Some thoughts on the future of the church...

Here is a blog I recently read:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christian-piatt/dear-christians-relax-theres-no-war-on-our-faith_b_2286820.html

I was recently reading a blog post by Ed Stetzer. He was talking about what some of the new research suggests in regard to how people are viewing the church today and how that is changing as opposed to how to people viewed the church in times past.

I also recently read another blog about the difference between the church today and 30 years ago.

I read a blog this morning about the 7 things that the church needs to do to have repeat success…
http://www.paulalexanderblog.com/leadership/7-traits-of-churches-that-experience-repeat-success/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+paulalexanderblog+%28Helping+Churches+Make+Vision+Real%29&utm_content=FaceBook#.Up9U96XZhbU

Here is a funny observation: none of the things listed in the 7 things for repeated success blog address any of the issues talked about in the blogs on how church has been affected by cultural change. So, ultimately, if you do these 7 things to repeat success, you are either (A) doing the same wrong thing better, or (B) leading people down a larger path to destruction by not dealing with what they are actually thinking about and wrestling with in their lives.

Why would you do that?

So, in an attempt to actually give some pertinent advice to help the Kingdom of God come crashing into earth in our culture, I want to give some observations that I see shaping the cultural perception of the church and how I think the church could respond in order to navigate what I observe as a fairly large shift in church history.

1. Culture in general is leveling the playing field in regards to authority. The pastor used to be a person of importance by virtue of his position alone. This is no longer true.

Maybe it is too many news reports on leaders being dishonest, maybe it is something else. But this is not a church problem, it is a cultural shift. No one is a victim here. And that matters.

Church leaders are all too ready to play the role of victim and cry out about how the culture is becoming more and more evil as we see people lose respect for authority.  But let's be honest, perhaps the bigger issue is that authority lost respect for the people that it exists to help. And perhaps greed in authority laid a path for the loss of respect altogether.

People don't trust the government, police officers, or clergy. The good news is that this shift isn't an attack on the church. It is an attack on those who aren't putting their money where their mouth is. And that is okay. Does it put pressure on us as Christians and as church leaders? Yep. But my experience has been that people are very willing to give respect. However, it will be earned - not granted.

So what is the solution? 2 parts in my opinion…

First, Preachers must stop preaching about the reality of their ideals without sitting squarely in their struggle to achieve those ideals. There is a LOT more to be said about this, but this is a blog, not a book. So, suffice it to say that when you talk about all your ideals without acknowledging your struggle, you paint a picture so rosy that the culture looks at you and says that you are either lying or more perfect than I could ever be. Either way, I don't want any part of what you are doing.

Second, Preachers need to give room in their sermons for people who have messed up. Preaching on the moral evils of abortion without acknowledging hope for those who have actually had abortions (and they are in your church) only robs them of the ability to talk about it and be set free from the guilt. Preaching on the abomination of homosexuality and not intentionally creating space for those who feel like they are struggling with this issue to talk about it is an equation for disaster.  Preaching cannot only contain right and wrong anymore. We MUST capture the tension of failure and the hope of God's agenda of restoration.

I would suggest that a great place to start would be to stop focusing on people's sinfulness. They already know they are sinners. And start focusing on God's goodness. Jesus said - If I be lifted up I will draw all men unto me. How about if we get away from the discussion on election of the saints and start lifting up Jesus and His desire for the restoration of all things.

2. Culture in general has moved away from truth in clean categories. We used to be able to give systematic theologies, clean prepositional boundaries, and apologetical presentations. These have less and less affect on our younger generations. That is not because the devil got a better foot hold!!! It is because culture has changed how we have the conversation about truth as a whole. And the church must figure out how to engage the conversation in terms that people can hear.

5 steps or 7 ways or 27 things… I don't even want to read these kinds of articles. How many times have we read about 5 steps to affair proof your marriage and still struggled with wanting to cheat? And even simpler, how many times have we read about or listened to someone talk about 7 steps to a healthier you? and yet we didn't workout - because it isn't dealing with the real issues that are keeping from exercising in the first place.

It is like a husband that hears his wife express a problem and then give her 5 steps to a happier self. It demeans her pain. And when I express a struggle to someone and then they just move to well if you just did…

I secretly want to punch them in the face. The TRUTH is that living life isn't slick or clean or simple. And as the world gets smaller, the issues that we wrestle with in how we live out our faith are becoming more and more complex.

To reduce my life to 5 steps??????? come on! It isn't that simple.

Perhaps a better way to talk about these issues is to leave the tension there rather than trying to resolve it away. The answer for the world is Jesus, not my 5 steps. Keep pointing people to Him and I bet the "things of this earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace."

Pain does happen and abuse is real and right and wrong are not always simple or easy. And 5 steps to resolving it all away doesn't change it or deal with the reality of the emotion that I am captured by. Those steps demean my pain and turn me off from wanting to hear you ever again.

3. What activities motivate people to serve the Lord and how we even define that has changed. Serving the church, and global missions (which meant throwing money at people to go over there) was a core issue for the church of the previous generation. Today, the younger generation is not loyal to the church. They want to serve people - people who they see need help.

I will give an example… this Thanksgiving, a 15 year old girl in our church decided to take on the monumental task of feeding 500 families for Thanksgiving. Not people - families! She organized food drives, worked with food banks, raised money and organized a meal.  It was a raging success!  She fed over 620 families and exceed anything I thought she could get done.

What intrigued me was who was excited to help with the meal. We had servers, cooks, table hosts, people milling around and just visiting with those who came. And we had too much help. Too many people showed up to help with this meal! And the best part… they were almost all young college and high school students. This 16-23 year old age range got excited about feeding the needy in their own community. And that says a lot.

What also says a lot is who was not there. As I saw it, there were very few folks from the 50+ crowd there to serve. And that is not wrong or lazy on their part. It is an awareness piece for the church to notice what motivates people to serve the Lord and how do we give them opportunities to do so?

On the flip side, there are things that our church does (i.e. buying school supplies for entire schools, service project days for the entire community, etc.) that are very motivating to the 50+ crowd without having a string turn out from the younger folks at all.

We need to see this so that we don't get stuck in a rut of doing the same things that we have always done and wondering why people have "turned their backs on God" because they are not showing up. Perhaps the issue isn't their love for God at all. Perhaps it has more to do with the activity itself.

4. The church has to care about "those people." Whomever the "those people" are in your community (poor, homeless, drug addicts, prison inmates, homosexual community, etc.), the church needs to invest a substantial amount of its budget toward reaching out and loving them.

Again, this is a blog post which is already too long, not a book so I will try to make this brief, but one of the biggest complaints that I hear from non-church goers is that the church spends all this money on buildings and staff and doesn't spend any money on the poor and needy.

Now, some of that is trumped up, no doubt. But where are the testimonies of how your church has reached out and met needs? Why don't people know these stories?

I would suggest that we have to stop measuring the effectiveness of our reaching out into the community based n how many people came to church as a result of it. And I know that will get me into hot water with some, but hear me out on this.

Jesus didn't say be generous in order to grow the church (or the Kingdom). He said be generous because that is what people who are in the Kingdom do. That is how they live. Business measures growth based on investment - R.O.I. The Kingdom measures faithfulness. Growth is God's problem. He says something about that. And yes this is a huge topic, but the point of the church is not to become a great big church. If that happens great, if not, great.

The point of the church is to be a community of people who love each other and give people a picture of what the Kingdom of God really is all about.  I will bet that if the church would focus on being the best church for the community and not just the best church in the community - if we would focus on being a place that loves the people within our sphere of influence better than any where else, and stop trying to decide how many people came to church because we did such and such…

I'll bet we wouldn't have any trouble at all with growth.

There is a lot more that I would love to say, but I have rambled long enough and probably already gotten myself in to trouble.  Let the conversation begin!!

Resignation Day…

So, upon reflection, yesterday wasn't my best sermon. And to confirm that were 3 emails and 2 face to face conversations where people let me know that it was not my best sermon. It is always nice to come home and sit with that reality (yes that was sarcasm).

I didn't communicate clearly. Maybe I wasn't prepared enough or maybe my mind wasn't in the right place. Maybe I didn't pray enough… I don't know. What I know is - it wasn't my best sermon, and people made sure to let me know.

Here is the funny thing… there is a shift in me that I have never experienced before.

Any preacher will tell you that the absolute worst day of the week is Monday. For me, I feel like I have been drug through a knot hole. And if for some reason I miss getting a nap on Sunday afternoon, well, let's just say that staff meeting the next morning isn't pleasant for anyone.

I have heard many a preacher say that they write their resignation letter every Monday. Or at least that they pull it out and dust it off.

Sundays are hard days in general. I had this conversation with my kids yesterday on the way home. Whoever penned the song lyrics "Easy like a Sunday morning" was NOT in the ministry!

It is extra hard when I feel like I have freshly poured out my heart, and I get an immediate negative response. How does one recover from that? When I preach, it isn't as if I am just throwing out random thoughts about life. I always try to talk about how the passage has sifted my own soul. This is not just a text conversation. It is a piece of me - every week. I believe that I bring glory to God by doing this.

So when 3 emails and 2 conversations tell me that piece of my soul wasn't as good as it should have been, it isn't about critiquing words. It is a critique of my soul. And that hurts.

So Monday is resignation day, as a rule. And while I don't think that any of these preachers actually follow through with resigning, I can see why they want to.

And now to the shift in me…

Normally, I would want to be done as well.  Normally, I would want to hold back the next time. Normally, I would be less willing to risk the vulnerable parts of my journey with God.

If they didn't handle that stuff well, then I am sure not going to share "this" piece of me…

This morning I woke up with something bouncing around my head. This notion that perhaps the critique isn't about the sermon and the sermon isn't about my power of speech. And my power of speech isn't about dazzling people to God.

Maybe, God uses these moments in me so that He can refine me to deeper and more profound places of my soul. And maybe people will be able to handle that and maybe people won't be able to handle that, I don't know, but it forces me to face down why I preach at all.

And it forces you to face down why you do what you do as well.

Is the response of people evidence of God's blessing? Or is the response of people God's refining work in me?

Do I only give the deep parts of God's work in me those I can trust, or is God's work in me the message that I give to the world regardless of how they respond?

Do I trust that God can and will accomplish His work? Does He need me to preach at all? Or is it a privilege to tell the world about an agenda for this world that is better and more fulfilling than anything the world has ever known?

Maybe I would add one more to the list of Beatitudes in Matthew 5.

Blessed are the men and women who sit down in the empty, hurtful, lonely mess of resignation day. For they will be refined.

Happy Resignation Day!!!

As we move into Thanksgiving, I am thankful for this day.

To my friends…followers and non-followers

So, I was raised in the church. I have never known my life without God in it. Not just theoretically, but real and evident. So when people say that they just don't see God, I can't imagine the hole that this would leave in my life if I felt that way.

It gets me thinking… do people know what they are looking for when they make such a statement? And what is more, it gets me thinking about what other areas of my life do I take for granted. And what other claims - false or true - are being made about my worldview, and have no basis in reality. And that leads me to this "open letter."

I believe that people who follow Jesus don't know nearly as much as they think they know about people who do not follow Jesus. And I believe that people who do not follow Jesus don't know nearly as much as they think they know about people who do follow Jesus.

Somebody needs to start the conversation… So, here I am. Let's start. I want to give some treatises that I believe could govern the conversation from the "Christian" worldview.

First, I am sorry that we use statements and phrases that no one really understands.
"come slay us"
"Jesus dwell inside us"
"Holy Spirit move"
"Just let go and let God"
"God won't give you more than you can handle"

I am sure there are LOTS more. But please understand, the Bible is a book full of metaphors and some of those show up in how we talk about God. I am sure that there are better ways to talk about God. Help us find out how to have that conversation better.

Second, you have to understand that my faith is absolutely central to me as a human being.
Lay aside all the creation/evolution, apologetics, and questions about those who have never heard about God in some foreign jungle for just a minute.

I believe that as humans we are drawn to the mysterious and unexplained realities of our life even in the modern world we live in. I believe that the story of God as laid out in the Scripture inspires me to embrace the tension of these unresolved questions. And I believe that my faith in that God strengthens me to endure incredible tragedy when there is no rational explanation.

So, when you attack my faith I will, of course, get defensive. It isn't personal - necessarily. But an attack on my faith is like cutting my heart out and not caring at all about the implications you've caused.

Third, living by faith means that I will do somethings that look crazy.
It doesn't mean that I AM crazy. It is the notion that when I live my life trusting that I know a God who will provide all my needs according to His riches in glory (which the Bible teaches) I will step out and do and say things that defy logic at times. I am not trying to be "weird." I am trying to be faithful.

From my perspective, men and women who do great things and make great differences live by something that is different than logic. They live by conviction. It would seem to me that this is becoming a lost art in our world. And yet those who accomplish great things still have a drive to live motivated by something greater than what we see here and now.

There is a better tomorrow. And my conviction is that when I choose to make decisions based on my convictions regardless of the cost, I help the whole world take one more step toward that better tomorrow.

Yes, I agree that there have been atrocities done in the name of Jesus. And I also believe that those who have leveraged God in order to build their own personal kingdoms will stand before God accountable for that foolish decision. But that doesn't mean that there is no benefit to living by convictions and faith. Throwing the baby to with the bath water makes no sense.

Fourth, I agree that some of the meanest people we know call themselves Christians.
And I am sorry. I am sorry for their actions, their mean words, and their careless attitudes. And while I try to be a good person, just like you, I have been the one at times that has hurt those around me. I am human. I wish I wasn't, but I am. And I am prone to make mistakes. Please forgive me. I am trying.

That being said, that which is worth living for is not given or robbed of validity because of those who choose to not obey it. People can put whatever label on themselves that they choose. Just because you call yourself giraffe doesn't make you one. So rather than trying to decide whether or not a worldview is valuable based on those who call themselves its followers, I would invite you to consider that there are those who do incredible selfless acts of kindness and generosity in the name of Jesus. These actions make the world a better place and are done from a pure heart.

Fifth, The God I love is pulling for our success.  He is not mad.
Perceptions of God abound in our culture. And while there are famous preachers and teachers who would invite you to see God as angry at you because of the foolish mistakes you have made (and who wouldn't want to follow that god???) (sarcasm), I believe that the Bible reveals a very different God. He is for you. And again and again the Bible makes sure that you know God is about the redemption of all things, not destruction of evil people.

I want you to know this God. So don't be mad at me when I share my faith with you. I am doing this because I love you… and so does He.

Sixth, The God I love is walking right along side us. He helps us make choices that have a much larger and longer impact than just this moment.
And by the way, this gives me peace regardless of my circumstances. I can rest in the grace of a God who is for me, and with me.  He has got this regardless of what pain I am facing on the surface.

Which raises the question about family members and friends that we prayed for and God didn't do what we wanted and so now we are mad so we try to say that we don't believe in Him, but what we mean is that we want to let Him know how disappointed we are that He didn't do what I asked for.

I can relate to this feeling. But my God isn't holding out on me. He know things I don't know. He sees things I don't see. And no matter what anyone tells you, this life here and now is neither the end nor the optimal existence.

Seventh, (and last) The God I love is ahead of us pulling us toward something better.
My firm conviction is that regardless of the pain we are in now, and that pain is real, there is a new morning coming. We will be just fine.

Pain is real. And the longer I am in ministry and I hear the pain of people's stories and how they have carried that pain for years, I am honored to be in the presence of such fortitude. I don't know how they get out of bed in the morning. I am sure I could not.

But pain also isn't the end. The rules of every great story is that right in the middle of the story, everything has to fall apart. If that doesn't happen at all, it is a boring story. If it happens at the end, it is just a tragedy ( I hated Romeo and Juliet for that reason). So everyday, I have to decide… Is my life a tragedy or a great story. The knowledge that my God is ahead of me pulling me to something better is key in helping me tell a good story with my life.

For my Christian friends, please add to the list.  Add more foolish Christian phrases and more tenets of the discussion that you would think are necessary.

For my non-Christian friends, do the same.  Let's compare the list and see if in the midst of all this, we can't find hope together.

new tech features...

http://www.blogdash.com/full_profile/?claim_code=c04fa39176ec47e6cd77c76760b9c9b2

Please disregard this post… it is a technical upgrade.

blog-o-therapy #2 - Expectations...

http://careynieuwhof.com/2013/11/5-unusual-ways-ministry-leaders-struggle-with-god/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-unusual-ways-ministry-leaders-struggle-with-god

So this blog post is pretty good.  And true. I have found myself in each of the places mentioned within the article.

And it raises the question… Why do I let myself get there? I would never let someone that I am counseling believe these lies about their situation. I would explain a loving God who is generous and purposeful to His core. I would offer a God who loves without condition and encourage them with words of Scripture that are profound and moving.

So why, then, as soon as something happens that is difficult in my ministry do I find myself searching my last few days trying to find the reason for why God is allowing this terrible thing to happen to me? More succinctly, why would God allow this terrible thing to happen to such a wonderful guy like me?

And maybe that is the point… The assumption that I carry is that I really am all that wonderful (just ask me), and that being wonderful deserves a certain kind of treatment from God.

Expectations suck!

I expect that if I am "doing well" with God (whatever that means) then the church will grow. I expect that when it isn't moving along at the rate it should, the reason is all about me. I expect that God is going to protect me from the pain of life. I expect that everyone around me is going to eventually see the world just the way I do. And those who see it differently are either wrong or stubborn. And I expect that if I am going to give you pieces of my heart as a friend or a family member, you must see everything just like me.

And if any of those expectations are not met, well then I am very busy right now and don't have time to be with you. And I expect you'll understand and be okay with that.  I am a pastor after all. There are lots of demands on my really important job.

I sound really gross.  Would I even like to hang out with me? To be honest, I don't really like hanging out with me. And maybe that is why I expect you to be or act a certain way and why I expect God to be or act certain ways and when He or you interrupt the patterns of my expectations, I don't have a frame of reference for that. Maybe some part of my relationships with others and God is about a test of whether or not I am okay based on whether or not you think I am.

Maybe I use pain to validate a skewed perspective of how the world around me is supposed to function.

What do you think? What are some of your expectations of God and others?

Blog-o-therapy #1 - What is this internal conflict?

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html

So, first of all, if you haven't watched these TED talks yet, #1 - you have been under a rock and #2 - you need you watch these. Vulnerability first and Shame second.

I have watched these and revisited them over the past year and a half. Each time I watch these videos I get different things out of them.  There are many layers to what is being said and as I journey through my own awakening to the world around me and God's magnificent, redemptive plan for it all it opens up new parts that spark new internal conversations. And now we have the impetus for the next few blog posts.

I am thinking about going to therapy. I like counseling. It has proven at times to be very beneficial in my life. But maybe with your help, I can be "therapied" (apparently I just made that word up, or at least spell checker thinks so). So, I will present some internal battles and see where it goes. Maybe together we can unlock some pieces of each other that lead to more and better pieces of those around us and ultimately a truer version of who our God is.

My approach is to not so much present an argument or present a thesis that sways the masses. It will be more about teeing up a topic and giving some random thoughts around this topic that are true of me. So, picture me in your office, ready for therapy. Help me out... Am I crazy? Does this resonate with you?

Topic #1 - I want to be big and small at the same time.

I love influence and taking people on a journey of discovery and growth. I love opening up new worlds for people to explore. And I love watching people achieve more than they ever thought they could. That awakening moment for them is the reason I get up in the morning.

Here is the twist... With increased influence comes the possibility of increased disagreement. And I have discovered that I love having just enough influence to allow me to manage the amount of disagreement I have to deal with. It allows me to "fly under the radar." And it allows me to share my dreams and critique other people's perspective without having to actually be the one on the chopping block.

It seems that reality demands that I must go to both places or neither place.  In other words, as Brene Brown says, you cannot selectively numb. If I choose to avoid the critique, then I choose to avoid influence. I cannot selectively avoid one side or the other.

So I know that,.... And yet I do not want to "go there."

How can I be willing to open up myself to critique because it also opens me up to the possibility of what gets me up in the morning? And I know that robbing myself of critique is robbing myself my created purpose. I know it, but it scares me.

I have been wounded. And I am still standing. I am still okay. I am still here. And yet, I am still scared to death...

Help me out.

Why is the Old Testament so violent?

So, my next post will be about rest and understanding why God commands it.  To that end, I have had to take a rest to get at what I want to write.  Sorry there has been a gap.  But to keep things interesting for you... I was shared this yesterday and this section of the Bible and the "God of the Old Testament" is one of the questions I get the most.  Enjoy the videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hotJ7p0f9I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGVn1gaSsAs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf2lX1nYkKw

My Questions About American Religion #9 - Who are we? (part 2)

I needed to split this one up.

It is hard to talk about this part without the post in between.

And to be honest, I have been putting this one off. I will be open up front, I am a little sensitive about this one.  Mainly because I think God is sensitive about this one. I think that we have been duped when it comes to how God sees us as people.

So, in our church we have 3 main priorities:
1. Protect God's reputation at all costs!
2. Protect God's most prized creation - people.
3. Deal with the issues that keep you from doing 1 and 2.

And you MUST deal with them in this order.  If you try to deal with issues without trying to protect God's reputation or people first, it is a mess.  It may look a lot like the preacher I saw recently on the front of the MSN webpage.  The video of his service shows him walking down the aisle of his church openly calling out people by name telling the whole church what he thought of them.  He told one person that the person wasn't worth 15 cents.  This preacher was not only dealing with things out of proper order, but he needs to find another profession (but this will turn into a rant in a hurry so I will stop).

Not worth 15 cents????

OUCH!!!

I think that if you were to go out on the street and ask the average person on the average street how they feel about themselves an overwhelming percentage (narcissists excluded) would tell you they believe that they are inadequate, bad, unworthy. And people have tried to deal with this issue of what we want to label as "self esteem" in all kinds of ways. The educational system has tried to make everyone a winner. Sports programs give everyone a "participation trophy." It reminds me of the movie Parental Guidance where Billy Crystal is a grandparent that freaks out when he learns that no one strikes out in his grandson's baseball league.

We have tried to find ways to deal with this feeling. And they aren't working. Maybe because we are trying to go to the world's system to find things that only God can provide.

Enter the church... Guilt masters. And we have these well developed doctrines like "Total Depravity" that begin to promote this all to familiar feeling of inadequacy and unworthiness. In short, total depravity states that man is so messed up that we are absolutely incapable of finding God without His direct intervention. So, even our attempts to follow God come from His direct work in our lives.

While this doctrine is not without biblical case, I would submit that it is also not driven by the weight of the biblical narrative, but by small soundbites taken out of the context they were written into in the first place.  The biblical case that is made is a proof texting attempt to explain that sinking feeling of unworthiness that we deal with on a daily basis. And, it neglects much of what the Bible says to the contrary.

So, my question is, what does the Bible say about who we are to God? And how does He feel about us? And what are the implications of buying into that and of not buying into that?

To go back to the beginning (always a great place to start), God fashions the world and creates an ordered way in which the world is supposed to function. Then, he makes Adam from the dirt and places Adam in the garden with everything that he needs to succeed. God isn't holding out on Adam and waiting for him to fail, arms crossed in disappointed expectation. God gives Adam everything that He needs to succeed and sets Adam up in every way for success. Even to the point of God saying - okay I see one more thing that he needs, a companion.

He never held out on Adam. He never set Adam up to fail. God believed in Adam and Havvah from day 1 and made sure they were in position to succeed.

A separate thought that will lead to the same place...

Yesterday, I had what we call sermon club. It is a meeting where my staff and I get together and take the sermon series we are working on and brainstorm what the sermons for each week should look like. I love it! I get such a broader perspective on things there.

We were talking about Moses' conversation with God as God says His anger burned against the children of Israel. One of the people in the room said something to the affect of - you guys always talk about a good story and God isn't mad. How do you square that?

Good question...

When we get "mad" at someone, it is typically rooted in one of two places: either we want them to pay for what they did to us (which we would label justice), or we want some level of vindication for ourselves (this can be colluded and isn't necessarily tied to the person we are mad at. For example, my parents hurt me so I will hurt you to prove that I am not as bad as they say). Both of these are rooted in self and are not ever where God's anger comes from.

God's anger comes from a different place. God knits us together in our mother's womb, He marks our steps for us, and He fills us with tremendous potential. Potential to bring His Kingdom crashing into earth (this would be fulfilling the Gospel). When we are selling ourselves short of that created potential, He intervenes and says - I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!! You are robbing yourself of your created potential. Your life is so much more valuable than this. I cannot stand by and watch you rob yourself of the fullest life that I have for you anymore.

This is at the heart of ALL the prophets. Ezekiel reveals God as the Lord who strikes the Blow. Not as an angry God who we managed to get on His last nerve!! But as a God who can no longer take a passive stance as we walk down a path that leads us away from our created potential. And so, God intervenes. But always for the purpose of restoration so that we can know Him more, and He can bless us more than He ever has - and we can receive and handle that blessing well.

Even Lamentations - one of the most depressing books in the Bible when only read on the surface - gives us a hope in a God that is not upset at us and certainly is not trying to make us pay for our wrongs. Lamentations is what is called a "chiasm." This is a Jewish writing style that is essentially a poetic structure where the point of the poem is in the middle.  And the outsides of the poem mirror each other as they move toward the center. It would look like this: A-B-C-POINT-C-B-A. This would be an example.

Lamentations is a book full of mess and devastation and ruin. But in the middle, the point, there is a profound statement. "Because of the Lord's great love for us, we are not consumed. His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, the Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait on Him."

Perhaps at the core of following Jesus is this relentless proclamation that in the midst of the devastation and ruin this world offers, there is a better story - a deeper reality - a truer true. A life where the Creator of the universe looks at us with compassion that never fails. A life where God says you are worth more than you could ever imagine. And we keep insisting that this is the life that God invites us to.

And this is the point of this post. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard form the pulpit over the years (and unfortunately even taught this) that I am a mess, all jacked up, unworthy. This by the way comes from starting my story in a particular place in Scripture (that is about 3 chapters in - not at the beginning). But the bigger devastation in all this is that it forces me to fixate on the reality of how far I am from God's agenda for my life.  And while I want to take hold of God's best dreams for my life, I cannot.  Because I am too broken.

Paul says you are God's masterpiece. (Eph. 2) You are the crowning jewel in all of His creative work. So perhaps the better way to inspire people to follow God to the fullest is not to remind them of their fallenness, but to remind them of who their God is and how He really feels about them.

Which leads me to Jesus. If I hear someone say one more time that we are not worthy of the sacrifice Jesus made, I am going to scream! Because Jesus thinks you are. He gave his position up in heaven to become a man and to be brutally tortured and murdered on a cross for you. Not because you are not worthy, but in fact, because you are!!!! It was His good pleasure to do this. Perhaps the wonder of the cross is not in why Jesus died for such a worm as I, but much more in the fact that Jesus sees such potential in us, that He would count it His good pleasure to show us just how much we are worth.

That Jesus would see such potential in me that He would gladly give up everything to ensure that I can take hold of everything that He has for me to live out means more to me than you could possibly imagine. And this is GOOD NEWS!

If the story is told that I screwed things up so bad that Jesus had to come bail me out, then that only reinforces the lies that the world has been telling me since I was born.

It is the world that screams at us that we are not enough. It is the world that says we are unworthy, undeserving, and unimportant. And like Lamentations, in the midst of the chaos and mess that this world offers us, we serve a God who quietly comes to us and whispers in our ears, "You are worth more than you could possibly imagine. I love you. You are mine."

As followers of Jesus, then, we must be a people who quietly whisper like Jesus into our communities, our families, and even our own hearts. We must whisper with our actions as well as our words. We must tell people how God sees them. Not as messed up or hopeless or helpless. God see them as full of potential, precious, and worthy of His utmost efforts to ensure that they can become everything that He has created them to be.

So today, may we whisper worthiness to a world that screams insufficiency. May we live in our God given potential not our deceived brokenness. And may we tell the story of a God who's compassions never fail, and because of His great love for us, we are not consumed, but overcome.

Maybe that is what bringing the Kingdom of God crashing into earth is all about.

My Questions About American Religion #8 - What is the Gospel?

This word "Gospel" has been tossed around in the Christian world for a long time. It has taken on several nuances over the years that make it hard to define.

When a person shares a salvation message, they are often heard saying that they were sharing the Gospel. And this ranges all over the spectrum of how we share the salvation message. If I walk up to someone and ask them if they died tonight would they go to heaven, then I am sharing the Gospel.

When I talk about the crucifixion, I am sharing the Gospel. When I walk someone through a set of steps (which is totally different from church to church) and say "This is how you get saved." (which if that is true then someone is right and someone is wrong and there are a lot of deceived people out there), this is called sharing the Gospel.

For some, anytime that I talk about Jesus, I am sharing the Gospel because I am talking from the "Gospels."

For some, anytime that I am acting like a Christian in front of someone I am sharing the Gospel. And so all the Gospel is simply amounts to lifestyle choices.

But there is a verse that haunts me. Paul in his writing to the Galatian Church says that if an angel of the Lord or even if they themselves come to them preaching another Gospel other than the one they had already received, that person preaching would be eternally condemned. Even an Angel!

The hard part is that all these examples of how we label the Gospel sound different to me. And I think it would do us well go simply go back to the text and let it speak what it speaks and then adapt to that. So let's define the the Gospel and go from there...

First, the word Gospel means "good news." it is the greek word euangelion and it is not a uniquely religious term. Caesar sent out a euangelion when he became emperor. A bearer of Good News to the empire. Zeus was called the bearer of Good News and Hermes was called the bringer of Good News. Paul uses a play on this in Acts 13.

So we need to know that Good News and Gospel are synonymous and it is a message that is supposed to bring hope to all mankind.

But what message actually is the good news? What message actually is the gospel? Let's take a brief look...

Matthew 4:23 New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

Matthew 9:35 New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.

Mark 1:14-15 New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)

After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”

Luke 4:42-43 New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)

At daybreak Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them. But he said, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.”

Luke 8:1 New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)

After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him,

Luke 16:16 New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)

The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it.

Acts 8:12 New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)

But when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.

So critical for us to get this!!! When Jesus was killed, what was the charge? That He was a king. Why? Because His message was all about the Kingdom. And without running too far down this trail, this was also the message of the New Testament writers as well.

So why does this matter?  I am glad you asked!!!

Again, people pick up a larger story based on how and what you say. When your Gospel is a salvation message, it becomes about getting people "in" and making them "okay" and finding that saved/unsaved line and getting them across. Well, once that happens, we have no more to talk about. We have no more leverage to get people to grow up and guess what it produces... baby Christians. And what is the church full of?

But they have done what they needed to do in order to get where they needed to get. They are "in" and that is enough. So we can preach all we want to about people growing up in their faith or getting involved or investing in others, but there is not a single reason other than guilt to get people to actually do it. and so churches have become guilt masters.

But what if the problem with churches full of immature believers isn't that they are selfish, it is that our "Gospel" isn't quite the same Gospel of Jesus? What if there is a better Gospel?

I wold suggest that the GOSPEL is not ONLY a salvation message.  While it no doubt contains a salvation message, the Gospel is an invitation to live in a Kingdom that is not of this world. As Dwight Pryor says, it is a power at work in our midst. The Kingdom and how we can live in it with power and freedom - THAT is the Gospel. That is the good news. And that is what we should be preaching!!!

So the next question is what is the Kingdom? Well, Jesus tells 38 parables that we have recorded. 20 of them directly say that the Kingdom is like ... So here is our task! To find the principles Jesus up held and taught and inviting people to live with these guiding principles in their lives. And the Good News is that we have a God who has given us the power to do just that. And the Good News is that when we live in this way, we are free. And the Good News is that when we live in this way we have real Peace. And the Good News is that as we live in this way, we get closer and closer in our knowing of God and our created purpose. And we are more free and more whole - and that is what God cares about. And THAT is good news!

My Questions About American Religion #7 - Who are we?

This one is at the core of my being.  If I had one opportunity to give you one message, this would be the one I would share.  And as usual, it comes with some ground work...

There is a concept in the Jewish culture that I want to unpack for us here... the role of the firstborn, or in Hebrew - the behor.

The behor has a special role in the whole family.  It is the firstborn son, and he is responsible for some things that the rest of the children are not. First, he is responsible for carrying the family's values to the world. Second, he is responsible for instilling those values in the other children and making sure they uphold those values as they go out into the world. He is able to communicate and convey those values in ways that mom and dad just simply cannot. Third, he is responsible for taking care of mom and dad when they are old. Fourth, he gets 80% of the inheritance.  The other children split the other 20%.

My wife and I recently took a trip to Israel. And like most folks that go there, especially for the first time, we took about a million pictures. Some folks we know came to see the pictures and as we were sharing about this place and that photo, my son said, "oh, yeah. that is where 'this' happened or where 'that story' took place."

I have to admit, I was surprised and impressed.  I said, "Wow! that is pretty amazing that you remember all that."

He said, "I have to know all this, I am the behor!"

I choked a little. He gets it. He sees and is owning his responsibility to transfer our family legacy to the rest of the family.

There is an interesting Law in Torah that makes no sense at all unless you understand how significant this idea is to the Jewish family.

Deuteronomy 21:15-16 - "If a man has 2 wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love."

HUH?!?!?!? (I find myself saying that a lot lately) There are so many questions about this law. First, 2 wives? Second, I am having children with the one I do not love? How is that working out? Third, my children aren't just my children? Who their mom is decides my preference for them? ... I am sure your list could go on from here.

This should immediately make us think of a story from earlier in the text. And from a Jewish perspective, that is the point.

Jacob had 2 wives: Leah and Rachel. Rachel he loved and Leah he did not love. But Leah is having children and Rachel is not. Ruben becomes the firstborn son. And he should become the behor of the family.

Now think about this. The behor gets double portion in everything. when the other kids have one coat, the behor gets 2. So, when Rachel finally has a son - Joseph - and Jacob sees that, what does he do? He gives Jacob a second coat. What is Jacob saying? Joseph is the behor!

I wonder how would you feel if you were put in Ruben's position? Resentful? At least! And ultimately we see him try to kill Joseph.  And Joseph is thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, thrown in jail, forgotten.

Then the dramatic climax where the brothers are reunited (and it feels so good) =)

How is Joseph going to act? Like the real behor - Ruben? Or will he be the behor he was chosen to be all along?

He forgives. And in an instant we see 2 firstborns giving us an example of what it means to lead the family.

Fast forward 400 years. The children of Israel are getting ready to leave Egypt.  They kill the lambs, put blood all around the door, and walk through a bloody door symbolizing their new birth as the behor of all mankind for the Lord God almighty.  And they have a decision to make.  What kind of behor are they going to be? One that turns their back on their family when things get tough, or one that forgives? We have seen examples of both.

And God takes them to Mt. Sinai. And He says something there to them that is so precious.

Exodus 19:5-6 says, "Now if you obey me fully and keep my convenient, then out of all the nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation..."

As the behor of the nations, you will be a kingdom of priests.

We are given the same precious gift:

1 Peter 2:9 English Standard Version (ESV)

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

We now join the call of being a kingdom of priests for our God to the world. And that means something.  We have a responsibility.  We must uphold the responsibilities of the priest to the world.

The priest has essentially four responsibilities, but for the sake of space (that seems to be a theme in all this) we will focus on one - the Priest becomes the representation of their God to the world. Sounds an awful lot like a behor.

Which raises an interesting question that seems to be unrelated on the front end, but absolutely ties in on the back end - Why do we obey the rules?

Think about it. Why do you obey God? So He won't punish you? So He will approve of you? The only way to have these as motivations is to start your story in Genesis 3 (I told you this would keep coming up).

If we start your story in Genesis 1, we start with a God who is wholly enamored with us. He loves us fully and completely. no reservation, no condition - period. He cannot possibly love you more than He already does. You cannot earn God's love or make Him give you special privileges by obeying Him.

So then, why do we have to keep the rules?

Because we are the priests - the behor (The Scripture says that Jesus is the firstborn over all creation now, but that only serves to further my argument in that we are His representations to the world.). We are the ones who are responsible for giving the world an accurate picture of who our God is.

This is who we are: a Chose people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood. And we must tell the world an accurate story of who our God is.  I have said for a long time that if people could see God for who He really is, they would love Him.  How could they not? But a better question would be - how will they see Him? 

People try to come up with all kinds of explanations about who we are.  And it influences the Gospel they share (this will be tomorrow's post).  "We are all jacked up!" "We are a mess!" "We are sinners!" "We are all so unworthy!" 

While at some level these are all true (except for the unworthy part - that will be a post next week), they are not the story that God is telling in His Word. 

You are NEVER defined by your past, your mistakes, your shortcomings. You are a priest of the most high God. You are called and full of potential to bring the Kingdom of God crashing into earth. You are endowed with the power that only the Spirit of God provides to be greater in this world that anything that can be thrown at you.  You are more than a conqueror! You are a priest of the Most High God. You are chosen - on purpose, not by accident or chance. You are holy - set apart by a peculiar life of forgiveness in the midst of pain, generosity in the midst of takers, and love in the midst of other's selfishness. You are royalty.  And the One who holds all authority in heaven and on earth believes that you have what it takes to be JUST like Him.

You are the behor. Both special and noticed in God's eyes, and given a unique role in the rest of creation to tell an accurate story of a God who recklessly pursues us and will stop at nothing to get you to understand that He wants you to realize your FULL created potential and that you are FULL of created potential because He put it in you.

Try not to smile when you realize that the creator of the universe sees you as all these things and so much more. Oh, and by the way, when you and God disagree about who you are, He is right - always.

May you be full of the amazing story of God to the point that it bleeds out your pores and people are smeared with the Grace of God simply because they bumped into you.

My Questions About American Religion #6 - What should we know about the people who wrote the Bible?

Okay, sorry this one took so long to get to.  I needed some verification on a few things.

For the last 10 years or so I have been on this journey to understand the people who wrote the Bible. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one big one is that I don't think we give enough credit to how their frame of reference influenced what they said and how they said it. I will spend the rest of my life unraveling that reality, but suffice it to say that the Bible was not written by folks who lived or thought like 21st century Christians.

It was written by real people at a real time in a real place.  And that is significant. So, I have plunged myself into understanding the Jewish world of the 1st century.  And I'll be honest, I admire them - a lot. My good friends make fun of me. Not really gentile, not really Jewish.

What am I? Another label that we all joke with and laugh.  But it raises a question that I have gotten a lot. So are you saying that we should all become Jewish? Absolutely not. But not for the same reasons that I think most people would suggest.


Without question, I am deeply convicted that we (western Christians) have neglected our obligation to the Old Testament in general and specifically to Torah. And I would like to submit a perspective of what I see the Scripture actually doing.


God NEVER breaks His covenant. And Jesus reaffirms His intent to fulfill, not abolish the Torah. This would lead us to a couple of questions from the text.

First, Hebrews 7...

Paul, who wrote 15 of the 27 books of the new testament (if you give him Hebrews), wrote everything we have of his in Greek. Paul was not Greek, he was Hebrew. But he wrote in Greek to help a cross cultural context understand who Jesus is and how we relate to Him.

 Question: Where did Paul learn his Greek? And when expressing theological or biblical truths in Greek, where did he learn what words to use and how to use them? The obvious answer would be that he learned how to talk about God in Greek from the Septuagint (which is the greek version of the Old Testament and was written about 250 years before the time of Christ).

 On the surface, that doesn't sound all that profound. But dig a little deeper and we are going to see some huge ramifications that may very well push some hard buttons. If the Septuagint is the standard for expressing Hebrew thought in Greek, then it is not enough to do a Greek word study when we read the New Testament. We must also trace that word back to how it was used in the Septuagint and find its Hebrew equivalent because it is there that we understand what reality Paul or any other New Testament writer for that matter is trying to convey. And, when that concept doesn't exist in the Hebrew Scriptures, we often see Paul making words up. He often sticks words together that have never been done before because he is trying to convey an idea that has no basis or understanding in what he has previously studied.

 Quick example: Hebrews 7:18 says that there was an "annulment" of the preceding commands (the Law) because of its weakness and unprofitableness. Annulment is a strong word. In a legal sense, it means that the old Law (Torah) has been done away with. So, if the writer of Hebrews (we will say Paul) understands this Greek word from the Septuagint, then we need to see where it is used, and what is the Hebrew equivalent. The Greek word - "athetesis" - is only used one time in the Septuagint and that is found in 1 Samuel 24:11.

 A translation of the Septuagint says this: And behold, the skirt of thy mantle [is] in my hand, I cut off the skirt, and did not slay thee: know then and see to-day, there is no evil in my hand, nor impiety, nor rebellion; and I have not sinned against thee, yet thou layest snares for my soul to take it.

 The word for rebellion here is the same Greek word. And it translates the Hebrew word "pesha" which means rebellion or transgression.

 My thought: Paul is not trying to say that the New covenant "annuls" the Old covenant. From his understanding of how to communicate theological ideas from the only source for greek that would have given him that ability, he is saying that the Old Covenant created a rebellion that the new covenant can resolve through Christ. It does not, however, undo or annul what the old covenant does. It expands and unpacks it further.

Second Galatians 3...

Galatians 3:10 says that all who rely on the works of the Law are under a curse. Is Paul saying here that if we give space in our lives to the Torah that we are putting ourselves under a curse?  No way!

Here is the part I wanted to confirm before writing this post..

There are 3 parts to Torah. The first part is the "Cultic" Laws.  This would be those laws governing religious practice. The second part is the "Moral" Laws. This would be all the laws governing moral practice - don't lie, don't steal, don't murder, etc.

Then there is a 3rd section to Torah. In Hebrew it is called miqsat ma'aseh haTorah. In English this is translated "works of the Law." This section is specifically those parts of the Law that make one Jewish. And this is the part that Paul says is not where our hope comes from.

By the way, one of the central conversations in the Jesus community should be which laws go where. Because while we are free from becoming Jewish, I would submit that we are still obligated to the moral law - no doubt. And probably the cultic parts of the Law as well. No where are we ever freed from those. But I don't have time to pull that apart in this post.

The first written record that I am aware of concerning the Works of the Law is called MMT and is found as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is talmudic in nature which means that much of the content is interpretation and application more than direct quotation of Torah.  However, what it shows is that even though there is little written record, this existed easily within the first century religious conversation.

Now if we put this lens on and look at Paul's message, it changes things dramatically. Take a look at Acts 13 - Paul and Barnabas in Pisidian Antioch. When Paul preaches to the Jewish community there, the first message that he gives repaints all of Jewish history through the lens of Jesus.  And we would think that they would freak out.  But Acts 13:42 say in the ESV that as they left the synagogue, they begged Paul and Barnabas to come back and talk about this again at the next meeting.  And many of the devout Jewish leaders followed them and asked to hear more of that teaching.

So the next week, they come back and there are all kinds of Jews and gentiles present.  And the short version of Paul's message is this: because of Jesus, you gentiles are in too!!!  And then the Jewish people FREAK OUT!!

Jesus isn't the problem. That people don't have to be Jewish to be okay with God is the issue.  This is also what Paul is talking about in Ephesians 2 - we are saved by grace through faith not by works so that no one can boast.

Paul's conversation is not about whether or not we can earn salvation. It is about whether or not one has to become Jewish before becoming a Christian. And by the way, that was the fundamental battle being fought in the church in Rome and through the book of Romans.

And by the way this is the central piece to Paul's message where ever he went.

Am I saying that someone can earn their salvation? No, I am saying that that isn't the conversation Paul is trying to have in Ephesians 2. And that is important.

The implications for this are vast and profound and I have taken way too little space to discuss a very large topic.  But here are some of the reasons why this matters...

First, I believe that every word of the Scripture is inspired - all of it. And to claim that we are "New Testament" Christians has an underlying connotation that we are not "Whole Bible" Christians.  While we may not mean that, we say it, we spend our time in the New Testament, and we don't spend much time at all grappling with the Old Testament, we just say "Well that was the Old Covenant." and run away from it.

Again, that would be a part of the larger story that we are telling by the little bits and pieces that people hear from us.

Second, I do not believe that you can truly understand Jesus without understanding the Old Testament. Not just Jesus in the OT, but understanding the OT as it is - part of the unfolding story of God's redemption of all things.

Third, we will never be able to understand the New Testament and what it means without understanding the Old Testament as it is used through out the the New.  IT IS ONE STORY! And whatever the New Testament says, it says as a consistent part of what has already been said.

So, no, we don't need to become Jewish, but perhaps there is something to be said for embracing Jewish thought and practice.  For me, it has taken the Bible and the Christian life from black and white to full HD color!

My Questions About American Religion #5 - Why can't we question?

So here is an interesting little side track from our former trajectory... But it is something that has "emerged" (you might see the pun later) out of the discussion.

So, my whole life I have asked questions.  Drove my mom nuts.  In fact she may still be in therapy! (just kidding)

I have an insatiable desire to know - well, everything. It is more than just I want to be a life long learner. I have a driving passion to get to the thing below the thing. It drives my wife crazy at times too. And I get it. What would it be like to be married to someone who is analyzing every move you make, every word you speak, and the infinite meanings to the combinations of those 2 things.  It has to be exhausting. So, as I know that my amazing wife will be reading this, I want to say that I am sorry.

That being said, asking me to not analyze is like asking me not to breath. I can't help it. So, I won't stop  analyzing. I can't!

That leads me to my thought for this post...

Why is it that if I am asking questions of some things about American religion I begin to get labeled as part of certain schools of theological thought or certain "emergent" groups that are asking similar questions?

Why is it so important to know what my particular doctrinal school is?  And why would anyone assume that I can fit into one? And how can we assume that ANYONE would fit into just one theological system?

I mean, honestly, why do people work so hard to resolve these questions that have no simple answers?

For example, how old is the earth? And if I admit that the earth is in fact older than 6,000 years, am I an evolutionist? What if I think maybe the earth is over millions of years old? Do I not love God enough to believe what none of us were there to see?

How does God expect me to treat "those" people? whoever they may be...

Why does God allow suffering? I mean REALLY!  No trite answers here please!

What if I disagree with Piper or Driscoll on a theological issue? And heaven forbid that I would agree with Rob Bell!  I recently heard someone call N.T. Wright (who is one of the greatest theological minds of our time) a "waste of human flesh." Really? because you disagree with him? THAT is the label he gets?

A few years ago I read an awesome article written by Tony Campollo called "Where are all the liberal scholars?" His point, and I think a valid one, was that we don't have any voices in the church world that challenge the status anymore. Dobson says all there is to know about family. Piper says all there is to know about theology. And Swindoll still is the final word on preaching.  And we only put up with Rick Warren because you can't argue with how many copies of Purpose Driven Life were sold.

Don't get me wrong. I have read all these guys on these very issues. And I believe that what they say has great depth. But they are just a few of the great voices that should be at the table. Why can't a Tony Jones or Rob Bell influence the over all conversation on a topic?  We just might find that none of us knew as much as we thought we did.

And maybe that is the point.  That we want to know that we know.  So, we are constantly pushing towards resolution of things. Sermon, books, conversations, small groups - all these try to push us to resolution. And yet, when we are honest with ourselves, it didn't work.

There are multiple reasons why that might be true, but I want to address a couple. First, anytime you resolve something for someone, you take away their need to think about it anymore. Consider how Jesus taught. He leaves this open ended story that raises more questions than it answers, and then puts a hint in it (this is called a remez and it is found in everyone of Jesus' parables) but doesn't tell you where it is (except that we know it is in the text), so you have to start digging for it.

Jesus resolved almost nothing. but drove people to the Word and to their knees. And my experience has been that real teaching that inspires and compels us to grow up in our faith becomes the first word of many more words on a topic.  It is never the final word on anything.

Second, God's Word, which is full of wonder and mystery, leaves so many questions. From creation to how things are going to end, it raises WAY more questions than it answers.

And it seems that God likes leaving these questions there.  In fact, if you look at the people that God loves to use, they are often not the ones who have the best answers, but those who are asking better questions. So, why is it that if a person begins asking questions, they immediately get the "liberal" or "compromise" label attached to them?

What have I compromised? And where have I been so liberal?

Jesus was 12 at the temple and the text says that He was sitting with the rabbis and asking them questions.  And all the people marveled at His wisdom.  We often see the one asking questions as the one who is the uninformed. Jewish thought sees this the exact opposite. It is the better question that reveals that we have wrestled this through to a place to stand.

Here is my conclusion today... If being conservative means that I have to uphold a certain dogma and that I can never let people see the questions that I wrestle with pertaining to the lines of thinking I have been given, then I do not want to be conservative. But for that matter, I don't want to be liberal either. And I don't want to be emergent or traditional, or reformed, or neoreformed, or denominational or non-denominational. And I don't want to be fundamentalist or dogmatic. But I don't want to be a person who compromises my convictions either.

I guess when it all gets boiled down, I don't want to be labeled by people who are trying to stick me in a box that they are comfortable with so that they can believe that they know things about me without taking the time to really get to know me. And while I could really tout how they are missing out, I feel like I am the one who gets robbed.  I miss out on getting to know them as well.  And that is what hurts deeper. That they won't let me truly know them.

I will always continue to ask questions.  It is just who I am. And the idea that there are folks out there that won't be comfortable with that makes me sad.

If being a fundamentalist means that I have to adhere to a preset group of dogmas without questioning or challenging them, then I will never be fundamentalist. Nor do I want to be.  But that doesn't make me liberal or emergent either. Not only are these not the only options, but they aren't options at all in my mind.  I am just me. trying to live out my created design in the most God centered way possible. Hopefully, we can all find Jesus in the midst of that.

Sorry this is taking longer than I thought...

So, I have a friend in Jerusalem who is a Jewish Theology teacher at Yeshiva (university) in Jerusalem. I have a couple of specific questions about my next post that I am wanting to get some input from him on before I post so I am waiting for a response before I write.

So, here is a good blog post to keep you occupied while we all wait:

http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/11-things-i-wish-more-pastors-would-say

No blog post today...

I am researching for my next post and I need a few days to confirm some facts before I write. So, I will not be writing anymore through the weekend.  But I will attempt to post again on Monday.  Thanks for everyone who is reading.  I am blessed.

My Questions About American Religion #4 - How Many Stories Do We Have To Tell?

This one is a little sticky...

Very early on in the development of Christianity, there began to arise an "anti-Semitic" sentiment in Greek Jesus followers. The range of writings about this span from Augustine (A.D. 354-430) to Martin Luther (A.D. 1483-1586).  It seems that Gentile Christians have had it out for their Jewish roots almost from the beginning of the Christian movement.

Some Quotes:
"Augustine’s characterization of the Jews, their beliefs, and their practices is insulting, but it springs not from any real encounter with practicing Jews, but from his interpretation of their religious practices as understood through Scripture." - See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godandthemachine/2012/05/unwilling-witnesses-st-augustine-and-the-witness-doctrine/#sthash.tn3FDo9w.dpuf

His dependence upon Jewish tradition did not, however, prevent him from reproaching the Jews for not understanding, or not wishing to understand, the O. T. In his "Tractatus Adversus Judæos" he endeavors, as his main object, to prove from Scripture that the Law is fulfilled in Jesus, and that therefore Christians may rightfully have recourse to the O. T. even if they do not observe the Law. His endeavor to prove the Messianic character of Jesus from Psalms xliv., xlviii., and lxx. is very far-fetched; as well as his plea for the rejection of the Jews, based on Isaiah ii. and Mal. i. 10, 11. He says on this point, "If the Jews in the Isaiah passage [verse 5] understand 'the house of Jacob' to be equivalent to 'Israel,' because both names were borne by the patriarch, they only show how incapable they are of comprehending the true contents of the O. T.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2136-augustine#anchor9

Martin Luther wrote an entire book called The Jews and Their Lies. In it, he writes:
"I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them. I would not have believed that a Christian could be duped by the Jews into taking their exile and wretchedness upon himself. However, the devil is the god of the world, and wherever God's word is absent he has an easy task, not only with the weak but also with the strong. May God help us. Amen."

"Therefore the blind Jews are truly stupid fools..."

"Now just behold these miserable, blind, and senseless people ... their blindness and arrogance are as solid as an iron mountain."

These are just a few of the absolutely horrendous things that have been said over the generations by well meaning "Christian" theologians trying to deal with the relationship between Jews and Christians.

Frank Viola in his book Pagan Christianity addresses the roots of this and ties it to Constantine legalizing Christianity and needing to separate it from the Jewish roots of Christendom.

I don't know where it all started for sure. But I know that it sure is prevalent in the church today. I recently had a conversation with a man who has been in ministry for 42 years. As my dad and I were talking with this man about our trip to Israel, he said very matter of fact like, "You know why that place is a desert over there? Because it is no longer under God's blessing."

HUH?!?!?!

Here is an opening thought... God NEVER breaks His covenant. God doesn't just change His mind mid-stream to make another provision. He doesn't have to.

And that is a big deal. Because if that is true, then from creation to the end of things, God story is being told as  He intended it to be told.

But do we talk about the Bible that way?

Here is the story I was raised in and taught over and over again all the way through my advanced theological education...

God created this perfect world.  We messed it up. So, God came up with another way to work among His people - the Law. Jews messed it up. So they got replaced (whether that is a full blown "replacement theology" or some lesser version of it) by the church. And through Jesus we have NEW understanding and therefore we must read the Bible from Jesus to the end.  We are NEW TESTAMENT Christians. it is a new story that replaces the old story that replaced the first story.

I know that some of you reading this are saying... It's not that simple.  I know, it never is.  And what about the prophecy of Genesis 3:15, blah , blah, blah...

I am not defending or critiquing any theological positions. I am simply talking about how we actually talk about the story being told in the Bible. Because regardless of our theological and doctrinal positions, we talk about things in a certain way.  And that is what people catch.

It is almost as if God has to keep adapting to us. By the way, this may very well have its roots in the fact that most folks start their story in Genesis 3 - with man.  And because of the western focus on self first, we see the story of the Bible from ourselves out rather than as it was perhaps intended. If we start our story in Genesis 1, Then we start with God telling the story.  And the rest of the Scripture is a continual unfolding of His story that was, is, and will always be His. So there are no "new" twists and turns.  There is no need for "adaptation" by God to make up for our silliness.

So, what does Jesus mean when He says in the upper room, "The cup represents a 'new covenant' in my blood?"

Well, that is what I really want to address in this post. What is God's view of covenant? And based on that, what are the implications for how we tell the story (or stories)?

Anytime that God works with mankind, He works with us in covenant. I will briefly touch the 3 major Jewish covenants and of course our new covenant.

After the flood, God came to Noah and made a covenant with him that God would never destroy the earth with water again.

God came to Abram, and changed his name to Abraham and made a covenant with him that the whole world would be blessed through his offspring, that God would give him a promised land, that he would be the father of many nations (true of both the Jews and the Arabs), and that whomever blessed him and his offspring would be blessed and whomever cursed them would be cursed.

Genesis 17:13 says this is to be an everlasting covenant. Does God know how long everlasting is? I think He has a pretty good idea.

God made a covenant through Moses with the Jewish people. His covenant is that they would be His treasured possession (Exodus 19:5-6), a kingdom of priests (this will be another post down the line as well). They are to be for Him an example to the world of who He is.

There are lots of other covenants God made with His people as well. (i.e. priestly, Davidic) What I would ask is this...

Did God undo the Noahic Covenant in order to make the Abrahamic covenant? Are we still under the rainbow?

Did God undo the Abrahamic Covenant to make the Mosaic covenant? Were God's people still special and blessed among the nations?

There is never an example in all the covenants that God made where God undoes one covenant to make another.  That is not the way covenant works.

Matthew 5:17-19 (ESV) - Jesus said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For, truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Did Jesus intend to do away with any of the former covenants? He didn't do away with Noah's covenant. He can't break Abraham's covenant, it is an everlasting covenant. And He flat out says that He is not abolishing the Mosaic covenant? So what is this "New covenant" thing He talks about and why does this matter to us?

The way covenant works is pretty straight forward. God is telling a story with this world He made and He is inviting us to be a part of it. There are points in which He reveals new pieces of Himself, and this is at the heart of making a new covenant.  But never EVER does a new covenant negate the older ones - EVER.  They are simply a further unfolding of what already is. And so Jesus doesn't negate the "Old Testament." in fact He validates and honors it.  He unfolds the heart with which we must honor Torah.

So am I saying that we should all be Jewish? No, but that will be another post as well.

Here is the bottom line: God has been telling His story since the creation of the world. And what we must remember as modern Christians is 21st century, western Christianity not the crowning achievement of His story.  His story has been continually unfolding for a long time and we have been grafted into THAT story, not the other way around.

There is only one story. From Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 it is all one story.  Perhaps there is a better label to put on us than "New Testament" Christians. We are either a part of the story that has always been true and continues to be told or we are not.

There are some profound implications that I will state here for the sake of discussion but will not build much of a case for because this is already too long...

1. We cannot negate the first 2/3's of the Bible because that is the "before Jesus" stuff. That is not only detrimental to our understanding of God and the story He is telling, but it is also hypocritical because...

2. If we say we believe in "plenary verbal" inspiration of the Scripture (every word fully inspired by God), then we cannot treat parts of the Bible as more important than others. Even in a philosophical sense, that doesn't work. But it certainly doesn't work in practice.

3. I do not believe that you can truly know Jesus without knowing the Old Testament well. Not just Jesus in the Old Testament, but the Old Testament as it is intended, written, and interpreted. Everything that Jesus did, and everything that Jesus said is anchored in the Old Testament Scriptures.

It is important for us to understand that we don't have multiple tracks working in the mainframe of the story God is telling.  And that the Jesus covenant doesn't undo the Mosaic covenant. It expands, broadens and deepens what already is.  This is how God has worked from the beginning. And that is where we start our story.

My Questions About American Religion #3 - What are we trying to build?

To begin this post, I want to state a couple of things.  I have planted 2 churches.  Both of these churches are "mega-churches." I have no problem with big churches and I have no intent of leaving them to go pull away and be a part of some monastery. Although there are days when the idea sounds appealing. =)

Let's go back and think about beginning in the beginning. If the story we are telling is an invitation to return to God's original agenda for His creation, then we need to consider what that is so that we can make sure we are a part of it. And it is time to introduce the first of many Hebrew concepts for this series... Shalom.

Shalom when translated means peace. But we must make sure that we have an accurate understanding of "Peace" from a Hebrew perspective. Now, this is not a blog to exhaust what Shalom is, there is much written about that already. But a quick survey would be useful I think in grappling with the issue at hand.

Peace in the western mind is often translated as the absence of conflict. This definition of peace demands that we have circumstances that are acceptable to us in order to have peace. And this creeps into our lives much more than I think we realize. Even for those who would absolutely call themselves a follower of Jesus, when circumstances are bad we have a tendency to trust the truth of our circumstances, not the truth of God's agenda.

To interject a tangent thought here: if you start your story in Genesis 3, then all of your circumstances start bad. The whole universe is under suspicion. This is magnified by a very western metaphysic that touts that the universe is utter chaos. Our job, then, if we want to have peace is to control it. So we strive to understand, control, and predict the universe believing that in doing so, we can have peace. Not to go all Dr. Phil on us here, but "How is that working for us?"

Peace is the Eastern mind comes from a different place.

The Hebrew perspective is that the universe is effectively ordered by a God that is first of all Sovereign, and second of all in His nature He is good.

There are 2 ways to understand this and for the sake of time, I am simply going to propositionally state them. First, Galatians 5:22-23 says that the fruit of the Spirit (in other words, the evidence that the Spirit is working in your life) is love, joy, PEACE, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. This would mean that peace - whatever it is - is a gift of God working in your life, not a circumstantially based reality.

Second, when the Spirit is working in our lives we are becoming more and more like Jesus in our daily lives. This brings us more and more in line with God's agenda for this world. So, if the creation story is about a proper ordering of creation in all of its facets (which it is at one level), then perhaps walking with Jesus closer and closer is at least in part about restoring the order that God has for His creation.  

Peace then, comes from the realization that everything is in fact just as it should be.  Peace comes when we own and live the reality that this is God's world. It always has been God's world. And it always will be God's world. And no amount of Chaos will ever ultimately change that, although it will try to make you believe that it has.

To state it another way, Shalom (peace) is trusting that God's agenda for this world is right and cannot be stopped.  Therefore I can rest regardless of the circumstances I am currently experiencing.

And it would seem that God's invitation for us as followers of His would be to partner with Him in the restoration of Peace - to people, and to this world.

One major implication of this is that the church as God gave it to us should be about the restoration of peace in all that we do.  And what we are building is not so much about buildings, budgets, and butts in seats; it is more about wholeness, healing, and hope for today and tomorrow.

Now, one of the major obstacles that we face is trying to square western values with biblical principles. Typically, when we have these dichotomies, the principle loses. Not so much because we reject it, but often we simply have no frame of reference for it to play out in our lives.

We have been raised in a culture that loves bigger, faster, stronger, and dominance. Competition is at the core of what drives this. Comparison, keeping score, building huge organizations, more money, more power - these are all by products of a worldview that starts in a very different place than the biblical worldview.

Now, before we go any further, I want to restate that I have no problem with big or fast or strong. God gives these things to certain people, organizations, and teams. I am simply saying that perhaps, chasing these ends is not only robbing you of the peace that God offers, it is not at all what God is asking us to give to the world.

So, are we asking the right questions when we go to a conference on how to "Grow the church?" Or is the desire to grow the church even a good desire? And are bigger and better buildings a good investment with Kingdom dollars?

I am going to say - Yes.  And No! It will all depend on what truly is the motivation of our hearts as we spend this money to do these things. Are we trying to "win?" or are we trying to restore what is broken?

There is this thing in all western cultures because they start with the self and work out from there that makes self preservation a primary concern for the humans being.  My stuff, my protection, what I want and what I need all takes precedent over the good of the community.  And this bleeds all over the church. While we try to talk about giving, loving and serving, we are so self motivated that we still bounce from church to church looking for something that entertains, or that meets "my needs" because that is what this is all about after all.

Consequently, we find ourselves trying to build these massive organizations that we call church and we try to pass it off as a noble effort, but it has much more to do with bigger, faster, stronger domination than it does anything else.  And we can try to spiritualize this. We are winning over satan! We are dominating the devil!  But the whole need for winning and dominance is rooted in a faulty worldview to begin with so it creates an unresolvable tension between our teaching and our organizations that people can feel.  And while they may not be able to put their finger on it, they can certainly tell that something isn't right.

Again, this isn't a bash against large things.  It is an observation about the motivations that cause us to build them in the first place.  There are those movements of God where big things happen. You cannot stop it and often can't account for what happened exactly although many people try to because they want to "reproduce" the growth. And so we write books and then define our system and people try it and it doesn't work and they wonder why and often feel more inadequate than they did before (guess where they are starting their story).

Perhaps, the better approach would be consider wholeness and how we restore peace to a chaotic world, rather than growth and how we make a big church. Getting a bunch of people in a room is easy. helping them let go of the brokenness that they have defined themselves by and experiencing freedom and hope and peace... THAT is a whole other ball game.  It is messy and challenging.  And forces me to deal with my stuff along the way as well.

Maybe part of our battle is that we are trying to morph God into our western "Empire building" mindset and I would submit that a big piece of the tension we feel between what we are teaching and what we want to have happen is that we are incongruent. Maybe we must choose between focusing on getting bigger and becoming whole.  And like the scriptures teach - Paul planted, Apollos watered, but God makes it grow.

I will close with a story. 

10 years ago, my marriage nearly fell apart. I was in a fast growing church with lots of recognition. It was a pastor's dream job and yet I found myself ready to run away and leave it all.  And the cost of living with the pressure of keeping up and producing more and more was way more than I was able to handle. There is only so much pressure one can take before they crack and eventually break.

I found myself at the end of my faith. And since I was there already, I decided to question everything.  And I mean EVERYTHING! Do I believe in God? Do I believe in church? Do I believe in the Bible? Why do I do what I do? Is that okay?

With the help of some great friends, here is where I landed... Ministry is supposed to give life, not take it away. How can I walk and work with the giver of life and not have any?

Second, when ministry doesn't give life, it is because I am doing things from my own power, not the Lord's. And while we all visit that place, I was living there because of the reasons that were driving me to build a large church in the first place.

Third, God cares way more about my wholeness than my production. He never says that I have to have a church of a certain size, but often says that I am to be free, healed, and transformed. I cannot care about what God cares about if my goal is to grow a big church.

Fourth, within our culture, we are invited to build our own empire.  We are encouraged to amass wealth and to find security in the possession of this wealth. God invites us to peace. And Jesus is right when He says you cannot chase both.  You will love one and despise the other.

So, I pose this question to you... Empire or Shalom? which are you chasing? is it working?  What are you building?