Category Archives: Church and ministry

Meditation: on barbering churches

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“A haircut is defined by its edges. That’s what I was taught, that’s what I believe, that’s what I teach.” So declared my barber the other day, going on to talk about how if the edges are ragged or uneven, that’s what catches people’s eyes; and since he’s outstanding at what he does, and since what he said sounds perfectly reasonable to me, I believe him. He got me thinking, though: of what else could we say that? And specifically, is the church defined by its edges?

Of course, there are a lot of churches which quite deliberately define themselves by their edges, taking the “bounded set” approach to membership and identity: everyone who believes these twelve things is welcome, and anyone who doesn’t, isn’t. Keep the edges nice and neat, a sharp line between us and them, that’s the idea. It’s almost a way of defining the church by appearance. But what about churches which don’t take that approach? Are they, too, in some way defined by their edges?

I incline to think so, for a couple different reasons. Most obviously, there are those which quite deliberately and self-consciously invert that paradigm; they would tell you they don’t define themselves by their edges, but in fact, they do. It’s simply that, rather than taking pride in their nice neat edge, they take pride in having a ragged one—it’s their chosen mark of “authenticity.” “We’re open to x kind of people—we’re Christ-followers, we accept everybody just like Jesus did,” and so on. Certainly, sharing the desire of Jesus and Paul that the gospel should be preached to all people, regardless of any other considerations, is a good and noble thing; but focusing on the ragged edge for its own sake is unhealthy. For one thing, it can make us disinclined to challenge people to repent and pursue God’s holiness; some people won’t find that “accepting,” and they’ll leave. (Others, meanwhile, will answer the call, and grow in holiness, and as a consequence will no longer look different enough to remind everyone how accepting we are.) We need to remember that our purpose is to preach the gospel and make disciples of Jesus Christ, and that we can’t subordinate those tasks to any other goal, however noble.

For another, a focus on the ragged edge can all too easily become a fetish, and an opening for spiritual pride and self-delusion—the delusion, if nothing else, that we actually are accepting of all people, when actually we’re simply accepting one particular group of people who aren’t accepted elsewhere. That’s a noble thing in its own right, but it’s not the same as building a church where all people are truly welcome; for one thing, it’s much easier. Building a church to fit one “out” group really isn’t all that hard, as these things go; building a church in which the goal is that anyone who comes will be welcome is extraordinarily difficult (in fact, it’s impossible by human effort), because it means accepting people who don’t accept each other, and teaching them to get past that and accept each other as well.

Even leaving aside intentional self-definition, however, I do think that in part, the church will always be defined by its edges whether it wants to be or not. Most basically, the edges are where the church interacts with the world around it; thus, whether a church sees itself as a bounded set (defined by its boundaries, and thus by whom it chooses to admit or shut out) or a centered set (defined by its collective focus, on which its existence is centered), whichever of those two models it uses to define itself, the world is always going to be looking at the edges, and drawing its conclusions from them. Do we maintain a nice neat edge by only welcoming people who are just like us, or do we make room for people who stick out? (And if we do, do we allow them to continue to stick out, or do we set to work changing them?) Granted the difficulty of truly accepting people who “don’t fit,” do we try? Are we willing to pay the price to minister to people who are “extra grace required”?

It seems to me that if the church is being the church, we should expect some ragged edges. (This is the truth that gets exaggerated in churches that take pride in them.) After all, the only way to prevent that is to focus on the edges ourselves, and that’s not what we’re called to do; the church should be not appearance-driven but (to quote Jared Wilson) gospel-driven. As Jesus defines us, we are a people on the way, his disciples traveling together down the road through life, “following Christ in mission in a lost and broken world so loved by God” (to quote my denomination’s mission statement). This is why my own mental image of the church is rather like a comet: there are those who are farther along and more mature in their faith, leading the way for the church, and then others who haven’t come as far yet, and then the trailing edge is rather ragged indeed; but the key is that we’re all traveling the same direction, and that those who join us aren’t left to trail along behind, but instead are nurtured and discipled and mentored until they too are mature and strong in their faith and ready to do the same for others.

In a way, then, pastoring is a matter of barbering churches, but with a bit of a different emphasis than most people would probably expect. Being a pastor isn’t a matter of keeping the ragged edges trimmed; rather, we have to be careful to allow them, lest we end up trying to shut people out of the kingdom of God—and we need to make sure that the church as a whole understands this as well. At the same time, though, we need to make sure people aren’t left hanging around on the ragged edge, as if that was good enough; we need to bring them toward the center, toward the focus: toward Jesus. The movement of the church, and of everyone in it, must always be toward Jesus.

What shall we do with a Christless preacher?

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(If you know the sea chantey, feel free.)

Over at Gospel-Driven Church, Jared has been writing a fair bit about the problem of Christ-free, counterfeit-gospel preaching in the American church, which he’s quite correctly dubbed “the new legalism.” He’s not the only one, of course; another redoubtable voice on the subject has been that of Michael Spencer, the iMonk. Recently, though, someone asked the iMonk, “What do we, in the pew, do about this?” (scroll down near the end of the comments)—an important question, but not one I’d seen raised; so Jared set out to answer it. IMHO, he did his usual excellent job, and I commend the post to your reading.

The one thing I would add, from a preacher’s perspective, is to reinforce something Jared says: if your pastor isn’t preaching the gospel, talk to them about it if there’s any way you can—and specifically, do three key things. One, find whatever gospel elements you can in their preaching, tell them you appreciate that, and tell them why. Give them whatever positive feedback you can that will draw them in the direction of preaching Christ. Two, tell them you’d like to hear more of that (in positive terms, though I wouldn’t advise going so far as flattery), and ask them to try to preach more of the gospel, more about Jesus and his life and work, and to put Christ more at the center of their preaching. If you know others who think and feel the same way, tell them so—and use names. (One thing preachers in most churches learn quickly, if they’re going to survive, is to give anonymous complaints/suggestions very little weight.)

I say this for two reasons. First, while there are no doubt preachers who don’t feel the need, most of us are always trying to evaluate our preaching to see if we’re improving, how the congregation is responding, if our sermons are actually influencing anyone—if our preaching is “working,” whatever we might understand that to mean—but that’s very hard to do without clear, specific, intelligent feedback; and in most churches, that kind of feedback is hard to come by. For most preachers, if you present that kind of feedback in an encouraging, affirming, appreciative way, you will receive a positive response; and while that might not result in any real change in their preaching, then again, it might. (If it does, of course, follow that up with expressions of gratitude and further encouragement.)

Second, most of us preachers are, at some level, utilitarian in our view of our preaching. That’s not to say we’ll do anything if it works (though some will, to be sure), only that there aren’t many of us who will keep on doing something that clearly doesn’t. In some ways, that’s unfortunate, because in churches that are resisting the gospel message, what needs to be done is to keep preaching the gospel whether it’s “working” or not; but in another way, it’s not only proper but necessary. After all, if our preaching isn’t bearing any fruit, then clearly, we need to change something. The only real problem here is making sure that we have the right definition of “fruit.”

All of which is to say, whatever your preacher is preaching, it’s a reasonable bet that they’re doing it because they’ve been told that’s what works, and unless your congregation is small and shrinking, their experience has probably convinced them it works. Realistically, you’re not likely to get your preacher to change unless you can get them to believe that gospel-centered, Bible-rooted preaching will also “work”; and the best way to make that happen is to help them see that people in the congregation are hungry for it.

There’s a third key thing you need to do as well if your preacher does begin to change: support them through the backlash. Assuming attendance is healthy in your church, it’s likely that many (if not most) of the folks there like the preaching just fine and don’t have the same problems with it that you do; of those folks, there will almost certainly be some who will strongly resent the changes, and they’ll let the preacher have it with both barrels. At this point, three main scenarios present themselves:

—the preacher gives in and the church reverts to its previous normal;

—the preacher leaves and the church reverts to its previous normal; or

—the preacher digs in and there’s a conflict of some sort.

Given the tendency among most preachers to conflict avoidance, the third scenario is the least likely unless they have your strong, vocal support, and the strong, vocal support of everyone who appreciates the new direction in their preaching. What’s more, if you’ve been involved in urging them to change, and they’ve changed as a result, you have a moral responsibility to support them as they deal with the consequences of that change.

Martin Luther King Jr.: yad vashem

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Forty years ago this evening, at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, America lost one of her great-souled sons when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down by an assassin. The memorial at the hotel appositely cites Genesis, from the story of Joseph:

They said one to another, “Behold, here cometh the Dreamer. Let us slay him and we shall see what will become of his dreams.”—Genesis 37:19-20 (KJV)

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Rev. Dr. King’s death is that so much of his dream died with him. Too much of the church, too many of his brothers and sisters in Christ, have set aside his call, which is the call of Christ, that we are to be one in our Lord across all our divisions, racial no less than any other—and for what? For business as usual, and the easiest, most expedient ways to grow congregations. There’s no denying, the “homogeneous unit principle” serves the cause of numerical church growth; what it doesn’t serve is the cause of the gospel, the work of the kingdom of God on this earth. On this point, more people should listen to Markus Barth:

When no tensions are confronted and overcome, because insiders or outsiders of a certain class or group meet happily among themselves, then the one new thing, peace, and the one new man created by Christ, are missing; then no faith, no church, no Christ, is found or confessed. For if the attribute “Christian” can be given sense from Eph. 2, then it means reconciled and reconciling, triumphant over walls and removing the debris, showing solidarity with the “enemy” and promoting not one’s own peace of mind but “our peace.” . . . When this peace is deprived of its social, national, or economic dimensions, when it is distorted or emasculated so much that only “peace of mind” enjoyed by saintly individuals is left—then Jesus Christ is being flatly denied. To propose, in the name of Christianity, neutrality or unconcern on questions of international, racial, or economic peace—this amounts to using Christ’s name in vain.

It’s easy to blame the white church for this, of course, but it’s not only the white church that’s guilty of leaving the Rev. Dr. King’s vision behind; as Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, one of his good friends and coworkers, writes, those who claimed the role of leadership of the black community did the same, and did so intentionally. Where the Rev. Dr. King preached the gospel of Jesus Christ for all people, many of those who would claim his mantle “were in no mood for reconciliation, and are not to this day.” The year after his death would see the beginning of black liberation theology with the publication of James Cone‘s book Black Theology and Black Power, which argued that

In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors. . . . Either God is for black people in their fight for liberation and against the white oppressors, or he is not.

The following year, Dr. Cone took his seat at Union Theological Seminary in New York and published his second book, A Black Theology of Liberation. In that book, he wrote,

The black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples. Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God’s experience, or God is a God of racism. . . . The blackness of God means that God has made the oppressed condition God’s own condition. This is the essence of the Biblical revelation.

That’s how we got from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.; and it’s why so many folks who looked at Barack Obama and thought they were getting the incarnation of the Rev. Dr. King’s dream are now wondering if they were sold a bill of goods. The good thing in all this, though, is that Sen. Obama is right—words do matter—and that however the name of Martin Luther King may be used or misused, and however his work and legacy may be invoked or distorted to whatever purpose, his words remain, and they ring with power. Whatever else he was, the Rev. Dr. King was a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he spoke the word of God to America—and when God sends out his word through one of his followers, that word will not return to him empty-handed, but it will accomplish the purpose for which he sent it. As such, it is not too great a thing to say, as Fr. Neuhaus does, that the Rev. Dr. King’s words will continue to echo until their purpose is fulfilled.

As long as the American experiment continues, people will listen and be inspired by his “I Have a Dream,” and will read and be instructed by his Letter from Birmingham Jail, and will once again believe that, black and white together, “We shall overcome.”

Amen. In the house of God and within its walls, he has a memorial and a name that shall not be cut off. May Jesus Christ be praised.

The fallacy of diagnosis

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Bill over at The Thinklings has a truly excellent post titled “I’ve Identified the Problem and it’s You”, which I strongly encourage you to read, challenging a tendency he’s seen among Christians to broadly blame pretty much all Christians but themselves for whatever problem they happen to be complaining about. (I would note that in my experience, this sort of approach is equally common among non-Christians.)

What particularly struck me here, and where I think Bill has expressed himself with particular aptness, was his use of the word “identified.” In family systems theory—the application of general systems theory to human relational systems, following the work of Murray Bowen and Edwin Friedman—this is an important word. When the relationships between a group of people are broken—which is to say, when the system is dysfunctional—the system will tend to blame the problem on one person, to say it’s that person’s fault that things aren’t going right. This is a form of scapegoating as a way of offloading responsibility (“There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m fine; you just need to fix him!”), and the person on whom the blame is set is referred to as the “identified patient.” The term used for this is “diagnosis”: someone “diagnoses” the “patient” as having the problem, thereby implicitly asserting that everyone else is just fine.

In counseling, the key in responding to this sort of situation is to recognize that the diagnosis is in fact false, and that the problem rests not in one person (even if that person is the one showing the symptoms) but in the relational system as a whole. That’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, even when you can get all the members of the family or group together in one room; what Bill has identified, though, is considerably harder to address, since it’s so much more diffuse. Indeed, I’m not sure how to address it, except that (obviously) we must begin by naming and identifying the problem, as Bill so ably has. Beyond that, I’m not sure what can be done except to gently, patiently, graciously call people back to grace and humility, and to remind them that they, too, are sinners.

In light of that, I particularly like where Bill ends his post:

It breaks my heart because Christ died for the church, His Bride. And if someone is truly saved, they are part of the Bride and part of our family, even if they don’t measure up to your definition of cool, even if they don’t line up with your cultural tastes or ecclesiology, Even if they say things sometimes that embarass you. Even if they disappoint you. There is a way to go, in grace, to specific people in your family and work out your problems. But what Christ never gave us the option of doing was drawing our own lines in the sand to determine which of his children we’ll call “brother” and which we won’t.

This is an important truth, and something we really need to hear.

Revelation 7 multiculturalism

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One of the more interestingly problematic characters in contemporary SF is John Ringo. As the blogger over at Aliens in This World put it, “John Ringo is an odd bird, even by comparison to the normal oddness of science fiction writers. Ringo can write really really good, bad, and creepily-unwholesome-I-need-a-shower books. Often inside the same cover.” That captures it quite well, I think—particularly the way Ringo so often juxtaposes things I really appreciate with things I really don’t. He has in some ways a very perceptive eye, but a deeply flawed worldview underlying it, which makes him one of the few people I’ve run across (along with Ann Coulter) who can articulate conservative conclusions in such a way as to make me react like a liberal. This all is probably why the only books of Ringo’s I really like are the Prince Roger/Empire of Man series he’s co-writing with David Weber. (IMHO, they fill in each other’s weaknesses quite nicely.)As I say, though, he does have a good eye, and little tolerance for nonsense (he’d use a much more pungent word there, of course, having a rather rough tongue), virtues which are often promiscuously on display in his work—along with his pronounced animus against received pieties of any kind. That animus can color and distort his perception, but at times, it can also inform and strengthen it; when it does, the attacks he unleashes can be devastating.One good example comes from the fifth chapter of his latest project, a novel titled The Last Centurion, in which he takes a swing at multiculturalism. The novel is set in the future, but the examples on which he draws are from this decade, including this one:

Group in one of the most pre-Plague diverse neighborhoods in the U.S. wanted to build a play-area for their kids in the local park. They’d established a “multicultural neighborhood committee” of “the entire rainbow.” . . . There were, indeed, little brown brothers and yellow and black. But . . . Sikhs and Moslems can barely bring themselves to spit on each other much less work side by side singing “Kumbaya.” . . .The Hindus were willing to contribute some suggestions and a little money, but the other Hindus would have to do the work. What other Hindus? Oh, those people. And they would have to hand the money to the kumbaya guys both because handing it to the other Hindus would be defiling and because, of course, it would just disappear. . . .When they actually got to work, finally, there were some little black brothers helping. Then a different group of little black brothers turned out and sat on the sidelines shouting suggestions until the first group left. Then the “help” left as well. Christian animists might soil their hands for a community project but not if they’re getting [flak] from Islamics.

Now, maybe that sounds unfair to you; but if so, check out this piece (among others) by Theodore Dalrymple, based on his extensive experience working as a doctor in one of Britain’s immigrant slums. I won’t cite any of his stories—you can read them yourself; be warned, they aren’t pleasant—but I can tell you the conclusion to which they’ve led him:

Not all cultural values are compatible or can be reconciled by the enunciation of platitudes. The idea that we can all rub along together, without the law having to discriminate in favor of one set of cultural values rather than another, is worse than merely false: it makes no sense whatever.

The problem here is the unexamined assumption that “the intolerance against which [multiculturalism] is supposedly the sovereign remedy is a characteristic only of the host society,” and thus that if those of us who belong to the dominant culture would just set aside our idea of our own superiority, then all the problems would go away. Unfortunately, life isn’t like that. For one thing, this rests on the essentially racist assumption that all “those people who are different from us” are really all alike and thus all on the same side; but it ain’t necessarily so. To be sure, this assumption isn’t only made by white folks. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assumed that Hispanic immigrants would ally themselves with American blacks, and thus supported loosening immigration laws; Jesse Jackson assumed the same, which is why he proclaimed the “Rainbow Coalition.” As Stephen Malanga writes, though, it hasn’t worked out that way.More seriously, it isn’t only Western culture that is plagued by intolerance, hatred, violence, and other forms of human evil; other cultures have their own problems, too. As Dalrymple writes, “many aspects of the cultures which they are trying to preserve are incompatible not only with the mores of a liberal democracy but with its juridical and philosophical foundations. No amount of hand-wringing or euphemism can alter this fact.” Nor will any number of appeals to the better angels of our nature; human sin is a cross-cultural reality.Does this mean multiculturalism is hopeless? No, but it means it cannot be accomplished politically. If the divisions between people, and between groups of people, are to be healed, there must be another way; and by the grace of God, there is. It’s the way incarnated in the ministry of the Church of All Nations, a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation in Minneapolis which is founded and pastored by the Rev. Jin S. Kim. It’s the way that says that our divisions cannot be erased by human effort, but only by the work of the Spirit of God—and that we as Christians have to be committed to giving ourselves to that work. We can’t make it happen, but we need to do our part to be open to God making it happen. This is the vision God has given us to live toward:“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number,
from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,
standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes,
with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice,
‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’
And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders
and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne
and worshiped God, saying, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving
and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.’”—Revelation 7:9-12 (ESV)

Reclaiming the gospel?

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I applaud the Evangelism and Church Growth arm of the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s General Assembly Council for taking evangelism and church growth seriously. All Christians should, after all, and particularly those called to lead a declining denomination like ours, which is declining in considerable part due to a failure to take them seriously. I applaud them for seeking to reach out to and inspire those “who have a passion for evangelism, for church growth, and a desire to share the gospel message with all God’s people.” I applaud them for holding a contest for middle-school and high-school students to produce a T-shirt design to help them do that; contests have a way of getting people excited, and unveiling the winner at the Evangelism Breakfast at General Assembly should stir up interest.

Where I have a problem is with the theme of that breakfast: “Reclaiming the Gospel.” There are a lot of things we might say we need to do with the gospel, but reclaiming it? In the first place, we don’t need to re-anything the gospel. It is already “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,” as Paul teaches us; it doesn’t need anything done to it, and certainly not by us. We just need to stand up with Paul, declare that we aren’t ashamed of it, and preach it.

In the second place, if we did need to re-something the gospel, it wouldn’t be reclaiming it. We never claimed it in the first place—it claimed us, or rather Jesus did, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Theoretically, we as heirs of the Reformation understand that the gospel isn’t about us—it’s something God did for us by his grace, not any of our own doing—and that the power of its proclamation isn’t about us either, it’s about the Spirit of God. To talk of reclaiming the gospel, it seems to me, gets that seriously out of whack, as if we somehow appropriate it and put it to work to accomplish our purposes. No. God appropriates us and puts us to work to accomplish his purposes through us. It’s Christ’s ministry, not ours; it’s the Spirit’s power, not ours; our job is not to reclaim the gospel but rather to submit ourselves to the gospel, to place ourselves at Jesus’ disposal, so that by the leading and power of the Spirit we may be used to carry out his ministry in this world.

I appreciate the heart being shown here for evangelism, but I’m seriously concerned by the fuzzy and human-centered way in which that heart is expressed. This is of a piece, it seems to me, with the very un-Reformed understanding of grace expressed in the Covenant Network’s mission statement, which I think also shows a laudable heart skewed by a serious failure of understanding; it suggests to me that our theological foundations have eroded to a significant extent, such that our guiding assumptions come less from our Reformed heritage than from the world around us. In the end, that’s no way to build up the body of Christ; it’s no way to grow the church.

In defense of the church, part II: The institution

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I had been intending to go a different direction with the second post in this series, but then Jared posted on “The Institution-less Church,” and posted a chunk I’d forgotten about from the interview Eugene Peterson did a while back with Mark Galli in CT, “Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons.” Consider this, from Eugene:

What other church is there besides institutional? There’s nobody who doesn’t have problems with the church, because there’s sin in the church. But there’s no other place to be a Christian except the church. There’s sin in the local bank. There’s sin in the grocery stores. I really don’t understand this naive criticism of the institution. I really don’t get it.

Frederick von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree. There’s no life in the bark. It’s dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within. And the tree grows and grows and grows and grows. If you take the bark off, it’s prone to disease, dehydration, death.

So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive. And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn’t last long. It disappears, gets sick, and it’s prone to all kinds of disease, heresy, and narcissism.

Then put that together with this comment from the Rev. Dr. Paul Detterman’s sermon to our presbytery, on which I posted a couple days ago:

God’s Word is also oblivious to cherished structures and institutions we have created in our own image and then attributed to God—like denominations, and presbyteries, and congregations, and sessions . . . These institutions seem very real to us. We even mistakenly call them “church.” But not one of them exists with their own set of adjectives and attributes. There is no such thing as a “faithful” congregation or a “faithless” denomination. The structures that “organize” organized faith are simply that—organizing systems devoid of characteristics except what individual people bring in to them. This presbytery is only a gathering of individuals who are more or less committed to living as God’s faithful children—working for God’s shalom in God’s world.

Then let me add one other reference, this more of a personal one. My father grew up in the Church of God (Anderson, IN), which arose under the leadership of D. S. Warner out of the Holiness movement. Convinced that denominationalism was a source of bad things, he intentionally founded a “movement” rather than a denomination. Now, they have a college and a seminary, they have a headquarters, they have a structure—by any definition, they’re a denomination. By any definition except their own, that is; they’re still firmly “anti-denominational.”

I think one problem in all this, and one reason for the criticism Eugene doesn’t get, is that we expect too much of the institution, whether it be the local congregation, the denomination, or anything in between. We expect the institution to reflect God, to carry out the ministry of Jesus, to attract people, and so on and so forth, which is a set of expectations it just can’t carry. Dr. Detterman has the right of it—the institution is just a structure to organize our activities to help us function. Eugene has the right of it—the institution is a dead thing that protects and gives form to the live thing underneath. But that points us to the reality that the structure isn’t going to do the work of the church, because the structure isn’t the church; we together are the church, and the structure is there to enable us as we do the work of the church. To avoid facing that, though, we tend to pile those expectations on the institution instead, and then when it fails, we blame it, and denounce it, and set off to find a better way.

But what better way is there? Jared got it right when he noted, “the dudes most passionate about killing ‘church institution’ aren’t exactly institution-less . . . their institution is just sexier.” The example of the Church of God (Anderson) shows, I think, that the best we can do is replace one institution with another, because true institution-less-ness would be anarchy, and anarchy doesn’t work; as Eugene says, a church without an institution is like a tree without bark, soon to stop functioning properly due to disease.

I also suspect that we object to the “institutional church” because it gets in the way of us doing what we want; but in reality, that’s part of its purpose. Yes, there is a tendency for institutions to become self-justifying and self-serving, and that’s a bad thing; but is that the fault of institutions, or of the people in them? That’s a human sin, and attacking institutions won’t change it. If anything, doing that makes it worse, because the existence of the institution, for all its faults, reminds us that it has a purpose. We can still do all the touchy-feely “spirituality” stuff that’s all about us without any kind of formal structure, but a congregation that never really goes beyond that is about as self-justifying and self-serving as anything can be; what we need the institution for is to do the things that take us beyond ourselves, the things that actually require work and effort and need organization and structure to support them and keep them going. You know, all the “go into the world and make disciples of all nations, teaching and baptizing” stuff that Jesus commands us to do that we don’t always find wonderfully comfortable and congenial. The institutional church cannot be just about us. Maybe that’s part of our objection to it, too.

Blinded by the darkness

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As I posted a few weeks ago, the Rev. Dr. Paul E. Detterman, past PC(USA) associate for worship and current executive director of Presbyterians for Renewal, preached an excellent sermon on 1 John 2:1-11 and Matthew 28:18-20 at our February presbytery meeting. His sermon has now been posted on PFR’s website (note: it’s a PDF), and I encourage you to read it. He’s speaking in this message as a Presbyterian to Presbyterians, so it’s addressed specifically to intra-Presbyterian issues, but it is by no means limited to them. There’s a lot in this sermon, but I want to highlight a few things in particular.

You have invited me to preach the Word of God, and preaching God’s Word can be a very dangerous thing. God’s Word is liberal enough to make conservative people very nervous—but it is also conservative enough to make liberals squirm. And because most of us have our emotional/ideological feet far out in the aisle at any gathering like this, when God’s Word rolls through, toes will be smashed. It happens.

This was part of Dr. Detterman’s opening paragraph; I appreciated the reminder as he began speaking that we should never open the Scriptures assuming they’re only going to tell us what we’re comfortable hearing. God isn’t limited to what we like.

We forget basic theology so easily—like who God is and who we are and why we should care. Theological amnesia is not a liberal problem or a conservative problem—it is a human problem. It is the human problem, to be exact, and it is exactly where our passage from John’s letter begins.

Indeed, it’s all too easy to go about our normal lives in a very ungodly forgetfulness, rather than living out the reality of who we are in God in the cold, hard facts of our daily circumstances and situations and choices. Specifically, Dr. Detterman identifies the three great inhibitors of our call to carry out the Great Commission as the inverse of 1 Corinthians 13:13: we have forgotten biblical faith, hope, and love. That doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten those words—but we’ve forgotten what they really mean, and replaced their biblical content with our own.

We really don’t know how dark our present darkness really is until we see flashes of God’s penetrating light—then we see how much of God’s reality we are missing.

The problem is, as John notes, there is something in us that prefers darkness and resists the light, and so we let the darkness blind us, congratulating ourselves all the while on how well we see.It’s a great sermon, and there’s a lot more to it than this; again, I encourage you to read it for yourself, especially if you’re a part of the Presbyterian Church (USA)—no matter where you stand on the conflicts that wrack this denomination, Dr. Detterman’s sermon will challenge you toward greater faithfulness.

Is there an echo in here . . . ?

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Or is it just me?

Hap tagged me in another meme (or maybe I should call that a Hap zap), of which the rules are as follows:

1. List at least two posts (with links) that have resonated with you. Do not include your own posts!
2. Give a brief explanation why you like the post.
3. Tag four other people.

Resonated. What has echoed in my thoughts?

The Foolishness of Preaching: I especially value this one as a preacher myself. Whether at his own blog (as here) or on the Thinklings, I really appreciate Jared Wilson’s insight; this one was one of those “Why didn’t I think of that?” moments.

Lukewarm: Jake’s a friend of Hap’s, which in my book makes him a friend of mine, at least of sorts, even though I’ve never met the man. Anyway, we’ve all read the letter to the Laodiceans in Revelation 3, but how many of us have ever taken the next step to see lukewarmness as a trial and temptation, and something the Enemy consciously uses against us? I’m still absorbing this one.

Why No One Here Is Laughing at My Jokes: Dr. John Stackhouse is a brilliant theologian, a good and godly man, and in his acerbically witty style, one of the funniest people I’ve ever run across. I enjoyed being around him at Regent, and I think he’s wonderful. I do know, though, that some folks were put off by his sense of humor. This is a powerful piece of self-reflection on that subject; maybe it will inspire you, as it did me, to some of your own.

Doctrine as the “constitution for a community”: Confessing Evangelical is the blog of a British Lutheran lawyer who’s not only pretty deep theologically, but draws in some very interesting cross-currents. When (soon, I hope) I get around to “Defending the church, part II,” I’ll be drawing seriously on this post.

Lent: Dancing in Shadows & Light: This is something of a stand-in (what’s the term I want? Metanoia?) for the Anchoress’ ongoing reflections on Lent; I chose it as the newest up and as one of my favorites. I love the image.

Genesis 12:1-4 Pastoral Prayer: I’ve already noted that Doug Hagler and I don’t agree on all that much; but he has written some beautiful prayers. This one especially moves my soul.

An early New Year’s resolution from my wife which I, in many ways, am still trying to catch up with. “How different would our interactions with each other be if in looking at each other, our first thought was ‘Here is the work of God’s hand’”?

So, tags . . .

Sara
Barry
Erin
Wayne (what the heck, he’s got to do one of them sometime)

Let the little children come

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Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”—Luke 18:15-17, ESVMaybe it’s just me, but I think we find it easier to ding the disciples here than we ought to. After all, we know they shouldn’t have done this—Jesus tells us so—but too often, we don’t stop and think about why they did it. We don’t have to, because we don’t hear what they heard: babies crying (if not screaming) as their mothers struggle through the crowds to get to Jesus; bigger kids running around, shrieking, laughing, crying, throwing themselves on the ground; probably a few of them coming up to Jesus, climbing up in his lap, tugging on his robe, and asking him off-the-wall questions. We don’t hear the disruptions or see the distractions, because they’re between the lines—but kids being kids, you can bet this wasn’t a quiet, peaceful scene. If you stop to think about it, you can see where the disciples were coming from. No doubt they saw all these kids as interruptions, disruptions, distractions, interfering with the real work Jesus was doing—not as part of that work; and so they tried to push the kids out of the way so Jesus could get on with the important stuff.Jesus, of course, rebukes them for that, and in the process he identifies the root problem underlying their attitude: pride. Children have no social status, so they can’t do anything for you; if Jesus is spending his time with children, that’s time taken away from teaching and ministering to adults who do have status in society, who can increase his social standing and the respect he receives as an important and influential teacher and scholar—and thus, not incidentally, raise the standing of his disciples, as well. Part of their concern, Jesus sees, is that they want people around Israel to respect them, to look up to them, to admire them—“See Thomas over there? He’s studying under Jesus.” “Oooh, impressive!”—and Jesus taking the time to bless and teach children does absolutely nothing for that, because children don’t really count. That’s not to say they weren’t valued, or that they weren’t loved—they were; but they had no legal standing, no social standing, no reputation, no right to their own opinions, indeed, no rights to be considered at all. As such, welcoming children just wasn’t a priority for the disciples.You can see where they’re coming from, but Jesus will not let their resistance stand. “Let the children come,” he says, “and don’t hinder them.” Let them come, because the kingdom of God is for them, too; let them come, because as Matthew 18 tells us, whoever welcomes a child in Jesus’ name welcomes Jesus, while anyone who drives them away bears some of the responsibility for their sin, and thus is open to judgment. This isn’t just a matter of bringing them to church and warehousing them in the basement doing crafts while the grownups are in worship, either. That kind of approach brings children to church but not to Christ; I’m convinced it’s much of the reason why we see so few people between the ages of 18 and 30 in our churches in this country, because they’ve grown up in a church that, from the only perspective they’ve been given, has no Christ in it.No, letting the children come to Jesus is a two-part responsibility, I think. One, it means loving them the way Jesus does—which means the focus has to be on what’s best for them, not what’s most comfortable and convenient for the grownups. This is harder than it sounds, because we have a real pattern in this country of doing things in the name of children that aren’t really about them. It’s all well and good to say that children are the future, but too often that comes with the unspoken corollary that we grownups are the present. We need to begin by acknowledging that our children count in the present, too; the kids in the church are our equals in the body of Christ, and “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Consider others more significant than yourself” apply to them just as much as they do to anyone else.The other part of letting the children come to Jesus is discipling them—and he himself told us what he expects from us there. Here’s the Great Commission as translated by Eugene Peterson in The Message:

“Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.”

Children’s ministry is not about keeping children out of sight, out of earshot, and out from underfoot; it’s not even about teaching them to be nice to each other and quiet in church, though those things have their place in the process. It’s about training them in this way of life, instructing them in how to live out everything that Jesus has commanded us, teaching them what it means to follow Jesus, day after day after day, week after week after week, right up to the end of the age. It’s about, in other words, nothing less than discipleship, raising the children of the church to live as saints of God; it is, or should be, all of a piece with what we do in the rest of our ministry as the church. And there’s no clause in there to say, “Only the easy ones—only the ones who already know how to behave—only the ones you’re already comfortable having around.” Indeed, the ones who make us most uncomfortable, the ones who haven’t been taught how to behave, the ones full of anger they don’t know how to express against parents who have betrayed them and let them down, though they’re the hardest to reach, are the ones we have to try hardest to love; because if we don’t take them in, who will?