Who Comes Up with Church Sign Sayings?!

I see some crazy church signs from time to time – some actually make me laugh out loud. Others get me to roll my eyes while others make me question the motives of the church. Yet, somehow in the South, we think church signs are effective - as if someone in a distant time saw one and said, “Gee, that’s really enlightening! That makes me want to go to church here on Sunday!” It just doesn’t happen.

I saw one last week that caught my attention. With great confidence, the sign read, “GOD QUALIFIES THE CALLED.” I assume it had something to do with Sarah Palin, since her VP nomination occured a few days before and, though churches are supposed to be like Switzerland where politics are concerned, they’re not. Political innuendo aside, the statement did intrigue me, though. The inference here is that if a person is called to ministry or some divine moment of destiny, God will qualify them with the knowledge and wisdom to do the job. My charismatic lineage has had a field day with this type of thinking and, because of it, we’ve done a great job of delivering some fo the most uninformed and under-researched sermons of all time. Heck, I’ve delivered a few of those myself.

But I really don’t believe that sign anymore. People often accept the calling in ministry but rarely do the due dilligence to become good at it. That tells me something. That person never fully accepted the call to begin with. There was no follow-through to become qualified, in a sense. I’m not saying you have to stay in school for an extra decade. But the weight of responsibility for ministering to people should at least drive us to think, study, pray, research, read, dialogue, and work our tails off to deliver the best and fullest understanding of God that we can to our congregations. Now, credentials aren’t that important to me. They don’t define me in any way. I’m just a guy who loves Jesus and loves his family. But whether your credentials include letters behind your name or not, you still have to have answers for people who fall apart in your office unexpectedly. “God knows,” “God works in mysterious ways,” ”Where God shuts a door he opens a window,” and “Just believe in faith” never really answer anyone’s questions. Bumping up against the big questions of life over and over, but never actually providing explanations to those questions only frustrates people. “I don’t know” is okay sometimes, but not everytime. Part of being qualified is being willing to wrestle with those questions and provide relevant and accurate answers for people in need. And that takes a lot of willpower.

So, to me, God may call someone, but it’s a personal decision to become qualified. It’s that old John Wesley concept of “responsible grace.” We’ve received the grace…now what are we going to do with it? God may call the qualified, but in the many cases when he merely calls the available, we must qualify ourselves. That takes time, effort, and money. But if the call is real, it deserves a focused response.

God is…

What is God like? Can anyone really know? If you pick two random people off the street and ask them to describe God, you’ll get some significant variations on the topic. Here’s a thought: if God is love (1 John 4:8), then if there’s a place in the Bible that describes love, it may be worth our time to look at it. For me, 1 Corinthians 13 immediately comes to mind. If you were raised in the church like I was, this chapter was used in two specific ways: to describe what Christian marriage should look like and to guilt the rest of us into behaving like we love each other. And yes, the context of the passage deals with treatment of others in church settings (chapters 12 and 14). But what if there’s more to it than that? What if that chapter describes the nature of God for us? What if we substitute “God” for “love?” It would read like this:

God is patient

God is kind

God does not envy

God does not boast

God is not proud

God does not dishonor others

God is not self-seeking

God is not easily angered

God keeps no record of wrongs

God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth

God always protects

God always trusts

God always hopes

God always perseveres.

 

What is God like? He looks like that. All other understandings of divine attributes are housed within this larger context of his goodness and love. God is holy. He’s holy love. And how does holy love act? At a level of sacrifice that human love can never reach. God is sovereign. He’s sovereign love. What does sovereign love do? It lays its life down in a way that’s unconquerable and undefeated. God is everlasting. He’s everlasting love. How long does it last? It’s love that never stops its relentless pursuit of seeking its beloved.

Now that’s a God I can give my life to.

Critical People Are Not Credible People

I am so sick of critics.

Between political opinions and religious self-appointed doctrine police, I’ve heard more negativity in the last few months than I can remember. Though I like WordPress, I can’t get over the amount of negative blogs they feature on their front page – as if denigrating and slandering others is meritorious. Our society has conjoined the concepts of criticism and credibility at the hip. We’re not legitimate until we disagree with a Palin or an Obama or a Bentley or a Boltz. To find nothing wrong with someone or something has become a sign of ignorance or presumption. And because of that, we just may be the most opinionated society in the history of humankind. And we’re under the delusion that our opinions are worth something. But really we’re just taking the Western cultural paradigm to the extreme. Being critical does not make you credible. Before you write this post off as someone being critical of critics, let me explain where our “culture of suspicion” originated…

Everyone knows about the Enlightenment and the rise of rationalism as the guiding hermeneutic (to use a theological term) for secularism. Descartes introduced a new paradigm for Western society – one where evidence must be presented for a hypothesis to stand. Leibniz and Spinoza followed behind applying Descartes’ ideas to social and political theory. Empiricists like Hume, though disagreeing with the rationalists on many points, carried their negativity to the extreme in areas of anthropology and religion. Now, Cartesian methodology is fine as a foundation for the scientific method (though some may feel that’s gone too far as well – go read Appleyard’s Understanding the Present to balance what you find in most conventional histories of science), but this Enlightenment ”method of suspicion” guides our approach to everything from politics to religion to media to relationships. After all, where there’s smoke there’s always fire, right? This Enlightenment based approach has also affected our understanding of scripture, specifically in the area of demythologizing the gospels to make them more “accessible” to the modern mind.

As Americans, we are constantly steered toward this critical paradigm. I like what social historian Keith Thomas said about it in regards to our understanding of the supernatural: “Most of those millions of persons who would laugh at the idea of magic and miracles would have trouble explaining why.  They are victims of society’s constant pressure towards intellectual conformity” (emphasis mine). And it’s a more widespread epidemic than just the belief in miracles. At the core of this issue is our inability to trust. Cartesian method quickly moved out of the laboratory and now influences dinner table conversations, news and political opinion, and has decimated our ability to treat people with honor and respect. We feel we need “evidence” to trust anyone. And that’s a very sad thing. That approach to life also eradicates faith – the belief in something beyond our explanation or full understanding. Rather than believing the best about another until proven wrong, we chose to expect the worst, while waiting for the slight chance that someone might actually do the right thing. We value the 10% bad and discard the 90% good about each other.

Here’s the funny thing about all of this: people who adopt this critical approach to life assume that they stand on the bedrock of human understanding. Most humanists I know feel this way. And who knows, maybe they have arrived at the pinnacle of intelligence. But really, the Western Enlightenment paradigm is only about three hundred years old. Rationalist thought didn’t fully permeate Western thought until about 250 years ago. And there were hundreds of paradigms that came before us. Presently. most other world cultures see our modernist suspicion as faddish and a sign of immaturity. After all, people saw things differently before the 1700s. And we now have the corner market on comprehension after 250 years? Is it possible we think too much of ourselves?

The Bible says we should believe the best about each other. That’s hard to do as we attempt to control others by labelling and distorting information to confirm our suspicion of others. I believe that’s called making a mountain out of a molehill. That type of criticism is only a reflection of deeper negativity inside the critic. Critics are unhappy people. Chances are good that a critic spends as much time in personal negative self-talk as they do talking about someone else. The truth is: we’re all okay. Not perfect. But most people have good intentions when not backed into a corner. We can choose not to believe that and let the “hermeneutics of suspicion” guide us. But if we do, we’ll be so busy criticizing the mistakes of others that we’ll miss thousands of chances to witness the good intentions of those around us. And that’s something I personally don’t want to miss.

Asking Myself Strange (Theological) Questions, Part 2

So, now that I’ve explained a few of my more recent strange questions, I’ll give you my most recent theological question that I’ve been asking myself. This question has been haunting me for about two or three weeks now. If you’ve read some of my other posts, you’ll notice I’m really interested in the razor thin line between God’s sovereignty and his willingness to be vulnerable for the sake of love. That’s doesn’t mean God’s not omnipotent – it just means that part of being all-powerful is having the ability to limit that power for the sake of relationship. We leverage our power with our friends and children everyday. Wise use of power includes it’s control.

The question is: “Does God the Father live in a state of leveraged power (humiliation) for the sake of humanity?” Now, for all you theologians out there, notice I didn’t say God the Son. The Bible is pretty clear that through the incarnation and the ascension, Christ now remains in a state of permanent humiliation. Part of humanity’s rescue was to include humanity into the divine life of God. At its basic level, that means that in Jesus, a human, now resides within the fellowship of the Trinity. Jesus, by “emptying himself of his privileges,” lives in a humiliated state of confinement that he previously did not know before the incarnation. And yes, God has now highly exalted him…but it’s within a resurrected human body that Jesus returned to the Father. So when the Son was sent, in a way he was permanently sent – it altered him forever. Jesus represents that divine limitation right now as he intercedes for us.

Okay, but that wasn’t the question was it?  I said God the Father exists in a state of leveraged power for our sakes. How is that? Well, we can agree that God is all-powerful and capable of deciding how humans enter into relationship with him. But the Father (with the Son) chose the incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection as the universal paradigm from which all humans would understand the Father’s good nature. He chose a single method of revelation and is confined to that chosen revelation: the revelation of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the Father is only fully understood by limiting himself to what we understand about Jesus. Otherwise, we don’t fully grasp him. In essence the Father said, “the only way to see me is to see the Son.” That’s why Jesus said “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” It also gives new depth Jesus’s words: ”No one comes to the Father but through me.” Jesus became the point of entry by which we not only understand the Son, but also the Father. The Father chose this self-limitation for the derived benefit of helping us fully understand his goodness. So, the Father is limited to conveying his goodness through the revelation of the Son. In other words, the Father is dependent upon the Son to speak of his glory. That’s means the Father also entered into a state of humiliation with Jesus for the sake of love.

Any thoughts?

Asking Myself Strange Questions, Part 1

I think about some weird stuff sometimes. I’m not talking about questions like “why is the sky blue?” or “what’s my purpose in life?” I’m talking about questions for which others might lock me up in an asylum. Yet, I feel these questions have some validity, so I though I’d share a few with you, just so you could see how strange I truly am…

I’ve heard stories from my paramedic friends that often times when a car accident occurs, the radio or CD player in a car will keep working, no matter how bad the car is smashed up. This includes fatal accidents. That intrigued me and, as a big music fan, I began to asked myself “If the music in your car keeps going, what albums would I like to be playing if I was in an accident?” Of course it has to be an album that you would like to listen to the last few moments of your life or one you would enjoy hearing while you’re upside down in your car waiting for an ambulance to arrive. It might also be somewhat of an ego booster for an emergency response team to say “Nice album!” as they rescue you. That may be a crazy question to ask, but wouldn’t you rather be listening to an album you really like as you wait for help to arrive? I don’t ask this question every time I’m in the car, but I have begun to separate my music collection in my car based on these parameters. The other day as our family was driving somewhere, I actually said out loud, ”Ah, this is a great ‘accident album!’” When I explained my comment, Beth looked at me like I was a crazy person.

Occasionally, my strange questions don’t work out like I think they will, and I just end up feeling stupid. For example, take one of my more recent questions: “Where is the best place to purchase a ‘night light’ for my children?” After much thought I had determined that it was best to purchase night lights with automatic sensors at Wal-mart since they are open twenty-four hours. Their store lights are on all the time, so the night light would never have been used up like it would in stores that turn their lights out. There’s only one problem with my genius observation: night lights in stores are not plugged in. So, they never turn on, whether the store turns its lights out or not. Stupid, huh? Sadly, that question occupied my thoughts for about three days.

I’ll share a theological question that’s been plaguing my OCD brain next post.

Reading and Listening…

Quick update on what I’ve been reading and listening to over the past two months…

I’ve been into choral music for a while, specifically Morten Lauridsen and Arvo Part:

Morten Lauridsen, Lux Aeterna

Arvo Part, Miserere

I’ve also come across some older rock bands that have reformed and put out some really good albums.

Europe, Secret Society. This album is surprisingly good – great melodies, solid musicianship, good production. Great straight-ahead rock album. Don’t laugh – go listen.

Extreme, Saudades de Rock. This doesn’t have quite the production of their earlier big studio albums. But it’s still really great to listen to. In the past, I would’ve described Extreme as a rock band with blues influence. This album seems to be the other way around: a rock-tinged blues album. Of course, the thing that stands out the most is Nuno Bettencourt’s impeccable (and possibly unpickable) guitar solos.

I’ve been reading some theology, but also working in some practical pastor and team bulding books.

Walter Brueggemann, The Covenanted Self

Terence Fretheim, 1 and 2 Kings (Westminster Bible companion Series)

C. Baxter Kruger, God Is for Us, The Great Dance, and Jesus and the Undoing of Adam

Oliver, Hasz, and Richburg, Promoting Change through Brief Therapy in Christian Counseling

Aubrey Malphurs, Leading Leaders

Bonem and Patterson, Leading form Second Chair

I really enjoyed the brief therapy book – since all pastoral counseling becomes brief counseling. You’re doing good if you get anyone to listen to you for six weeks. The second chair book is excellent for anyone in a associate or supporting ministerial role. Every “second chair” leader should read this book. Though all the Baxter Kruger books were good reads, Jesus and the Undoing of Adam was superb. Great theology covering everything from the inner workings of the Trinity to the incarnation and death of Jesus. It’s only seventy pages, but not a word is wasted.

How’s That New Job Going?

I have a very busy week in front of me. I’m one of those guys that gets a little nervous looking at what has to be done in a certain amount of time. It freaks me out. I somehow get everything done, but can never seem to remember that as I head into another busy week. This week is one of those.

I went and visited a children’s ministry in Crestview, FL two weekends ago. We are planning on restructuring our children’s ministry extensively. Of course, that’s gonna take some time, but I’m gathering ideas and input from people along the way – no need to reinvent the wheel, you know. This whole restructuring thing falls under my job title: Director of Discipleship and Family  Ministries. While visiting the church, my wife briefly spoke with the lead pastor there and they discussed why we were down in Crestview. The lead pastor said, “So Sam must be the children’s pastor?” Beth said, “No, he’s the Family and Discipleship Pastor.” “So what are his responsibilities?” the lead pastor asked. ”He is over areas of discipleship like small groups, member assimilation, and jointly responsible for broader areas like adult spiritual formation. And he’s also over children’s ministries and family enrichment. So he’s involved in everything from the nursery to marriage retreats,” Beth explained. “Wow -that’s alot. It must be a smaller church then.” the pastor said. Beth replied, “No, it’s 1200 members.” The lead pastor said, “What!!” and started laughing, probably questioning my sanity all the while.

So, I’ve come to understand the phrase “broad job description” in a new way. Luckily, I would rather be busy than not. And changes that are made at Thomasville First Methodist takes months to implement – some take years. Though I’d like for the church to turn like a speed boat, it’s more like turning the Titanic. I was laughing with the nursery director today that though I try to be systematic and focused, working at a church is more like floating in a lake surrounded by objects. The objects that run into you the hardest usually get the most attention. Most of my day is spent bouncing into issues and obstacles. And sometimes the larger goals can get lost. But it’s still true that an elephant can only be eaten one bite at a time. So that’s what I’m doing: one big bite a week.

The youth director gave me some advice my second week there. He said, “Make sure you do your research and when you implement or restructure something, do it well from the beginning. You don’t have to do everything tomorrow, but when you do it, make sure you do it right.” Good advice.

Small Frame Syndrome: A Genetic Disorder Affecting Millions…

My wife told me that my blog has been a little too “heavy” on the theology side recently and that I needed to lighten up a bit. Okay…point taken.

I am a slender person. Always have been. People have hated me for my metabolism in the past. But now things are changing. With the onset of the early thirties, I can now no longer eat whatever I want. I started counting calories a few weeks back for this reason. I’ve also been running for about six months now – just a mile or two, three times a week. Still, the calorie counting and the exercise does nothing to combat the slowly developing “tire” around my waist. It’s just a few pounds, but on me, it shows.

In light of this, I recently diagnosed myself with a brand new disease, though I believe many others share it with me. I hear they’ll be posting it on WebMD any day now. I call it “Small Frame Syndrome,” though I usually abbreviate it SFS because everyone knows official diseases must be abbreviated to be important. SFS affects millions of slender folk. There are a lot of people who can carry an extra 20 pounds without anyone noticing. These people have larger body frames. Heck, some of them could have a small child running in circles on the inside of them and no one would notice! These people believe they have indeed lost the genetic lottery. But listen to the complaints of a man with SFS for a minute.

A person with SFS immediately feels their weight gain in their clothes and in their face. People walk up to you, afflicted with SFS, and ask, “Have you gained weight?” like you are the poster child for starvation or something. You say, “Yeah I have gained a little.” The well-meaning observer shoots back, “Looks good on ya!” You say, “Thanks!” while secretly looking for the closest fork so you can stick it in their eye. The problem is that the weight gained that shifts your frame so drastically for all observers to see is a measly four pounds. That’s right: four stinkin’ pounds. Sadly enough, people with SFS have to maintain their weight within five pounds of their average in high school or the comments about beer guts and double chins come out of the woodwork!

You may be saying to yourself, “Whaaa, whaaa, someone call the whambulance!” And maybe I am complaining about something trivial. But make no mistake, SFS is a nerve-wracking condition affecting millions of people…yet, there still remains no support group started by a random guy named Bill or a particular psychotropic drug for this debilitating condition and the social scrutiny that accompanies it. Pray for those with SFS that they will be strong in the face of adversity and will take well-meaning compliments at face value.

Christ, our “Substitute”?

Those who have been following this blog for a while have probably read some of my posts on “Views of the Cross, Parts I and II,” “Does Reformed Theology Restrict God More than Process Theology?” and “Does God ‘Need’ Jesus to Forgive?” I state in several different places that I believe the cross can be substitutionary without requiring penal substitution. In other words, atonement can occur without retributive action by the Father towards the Son. I’ve said all along that I believe this is a Trinity problem, not a cross problem: once the Trinity is fully understood, it’s pretty easy to recognize that Jesus is not a “sacrifice” to God. Jesus is God – Something Protestants have historically had trouble understanding. Therefore, God (represented in Jesus) died on the cross so that we could have life. That exchange of death for life is what the Bible is speaking of when it mentions substitution.

I came across a post tonight by Baxter Kruger called “The Wonderful Exchange” that does a great job of explaining this concept. So, rather than write my own, I thought I would just post his:

 

 

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich” (2Corinthians 8:9).

This short verse from the apostle Paul takes us out a merely forensic or legal view of Jesus’ coming and gives us a much richer and far more profound vision. Here, as throughout the early Church, the coming of Jesus is not merely about the taking away of our sin, but about the staggering life that he brings to us, the very life that he himself enjoys with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Cleansing is certainly critical, but the taking away of our sin is unto a greater purpose, the sharing of his life. Jesus is, as the Baptist said, “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And he is also the one “who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.” The saving work of Jesus, in the New Testament’s vision, always involves both dimensions. As John McLeod Campbell argued, there is both a retrospective and a prospective dimension to salvation in Christ. There is the removal, the cleansing, the taking away of sin, and there is the giving or sharing of life.

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons”(Galatians 4:4). 

In the West we have been so thoroughly preoccupied with the retrospective dimension of Christ’s work (redeeming us from the law, taking away our sin, justification) that we have almost forgotten the prospective dimension (baptism in the Spirit, adoption, union, the sharing of life). Hence there are thousands of books on justification and only a handful on adoption, even though our adoption stands as the driving reason, indeed as the eternal reason, for Jesus’ coming (See Ephesians 1:5).

My point is not to denigrate the work of our Lord in taking away our sin—such a work is fundamental—but to bring us back to the early Church’s vision that Jesus both takes away our sin and shares himself and his own life with us. The great early Church father, St. Irenaeus, put it this way, “our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself” (Against Heresies, V, preface).

Note John Calvin here as well:

This is the wonderful exchange (mirifica commutatio) which, out of his measureless benevolence, he has made with us; that, becoming Son of man with us, he has made us sons of God with him; that, by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us; that, by taking on our mortality, he has conferred his immortality upon us; that, accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power; that, receiving our poverty unto himself, he has transferred his wealth to us; that, taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself (which oppressed us), he has clothed us with his righteousness (Institutes, IV.17.2). 

And James B. Torrance:

The prime purpose of the incarnation, in the love of God, is to lift us up into a life of communion, of participation in the very triune life of God (Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace, p. 21). 

In Paul and Irenaeus from the early Church, Calvin and Torrance from more modern times, we see that salvation in Christ is about a wonderful exchange involving not merely legal standing, but life itself. For Paul, the One who was rich before all worlds became poor in order to take away our poverty and give us his own wealth. For Irenaeus, the Son of God became what we are to bring us to be what he is in himself. For Calvin, the Son of God became one with us to make us sons and daughters with himself, and to share with us his own immortality, strength, wealth and righteousness. For Torrance, the Father’s Son became incarnate to give us a share in the very triune life of God.

For all four, not to mention the apostle John, Karl Barth and many others, the incarnation was not a mere prerequisite for a spotless sacrifice on the cross, but the way of union between all that God is as Father, Son and Spirit, and all that we are in broken human existence. Without the cross and Christ’s death on it there could be no such union, and talk of the incarnation would be a farce, but the death of Christ serves the larger purpose of the wonderful exchange of Christ taking all that is ours and giving us a real share in all that is his.

In a variation on Paul’s great statement, “For you know the stunning grace of the Father’s Son that though he was rich in the shared life of the blessed Trinity, yet for our sake he became poor, suffering our wrath to meet us, and now through his suffering we who were so poor have been included in Jesus’ own rich relationship with his Father and Spirit.”

As Professor Torrance insisted, the Christian life is about participation, about our personal participation or sharing in the very life of Jesus himself, and thus in his life and relationship with his Father, and in his relationship with the Holy Spirit, and indeed in his relationship with all creation.

May the Holy Spirit quicken us with hope that such a vision could be true, and may the Spirit of adoption give us the faith that yearns to know and experience Christ’s life within us, until the life of the blessed Trinity—shared with us all in Jesus—comes to full and abiding and personal expression in all the earth.

What a Great Worship Song!

Sorry I haven’t been around to return comments and such for the last few days. You’ll understand when I say that I was here:

If you’ve read this post, you know I have a precarious relationship with worship music. I can’t exactly tell you why some songs get my attention and others don’t. But I’ve played one worship song several times a day for the past three weeks: “Only True God.” You can hear a little bit of it here and here. It’s by Paul Baloche and Kathryn Scott of Vineyard fame. Here are the lyrics:

Beyond us, God within us
Revealed, yet we see in part
Transcendent, but so near us
The mystery dwelling within our hearts

Father, Spirit, Son, only true God
Exalted three in one, only true God
Only true God

Majestic, God above us
Enthroned, yet You wash our feet
Humble, but so holy
All of creation bows when You speak

Father, Spirit, Son, only true God
Exalted three in one, only true God

God of all things, God Who saves us
God within us, You are God
God of all things, God Who saves us
God within us, You are God

Normally I don’t go for the whole “declare your doctrine” through praise music trend (I’ll be happy when Matt Redman and company move past it). But somehow this song does that and still finds way to make it personal. I don’t know – maybe it’s the 3/4 time feel or Kathryn’s voice or the intimate images that balance power and humility. But I totally love this song.  LOVE IT, PEOPLE! Maybe you can tell me why.

More than ever before, Christians are beginning to understand that it’s the interaction between the members of the Trinity that really demonstrates and displays the true nature of God – dare I say his playfulness. That’s why Paul Young’s “The Shack” is so popular – it gives a glimpse of that interaction which sharpens all Three. For me, this song really captures this. It feels like it was written by someone about their close friend – someone whose complexity they find difficult to describe, yet familiar all at the same time. That’s what Paul and Kathryn were doing. They were describing their friend when they wrote this song.