A Special Place in Hell

Every time I hear someone use the expression, "a special place in hell", I cringe a little inside.

We use it in reference to someone who we believe is particularly deplorable; someone who has done something that we can't possible imagine. Surely, this person is worse than we are. Surely, out of all the bad people, this one deserves more punishment than the rest. Surely, if God is going to subject anyone to an eternity of torture, this one here deserves it more than the rest. So much, in fact, that they must be given a special place. Like a back room. Where extra torture happens.

Unfortunately, I think the statement says more about us than it does about the person that we're referencing. At very least, it reveals a lot about what we believe. For one, it reveals that we believe, in some sense, that there are universal standards of right and wrong. We don't exact this type of judgment on just anyone; we reserve it for those people who have done something that we fairly assume will universally be condemned. Of course, there is also the self-righteousness of the whole thing. Clearly we believe that we have a higher moral or ethical standing than the person we have condemned to the back room. Finally, it reveals our complete misunderstanding of who God is, what he's up to these days, and what hell actually is.

Out of the three, it is only the first one that is at least mildly constructive. We live in a day and age when we are increasingly embracing the idea that there are no universal absolutes; indeed, all morality or ethics are relative to the culture that we live in. In other words, something we consider deplorable might be perfectly acceptable in another culture; and thus, a person practicing those acts cannot be considered "evil" or "wrong" so long as they are operating according to the morality or ethics subscribed to by their culture. Most people don't live with this philosophy for very long before they realize the major pitfalls and ethical dilemmas that it raises. (For example: bombing innocent people. Maybe we are the only ones who think they are innocent. Maybe someone else thinks they are guilty. It's all relative, isn't it?) The failures of cultural relativism become clear in light of particularly deplorable acts, and we acknowledge it with statements like "a special place in hell". To that end, it is constructive. But it is only the beginning of the unraveling.

The second problem immediately arises when we consider that somehow we are morally or ethically superior to someone else. By what standard? If it cannot be a cultural standard, and there are absolutes that we inherently acknowledge, then what is the basis for those absolutes? Who gets to create those absolutes? Who enforces the absolutes? And how do we know what they are?

This is the great question that will come home to bear on our culture. As Christians, I believe we must be prepared with an answer. So often we have resorted to simplistic responses–"just believe in Jesus", "Just invite Jesus into your heart"–and have failed to address the very real and deep questions faced by humanity. But Christianity is nothing if it cannot address the deep, spiritual questions that each of us, as spiritual creatures, carry within us like a constant reminder of a life once lived.

When my philosophies have proved to be a failure; when my resources have not provided me what I am looking for; when my success has not made me feel any more important; when my pursuits have not provided me love; when, in the end, I am still unhappy, where do I turn? We can mute the questions for a time, but we cannot ultimately ignore them. At some point, even if for a moment, they return to the surface and beg to be answered.

Christianity provides an answer. There is an absolute, and it was created and established by the God of the Universe. But this God is not a dictator who creates the absolute for his own enjoyment; he is a Father who creates the world a certain way for his children's enjoyment. And the absolute are not rules, per se. Not as we think about rules. They are simply the way things are. God is perfect and good and holy and beautiful, and anything that is not perfectly in harmony with goodness or holiness or beauty simply cannot exist. It cannot be one with the Father. So long as we are in perfect harmony with all that God is by his very nature, we exist in perfect joy. This is the description of how things were upposed to be.

It is that very union that was broken. Broken, as the Bible says, by representatives of the human race. Instead of living in the perfect unity that we had with the Father, we instead opted out; we chose our own way. Something else looked to be more beautiful and more good; but when we experienced it, we realized that we had been deceived. The promise of a greater beauty or a greater good was a lie; it could never exist; it could never deliver what it promised.

The result of this broken unity is disunity. It's disordered living. It's a disruption in the way that things were intended to be. Rather than harmony, we have chaos. Rather than goodness and beauty, we see evil and ugliness. Everything that was, the way things were really intended to be, was broken. And worse, imperfection can never achieve perfection again. Even if it could to some extent, it would carry around the memory of it's brokenness. Perfection will require outside intervention.

All of this explains how things are. Yes, there is disruption in the universe. Yes, there are absolutes. Yes, there is evil. Yes, there is brokenness. We see it, experience it, and all to often, know it in an intimate way either as the perpetrator or the victim. Most of the time, we are a combination of both. Our feet are firmly planted in how things are; firmly rooted in rebellion against how things were supposed to be.

So there is no morally superior ground. Imperfect is imperfect. One flaw or many. In broad categories, the label reads the same: damaged goods. And we have been experiencing the penalty ever since: separation from our Father. In short, we have been experiencing the precursor to hell.

Whatever else Hell is, it begins with this: complete and utter separation from God. The natural outcome of the divorce from his perfection, goodness, and holiness. Complete brokenness. There are no "special places" in hell. Everyone suffers the same fate. There is no worse thing imaginable than complete separation from our source of life. It couldn't get worse even if we wanted it to.

But the good news is that there is a way home; there is another representative who did for us what we were always supposed to do, but couldn't. Another representative who bore the penalty of our rebellion, and suffered Hell on our behalf. Another representative who chose not to opt-out of God's goodness, but rather, chose to endure extreme pain and ultimately separation so that you and I could opt back in. That representative, of course, is Jesus. And because of his sacrifice, as your representative, God judges you based on him. So when God sees you, he sees perfection. You are united with him again. The way things were supposed to be has come again, and you can have it.

Imagine that the memory of the life once lived was a memory of pure joy; you know you had it once, and you have been struggling to find it again ever since. Jesus is the pathway home.

So back to the original impetus for this thought: a special place in hell. 

There is no special place in hell. None of us are superior to anyone else and in fact, what we deserve is, across the board, exactly the same: we deserve total and complete separation from God because this is what we chose, it's what we choose, and it's what we will continue to choose for as long as we have breath. We will choose our own way. The path where we get to decide what's best. There's only a back room in hell reserved for the worst of us if it's big enough to hold all of us.

But there is a special place in heaven reserved for Jesus. And the good news is that it actually is big enough to hold all of us. But we only get in with Him. When we go to Jesus house with him, his Father adopts us as his kids and gives us a room.

Jesus is not interested in condemning people to hell; he is supremely interested in inviting them to heaven. The great and beautiful message of the Gospel is that he has already secured the pathway and ensured a safe passage for all who put their confidence in Him.

Thoughts on Education

As a Christian, I believe the most important thing that I can teach my children is that God loves them, and that as a result of that love shown to them through the atoning death of Jesus Christ, they can love God and others and ultimately experience what life was always intended to be about. I can achieve everything else as a parent, but if I fail to teach them that exceptionally good news, I've won nothing. I can't control the outcome when they leave my house, of course, but I can do everything in my power to teach them that good news so that it has the best chance of "sticking" even without me around.

It's important that Christians put education, generally speaking, in that context. Some time back I read an article or a book (I can't remember where or I would give proper attribution) and the author stated emphatically that there is no "religiously neutral education". I considered the premise and believe that he was right. The truth is that we will either view the world through the lens of God's existence, so that everything contains traces of his goodness and wonder, or we will view it through some other lens; namely, a lens in which he does not exist. We cannot have it both ways. We cannot say that God is powerful and worth knowing, but unnecessary in relation to the rest of our studies, as if God has nothing to say about writing, or arithmetic, or our basic ability to communicate through words and language, let alone whether or not his existence has any bearing on the universe or why things are the way that they are or why we interact the way that we do. If God is unnecessary for the study of any of these things, then as one philosopher suggested, God may as well be dead. We simply don't need him anymore.

On the other hand, if God does have something to say about all of these subjects, as the Christian believes that He does, then we must approach the education of our children with that conviction. Writing is no longer simply about "grammar", but it is about the wonder that we can even communicate at all, or that we can pass things on to other generations, or that thoughts can become sentences which can become complex arguments or narrative that can be written down and passed on and can create a sense of enjoyment in a person we have never even met. Math is no longer about the memorization of equations or facts but is instead about the way that God has ordered the world so that there are "laws" and "patterns" that always hold true, in every circumstance. Biology is no longer simply about why things are the way that they are, but is instead about what these things tell us about God and his design and plan and wisdom in creating things the way that he did. Studying the cosmos reminds us that things may not always be the way that they seem; that perhaps God used methods and timeframes that we cannot even possibly wrap our minds around in his sovereign control over the entirety of all that is.

I might argue that if we lose the wonder of who God is in the education of our children then it is nearly as serious a flaw as if we forget to teach our kids to love Jesus. That is not to suggest that they are on the same level. Failure to teach about Jesus has eternal implications; failure to view education through the lens of God's sovereignty may just incur temporary boredom. But it is a tragic boredom! It is a similar type of boredom that leads our culture to endure education for the sake of a future promise or paycheck. The type of boredom that makes us stick it out, even though it stinks. To learn math because we have to. To ask the teacher, "when am I ever going to use this?", only to have her give you some canned response about the importance of grammatical construction of a sentence when you are an adult when the teacher knows full well that the answer is, "you probably won't have to use it, except to pass the test."

The Christian can answer the question differently! It's not about whether you "use it". More importantly, what do we discover about God through it? That is the important piece!  

This is why education matters for our children. More important than whether or not they memorize facts is whether or not they understand God's purpose in creating those facts to begin with, and then, when we understand them, how we can use them to make a difference in the world.

More Than One Question

If I could encourage you in one way, it might be this, that you not approach God with a single question and then seek to determine what you think about God based on his answer to that question.

Far too many of us approach God this way, with our single question in hand, a test for God, if there ever was one, to see if he measured up to our ideas of what he should be like. Based on his response we then determine whether he is worth our love.

The problem with this approach is that it is too simplistic. If there really is a God, it would be impossible to know everything that there is to know about him from a single question. Further, I wouldn’t even want someone to judge my worth–and certainly not base their love for me–on any single question they may ask, no matter how positively I can answer the question! If before I were married my future wife came up to me and said, “do you like ice cream?” and I responded that I did, she may love me for the moment but be quite disappointed when she finds out that I don’t like having a conversation after 7 pm. If my desire for ice cream were the only thing true of me, or at least, the only thing she knew to be true of me, then her love would be so incomplete for me that it is only marginally better than no love at all. Indeed, it may even be worse, since her knowledge of me is so small that there is a high likelihood that, in the future, she will find out things about me that she will eventually grow to hate.

On the other hand, she may ask me a much more important question than my regards for ice cream. For example, she might ask me if I ever get very angry. And I would have to respond that I did, at times, get extremely angry. I may yell and curse when I get angry, although it is not the norm. If my future wife determined that I was not worth loving because of the way I answered that singular question, it would be just as tragic or worse than if she loved me based solely on my affinity for ice cream. Her knowledge remains incomplete; she cannot possibly understand me based on whether or not I like ice cream or whether or not I ever got angry.

Too often we approach God with singular questions intended to call him out, or characterize him into someone we can understand. Sometimes we do it so we can love him based on his answer, sometimes we do it because we already hate him, but it would be much easier if we had a reason. At best, the questions are a reflection of our heart; they cannot reflect the full truth of God.

If I were to approach God and ask him if he could ever forgive me, for example, the answer would be a resounding ‘Yes!’ Yes, he can forgive you! But to ask that question, no matter how positive the response, is to have a severely limited view of God. It may be the answer we were looking for, and even hoping for, but it is not the answer we ultimately need. Knowing that forgiveness is possible is an entirely different proposition than knowing how to attain that forgiveness; knowing that God can forgive without knowing how or why he forgives is incomplete. And, much the same as my wife loving me based on ice cream is dangerous, so loving God with such an incomplete knowledge of God is dangerous as well. For if I leave his presence and all I know is that he can forgive, but I forgot to ask him how, then it may be that I will never receive the forgiveness that I had been inquiring about in the first place.

I may also approach God and attempt to force him into a corner. How many would love to question whether or not God brought about the latest suffering, or the cancer, or allowed their sibling or parent to die at such a young age? We approach him with indignation and demand from him, “did you let this happen?” When he answers “yes”, as we assumed He would, there is no need for further questioning. That one answer gave us all that we need to know; we have no interest in a God who would allow that type of pain in our lives.

The problem is in our assumption that God’s knowledge is as limited as our knowledge. Our rationale goes something like this: If I cannot possibly picture a reason why this suffering may have come upon me, then it must not possible that there is a reason at all. My future spouse would be operating according to that rationale if she chose not to give me a chance after finding out that I sometimes get very angry. The problem, of course, is that she may not know why I get angry, nor has she even considered the possibility that there may be a reason for someone to be very angry. She has made her choice; she cannot picture a reason for someone to ever get angry, and so a reason must not exist. In the same way many of us miss out on God because we don’t like his answer to a singular question. We hear his answer and determine that it’s all we need to know. God is not worth our time.

And so we’re back at the beginning: do not approach God with one question that you believe will be the silver bullet for determining whether or not God is someone who should be loved. Rather, ask the deeper questions; the ones that lay beneath your desire to have an answer to the one you think is so pressing. Perhaps there is more to God than you originally thought. Perhaps he loves you more than you know. Perhaps the answer to the question you once thought so important that it could not wait will eventually be found to be meaningless, in light of the wonder of who God really is.

Are you willing to find that out?

The Fallacy of a Dying Church

Here is some language that we should stop using: "dying church".

Let's get this straight: the church of Jesus Christ is always alive. Let's not lose focus on what the church is. It is the gathered body of people made alive through faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a work that is compelled by and empowered by God through his Holy Spirit. The very definition of the church cannot be extricated from life itself; if it is, you no longer have the church.

So why do we call churches that are in decline "dying churches"? It stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the church. Our problem is that we too closely associate the church of Jesus Christ with our local church, assuming that the two are one-and-the-same. While the church-local is built on and a part of the universal church of Jesus Christ, it nevertheless contains a wide variety of human elements, both cultural and systemic. Life, for those portions, is no guarantee. In fact, if there is a guarantee, it is that at some point in the future, both our systems and our cultural expression will become irrelevant, and thus, highly susceptible to collapse.

The first step is to make the distinction between those elements of the church that are "man-made" in their origin, and those that are "divine" in their origin. Only when we do that will we become comfortable with the changes that are necessary in the human realm, while holding fast to the life-giving elements of the church, which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What I've seen is that many churches, in an effort to simply survive, will sacrifice the Gospel or the advance of the Gospel for the sake of the local church. While they may desire to grow and be "healthy", it is only trumped by their desire to make sure things can continue to be done the way they've always been done. Change is scary; risk is scarier. If we change, we risk making a mistake that will ultimately destroy "everything we've created" (see the problem?); if we don't change, not only do we remain comfortable but we mitigate the risk. If there is any risk, it's far enough down the road that we're not worried about it.

Incidentally, this is why most organizations that ultimately close their doors are on the path to closure long before they think they are. Organizations grow, stabilize, and then plateau. It's in that plateau period where the choice is often made to remain in a state of comfort and not "rock the boat"; unfortunately, that's usually the first step towards a long, slow, steady decline that won't be evident until the gentle slope has turned into a cliff and there is almost no turning back.

The good news for the church is that we aren't, or shouldn't be, afraid of organizational collapse. We're not selling a product that needs to be revamped, lest we lose our lifeline. We're preaching an unchanging Gospel that is our lifeline. When we wrap our heads around that, and realize that the lifeblood of the church goes on and on and on and grows and grows and grows no matter what happens to our little expression of the church, we become much more open to letting go of the human elements of the local church and living in the comfort and grace of the Gospel.

The church is not dead, she is alive! That's the confidence we have in the Gospel. And that's the message we need to proclaim.

On Baptism - Does God have Grandchildren?

Here's a slippery wicket: does God have grandchildren?

Most orthodox Christians believe that there must be a regenerative work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a person before they are finally admitted into the family of God. This work is described in various ways all throughout the New Testament but refers to that moment of moving from unbelief to belief. This work is compelled by, and accomplished by, the Holy Spirit working in our hearts. When that regenerative work occurs, we move from being an old creation to a new creation, or from death to life, or from darkness to light, or any number of other metaphors that are used in the Bible to describe the difference between our former state and our new state. Again, the regeneration is necessary, and it is a work of the Holy Spirit.

This is important: you don't get into the kingdom or family of God just because you are born into a Christian family with Christian parents. There must be a personal belief–putting ones confidence in the work of Jesus Christ for their own salvation–likely followed by some form of profession.

If memory serves me correctly, it was Billy Graham who either coined or popularized the phrase that "God does not have grandchildren." His point was to emphasize the importance of making a personal profession of faith in Jesus Christ; it was this "personal profession" that would indicate that a person possessed saving faith. In that sense, he is correct: God does not have grandchildren. He simply has children, all of whom have professed faith in Jesus Christ.

But what about the children of believing parents? Here we are left with three options.

The first option is that they, too, are Christians, or children of God. There are a multitude of problems with this, beginning with the aforementioned need for regeneration, and ending with the plethora of kids who have unfortunately been born to Christian parents who have then lived a life that ultimately professed a radically different belief. It is clear that simply being born into a Christian family is not enough to save; we must still admit our need for a savior and put our own confidence in Jesus Christ.

The second option is that these children are not Christians at all, but totally pagan, unregenerate, unbelievers, and far from God. We'll deal with this in a moment.

The third option is that these children are in some sort of a different category altogether. Perhaps not "regenerated" and thus fully saved, but not quite pagan, either.

Most Christians fall into the third category, at least in practice. Our children are raised to call Jesus, "Lord". They are raised to call God, "Father". They are taught to follow Jesus, to share Jesus with their friends, to live for Jesus, to pray to Jesus, and to abide by God's word. Of course, we wouldn't require (or should not require) any of these things for a person who was legitimately an unbelieving person. We may want them to live according to God's ideals, we may appeal to them on behalf of Christ, but we will only expect them to actually live that way once they have put their faith in Christ, have been transformed by the Holy Spirit, and genuine love for God and love for their neighbor is actually possible. To force a non-believing person to "act like a Christian" would be to create some sort of moralist, ethical behavior, that is not in any way based on the Gospel. We might create nice people, but not Christians.

But, of course, most of us don't view our children as being exactly the same as unbelievers. We recognize that by virtue of being raised to Christian parents who love Jesus, and teach Jesus in their homes, and call God "Father" themselves, our children receive some sort of benefit of being amongst the people of God. They are treated like they are a "part of the family", even if they haven't been able to profess Jesus Christ on their own. We look forward to the day when they will make that profession, but until then, our confidence is placed fully in Jesus that he will save our children, so we teach them to love Jesus as their savior so that they are prepared to hear his voice when he calls.

So what does that have to do with baptism?

We believe that baptism is a sign of the new covenant. This New Covenant is instituted through Christ's shed blood on the cross, thus making a way for all people to access the family of God through faith in Jesus Christ and confidence in his work on their behalf. Thus, baptism is ultimately a symbol of association with Jesus Christ in his life, death, and resurrection; this is the association that makes the covenant community the covenant community. It is the reason that when we practice adult baptisms, and an adult "receives the sign of the covenant", that we practice baptism by immersion into water. The imagery of the descent into the water and the reemergence from it reminds us that we have been buried with Christ and will rise with Christ–again, through association with his life, death, and resurrection, in faith.

The promises don't stop there, however. We also believe that when Peter told the Jewish people (and visiting foreigners in Jerusalem) that the promises of the Gospel were for them and their children, that he meant it exactly the way they would have taken it. If they, in faith, believed in the promises of God, then their children would receive the benefit of being raised in that covenant family as well. And, additionally, that if their children believed, then they, too, would ultimately receive salvation. In the meantime, the children would be raised to be "part of the family".

It is precisely because these children are considered to be "part of the family" that we baptize our infants, pointing towards Christ as the ultimate means of salvation, yet fully living in the grace of God that our children will be raised as a part of his covenant family. Our children, too, can call God, "Father". They will be taught to abide by His word and to love Jesus as their savior. In the meantime, we continually pray that Jesus would do the difficult work of transforming their hearts by sending the Holy Spirit so that they become a "new creation", through faith in Jesus Christ. When that happens, then we celebrate with them at their profession; what we are celebrating is not something that they have done, but something that God has done, and something we always believed he would.

Furthermore, we see these great promises of God towards his people all throughout Scripture. As we baptize our children because they will be raised as "part of the family", so Abraham circumcised his infants, and even the other adult males living in his house. Abraham's faith in the promises of God, and his dedication to the commands of God, would extend, in some way, to the people who lived under his roof. It wasn't a guarantee of salvation, (Remember Esau?) but it wasn't exactly the same as being outside the family either. Instead, Isaac, and all of his children, and their children, were considered to be part of the "covenant family". Eventually, the confirming mark that they had personally understood this would be a continued reliance on God and his promises (faith). But until then, they received the sign–circumcision–that indicated that they were included in God's covenant promises.

If baptism is really a sign of the new covenant (I cannot see how it isn't), then by restricting it to adults only we are making the case that children of believing parents are not part of the covenant. To be outside the covenant is to be pagan. This is at least in part why many baptist churches practice infant dedication. We almost instinctively realize that to be the child of a person who believes in Christ is a special blessing; certainly God's promises extend to our children in some way.

But dedication doesn't go far enough, because ultimately baptism isn't about us. It's about God. The God who saves his people by sending his Son Jesus to the cross to die for our sins. The God who establishes covenants with his people and then, through his faithfulness to his own covenants, ensures their fulfillment. The God who invites us to follow him in his Grace, who saves us by his Grace, and calls us to believe. We baptize our infants because it reminds us that even when we could not respond to God, he would faithfully pursue us anyway. God's love is poured out on our children through his church, as part of the family, until they can profess with their mouth, "Jesus is mine, and I am his."

That's a blessing worth celebrating. It's grace worth signifying. That's what baptism is about. And it's why our infants receive the sign.

On Baptism

I'm starting this post with the very real knowledge that there is so much more to say than one post will allow as it relates to my what I think about baptism. I've had multiple conversations in the last week that have prompted me to think about, refine, and clarify what it is that I (and our church) believes and practices. I'm not even sure I'll get into that in this post.

In fact, one of the troubles with baptism generally is that your average Christian really is under-informed regarding what it actually means and the significance involved. I'd like to say that it's just people in my own tradition, but I think the problem is more widespread. People from the  reformed background tend to adopt the "we've always done it this way" mentality, baptizing their kids when they're born, giving it little more thought than the nominal catholic who wants to have a christening. They have no knowledge of what they actually believe about the sacrament, what it signifies, what it represents, the promises of baptism, etc. Thus, they have no defense when a well-meaning (but also under-informed) brother or sister tells them that real baptism consists only of immersion of a professing believer. After all, "it's obvious".

Except it's not obvious, as any honest pastor/theologian will confirm. It requires at least as much, if not more, explanation and understanding than our other sacrament, Communion or The Lord's Supper. Most churches take the sacrament of communion seriously enough to "fence the table" every time that the church celebrates it. This means that we explain exactly what it means, what we're doing when we take it, and how to take it incorrectly, so that we don't "heap judgment on ourselves". We take the meaning of communion seriously enough that we don't claim that "it's obvious".

So, we must know what we believe. There are reasons that some churches believe that the sign of the new covenant can and should be freely given to children of believing/professing parents (maybe my next post). There are reasons that other churches believe that the sign of the new covenant should NOT be given to those children, until they can profess for themselves faith in Christ. But in either case, let's understand what we're doing when we're celebrating the sacrament.

Conviction on an issue is not the same as biblical clarity on an issue. All pastors/believers should be convicted about what they believe the Bible says. Honest ones will be able to admit when it's possible to disagree and still be a Christian. We don't all have to practice the same thing, but we should be willing to admit that the "other side" is at least plausible.

(The issue with not knowing or understanding, incidentally, is that there are a lot of people who aren't living in the promises of their baptism because they think that their baptism was about something that they did. But one thing we should all agree on, whether we were baptized as a child or as an adult, is that the action is never in our corner–it's always in Christ's...)

Changing Dreams →

Legit. Worth the read.

“Our home is beautiful. Everyone who sees it tells us. And we happen to agree.

When people come to visit they settle in quickly. Even if it is their first time there, they feel at home.

And now we are doing something probably even fewer people do. We selling our dream home.”

— Jeremy Statton

Becoming Galilean

“It took Jesus about two seconds to become a human. It took him around 30 years to become a Galilean.”

— Robert Guerrero

I was at a fundraising banquet for a non-profit where I serve on the board (New Hope Community Ministries. Check it out: http://www.newhopecmnj.org) when the guest speaker dropped the bomb quoted above. I've been processing it for the past week.

When I arrived in North Jersey and at Restore, I had a lot of thoughts about church planting that turned out to be mostly wrong. It's not that they were incorrect, per se, it's just that they didn't fit the context that I was planting in.

North Jersey isn't like the other contexts that I've been in. It's faster-paced than Miami, but much more community-centric than upstate New York and the capital region. It's a delightful blend of fast-paced-cut-your-throat-to-get-ahead New York City and old-timey New England, where if we don't know you and you didn't grow up in this here town, we don't trust you. It's not exactly either of those things, but it has elements of both. It's regional, but it's not. We commute to work, then come home, park our cars, and walk to the park. My town is better than yours. Welcome to North Jersey.

I remember hearing about a dude who was planting a church in New York City and for the first year, when people asked him what he was doing, he said something to the effect of, "learning the people." He may as well have said, "becoming a New Yorker". That's what he was doing, and he was right for doing it.

At the time the comment struck me as somewhat silly–again, not because he was wrong–but because it seemed like a waste of time. It seemed to me like a better approach would have been to take a person who was already a New Yorker and have them plant a church in New York. At least it would have been more efficient. Of course, raising up indigenous leaders is (or should be) the long term goal of every church planter in New York and elsewhere. But unless that is happening already, or until it does, a church planter is going to need to take some time to learn the context if we are going to preach the Gospel well.

The good news about the good news is that it doesn't stop being good, no matter what context you are in. But, if you want to make sure that the people you are preaching to hear it as good news, you better learn to express it in a language that they can understand, addressing the real needs that they already know that they have, or setting them free from the real bondage they already experience. And that requires becoming one of them. Like Jesus became a Galilean.

Planning for the Expected

When people say "plan for the unexpected", they don't mean, "plan for every scenario that could occur." What they mean is, "plan on something unexpected happening." You can be sure that no matter what you are doing, you will almost never be able to control every variable. The best you can hope for is to control the ones you can anticipate, so that you can respond well to the ones you can't. In other words, if you really want to plan for the unexpected, the place to start is by planning well for the expected.

The other night I was charged with setting up the sound system at a fundraising banquet for a non-profit where I serve on the board. (New Hope Community Ministries) The sound at a banquet is key. You want people to be able to hear what is happening. They need to hear the director, the testimonies, the keynote speaker. On top of that, they need to be able to hear it over the din of background conversation and salad/pasta/dinner/desert being served. The point of a banquet is to be able to share with a large pool of donors the work that you are doing, in hopes that they will continue to support the ministry moving forward. If they can't hear what you are doing, it will have an impact on their willingness to support you. So, without making too much of it, sound is important.

I prepared in advance for every scenario I could think of and made sure that I had what I needed to make it work when we arrived at the banquet all with only an hour and a half to set up. In other words, I prepared for the expected. I made sure that I had done everything I could do in advance so that, when the unforeseen and therefore unexpected occurred, I would have time and the mental energy to respond. In this case, the unexpected was the projector being on the other side of the room from the sound system, thus creating a difficulty in getting the sound from the computer/projector to the sound board for amplification. Because I had planned of the expected situation, when the unexpected popped up, I had more than enough time and energy to make sure that the unforeseen variable was controlled by banquet time, and things went off without a hitch.

This is the same reason I manuscript all my sermons. If I prepare well for what I know; if I prepare well for the expected, it actually gives the Holy Spirit more time to show up and tell me to go in a different direction than I had planned. Because I'm confident in what has been planned, I have the confidence to deal with the unplanned in the moment. 

I tell people at church the same thing. Early on in our churches life we were using an older sound system, an old projector, setting up folding chairs, ripping them down, meeting in a fellowship hall that sounded like a stereo inside a garbage can (try that sometime: stick your head in while it's playing and see what it sounds like), in a building whose A/C didn't quite work the way you hoped it would. There was a sense that in our pursuit of "excellence", error was somehow disallowed. I assured people that I had no problem if things went wrong, provided that it wasn't due to a lack of planning. If we did everything that we could in advance to make sure we were prepared for the worship service, or whatever else it was that we did, and something that we couldn't foresee and so couldn't control went wrong, that was just life. It's how things went. But if we had a hiccup in the service and it was because we didn't plan well, then that was on us. That was a failure to pursue excellence.

One time we wanted to show a testimony video for a baptism. It was really well done, and some people and put significant amount of time into putting it together. Unfortunately, the little white macbook-that-could we were using for ProPresenter didn't quite have the horsepower to push a video in full 1920x1080 HD. We had tested it for a few seconds prior to the service and it seemed to work fine, but when we ran it straight through in the service it lagged, stuttered, and ultimately would have been better with a black screen and a voiceover. Well, the first time that happened, we couldn't have anticipated that variable. But, the second time we could have. And it never happened again. Not only did we make sure that we weren't pushing full HD videos from the macbook, but we also made sure that if we were going to show a video we would watch enough of it to duplicate real world circumstances in advance to make sure it was working properly. The first time it happened was acceptable. If it happened again, it wouldn't have been.

The point is that the only way to prepare for the unexpected is to plan for the expected. Plan for the things that you know. Do the things that you can do. Do them well. And then, when the road of life takes little twists and turns, you'll have the capacity to actually handle them in the moment.

The Way that Leads to Life

“There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death.”

— Proverbs 14:12; 16:25

The wisdom saying above occurs twice in the book of Proverbs, and why shouldn’t it? It is a summary of the way in which each of us walks his own way.

One can almost hear the thoughts of Adam in the Garden of Eden as he listened to his wife discuss the potential benefits of the “forbidden fruit” with the Serpent. In the end, after hearing the arguments, it is as if he thought to himself, “It seems like this is right. This is the best path forward to where I want to be.” He knew that God had said it would lead to death, but this way seemed more “right”.

Most of the time it is not the things that we know are wrong that get us off track; it is the things that we believe will be right for us. Perhaps it is only our motivation that is wrong, like performing good deeds for self-recognition. Maybe we assume that the ends justify the means, like lying on our resume because we believe that having this new job will allow us more flexibility to give of our time and our resources. Or, maybe we justify our actions by creating a greater evil that we are combating, like cheating on our taxes because we think the government will do worse with the money than we will.

Jesus did not walk according to his own way, but walked according to the way that God his Father had laid out for him. Because he perfectly walked God’s way, he was the perfect sacrifice for all of us who had walked according to our way. Because of his perfect life, his perfect sacrifice, and defeat of death, the way we must now walk is in the way—that is, we must walk in Jesus. (John 14:6)

Burnout and Confidence in Weakness

The past two weeks rank right up there as two of the busiest weeks of my life. Hence, the hiatus on the very new blog. I had a good there week streak going there and then WHAM, things got out of control and it took a bit to get things back on track.

A couple of notes from that experience.

First, it's really important to be confident in your weaknesses. I'm not fully sure what it means yet. It's just been a thought that's been in my head the past week or so as I've considered my church. The longer I'm in ministry the more and more I feel like God should have picked someone else to do my job.

I used to think I was good at a lot of stuff; now I feel like I'm good at very little. I think that's part of having sober judgment of oneself (Romans 12:2). It's okay to know that you've been gifted in certain areas, but it's just as important to know that you're not gifted in other areas. Very few people are gifted in a lot of areas, although some people are. The point is that when things get stressful, or busy, or the church is growing, or when it's not growing, my temptation is to think that our church would be better off with someone who has a different set of gifts. Maybe someone who isn't so limited. The temptation is to tell God what type of person would work best in His scheme.

Of course the problem is that he didn't pick someone else. He told me to do it. I'm okay with that. But I also need to remind myself that I'm okay with that, and actually, that it's good news to remember I'm a weakling when things are tough so that he gets the glory and not me.

Second, when you don't know about your weakness, you'll burn out quick. I've said in the past that most burn out doesn't happen from busyness but because people are being busy at things they aren't passionate about. I still think that's true, but both types of burnout happen. Just being busy can burn a person out, even if they are doing things that they love. So maybe a better way to say it is to simply say that the people who burn out are the people who can't admit they are weak.

Some people burn out because they do things they stink at, and it kills them. Lots of pastor's fall into this trap. They go to a church as a solo pastor and end up trying to do everything on their own, either because the congregation expects it of them or because they think the congregation expects it of them. Soon, they burn out. They can't do it all. That's ludicrous. If they could do it all we wouldn't need the rest of the body. It'd just be the pastor and Jesus and a bunch of disconnected members. But it isn't.

Other people burn out because they get really busy, even doing things they love, and fail to realize that the world doesn't actually rest on their shoulders. The old saying is that "I'll stop when the Devil does". I'm not the first to respond, "yeah, the devil doesn't stop, but Jesus did." Jesus took sabbaths and rest and asks us to do the same. He doesn't expect us to be the savior. We can't save ourselves, let alone anyone else. Admitting that is the first step to letting a lot of stuff go that we just don't need to stress about.

So, I'm still working on this. It seems like good advice, though. I'm hoping to get better at applying it.