Infrastructure & Kingly Gifts

It's not sexy to talk about building or maintaining an infrastructure, but just try to change the world without one. - Seth Godin

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/10/infrastructure.html

In the A29 Network we talk about leaders as prophets, priests, and kings, based on the three offices of Jesus. (I'm not actually sure where this paradigm for leadership originated, but it's the only place I hear the language.) Every leader will be have a primary strength area, a secondary strength area, and then an area that they are weak.

Prophets are leaders who speak the truth. They cut through the confusion and clarify what it happening. They are visionaries.

Priests are leaders who love. They love the people around them, are compassionate, and make people feel cared for.

Kings are leaders who organize. They plan. They are strategic. They understand how seemingly disconnected parts work together and the implications of decisions.

Kings are the ones responsible for infrastructure, and as per the quote above, are typically the ones who get ignored (at least in church ministry). Their work happens in the background, and if they are really good at what they do, their work disappears. You never see it. You just experience it.

Take Apple: Steve Jobs was the prophetic leader. He had a vision. He was (apparently) often brash. He knew what he wanted. He got things done by the sheer force of his personality. He's the one who saw the iPhone in your hand before you even knew you wanted an iPhone.

Tim Cook, on the other hand, is a kingly leader. He organizes. He's the reason the thousands of little parts in your iPhone come together at just the right time, in just the right time frame, in just the right quantity, at just the right profit point, so that the iPhone that someone else envisioned actually ends up in your hand.

Steve Jobs (rightfully) got credit for his vision. Tim Cook (rarely, at least in the general public) gets the credit for almost certainly being the most effective kingly leader on the planet. His work disappears. We look at the phone in our hand and think, "amazing!" Rarely do we stop and think about what was required to make 13 million of them, ship them to multiple countries, and sell them all in three days, with enough stock remaining to do that again in a few weeks in nine more countries, then within three months to well over 100 countries. In fact, the only time you'd think about it is when there is a glitch in the system: when you show up to the Apple Store and they don't have exactly the model that you wanted in that exact moment.

The main problem is assuming you don't need the kingly gifts in your organization. That's what most churches do, in my experience. They love the priests (how could you not? They are so caring!). They love the prophets (they give good sermons!). Kings aren't even on the radar, even though organizations are simply not effective unless there is someone without the kingly gifts in a high level of leadership. That's why many church organizations remain small. You can't get anywhere unless you have an infrastructure that actually allows for the ideas you have to come to fruition, and the people you have to be organized into a meaningful movement.

Why the Resurrection Matters

Another Easter Sunday has come and gone and with it, the temptation to let the "Resurrection" fade into the background much the same as Christmas fades into the past and we are left paying off our credit cards from over-celebration. We don't celebrate in the same fashion for Easter. Despite the attempts to commercialize it with the Easter Bunny, new outfits, and candy, it still remains primarily a religious holiday that isn't recognized by people other than those who identify with Christianity. Yet the temptation to move on with our lives and compartmentalize the truths of the resurrection is just as much of a temptation as it is to throw out the wrapping paper and mentally move on to the next big event.

Easter is fundamentally different than Christmas, however. While the events of Christmas are incredibly important and contain a great deal of doctrinal truth, they don't stand on the same level as the events of Easter. In fact, the events of Christmas have no value whatsoever apart from Easter, since the death and resurrection of Jesus are the culmination of everything that he came to accomplish. If they never occurred, then his birth, life, and whatever else occurred would still have been interesting, miraculous, potentially life-altering even if we chose to use Christ's life as an example, but not near as important as they are because of the events of Easter weekend. I'm not sure if the importance of the resurrection can be overstated: if it doesn't happen, there is no hope, there is no ultimate salvation, and practically there is no foundation for the church. The first two points are theological in nature and I won't address them here. It is that last point–the practical necessity of the resurrection for the church–that I want to address.

As we examine the broader culture (at least of America) it's easy to notice that there are some very sharp disagreements regarding how we view various cultural issues. Pick any issue you'd like, and chances are you can find not just diverse views on the subject, but polarizing views. Our tendency is to believe that these disagreements are themselves the problem, but they aren't. They are a symptom of the problem. The real problem, as it turns out, is that we are standing on fundamentally different foundations.

Imagine that the two of us were standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, and we began to describe to one another what we see. To a certain extent, our descriptions may seem similar. We might describe a deep gorge, the relative color of the dirt and clay, the vastness of what we are viewing. As we go further in our descriptions, however, they inevitably begin to diverge. One of us argues that the canyon is a thousand feet deep, the other says it is only a couple of hundred feet. Perhaps we argue about the vegetation, or what it is that makes it so beautiful, or how the sun sets–or rises–on the opposite end of the canyon. Soon we would find that our disagreement is so sharp, that it is impossible for us to figure one another out. We end up completely polarized, convinced that the other person is a lunatic.

Of course you may have already figured out the problem. We are viewing the same canyon, but from two different vantage points. Where we are standing makes all the difference in recognizing why it is that we disagree on our perspective. Once we understand that we are not even fundamentally seeing the same things, we can come to terms with the fact that we disagree.

This is why the real issues of culture have nothing to do with our perspectives on the issues, and have everything to do with the foundation on which we are standing. Christians in particular have taken for granted that for the vast majority of the history of the United States, most of the population stood on a similar foundation. Call it "Judeo-Christian values" or whatever you wish, but really it was just the foundation that there was a God and that we could find out more about him in the Bible. I don't assume that the entirety of the country was Christian, let alone religious, but at very least the foundation was roughly similar. Thus, if there were disagreements on certain subjects, they weren't extreme. We might be arguing about the color of the clay in the canyon, but at least we are looking at the same clay.

Unfortunately that foundation has shifted and the vast majority of culture is no longer standing on the same foundation. This is the effect of post-modernity that claims that there are no universal truths. One of the impacts of this was the supposed destruction of the meta-narrative, which is by it's nature a comprehensive truth claim. Of course the theory falls on it's head. Even saying that there is no universal truth is a comprehensive truth claim about how the world works, it simply shifts the responsibility for decision making to the individual, rather than the universal. Again, claiming that every decision is up to the individual is a universal claim. Thus the meta-narrative was not done away with, but simply changed, and as a result, we find that when we are describing what appear to be similar issues, they are not the same at all. Those of us who are Christians are standing on an entirely different foundation than those who are not-Christians, and vice versa.

This in itself is not a bad thing, it is just something that simply "is". If anything, it provides an opportunity for Christians to have more clarity about what it is that they actually believe. I also think that it should provide Christians more opportunity to have grace with skeptics, since we ought to understand that the issues is not a disagreement, per se, it is a foundational issue. We are not standing on the same footing. We aren't looking at the canyon from the same angle. I can't expect my skeptic friend to see the world from the same perspective that I do, unless we first understand where it is that we are standing.

All of this brings me back to the church, and my original point about the practical need to remember the resurrection. Over the past decade, at least, and perhaps longer than that, post-modernity has come into the church in a variety of ways. The easiest entry way has been to offer differing perspectives on traditional Christian perspectives. Some of those perspectives have been healthy and offered appropriate correctives in the church. Like all institutions (and individuals, I might add), when you have held onto a particular belief long enough, you typically end up abusing it in it's application. For example, the longer you believe you are a safe driver, the less likely you are to use your seat belt. The better you are at a particular activity–skiing, for example–the more likely you are to push the limits verging into the unsafe, even for an expert. The same goes for churches. What might begin as a helpful doctrine or tradition can end up being abused in the long run, in desperate need of correction and a reminder of where the application should begin and end. Other perspectives, however, have not been corrective in nature, but downright incorrect. As a seminary professor said, "the only corrective to bad theology is better theology." Unfortunately many of the critiques in the last decade have not been better theology, but just more bad theology from a different perspective. The pendulum might swing to embrace it, but it doesn't mean that we are any better off. Change for changes sake is not necessarily a good thing. So how do we combat these perspectives? The answer is the resurrection.

The resurrection provides Christians with the foundation on which unity can be built as a church, for at least two reasons. The first reason encompasses both Jesus death, and resurrection, which puts all Christians on the same plane. If Jesus death and resurrection are real, historical events that happened and on which Christianity is based, so that faith and confidence in those events is essential to being a Christian, then the very nature of them mean that all of us arrive into this new kingdom of God on the same train. No one gets in on their own power. No one is more righteous than another. In fact, we all have the same righteousness from the same savior and get in on the same ticket.

The second reason that the resurrection is necessary is that it proves that Jesus is the king of this new kingdom, and thus, he gets to set the expectations. I believe that one of the chief reasons that some of the sharp disagreements that the church has experienced with the culture have become sharp disagreements within the church itself is that many within the church have unwittingly shifted their foundation. This was more evident than ever in the week leading up to Easter when a variety of articles were published claiming to come from Christian sources, but as I examined them, I noticed that they weren't Christian at all. They claimed to have a similar value structure, but they so minimized the death and resurrection of Jesus that those two events were no longer the foundation on which they based the rest of their so-called "truth". Realizing that meant that I could accept their conclusions at face value–as the author's opinion–but also realize that they weren't Christian perspectives, even though they claimed to be. It has become increasingly easy for people in the 21st century church to disagree with Jesus, or try to change his words to fit our meaning, and the reason that we can do it is because we, essentially, deny the power of the resurrection or take it to mean something it doesn't mean. The resurrection is not hope just for hope's sake; it is hope because it revealed that Jesus really was who he said he was. Jesus really was God incarnate who had the ability to defeat death on our behalf. The power of the resurrection wasn't limited just to him; it's a power that all who put their faith in Christ have access to. Far from being just some nebulous, ill-defined hope, it is a hope that very clearly identifies Jesus as God of very God, and King of every King. In other words, if we believe the resurrection is true, we don't get to disagree with Jesus.

As believers, then, the starting point for our unity must be the resurrection of Jesus. This is what gives him His claim to authority, as well as clarifying for us why we don't get to be authoritative in our own right. The Resurrection is the foundation on which the Christian views the rest of the world. When we stand on the power of the Resurrection, then we may still discuss and dialogue about what, exactly, Christ believed, but we don't get to disagree with Jesus or the rest of the Bible, or interpret it to fit our cultural milieu or cultural understanding at the time. Rather we stand on the authority of Christ himself.

If there are sharp disagreements in the church, I am much less interested in knowing what you think about the disagreement, and much more interested in knowing what you think about Jesus. Is he the risen Lord, or not? If he is, then you and I can both submit our opinions to his. If he isn't, then we're not on the same foundation to begin with, and I don't care much that you disagree with me. We'll never agree on what the canyon looks like so long as we are standing on different lookouts.

This is why we can't put Easter in the past. Easter Sunday, and what it represents, are not just a day in the life of the church calendar, but the foundation on which every day must be built. To the extent that we remember that, we'll have a united church. To the extend that we forget it, we'll be divided. It might really be as simple as that.

Saturday Night

I signed in to the blog to write a new post about something that's been on my mind since this morning, but decided against it for the time being. (It was going to be about an article I read on a proposed legislative change in Maine that would require non-profit organizations to pay property taxes, but I'll save that for another day. It's probably not as disinteresting as you might imagine, and it has potentially much more profound effects than you may realize...) In any event, I decided to write a brief note on what I do on Saturday nights. 

Saturday nights are about brain rested and engaged, all at the same time. If it's been a good week, and I'm well-prepared, then I've just gotten done with my two-day weekend, starting on Friday morning and going through the day on Saturday. Sunday, my week starts up again, and it starts up with a bang. It's my busiest day, and it requires by far the most mental energy, for at least two reasons. I'll preface this by saying that this isn't intended to be a "woe is me" story. It is just how things are.

The first reason that Sunday requires a lot of mental energy (if you care about the people in your church) is that most people are coming in on Sunday and they are burned out from the week. They are tired, they are in need of encouragement, they want to hear what God has to say, they want to be built up, challenged, equipped, and then sent on their way, and the expectation is that it's my job to do that for them, or at least, to do my best. Because I care about the people in my church, I want that for them. I want to take the Bible and explain it to them in a way that matters for the real, everyday life. I honestly believe that if "Christianity" is just something you do on Sundays, then it's worthless. It has to have traction in the rest of your life; it has to have as much meaning when you show up at work on Monday as it did to you on Sunday. In other words, I don't think that Christianity is something that you do to make you feel good. I don't think it's something that "works for some people" but doesn't work for others, as if religion really is just a pick-one-that-makes-you-feel-good affair. I think that Christianity either has to offer a meaningful and rationale explanation for why things are the way that they are, so that it actually offers real answers that matter or it's really nothing. To say it another way, what we believe has to ultimately touch every square inch of our lives in some fashion; hence, there is no square inch of life that cannot be explored, examined, and considered.

The second reason that it requires so much mental energy is that to actually offer that meaningful insight into life in a way that matters means that physically speaking, you are going to engage a significant percentage of your brain. There was a Mythbusters episode that sought to prove (or disprove) the myth that humans only use about 10% of your brainpower. As they tested, they noticed that there were ways that would engage a significantly greater percentage of brainpower, as in when you were doing multiple things at the same time. For example, if you were walking around, reading, speaking, and recalling a story all at the same time. Anyone who has every done any public speaking already knew that experientially, but it's actually backed up by science. If you've ever wondered why you are so exhausted after speaking to a group of people (even if you enjoy it!), this is the reason. It requires far more coordination of various brain functions than most people realize.

This is the reason that a Saturday night is both simultaneously about resting and engaging all at the same time. It's like stretching. Or mental yoga. Yoga, because I try to focus on what it is that I'm going to say on Sunday. Stretching, because I'm trying to warm up my brain just enough so that it's ready to go, but not so much that it's already tired.

At the end of the day, though, the reason I try to engage/rest on Saturday goes back to that idea that tomorrow, I feel a burden for the truth of God and for the people of our church. I want to make the connection between those two things: here is what is true, here is what that means for us when we get out of here. I have enough confidence in God's power, and enough trust in our church, that even if I totally blow it and whiff (or, as I've thought in the past, if I Charlie Brown it) I know that they are going to be okay and they are going to come back next weekend. There's more than enough grace to go around!

On the other hand, I know that I've got 30 minutes. And then for most of us it's back to the grind. Back to real life. Back to figuring out what God and Jesus and the Bible actually have to do with my bills, my family, my work, my co-workers, my neighbors, and everything else that sucks the life out of me during the week. Here's to hoping that 30 minutes is time well spent.

Vision, Leadership, & Teamwork

I don't like meetings.

Actually, let me rephrase that.

I actually enjoy meetings. I just don't like what they do to people.

Meetings give the impression of valuable work, when nothing is actually getting done. They give the attendees the nspiration, but often that inspiration never generates into the perspiration required to actually accomplish the mission. 

Early on in our church planting adventure, there was a weekly (weekly!) meeting of leadership to discuss what was happening in the church and strategize for the future. Those meetings were never dull; it's one of the benefits of enjoying the company of the people you work with. Unfortunately it also gave the impression that a lot was getting done when in reality, almost everything we wanted to do was stuck in committee. A lot of good ideas were getting thrown out, but nothing was actually being done when the meeting was over.

That culture tends to attract the type of people who want to be in "leadership", but weren't leading anything, and in many cases, didn't want to lead anything. They just wanted to be at the meeting, because the perception was that this was where the "power" was generated. If they were at the meeting, they'd have input, and input equalled influence.

Someone said once that "culture eats strategy for lunch". That is, you can have the best strategy in the world, but your culture is going to be the dominant force that will ultimately dictate what you can get done. Anyone leading an organization knows how difficult it is to change the culture of the organization. Yet that's what we needed to do right from the get go. Meetings couldn't be the pinnacle or the destination of our work; they were more like the rest stop on the side of the highway.

Imagine your leadership team as a caravan of vehicles all headed towards a destination down the highway. A meeting is like the rest stop. They are necessary. Sometimes you need to make sure that the caravan of vehicles is all relatively close together so you didn't lose one another. It is good to catch up and make sure no one accidentally took an exit ramp since the last meeting, and make sure that no one is so far ahead that they aren't really a part of the caravan anymore.

Meeting based cultures are like the caravan that gets stuck at the rest-stop and keeps going inside to check the map. They may have the map memorized. They know where they've been, they know where they are, they know where they are going. But they never move.

We needed a leadership based culture. A leadership based culture is the caravan on the highway that only stops at rest-stops to make sure that the group was all still together, that they were all still headed in the same direction, and that no one was too far ahead or too far behind. In other words, the eal work gets done outside of the meeting. That was the cultural change. Unless you were doing work outside the meeting, you really didn't need to be at the meeting. If you weren't a part of the caravan, there was no need for you to stop and interface with us about the direction we were headed.

In any event, that change took some time, but now we have a leadership team that understands that the real work of ministry doesn't happen in the meeting. It happens in the nitty-gritty of daily relationships; the stuff that happens between the meetings. As our church has grown, that change in thinking becomes essential. Firstly, there is simply more ministry to be done. More people means more needs. The only way that those needs can be met is if you have leaders capable and passionate about their area of ministry. And secondly, the bigger the church and the more needs, the less time that I as the pastor have to dedicate to any one area. There is a divergence between my time and ability and the needs of the church. Other leaders need to step up.

Last night, we had our monthly ministry-leadership meeting, and I reminded them of three things that make the system work. Vision, Leadership, and Teamwork.

Vision means that we are all seeing the same thing. As the lead pastor, that falls on me to make sure that what I see is what we all see. In our case as a church, that means a radical and intense focus on visitors and new families who have been attending. This is necessary for us as more and more people join our church, but also necessary if we expect more and more people to join. We constantly need to be asking, "how does a new person view this thing?" "How does a new person feel about this?" "Does a visitor at Restore feel comfortable?" Each of us play a role in making sure that happens so that when a new person comes into Restore, they see the same thing wherever they turn or whatever leader they turn to. "This is a church who loves Jesus. This is a church who loves me."

Leadership means that we steward our position well. It means moving the ball forward. It means taking ownership. It means taking responsibility and having authority. it means stewarding our position well, so that if we ever have to turn it over to the next guy or gal, they can pick up where we left off. It means that we aren't just concerned with getting the job done now, but ensuring that we can get the job done months or years down the road when instead of 200 people we are dealing with 300 or 400. Have we been stewarding our influence and position in such a way that ministry can continue, even if we cannot?

Teamwork means understanding our position as part of a team. We are not lone rangers. We are not silos of ministry. Everything that we do impacts and affects someone else on the team or someone else in the church. If the team decides that we are going to use a particular church software to streamline our ministries and make them more efficient, it requires that everyone play their part in making that happen. For one person to be apathetic about it means that someone else will have to pick up the slack. We simply can't do our jobs alone; we need one another if we are going to have the healthiest church or organization possible.

I think one of the reasons that more churches don't move to a leadership-based culture and instead are comfortable with a meeting or committee-based culture is because a leadership-based culture requires trust in your ministry leaders. It requires you to give away authority and give them the authority that is commensurate with their responsibility. It requires you to let go of some stuff. It requires that you let people take risks and sometimes fail. It means not knowing what is going on at all times.

It's also freeing and it means that stuff gets done and the caravan keeps moving forward towards the same destination.

And every now and again, we get to stop at the rest area and stretch our legs, laugh, and have a quick meal before we head out again on the journey.

Loving Others

A notification flashed across my iPhone this morning from a pastor's group I am a part of. The question that had been posed and was now sitting on my screen was how to address a "seeking" couple that was visiting the church but had questions about a particularly difficult cultural situation. In this case, the situation was "homosexuality", but it could have been anything. The pastor wanted to know what he should say and how he should address it.

A few thoughts went through my head as I considered what I would say to him if I responded. The first was, "what do you actually believe about the subject?" My guess is that my pastor friend already knew what he believed, or at least thought he knew what he believed, but when the question is actually posed by a real actual human rather than as a theoretical concept, stuff gets real.

I want to interject and interrupt myself for a moment, because I want to say that I did not read any further than the question, and I did not get an explanation or backstory or any details about what this particular pastor knew or didn't know or thought or didn't think. That said, there was something about the wording that made me think that this person perhaps hadn't through through what he actually believed when the rubber actually met the road; when his theology met his humanity. The word that struck me was the description of the inquisitors as "seekers".

I knew what he meant. "Seeker" is church lingo for someone who is seeking God in some fashion. They are typically "spiritual" but not "religious". They may have been raised in the church, see value in Christianity, but aren't entirely sure how to mesh what they think they believe with what they think the church believes. Often times a seeker has a particular question in mind; something that is their litmus test. For one man who visited our church, his question was predestination. He wanted to believe in God, but couldn't believe in a God who predestined people to Hell. He asked me what I thought on the way out of church, and I had to answer an incredibly complex question in just a couple of minutes with very little understanding of what was behind the question or where he was coming from. When you are talking to a "seeker", the tendency is to frame your response in a way that softens or mutes the difficult edges of your answer. We convince ourselves that the person isn't ready to hear the truth, or that the truth might offend them, and we wouldn't want that! We don't want to be the person who shoves them from "seeker" status back into "lost" territory. We better make sure that our answer is true, but not so true that it is offensive.

Oftentimes our responses in those scenarios end up being so ambiguous that they leave the person on the other end feeling like they got an answer, but not being totally sure what it was. I was watching an episode of Parks & Recreation the other day where the always-positive Chris played by Rob Lowe had recently broken up with Anne, one of the main characters. The problem was that the break-up was spun in such a positive way that Anne didn't realize that he had dumped her. I wonder how often my answers to these difficult questions so ambiguous or spun so positively that the person on the other end walks away thinking that I may have said something entirely different than what I intended.

What my pastor friend was really asking was, "How do I tell these people what God really believes about homosexuality without offending them and turning them away?" I think that's a legitimate question, but I don't think it matters whether or not the people are seekers, or whether they have been followers of Jesus their entire lives and are only just now having to figure out what God really thinks about this as it becomes a more common cultural question. Instead, I think that the real question that we have to ask ourselves is this: do you really love these people?

It strikes me that Jesus doesn't turn away from difficult questions, and he doesn't soften the blow of the truth that is in his response. Sometimes, people turned away because of it. Other times, they stuck with him. Here is the key: it was never their status (lost, seeker, found, whatever), and it was never their response (turning away or sticking) that guided his answer. It was always truth embedded and presented in love. When Jesus answered a question truthfully, he knew full well that he loved the person he was talking to. That's why he answered with such poignant truth. It was because he loved them.

I had to have a difficult conversation with someone once related to this topic. The first thing I did was ask the question: what does the Bible actually say? What do I actually believe? What does God actually think? This is what it means to love God, at least in part. It means that I actually care about what He thinks, and not just what I feel. But then, ultimately, the rubber meets the road and the theology of what God says meets the humanity and the emotion and the spirit of the person sitting right in front of you who has asked, "what does God think about this?" My pastor friend knew the right answer, but he wasn't sure that he knew the right response. My question would be, "do you really love them?"

When we really love the person we are responding to, to whatever degree our love can be totally genuine, that love will shine through in our response. I'm not telling you what God thinks about an issue to prove that I'm smart, or to prove that I can one-up you, or to belittle you or make you feel bad about yourself. I'm telling you what God thinks because I love you and He loves you and because He loves you and I love you I believe that there will be more joy in the truth of what God says than there will be if I just tell you what you want to hear, or if I couch my answer in such fluff that you leave without being entirely sure what God actually thinks. Love doesn't mean we always agree. Love doesn't mean that we always give the easy answer. Love means that we can give the honest answer, even when it hurts.

I said this to the Elders of our church a while back when we had one of these difficult questions come up and we had to respond, even though we knew that the reason the person was asking is because they were putting out their little litmus test to see if we believed in a God that they could believe in. I said, "if it is not difficult for us to respond, then we are not being Elders." Responses to difficult questions are not filled with pride; they are filled with love. It ought to matter to us when we give an answer to someone that we know might cause them to leave the church or leave the fold of God. Yet we know that it would hurt more, and be more harmful, to neglect what God said, or to answer ambiguously, just for the sake of harmony; just so that we don't rock the boat.

So yes, the question is, "what do you actually believe about the subject?" But then, before we respond, we need to ask ourselves, "do I really love this person like Jesus loves them?" If so, then we respond in truth, embedded and presented in love, not ambiguity.

Feel Good Faith and Thin Christianity

Most of life happens on a pendulum. I don't mean life as in the living and breathing essence of who we are, but I mean life, generally. Our worldview, our culture, and societies values.

A couple of things came up yesterday that started me thinking about this. The first was that a basketball player at a Division 1 college quit the school and will be transferring next year or as soon as possible. He was a starting player, and he quit mid-way through the season. His rationale? From what I understand (this was second hand delivered to me), the locker room was a disaster. Racism, drugs, alcohol abuse, sexuality, and on and on. Not that this kid was a prude. But at a certain point, it becomes too much.

I commented to the person telling me that this is what we can expect if we decide as a culture that value judgments can be made by the individual. What boundaries are we willing to set? Where are the lines that we draw? And then, on whose authority do we set them or draw them? It might be the institution itself (in this case, a University), it might be the government, or it might be something else, but at the end of the day someone has the authority to set the boundary points and effectively declare that this is as far as they are willing to go. As long as it is the individual, then functionally, we have declared that "no boundary marker" is the real boundary marker.

Setting it based on the authority of a human institution typically doesn't fare much better. This is precisely what causes the pendulum shifts in our culture. Most human institutions can be changed either by popular opinion, by uprising, by votes, or in many modern cases simply by the subjective opinion of appointed judges. If we don't like the boundary marker that a particular institution has set, there is typically some way to change it. And since most of us are not overly prone to moderation, our views tend to go from one extreme to the other. We go from prohibition to license in a few generations; give it a generation or two more, and we might see the pendulum swing back.

The other conversation I had related to Christianity in the first century. A friend is preaching on the book of Revelation; I am preaching on the book of Acts. A commentary on Acts that I was reading pointed out that the way to really understand Acts, or to really understand Revelation, was to read them together and see that they are talking about the same thing from different perspectives. Acts is the historical narrative; Revelation is the spiritual one. One of the descriptions is on this side of the curtain; the other describes what we cannot see, unless it's "revealed".

I shared it with my friend and he mentioned some of what he was reading in terms of the persecution of the early church and the heinous measures that the Romans would be willing to go to either in the name of sport or simply torture. It raised an important question for us to consider: how many people would still be in our churches if they knew that simply being there could get them killed? It was sobering to think about, not just for the people in the pews, but for ourselves. Would we be willing to endure brutal torture for the sake of Christ? We both believed we would, but mostly just hoped we'd never have to truly find out.

It strikes me that the Christian faith is almost always counter-cultural, and when it isn't, it suffers. I don't mean this in the way that it's typically presented, however. For example, it's easy to say that Christianity is counter-cultural when sexual promiscuity, for example, is celebrated. This is the way that we typically mean that Christianity should be counter-cultural. I'm suggesting that it should also be counter-cultural even when the values of culture appear to be in line with the values of Christianity. That is, Christianity is ultimately just as counter-cultural when it is sexual suppression that appears to be valued, as could be argued was the case in the mid-20th century, and two married people having the same bedroom was considered too risqué for TV. For one thing, sex is a gift that Christianity and the Bible celebrate. It's not embarrassing, it's good. That alone ought to have been a counter-cultural message during that time.

The real reason that the church is counter-cultural, though, is not because we agree or disagree with the values of the culture. Again, that's what we typically mean when we say we are counter-cultural, but that should be a secondary focus. Even if the values of culture appear to be in line with the values of Christianity, what remains counter-cultural is the authority by which we set our boundary markers. This is what keeps Christianity from functioning on the same pendulum cycle as the rest of culture. Our authority is unchanging; it doesn't change based on our feelings or what we think about it. Culture can appreciate our values or think that they are old-fashioned and silly, but what makes us counter-cultural is that we define our values based on God's ideals and not based on human institution or our own perceived moral compass.

It strikes me that when culture appears to agree with the church, the church is less interested in being counter-cultural, and more interested in figuring out how we can be "mainstream" with what we believe. We try to squeeze Jesus into our already relatively moral existence. Our churches begin to look like malls, our worship events look like concerts, we give away material goods to get people to enter, we give slick, well-presented "message" that showcase our public speaking ability rather than the Word of God, and we convince people that Jesus can take their mostly-good life and turn it into a really-good life. I don't want to impugn a whole generation of churches, and I am being intentionally cynical for a reason. It appears to me that the fruit that we're seeing in the Christian church in America at large begs the question: what authority does a Christian actually follow? And if that authority is an unchanging, sovereign God, then why does it appear that his opinion changes as frequently as ours?

Again, there is much good that has been done through churches that might consider themselves "seeker-sensitive" or whatever other Christian nomenclature you might want to use. I can't help but wonder, though, whether one significant downside is that as long as our worship services look like something that we produced, or come from our own minds, whether we're not just feeding into the same old story that authority is found in human institutions. And if it's found in human institutions, if the church's authority comes from the mind of the pastor or the Elders who happen to be in charge at the time, then it's no wonder that many churches will change as quick and as soon as culture. It's also no wonder that many Christians can't fathom that being a Christian might mean that you disagree with some of what culture values; they've never been taught that what makes us counter-cultural is not necessary what we do, it's who we follow.

Imagine if the church took seriously who God was, and then took seriously who we are called to be not based on our opinion or culture's opinion of us, but simply based on God's love for us. What would that look like? 

It would be a counter-cultural church that based it's authority on God, and didn't make their decisions based on what man thinks about them, but based on who God is and what he has done. That would be a revolutionary church indeed.

The Church is Simple

Going through the book of Acts in a sermon series has been a refreshing reminder of the life of the church. Inasmuch as everyone talks about wanting to "do church like the first century church", we usually don't hit the mark. I can't help but think that we are seriously overcomplicating it.

It seems like there are at least three things we can say, keeping things pretty simple.

First, the church is founded on Jesus Christ. For any Christian, that ought to be the obvious one. You don't have the church without Jesus.

Second, the church is powered by the Holy Spirit. This message is consistent throughout the life of Jesus and of course carries through in the book of Acts. Jesus talks about the coming Holy Spirit to the disciples and then prays for them in John 17 that they would be sent out into the world. The order is important. In Acts, Jesus tells them to wait until they have the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit finally comes on the day of the first fruits of the harvest, the disciples receive the promised power and they go out and spread the message of the Gospel to massive response.

Third, the church is recognized by it's community. It seems to me that everything else that happens in the book of acts, and certainly the first description of the church in Acts 2, has this as it's center. The church restores bonds between people that were previously broken.

If I were to add a fourth, it would be that the church is sustained by it's prayers. I don't like the word "sustained", necessarily, because I think we are sustained by Jesus/the Holy Spirit but it's because of that sustenance that we ultimately pray. If the church recognized that we were totally dependent on Jesus work and the Spirit's power, we'd do a lot more praying. Prayer is one of the ways we activate the Spirit's work (activate here being used loosely; I don't intend to treat it like an on/off switch or something we can ultimately control.)

When we see what the church is doing, then, what we notice is that they are taking great care to remain on their foundation–that is, they are studying the Scripture that tells them about Jesus–they are continually seeking the Spirit–prayer–and they are doing all of this in community with one another. That community, in some cases, simply means that they have decided that doing life together is better than doing it apart. They hang out, they love one another, they want to be with one another, they weep with one another when necessary and laugh with one another when they can. They share amongst themselves. There isn't need in this community, because there would never be need in a family. And we are the family of God.

This is the fundamental essence of the church of Jesus Christ, who is bound together by Him and through him, and grows together into a family by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It's easy to miss the simplicity of what the church is called to be.

Denominations: God's Hilarious Joke, Part Three

I was asked to write a post about "getting along with your denomination", and this is what came out. I'm presenting it in three parts, because it's too long for one post. This is part three. (Read Part One and Part Two.)

Opportunities for Grace

I wanted to close with what I think is probably the most important reminder that's needed when dealing with a denomination: it provides us an opportunity for Grace with other brother's and sisters that can demonstrate what unity looks like in the church of Jesus Christ.

When I was outside of the denominational context, I thought just the opposite. I thought that denominations were proof that Christians were divided. And it's true that historically, denominations have often formed because of disagreement over various theological issues large and small. The solution to that problem, however, is not an even greater fragmentation of the Christian church; the solution is greater unity. And that unity is often most clearly seen in the denominational context, particularly when variety and loving disagreement continue to exist within it's ranks.

My denomination allows for the ordination of women, but also allows local bodies of Elders in a particular local church to decide for themselves based on their theological convictions. I am convinced that the Scripture is clear on the issue of eldership, and that elders (and therefore ordained Pastors) are supposed to be men. That creates a tension that I and my church have had to navigate.

On the one hand, I wish my denomination took a more definitive stance on the issue. I wish it was something that all the churches agreed upon, so that I didn't have to handle it on a local level. (It'd be nice to simply refer to "official policy" and avoid a debate!) On the other hand, it has offered me far more opportunities to have grace for my brothers or sisters in disagreement than I would have had otherwise; the fact is that if they did take a definitive stance, it would have led to the departure of some significant portion of the churches.

I'm reminded when I see my ordained sister's-in-ministry that even though we disagree on the issue of Eldership, we agree on the issue of Jesus. I'm reminded that they are lovers of Jesus like I am a lover of Jesus and they desire that people come to know him like I desire that people come to know him. I'm reminded that one of us might be wrong and the other one might be right but even if I'm right on this doctrine, I'm probably wrong (or at least incomplete!) on another one. And yet, at the end of time, we're both going to stand before our master and he's going to say, "well done, good and faithful servant". The Christian life is a life of grace–for the sinner, and for the "righteous". 

CONCLUSION

I'm still not a denominational apologist; I don't think you have to be a part of a denomination in order to have a proper church, nor do I think that denominational churches are necessarily healthier spiritually or organizationally (in fact, a cursory glance at the church in America would indicate that they're not!) What I've learned, though, is that we're often too quick to reject them and reject many of our brothers and sisters in the process.

Several years back, as I was exploring my call to plant a church, I read the church profile form of a church that was searching for a Senior Pastor. They were one of several churches from that denomination in the area, and it was evident to me that none of the churches were doing very well. This church profile form in particular indicated some frustration. It said something to the effect of, "we want to move forward, but we want someone who is going to lead us and not just push us around."

What they meant was, "we want someone who will love us." 

I wondered to myself, with all the talk of church planting, who will love these people? What leaders and pastors will love these saints, who have endured the hard road of the faith for many years, who established churches long ago, and may have lost their way? Who will endure the red-tape, and the hoops, to re-introduce these saints to Jesus and remind them of the beauty of the Gospel?

I said to myself at the time, "I guess someone else will have to do it." And then God pulled a fast one. And we've been laughing ever since.

Denominations: God's Hilarious Joke, Part Two

I was asked to write a post about "getting along with your denomination", and this is what came out. I'm presenting it in three parts, because it's too long for one post. This is part two. Part one can be found here.

A Unique Flavor

The connectedness of a denomination is not just creeds and confessions, but "flavors" of Christianity that are preserved in a unique form. Denominations typically represent more than just a particular theological approach to the Christian faith; they also preserve perspectives on the Christian faith that can inform the church at large.

I had been looking at our denomination in the 21st century and wondering, "where do I fit?" It was easy to pick apart the shortfalls and flaws and the infighting and the confusion and I wondered why God had put me where he had put me. I remembered the moment when my heart began to  change.

The book I was reading was Philosophers who Believe. It was a collection of Christian testimonies from leading 20th century philosophers, and I was captivated by a philosopher named Alvin Plantinga. I went on to pick up his book, God and Other Minds, among others, and was mesmerized by his intellect, and his ability to articulate the Christian faith in a way that was clear and rationale and didn't feel the need to resort to simple platitudes of "just have faith's" and "just believe's". It felt like I had found someone who spoke my language. 

To my initial dismay but ultimate delight, I realized that he was a member of my denomination, and furthermore, that the history of our denomination had always been to engage the sciences and the intellect through the lens of God's sovereignty and his Scripture. I was dismayed that my denomination wasn't as terrible as I thought it was (pride, remember?) but was delighted when I began to see why God had put me where he did. It wasn't that Plantinga spoke my language; it was that I was learning that there was a whole denomination of people who had preserved a particular flavor of intellectual faith throughout their history, and now I was a part of it.

Honor the Tradition

Denominations are often criticized for being slow-moving, difficult to change, and in many cases, stuck in their traditions. Anyone who has ever been a part of one knows how true that can be! It is an unfortunate reality that many of our sister denominational churches would be the most relevant church on the block...if it was 1960!

Some traditions have to be de-emphasized, if not removed altogether. They are just preferences of a culture that has long since passed; organs, carpet colors, maybe even hymn books. Even so, we need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater! What may be slow-moving, slow-to change elements of tradition might have a historicity to them that would make us blush if we knew what we were rejecting–or what we were doing to the elderly saints who hold them dear.

I was preaching at a denominational church not too long ago. Most of the congregation at the service I typically lead is very elderly. A few of them are first generation immigrants who came to the United States at a young age. I knew that the church was going through some changes, and that the general complaint was that some of the elderly folks were being sticks-in-the-mud and holding up the process. It would have been easy to think to myself–as I had on occasion–that the problem was simply that these elderly people had just never heard the Gospel! Surely, if they had, they'd be willing to change!

My sermon that night mentioned Corrie Ten Boom, and I talked about her family watch shop, and how she brought in refugees from Germany who were trying to escape the concentration camps. Eventually, Corrie was captured by the Gestapo and spent many years in a concentration camp herself, preaching the Gospel and providing hope and comfort to the other women who were there with her.

After the sermon, a man came up to me with tears in his eyes, and he began to tell me his story:

"I remember growing up in Holland when I was just a boy. My family owned a farm, and we were relatively far out in the country. When the war started, and the refugees began coming by, my parents knew that we needed to take them in, like many of the other Christian families were doing. We knew that we needed to have a hiding place for the refugees in the event that the Gestapo came looking.

We originally decided that we'd hide them in the haystacks in the barn, but eventually changed our minds. Since we were out in the country, we knew we'd get a warning if the Gestapo was ever on their way. We decided that a better hiding spot was in the canal. We made long straws for them, and they would hide under the water in the canal and breathe through the tube. The first time that the Gestapo came by, the first thing they did was take pitch forks and jam them into the haystacks.

I remember what my mother used to tell us every time the Gestapo came by. Before they got there, she would sit us down and say, "kids, tonight we might be with Jesus. But if not, then he has more work for us to do."

And then we would pray."

The man's eyes were filling with tears as he reached the end of the story, and the deep love of his heart was being made clear. I don't know if he was one of the ones who was being the proverbial stick-in-the-mud, but who might have blamed him if he was? The tradition of the church wasn't just a preference for him; it was a stabilizing force that withstood the test of dark times. It wasn't a lack of Gospel knowledge–in fact, most 21st century American Christians probably need a reminder of how cushy our lives actually are–it was a deep reminder for him that God was sovereign and that Jesus was in control.

That's not necessarily an excuse to stand in the way of continued reformation and change, but it's a good reminder that some of our brothers and sisters have carried the mantle of the Gospel through times darker than most of us have yet to experience.

Every hoop has a story

When I joined the denomination, I knew I was going to have to jump through a variety of hoops. (It occurs to me that I have no idea where that expression comes from, only what it means!) I knew that there would be red tape. I knew there would be some politics involved. I knew that we wouldn't be able to do things as quickly as we wanted to do them. It's easy to criticize the hoops as unnecessary bureaucracy, and in some cases that's exactly what they are. It's also easy to forget that every hoop has a story.

Every year, our governing body (called "Synod") gets together with representatives from each local church grouping (called a "Classis") and makes decisions for the body as a whole. Some of these decisions end up as addendum or supplements to "Articles" in our Church Order. It's hard enough to keep up with it when it happens year after year, and the latest edition of the Church Oder is published, let alone when you realize that this has been going on for a long, long time.

That's why the restrictions or guidelines or failsafes or checks and balances feel like "hoops". We're so removed from the original institution of them that we forget that there is typically a reason that they were put in place, and it's typically because something happened that the leadership of the church wanted to avoid in the future.

In that sense, the "hoops" are like the legal language that's listed in the small print on the bottom of a child's toy or the upside-down-kid-head-first-in-the-bucket picture that's on every bucket larger than 2 gallons that you've ever purchased. Somewhere along the line a kid decided to dive into a bucket and the company felt like it would be safer moving forward to warn everyone about the dangers of that activity.

Or, in religious terms, it's like the Pharisees who added boundary laws upon boundary laws to make really-super-sure that no one would ever break the actual law of God. We read the Gospels and laugh at them and fail to realize that at some point, these guys were serious about keeping the law of God and doing what was right in the eyes of God. Yes, they became self-righteous. Yes, over time they missed the point. Yes, Jesus needed to call them out and redirect their confidence from their own righteousness towards the righteousness of Jesus. And all of this must often be done in the denominational context, particularly in the 21st century.

But behind every hoop or boundary law that's put in place is a desire to honor the holiness of God and the righteousness of his church. It's a desire to protect ourselves from ourselves. It's a desire to hand down a clear Gospel message to the next generation. Sometimes the denomination gets in it's own way in the long run, but it's a lot easier to redirect when we understand that the goal was always Jesus Christ and the oversight of His Bride, the church.