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.

Changing the Dating Culture

Let's get right to it on this topic. The way young people date today pretty much reflects how married people relate to each other. Young people spend lots of time together alone; they awaken desire prematurely; they mess around, often times ending in intercourse; and they are just as affectionate as a husband and wife should be within the sacred confines of marriage. Most of the time, the only thing that separates a dating relationship from a marriage relationship is the ring that is parked on the left hand. Vodie Baucham says, as stated above, that dating as it is currently done is “glorified divorce practice.” So, it’s not hidden—I am a huge enemy toward the way we currently practice dating. The difference between a Christian and a non-Christian when it comes to relationships should be monumental. For the Christian, the lens through which we view relationships must be Scripture. For the non-Christian, the lens through which they view relationships is often the current cultural approach. This approach is found in the saying, “You don’t know if the shoe fits until you try it on.” Men and women live with each other, fulfill their sexual desires, hop around from dating partner to dating partner, and treat each other as husband and wife—all without any form of commitment. Again, it is not uncommon to find confessing Christians living together before marriage either. If they are not living together it seems that they spend all of their time together in intimate environments where there is no accountability, and they have no one walking beside them as they pursue the biggest journey of their life.

What’s the Difference?

The dating relationships of Christians must be different than those of non-Christians. Men, what does it say about you when you do not protect your girlfriend physically, emotionally, or mentally? Do you use the words, “I love you,” without thinking twice about it as if love is really an emotion, and then when you aren’t “feeling it” anymore you can just use the “it’s not you, it’s me” line? Oh man, there is nothing worse than a guy who uses a girl and then moves on to the next after he’s gotten his fix! Do you often put yourselves in situations where temptation can be sparked? Have you awakened desire and intimacy before it is ready? If you can answer yes to any of these questions then you need to repent of your stupidity, and really begin to think about how you are forever hurting your sisters in Christ. Believe me guys; I’ve been there. I have done the things mentioned above, and thankfully God has shown grace upon me through his Son Jesus where I have had to repent of sin and become intentional about how I treat my sisters in Christ.

The way young people currently practice dating is killing not only their spiritual lives but it is killing the vitality of the church. This must change in our generation! Scripture does not necessarily say, “This is how you are supposed to date,” but it does give us insights and wisdom into how men and women outside of marriage should relate to one another. Let’s begin in Genesis 2. Genesis 2:24-25 says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

The Bible does not say that a man shall leave his fa- ther and mother and hold fast to his girlfriend. Let me be clear men, we don’t join with our fiancées either. We join together with our wives. This is what is known as leaving and cleaving. Men, we leave our mother and father and we cleave to our wives. And obviously, we don’t get naked with our girlfriends either. Do you ever wonder why you feel ashamed when you do?

So, if marriage is the end goal then what are the steps to getting there? Here’s what I think, and honestly, it’s this simple:

1. If you find yourself being sexually tempted then it’s time to begin to prepare yourself for marriage (1 Corinthians 7:1-3).

I realize that many people will disagree with me on this point, but that’s okay, often times the ones who disagree with this are the ones who are justifying their actions of finding sexual pleasures outside of marriage—whether it’s through sexual relationships or pornography. It has been said somewhere that 98% of men lust after women; the other 2% who say they don’t lust after women are liars.

2. Young guys, you must have someone walk with you through the dating/courtship process (Titus 2:1-10).

I often tell young guys who ask me about courtship that it is simply the season of life when you are preparing yourself for marriage. If we are modeling discipleship/mentorship biblically then we should have an old- er man who is teaching and walking beside younger men as they make decisions. This includes their dating/courtship decisions.

3. Keep your dating/courtship/engagement time short (Song of Solomon 2:8; 8:4).

Please don’t date for five years before you get married. Seriously, is there any biblical wisdom in this? Let me tell you what will hap- pen if you don’t know already. You will be putting yourselves in five years of sexual temptation, desire, and struggle. Desire and love will awaken before its time. Also, when it comes to the engagement process then keep it as SHORT as possible. Believe me, this is the absolute WORST time for guys.

4. Begin to read books on marriage and not books on dating.

Why would you want to read a how-to-guide on dating if you’re only going to date for 6-8 months when you’re going to be married for the rest of your life? Prepare yourselves to be husbands and wives, not boyfriends and girlfriends. Believe me, six to eight months is enough time for you to know if you want to spend the rest of your life with someone. You don’t need a year to figure out if you want to see them naked or not, if you are like-minded, and if he or she loves Jesus. In all honesty, these are the only three requirements you must have to be compatible as husband and wife: 1) Do they love Jesus? 2) Are you attracted to them physically? 3) Are you like-minded in life, family, children, church affiliation, goals, etc.?

With that said, I implore you to begin to rethink your current dating situation if you are indeed in one that I have spoken of above. Let us be men who take the Bible seriously. Let us see the culture through the lens of Scripture—not vice-versa. I challenge you to be courageous in your dating, engagement process, and marriage.

Men, we must step up! —

Greg Gibson is married to Grace and is the father of Cora and Iver. He serves as an elder and family ministries pastor at Foothills Church in Knoxville, TN overseeing birth through college and marriages. He is the author of Reformational Manhood: Creating a Culture of Gospel-Centered Warriors and serves as the lead editor for CBMW’s Manual. Greg also writes often at ggib.me. Follow him on Twitter: @gregrgibson

Excerpt taken from Greg Gibson, Reformational Manhood, BorderStone Press, ©2014. Used by permission. http://borderstonepress.com

Pursuing Accountability in Community

We are commanded to grow in our faith and to look more Christlike as time goes on. However, this command was never meant to be something we just did by ourselves. The Bible constantly expects that we will be a part of a local community and that there will be people who know us and walk with us in our Christian life. In fact, churches where people merely attend and do not belong, where they sit in a big service, but nobody knows their struggles and issues is not really doing what the church was made to do. Discipleship is a community event. You are one part of the body—not the whole thing. With that in mind, here are some helpful tips on how to do accountability and confession within a Bible study, home group, or other Christian community.

1. Make Accountability a Priority

We are commanded in James 5:16 to "confess your sins, one to another." Without accountability people will not be able to work through their sins and their spiritual growth will be hindered. The church is not merely for Bible studies, but also times for community, worship, confession, and prayer. The easiest way to make accountability a priority is to set aside time for it as you meet together in groups. Meeting together should be done often (Heb. 10:25). You may not need to have a time for accountability every time you meet, but it needs to be done regularly.

2. Break up men and women

It is fine to hear Scripture taught, worship, and pray for each other together. When it comes to accountability, it is best to split up men and women. Not only is this extremely wise (you don't want woman who struggles with lust confessing to the man that struggles with lust, for example). It also allows for greater freedom with confession. The man who struggles with pornography will not confess that to a group of women. The woman who struggles with weight and body image issues will not confess that to a group of men. This allows people a level of comfort in dealing with their struggles that is good and appropriate.

3. Lead from the front

Your group will confess as much as the leader is willing to confess. If you want them to be honest and to lay their issues on the table, you have to start by doing the same in your life. When someone sees that a leader struggles with sin and is open and honest about it they feel freed up to do the same.

4. Request more mature disciples to participate

All through out Scripture the more mature are encouraged to lead younger Christians, so before you meet, call a few people who are mature disciples in the group. Ask them if they would be willing to confess sins and share how God has worked in their life when they repented of sin in this way. So, when you confess, you have a few other people who are willing to show how God works through accountability and repentance.

5. Give direction on how to do it

Let people in the group know that the accountability time is not just for personal prayer requests or for "how they are doing" but a time to be honest of where they are at spiritually and to be encouraged by other brothers and sisters in Christ. Also, let people know not to gossip about other people's issues. However, there are times to tell other people of something that is confessed. For example, a husband who has cheated on a wife and has never told her will eventually have to have his wife let in on this.

6. Overwhelm people with grace

Once someone has confessed their sin, there is a temptation to wallow in shame. Overwhelm them with grace! Encourage them in the gospel and in how much Christ loves them. In fact, I think this is the most important part of accountability. The focus is not on how bad we are, but it is on how much we have been forgiven. It's not about our failures, but about Christ's victories!

7. Follow up

After accountability you may have to meet with people to follow up. Some people may need to get into a recovery program or get plugged in with a counselor. Other people might have tried to make the time all about them and will need to be asked to try to be more considerate of the other people trying to confess as well.

Accountability is not easy, especially if you are new to it. Also, taking the first step to begin accountability can be tough. It is countercultural to express where you fail and struggle. However, the Spirit uses our weakness (Rom. 8:26, 1 Cor. 1:25, 2 Cor. 11:30, Rom. 5:6) to glorify Christ—so guide your community as they mature as disciples and rest in the mercy of the gospel. —

Zach Lee is Associate Home Groups Minister at The Village Church and is married to Katy.  Follow him on Twitter: @zacharytlee.

Multiplying Disciples in Bivocational Ministry

Bivocational ministry is a life many pastors find themselves in these days. Of course, it is not a new phenomenon among pastors. In the area that I live, there are many small rural churches that have been around for many years. Back when these churches were planted the pastors were bivocational, often farming besides preaching. For those pastors, being bivocational was not a choice instead of full-time vocational ministry, it was the norm and more or less required of those called to ministry. Today, there are still many pastors required to be bivocational because they live in a rural area, are church planters, or are pastoring a smaller church that couldn’t fully support them otherwise. Being bivocational is not the lesser calling. To be bivocational does not mean playing in the minors until God decides to send them up to the big leagues of full-time vocational ministry. I will confess that I held this view, though I would not have explicitly said it. Depending on what the “other” job is for bivocational pastors, it can be very easy to feel discontent and weighed down by the seemingly unimportant duties of what we incorrectly deem as our “secular” work. That’s good! Now we know how our entire congregation feels much of the time. When we view bivocational ministry as a lesser calling, we both belittle God’s explicit call on our lives and idolize full-time vocational ministry as something that will fix all our problems.

Work is hard, regardless of what it is that we do. We know this from our own experiences and because of the curse God spoke to Adam (Gen. 3:17-19). I have been bivocational for about seven years and I have friends that are also bivocational and friends that are in full-time vocational ministry. They all say that their work is hard. They all say there are days and seasons where they would like their situations to be different. Within the context of the hard work that all Christians do, pastor or not, we are still to be about the work of being a disciple of Jesus in, through, and by our vocations. A primary way that we do the work of being a disciple of Jesus is to make other disciples (Matt. 28:16-20). The New Testament gives many examples of disciples of Jesus that not only make new disciples, but make new disciples who make new disciples who make new disciples and on and on. The spread that took place stemming from the original twelve disciples is one example. There is a clear picture of multiplication that happens.

This process of multiplication can take place in the ministries of bivocational pastors both in their church work as well as in the supplemental work that they do. For bivocational pastors there are some distinct challenges and some real blessings that come from the work of multiplying disciples in both contexts in which they live and work.

Time

Full-time pastors have more margin in their schedules to be able to devote to meetings with people and, therefore, do the work of discipleship. Or do they? Do bivocational pastors really not have any time to disciple people? If you are bivocational, should you only look to preach and teach and leave the rest of the work to someone that has more time?

I think it comes back to redeeming the time that we have. We all have margin in our daily schedules; the challenge is whether we use it and how we use it. Everyone eats lunch, so there is anywhere from a half hour to an hour that could be used to meet with someone or make a phone call. Depending on what time work starts, other people in the congregation probably have to go to work too, so getting up a little earlier before work to meet is an option. Using the time in our commute to and from work for a phone call can be beneficial as well. These are all scenarios a bivocational pastor can use to connect with someone from his congregation in the midst of his work schedule. However, there is also a large pool of people at his workplace that need to and can be discipled.

The effort needed to disciple at work is less than one might think. A great example of how this is done is parenting. Parenting children is discipleship. The life of the parent is lived out with and in front of the children. The discipleship that occurs in parenting does not only consist of sitting down with the child to talk about their walk with Christ, although that happens.

Discipleship in parenting happens while the parent and the child are folding clothes, working in the yard, and so on. The same can be said for discipling coworkers. The little conversations on the way to a meeting, during a break or downtime, at the coffee pot are the primary avenues for discipling coworkers.

Reaching the multiplication stage at work requires a bit more organization and intentionality. This means setting some time aside to meet with fellow believers at work. I meet with a group of guys to do this very thing every other week at lunch. As one would do in the church, there should be an awareness of leaders and/or other strong Christians to develop. Once those folks are identified, then the process of making them into the second generation of disciples in that place begins. In Acts 14:23, Paul and Barnabas appoint elders in the churches on their way to Antioch in Syria and the same principle stands at work. We are not Paul and Barnabas and we are not appointing elders, but a similar work needs to take place for multiplication to happen. The development of leaders and the passing on of the responsibility for making disciples must take place so that disciples can be multiplied.

Purpose

A pitfall for many in bivocational ministry can be denying that they are bivocational. We can spend so much time pretending that our supplemental work is only temporary and that very soon God is going to give us that full-time gig. Our time in bivocational ministry may be our life’s calling or it may be only for a season. In any season of waiting on the Lord, there is work to be done while we wait. The sooner we realize we are indeed where we are for a purpose—and God sovereignly plans that purpose—the sooner we can be effective.

I look at God’s sovereign purpose in the time spent in bivocational ministry as a development of my gifts and laying down of my rights. In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul talks about all the rights that he has as an Apostle and a minister of the gospel. He immediately says that he does not take up those rights, but essentially lays them down for the sake of the gospel. “Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ,” (1 Corinthians 9:12b).

Like Paul, we who are bivocational (Paul was too by the way) are ministers of the gospel, who have the right to be taken care of through the ministering of the gospel. There is at least a partial surrender of those rights, whether it is by our volition or not, when we are bivocational. There was power that came from Paul’s laying down of his rights. There was an identification that Paul could have with others because he set aside these rights. “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,” (1 Cor. 9:22b-23). One of the evident purposes of God in the calling to bivocational ministry is the ability to identify with those to whom we minister. There is both purpose and blessing in this identification, which serves as a foundation for the multiplication of disciples in our contexts.

Humility

The reality is that if we are bivocational we are probably not speaking at conferences, writing best-selling books, and garnering thousands of Twitter followers. Of course, our mistaken definitions of “making it” in ministry in relation to any of these measures are far different from God’s. The ministry work that is done bivocationally is probably mostly done in the shadows of public view. Ministering bivocationally can be humbling. You may be a church planter that celebrates when there are more than thirty people that show up for a Sunday service. Your greatest joy in ministry for a week may be a good conversation you have with a coworker. This is all very, very good for our souls.

The pitfall of parts of our Christian subculture is an issue, not only for our congregation, but for all those in ministry. There is the fanboy culture of authors, speakers, and podcasts. There are those that many have deemed celebrity pastor. When we are working in the trenches of bivocational ministry, we need not covet fame and fortune in ministry. Our placement in bivocational ministry may be a protection from our own prideful selves. It may be a season that God uses to refine us and humble us. It may be a time where we learn how to celebrate all the small ways that God works. Some of us simply may not have been able or may not ever be able to handle the platform of full-time ministry. God may be protecting us and those to whom we minister from what we would become on that platform. He may at the same time be preparing us.

Humility is one of the most attractive things about Jesus. Think about it, “He is God and he did what?!” You probably know Philippians 2:5-11, but I will remind you. “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,” (Phil. 2:5). The mind that Paul is talking about is that of humility, which he goes on to describe in the verses following. When we exhibit Christlike humility, people see the grandeur and beauty of Jesus. We could say that Jesus makes and multiplies disciples through us by showing himself in us. As God teaches us humility in bivocational ministry, people start to see glimpses of Christlikeness in us. The humility that God is teaching us is for our good and his glory. His glory is then magnified by the disciples that are made and multiplied through our lives and ministries.

Thankfully, God does not put us anywhere that he does not intend to put us. If we find ourselves in bivocational ministry, we can be encouraged that it is God who has put us there. It is not the B team and this is not our lot because of some shortcoming that we have. It is the particular vocation that the God of the universe has prepared us for and placed us in for such a time as this. We have the responsibility of multiplying ourselves as disciples of Jesus Christ wherever we are. We have been given time to be redeemed and used for the kingdom. God has a Spirit-powered, Christ-exalting purpose for our vocations. In light of all this, we cannot help but seek humility in our hearts and in our actions as we embrace the challenges and receive the blessings of serving Christ.

—

Nick Abraham (DMin student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) lives in Navarre, OH with his wife and daughter. He serves as an Associate Pastor at Alpine Bible Church in Sugarcreek, OH. He is a contributor to Make, Mature, Multiply: Becoming Fully-Formed Disciples of Jesus and blogs at Like Living Stones.

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.

Men, Don’t Just Talk the Talk

If you were to read the hobbies section on my Facebook, you would notice I am into reading, blogging, and running. I do all those things almost every week. If you keep reading, however, you will notice it also says I like to work out, rock climb, and surf. While those things are listed, if I am honest, I haven’t done any of those activities in quite a while. Now, I can talk to you for hours about each of them. I know the lingo, but I don’t actually climb, surf, or workout anymore. So while I can talk the talk, I am not walking the walk.

Talking the Talk Without Walking the Walk

Often times a lot of churchgoers know how to talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk—especially those who have been around church for any length of time. They can talk all about the Bible and “churchy things” because they have been around it for most of their lives. However, when it comes to obeying all of Jesus’ commands (Matt. 28:20) they don’t do it. They aren’t walking the walk. Instead, they are just talking the talk.

Disciples of Jesus—those who have been regenerated by the Spirit, repented of their sins, and placed their faith in Jesus—not only talk about Scripture, they also allow it to guide their lives. They walk the walk.

Walking the walk is an everyday activity that involves us applying God’s Word to every area of our life. Family, work, play, and community involvement should all be informed by God’s Word. One major area is our families. God commands men to lead their families. Specifically, the husband is to be the leader and shepherd of their family flock.

Family Shepherding

Since we are to walk as Jesus walked, imitating him in all things, it is only right we look to Jesus for the “how to” of family shepherding (1 Jn. 2:6, Eph. 5:1, 1 Cor. 11:1). Let me offer you a few guiding principles to get you started.

First, we must know those we are shepherding. In John 10:14, Jesus tells us he is the Good Shepherd. After which, he tells us what the Good Shepherd does, namely, he knows his own.

Applying Jesus’ idea of the Good Shepherd to our own Christian walk means we have to know our families. The best way to get to know our family is to spend time with them. Family time doesn’t just occur because we are in the same room with them. It’s more involved than just being in close proximity. It requires us to engage them in conversation. Conversation that gets to know the heart of your family in an effort to draw out their interests, fears, and concerns. We cannot effectively draw out the hearts of our family if they have to compete with the television, Facebook, or our iPhones, so we have to disengage from our technology in order to engage with our family.

Second, we must protect our families from spiritual danger. Jesus tells us the Good Shepherd is willing to lay down his life for his sheep in order to protect them (Jn. 10:11-13). If we are going to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, we must do the same.

In order to protect our family, we have to know their world. We have to be aware of what they are watching, reading, and their friends. Also, we must understand the culture in which they live and know how to combat its worldview with the gospel.

Lastly, we must instruct our families. During his earthly ministry, Jesus intimately instructed his disciples, teaching them how to both read and understand Scripture (Acts 1:3). We must do the same.

There is no one size fits all way to instruct our families. Some may choose nightly family devotions, other families may benefit from weekly Bible studies, and still others from discussing that weeks sermon over lunch. The method will differ from family to family, but the principle remains the same—men, who walk in Jesus’ footsteps, instruct their families in the Lord.

You see, being a believer means more than posting spiritual quotes or Bible verses to Facebook, knowing the lingo, or making a claim of faith. Being a believer means we live according to God’s will; it means we walk the walk. So it doesn’t matter what you say. What matters is what you do.

Gospel Change Causes Us To Walk the Walk

Now, I am not trying to frustrate you by telling you you have to work harder or that you have to produce change on your own. Change doesn’t occur solely through our effort. Instead change primarily occurs through the gospel. When the gospel pierces our heart of stone, it does something we could never do. It causes our heart—our will, desires, and wants to change. It’s that change which is necessary for us to walk the walk.

However, gospel change doesn’t mean all we have to do is believe and all of a sudden we are perfectly walking as Jesus walked. We must still put forth effort. We must still work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12) Even so, we can be assured that while we work, God is working in us, changing our will to be more in line with his (Phil. 2:13).

Since God changes us, we know change is possible. In fact, we will be changed into the restored image of Christ (1 Cor. 13:12). Put another way: if we are disciples, there is no way we won’t change to live more inline with God’s will throughout our Christian walk. We may hit some valleys along the way, but we will always be moving up the mountain. Since that is true, men, walk the walk, don't just talk the talk.

—

Casey Lewis currently serves as the Senior Pastor of Sycamore Baptist Church in Decatur, TX. He is a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a husband, father, and a follower of Jesus Christ . He currently blogs at ChristianityMatters.com. Follow him on twitter: @caseylewis33

Exporting Love

The chief export of a local church should be love. Churches do many things, but the main thing we are to express to God, to one another, and to the world is supernatural love—because God is love. “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8). Boil all Christian activity down to one word and it’s, simply, love.

Since our God is love, we are to be people who are known for love. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”(Jn. 13:34–35).

“God so loved the world that he gave us” Jesus (Jn. 3:16). And we love because he loved us first (1 Jn. 4:19). Love is the superstructure of the gospel. The cross of Christ is the supernova of God’s love for sinners. “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

It’s Pretty Simple

When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment is—the greatest duty of God’s people, his reply: robust love for God and real love for others.

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”(Mk. 12:30–31)

Love God. Love neighbor.

That’s Christianity.

It’s really not that complicated. Our pesky flesh just gets in the way.

We can try and contort Jesus’ words, like a good Pharisee, with questions, “Well, who is my neighbor? How should I love my neighbor?” Jesus makes it pretty clear. Love your neighbor like you love yourself. We are to have counter-cultural love for the culture—nothing less than loving our neighbors like we love ourselves.

And we are to have gospel-formed love for our brothers and sisters. “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2). We are to do good to everyone, and especially those in the Church (Gal. 6:10).

This is a difficult way to live. But not impossible. This kind of love is not beyond the Kingdom of Christ. This is the Great Commandment, not the great impossibility. To walk in the Greatest Commandment requires great power, great ability—given from the Holy Spirit. What’s the first fruit of the Spirit again?

What Are We Exporting?

Our first priority is loving God. Always. Our chief task is not to put on a slick Sunday service, or to assimilate people into community groups, to serve the poor, to defend doctrine, to write books, to preach sermons—our first and greatest aim is love. (Then good works will follow.)

And if we aren’t careful, we can get caught up in the good things and forget the main, the best thing.

The church at Ephesus received a letter from Jesus, commending their sound doctrine—but rebuking their lack of love.

But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.” (Rev. 2:4–5)

Every church should take an assessment of their ministry manifest and ask, “What are we exporting?” What is our church churning out? More love or more or more pride? More gospel or more Oprahisms and Osteenifications?

Solid doctrine is a good thing. So important. But churches with stellar doctrinal statements die every day. Lampstand status requires love.

The Ephesians didn’t lose their love for Jesus and others because of sexual immorality, drugs, Netflix, or Jim Beam—it was the good things, overtime, that wore them down. Like the slo-mo drag of the ocean, they lost their bearing. Caught in the motions of Christianity and they were no longer caught up with the risen Christ.

Stay The Course

Let’s not assume we aren’t there, or that we aren’t a weekend away from being there.

• Does our church really love Jesus, the person? Or are we bored with him?
• Does our church really love one another? Or are we a lame event?
• Does our church really love the lost? Or are we a city in a bunker, instead of a city on a hill?

This is too vital to not consider. Where are we today?

Let’s stay the course. Let’s do the two firsts that Jesus mentioned to the Ephesians.

The love we had first. The works we did at first.

We never move on from there. There’s no advanced Christianity. This is it. Love for God, love for neighbor. Word and deed. Hear and do.

We remember Jesus; we get reignited by his volcanic love, and then we act accordingly. The Way. The Truth. The Life.

We love because he first loved us.

—

J.A. Medders is the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Church in Tomball, TX. He and Natalie have two kids, Ivy and Oliver. Jeff digs caffeinated drinks, books, and the Triune God. He blogs at www.jamedders.com and tweets from @mrmedders. Jeff’s first book, Gospel-Formed: Living a Grace-Addicted, Truth-Filled, Jesus-Exalting Life, is set to release this November from Kregel.

Looking for Hope in a Better Person

You’re a night security guard and the only Christian on duty. Another guard suddenly sticks his head into your office. Pointing his finger he almost accuses, “You’re one of those ‘Christians,’ right?” Nothing good ever follows that question. No one gives you a high five, says “good job,” and goes about their business. They want to debate, challenge, or stump you. You hesitantly respond, “Yeah . . .” He crosses his arms, looks you square in the eye and then comes the challenge: “I do drugs. What would Jesus say about that?” How would you respond—in a way that might actually resonate?

Three Insufficient Responses

I’ve posed this scenario, which actually happened to a guy I know named Nick, in trainings around the country. No matter where I am, I hear these responses,

“Um, I Don’t Know Exactly”

For some, our gut response would be to look down, stammer, and ashamedly admit we don’t know what Jesus would say. Maybe it’s the outlandish honesty or the shock of a challenge at 2 a.m. Perhaps we have a hard time putting Jesus’ response into words. Or our people-pleaser kicks in and we simply can’t tell him the core of what we believe. A common response to this question is a blank stare. Put yourself in the shoes of the asker: “I don’t know” looks like ignorance.

“He’d tell you to stop”

For others, the answer would stem from the moralistic, humanist culture we grew up in. Our answer is some form of Bob Newhart’s MADtv sketch: a counselee admits a number of struggles, while Newhart “counsels” each with a blunt, “Stop it!” Even if we intellectually know Jesus is our savior, we function as if He is a good guy with ethical advice. Maybe we advise a few “good works.” Perhaps we appeal to legality (“you’ll get arrested”), personal welfare (“it might kill you”), heartstrings (“if you get arrested, can you imagine how your family will feel?”), or moralism (“you know it’s wrong”). It could be that we even quote a verse: “He’d say ‘you shall have no other gods before me’; that’s the first commandment.” Put yourself in the asker’s shoes again: “‘Stop it’” fits a view of God many already assume: a rule-giving, demanding, and impersonal deity.

“He died for your sin so you can be with Him in heaven”

A final common response acknowledges their need for the gospel. Maybe you’ve been praying for this guard. You’re elated that God finally opened the door. So you gush the gospel many of us know well. “He’d tell you that God is perfect and heaven is perfect, but because of sin, you’re not perfect. God sent Jesus to die for your sin so you can be reconciled to God and live eternal life with Him. If you accept Jesus He’ll forgive your sin of drugs.” This is true—and praise God it is! But if he’s ignoring God, he doesn’t care about heaven. If he’s like much of the world, he doesn’t believe he’s too bad a person. If he’s a common American, it’s likely he doesn’t fully understand sin or his need for Jesus. Even the objective, big-picture gospel is not a sufficient answer.

“Like Children, Tossed To And Fro . . .”

These responses fail to get to the heart of our faith. The first is empty. the second is moralistic. The third sees the gospel as merely a past event that greatly benefits my future, but that has nothing to do with today. Many who question the gospel need to know how it applies to them in their current situation. Behind the challenging question is a heart in need of applicable truth.

Futile attempts like these are not unique to our culture. Writing to first-century Ephesus, Paul explains the goal of Christian life is maturity, then gives three ways we cannot attain that goal: “every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” First, exclusively pursuing doctrinal trends, teachers, or head-knowledge of the Bible isn’t enough. Second, we will always be let down by relying on our own power, to make new rules and fix each other. Third, false teachers deceive, spouting false hope and false ways to solve real issues.

But these are ways we often answer many questions, not just the 2 a.m. drug challenge. “How can God redeem my broken marriage?” “I’m so angry at my boss, what do I do?” “We just want a baby.” “How do these verses or commands apply to me?” “Where is God in this (recent tragedy)?” We answer, “I don’t know” (and if you’re really good, “. . . but I’ll pray for you.”) “Let me give you a great book on that.” “Let’s meet every week for accountability.” “Do these three things or steps.” “You just need to trust Jesus.” “One day, all this will be better.”

Applying An Objective Gospel To Subjective Situations

None of these, Paul would say, are sufficient for faith or maturity. He even calls answers like this childlike. Answers like these miss one of the great blessings of the gospel. It is a past event, both historically and personally for every Christian. It does give future hope, for personal reconciliation and the renewal of all things. But it also impacts every moment of our present lives. The gospel means something, to everyone, everyday, for every situation, whether they know it or not. Paul says that while those other ways fail, the one way to grow in Christ is to “speak the truth in love.”

This is why we listen well; why we learn stories. Within every complaint, struggle, and idol hides an opportunity to speak the objective truth of the gospel into someone’s subjective circumstance. Jeff Vanderstelt offers four areas to listen for, in every story, frustration, and situation, where we can intervene and point people toward Jesus:

• Identity: Who or what shapes their understanding of themselves? Where do they find personal value and worth?
• Brokenness: Where are things “different” than they’re supposed to be? What are areas of pain, hurt, and frustration? Who or what’s to blame?
• Redemption: What or who do they look to, to fix the brokenness? What or who makes everything right? What or who’s their functional redeemer?
• Hope: What does “right” look like? What would everything look like once everything is fixed? What or who is the center of that hope?

When we identify false identity or hope in someone’s life, see a misplaced view of brokenness, or hear the letdown of a false redeemer, we can point them toward a better story. We lead them to an identity and hope in God, not anything or anyone else. We define sin as the true brokenness, not any other problem. We point to Jesus as the only true Redeemer in the midst of the siren calls of false saviors. That loves them well, and speaks gospel truth in a way that addresses a direct need.

How Would You Respond?

“I do drugs. What would Jesus say about that?” Based on today’s content, how do we answer that question? What deeper need do the drugs really cover? What true struggle is he admitting? Put yourself in Nick’s shoes: how does the objective gospel apply to the guard’s subjective situation?

After thinking for a moment, Nick responded, “I think Jesus would tell you you’re looking for hope in a place that lets you down. And you know it lets you down because you have to take a hit three times a day. So I think Jesus would tell you He’s a better place to put your hope, because He promises He’ll never let you down.” Nick spoke the gospel truth into the basis of the guard’s personal hope. In thousands of years of history, sixty-six written books, and millions of lives across history, God has proven that Jesus is our greatest hope. The guard didn’t fall on his knees weeping that night. God didn’t redeem his soul in that office. But he uncrossed his arms, shook his head, and told Nick, “No one has ever told me that before. That actually makes a lot of sense.” That night, the guard walked having heard the gospel in a way that resonated with his present life and need.

—

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: This is an excerpt from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr. available from Moody Publishers starting June 2014. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher. For free resources and preorders, visit everydaymission.net.)

Grieving Well

Crisis struck our church body suddenly and without warning. One of our staff members gave birth to her fourth child, only to have that sweet, little life end just a few days later. This sudden loss came as a surprise to everyone. Many in our church body mobilized to surround this family with prayer, meals, and whatever kind of support we could think to provide. My husband and I, who have also suffered the death of a newborn, were uniquely positioned to come alongside this couple with the empathy that is only bought through similar suffering. As we spent time with this couple and their children, we hoped we might bring them some comfort. We also hoped we might be able to help them grieve well. As my husband assisted with planning the graveside memorial service for little Lucy, he asked me if I might be willing to speak at the service, sharing what I learned through our loss. Even though we lost our daughter fifteen years ago, the lessons are still fresh and real. I agreed. Through our loss and subsequent suffering, I learned two valuable truths about God and in that process learned how to grieve well. I share these deeply-learned lessons here so that they will encourage those who grieve as well as those who are called to grieve alongside someone else.

God is God

The first truth I learned through our loss is that God is God. Sounds fairly straightforward, but it’s a difficult truth to grasp in the middle of suffering. When we lost our daughter as a stillbirth, many well-meaning people said many unhelpful things. One person gave us a book that tried to reconcile God’s sovereignty with personal loss and suffering. I took away from that unfortunate gift that God did not have anything to do with my baby’s death. This attempt at comfort ultimately proved flimsy and unsustainable. God didn’t have anything to do with this? Well then, if that’s the case, God might be love, but he is not God.

That interpretation of my suffering wasn’t good enough for me. I couldn’t believe that God had his hands tied and that this loss happened totally outside his jurisdiction. I began to search the Scriptures on my own and pray, begging God to help me make sense of it all. He led me to 1 Peter 5:6, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.” Studying that verse along with many other passages describing God’s sovereignty led me to this conclusion—God had everything to do with my daughter’s death. He is God. He is absolutely in charge. I can trust this loss didn’t happen apart from him. He allowed her to die for reasons known only to him, because only he is God. He is the one with the mighty hand. My job is to humble myself under it.

God Cares

Left by itself, however, the truth that God is God (and we are not) can leave us feeling resigned at best and bitter at worst. “Great,” we think, “God is God. Where is the comfort in that?” Thankfully, the second truth about God comes fast on the heels of the first. The next verse in 1 Peter 5 tells us “Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” God is God, yes. But he is a God who cares for me more than I can ever imagine. That truth is a game-changer. That means that not only can I trust his sovereignty, but I can also trust his character. Because he cares for me, he will never, can never, act in a way contrary to his character. I can trust him to always, always act in a way that is loving. So as I humble myself under his hand, I can relax. This is a good hand I am under. I can trust him.

Learning to Grieve Well

Armed with those two truths about God, I found myself in the position to grieve well. I crawled under the mighty hand of God and stayed there. Though at times tempted to blame a decision made by myself or a doctor, I received the grace to reject that temptation and stay put. “God is God,” I reminded myself. “It is his loving and caring hand I am under.” I also resisted the temptation to run. Escape by numbing myself with food or movies or prescription medication or whatever proved fruitless. I chose to stay under the hand of God and trusted him to lift me up whenever he was ready.

I crouched low, and really, really grieved. I let the emotions come and I let them out. I cried to God and yelled to God and clung to God all at the same time. That’s what you can do with a God who cares. I cast all my anxieties on him like Peter told me to . . .  again and again, throwing in my fears and despair and anguish as well. God took it all. And still I stayed there, crouched low. Grieving. Waiting.

Once my tears began to dry a little, God began to lift me up over the following weeks and months, just as he said he would. I have found as the years have passed since then that during that time I was able to grieve well and fully. I didn’t run from it, but fully gave into it, trusting God throughout the process. There have been other opportunities to grieve since then that I have not handled as well, so I know the difference. That time God gave me the grace to do it well. I humbled myself under God’s hand and trusted him to lift me up. I cast all my anxiety on him, knowing that he cares for me.

The Gift

My husband and I discovered something precious during that difficult time of loss and grief. As we crouched there under his hand, God gave us something irreplaceable: the gift of himself. That could potentially sound cliché until you experience the presence of God in the middle of grief. When our daughter died, I felt the presence of God fill our hospital room in a powerful, almost tangible way. I literally thought about trying to reach out and touch something that I could feel, but couldn’t see. He was that real, that present. We have experienced the deaths of others that we love since that time without that same visceral experience. That’s how I know it was a gift. “God is near to the brokenhearted” (Ps. 34:18), and we, in our broken state, experienced the gift of his nearness that day. Experiencing God’s nearness set us up to grieve well. We knew he was God. And we knew we could trust him.

Grieve Well

If you’re in the middle of grieving, I hope these words point you to the one who is in charge of everything, including your loss and your mind-blowing grief. I encourage you to humble yourself and crawl under the hand of God. Crouch there and grieve well. Let it all out. Trust him to lift you up. While you’re there, cast all your anxiety on him, along with your fear and grief and anger and tears. He cares so much for you. My prayer is that, as you draw near and remain close to him, that he will draw near to you and gift you with his presence. There is no greater gift.

And if you’re called to come alongside someone who is grieving, I hope these words give you some direction in how to speak life-giving truth them. Truth that is sturdy, sustaining, and healing: God is God. He is absolutely in charge, which means you are not suffering randomly or meaninglessly. He has you under the palm of his mighty, protective hand. Remember, though, that you can trust him because he cares for you more than you could ever imagine. His purposes toward you are always love. So stay there. Crouch low. Grieve well. And trust him to lift you up when the time is right. He will be faithful to his word to do this. And you will walk away stronger, blessed with the irreplaceable gift of his presence.

—

Lindsay Powell Fooshee is married to John, a pastor at Redeemer Community Church and church planter with Acts 29. They are raising 3 great kids in East Tennessee. Lindsay holds an M.A. in Christian Thought from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and blogs regularly at Kitchen Stool.

Culture Changes You

I remember taking an introductory communication course during my first year of college. It wasn’t a profound experience, really, just a community college course outlining a few social science theories while most of the class worked on math homework or played Angry Birds. Something from that course stuck with me though. It was the first day of class when the professor challenged us, “try to not communicate” the professor said. So we stopped talking and put on an expressionless face. “Nice try, but you failed” quipped the professor. “You are always communicating something. Through your body-language, your choice of clothing, your mannerisms, your vocal inflection. You can’t not communicate.”

After forgetting most of what I learned that semester, that stuck with me (granted, it helps that every communication professor starts their semester with this little exercise. Since I studied communication theory for my undergrad, I’ve probably blended a dozen or so lessons into the story above). But the point holds true.

Drenched in Culture

To take a page from my old professors, I would like to suggest that the same is true for culture. Take a minute to try to imagine a person not influenced by culture. I’ll wait.

Do you have your imaginary case study ready? Maybe it’s a sort of unabomber character, living off the land in Montana. Maybe it’s a small town fundamentalist preacher who hasn’t watched a movie, played a card game, or read a “secular” book since 1971.

Well, thanks for playing, but even these folks can’t escape the reach of culture. Culture is as ubiquitous as the air we breathe. The clothes we wear (or don’t wear), the language we speak, and the things we buy—which are all evidence that we are all drenched in culture.

Culture is everywhere and, like it or not, culture is changing you.

After watching that movie last night, listening to that album, reading that book, binge watching House of Cards, and buying that new shirt you are not the same person.

On a recent Christ and Pop Culture podcast we asked Dr. Greg Thornbury, president of King’s College in New York City, about engaging culture. To which he responded,

“You want to engage culture?—too late! Because culture has already engaged you . . . It’s the air you breathe. You’re so suffused with it, that to talk about engagement is almost a misnomer.”

Thornbury then recalled this old Palmolive commercial. “You’re soaking in it,” Madge tells her friend in the commercial. Just as our curiosity is peaked about culture and Christianity, we realize that we’ve been soaking in it this whole time.

Maybe you fully realize this, but fear the growing influence of secular culture, and try to avoid that which seems antithetical to Christian morality, or liberal, or heterodox. However, because we are unable to escape culture and since culture is undoubtedly influencing us, the question cannot be “how can we avoid being discipled by culture?” and should be “how can our involvement in and consumption of culture be harnessed as a gospel-centered discipleship tool?”

For the rest of this article, I will lay groundwork for the latter question and, in a series of monthly posts at Gospel-Centered Discipleship, I will go through several case studies using different cultural artifacts.

What exactly is Culture, anyway?

What: What is culture? Culture is hard to define because culture is both profoundly visible and invisible. Both concrete and abstract. Culture is what you are expected to say when somebody sneezes. Culture is the free version of Hamlet in the local park. Culture is the billboard on the highway. Culture is how long you are expected to pray, if at all, before a meal. Culture consists of the shared ideas, norms, and practices that knit humans together. Culture forms us and we form it.

Why: Why do we create and consume culture? Maybe more important than understanding the precise definition of culture is understanding why we create and consume it. As articulated by James K.A. Smith in Desiring the Kingdom, humans create and consume culture because we are lovers––that is, we participate in the cultural practices that we do because they promise to fulfill us. “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 we are,” says Smith (50-51). Simply put, the cultural practices that we participate—sometimes without even realizing it—reveal what we desire.

Culture is much more than beliefs and ideologies. Culture is a collective conscious and unconscious  striving for happiness, understanding, and fulfillment. To quote James K.A. Smith again, the ideas and practices that make us human are “always aimed at some vision of the good life, some particular articulation of the kingdom” (24).

“Pop Culture”: To briefly summarize for clarity, “pop culture” is the media, practices, and artifacts that are produced by culture.

Popular culture is one big, diverse collection of desire-driven narratives. We often buy certain clothes because we believe that how we look will lead to some sort of fulfillment. We watch films that explicitly reflect our desire for reconciliation or subtly reflect our desire for beauty. These artifacts are what Smith calls pictures of the good life. We are being discipled (changed into the image of something) by what we consume,

“[A]esthetic articulations of human flourishing as found in images, stories, and films (as well as advertisements, commercials, and sitcoms). Such pictures appeal to our adaptive unconscious because they traffic in the stuff of embodiment and affectivity. Stories seep into us––and stay there and haunt us . . . . we can’t not be lovers, we can’t not be desiring some kingdom” (58, 75).

Considering the power and ubiquity of culture, we cannot afford to ignore it. Nor can we afford to go to war with it. If “The earth is the LORD's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein”(Ps. 24:1), then we must recognize the import, God-ordained role that culture has to play in our lives. More than, culture can be used as a valuable discipleship tool. With all the complicated messages that culture presents, we need supernatural help to view it as such.

Trained by the Spirit to See

The beauty of grace is that we aren’t going to get it right, but that’s okay. God is actively living and working inside of sinful people.

I grew up in a non-Christian home, intellectually discipled by my dad to love and appreciate great film, music, and literature. Before becoming a Christian at sixteen, I found refuge in the music of Bob Dylan and Uncle Tupelo, the writing of Salinger and Vonnegut, and the films of Kurosawa and Wes Anderson. These cultural artifacts shaped me, dare I say, in wonderful and healthy ways.

When I became a Christian, my life was changed by Jesus. I understood that I was a bad person who needed to be saved from myself. I found security where I had only known insecurity. I also found Christian culture, and, for about three months, I gave up “secular music” and listened only to Christian radio because I thought that’s what Christians did. It was like only feeding a kid spinach for three months—”I know it’s good for me.” I would tell myself, “but it’s so awful going down!” I don’t remember the day that I gave in, but going back to my Wilco and Rolling Stones albums was a breath of fresh air. And those albums turned out to be some of the most helpful discipleship resources I’ve ever interacted with. They displayed what it looks like to wrestle through doubt, insecurity, and loneliness. Not to mention, expressions of joy, historical rootedness (here’s looking at you, Mick Jagger), and intimacy. As I began to study the Bible, I found that culture expressed similar emotions and often strove towards the same goals, and fell into the same trap.

There is an invisible thread that runs throughout culture. Christians have the grace of the revealed knowledge that this cultural mystery is the Logos—God himself working through culture, history, and music. Paul quoted Aratus and Epimenides of Crete in Acts 17 to show the Greeks that God was at work in their culture. While the Spirit teaches us the substance of this thread (the gospel narrative) through the preached Word, the sacraments, Scripture, community, and prayer, we can learn to boldly draw parallels between the seemingly secular, obtuse, or ignored and the Creator of the universe.

After years of being well-discipled in a gospel-loving church—a safe place to wrestle through the inherent goodness or badness of the pop culture that I love so much—the Spirit trained me (and is continuing train me) to see how, while broken, human culture is divinely infused. Through cultural expressions of honest doubt, sincere beauty, and vulnerable intimacy, the Spirit has taught me the cathartic joy of identifying with human longing and the art of seeing the sacred in the secular.

The Spirit teaches us to view the world and culture through gospel colored glasses. Humans who create culture are creatures who are longing for redemption—creatures with eternity written on their hearts and the image of God in their DNA.

“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.  And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual” (1 Cor. 2:12-13).

Our spiritual nature (that is, united by faith to Jesus) allows us to see the world for what it is. We are taught by the spirit to see people as made specifically in the image of God, longing for something to save them from their fallenness. The culture that humans create—Christian or not—reflects this Godward orientation and can itself lead Christians to understand God in rich, previously untapped ways.

Take The Brothers Karamazov—the book that, apparently, led Reza Aslan to reject Christianity. The same book that I would call one of the most import books in my spiritual life. While I saw pure, Christ-like grace exemplified in the characters of Alyosha and Zossima, I saw a wise vision of ecclesiology in the chapter “The Grand Inquisitor” and even when Dostoevsky inevitably strays from Protestant orthodoxy, as I read I grew in love. I don't need it to be explicitly evangelical to see God’s divine imprint in Dostoevsky's work.

Enjoying good culture is a joy and a blessing. When we see God’s fingerprint on it, we can be sure that the Spirit is teaching us that he loves his creation and culture as a good, undeserved gift. No need to freak out at the upsurge in “secular” culture. If God created culture and man is wired to know God, even the most anti-Christian cultural expressions will not be able to overcome God’s redemptive plan and will, in some way, reflect gospel truth. One of the joys of being a Christian is that we get to search for it.

Granted, Scripture says that some things are truly wicked and should be avoided (see 1 Cor. 10:23-33), and that many things are unhelpful, though lawful. Pornography, hate speech, and like are to be rightfully abhorred and actively fought against. However, everything is a mixed bag, including Christian culture (and certainly including this article!). So we must be careful not to draw black and write lines in the sand, calling everything that disagrees with our theological and moral sensibilities irredeemable smut. Culture is complex, and more often than not has much more to offer us that we think, not less.

Culture can be spiritually detrimental, but often it simply exposes our already corrupt heart. If we are unrepentantly greedy or adulterous, films like The Wolf of Wall Street and Goodfellas will feed those desires. However, if we approach these films with an explicit desire to understand the character of God, culture, even the most seemingly unredeemable can point us to the gospel.

Maybe you zone out to How I Met Your Mother every night after work. Maybe you just bought Weird Al’s new album and you’ve been jamming out to “Tacky”  this week. Whatever it is, it isn’t “secular”—it’s shaping you. Be encouraged though, as you learn to view it through a gospel lense—like Paul did with the poetry of Epimenides and Aratus. God can use it as a means to reveal himself and the good news of his Son.

—

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.

Avoiding the Pitfalls of Pastoring

There are two common dangers in pastoral ministry and Paul is alert to both of them. They are what we might call over-pastoring and under-pastoring. Over-pastoring is what happens when a leader or leaders exercise too much control in the life of the church. They are quick to suppress any dissent and may even end up bullying people. They often personalize issues. Suggestions for change or criticism are responded to in a personal way with counter-accusations. The unconscious aim of such leaders is personal control rather than the maturity of the congregation. This is why Paul says an elder must not be “over-bearing, not quick-tempered” (1:7).

Under-pastoring is what happens when a leader or leaders exercise too little leadership within a congregation. They avoid confrontation, so they fail to correct false teachers or challenge ungodly living. They may be good at encouraging people, but weak at rebuking those in error If the aim of those who over-pastor is personal control, the aim of leaders who under-pastor is personal comfort. They want a quiet life. But Paul says an elder must “refute those who oppose” the gospel (v. 9) and tells Titus that “rebellious people . . . must be silenced” (v 10-11).

You may not be in leadership. But, as we shall see in Titus 2, we are all called to pastor one another in the church. So we can all have a tendency to over-pastor or under-pastor.

If you think you have a tendency toward over-pastoring or under-pastoring, then the key is not simply to modify your style. The key is to “hold firm to the trustworthy message as it has been taught” (v 9). This is why holding firmly to the gospel is so important.

Why Under- or Over-Pastor?

What is it that drives someone to over-pastor? Proverbs 4:23 says: “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life” (NLT). In others words, what shapes our behavior is the thoughts and desires of our hearts (Marks 7:20-23). Our behavior goes wrong when our thinking about God and desires for God are misaligned. People over-pastor because they want to feel they are in control, or they are trying to prove themselves through their ministry. They have not embraced the truth that God is great and he is in control; or they have not embraced the truth that God is gracious and their identity is found in Christ. They may believe these truths in theory, but they do not hold them firmly in their hearts—and this is revealed in moments of pressure.

What is it that drives someone to under-pastor? People under-pastor because they fear the rejection of other people or crave their approval or they want to be liked (what the Bible calls the “fear of man,” Proverbs 29:25). Or they may under-pastor because they want a comfortable life, so they avoid the hard things involved in leadership. They have not embraced the truth that God is the glorious One, who should be feared. Their fear of man is not being eclipses by the fear of God. Or they have not embraced the truth that the God is good. True and lasting joy is found in him—even in the midst of hard situations.

Leaders need to disciple themselves with the gospel before they can disciples others. That does not mean they need to be perfect—progress rather than perfection is what is required (1 Timothy 4:15). But leaders do need to apply the gospel to their own hearts—otherwise they will be like the hypocrites of whom Jesus warns, who try to take specks out of people’s eyes when they have planks in their own eyes (Matthew 7:1-5).

—

Tim Chester (PhD, University of Wales) is pastor of the Crowded House in Sheffield, United Kingdom, and director of the Porterbrook Institute, which provides integrated theological and missional training for church leaders. Chester also coauthored Total Church (Re:Lit), Everyday Church (Re:Lit), and has written more than a dozen books.

Excerpt taken from Tim Chester, Titus for You, The Good Book Company, ©2014. Used by permission. http://www.thegoodbook.com/

Prioritizing Church Attendance

Let’s just face the facts. Today, many Christians do not think attending church is that important. In the past, Christians believed that actively being a part of a church body was absolutely necessary to one’s faith. There used to be an understanding in Christian families that unless one was deathly ill or there was a family emergency, you just never ever missed church. So what has changed and caused so many people to view the church as a disposable good instead of as an intricate part of one’s spiritual life?

Why We Don’t Attend Church: A 40-Hour a week job, but no time for God

Pastor Kevin DeYoung is right. Our lives really are “crazy busy.” There is no doubt about it. Whether you are a college student, a newly-wed couple, or have a family of seven, we live in a day and age where the mentality is simply: go, go, go! This is one of the main reasons why church attendance is viewed as optional. Most people work 40-hour a week jobs in the United States, and so once the weekend hits the mindset of rest and recovery sets in. Trust me, I get it. Everybody wants some downtime. But why do we think that rest and recovery should take place outside of the confines of the house of God?

Recently, Trevin Wax wrote an article titled: “Are You A Part-Time Church Goer? You May Be Surprised.” Wax explains various reasons why people miss church in today’s society. There are 52 Sundays a year. If you only attend 25-30 Sunday services, you are a part-time church goer. Congratulations!

Do you recognize what is clearly wrong with this? Our jobs, which of course we must have to be able to support ourselves and our families, are seen as absolute necessities, while church attendance is simply seen as a dispensable activity. Brothers and sisters, this is not how it should be. Of course, the mindset of just attending church, getting your church attendance ticket punched, is absolutely wrong as well. Pastors and church leaders should preach against this mentality as well. However, think about this for a second. Just like you gather with your biological family, shouldn’t you also desire to gather with your spiritual family?

Why We Need The Church: A Biblical Case

I know the arguments that are going to be raised about what I have said thus far. People are going to say: “Does he really believe that attending a local church, going to its building, and doing this once or twice a week is what the Bible is suggesting?” Well yes and no. Kevin DeYoung explains, “I know we are the church and don’t go to church (blah, blah, blah), but being persnickety about our language doesn’t change the exhortation of Hebrews 10:25.” I couldn’t agree more.

Fellowship with your spiritual family is a sign of maturing in the faith as a disciple. Hebrews 10:25 says, “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” Have we really become so “new-agey” in our thought that we now think that we have matured past the need to attend church? Lord, let it not be so.

Gospel-Motivated Church Attendance

There is no doubt that what we need to recover in the life of Christians today is a gospel-motivated church attendance. What might this look like? Well, in my opinion its demonstrating the fact that when the church gathers on the Lord’s day, she proclaims the gospel, meditates on the gospel, and rehearses the gospel. By doing this, lives will begin to fundamentally change. It really is just that simple.

When the gospel is at the center our focus shifts. We no longer view church attendance as something we just need to check off, but as an intricate part of our spiritual lives. Instead of serving the god of individuality, we will be serving the God of Scripture. The gospel changes everything. However, we must first let the gospel change our low views of the church, and recognize that the house of the Lord is absolutely vital to the Christian life—to the life of a mature disciple. Should not the good news of Jesus Christ dying for our sins motivate us enough to enter into God’s house on Sundays? I would say so.

We are all at different points in our spiritual walks with the Lord. No matter what point you are at on your journey, I hope that you will come to see the importance of attending church. Do not be so narcissistic and self-consumed to think that you do not need the body of Christ. That is simply a sign of spiritual immaturity and a straight-up lie from the Devil.

I am not trying to guilt anyone into attending church regularly either. However, I am issuing a challenge to those who consider themselves Christians. If you consider yourself to be a part of the bride of Christ (Rev. 19:7-9, 21:2), tell me why would you separate yourself from the body of Christ (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 10:17)? Logically, that makes no sense at all.

So Christians, live in light of the fact that you have been redeemed and do not have to earn your acceptance before God through your church attendance. The community of Christ needs you because it cannot function without all of its body parts. This is not condemnation, but rather an exhortation. Attending church is a blessing that should not be taken for granted.

—

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.

Choosing Grace Over Outrage

In his book, We Learn Nothing: Essays and Cartoons, political cartoonist and New York Times Op-ed writer Tim Kreider describes the modern epidemic that he calls “outrage porn”:

So many letters to the editor and comments on the Internet have this . . . tone of thrilled vindication: these are people who have been vigilantly on the lookout for something to be offended by, and found it…Obviously, some part of us loves feeling 1) right and 2) wronged. But outrage is like a lot of other things that feel good but, over time, devour us from the inside out. Except it’s even more insidious than most vices because we don’t even consciously acknowledge that it’s a pleasure. We prefer to think of it as a disagreeable but fundamentally healthy reaction to negative stimuli, like pain or nausea, rather than admit that it’s a shameful kick we eagerly indulge again and again . . . [It is] outrage porn, selected specifically to pander to our impulse to judge and punish, to get us off on righteous indignation.

The commitment to feel 1) right and 2) wronged seems to be a fairly common phenomenon. But is this a fruitful way for Christians in particular to engage in public conversations about the issues of the day? I think Jesus taught us another way.

There are surely going to be times when we will disagree with others, sometimes in a passionate way. A follower of Jesus is by definition a person who carries certain convictions. Yet when we must disagree, being steadfast in our loyalty to Jesus demands that we not be disagreeable as people. When people assume a different viewpoint than ours, we are never to hold them in contempt. Scorn and disdain and a chip on the shoulder are not Christian virtues. Rather, they are Pharisaical vices. They may at times contribute to winning an argument, but they will never win a person. A disagreeable spirit—or as my fellow pastor Ken Leggett likes to say it, “habitually putting on a no face instead of a yes face”—is not the way that Jesus intends for his followers to engage in disagreements and debates.

Tim Keller says that tolerance isn’t about not having beliefs. It’s about how your beliefs lead you to treat people who disagree with you. This is where biblical Christianity is unparalleled in its beauty and distinctiveness. I am not talking about distorted belief systems that pretend to be Christianity but are not. I am talking about the true, pure, undefiled, unedited, unfiltered, unrevised, and an altogether biblical and beautiful system of belief—the one that visits orphans and widows in their afflictions, the one that loves all its neighbors who are near or in need, the one that is kind to its enemies:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?”

Jesus did not merely speak these words as an edict from on high. He became these words. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). While we were running from him, while we were passively resisting him, while we were actively opposing him, while we were his enemies, Christ in love gave his life for us.

Do we need any more reason to be kind to those who see things differently than we do? What more reason do we need than that through Jesus, we are forgiven and free and loved and will never ever, ever, ever, be condemned or scorned by the courts of heaven?

Having received such grace, Christians have a compelling reason to be remarkably gracious, inviting, and endearing in our treatment of others, including and especially those who disagree with us. Let’s be known by what we are for instead of what we are against. Let’s be less committed to defending our own rights—for Jesus laid down his rights—and more enmeshed in joining Jesus in his mission of loving people, places, and things to life.

When the grace of Jesus sinks in, we will be among the least offended and least offensive people in the world.

Jesus already took us seriously by giving his life for us. There is no better reason than this to take ourselves less seriously.

—

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/blog. Used with permission from Scott Sauls.

Picturing Discipleship at The Moulin Rouge

Embodied Desires

A common “churchy” response to this cultural situation runs along basically Platonic lines: to quell the raging passion of sexuality that courses its way through culture, our bodies and passions need to be disciplined by our “higher” parts—we need to get the brain to trump other organs and thus bring the passions into submission to the intellect. And the way to do this is to get ideas to trump passions. In other words, the church responds to the overwhelming cultural activation and formation of desire by trying to fill our head with ideas and beliefs.

I suggest that, on one level, Victoria’s Secret is right just where the church has been wrong. More specifically, I think we should first recognize and admit that the marketing industry—which promises an erotically charged transcendence through media that connects to our heart and imagination—is operating with a better, more creational, more incarnational, more holistic anthropology than much of the (evangelical) church. In other words, I think we must admit that the marketing industry is able to capture, form, and direct our desires precisely because it has rightly discerned that we are embodied, desiring creatures whose being-in-the-world is governed by the imagination. Marketers have figured out the way to our heart because they “get it”: they rightly understand that, at root, we are erotic creatures—creatures who are oriented primarily by love and passion and desire. In sum, I think Victoria is in on Augustine’s secret. But meanwhile, the church has been duped by modernity and has bought into a kind of Cartesian model of the human person, wrongly assuming that the heady realm of ideas and beliefs is the core of our being. These are certainly part of being human, but I think they come second to embodied desire. And because of this, the church has been trying to counter the consumer formation of the heart by focusing on the head and missing the target: it's as if the church is pouring water to put out a fire in our heart.

What if we approached this differently? What if we didn’t see passion and desire as such as the problem, but rather sought to redirect it? What if we honored what the marketing industry has got right—that we are creatures primarily of love and desire— and then responded in kind with counter-measures that focus on our passions, not primarily on our thoughts or beliefs? What if the church began with an affirmation of our passional nature and then sought to redirect it?

A Romantic Theology

The result would be what Inklings member Charles Williams called a “romantic theology.” Developed in a number of (unfortunately) forgotten little books, Williams’s argument is that the human experience of romantic love and sexual desire is itself a testimony to the desire for God. Williams would put it even more strongly: the person who experiences romantic love has experienced something of the God who is love. Treading a path opened by Dante’s meditations on Beatrice, Williams suggests that romantic love “renews nature, if only for a moment; it flashes for a moment into the lover the life he was meant to possess.” Love, says Williams, is a testament to the in-breaking or emergence of the divine in human experience, and thus to be affirmed as an expression of our deepest erotic passion, the desire for God:

Any occupation exercising itself with passion, with self-oblivion, with devotion, towards an end other than itself, is a gateway to divine things. If a lover contemplating in rapture the face of his lady, or a girl listening in joy to the call of the beloved, are worshippers in the hidden temples of our Lord, is not also the spectator who contemplates in rapture a batsman’s stroke or the collector gazing with veneration at a unique example of [a stamp]?

As we’ll see later hinted in Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins, the erotic—even misdirected eros—is a sign of the kinds of animals we are: creatures who desire God. As Augustine famously put it, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” This is not a matter of intellect; Augustine doesn’t focus on the fact that we don’t “know” God. The problem here isn’t ignorance or skepticism. At issue is a kind of in-the-bones angst and restlessness that finds its resolution in “rest”—when our precognitive desire settles, finally, on its proper end (the end for which it was made), rather than being constantly frustrated by objects of desire that don’t return our love (idols). But this means that even desire wrongly “aimed” is still a testament to our nature as desiring animals. Operative behind Williams’s “romantic theology” is a picture of the human person that appreciates affectivity and desire as the “heart” of the person.

An Augustinian Anthropology of Desire

An Augustinian anthropology of desire primes us to adopt just such a romantic theology. And this entails, I think, an interesting implication for how we’ll think about learning and discipleship. I have in mind The Moulin Rouge—a film set in that den of iniquity, Montmartre, at the turn of the twentieth century, during the fervor of the Bohemian revolution. A starving artist named “Christian” has rejected the “respectable” and bourgeois lifestyle of his father (as a clerk or salesman) and instead sought to pursue a life devoted to literature and drama, all in the pursuit of beauty. He rejects the nine-to- five machinations of “normal” people, refuses to be reduced to a middle-class producer and consumer, and instead takes up residence with the colony of artists clustered in Montmartre—infamous home to burlesque shows and the red-light district, but also home to painters and artists like Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and van Gogh—all taking place under the watchful eye of the Basilica Sacré-Coeur perched atop the hill. Thus Montmartre represents a certain mix of the sacred and the profane—both of which seem to be at odds with the bourgeois life of production and consumption that the young artist, Christian, has rejected. The proximity to Sacré-Coeur almost invites us to look for parallels and comparisons between the bohemian artists and the mendicant friars, the decadent painters and the celibate priests, both of whom reject a life of moneymaking for the sake of very different visions of the kingdom, of the good life. But if both the bohemian and the friar desire a kingdom that rejects the pursuit of comfort and wealth, could it be that there are some covert similarities between their visions of the kingdom? Does the Moulin Rouge already point up the hill toward the Basilica? What, at the end of the day, is Christian after?

Above all, Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge is a “spectacular” love story revolving around the play within the play—a production of another love story, “Spectacular, Spectacular.” It is desire that brings the young man to art, to commit himself to the voluntary poverty of a bohemian literary existence. And it is in pursuit of this desire that another desire flames: his passion for Satine, a courtesan who reigns at the Moulin Rouge. Oddly, Satine herself represents the moneymaker, concerned primarily with acquisition, as attested in her hymn, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” (Indeed, her profession represents the very commodification of love.) Thus she resists his advances; above all she rejects his bohemian ideal, his naive commitment to love (played out in the “Elephant Love Medley”). But love wins. Christian’s evangelistic commitment to love captures the heart of Satine, and the effect is transformative: rejecting a lucrative offer from the duke, she too becomes a bohemian, and the desire for acquisition gives way to a passion for love and beauty. Love even has a kind of epistemological or perceptual effect, as indicated in their anthem, “Come What May”: “Never knew I could feel like this, like I’ve never seen the sky before.” The world is “seen” differently because of love. By the end of the film we learn that all of this has constituted a kind of education: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return.”

On the one hand, this seems to be the very antithesis of the kingdom of God: a realm of prostitutes and addicted artists given over to wanton pleasure-seeking. This criticism is embodied in the figure of Christian’s bourgeois father, who berates the bohemian culture for its sinfulness, which seems to be most linked to its failure to be “productive.” But to “the children of the revolution” (try to hear Bono crooning the song from the sound track), our highest calling is not to simply be producers. Instead, they are committed to the bohemian ideals of “beauty, freedom, truth, and above all, love.” And the spectacle of the film is ripe for analysis in terms of Williams’s theology of romantic love—a love that is revelatory, that breaks open the world (“Never knew I could feel like this, like I never saw the sky before . . .”). Christians will tend to say, “Ah, but that’s not love—that’s eros, not agapē!” But a romantic theology refuses the distinction because it recognizes that we are erotic creatures—that agapē is rightly ordered eros. And so one could suggest that the kingdom looks more like Montmartre than Colorado Springs! The kingdom might look more like the passionate world of the Moulin Rouge than the staid, buttoned-down, talking-head world of the 700 Club. The end of learning is love; the path of discipleship is romantic.

—

James K. A. Smith (PhD, Villanova University) is professor of philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he also holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. He is the editor of Comment magazine. Smith has authored or edited many books, including Imagining the Kingdom and the Christianity Today Book Award winners Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? and Desiring the Kingdom. He is also editor of the well-received The Church and Postmodern Culture series (www.churchandpomo.org).

James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, ©2009. Used by permission. http://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

Growing Pains and Making Messes

Enjoying the Growing Pains

I can’t sleep. My wife and I are expecting our third child. These two things aren’t related. Better said, they are not causally related. Our oldest is two and a half and our newly minted “middle child” just recently turned one. Both of them are in incredible points of their development that have been battering against my symbolic and typological head. Let me explain and apply.

The newly minted one year old, let’s call him Judah since his name is Judah, has recently begun to walk and climb all over the house. Chasing sister for toys. Chasing mom to be held. Judah emits guttural noises everywhere he goes. Both of pleasure and pain. The joy of seeing your child delightfully happy is marginally mitigated by the fact that the house is perpetually littered with toys and the child’s face littered with bruises from falls.

Our oldest, let’s call her Kenzie since her name is Kenzie, is a talking machine. She memorized song lyrics early on, so this year we started her with the Heidelberg Catechism. Kenize has nine Q&A’s memorized and recently was able to recite the entire Lord’s Prayer. She naturally recites well, but it’s her natural talking that is funny. It’s the words and sentences she develops in her own mind that cause my wife and I to roll around in laughter.

Growing Disciples Make Messes

Where am I going with this?

Last night, as I struggled to sleep, I was overcome by the realization that my kids were growing. Now this is a duh moment. I can see them growing with my eyes. But intellectually I perceived that bones were growing, organs expanding, and motor skills developing. My children at some point would no longer be children. Christian discipleship is like this. The Scriptures are replete with this imagery so I’ll limit myself:

“Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation” (1 Pt. 2:2).

“Until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Eph. 4:13-14).

Almost all of us have read these verses. We have crafted ideas of what they mean and what they look like. God has placed real life images in front of my face. Christians are born unable to take care of themselves. The church is the delivering and tending nurse. The young Christian coos and makes small messes. They begin to mature. We hope they mature. They must mature. In this process, they become like Judah—a walking, tumbling, crying mess. And the church needs to be ready. These child-like disciples need to be fed constantly. Cleaned more constantly. They require direction on how to interact with the world. They won’t stay this way for long, but the instruction must be given if we expect them to mature.

Then these fresh faced Christians become little walking, talking Kenzies. They learn doctrine by rote. They talk and sing and sound like Christians. They do little chores here or there and are all-around delightful to have. But they also say things that make no sense. Sometimes they mean to be silly and other times they do not. This can be frustrating for the more mature, so the church must be patient. We must teach not only what words mean, but the proper tones to convey their truth winsomely. This immaturity shall pass in time. And new stages of Christian discipleship will be crossed. But the church should not be surprised at the messes created by young disciples. We should take joy that they are in fact growing.

—

Joshua Torrey is a New Mexico boy in an Austin, TX world. He is husband to Alaina and father to Kenzie & Judah and spends his free time studying for the edification of his household. These studies include the intricacies of hockey, football, curling, beer, and theology. You can follow him @AustinPreterism and read his theological musings and running commentary of the Scriptures at The Torrey Gazette.

Setting Your Heart at Rest

This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God  and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.

—1 John 3:19-22

Condemned.

That is how I felt when I received the note in class one day “to meet with the Assistant Principal.” As I made my way to the office, my heart was beating out of my chest. I assumed everything I had ever done at high school was about to be laid out before me. As I made my way into the office and sat down, my heart was restless and anxious, prepared for the worst. I couldn’t even remember doing anything to get myself in trouble, but that did little to calm my increasingly antsy nervous system.

“Hey R.D., I want to talk with you about the senior banquet coming up in a few weeks and some ideas I had to help make it come together,” said the Assistant Principal.

“Yes, that is exactly what I want to talk about as well,” I sputtered out. This was going to be a much better meeting that I imagined. My heart could rest easy again.

The sense of condemnation and restlessness before my meeting with the Assistant Principal is often how I feel in the presence of God and I believe how many Christians feel as well. If God dropped you a note right now and said it is time to come into my office, how would your heart feel? What would your emotions be? If the invitation from the great throne room came to you, would you feel condemned? How our hearts are set in the presence of God can tell you a lot about how deeply (or not) you are experiencing the gospel within your heart.

John is writing to Christians in his first letter to encourage them to have confidence and assurance in the presence of God. He writes that remind us “how to set our hearts at rest in his presence.” John is telling us that we do not naturally set our hearts to rest in God’s presence, but we must work at it; we must learn how to “set” our hearts at rest.

Why do we struggle to be at rest in the presence of a God? Because our hearts condemn us. John writes that our hearts will condemn us when we truly come into the presence of God (1 Jn. 3:20). When we truly come into the presence of absolute perfection and excellence, our hearts will tell us how far short we fall of  that perfection and excellence. When Isaiah catches a vision of God in the temple he doesn’t run up to him to get a hug, he nearly falls apart, crying out “Woe is me! I am ruined!” (Is. 6:5). This is how you know you have come into the presence of God. When the light of God’s glory truly shines on you, your immediate reaction will be a desire to turn the lights off.

I remember when I had terrible acne in high school. I would wake up every morning and walk into my bathroom to turn on the lights. When all the lights turned on, all the impurities of my face were evident. There was no hiding and it was embarrassing. So for a while I simply turned on a single light to dim the lights, in a vain attempt to pretend that if I couldn’t see all the pimples then they might not actually be there.

But in the presence of God, the lights are fully on and we see ourselves for who we truly are, pimples and all. And our hearts rightly condemn us. The accusations fly from our hearts as we begin to seek God and pray to God, “You call yourself a Christian after the week you had?” Our hearts begin to bring up our sins, our brokenness, our guilt before God to accuse us and weary us as we honestly try and seek him.

We all experience this condemnation to differing degrees at different stages in our lives and we all counsel with people who experience condemning hearts as well. The reason John writes then is to provide a gospel remedy for our condemning hearts so that our hearts can rest in our Father’s presence.

A Gospel Remedy

“God is greater than our hearts...”

First, John reassures our hearts before God. God is greater than your heart, he is greater than your momentary feelings of guilt and shame. John reminds us that what God says about you is greater and truer than what you say about you. It can be easy to elevate our feelings, our emotions, our very hearts over the truth of who God says we are, but John tells us we cannot do that and be at rest. We need a greater word, a deeper anchor for our hearts in order to find rest.

Religion and irreligion are both recipes for restlessness. Religion promises rest for your heart by working, doing, thinking, and acting rightly. Religion comes to our hearts saying, “You can get over your guilt by working really hard at being a moral and righteous person so that the guilt of being immoral and unrighteous leaves.” But this is madness. How many good deeds and good thoughts does it take to truly put our hearts at rest? We can never know and, therefore, we remain, ultimately, restless in our path out of condemnation through the remedy of religion.

Irreligion promises that you don’t need a god to remove the guilt you feel, you only need you. You are the one who is able to remove the guilt by embracing who you are and by pursuing things which make you happy. But this is another recipe for restlessness. Here you simply replace a religious god with a secular one—in romance, approval, or wealth. But a new relationship, a new car, or a new job eventually lose its luster, and the reality of who you are, suppressed for a while, returns with a saddening vengeance.

We need something beyond religion and irreligion to deal with the crushing reality that whatever the standard is, we don’t measure up and whatever it is we think will put us at rest only makes us more restless. We need a greater word about us to hold onto.

This greater word is the word of God—the truth that we are created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26-27), saved by God’s grace (Eph. 2:8), adopted into God’s family (1 Jn. 3:1), and able to approach God’s throne with full confidence because of Jesus (Heb. 4:16). These are the gospel promises that we must make greater than our hearts and truer than our feelings. The remedy to the religion of work is to rest in the work of Christ for you. The remedy to the irreligion of the pursuit of pleasure is to rest in the beauty of the ultimate pleasure—Jesus Christ.

When we behold the greatness of God’s promises for us through Jesus we are able to begin setting our hearts at rest, knowing that our feelings betray us, but God is greater than our feelings of guilt, shame, and condemnation. That precious promise is not the only one that John reminds us of, he moves on to remind us of another.

“...and He knows everything.”

Second, God knows everything about us, absolutely everything. God is not surprised by anything that we have ever done. He has never looked out from the throne to say, “How did this happen? Why did you do that? I would never have saved you if I had know you would act like that?” No, he knows all about us and yet he still loves us.

We are often like Aladdin, continually fearing that when we are exposed for who we truly are, the people we love the most will desert us. You remember Aladdin right? Are you singing “A Whole New World” right now? I know you are—I digress. In the movie, Aladdin falls in love with Princess Jasmine, but doesn’t tell her the truth about his identity, that he is just a common peasant and not a prince. He enlists the help of the Genie in order to become something more than he is, but eventually the weight of hiding who he truly is wearies his soul. We see the exhaustion of hiding his identity come out in a conversation with the Genie towards the end of the film.

Aladdin: They wanna make me Sultan. No, they want to make Prince Ali Sultan. Without you, I’m just Aladdin.

Genie: Al, you won.

Aladdin: Because of you. The only reason anyone thinks I’m worth anything is because of you. What if they find out I’m not really a prince? What if Jasmine finds out? I’d lose her. Genie, I can’t keep this up on my own.

We can’t keep up hiding on our own as well. The liberating news of the gospel is that we don’t have to hide who we truly are because God knows everything. We have already been found out! There we stand before the God of the universe exposed! But now we have “confidence before him” (1 Jn. 3:21) because though he knows everything, he still loves us. How can we be sure of this? Because of the truth of 1 John 3:16, “This is how we know what love is, Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.”

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, to bear the condemnation from God that we deserve so that we would not bear it. This is why Paul writes that “therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). So now our hearts are put to rest toward God and God’s heart is put to rest towards us forever, and in the presence of God we can be vulnerable and honest, laying our whole lives bare before him and trusting that he will do what is good for us. We know that the Holy Spirit is here not to condemn us, but to convict us and remind us of the grace of Jesus and not the guilt of our sin.

The Liberating Rest

When we enter the presence of God through prayer or when we think of who God is in all his glory and beauty our hearts may condemn us and tell us that we are unworthy of his love or that we have no right to ask things of this God because of how we have been behaving, we must remember the gospel remedy in what Christ has done for us. We must remember the liberating truth that “God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything.”

We are not under guilt. We are under grace and so when the note from God comes to us, to enter into his presence and the voices in our heart rise up to condemn us we can confidently say with Paul “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom. 8:33-35a).

The answer of the Holy Spirit in Scripture is no one. And we can rest in that.

—

R.D. McClenagan is a teaching pastor at Door Creek Church in Madison, WI where he lives with his wife Emily and their increasingly adorable twin baby daughters Maisie and Camille. Follow him on Twitter: @rdmcclenagan.

The Pastor’s Kid: An Interview with Barnabas Piper

Being a pastor's kid (PK) is not something most of us can relate to, and yet the PK is someone we cannot avoid. PKs live in a world different from ours, a world where their family's every move is under intense scrutiny. But even if we're not a PK, it's important to understand the unique difficulties they face.

Barnabas Piper has written a book, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity, hoping to use his experience to encourage PKs to trust in Christ and to seek community in the midst of public and private struggle. It is also an instructive book for those of us who want to love our pastor's kid better.

Barnabas was kind enough to answer a few questions for GCD, and I hope it will encourage you to buy the book.

BRANDON: What made you feel like this message was the one to turn into a book?

BARNABAS: I was reluctant, at first, to write a book from the perspective of PKs. I doubted whether it would connect with enough people and wondered if it might seem whiny or navel-gazing. But as I corresponded with PK after PK I heard the same stories and perspectives over and over again, and they meshed with mine almost perfectly. I saw a persistent need and consistent desire. After I wrote a couple articles on being a PK the responses flooded in—each one hit a nerve. I saw a clear void in resources speaking to and for PKs both to encourage them and help their parents too.

BRANDON: Pastors have the unique expectation of discipling everyone in the church at the same time, in some form or fashion. How did this affect your dad (John Piper) in discipleship at home with you and your siblings?

BARNABAS: My dad was always a preaching pastor. His calling was to preach and his gift was to preach, and he was uniquely gifted at it. For him, discipleship of the church was primarily in consistent faithful exposition of the Bible. It was similar at home, just without the booming voice and gesticulations. He exposited and applied scripture. It was a strength and a weakness. The consistent pointing to God’s word laid a foundation for understanding, but it sometimes fell short of feeling personal and relational. There are dads, especially pastors, who use scripture verses like a magic cure for every ailment. My dad was not one of those.  He was never trite in his use of verses and he didn’t proof text to make a point. Sometimes, though, I just wanted normal conversation and connection and his default was digging into the Bible.

BRANDON: Pastor's kids often carry the unfair weight of being expected to be perfect because of who their dad is. How can people in the church help pastor's kids feel more "normal"?

BARNABAS: The short answer is “treat them like you do all the other kids.” PKs get singled out for misbehaving and even small indiscretions get noticed and reprimanded or reported. Where one kid might be called out Sunday School for being a distraction the PK  will have his mother or father called about the same sort of incident. PKs often get singled out to answer questions in Sunday school even if they don’t want to or don’t really know the answer. In fact, not knowing isn’t really allowed either. It creates an expectation of perfection, or at least a faking of it. Last, let them ask questions, doubt, wonder, explore, and find faith. Too often faith is expected of PKs and what is actually there isn’t a relationship with Jesus but a recitation of what is expected.

BRANDON: What advice would you give pastors seeking to better disciple their own kids?

BARNABAS: Converse, don’t ever preach. Relate, don’t always council. Connect with your kids over what they enjoy and over what you enjoy. This means have a hobby that can be shared (not just reading or studying). Listen, don’t always teach. Sometimes they need to be heard and to know you care. Show them you enjoy being with them. And admit to your sins, not just to being a sinner, but to actual sins. Then ask their forgiveness. These kinds of actions create an atmosphere of trust, respect, and openness. Such an atmosphere is where faith is worked out, questions are more safely posed, and a real relationship with Jesus can be exemplified and developed.

BRANDON: What advice would you give pastor's kids struggling with the pressures they face?

BARNABAS: Trust somebody. Find one or two friends. (You don’t really need more than that.) No they might not totally understand, but they care. It will help you process your struggles to talk through them. You’ll begin to see the holes that exist in your life that only Jesus can fill.

Then look for Jesus. Sure, you’ve heard all about him for your whole life, but go look for him. What you see may differ greatly than the impression you have of him. He’s not your daddy’s boss. He’s not a killjoy or a judge. He’s not an angelic, halo-wearing, choir boy. He is profoundly powerful, gracious, loving, and present. What find see when you look for Jesus is that you find him. He will introduce himself to you in a way that is so real that all those pressures and challenges and issues become something that may still hurt but are manageable and secondary.

—

Brandon D. Smith is Executive Director of Gospel-Centered Discipleship and serves in editorial roles for The Criswell Theological Review and The Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood. He is also Editor of Make, Mature, Multiply: Becoming Fully-Formed Disciples of Jesus. He is proud to be Christa’s husband and Harper Grace’s daddy. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonSmith85.

Seeking Extra-Biblical Humility

My church raised me to love the Bible and all its stories, but didn’t talk much about tradition, or the historic creeds, confessions, and catechisms. I learned the Bible every week, but I was missing out on what my spiritual grandparents had to offer me. It wasn’t until seminary that the significance of what came before me began to sink in. That’s when I discovered my need for what I like to call extra-biblical humility. Extra-biblical humility is a humble respect and gratitude for all that God has provided for the health and vitality of his Church outside of the biblical canon. This means respecting and caring about words like dogma, doctrine, and theology. It means cherishing our rich heritage as evangelical Christians by paying attention to more than just our Bibles. It means recognizing the call for all of this is grounded in Scripture itself, as 2 Corinthians 13:5a says, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.”

Up until seminary I had shown a willingness and desire to read my Bible and pray, but not much else besides reading a few modern Christian books and listening to my pastor preach. In so doing, I left some blind spots unguarded. If you feel like you only need to know your Bible and those who care about theology are slightly less holy than you, than you might have these same blind spots. Our weakness comes from redefining sola Scriptura from “no authority over the Bible” into “no authority except the Bible.”¹

When my sister-in-law started college in Boston, she met a group of people who knew their Bibles from back to front. They were zealous for God, called themselves a church, but something about their beliefs didn’t seem right. They told her she had to be baptized to be saved and their’s was the only baptism that counted. After all, Ephesians 4:5 says “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” so someone must have the one true baptism. Warning sirens! The group my sister-in-law ran into was a very real cult. But how did they get to a place of such poor theology? They got there, and we can too, by placing our personal interpretation of the Bible next to the Bible in importance.

Where then should our beliefs and practices come from? We first want them to come from the Word of God, but where should we check our beliefs to make sure they’re right? Where should our interpretation fall in comparison to other teachings? Michael Horton, in his systematic theology, unpacks a “proper order:”²

“(1) the Scriptures as the infallible canon, qualitatively distinct from all other sources and authorities;”

A healthy Christian belief system rich in extra-biblical humility is like a house. The Bible is the rock upon which we build our home. It is where we build our theology, not around it, but upon it. This differs from Roman Catholicism which puts Scripture and tradition on par. We test everything we believe today to make sure it stands upon God’s word.

“(2) under this magisterial norm, the ministerial service of creeds and confessions;”

The creeds and confessions are the foundation from which the house that is evangelical belief, practice, and personal interpretation should rise. Various traditions will hold to their own specific confession, like the Westminster, Savoy, or London, but we should all hold to the early creeds. This is why we need to recite the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds often. Catechisms like the Heidelberg or more modern New City also function as checks for our beliefs. All of these help us stand firm within the circle of orthodox Christian belief.

“(3) contemporary proclamation of God’s Word in the church around the world;”

We now build the structure of our home with the global preaching of pastors and teachers. As a pastor in America, I have a different perspective on God’s word than pastors in Asia, but we should all preach the same good news and essential doctrines. Our explanations of the Trinity, the fall, salvation by God’s grace through faith, the inerrancy of Scripture, substitutionary atonement, and more, although contextualized, should mean the same thing.

“(4) Long-standing interpretations in the tradition;”

Our house rises higher with traditional interpretations of God’s word. Our home is almost built, but not without caring about the past and what it declared to be right belief. Have you just created a brand-new theology that solves everything? Be wary. If you think the Church has really gotten it wrong up to this point, then you could be right, but you could also be undercutting the role of the Holy Spirit as he sustains the ministry and belief of the Church.

“(5) the particular nuances of individual theologians.”

At the top we come to individual theologians. We all have pastors, elders, preachers, theologians, and popular authors we like. It’s often tempting to put their interpretations of God’s Word on par with Scripture, but we should always be careful in doing so. When our favorites preach a biblically true sermon, they too preach authoritatively, but their interpretation should not deviate from the rest of the house, especially the creeds and essentials.

Finally, we come to you, the chimney. Consider that a chimney isn’t just on the roof, it is laid at the ground level and is built through the house. It works with the rest of the house to heat the home and give life to the faith. Your faith won’t align with every corner of the building, but it shouldn't ignore its place or a fire could start in the wrong location. When viewed from the outside, the chimney appears small in comparison to the rest of the house. For many evangelical Christians, we are simply a chimney on a hill, which is more like a fire pit than a home. This brings glory to us and our interpretation instead of glory to God and the Holy Spirit’s work in the Church.

A Rich Heritage to Mature Disciples

The Word of God is sufficient for faith and practice, but God has also given us a rich heritage to guard, protect, and mature us as disciples. Let’s make sure we and our churches understand the importance of what has come before us by reciting creeds in our worship services, teaching catechisms in our children and adult Sunday schools, and explaining orthodoxy from the pulpit. Knowing what’s come before and having extra-biblical humility is a sign of a humble and mature disciple. It’s a sign to those you are discipling that you don’t have all the answer and ultimately points them back to Christ and to the community of faith who looked to Christ before us.

When I arrived at seminary, I didn’t have much extra-biblical humility. I couldn’t have told you much about dogma, doctrine, or theology, but the more I learned about the history of the Church and all it has to offer, the more grateful I became. When I realized I didn’t have to figure out everything anew for myself, it gave me the freedom to enjoy, study, and discover the Bible in a whole new light because I knew I was safeguarded by historic orthodox belief.

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Jonathan M. Romig (M.Div., Gordon-Conwell) is the associate pastor at Immanuel Church in Chelmsford Massachusetts (CCCC). He blogs at PastorRomig.blogspot.com and recently finished teaching New City Catechism to his adult Sunday school class and self-published his first ebook How To Give A Christian Wedding Toast.

^{1. Gary Parrett and J.I. Packer, Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2010), 68-69.↩}

^{2. Michael S. Horton, The Christian Faith: a Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2011), 218.↩}

Take It Back to Jesus

A lot of people are skeptical of Christianity and the the church in general. You’ll often hear statements like, “I don’t believe in organized religion.” How should we respond?

Take It Back To Jesus

Our goal isn’t to convince lost people that church is cool. We are witnesses of the Risen Lord, this is about Jesus. Jesus is the Savior of sinners, not a cool Sunday service.

When people say they don’t like organized religion, ask them their thoughts about Jesus Christ. More pointedly, ask them if their position on organized religion means that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead.

If they think Jesus is dead, why go to church? Who cares? Why be in a huff over organized religion if its founder is a loser?

But, if Jesus is alive—everything changes. Their thoughts about the church and “organized religion” have to be seen in light of the risen Lord. Since Jesus is breathing, everything the Bible says about Jesus’ church has weight to it. It is solid. If Jesus conquered the largest obstacle in our lives—that’d be death—than we need to listen, and seriously consider everything his book says.

• Jesus said he was going to build his church (Matt. 16:18).
• Jesus came for the church (Acts 20:28).
• Jesus picked twelve leaders to start his church.
• Jesus is the head of the church (Eph. 5:23).

Jesus wants a church; if he didn’t, don’t you think he would have told the apostles in Acts to stop organizing and corrupting his vision for Christianity? In Acts they are meeting, structuring themselves, sending out missionaries, appointing leaders, etc. I don’t think Jesus wants a disorganized religion.

Jesus loves the church (Eph. 5:25). You can’t truly follow Jesus and not be a part of his church. It’s backwards. The New Testament doesn’t recognize that as Christianity.

A Rebellious Christian

If they profess to be a Christian and are against the church, then they should be called to obey Jesus, who is the head of the church, which is his body. To have Jesus, the head, is to also have his body, the church.

A professing Christian that is against the church is against Christ. If you are anti-Church, you are acting more like Satan, more like an anti-Christ, than your professed Savior.

The New Testament is clear, Christians are meant to belong to a local church (Heb. 10:24). I’ve met far too many Christians who are too “mature” to obey the Bible and go to church. Sheesh. Repentance is in order.

God Isn’t Against Organization

There is nothing wrong with the words “organized” and “religion.” But put them together and people get goosebumps.

God isn’t against organized religion. The entire Old Testament shows that. And the New Testament affirms the gathering, structuring, and ministry activity of God’s people for the sake of God’s glory and the spread of the gospel. Again, the Bible doesn’t prefer a disorganized religion, “But all things should be done decently and in order” (1 Cor. 14:40).

So, the bigger reality is not what we think about “organized religion,” frankly, it doesn’t matter; the greater question is what does God think?

God is pro-organization. I’ll just give two pieces of evidence. Exhibit A: the Bible. And exhibit B: the universe.

What Do They Mean By “Organized Religion”?

When discussing or debating a word or phrase, define it. Ask what they mean by “organized religion”—it takes the conversation from the clouds to the ground. And then you can get going somewhere.

What they probably mean by “organized religion” is that they don’t want to be a part of some system that doesn’t care about them, doesn’t help them, just wants their money, etc. And I’d agree. That sucks. And frankly, that’s how Satan would run a “church”—which is not a church.

So, yeah, I’m against that kind of organized religion too—we all should be.

But the New Testament gives a different vision for the church—the main metaphor used is that of a family.

No one is against a family—or organized families.

We are brothers and sisters in Christ. God is our Father and Jesus is our big brother. We are adopted into God’s family (Rom. 8:15). We aren’t a perfect family. But we are family. There is real love, joy, and harmony to be had among the family God, the body of Christ, the local church.

We ought to acknowledge—and repudiate—the yuck of abusive, manipulative, serpent-like “organized religion,” and put forward the compelling vision of the family of God.

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42–47).

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J.A. Medders is the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Church in Tomball, TX. He and Natalie have two kids, Ivy and Oliver. Jeff digs caffeinated drinks, books, and the Triune God. He blogs at www.jamedders.com and tweets from @mrmedders. Jeff’s first book, Gospel-Formed: Living a Grace-Addicted, Truth-Filled, Jesus-Exalting Life, is set to release this November from Kregel.

Originally published on JAMedders.com “How to Handle the ‘I Hate Organized Religion’ Talk.” Used with permission.

Adopting a Missional Posture

Mission is why we exist as disciples. God’s love inspires us to be missionaries to the world around us. Emil Brunner says, “The church exists by mission just as fire exists by burning.” Mission begins at home, serving in our local church, and reaching our community. As disciples, we have been sent as missionaries to share the gospel in our present culture and to fulfill the Great Commission. The church is rooted in the concept of the missio Dei, which recognizes that there is one mission, and it’s God’s mission. The missio Dei is a Latin theological term that can be translated as mission of God. The word missio literally means sent. The church is not an end in itself; the church is sent into the world to fulfill the mission of God.

God is a Missionary

Understanding what it means to be a part of the mission of God begins with understanding that God is a missionary God. The very being of God is the basis for the missionary enterprise. God is a sending God, with a desire to see humankind and creation reconciled, redeemed, and healed. God’s mission can be seen throughout the pages of the Bible and history. Nowhere is the mission of God better understood than in the person and work of Jesus Christ. John 3:16 tells us, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Many Christians and churches teach and preach that missions are something we support or do, such as sending or supporting missionaries in other countries. This was the case twenty to thirty years ago. However, in the twenty first century the mission field has come to us.

We live in a post-Christian world where people simply don’t know the gospel anymore. Therefore, we are all called to be missional disciples and share in the mission of God. Ed Stetzer says, “Being Missional means actually doing mission right where you are. Missional means adopting the posture of a missionary, learning and adapting to the culture around you while remaining biblically sound.”

Jesus: The First Missionary

Being a missional disciple is simply following the way of Jesus. Jesus Christ was the first and greatest missionary. The Bible tells us that he came from heaven to earth to die for a lost and dying world. The following scriptures reveal how the mission of God was fulfilled through Jesus Christ and how we are called to continue and complete the missio Dei in our culture.

• “Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work’” (Jn. 4:34).
• “I can do nothing on my own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (Jn. 5:30).
• “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (Jn. 6:38).
• “I know him; because I am from him, and he sent me.” (Jn. 7:29).
• “And he who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him” (Jn 8:29).
• “We must work the works of him who sent me, as long as it is day; night is coming, when no man can work.” (Jn 9:4).
• “And Jesus cried out and said, ‘He who believes in me does not believe in me, but in him who sent me. And he who beholds me beholds the one who sent me’” (Jn 12:44-45).
• “For I did not speak on my own initiative, but the Father himself who sent Me has given Me commandment, what to say, and what to speak” (Jn 12:49).
• “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives whomever I send receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me” (Jn 13:20).
• “And this is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (Jn 17:3).
• “For the words which thou gave me I have given to them; and they received them, and truly understood that I came forth from thee, and they believed that thou didst send me” (Jn 17:8).
• “As thou didst send me into the world, I also have sent them into the world” (Jn 17:18).
• “Jesus therefore said to them again, ‘Peace be with you; as the Father has sent me, I also send you’” (Jn 20:21).

Sent on a Mission

As the Father sent Jesus, he also sends us into our time and culture. Mark Driscoll says, “It is imperative that Christians be like Jesus, by living freely within the culture as missionaries who are as faithful to the Father and his gospel as Jesus was in his own time and place.”

We have been chosen by God to live in this time and place in order to fulfill the mission of God. Acts 17: 26-27 tells us that God has determined the exact place and time where we should live so that that men may find him. It is truly awesome to realize that you have chosen by God to be his representative to this world. It is both a great privilege and great responsibility.

Paul describes our calling in the following way, “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20).

Being missional is God’s way of showing the love of his Son Jesus through his church. Christians must strive to always be like Jesus, our perfect example. Jesus said, “The Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45). This scripture beautifully embodies the task of Christian ministry. To be a disciple is to be a servant. We are to serve and give our lives for others. Serving is the example that Jesus gave; therefore, we should follow it.

As the church we are called to care for a lost and dying world that is in desperate need of a Savior. Too many times we compartmentalize the different ministries of the church. We have viewed social ministry as something we do on one hand and evangelism on the other. God is calling the church to rediscover the biblical model of holistic ministry.

Jesus met both the physical and spiritual needs of the people he ministered to. As the Body of Christ on earth, we are his representatives to a lost world. Therefore, what we do and say are of eternal importance. Being missional disciples is not an either or situation. It means that we care about people’s souls and their bodies. It means that because we care about the gospel we should care about social and environmental issues. Being missional disciples brings all of life together under the banner of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Dr. Winfield Bevins is the Director of Asbury Seminary’s Church Planting Initiative. He frequently speaks at conferences and retreats on a variety of topics.  He has a doctorate from Southeastern Seminary. He has written several books, including Our Common Prayer: A Field Guide to the Book of Common Prayer. As an author, one of his passions is to help contemporary Christians connect to the historic roots of the Christian faith for spiritual formation. He and his wife Kay, have three girls Elizabeth, Anna Belle, and Caroline. Find out more at www.winfieldbevins.com.