and yet many writers do everything in their power to insulate themselves from the common man, from where they live, from where they trade, from where they fight and love and converse and . . . ”

Barton was a writer who just moved from New York City to Hollywood to write for the motion pictures. His work and passion was the plight of the “common man” in America—the working class, regular “human experience.” The crowd that knew nothing of the world of the elite intelligentsia that Barton was a member. His first Broadway play, Bare Ruined Choirs, all about the “common man,” was a smashing success on Broadway. So much of a success that he landed himself a deal in Hollywood. So he left for California to share his stories of “the common man” with the masses.

The only problem is that Barton didn’t know the first thing about “the common man” and was so wrapped up in his vision of “the common man” that when a common man, like Charlie, wants to tell him about his life he is too involved in himself to listen.

Now, if this sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve sat through the strange, brilliant Coen Brothers film Barton Fink. An odd little flick about delusion, disillusion, and writer’s block.

I resonate with the scene above between Barton (John Turturro) and Charlie (John Goodman) more than I’d like to. It’s a convicting, albeit subtle, picture of how I tend to treat people.

Good Stories Breed Humility

I think I know way more about things than I actually do. My theology is airtight (or, at least I think it is). I’m decent at arguing, and I really want to fit things into my neat and tidy classifications. But a good story—a good movie—won’t let you do that.

In the last one hundred and twenty years the medium of the motion picture (movie) has become, arguably, the most popular and powerful way to communicate in story form. Usually running anywhere from twenty-odd minutes to eight plus hours long, a film creates a distinct reality and tells a story (or series of stories) in that reality. Sometimes that reality is real life. Sometimes it’s a galaxy far far away.

Film has been a part of my life in an important way since I saw The White Balloon when I was about ten. I remember being blown away by how different the main character was than me. But at the same time, how similar. I thought I would have reacted just as the main character might have in the same situation—though I could never have imagined actually being in those situations (e.g., living in Iran, navigating a market in streets of Tehran). The story about an unremarkable person navigating an unremarkable situation somehow captured the beauty, emotions, and struggles of life in a remarkable way.

Since then, movies have been more than just entertainment to me. They’ve helped me understand my humanity—the backdrop for understanding the gospel.

I struggle to know what exactly it means to be human. I mean, yes, my “worldview” tells me the facts: created in the image of God, totally depraved, saved by Jesus, Jesus is marking me more like him—but meanwhile life is hard and I need a nap, one day I will die, then I’ll be with Jesus forever. But understanding those facts personally, hopefully, and joyfully is another story. My worldview is often just “life is hard and I usually need a nap.” I forget the beginning, most of the middle, and the end.

More than teaching new things, movies usually serve to remind us of what we already know in beautiful ways. Good movies remind me of what it means to be human—and above all, what it mean’s to be rescued by grace.

Films like The White Balloon and It’s a Wonderful Life remind me that it’s okay to be ordinary because there is something deeply, divinely extraordinary about the ordinary grind of work, family, and sacrifice. Something like Jeff Nichols’ 2007 film Shotgun Stories reminds me that I will never outgrow my need for grace because things will never (in this life) be fully as they were intended to be. Even a movie like Wolf of Wall Street reminds me that the atrocities of humanity deserve God’s wrath, myself included and indicted.

Not the Whole Story

Movies usually don’t tell whole story, but they tell stories that reflect the whole story.

In Mike Cosper’s new book The Stories We Tell, he masterfully articulates how the TV shows and movies we love give us glimpses into the human heart, created in the Image of God. A good movie “aims at the imagination,” says Cosper, “a much more mysterious and sneaky part of us, ruled by love, desire, and hope.”

For Christians, it can be tempting to be fearful or dismissive of these sorts of incomplete stories where the echo is somewhat faint, especially when they seem (on the surface) to contradict Christian values. But in reality a good film, uninhibited by pretense, can be a robust vehicle for gospel transformation. Alissa Wilkinson, the chief film critic at Christianity Today puts it this way,

“We tend to treat actual cultural artifacts in the way we sometimes treat the Bible: as ‘proof texts’ from which we can draw principles or truths for application. Though we love the Bible, we evangelicals in particular have often treated verses as if they stand alone, forgetting that the story in which they appear speaks just as much as the verses themselves.

Similarly, Christian critics can lean (lazily) into the idea that products of culture mainly exist as object lessons to be turned into ‘truths’ when we talk about them and figure out how they do or don’t line up with our beliefs.”

Instead of interacting with stories and people for what they are, it’s too easy to get upset because they are not as we want them to be.

We treat people like the media we produce. As we proof text media or Scripture, we end up proof texting people. “Post-moderns,” “liberals,” “fundamentalists,” or “millennials” become a standard way to disengage with the nitty-gritty humanness of the people around us.

The Gospel That Listens

But the gospel doesn’t operate in labels. God extends grace to unique, broken individuals. The only qualification for believing the gospel is honesty. Honestly acknowledging our need and inability to accept God’s grace and adoption. Like God’s questioning of Job in Job 38, we don’t need to have all the answers we just need to know who does.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, Or who laid its cornerstone, When the morning stars sang together And all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4-7)

A good movie won’t always reveal the whole systematic truth of life, but if you look closely, it can reveal glimpses of the Creator of truth.

These glimpses—taken for what they are and not just what we want them to be—have the ability to challenge, soften, and enlighten us. They give us lenses to understand different aspects of the human experience.

That scene in Barton Fink, remember, from our opening, isn’t profound because I’m trying to make it as a writer in Hollywood but because, in one way or another, I have many people around me, Christians and non-Christians, saying to me “I could tell you some stories . . . ”

By God’s grace, I’m learning to listen to those stories for what they are just as I’m learning to see movies for what they are—the image of God mixed with our humanity, humanly told.

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Nick Rynerson lives in the west suburbs of Chicago with his groovy wife, Jenna. He is a staff writer for Christ and Pop Culture and a marketing coordinator at Crossway. Connect with him on Twitter @nick_rynerson or via email.

Sent into the Harvest: Halloween on Mission

What if a crisp October wind blew through “the way we’ve always done things” at Halloween? What if the Spirit stirred in us a new perspective on October 31? What if dads led their households in a fresh approach to Halloween as Christians on mission? What if spreading a passion for God’s supremacy in all things included Halloween — that amalgamation of wickedness now the second-largest commercial holiday in the West?

Loving Others and Extending Grace

What if we didn’t think of ourselves as “in the world, but not of it,” but rather, as Jesus says in John 17, “not of the world, but sent into it”?

And what if that led us to move beyond our squabbles about whether or not we’re free to celebrate All Hallows’ Eve, and the main issue became whether our enjoyment of Jesus and his victory over Satan and the powers of darkness might incline us to think less about our private enjoyments and more about how we might love others? What if we took Halloween captive — along with “every thought” (2 Corinthians 10:5) — as an opportunity for gospel advance and bringing true joy to the unbelieving?

And what if those of us taking this fresh approach to Halloween recognized that Christians hold a variety of views about Halloween, and we gave grace to those who see the day differently than we do?

Without Naiveté or Retreat

What if we didn’t merely go with the societal flow and unwittingly float with the cultural tide into and out of yet another Halloween? What if we didn’t observe the day with the same naïveté as our unbelieving neighbors and coworkers?

And what if we didn’t overreact to such nonchalance by simply withdrawing? What if Halloween wasn’t a night when Christians retreated in disapproval, but an occasion for storming the gates of hell?

The Gospel Trick

What if we ran Halloween through the grid of the gospel and pondered whether there might be a third path beyond naïveté and retreat? What if we took the perspective that all of life, Halloween included, is an opportunity for gospel advance? What if we saw Halloween not as a retreat but as a kind of gospel trick — an occasion to extend Christ’s cause on precisely the night when Satan may feel his strongest?

What if we took to the offensive on Halloween? Isn’t this how our God loves to show himself mighty? Just when the devil has a good head of steam, God, like a skilled ninja, uses the adversary’s body weight against him. It’s Satan’s own inertia that drives the stake into his heart. Just like the cross. It’s a kind of divine “trick”: Precisely when the demonic community thinks for sure they have Jesus cornered, he delivers the deathblow. Wasn’t it a Halloween-like gathering of darkness and demonic festival at Golgotha, the place of the Skull, when the God-man “disarmed the powers and authorities [and] made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them” at the cross (Colossians 2:15)?

Marching on Hell

What if we were reminded that Jesus, our invincible hero, will soon crush Satan under our feet (Romans 16:20)? What if we really believed deep down that our Jesus has promised with absolute certainty, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). What if we realized that the gates-of-hell thing isn’t a picture of a defensive church straining to hold back the progressing Satanic legions, but rather an offensive church, on the move, advancing against the cowering, cornered kingdom of darkness? What if the church is the side building the siegeworks? What if the church is marching forward, and Jesus is leading his church on an aggressive campaign against the stationary and soon-to-collapse gates of hell? What if we didn’t let Halloween convince us for a minute that it’s otherwise?

What if Ephesians 6:12 reminded us that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic power over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places”? What if we remembered that it’s not our increasingly post-Christian society’s Halloween revelers who are our enemies, but that our real adversary is the one who has blinded them, and that we spite Satan as we rescue unbelievers with the word of the cross?

Resisting the Devil

What posture would Jesus have us take when we are told that our “adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8)? Naïveté? Retreat? Rather: “Resist him, firm in your faith” (verse 9). What if we had the gospel gall to trust Jesus for this promise: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7)? And what if resistance meant not only holding our ground, but taking his?

What if we hallowed Jesus at Halloween by pursuing gospel advance and going lovingly on the attack? What if, like Martin Luther, we didn’t cower in fear, but saw October 31 as a chance to serve notice to the threshold of evil? What if we didn’t turn out our lights as if hiding, but left a flaming bag on the very doorstep of the King of Darkness himself?

Orienting on Others

What if we saw October 31 not merely as an occasion for asking self-oriented questions about our participation (whether we should or shouldn’t dress the kids up or carve pumpkins), but for pursuing others-oriented acts of love? What if we capitalized on the opportunity to take a step forward in an ongoing process of witnessing to our neighbors, co-workers, and extended families about who Jesus is and what he accomplished at Calvary for the wicked like us?

What if we resolved not to join the darkness by keeping our porch lights off? What if we didn’t deadbolt our doors, but handed out the best treats in the neighborhood as a faint echo of the kind of grace our Father extends to us sinners?

Giving the Good Candy

What if thinking evangelistically about Halloween didn’t mean dropping tracts into children’s bags, but the good candy — and seeing the evening as an opportunity to cultivate relationships with the unbelieving as part of an ongoing process in which we plainly identify with Jesus, get to know them well, and personally speak the good news of our Savior into their lives?

And what if we made sure to keep reminding ourselves that our supreme treasure isn’t our subjective zeal for the mission, but our Jesus and his objective accomplishment for us?

The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. – Jesus in Matthew 9:37–38

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David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is executive editor at desiringGod.org and an elder at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis. He has edited several books, including Thinking. Loving. Doing., Finish the Mission, and Acting the Miracle, and is co-author of How to Stay Christian in Seminary.

Originally posted at DesiringGod.org. Used with permission.

Reigning with Christ on Daily Mission

To say that the heart of the gospel is Christ crucified would not be wrong (1 Cor. 1:23; Gal 6:14). To say that the heart of the gospel is the resurrection of Christ would not be wrong either, for by it our justification comes (Rom. 4:25; cf. 1 Tim. 3:16). To say that the heart of the gospel is the ascension of Christ would not be wrong, but you may receive a funny stare from a confused onlooker. The reason, of course, is that the ascension of Christ is an often overlooked element of the universally huge, wonderfully true, gospel of the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Perhaps you’ve glossed over this verse before: “And when [Jesus] had said these things, as [the disciples] were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). To give another perspective on this event, Mark shares that, “The Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to [the disciples], was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God” (Mk. 16:19).

The anticipation of the Old Testament, as well as the resounding message of the New Testament, is that Christ is King. This is not an empty saying. It means something. The writer of Hebrews says that, “When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet” (Heb. 10:12-13). The verse alluded to here in Hebrews is found in Psalm 110 (which just so happens to be the most quoted Psalm in the New Testament!). Jesus uses the same verse to vindicate his ministry, claiming that David was writing about him (Matt. 22:41-46).

The Exalted King in the Old Testament

The theme of an exalted King to come is all over the Old Testament. Isaiah says that this King’s “temple” will be established “as the highest of the mountains; and shall be lifted above the hills; and all nations will flow to it” (2:2). Later Isaiah says that this son would be given and “the government shall be on his shoulder… Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end” (9:6, 7). Fast forward to the time of the Babylonian exile and we find Daniel interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The dream showed a stone that struck the feet of the statue which symbolized the coming nations of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The kingdom “stone” broke the entire statue so “not a trace of [the kingdoms] could be found” (Dan. 2:35). The stone grew into a great mountain that would fill the earth. Jump over to Daniel 7 and we see the vision of the son of man who comes up to the Ancient of Days and “to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (Dan. 7:14).

Verses like these are what we find as the back story to Christ’s ministry on earth, and the overwhelming consensus of the New Testament writers is that all of this is now true. Peter affirms it an Acts 2, and the rest of the Bible sets its context inside the end of the ages (1 Cor. 10:11) that happened in A.D. 70 with the destruction of the Temple. Because the Old Covenant has passed away, the New Covenant has come, and with it her newly crowned King. The millennial reign of Christ as King is now. Jesus has all authority on heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18).

Now, lest we see this as irrelevant for us who serve as God’s ambassadors and vice-regents, pay close attention to what Paul says in Ephesians as he affirms what has just been laid out above: “[God] worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (1:20). Notice the connection: Resurrection, then Kingdom. The resurrection of Christ is intimately connected to the ascension of Christ and both serve as events confirming that the kingdom of God has indeed come.

But please do not miss what happens next, because this is crucial for the Christian and his implementation of the Kingdom of God in his life. Paul uses nearly the same language to describe our union with Christ: “[God] raised us up with [Jesus] and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6). The context of Ephesians 2:1-5 has to do with resurrection language that is employed when describing our salvation. We were dead, but God made us alive. And not only did he make us alive, we are now reigning with Christ in his perfect Kingdom.

Seated with the King

Where have we heard that before? You guessed it: Revelation 20. When you participate in the first resurrection (the rebirth; cf. Jn. 5:25), you are blessed because death has no power anymore—it has been broken by Jesus’ death. Not only that, you reign with Christ. You have been (past tense) seated with the King.

This is where you and I come in. It is time we see our lawn mowing, dish washing, gardening, and work as Kingdom business. I heard a pastor recently describe some of his extracurricular activities as having “nothing to do with the Kingdom.” I beg to differ. Whatever you do, do it for God’s glory because God’s glory is now on full display (1 Cor. 10:31). It will fill the earth (Is. 11:9). All of this is about dominion. And dominion is about man ruling the earth on behalf of Christ. We seek justice in the Church, the Family, and the State. We labor not just for souls to be saved, but for society to be transformed. Certainly this cannot happen apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in the souls of men, but the Kingdom truly affects everything. When Christ issued his decree as the King of the Universe, it was a decree to make disciples. What is a disciple? Some who is baptized (a part of the visible Church) and obedient to the word of God. (That’s why Jesus told us to teach the nations to observe everything that he commanded).

To the stay-at-home-so-you-can-build-a-home mom: diapers are about the Kingdom (for how else are we to leave a legacy for generations to follow?). Fathers: your work to provide for your family absolutely matters. It matters that you contribute to society with the sweat of your brow. Parents: train up your children in the knowledge of God. Farm the land; build business and do economics; do accounting to the glory of God. Why? Because you reign with Christ. And Christ is in the process of putting all his enemies under his feet (1 Cor. 15:25). The “subdue the earth” command Adam forfeited, the Second Adam recovered. That’s why the ascension of Christ matters. That’s why you matter.

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Rev. Jason M. Garwood (M.Div., Th.D.) serves as Lead Pastor of Colwood Church in Caro, MI. Jason and his wife Mary have three children, Elijah, Avery and Nathan. He blogs at www.jasongarwood.com. Connect with him on Twitter: @jasongarwood.

Evangelism After Christendom

Evangelism is something many Christians are trying to recover from. The word stirs up memories of a bygone era—Christendom—where rehearsed presentations, awkward door-to-door witnessing, a steady flow of tracts, and conversions in revival-like settings were commonplace. As American culture becomes increasingly fragmented and secularized, these forms of evangelism create an impediment to the gospel. Wave after wave of rationalistic, rehearsed (and at times coerced and confrontational) evangelism inoculates, if not antagonizes, the broader culture. The gospel is slowly associated with forceful Christians who are information-driven, looking to get Jesus off their chest. As a result, evangelism is viewed as an attempt to recruit converts, not love your neighbor. In response, Hollywood has taken up its own evangelistic message in documentaries like Jesus Camp and Philomena and films like There Will Be Blood, Saved! and Believe Me. The public has been disaffected by our evangelism.

Learning A New Language

What should evangelism look like after Christendom? To answer that question, we must recognize that twentieth-century American evangelism worked because the culture was largely familiar with Christianity. It included many assumptions, such as the brute fact of absolute truth, the existence of heaven and hell (or God for that matter), and a widely held notion that sin keeps us from God. We can no longer assume this understanding. The cultural shift away from Christianity has resulted in a loss of theological vocabulary. People don’t understand what we are saying. It’s as if we are speaking a foreign language.

Many Christian teachings and assumptions are fuzzy, even questionable to those outside the faith. Calling people to “repent and believe in Jesus” is typically misconstrued as “stop doing bad things, start doing good things (like Jesus did), and God will save you.” This, of course, has nothing to do with the gospel and leaves us disconnected from our culture. There is a considerable gap between the gospel communicator and the receptor culture. This gap is filled with all sorts of things that prevent effective gospel witness, including theological misunderstandings, politicized Christianity, bigoted religion, and unbelievable forms of evangelism. How can we cut through the cultural confusion in order to communicate a clear, winsome gospel message? Like missionaries in a foreign country, we inhabit a new mission field. We need to relearn the language, discover redemptive analogies, and reacquaint people with the true Christian story.

How the News is Good

A fundamental question in evangelism is often overlooked: “How is the gospel good news to those we evangelize?”

Not what is the good news, but how is our news good for others? Christians are often proficient at rehearsing the information of the gospel, but we often lack the ability to relate the gospel to the lives of others. If we are to overcome obstacles to evangelism, we must be able to answer this question: “What does the death and resurrection of a first-century Jewish messiah have to do with twenty-first-century people?”

How does the gospel transform the self-righteous do-gooder, the skeptical urbanite, the distant spouse, the successful professional, and the strung-out addict?

Getting to a Believable Gospel

We need to recover a believable evangelism, one that moves beyond the cultural and personal barriers we have erected in contemporary evangelism to rediscover the power of the biblical gospel. What makes the gospel believable? Rather than a one-size-fits-all message, we need to hold the gospel up to the light and see its various gospel metaphors—justification, union with Christ, redemption, adoption, and new creation—in light of various cultural identities and longings. These metaphors can function like redemptive analogies. If we listen to people long enough, we will uncover deep gospel longings, that manifest uniquely in secular culture, and call people to turn and put their faith in only one who can fulfill those longings. Here are a few examples.

1. Seekers of Acceptance

One of the greatest needs people have today is to be accepted, to know they are welcome and won’t be rejected. This is particularly true in entrepreneurial or honor and shame cultures. People who are driven to perform well in school, work, and family life are often seeking acceptance from themselves or others. Though they may try to deny or hide it, these kinds of people often carry a sense of shame, a fear that they will be found out, rejected, and judged when they fall short. Urban professionals worship in the temple of the city, students bow before the almighty “A,” and families strive to live up to a cultural dream. Eventually people fail to find acceptance through these things, no matter how successful they become.

To those seeking acceptance, justification promises perfect acceptance before a holy God through his unique Son, Jesus Christ. Justification can bring tremendous relief and joy to those seeking acceptance.

2. Seekers of Hope

The metaphor of new creation can be especially compelling for people who are longing for a new start in life. People whose lives have been littered with failure, scarred by abuse, humbled through suffering, darkened by depression, or ruined by addiction need the hope of becoming a new creation.

To those seeking hope, new creation exiles the old life and welcomes a new life through faith in Christ, shedding a bright ray of hope into the heart of the hopeless.

3. Seekers of Intimacy

Our search for intimacy in relationships never ends. Even the best friendship or marriage isn’t enough for our insatiable demand to be noticed, loved, and cared for. We all want a place where we can be ourselves and know that we are accepted. We want relationships that are secure, where we feel safe to share our innermost thoughts and darkest struggles. This is especially true of the person practicing serial monogamy, stuck in a broken marriage, or the celibate, lonely single.

To those seeking intimacy, union with Christ promises entrance into the most intimate, loving, unbreakable, fulfilling relationship known to humanity, bringing deep healing and joy to those seeking intimacy.

4. Seekers of Tolerance

Many people seek tolerance. Some don’t know the difference between classical and new tolerance.¹ That alone can be an illuminating conversation that deepens mutual respect and admiration between people. Others will not like the exclusive claims that Christianity makes. However, before scoffing at their perspective or trying to crush their worldview, ask questions to get on the inside of their perspective and appreciate their views. They often have good reasons or difficult stories attached to their objections. Respectful dialogue can go a long way in over-turning bigoted impressions of Christianity. In fact, it will open doors that would otherwise remain closed.

To those seeking tolerance, the atonement offers a redemptive tolerance that gives progressive people an opportunity to experience grace and forgiveness in a way that doesn’t demean other faiths, which can be very liberating.

Different Perspectives, Same Eternal Gospel

These gospel metaphors offer different perspectives on the eternal gospel, which when applied to the deep longings of people, awaken belief, hope, faith, and love. Gospel metaphors account for the depth, complexity, and power of the gospel, helping us answer not just the “what” of the gospel, but the “how.”

In order for our evangelism to be believable, it must be biblical. So when we communicate the gospel of grace, we must necessarily draw on biblical truths, stories, and images. If we stop there, however, we will fail to communicate effectively how the gospel is good news for others. Like good counselors, we must listen to others well to know how to effectively communicate the unsearchable riches of Christ in a way that speaks to their unique life story.

^{1. Old or “classical” tolerance holds the belief that other opinions have a right to exist. The new tolerance is the belief that all opinions are equally valid or true.↩}

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Jonathan K. Dodson (MDiv; ThM) serves as a pastor of City Life Church in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Gospel-Centered Discipleship, Unbelievable Gospel, and Raised? He has discipled men and women abroad and at home for almost two decades, taking great delight in communicating the gospel and seeing Christ formed in others. Twitter: @Jonathan_Dodson

Jonathan’s new book is The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing (resource website here). You can also get his free ebook “Four Reasons Not to Share Your Faith.”

Haunted by Grace

This summer my wife and I moved from the medium sized central Illinois community of Normal to the Chicago suburbs. I grew up in Normal, went to college in Normal, and started my career in Normal—and I assumed I was going to spend the next few decades (at least) there. I don’t particularly like change and I don’t particularly like taking risks, so naturally the move has stretched me. The week before we closed on our house in the suburbs singer-songwriter Jason Isbell was passing through one of our favorite venues in central Illinois. My wife and I love Jason Isbell (and needed a date night) so we got there early to get a place to stand front and center.

It was a fantastic show—he puts on a great live performance. But about halfway through his set Isbell strums the first chords of “Alabama Pines,” and my wife and I both start weeping. “Alabama Pines”—an Americana ballad about feeling displaced, being away from home, and figuring out your identity amidst unfamiliarity—is one of our favorites and at the time was about as applicable as a song could be. In that moment, six feet from one of our favorite musicians, we were comforted in our insecurities, fears, and doubts. Even though we had never met, it seemed like Jason Isbell understood exactly what we were going through.

Once again, as happens often for me, music went beyond entertainment and became a means of grace.

Growing up, music was not just background noise but a world to explore. When most parents were playing children’s music or pop radio for their kids, I was being introduced to Buddy Holly, The Coasters, Chuck Berry, and Bob Dylan. My dad told me all sorts of stories about different musicians, studios, and venues that captured my imagination. Rock & Roll, Country, and the Blues were the folklore that implanted itself in my imagination, and like good folklore does, it filled me with wonder and awe.

Music was more than entertainment, it shaped me.

The love that I developed in childhood wasn’t just for music itself, but what it allowed me to express and articulate in remarkable detail. If I was upset I could listen to The Clash, who would identify with my angst. If I was sad I could listen to Bright Eyes lament. If I was feeling like I didn’t have a friend in the world, the Flaming Lips could always reassure me that there are people who are just as weird as me. Music naturally became a sort of language for me to articulate—if only to myself—what I was thinking and feeling.

Rock & Roll Music: Unredeemable Smut?

When I became a Christian, I thought I had to give up my love of the “secular” music that I grew up on. Like many who come from an unchurched background, I had to wrestle to understand how the things that I loved before I became a Christian should be incorporated in my new life. Before I was a Christian I certainly resounded with the refrain in Wilco’s “Sunken Treasure,”

Music is my savior I was maimed by rock and roll I was maimed by rock and roll I was tamed by rock and roll I got my name from rock and roll

When Jesus saved me I woke up to the reality that Rock & Roll is a lousy savior. I’m too big of a sinner to be saved by Rock & Roll. I needed Jesus.

But did that mean I must stay away from Rock & Roll altogether?

After much trial and error, counsel, prayer, and grace I realized I loved music for a God-given reason. God, in making man in his image, made humans musical creatures. It is our natural response to sing and express ourselves. From sports teams (you never walk alone!) to national anthems to love songs. We seem bent on expressing our loyalty, our love, and our sorrow through non-rational, rhythmic aesthetics. That is why Martin Luther said,

“I truly desire that all Christians would love and regard as worthy the lovely gift of music, which is a precious, worthy, and costly treasure given mankind by God. . . . Our dear fathers and prophets did not desire without reason that  music be always used in the churches. Hence we have so many songs and psalms.”

It is easy to see how we are discipled by music in the context of a worship service, but what about Rock & Roll? Country? How could that disciple us in anything other than debauchery and paganism?

By having my eyes opened to the real world—a world created by God, haunted by grace but caught in sin—I could see the image of God in the music I loved. It was my idolatry that was the problem.

Music as a Means of Grace

In 1 Samuel 16, when Saul is harassed by an evil spirit, it is the soothing, skillful lyre of David that brings relief. When Adam meets his bride Eve in Genesis 2 he responds in song. And in Acts when Paul wants to show how close to the gospel the Greeks were, he read them their own poetry—a musical literary genre. Music acts as a relief of the soul and a longing for the divine, even when we don’t intended it to be such.

Let’s jump back to the Jason Isbell show for a minute. As we were there having a good time and listening to some tunes, something happened. “Alabama Pines” struck our hearts and hit us square in the chest. At that moment the emotions and aesthetics of that song acted as a kind counselor by identifying and validating what we were going through. It was just for a moment, but it was nonetheless moving and cathartic. Isbell didn’t mean for his song to comfort us in our spiritual affliction, he probably just meant to write a good song.

Likewise, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco has said that the guitar solo in his song “At least that’s what you said” is a musical representation of what his anxiety attacks feel like. Tweedy expressed, as best as he knew how, a complicated emotional state and wound up creating something profound. I can hear my own anxiety, unbelief, and fear in his guitar. It does for me what David’s lyre did for Saul, and in that I can see the kindness of a God who relates to and understands his children.

When I am feeling hardhearted (which is often, if I am honest) there is music that tenderizes my heart and reminds me of God’s grace. Often this music is not explicitly theologically-driven or written by people who claim to be Christians. My wife and I chose The Avett Brothers’ gentle ballad “Murder In The City” for our first dance because of it’s softening power and beautiful picture of humble love. The same comes over me when I listen to A.A. Bondy’s album “American Hearts,” an album ripe with biblical imagery and poetic beauty.

These are what theologian Jerram Barrs would call “echoes of Eden.” Pictures of the way the world was supposed to be and a glimpse at the coming Kingdom.

Grace in “Secular” Music

Is there sin in “secular” music? Yes.That’s because it is made by sinners. But those sinners are also made in the image of God. Therefore, we have something to learn from even the least holy music.

The seemingly “secular” or “profane” always hold some divine significance in the world created exclusively by God.

That does not mean we should not be discerning. In fact, it means we should be extremely discerning! As I listen for God’s voice in the unpredictable world of Rock & Roll music, I find things that are not upbuilding that I do not want to identify with. But for all the unhealthy and broken music there is so much beauty and truth.

The temptation is to ingest music uncritically with little care or thought to the significance of the music being consumed or to find spiritual significance only in explicitly Christian music. Outside of the occasional time Coldplay talks about heaven, we hardly realize that we music has a profound spiritual quality.

We have access to our culture’s hymn book, and if we took the time to read it we might find what Paul found, that “He is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27).

It takes a heart awake to grace to perceive nonbelievers perceiving God’s attributes. The more we understand the gospel, the more we will begin to realize that God’s grace is so close, so tangible that non-Christians sing about it without even knowing they are singing about it. Grace sometimes offends our religious sensibilities by being so visible in lives of those who have no religious sensibilities.

Do you think that Paul would’ve been comfortable quoting Greek poets or acknowledging that “his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” before he was awake to the gospel of Jesus? Even in describing the sin of humanity, Paul wanted the Romans to know that their pagan neighbors perceived the reality of God.

I’ve found that the more I understand God’s grace (which still isn’t very much), the more I am open to seeing God’s grace in places I wouldn’t think to look for it. That’s why I dumped my love for music when I first became a Christ and why I soon came back to it. As the Holy Spirit continually grows our understanding of God’s grace, we will see it in places we could’ve never imagined it would be—like Rock & Roll music.

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Nick Rynerson lives in the west suburbs of Chicago with his groovy wife, Jenna. He is a staff writer for Christ and Pop Culture and a marketing coordinator at Crossway. Connect with him on Twitter @nick_rynerson or via email.

The Pornified Mind and the Glory of God

When I was 22 I heard Louie Giglio speak about the glory of God and I've never forgotten that sermon. He spoke about a road-trip he and a friend took in their late teens. Mount Rainier was the destination; they ate, drank, and breathed information about the mountain in preparation to summit it. But in the moment when they beheld the mount, it was not information that filled them, but awe. Louie told how he stood there looking at Rainier and wept. He was ashamed of his tears at the time—what self-respecting man weeps at a mountain? But as he shared the story in front of thousands of young people I guarantee there was no shortage of tears welling in our own eyes. Awe is contagious.

Rewiring Our Minds

A new film is set to release this year, the protagonist is a guy who values, "My body, my pad, my ride, my family, my church, my boys, my girls . . . and my porn." As best as I can tell from the trailer, when he finally encounters a girl who meets his porn-infused standards, he's surprised to find out she has some standards of her own. Her porn, though, is chick flicks—stories of tender, strong, fictional gentlemen who will meet her emotional and physical needs; needs which our principle guy finds he is hardly qualified to meet.

There's a good amount of gender stereotyping from what I can tell in just the trailer; however, as I don't see myself spending time, money, or soul watching the film, my observations here are based on the trailer alone. Now would be a good time to point out that porn is not just an issue for men: 66% of women today watch or have watched porn. But for the sake using the illustration of the film, we're going to stick to what it offers to us here. There are a few notable observations to be made from it, namely that even secular culture recognizes the similarity between men who watch porn and women who read books and films depicting romance. If watching porn rewires the minds of men, it's a safe bet to say there's some rewiring happening in the minds of women as well when they feast on emotional and sexual fantasies (of any kind).

One of the ways porn has affected men in greater numbers is their lack of arousal by a real live woman. The more they feast on multiple women at the mere click of a button, the more they train their minds to need new, new, new. Though I have no scientific proof for my theory, I would argue the same is true for women who have allowed their minds to sit in the stench of imagined and unfulfilled futures. No man can compete with the specimen of modern lore.

A number of single, young men have told me they can't get a date because women have this strong, silent, tall, dark, and handsome fictional ideal. The same is true for women. Men who have feasted on airbrushed women meeting their every sexual fantasy are not going to find much attractive in the girl next door unless she's wearing daisy dukes and midriff top. The more we feast on what is not real, the less we desire that which is.

In conversations with my single friends, the number one attribute of a woman the men want is someone they're physically attracted to, and the number one attribute the women want in a man is a partner and a friend. That's telling to me and it should be to all of us.

Splitting Intentions

Wendell Berry, in his essay Feminism, the Body, and the Machine, writes,

Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate "relationship" involving (ideally) two successful careerist in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided.

While Berry is speaking specifically about the modern idea that within marriage we "split" duties and work equally, his share and her share, and how this is only a divorce mindset within the confines of a lawful marriage, there's something to be said here for the way we go about seeking a spouse. For a man to place such high emphasis on the "hotness" of his wife is to overlook the sharedness of the image in Whom they were made. And for a woman to find her greatest satisfaction in a man who will be her gentle-friend and provider, she misses the opportunity to reflect back the Maker to her spouse.

We have been splitting duties since the garden of Eden (Eve: The serpent gave it to me! Adam: The woman you gave to me gave it to me!). In a culture that increasingly sees nothing wrong with porn, romance novels, or chick flicks, we only fracture that split further: the woman is meant to please men, the man is meant to please women. Meanwhile both have almost completely lost sight of original intention which is not to please one another at all.

God's Good Pleasure

"Come, let us make man in our image, after our likeness," are the first words we hear from God regarding man. In our image. In our likeness.

He formed man from dust and breathed life into his nostrils. He formed woman from bone and brought her to man.

Adam's response to woman has been caricatured by many to imply that woman was staggeringly beautiful and so should every woman henceforth be to her husband. But it falls flat because to what did Adam have to compare this creation? There were no standards of beauty but One. God alone. And in Adam's cry we hear the anguished cry of every man and woman to this day when they behold the nearest thing to God they can know, "At last!"

At last.

It was not the mere beauty of Eve's body that brought Adam such joy, but the image-bearer of his Creator standing in full glorious reality in front of him. It was not only a sexual reaction, but a spiritual one. Like Louie at the foot of Mount Rainier, nothing could have prepared Adam for the sight of something which so beautifully reflected his Maker.

Within the hearts of men and women, at the sight of what God has created to bring him worship and glory, to fulfill our greatest good and every mandate, we stand and worship, we weep. Why? Because we have seen the real thing, and no amount of airbrushed images or happily ever afters could prepare us for what God created to best reflect his likeness. A real, live person. The real thing.

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Lore is pronounced Lor-ee, but you can call her Lo. She grew up on the east coast, but transplanted to Dallas a few years ago—she’s not from Texas, but Texas wants her anyway (as the song goes). Lore has been writing since 2001, blogging since blogs were invented, and still can’t get the hang of the whole business very well, but she loves it just the same. Visit her at Sayable or follow her on twitter @loreferguson.

Be a Storyteller

What do you do when you get together with friends? You start with a story. What do you do when you return from vacation? Do you pull out the agenda from the cruise and walk them through a list of what you did? No, you share stories. How do you explain your childhood to your kids? Stories. It is difficult to separate storytelling from the fabric of relationship. We like to tell stories and hear stories. Sharing them is the foundation of relationship. Yet we often fail to share the story of Scripture in the same natural way. If story is the way we share  how our day went, why is it not the form in which we clarify the gospel? If story is the way we instruct our children in the way they should live, why don’t we become storytellers to instruct disciples in the way of obedience. We like stories as illustrations in sermons to clarify meaning, but fail to see the story of Scripture as the place to find meaning. I want to call us back to narrative. I invite us to become gospel storytellers. Scripture is nearly two-thirds narrative. It is the story of God. We ought to share it.

Stories are Where We Go for Meaning

“What is the meaning of life?” is the timeless question. It is the question asked in Micah 6:8: “What is required of man?” It is Aristotle’s question: “How should a man lead his life?” Historically, humanity has answered this question through philosophy, science, religion, and art. The first three have failed us or been disregarded. No one reads Plato outside of homework and cramming for exams. We are tired of science’s polished, empty answers. Religion is a place of hypocrisy, ritual, and superstition. The world of cynics has rejected all but the art and story is the dominant art form. In Story Robert McKee:

“The world now consumes films, novels, theatre, and television in such quantities and such ravenous hunger that the story arts have become humanity’s prime source for inspiration.”

Many of the stories we hear and tell fall short as the meaning of life. As a society, we are beyond the myth of human progress. We have far too many evils to remind us we aren’t getting better. The depravity of the world is our base assumption and our human hunch is that life was not supposed to be this way. Stories try to explain the way forward through this mess. However, void of the gospel story, our neighbors hears some variation of this plot: you can fix your problems, if we are creative, courageous, and smart enough. The meaning of life in contemporary stories is: you are the center of the problem and the solution. The story, or life, is about you. However, the gospel is the story of God for you, for your life. The story of a gracious and just God who goes to great lengths to save and redeem those who don’t deserve it. The story of God gives humanity a new identity, meaning, and purpose.

Stories are Where We Turn for Guidance

Kenneth Burke said, “Stories are equipment for living.” We model our own life choices on the stories we believe are best or the stories we wish to avoid. We hear how things worked and didn’t work in the years before and make adjustments. We learn from how our older siblings stories and model our own lives after them. Not only do my parents and teachers have a major affect forming the way I wanted to live, but so did Huck Finn, Bill Huxtable, the Box Car Children, and the group from Saved by the Bell. These stories and characters instructed and formed my proper view of living. They taught me how to live adventurously, with integrity, and even how to ask a girl out on a date. They did this, because I connected with the characters. We witness what they witness, we experience what they do. Stories are shaped in the reality of the world. They reflect what is true of us and our surroundings. As we listen to a story, it informs how we live. How does the story of the Bible inform how you live? What would it look like to have life shaped by the gospel story and bring others into that story?

Stories are the Glue of Community

Stories form and hold groups of people together. They are the folklore shared, the background, and the history of our greatest triumphs over our most challenging days. The inside jokes, the shared experiences turned lifelong memories, and anything that follows “remember that one time” binds communities together. The stories a community shares are the stories that define it. If the story is one of independence and self-reliance, the community will be shaped by this. If the common story is one of pleasure and riches, it will be defined by this, too. If the community’s story is one of hope, grace, and love, it will be characterized by hope, grace, and love.

The Good Story

Robert McKee, the self proclaimed story guru of the twenty-first century, writes, “A good story tells the world something it wants to hear and it’s the artists job to figure out what it wants to hear.” The gospel is that good story. It is the story of what the world needed but didn’t deserve being given by God through Christ. It is the story of true acceptance, adoption, belonging, gifts, overcoming the destruction and devastation of this world. Eugene Peterson explains this well:

Stories are the most prominent biblical way of helping us see ourselves in ‘the God story,’ which always gets around to the story of God making and saving us. Stories, in contrast to abstract statements of truth, tease us into becoming participants in what is being said. We find ourselves involved in the action. We may start as spectators or critics, but if the story is good (and the biblical stories are very good!), we find ourselves no longer just listening to but inhabiting the story.

The gospel is a story not a list of facts. It is the story about God redeeming, rescuing, and recreating his creation. The story of God taking it upon himself to save us from death and bring us to life. The gospel is the true story and only trustworthy account for what has been done to redeem the world. The story is good news. The gospel is the compelling story that doesn’t fall flat on meaning. The story that satisfies our longings for purpose and joy. It is the greatest story because it instructs us in how to live with faith and in close relationship with God. Furthermore, it creates a community. The story of God makes a new people characterized by grace, because the story is about grace. The community is centered on God because the story is about God. This is a story the world must hear.

Sheryl’s Story

Her family tree mostly produced problems. Its fruit wasn’t peppered with convicts or crazies, just disappointments: neglected homes, broken promises, and abandoned children. The residue of family pain was silent relationships. She knew at an early age that everything would be uphill for her and no one was going to carry her. Whatever she gained would be by her sweat. Whatever the costs, she would pay. She was raised religiously in what to do and how to do it. She knew the right things to do—but was never told the story.

One evening, she came to our home for our community’s weekly meal and story time. We shared and engaged the story of the early church (Acts 2). We shared the story of God’s adoption of us and the creation of the church. It was story-time. In the middle, Sheryl asked, “I’ve never heard this story, but is the church a family? All I’ve heard is God wants us to do stuff for him and live right, this story sounds like God loves us like children.” My wife explained, “Church is family. We are a family. Even when we are not together we are the family. But all good families get together, catch up, share stories, and live life together.”

Sheryl was raised to know the right things to do and the bullet points of theology. She was never told the story of the gospel. The story she had believed was one of self-reliance and moral behavior. She found meaning in it and had accepted this story for her life. But it wasn’t the true story. We had the blessing of sharing the story of God with her. Unfortunately, most of the people we live around and work with don’t know the gospel story, either. They may know some of the points, or some of the characters, but they haven’t heard the story. Like Sheryl, they need to hear it and engage. Be a storyteller to them!

Become a Storyteller

How do you become a gospel storyteller?

• Begin by knowing it as a story. Read it, listen to it, and engage it in conversation with us. Place yourself in the narrative, not as the hero but as the everyman.
• Ask of the story? If this were true, how would it change my life, community, city?
• Participate in the Story-Formed Way created by Soma Communities.
• Speak it. The best way to learn is to share it and try!
• Share your life story and how it is really part of God’s story.

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Brad Watson serves as a pastor of Bread & Wine Communities in Portland, Oregon. He is a board member of GCDiscipleship.com and co-author of Raised? and the forthcoming Called Together. His greatest passion is to encourage and equip leaders for the mission of making disciples. Twitter: @BradAWatson

Learning Outside the Camp

During the first week of August, a pastor that I respect and admire quoted 20th century German thinker and author Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha. The quote, which reads “I had to experience despair before I could experience grace,” is a beautiful sound byte that sums up the ubiquitous human illness of wanting to cling to everything and anything before we submit in brokenness to the grace of God. Everything seems sure until it isn’t there anymore—when the only thing left is God’s mercy in Christ. The only problem is that Hesse was a syncretist and about as far from what even the most ecumenical Christian—evangelical, progressive, post-liberal, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anabaptist, you name it—would consider within the boundaries of historical Christianity. And to be sure, people on Twitter let this pastor know this.

In that tweet, pastor Tullian Tchividjian set out to teach his tweeps (that’s a real term, look it up!) something about the grace of God using the writing of somebody who did not accurately understand the grace of God as articulated in Scripture. Someone who would certainly qualify as unregenerate in almost every Christian tradition. In other words, in one of those pop-psychology word association test nobody has ever shouted out “Hermann Hesse” when prompted with “orthodoxy.”

Likewise, the news of the band Gungor’s recent departure from several historically Christian positions has the evangelical internet aflutter with mourning, condemnation, and nuance. If you haven’t heard, in a blog on their website back in February Michael Gungor articulated his position on Adam and Eve, the flood, and metaphysics:

I have no more ability to believe, for example, that the first people on earth were a couple named Adam and Eve that lived 6,000 years ago. I have no ability to believe that there was a flood that covered all the highest mountains of the world only 4,000 years ago and that all of the animal species that exist today are here because they were carried on an ark and then somehow walked or flew all around the world from a mountain in the middle east after the water dried up. I have no more ability to believe these things than I do to believe in Santa Clause or to not believe in gravity. But I have a choice on what to do with these unbeliefs. I could either throw out those stories as lies, or I could try to find some value in them as stories. But this is what happens . . .

If you try to find some value in them as stories, there will be some people that say that you aren’t a Christian anymore because you don’t believe the Bible is true or “authoritative.” Even if you try to argue that you think there is a truth to the stories, just not in an historical sense; that doesn’t matter. To some people, you denying the “truth” of a 6,000 year old earth with naked people in a garden eating an apple being responsible for the death of dinosaurs is the same thing as you nailing Jesus to the cross. You become part of ‘them.’ The deniers of God’s Word.

In the last few weeks, World magazine and a few other publications got ahold of this and lamented Gungor’s lapse from orthodoxy. While a lot has already been said about this, both of these little case studies expose something about our hearts:

We (humans!) are often terrified to listen to and learn from people who hold to different (and sometimes contradictory) beliefs than us. In fact, our default reflex is to shun, condemn, and caricaturize.

The Bible, Orthodoxy, and Imago Dei

Ironically, the Bible is not afraid to affirm the God-implanted wisdom from those who fall outside of the perceived orthodox tribe. Most are familiar with the stories of Rahab the Canaanite prostitute who helped the Israeli scouts, the Roman gentile God-fearers who ran to Jesus, and the Greek polytheistic poets Paul quoted from memory who unwittingly proclaimed aspects the gospel. But there is often a disconnect between these Biblical examples and our on-the-ground understanding of our fellow image bearers.

Just as the seraphim called out in Isaiah 6:3:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”

God has filled the earth and the people of the earth with his divine imprint. The pinnacle of God’s creation—human beings—have been given a special conscious and unconscious understanding of his ways. God  “has put eternity into man's heart” (Ecc. 3:11) and thus, has given each human being the capacity to teach every other human being something significant about the character of God.

Certainly, those of us whom God has saved, adopted, and, through the Holy Spirit, given special revelation into the character of God through Christ have a lot to offer a world groping at the shadow of God’s image. The damage of sin and rebellion has dimmed humanity’s understanding of God dramatically—and that should not be ignored.

Yet the image of God is still there in every person. Hiding in plain sight. Sitting somewhere between the doubt, confusion, and rebellion. Believers who have been illuminated to the glory of God’s grace through Christ have “everything [we] need for life and godliness” (i.e., God’s Spirit in us), including the ability to learn about the things of God from all of his creation—even those who seem to be fighting God’s revealed truth at every turn.

This process is far from complete in me—I am not the discerning, godly, thoughtful, gracious student of truth that I delude myself into thinking I am. Still, despite my weakness and foolishness God has used various people and media that fall outside of evangelicalism to teach me about the God who reveals the same orthodoxy that I love. And God has probably done the same in you.

My Story and Zossima

No fictional characters (and only a few real-life people) have ministered and instructed me in God’s love, grace, and mercy like Father Zossima in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brother’s Karamazov. Dostoevsky created the character of Zossima to be a Christ-like figure amidst a world and church institution fraught with sin and hard hearts. Zossima is not a Protestant pastor, but a Russian Orthodox monk. A system that is fraught with what I believe are major theological errors. However, the words of gospel-dependent love and tenderness that Zossima speaks in Brothers is a spiritual opus that I return to regularly.

Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of anyone. For no one can judge a criminal until he recognises that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will be able to be a judge. Though that sounds absurd, it is true. If I had been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me. If you can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your heart is judging, take it at once, suffer for him yourself, and let him go without reproach . . .

. . . Know the measure, know the times, study that. When you are left alone, pray. Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing, consuming love. Love all men, love everything. Seek that rapture and ecstasy. Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears. Don't be ashamed of that ecstasy, prize it, for it is a gift of God and a great one; it is not given to many but only to the elect.

This passage—and many like it—showcase a beautiful, tender, gospel-rich love that Zossima beautifully articulated and, in the book, lived out. When I read it I am usually moved to tears. Though I don’t agree with some of his conclusions above (e.g., “if I had been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me”) I can see  and learn from Zossima’s Christ-like tenderness and love for sinners. I am moved by the tender love that Zossima articulates, and I believe that this tender love of people, God, and creation is close to what Jesus talks about in Luke 10:27. Zossima has discipled me in God’s love and grace, even though his systematics would not fly at any church I would ever join.

Back to Hesse and Gungor

So when Tulllian quotes syncretist Hermann Hesse about grace and suffering, I am free to nod and agree as I discern glimmers of God’s truth in it. To learn from Hesse’s saying, though he may not understand grace as articulated in Scripture, is to affirm his humanity and the divine imprint (common grace) on his musings. With orthodox grace-colored glasses, we can explore the world in search of God’s love. We can discern the good, affirm the truth, and love the person without harshly condemning and shunning all that is secular or not theologically airtight (because, honestly, besides Jesus, who is theologically airtight?).

We can disagree with Gungor’s steps away from an evangelical hermeneutic while still celebrating their music and whatever truth is in their statements. In fact, to love them and doubters like them, we must insist that their doubts may arise out of their honesty. As George MacDonald observes “doubts are messengers of the Living One to the honest”—they keep us humble and remind us of our humble dependence on God’s revelation to lead and guide. Though Gungor may still be in process, their doubts may be evidence of God working in their life—and like Thomas before them, Jesus will show them his wounds.

From here, we can listen to Michael Gungor’s words and hear the image of God. For example, when Gungor says,

To some people, you denying the “truth” of a 6,000 year old earth with naked people in a garden eating an apple being responsible for the death of dinosaurs is the same thing as you nailing Jesus to the cross. You become part of ‘them.’

We may at first just hear a jab at Biblical literalism, but there is much more there. He points a finger on the painfully shaming nature of much public and private discourse on doubt, grace, and orthodoxy. We (being, those who identify as more-or-less “conservative” evangelicals) should see this as a prophetic encouragement to love our enemies, bless those who persecute us (though this is not anything close to persecution), and to love our neighbor as ourself. We can say, “Thank God for these comments! Thank God for Michael Gungor!” Thank God that he used Gungor to articulate the pain that doubters often feel amongst those with less paradigm-shifting doubts.

Grace

At the heart of all charity and discernment is grace. The more we realize that we have been given amazing, free grace, the more we will desire to extend that grace. As our condition becomes clear, we’ll have more sympathy on other ignorant blasphemers. Our rejection of God and our reflected imaging of God is as instinctive

I remember teaching Sunday School with my wife, trying to get an adorable three-year-old to sing songs with us.

“Don’t you want to sing songs to Jesus with us?” I asked, as he sat in the corner of the classroom.

“No” he declared, as astutely as a three-year-old can

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like Jesus”

Nobody taught him to say that. Nor does anyone need to teach us to deny God’s truth, doubt God’s promises, or disobey God’s statutes.

When this little boy told me that he didn’t like Jesus, I didn’t shun him. Neither does God when we daily, repeatedly declare that we don’t like Jesus! That is the beauty of grace. The patient, one-sided love of God that has blessed us with divine wisdom amidst our rebellion. This grace is patient with us, and so we can be patient with others. This grace sees the good in us, when we are a complete stinking mess. This grace teaches us when we don’t want to learn—as Newton reminds us, “t’was grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved.”

And this is the same kid that will come up to you with innocent affection, give you a high five, and tell you all about Super Mario with a glimmer of passion in his eye. Just your typical God-imagining blasphemer.

This grace can be extended to others as it has been extended to us only as we see ourselves in need of it and the grace of God’s image in others. And hopefully, in doing so we can, like Paul in Acts 17, see God’s fingerprint on the un-orthodox and lead the un-orthodox to a more beautiful, robust understanding of God than they could’ve ever imagined—all the while as we are learning from them.

Learning from un-believers sounds dangerous. It sounds like capitulation of our ideals and our morals. But the cross of Christ assures us that we can dangerously extend grace because grace has been permanently, legally, imputed to us. In our exploration of God’s world, we are securely tethered, inseparably united to Jesus who promised to be with us always. So, in light of that Christian, search for truth and explore grace—even when it comes from those who also do not fully understand grace. And may God lead you in his Truth and his Grace.

What a beautiful grace it is!

—

Nick Rynerson lives in the west suburbs of Chicago with his groovy wife, Jenna. He is a staff writer for Christ and Pop Culture and a marketing coordinator at Crossway. Connect with him on Twitter @nick_rynerson or via email.

Telling Stories in Our Neighborhood

In a suburban town outside of Seattle, we celebrated God’s grace and the Spirit’s work through baptizing a new disciple of Jesus. This is the story of how a neighborhood can look like the book of Acts, where disciples are made and we teach and preach from house-to-house, an example of how to make disciples in our sphere of influence—in today’s context. We moved into our housing development seven and a half years ago, and for the first six years, we didn’t know anyone who didn’t live next to us. I’m serious. I didn’t know the guy across the street. (By the way, his name is Trevor, and he’s getting baptized in my backyard.) But, for the first six years, the extent of our reaching-out to our neighbors was leading a youth group and handing out bibles door-to-door and singing Christmas carols in the dark because people shut off their lights on us. Sometime while standing in the cold singing “O Come All Ye Faithful,” I started to think, “Maybe we need a different modus operandi for bringing the gospel to my neighbors.”

I decided to leave my one church to seek out help from people who have done this before, and I landed with Soma Communities. Truth be known, I am very prideful in the way I do things. Whether it is my orthodoxy or my orthopraxy, I feel like I have it down to some degree, which is a spillover from my success in business. It is wrong thinking, and I know this about myself. When coming to Soma Communities, I purposed to be a learner. What I asked myself was, “If you know so much, how come no one around you is repenting and being baptized?” Even though I was soon asked to take a lead role in a Missional Community out in my suburban city, I decided to just sit back and learn. As I learned, as I listened, I began to be intrigued, and I finally had to act on it.

How Should We Start? A BBQ in the Front Yard

I asked a new friend of mine, Caesar, “How should I start? Where should I begin in my community?”

He suggested, “Ask the Spirit, ‘What’s next?’”

At that time, I rarely asked the Spirit to guide and empower me for mission because I was doing nothing that would require the Spirit. I was insular, hanging around only Christian people, and rarely ever engaged anyone with the gospel or showing them the effects of the gospel and how that might look in our community. There was no reason to pray. It would have been like asking God to help me flip the channels on my television.

Well. My wife and I prayed, “Spirit, what’s next?”

If you want to open the power of the Spirit like freeing a hungry lion from its cage, then ask the Spirit what’s next with a desire to show others what he’s like for the sake of making disciples.

The Spirit answered by simply telling my wife and me this: On July 4th, instead of having your BBQ in the backyard, move it to the front yard.

This isn’t earth shattering, but as Luke 16:10 puts it, he who can be trusted with a little, can be trusted with a lot. We agreed with the Spirit and decided that would be a good idea. Then he pressed. We ended up putting together a 4th of July wiffle ball tournament and cook off and going door-to-door handing out flyers. The response was overwhelming. This was the first time I met Trevor, my neighbor from across the street. He entered a wiffle ball team, and they won. Whatever. In the end, we had about forty people play in the tourney and around one-hundred and fifty people at the 4th of July festivities. People continued to come up to me and tell me it was the best 4th of July party they had ever been to. It reminded us all of the Wonder Years. We didn’t want this to only happen once a year. So, we started throwing BBQs all the time and inviting people over to have dinner from the connections we made on the 4th.

The Story of God

As summer was drawing to a close, my wife and I knew one thing: we needed help to build this community to reflect the community of God. We started praying that God would send helpers and had other leaders within Soma praying for us as well. God answered. He ended up moving another couple to our city from a different Soma Expression and then sent us another couple from our old bible study. It was beautiful. We came together with a plan that we felt was from the Spirit. We sought to continue the dialogue with these new couples by hosting Saturday morning breakfasts at our house. We wanted these other couples to be there with us to engage our neighbors and become part of our community. To do this, they are willing to lay aside some of the things they might have been more comfortable with to pursue our neighbors. But, our goal was to have these breakfasts with an eye on going through the Story of God at some point with those people with whom we were building relationships. We figured this might take a year or so to build these relationships strong enough to engage them on a deeper spiritual level.

This whole time, my wife and I kept asking the Spirit, “What’s next?” Now, we were able to put names to these prayers. We started the breakfasts in October and by the end of the month the Spirit was opening doors for the gospel like I’ve never seen. People were asking us, “Why do you do all these things for the community?” We had also arranged a Halloween party, game nights, etc. “Do you sell Avon? Are you Christians? What church do you go to?”

We answered those questions, and then asked, “Would you be interested in walking through the story of what the Bible says about God and why we feel compelled to bring about this type of community? We can do it in our house and have fun and eat like we always do anyways and then have this story time with dialogue among friends.”

We ended up asking about six couples from our neighborhood and four said yes, including Trevor and his wife. After ten weeks of engaging in story and having a lot of fun, summer was back. We told those who went through the story that if they wanted to continue with us to dig into the Scriptures to see what the gospel says about making disciples, we’d be happy to have them. Trevor and his wife agreed and really started to delve in. We again threw a huge 4th of July party with wiffle ball, cook off, and fireworks, and kept following up with BBQs and studied the word together as a Missional Community.

Now, this entire time, we had, as a group, been praying that God would put on our hearts those people in our lives who seemed to be pushing into the kingdom. We’d been praying (and are still praying), because we were going to once again be doing the Story of God coming up in January. We then had a study on baptism, and two things came out of Trevor’s mouth: 1) I want to be baptized 2) I’ve been praying and talking to my brother and his fiancé and they desire to not only come to the BBQs, but also to the Story of God when we start it.

Praise God!

A Backyard Baptism

Shortly after this conversation, we had Trevor’s whole family, some friends, and our Missional Community in our backyard for a BBQ and a baptism. He’s being commissioned to make disciples, but because he’s been watching me and I’ve been walking this out with him day-to-day in normal everyday life for a year and a half, he’s already doing it. To him, a disciple of Jesus naturally makes more disciples.

Our Missional Community started the day I put aside my own comforts and moved my BBQ from my backyard to my front yard. We went six years without knowing anyone. Now, if we throw a BBQ, we have seventy people show up. We have six couples in our Missional Community. We are doing pre-engagement for one couple and trying to save another couple from going through a divorce. We think we might have to multiply coming up in January because we could have close to forty people that desire to go through the Story of God with us.

I’m no saint. I’m nothing special. I’m not paid by the church. I’m not paid by the community. God pays me money through my business—not to hoard it, but so I can be making disciples who make disciples in the neighborhood where I live.

This story isn’t crazy. This story isn’t outlandish. It’s pretty normal. My family is pretty normal. That’s the beauty of it. This is a small taste of what has been happening in our neighborhood and also in our own spiritual development. You’ll notice as you live this out, life, as usual, isn’t perfect. There are times of much difficulty. As a dude in our Missional Community put it, “You only get really irritated with people if you actually get to know them. It’s hard to get irritated at others if you merely wave at them when putting your garbage at the curb.”

If you’re reading this, what’s holding you back from going to your knees tonight and just asking God, “What’s next?” Be careful. Once you’ve let this Lion of Judah out of the cage, he’ll take over the neighborhood.

—

Seth McBee is the adopted son of God, husband of one wife, and father of three. He’s a graduate of Seattle Pacific University with a finance degree. By trade. Seth is an investment portfolio manager, serving as President of McBee Advisors, Inc. He is also a MC leader/trainer/coach and executive team member of the GCM Collective. Seth currently lives in Phoenix, AZ with his wife Stacy and their three children: Caleb, Coleman, and Madelynn. He is also the artist and co-author of the wildly popular (and free!) eBook, Be The Church: Discipleship & Mission Made Simple. Twitter: @sdmcbee.