glenn packiam's blog

Do the Words We Use in Worship and Prayer Really Matter?

[I have discovered from my recent tweets about the language of our worship and prayer that while many agree, several are confused. Some wonder why this fascination with the old and the traditional. Others think I'm simply an unlikely champion of the "good ole hymns." In an attempt to provoke more discussions amongst yourselves-- worship leaders, worship teams, songwriters, etc-- I have formulated the three most frequent objections I've heard...and I've attempted a response. If my response is severe, it's because I believe the issue is.]

"Worship songs" are not just "expressions of our hearts to God", they shape what we believe about God. In the first 1600 years or so, few dared to write "their own songs" for congregational worship. The first prayers and songs of the Church were Psalms (prayers they learned as Jewish children) reframed around Christ. By the end of the 1st century we see a few creedal formulas surface, many of which are quoted in Paul's letters. Later, when more songs and liturgies were written, they were carefully worded by theologians like John Chrysostom in the 4th century (whose liturgy the Orthodox Church still sings!) and much later, Luther in the 16th century. For many centuries after the Reformation, songs written for public worship had to have words taken directly from Scripture. Today, we are loose about it. We sit down-- and I say "we" because I have been guilty of this-- and try to write a song based on what's in our hearts, what we want to say, what my Church wants to sing...all of which may be OK if they are subservient to the larger question, "What is true about God?" Still, some insist...

1. "It's the Heart that Counts."
Tell that to Nadab and Abihu-- you know, the guys who offered a "strange fire" and got struck down in Numbers 3. Or Uzzah, the guy who struck dead for touching the Ark that was sliding off a cart it should never have been on because David did not "seek the Lord about the prescribed manner." Where did we arrive at the notion that God does not care about the way that we worship? Or that all that matters is our heart? What only adds to the muddle is the confused notion about what the "heart" is. We have been shaped by the Romantic Era so that when we hear "heart" we think "intention" or "desire." But in the Scripture the "heart" is the seat of the will. It is where action comes from.

But here's the real question: Are you sure that your words and your heart are two separate things? Can you sing "bad" words but have a "good" heart? Jesus seemed quite clear that our words always betray what's in our hearts. Perhaps our words in worship reveal what we really believe about God in our hearts. This is point of the whole Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi thing. It's the conviction that the way we worship is the way we believe is the way we live. It's not just a clever Latin phrase from a long time ago. Is it an accident that along with the rise of "popular worship songs" devoid of the words and content of the Creeds and Confessions of the Church has come the rise of a new religion, Moralistic Therepeutic Deism, that many think is "Christianity"? Have our words of prayer and worship become so generic that most of what we sing can be just as easily sung to Simba the Lion King or, better yet, Oprah's 'God'?

The Bible also tells us that our heart is desperately wicked. Scripture and the historic creeds and confessions of the Church (that were either based on Scripture or were themselves the basis for selecting the Canon of Scripture) are like iron stakes, driven into the ground on either side of a young tree. Without them, our worship grows crooked.

2. "What We Really Need is the Spirit to Show Up."
Immediately I want to ask, "Which Spirit?" and "How will you know it's Him?" What this statement may reveal is a fixation on an experience. But Christians don't gather together so they can "experience God" as if it's a sanctified frat party. We gather to pay attention to God-- His presence in the Sacraments, His voice in the Scriptures, His Spirit in His people-- and to pay attention to one another-- our companions on the way of the cross. To say it's all about God "moving" in a service is to leave that up to a subjective experience of whether He "moved" or not. If we aren't careful we may think that as long as we danced/cried/shouted/were moved/etc then it doesn't matter if what was said or sung was actually about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is letting Experience define Truth instead of letting Truth define Experience. It's a bizarre non sequitur: "I feel it, therefore it is true." No one would actually say this, but our actions may indicate that we are more concerned with "what the experience of God is like" than "who the God of the experience is." Pardon me for being crude, but that's a bit like saying, "As long as the sex is good, I don't care whom it's with." And, indeed, that seems to be the motto of our culture. But if we are to be Christ's Bride and not Bablyon's Whore, we can't qualify a worship service filled with sloppy theology by how good it felt. Our worship must begin with the question, "What is true about God?" not "What do I want/need/expect to feel?"

Oh, and by the way, every time the People of God gather in Christ's name, the Spirit of God is there. You (plural!) are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. He is present when we gather. The discipline of gathering weekly to worship is one of learning to pay attention to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not to have a group sensation.

3. "We Need to be Free to Express Ourselves in Our Own Way."
Resisting the urge to refer again to the aforementioned Nadab and Abihu, I will say, instead, that you are free to do lots of things. You are free to worship a false god if you'd like. You are free, as Adam and Eve were, to try to be god-like instead of reflectors of the Image of God.

"Freedom" is another convoluted word, muddied by the Romantic Era and the American Revolution. "Freedom" in the American sense is quite different from "Freedom in Christ." Jesus didn't die to give us free speech; He died to set us free from the law of sin and death at work in us. Our culture has idolized autonomy and called it "freedom." We like innovation and not imitation because innovation is an expression of independence, and imitation is proof of dependence. But Biblical worship has nothing to do with the arrogant and the independent. If you insist on making this about "expressing yourself", you will find yourself more at home with the Golden Calf than with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. After all, the Golden Calf was an image Israel was familiar with, an "expression of worship" they knew and that made sense to them. You cannot fashion YHWH in your image; you are fashioned in His image, which is why there is a "prescribed way" to worship Him. It takes humility to say, "I don't really know how to worship." It takes humility to ask, as the disciples did, "Lord, teach us how to pray." And then to listen to the words of the Lord's Prayer and let those words shape the language of your prayer. Can we pray our own prayers and write our songs from our heart? Of course. But we would do well to let our language first be shaped by Psalms, Scripture, and the historic Creeds and confessions of the Church.

As children, we learned to speak by being spoken to. Our mother or father says, "Ball" and we watch their mouth and try to say it back to them. Then we say it with them. Soon we say it on our own. Then we speak on our own. But not with "our own words." That would be gibberish. We speak the words spoken to us. So with worship and prayer: Speak, sing, pray, the Word that has been spoken to you. Or as Paul wrote, "Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts" (Col. 3:16).

[I'm sure I'll write a follow-up post with some recommendations of books on Psalm-praying, or sources of the ancient creeds and confessions. But for now, the diligent can find them. Part of the education is in the search, right? :)]

Overview of Ephesians in 15 Minutes by N. T. Wright

For those already familiar with theologian N. T. Wright, this talk will seem a bit elementary-- and much shorter!-- than his normal lectures. For those unfamiliar with Wright, you may not see what all the fuss about this theologian is about. "Ephesians cannot be summed up in 15 years of study let alone 15 minutes," you may rightly say. But keep in mind that Wright is one of the rare breed of theologians who can write multiple 700+ page volumes on Christian Origins, a full-length 500+ page commentary on Romans, and yet write dozens of other books aimed at the general public, and succeed at both! That sort of excellent scholarship combined with accessible articulation are what make him special.

What is remarkable about this short talk, given not to seminary students but to the whole student body at a Wheaton College chapel, is how, in 15 minutes, he is able to show Paul's cosmic soteriology and how we fit into it. If brevity, as Shakespeare said, is the soul of wit (which for Shakespeare meant intelligence not humor), then N. T. Wright's wit and wisdom are both dazzlingly brilliant. The whole talk, only about 22 minutes long, can be viewed on iTunesU HERE.

NT Wright Gives Quick Tour Through Ephesians from Glenn Packiam on Vimeo.

 

 

"The New Local Church" (an article I wrote for NEUE Quarterly)

[This is an article I was asked to write for Relevant Magazine's NEUE Quarterly. This is just how the article opens. You'll need to click on the link to read the article itself!]

I didn’t want to be a pastor when I grew up.

My father is a pastor. He knows the people in his congregation. Many of them have been there since the church began fifteen years ago. He and my mom have talked and eaten and prayed and wept and laughed with these people. They don’t use software with pictures that pop up under each name to keep track of their members. They don’t need a fancy online database with barcode keycards to remember which child goes with which parent; they know those families. They’ve been in each other’s homes. My father is a pastor.

I didn’t want to be a pastor because I didn’t think I could do that. Or maybe it was because I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to achieve, to accomplish, to make my mark, to be known, to be significant, to do “great things for God.” Yes, I led small groups and met with people and enjoyed regular moments of helping people one on one learn what it means to follow Jesus. But could I spend every day doing that? I wasn’t sure.

I didn’t want to be a pastor when I grew up. Later I learned I had to grow up in order to be a pastor. I had to put away adolescent obsessions with success and the spectacular; I had to stop being fixated on efficiency and numbers, programs and systems. The lessons came as I paid attention to two men—a farmer and a pastor—who spent the majority of their lives on the margins of society....

[READ the rest of the article, published for NEUE Quarterly, HERE. You'll need to use the arrow buttons on the top left of the page to "scroll" to page 42-44 to read it.]

What Makes A Worship Song Uniquely Christian?

[EDITOR'S NOTE: A few posts ago, I started the conversation about what our worship songs communicate about God and why that matters. Then, earlier this week, I was asked to write down some thoughts on songwriting for a booklet that will be distributed at a certain conference coming up in Australia. While I can't be certain what bits of what I sent will make it and what won't (it was rather lengthy!), here is an excerpt that I thought might be a nice follow-up to my earlier post of what is at stake in our worship lyrics.]

What do our songs and prayers say about God? If we were to construct our church’s theology solely based on the lyrics we sang, what kind of “God” would that be? And more to the point, could our lyrics be applied to a generic deity or is there anything uniquely Christian about the God they depict?

It is not enough to simply say “God” in our songs. Which “God”? The one Oprah describes, the one Deepak Chopra worships? People in America are filling in the blanks in their own minds of the “God” we’re talking about and the picture of God is often disfigured as a result. I can’t speak for what the view of “God” is in other countries and cultures, but one would think that in countries where many distinct religions abound—like in Malaysia, the country I grew up in—it only becomes more important that we are saying and singing things that are uniquely Christian. 

So, what makes a song uniquely Christian?

1.    Christo-centric
This is a fancy way of saying our songs should focus on Jesus the Messiah. We need to sing about His pre-eminence, how He co-created the world with the Father, how He left His throne in heaven and became a man, how He suffered death and was buried, how he rose again conquering sin and defeating the evil that has infected the cosmos, how He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father, how He will return in glory to judge the world and set it right and make all things new. (There. I have summarized what the creeds have said about Jesus!) 

And in saying all these things we should name Him. We can do better than a generic “You.” His name is Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the rightful King of the World. 

2.    Trinitarian
The Trinity is not a concept to be understood; they are Persons to be worshipped. But we are not helping that cause by not naming Them in our worship. And we make things worse when we get muddle “Who is doing what.” The early apostles went to great lengths to help us assign the right roles and functions to the right Persons of the Trinity (The Father as Creator, the Son as Savior, the Spirit as Life-Giver, etc). We would do well to pay attention to that in our writing. 

This mysterious belief in God as three Persons is uniquely Christian. We are not praying to, singing to, or following an amorphous, monolithic Hero-God. We are drawn up into the Divine dance, the communion of the Tri-Personal God. If we’re looking for help in understanding the distinct roles, we can, once again, turn to the Nicene Creed—the only statement of Christian faith accepted by every stream of the Body of Christ, both Eastern and Western, Catholic and Protestant (and rejected by Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other cults and religions that would like to be called “Christian”).

As I wrestle with this, I am not yet convinced that every song needs to be overtly Trinitarian by acknowledging all three Persons. A song could be aimed at one Person of the Trinity. (Think of a song about Yahweh as Creator-God, the Almighty Father, or about Jesus the Redeemer and King, or about the Holy Spirit as the Comforter or God’s “empowering presence” with us.) But even in doing this we are acknowledging the God we worship as three-in-one.

If you were to comb through the catalog of my songs (you might first need a powerful search engine to find them!), you would discover that many of my songs simply address “God” or “You”.  Many of them are not Christo-centric or Trinitarian, and some, worse yet, are not even uniquely Christian. Much of that I regret. This journey for me is only a year or so old. But I want to write songs that are uniquely Christian and that help people live our truly Christian lives as a result. Would you join me on the journey and embrace the challenge?

Making Sense of Scripture

[EDITOR'S NOTE: On March 21, 2010, I gave a talk at New Life Sunday Night (5:30pm in the Tent) on how the Holy Spirit speaks to us through the Scriptures and how we can responsibly make sense of it. It would be extremely difficult to read this post and "apply it" without listening to the 45-minute talk as well, so I've included a link to download it. Also, know that none of this is truly original. It has been culled from a number of sources, notably Gordon Fee's "How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth", Eugene Peterson's "Eat This Book", and N. T. Wright's "For Everyone" series.]

Supernatural, Week 12_ Making Sense of Scripture - PM

PHASE 1, OBSERVATION: What Is Going On?
Gordon Fee: “The Bible has eternal relevance and historical particularity.”
Enter the story
-    Look around and explore this world
-    Examine the characters, the people
-    The Goal: to hear it as the original audience heard it

Tips:
* Read epistles or narratives all the way through. (Debunk 3 John 2)
* Read before and after your favorite verses (Jeremiah 29:11)
* Use a simple study Bible (like Life Application Study Bible) for introductory notes, etc

Questions:
1. What was the occasion or purpose?
2. What was the historical setting?
3. What was the cultural meaning?

PHASE 2, INTERPRETATION: What Did This Mean For Them?
God spoke through the Bible writers to specific people and has relevance for us.
Imagine how original listeners heard those words

Tips:
* Give special attention to what God says about people and events in the story.
* Look for aberrations of a norm, or breaks from an established pattern 
* Study how the author uses particular words
* Use Scripture to interpret Scripture

Questions:
1. Why is the story included? 
2. What’s the author’s point?
3. What are they saying next?

PHASE 3, APPLICATION: What Does This Mean For Me? (Not “to me” but “for me”) 
Let the story enter you
-    Don’t stand over the Word of God trying to pull stuff out of it;
-    Stand under the Word of God and let it define and direct you. Let it show you what you look like
-    When we are reading the Bible, the truth is, the Bible is reading us. 
-    Let it break down and be digested and assimilated in you. It might mean reading in smaller chunks     (instead of trying to swallow a steak whole!)
-    The point is not information or inspiration; the point is transformation!

We Read the Bible to Know God and Become His People.

Tips:
* Distinguish between descriptive and prescriptive texts. (Example, “Judas hung himself” versus “Love your neighbor as yourself.”)
* Pray the application of Scripture (Grothe story and Hawthorne story)

Questions:
1. How does this principle contradict my culture?
2. How does this reveal Jesus?
3. What areas in my heart need to be reshaped by this?
4. What can I do in response?

The Order of Service at NewLifeSundayNight

Here is our "Order of Service" at NewLifeSundayNight:

Worship in Song
Music is one of the oldest worship expressions, and perhaps the most complete in the way it engages and moves our whole being. The Bible is full of injunctions to sing, shout dance, and play skillfully on instruments as we make music to the Lord. It also encourages us to sing a new song. For this reason, we begin our service with Matthew Fallentine and a team of worship leaders and musicians leading us in expressing our worship in song, often newer songs that reflect what God is doing in our midst today.

The Nicene Creed
Officially formulated and adopted at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, the Creed expands and re-articulates beliefs that were taught by the early apostles and used in baptismal rites as early as the mid-2nd century. It is also the only creed accepted across every Christian denomination in both Western and Eastern streams.

Silent Confession
This is quiet space to become aware of the places in our lives and relationships where we have tried to live independently of God. It is a time to confess our sin, acknowledge our need for God, pay attention to the Holy Spirit’s work in us, and surrender every part of our life and heart to Him.

Corporate Confession
By using language from Psalm 51 and the Book of Common Prayer, words that are centuries old (at least!), we are travelling a well-worn path of faith, humility, and surrender to Christ. It reminds us that we are not alone in our journey, nor are we the first to embark on it.

Communion and Prayer
From the earliest days of Christian worship, the Eucharist—the celebration of communion—was the centerpiece of the Christian gathering. It is the moment where followers of Christ remember His death, celebrate His resurrection, and anticipate His return.  

On Sunday Nights, we invite families and friends to get the communion elements from the communion stations as the band plays, and then to return their seats and pray with one another as they receive the elements together. We also have a prayer team available to minister to those in need of special grace.

The Lord’s Prayer
While it is certainly good to form our own words from our hearts as we talk to the Lord, there is something special about praying the words Jesus taught His disciples. We believe this prayer, with its praise, petitions, and proclamations, can shape the posture of our hearts and teach us to pray “in Jesus’ name”.

JoyTime
This is a time to give to God with glad and joyful hearts. Jesus taught that the way we spend our money is the best indicator of where our loyalties lie. So giving to God is a tangible way to express our worship. Jesus gave sacrificially of His life for “the joy set before Him”. We believe that giving to God should always be a joyful and sacrificial part of our worship.

Scripture Readings
Before the talk begins, there is a public reading of the Scriptures by different members of our community. Passages are selected from both the Old and New Testaments that correspond with the current series. 

The Sermon
The talks on Sunday Nights follow the same series and subjects covered on Sunday mornings. As the pastor of the Sunday Night “campus”, I serves as the lead teacher, and try to bring a thoughtful Biblical and historical perspective to the subjects each week. (Subscribe to the Podcast HERE.)

Toward a Better Theology of Healing, Pt. 2

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Read the previous post, "Toward a Better Theology of Healing, Pt. 1", for introductory remarks and points 1-3.]

4. The fruit of what was gained for us through Jesus has begun and is manifesting in us here and now; but it will not culminate in its fullness until He returns.
The Kingdom of God has come, but it’s full and ultimate reign is not yet. The favorite theological phrase is “already, but not yet.” It doesn’t appear to make much sense, but the tension between the “already” and the “not yet” is seen throughout the New Testament. Salvation itself is described as something that has happened, something that is happening, and something that has yet to occur. Traditionally, these “tenses” of salvation have been described as “justification”, “sanctification”, and “glorification”. Consider Paul’s letter the Ephesian church. In Eph 1:3, Paul says God "has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” But a few verse later he says that “his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ” will “be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.” (Eph. 1:9b-10). Again in verses 13-14, he writes that we “also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of his glory.”

We have the deposit. Moreover, we have the guarantee. But the culmination will be when “the times have reached their fulfillment”.  This is an idea that modern Americans struggle with. How could you make the down payment for something and not enjoy it fully now? We make a down payment on a house and expect to move in right away. Not so in the ancient world. A deposit guarantees that it is yours. But it is not fully yours yet. It’s not to dissimilar from buying a gift for your child and placing it under the tree as a sort of guarantee that it is his, and yet asking him to wait until Christmas morning to open it. Here is the point some Charismatics can’t grasp: just because a thing is paid for doesn’t mean you will have it all now. 

If we didn’t believe this, that what’s coming is better than what is, that the fullness of what Jesus paid for will culminate later at the end of time, then we should not stop by claiming healing for cancer. We should take authority over baldness and weak joints and shortness of breath after exercise. We should not expect to die at all. After all, what Jesus paid for was more than healing: it was the ultimate restoration of all things: no more bodies that age and break down, no more injustice no more tears, no more suffering of any kind. If we want it all now, we should never have another believer die. Instead, we ought to remember, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, that Lazarus was raised from the dead only to die again. In other words, the best, the fullness of what Jesus paid for is not all to be enjoyed here and now. Those who insist otherwise are not being consistent in their behavior…neither is the universe, for that matter, for people age and die. And, what's more troubling to that point of view is the fact that none of the apostles-- not Peter who quotes Isaiah 53, not Paul, not James who tells us to lay hands on the sick, not John who outlives all the apostles-- taught the no believer should get sick or suffer disease if they had enough faith. Furthermore, to my best knowledge of church history (and though I am no scholar, I am a student of church history), no one has taught that theology of healing-- that all should be healed if there is no sin and enough faith.

5.  We Can Enjoy the Firstfruits (i.e. Healing and Miracles) Here and Now
This may challenge some who believe that healings and miracles were only for an age but are not for now. While it is true that what is coming is better than what is, it doesn’t mean there is nothing to enjoy now. There is the “foretaste of glory divine”, the beginnings of what is coming in fullness. To put it plainly, we can enjoy healing and miracles here and now. That is not to say we ought to demand it or simply claim it. But it does mean we should pray for it and believe. We can receive the foretaste of God’s ultimate “restoration of all things” here and now. This is what Jesus meant we He announced, “the Kingdom of God has come.” It is here. That explains why when He sent out the 70 (or 72) he simply told them to heal the sick. He reaffirms this in the Great Commission, telling them that for “those who believe” (i.e. disciples), they will “lay hands on sick people, and they will get well”. (Mk. 16:18) 

Throughout the Christian centuries, there are instances of healings and miracles that take place at the hands of certain devout men and women. Gregory Thuamaturgus (the "Wonderworker") is an example in the early centuries. But the list continues through the saints. And since there is no indication that it was merely for an age, I would contest that it continues through followers of Christ today.

So, what are we to conclude? Chiefly that God is good. That His ultimate plan for us is total and complete healing. And that He has suffered and paid for it on through Jesus. And based on His goodness and His ultimate plan for us, we should pray and ask for healing here and now. But above all, we have hope: for what is coming is better than what is.

Toward a Better Theology of Healing, Pt. 1

Labels can be useful, but they can often be misleading. So telling you that I am a Charismatic may not be helpful—to you or to me!—because the term can denote views that I don’t hold. When we talk about healing, labels can sound more like accusations than theological dispositions. So, in talking about healing, I’ll try to describe points of view rather than labels or denominations.

Let me say up front that I believe in the work of the Holy Spirit through the Church today. In certain streams of the Charismatic movement, the view of healing is as follows:

Because (a) God is a good God and, (b) healing is always His will, and (c) healing has been paid for in the cross, therefore, (d) our faith or sin is the only remaining barrier to having healing here and now.

We have enough decades behind us now to sensibly say that such teaching is problematic at best. What are we to make of the multitude of Christians—including popular faith preachers and pastors—who have died from illness and disease? Should we suggest they didn’t have enough faith? And if that is our conclusion, how much faith is enough? Didn’t Jesus say faith the size of a mustard seed is enough? But how do you measure faith anyway?

To be fair, when this teaching arose, there was a broad view of God as a cold, indifferent Being who sometimes sent sickness and suffering according to “His good pleasure”. The Christian was left no choice but to quietly acquiesce, and to view their condition as their divinely appointed lot in life. Such a view has more to do with the fatalism present in Buddhism than the teachings of Christ. Passive acceptance of suffering as the will of the supreme Force of the universe is not what Jesus ever told a sick person.

I suspect it was a reaction to this view of God as a distant, unsympathetic Being assigning diseases to people in His sovereign will that led many to revolt. Where some may have tried to simply teach that God is good and that sickness and disease is not His wish for any of us, others took it a step further by claiming that we should never pray “God, heal me if it’s your will” for it is always God’s will to heal. Working themselves into a logical loop knot, such healing preachers have had little choice but to claim that if any person remained un-healed, it was no fault of God’s; there must have been some sin or a lack of faith that prevented them from receiving what was rightfully theirs.

I suggest a view of God and healing that the Church has held for centuries prior, one that presents God neither as a cold school master who refuses questions nor a sugar daddy who is good only as we understand the word. Let’s begin.

1. Sickness was not God’s original design.
Adam and Eve’s bodies were not made to break down, grow weary and weak, or be susceptible to diseases and pain. Heck, they weren’t even supposed to sweat prior to the Fall. Adam and Eve were never made to grow old or bald or wrinkle or die.

2. Sickness is not God’s final outcome.
There would be not point in saying that in heaven every tear would be wiped away if there would only be more tears to come. No, when God bring the restoration of all things, there will be no more sickness, disease, injustice, or suffering of any kind. Such is the picture that John’s revelation and the heavenly and apocalyptic visions from Isaiah, Daniel and others provide (Rev. 21:1-5).

3. Jesus entered into our suffering, took it upon Himself, and, in His death and resurrection, made the way for the restoration—full healing—of all things.
Having set the original intent and the final outcome, we must ask how it is possible that will reverse the cures on the earth and humankind. How did God undo the suffering of humanity? In short, by entering it. By the incarnation, Jesus entered into our human suffering. He knows what it feels like to be abused, abandoned, beaten, bone-weary; He knows what it’s like to witness the death of a friend, or to watch a companion self-destruct in suicide. He knows what it’s like to ask the Father for a cup to pass and yet to surrender to the Father’s will above His own.

But because of His resurrection, He did more than enter it; He conquered it (Jn. 16:33). Jesus became the “firstborn from among the dead” (Col. 1: 18) so that now we have hope for the restoration of all things. As N.T. Wright, the preeminent New Testament scholar of our day, says, “God will do for the universe what He has done for Christ Jesus.”

When Isaiah wrote that the Messiah would suffer for our transgressions and that by His wounds we would be healed (Is. 53), we must see a wider picture than simply physical healing. Isaiah’s Messianic vision is of one who would end wars, bring healing to the division of God’s people, and, in short, right all that is wrong with the world. When Peter quotes Isaiah (1 Pet. 2:23-24), he is talking about right relationship with God, and then right relationships between one another. Right before quoting Isaiah, Peter describes the unjust suffering that slaves experience under the hand of the masters. He encourages their patience and forgiveness for Christ suffered unjustly too. Moreover, Christ’s suffering paid for our healing: of wounded relationships, of all injustice…and yes, of physical suffering too.

Thus far, it seems we have done little to offend. But, Part 2 is coming. :) [HERE is PART 2]

Eugene Peterson on Bono, The Message, and the Importance of Good Fiction

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an interview done with Eugene Peterson by Dean Nelson in 2007. In one of the more rare public interviews, Eugene talks about the power of story-telling and the sweeping story of Scripture; the influence of good fiction on his approach to pastoral ministry; his journey in translating The Message; and his "connection" with Bono.]

Theology Is An Aquarium...

Last night I taught at our Sunday Night Campus on the subject of Justification. It was a great opportunity to clearly present the theological distinctions between justification, sanctification, and glorification, and to explain why the New Testament talks about salvation in past, present, and future verb tenses. The joy, the confidence that comes from knowing that our justification is a one-time declaration from God...and that it's all God's work through Christ...is amazing. To believe that while our sanctification is on-going and involves our cooperation, setbacks in our sanctification process will not undo our justification. Thanks be to God!

But along the way, while immersing myself again in Erickson's "Christian Theology" and Grudem's "Systematic Theology", and re-reading Paul's words to the Romans, it occurred to me that our theological categories can be problematic. Paul is not as clear in delineating these three phases of our salvation. And to complicate things further, there are other New Testament-inspired theological words like regeneration, redemption, atonement, reconciliation, and more. Then, as a parishioner pointed out to me earlier in the week, there is Matthew 25, in which Jesus seems to indicate that there is a certain kind of behavior that demonstrates what we have done with Christ (The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats) that determines our reward or punishment. How do all these things fit together? And why is the Gospel's first and best theologian-- Paul-- not as systematic as we'd like?

I suggest, as many others have, it's because Jesus wants more for us than information and understanding; He wants participation and firsthand, relationship-based knowledge. (Paul's favorite word for the kind of "knowledge" we are to have of Christ is the kind of intimate knowledge that you could only gain through experiencing Him.) 

In a way, then, theology is like an aquarium-- a large, massive Sea World sort of aquarium, if it's a good theology, anyway! An aquarium recreates the oceanic environment and helps us see things we wouldn't otherwise see. In a good aquarium, the salt water, the dynamic and diverse coral and "vegetation", and overall ambience help us imagine what the ocean depths are like. The living creatures are descendants of actual inhabitants of the deep seas. An aquarium gives us an accurate depiction of the ocean. 

And yet, an aquarium is not the ocean. There is more to the ocean than what an aquarium can hold. In the same way, even our best theological categories and designations are like gigantic aquariums. They are helpful depictions of God in His creating and saving work. They are useful for study and understanding. But they are not the sum total of God and His work. God is more.

But this does not mean-- as some has suggested-- that the "more" that there is to God will be contradictory to what we know and understand of Him in sound, orthodox theology. The ocean is not fundamentally or in its essence different than what we find in the aquarium. It's not as if a deep sea diver might discover that ocean water is really as sustainable to human life as oxygen or that fish actually talk or that tiger sharks are really playful puppies. No, the ocean isn't fundamentally different. It is just larger, more massive, more difficult to absorb and comprehend. In that way, God is larger than our theological designations. I don't suspect that we'll come to the end and then say, "Oh my. I didn't realize that God is actually something totally different that the attributes I studied of Him in the Scriptures and in theology." To be clear, I am not suggesting that by saying God is larger than our theology we are saying that we might find that none of our theology matters and that all roads lead to God anyway. No. An emphatic NO. I am simply saying that our theological designations are helpful and necessary. And yet they are limited. 

There is more to the ocean than what an aquarium can show; there is more to God than what theology can tell. 

So, keep the books. Study them well. They will keep you from drowning and dispel your illusions of "ocean life".

But hold them loosely. The categories and compartments are made of fragile glass.

Most of all, go diving. 

Deep.

The ocean is for exploring; and God is for knowing.

Rethinking "Every Tribe and Tongue"

[The following piece was written for Worship Leader/Song Discovery Magazine. What does it mean to "take worship to the nations"? It's a complex and layered subject...one that demands more a short piece like this. But perhaps this will be enough to get the conversation started. Here's my perspective as a worship leader who's grown up on both sides of the world. This post will link to the full article at SongDiscovery.com.]

As the famous American worship leaders returned to the table with platefuls of aromatic curries and rice boiled in coconut milk, their faces wrinkled with curious interest in something other than their discoveries at the buffet line. It was the faint lines of music drifting through the humid air. The sultry notes being squeaked out on a stringed instrument defied conventional pitch. And the light tapping on small bongo-like drums had no sense of "groove" or, for that matter, time signature. 

"Why don't Malaysians write worship songs like this-in their own style?" blurted one of the Americans. Because it's awful, is what I thought....[Click HERE to read the FULL ARTICLE]

Are Worship Pastors Becoming Extinct?

 Over the past seven years, I have served as the Director of the New Life School of Worship, a 9-month program designed to train worship leaders for local churches. We believe that to effectively prepare our students for local church worship ministry they need to be trained in more than music. They need to be grounded in theology, familiar with church history, and responsible with their handling of the Scriptures. Moreover, they need to learn what it means to be a pastor: to shepherd the people under their care. 

But it seems that some churches aren't looking for that. They would prefer a musician who can lead the "singing", oversee the tech team, and produce recordings of their original songs. None of these are bad expectations, of course. But are we looking for these trade skills at the expense of other, more essential pastoral qualities? Are worship leaders simply highly skilled technicians who have a "steady gig" at a church? 

Today's worship leader may spend more time with his Macbook than with a real book. She may be more familiar with GarageBand than the people in her band. He may be better versed with directing the choir than providing spiritual direction. 

Of course, the trade side of being a worship leader and the pastoral side are not mutually exclusive. A person can be good at Pro Tools and at pastoring the people on his team. The trouble is we've lost the sacredness of the pastoral vocation. Any person who says their core role is to pray, study, and provide spiritual direction is not as "useful" to the corporation we call church. What else can you do? we ask. Then we proceed to fill so much of their time time with scheduling bands, arranging music, and working with the latest recording software that they are no longer doing any pastoral work. Musicians and singers become cogs in a wheel, things we use to fill slots. True, the administration needs to be done. And yes, musical excellence is valuable. But at what price?

Ross Parsley, the long-time worship pastor here at New Life, is fond of saying that music ministry is not about music; it's about people. Worship ministry is first a sort of a "helps" ministry that serves the Body of Christ. But more to the point, it is an excuse for us to connect with one another. Music is the table we gather around, the place where we see each other face to face, and then learn how to walk alongside one another in this life of faith.

Perhaps the question every church who hires a worship pastor-- and every aspiring worship pastor-- should answer is this: What will Jesus ask us about: the music we produced, the services we programmed? Or the people we pastored, the sheep we fed?

Take time today and think about the people on your team. Pray for them. Pick up the phone and call them. Break bread with them. Talk to them about more than the setlist. Remember your calling as a worship pastor, not a music program manager. Clear some of the clutter from your week. Maybe it's time to appoint others to do the tasks that are keeping you from your role as a shepherd. You have never met a mere mortal. Our music will not last forever; these people will.

Rethinking The Way We Worship (Reflections on Deuteronomy 12)

It is probably not surprising to you that God has an opinion about the way we worship. As is the case with so many other things, God is not only interested in our doing of a particular thing but in how we are doing it. Obedience is not just about right action or right result; it's also about right "way". Jesus was obedient, even to death on the cross. The central temptation of Jesus was to get Him to do God's work in the Devil's way. Much has been written about the three temptations Jesus faced in this regard, from Dostoevsky to Eugene Peterson.

When this principle is applied to worship, however, the discussion usually becomes about physical actions: God wants us to lift our hands, dance, clap, etc, we say. And that may be true. The one who made us just might know something about what helps engage our whole being in worship. But I read something in Deuteronomy today that made think of a few other "ways" our worship must be:

"Do not worship the Lord your God in the way these pagan peoples worship their gods." Deut. 12:4 (NLT)

The Book of Deuteronomy puts a great emphasis on avoiding idolatry. Even Deuteronomy 12 opens with an injunction to destroy pagan shrines and every trace of idolatry, echoing a theme that has surfaced several times in the preceding chapters. But God doesn't stop there. It wasn't enough to not worship idols; they were not to worship Yahweh in the way pagans worshipped idols. So, what were the ways pagans worshipped their gods? Are those ways still prevalent in how people in our culture worship success or fame or wealth? In what ways was the worship of Yahweh to be different from pagan worship? Based on Deuteronomy 12, here are some thoughts on the way we worship our God:

1. Be Communal Not Privatized
The first thing God says about His "way" of worship as opposed to the pagans is about place. "Rather, you must seek the Lord your God at the place of worship he himself will choose from among all the tribes-- the place where his name is honored." That specific place is where they are to bring their burnt offerings, sacrifices, tithes, sacred offerings, offerings to fulfill a vow, voluntary offerings, offerings of the firstborn of their flocks (vs.6, 10-11). You get the point. But in case you missed it, Moses goes on: "Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings just anywhere you like. You may do so only at the place the Lord will choose within one of your tribal territories" (vs. 13-14a). 

In John 4 Jesus helps us understand that there is nothing inherently sacred about a geographic location anymore. It is worshippers who worship in spirit and in truth that the Father is after. But wherever those worshippers gather in His name, there He is. And every gathering has a place just as every family has a home. Place matters because that’s where the gathering is. By specifying a location for their worship in Deuteronomy, God was teaching Israel that worship was not a private matter. They could not freely offer sacrifices anywhere they liked. It had to be at the chosen place within their tribal territory. Their worship was to be in the context of their tribe-- or in our language, community.

There is something dangerous about our tendency to privatize or individualize everything. When worship becomes privatized it becomes vulnerable to error-- false worship, wrong thinking about God; moreover, it becomes anemic. Our worship must not only remind us that we belong to God, but that we are His people, we are part of His tribe. This is likely why Jesus' chosen word for the His new people was ekklesia, the gathering or assembly, a word that conjures images of a city gathering with purpose. Much can be said about our current trend toward meeting with a few friends just like us in a home and calling it "church", but that must be saved for another blog. For now, it will do to start us thinking in a more communal or corporate way about worship.

2. Honor Life, Don't Desecrate It
Moses continues by telling them that could eat meat so long as the blood was drained: "But you must not eat the blood. You must pour it on the ground like water" (vs. 16). From Leviticus 17, we know that "life of every creature is in the blood". Blood was for atoning for sins, not for eating or drinking. Wrapped in this strange command is an instruction about the sanctity of life.

By telling Israel not to eat the blood of an animal when they joyfully ate its meat as part of their worship celebration, God was teaching Israel not to let worship make them self-indulgent. It's as if He was saying, "Don't get so caught up in the joy of worshipping Me that you forget about others, that you think your life is more valuable than theirs." Later in Israel's history they would be rebuked for celebrating great sacred festivals and feasts at the expense of the poor and the needy (Amos 5). Our worship, while being communal, must not be insular. Life is precious: the Life that was given so that we might truly live, the lives that are suffering without that Life, and the lives that are trivialized and extinguished by genocide, abortion, abuse, and injustice all around the world. Worship must lead us to honor life and to protect it.

3. Involve Our Children, Don't Sacrifice Them
Toward the end of the chapter, Moses adds a very specific detail about how pagans worshipped their gods, one that Israel had to avoid:  “You must not worship the Lord your God the way the other nations worship their gods, for they perform for their gods every detestable act that the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters as sacrifices to their gods” (vs. 31). When Moses talks about what Israel was to do with their children, the two ways come into sharp contrast: “You must celebrate there in the presence of the Lord your God with your sons and daughters and all your servants” (vs. 12a). In Yahweh worship, children are included in the celebration; in pagan worship, the children are sacrificed. 

How often do we aim to serve God, to worship Him, to bring Him honor, but do so at the expense of our children? Far too many servants of Yahweh—pastors, missionaries, marketplace ministers—are sacrificing their children to carry out their work for God. This is how our culture works for its gods of wealth and success. But our God does not want to be worshipped in that way. His way of being worshipped means that we bring our children into what we are doing for Him. We are to talk with them when we are “at home and when [we] are on the road, when [we] are going to bed and when [we] are getting up (Deut. 6:7).

It's good that we are learning to put away idols and idol worship. Now perhaps it's time we rethink the way we are attempting to worship God, so that we aren't doing it the way the ancient pagans did. The way we worship matters immensely to God.

When Bottom-Line Thinking Ruins Everything

This year was supposed to be the year my football team broke out of their rebuilding phase and rose to challenge the Patriots, Colts, and Steelers for the right to represent the AFC in the SuperBowl. Instead, we have sunk to cellar, hoping to crawl out with a new head coach who is younger than his best veterans and without a Pro Bowl quarterback who was supposed to be the second coming of John Elway.

The trouble began months ago when a teary man in his mid-sixties simply said he was firing one of best friends because "it was time". Pat Bowlen's joint press conference with Mike Shannahan, his Superbowl-winning coach of 15 years, was the most crying I've ever seen in the NLF-- except of course for the time Brett Favre retired...the first time. Pro football, as we are reminded every offseason (which should be called "contract dispute season") is a business. And in any business, the bottom line is what matters most. Friendships are good; team loyalty counts for something, especially during the season. But in the end, players, coaches, owners, and VPs must produce or be fired. 

America's pastime, baseball, now marred by multiple steroid scandals, is carnage on the altar of bottom-line thinking. Is it really surprising that the immense pressure to produce godlike statistics to match their godlike salaries has driven so many pro athletes to Performance Enhancing Drugs? Teams want to make more money; to make more money you have to win more; to win more you need the best coaches and players; to get the best players you've got to pay them the best salaries for their position. And when you pay them that much, they better produce. And when there's that much pressure to produce, vocational purity is lost. There is nothing sacred or pure about the game anymore. There is no longer anything special about being a baseball player or a football player or a basketball player. It's all just a business.

Such thinking is all around us. A few years ago, my wife and I took our daughter to a pediatrician that many of our friends recommended. At first, we appreciated his efficiency, the way we got in and got out. But after a few visits, he seemed more willing to write a prescription for Amoxicillin than to listen to our concerns. We began to feel like we were being herded through the office and rushed through an appointment so the maximum number of patients could be seen each day. In short, it seemed our pediatrician had reduced his vocation of caring for children and attending to their health to simply a business. And the more patients he had, the better his bottom line. Eventually we left and found a different pediatrician who was more willing to take her time with her patients, one who was running her business but preserved the purity of her vocation.

Bottom-line thinking has a way of undoing our best intentions. I know because my vocation is not immune to it. Pastors are tempted to evaluate their work through the same grid as pro athletes and pediatricians: as managers of a business. Our bottom line, though it could be measured in dollars, is more often measured in people. Because of that, it seems purer. And to some degree it is. It's better to evaluate a church by the lives it is affecting than by the money it's bringing in. But still, it's a way of reducing the richness and complexity of our calling as pastors into something as static and unreliable as numbers. Worse, it often leads us to justify a way of doing ministry that looks nothing like Jesus simply for the sake of reaching more people. The proof of the pervasiveness of that thinking is in popular church campaign slogans like "Reach the Lost at Any Cost."

It might be worth noting that Jesus didn't reach the lost at any cost. When the rich young ruler walked away sad because he wasn't about to sell all he had and give it to the poor, Jesus let him. When the prodigal son left home, the father didn't run after him. To top it off, Jesus seems to have made a concerted choice to avoid a more popular and potentially more effective approach to reaching people simply because it was less personal. The two large cities in Galilee of Jesus’ day were Sepphoris and Tiberias. Sepphoris, Galilee’s capital, was only a few miles from Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth. Both cities were centers of activity and influence. Both were within view of the places Jesus frequented. Yet neither is mentioned in the stories of Jesus. (Tiberias gets a passing mention of people coming in boats form Tiberias to look for Jesus.) Instead, Jesus, as Eugene Peterson suggests, worked out “his way of life in the intensely personal and God-oriented small towns of Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida.” It wasn’t that He didn’t have any other options. He most certainly did. Could it be that Jesus chose these more personal settings on purpose? It seems consistent with the rest of His ministry approach. When Jesus did set His face toward Jerusalem it wasn’t to perform a spectacle at the Temple, as Satan had earlier suggested He do; Jesus went to Jerusalem, to the epicenter of culture, to die. These are certainly not the choices of a person driven by the bottom-line of producing more or reaching more.

To be sure, all vocations have an element of business. We are to be shrewd managers, faithful stewards, making the most of what we have been given. It's not wrong to get paid for what you do...even as pastors. (Paul makes a strong case to young pastor Timothy about the merits of rewarding those who serve as elders, governing the affairs of the church, in particular those who teach.) And it's not wrong to watch the bottom-line in your business. But at some point, too much attention to the bottom line corrupts the purity of any vocation. We must ask ourselves not simply how well our business is doing, but how well we are doing business. Are we losing the purity of our vocation-- as doctors or lawyers or pastors or athletes-- because of an obsession with the bottom line? The bottom line is one piece of what we do as a professional in any field. But if the bottom line drives our decisions and shapes our vocation, we will find ourselves in the place my beloved Broncos are in: ruined.

The New Sunday Night Service at New Life Church

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Since launch the service on Sept. 13, 2009, we have made a few tweaks, both to the service order and the preaching element. I have adjusted this blog to now reflect those changes as of Nov. 15, 2009]

The word's out: New Life is launching a Sunday Night Service. I know many of my blog readers don't live in Colorado Springs, but I thought the best way for me to share my heart for this service would be to blog about it. 

The pastor's challenge is to let his heart and mind be full of the way things should be while his hands and feet are firmly in the reality of how things are. We are always fixing our eyes on Christ and trying to follow Him and His ways, all while working with the particulars of the soil of our field. This means that not everything will line up with a list of ideals. It also means that we will get dirt under our fingernails. Yet we labor to be on this earth as Christ was, to be carriers of the Divine, acting out His Kingdom and the values of that Kingdom here and now, on earth as it is in heaven. We deal in the subversive, beginning with where culture is but undermining it with a Love that is not of this world. So, here are some of the values that will shape the service and the culture of the Sunday Night Campus.

PERSONAL
One of the main reasons Pastor Brady and the team decided to launch this service is to create a smaller environment for worship and community. We're looking for ways to make a big church not just "feel" smaller, but to actually be smaller. My hope is to be more than a service host. I want be a pastor. I want to build relationships with people who make this service their home and help them grow in the Lord. I want us to learn to be attentive to what God is doing in each other's lives so that as we gather each week we "recognize each other as companions along the way of the cross".

SACRAMENTAL
What I'm most excited about is gathering at the Lord's Table every week. As we prepare to celebrate the Eucharist about 20 minutes into the service, we'll participate in a liturgical confession from the Book of Common Prayer. We'll be saying words that have been said by the Church for hundreds of years, and in some cases, longer. Then, after our corporate confession, we'll go to tables on the sides and gather the elements as the worship team continues to sing. From there, you can either go to our prayer team, stationed along the edges, to receive prayer and ministry as you receive the elements, or gather in clusters with friends and family to receive the elements together. Of course, if the Lord is doing something deeply personal in your heart, you can gather the elements, find a corner and receive them on your own. To conclude our time of prayer and ministry at the Lord's Table, we'll stand to pray together the Lord's Prayer. 

For those who have never experienced the power of liturgy, this will be wonderful introduction to an ancient practice. For those who are from a liturgical background, this will all seem familiar but out of order (it is!). I pray these familiar actions and words become meaningful in a fresh way.

CONVERSATIONAL
In Working the Angles, Eugene Peterson describes the Greek word hodegete in context of the more familiar word exegete. Both have as part of their word the idea of "leading". But while exegesis focuses on "leading the meaning out of the text", hodegesis is the process of "leading people into the text." An exegete is an explainer; a hodegete is a guide. Both, of course, are necessary. Hodegesis is seen in the way Philip gets in the chariot with the eunuch and helps him understand the Isaiah scroll he's reading, and how it speaks of Christ. 

So, in a similar way, each talk will involve an exploration of the text so that we, with the Holy Spirit, can learn how to enter the Scriptures and to let the Scriptures enter us. The talks will follow the same sermon series as the Sunday morning services. Each one will use the same text and convey the same key points, but will have a slightly different expression and feel. I will preach about 36 times a year and have others from our teaching team do the rest. 

INCARNATIONAL
This is a fancy way of saying that we believe that God is present in ordinary people in the midst of ordinary situations. While we should-- and we will-- set apart special times and moments to encounter God, we believe He is with us all through the week. Our gatherings are a way of creating space, making room, for God. The songs, sermon, conversation and liturgy are all ways that we call attention to Him in our midst as a congregation. But the hope is that this habit of paying attention to God in the service will train us to be attentive to Him in the more ordinary moments and conversations.

This is also a nice way for saying we like laughing, eating, and enjoying one another. (And we hope the lobby reflects it!) There's something spiritual about it, though not in the conventional sense. OK, now for the nitty-gritty!

Details:
Sundays, 5:30pm-7:00pm
Location: The TENT, New Life Church
Launch Date: September 13, 2009 

Matthew Fallentine will be leading worship, and I will serve as the pastor of the service. The flow is roughly as follows:

Invocation Song/Welcome
Worship
Eucharist Confession
Receiving of the Eucharist with Prayer/Ministry
JoyTime (Offering and OT/NT Readings)
The Talk
Benediction

How to Get Involved:
There are loads of ways to serve and get involved. The Leadership Team will involve men and women who who lead small groups, pray for people as we gather at the Lord's Table, greet people at the door, take up the offering, set-up the lobby, prepare coffee and coordinate snacks, prepare the communion elements, and other little things. I am in the process of forming a core team who will help lead these areas.

But to start with, you can email me at [email protected].
You can also follow the service on Twitter: @NLCSundayNight. (If you're not on Twitter, it's an amazing way to communicate to a targeted group of people in a concise way, with highly intelligent "tagging" and "searching" features.) For us, it will be a great way to get updates and details on the service and the Leadership Team.

Shopkeepers or Shepherds?

Many people have the mistaken notion that ministry is all about meeting needs. Jesus met needs, so we must meet needs, it is often said. To our great joy, this challenge to meet people's needs places us on common ground with our peers in the business world, finally giving the pastor a shot at credibility in the "secular world". After all, a good entrepreneur is simply trying to create, distribute, and sell goods and services that meet people's needs. Without thinking twice, we rush to every business seminar or management book looking to learn ways that we can become better at "meeting people's needs".

The pastor becomes a shopkeeper, discovering more "needs" his people have and inventing more programs and ministries to meet those needs. The trouble is, the list of needs and the accompanying programs or ministries to meet those needs is endless. There are loads of "good" things that a church "should" be doing. The larger the church, the more things they are likely to attempt. This is how so many churches become program-driven, burdened by the many entrepreneurial start-up ministries they now have to maintain with a burgeoning staff and swelling expenses. None of this is evil. In fact, that's just the trouble: it's good, and in many situations it works. (What "works" means and whether or not we should run ministry through a filter of pragmatism is a massive subject for another post!) But it has the unintended consequence of turning Christ-followers into Christian consumers and shepherds into shopkeepers. Perhaps so many church folks act like consumers because we treat them as such. 

To be sure, managing people, resources, and ministry efforts are part of what a pastor must do. Even Jesus had to assign tasks to the right people and taught us to be good stewards of the things that have been entrusted to us. But was Jesus, at His core, a manager? Is the pastor called to be, in his essence, a spiritual shopkeeper?

Out of the crowds that heard Jesus' teaching, He commissioned the 70. Beyond the 70, He chose the 12 as disciples, later commissioning them to make disciples themselves. Jesus sought to turn followers into disciples, and challenged disciples to become disciple-makers. He seemed intent on leading people on a journey, along a process. Yes, Jesus met needs; but He was not driven by the needs around Him. He made decisions based on what He saw the Father doing, and there were several needs He even seemingly ignored. Luke 5:15-16 records:

"Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed."

Imagine it: crowds of sick people-- people with needs only Jesus could meet-- and what does Jesus do? He withdraws to pray. If a pastor attempted to ignore his overflowing email inbox or the stack of phone calls from people with pressing needs, so he could create space for prayer and study, he would immediately be labeled as "distant", "unconcerned with people's needs". Yet it was precisely because Jesus was free from the tyranny of meeting needs that He was able to pull away and pray. And it was because Jesus pulled away to pray that He "saw" what the Father was doing and did it and nothing else. We become better pastors when we refuse to let "needs" and "opportunities" dictate our course.

As pastors, we ought not take our cues from the pressing demands and expectations of the people. Nor should we aim reduce our role to peddlers of "the greatest product ever" or broadcasters of "the greatest story ever told". We are not entrepreneurs or business people. We are shepherds. And shepherds lovingly lead people along a journey.

What's happening here at New Life and in so many other churches is a move away from trying to do everything and offer everything. Instead, we're thinking more like shepherds. We're formulating a clear process that we'd like to lovingly lead people along. For us, the language is simple: Are we helping people worship, connect, and serve? We're in the midst of paring down the amount of things we attempt. And though we've made strides, we're not there yet. It's not new nor is it revolutionary; but it is counter-cultural. I've read at least four church leadership books written in three different decades that address this same shift. I suspect it's a recurring theme because the pressure of our culture to make a pastor think like an entrepreneur is immense. 

I can't tell you what it looks like for you to be a shepherd. There is no magic ratio of necessary programs and superfluous ones. I'm not here to pitch you a model or a book. I'm just here to add my voice to the chorus of wiser, older pastors who have walked this road and warned of its pitfalls. So: Here's to a generation of pastors that resist the urge to be shopkeepers and insist on recovering what it means to be a shepherd.

The Shape of Pastoral Life

Over the course of our six-week sabbatical, it became evident that there was a theme to our reading, our reflection, our prayer, and to a certain extent even our experiences. We were discovering the shape of pastoral life. From our time in Vancouver Island, visiting Mark Buchanan's church, watching and conversing with a pastor who knows his people by name, to our time away in Florida reading Eugene Peterson's Under the Unpredictable Plant, where he tells the story of his 30 years of pastoral ministry and challenges a return to the sacredness of our call, pastoral ministry was at the core of our reflection and prayer. It even emerged from the pages of my recreational reading of choice, Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring-- though I'm certain it wasn't Tolkien's intent! More on that at some point.

So, over the next few posts, I want to share a few thoughts. Some of the things Holly and I read and reflected on are still fermenting in our hearts so to share them would be pre-mature. But other things have already begun to take root and might be worth a discussion.

Working the Angles was written by Peterson before Under the Unpredictable Plant, yet they share a similar core and expound on each other. In Working the Angles, the operating geometric metaphor for pastoral ministry is a triangle. In a triangle, the most obvious parts are the lines, yet what gives a triangle its shape are not it's lines, but its angles. So in pastoral ministry, the most obvious elements-- the lines-- are preaching, teaching, and administration. But what gives pastoral ministry its shape are less obvious, more hidden things. They are described in Working the Angles, but expounded on with personal story and the Jonah story as a metaphor in Under the Unpredictable Plant. Drawing on ideas from both, the angles that give pastoral ministry its shape are:

1. PRAYER

Praying the Psalms helps give shape to our language when we pray our own spontaneous prayers. The five Books in the Psalms were likely designed to be a partner to the five Books of the Torah. The Torah is God's speech to us; the Psalms are how we answer.

"I want to pray slowly and lovingly, so that my relation with God is inward an honest."

(Eugene in a talk with his Elders, told in Under the Unpredictable Plant, pg. 39)

Prayer is giving attention to God.

2. SCRIPTURE

In the study and the proclamation of Scripture, we do not handle the Bible as a textbook, extracting "principles" and "big ideas". We instead "turn eyes in to ears" and listen to God and His word to us. We enter the stories, immerse ourselves in the particularities of time and place and name, and let the Word enter us. For in "listening the speaker is in charge; in reading the reader is in charge." 

(Working the Angles, pg. 88)

"I want to study God's word long and carefully so that when I stand before you and preach and teach I will be accurate."

(Eugene in a talk with his Elders, told in Under the Unpredictable Plant, pg. 39)

The study and proclamation of Scripture is calling attention to God.

3. SPIRITUAL DIRECTION

Like Grape Nuts that is neither grape nor nuts, sometimes spiritual direction is neither "spiritual" nor directive. It is prayerfully and imaginatively sitting before people, attentive and in awe of what God is doing in them. We have learned how to study the text and see connections and cross-references. Can we learn to do the same with people?

"I want to be with [people], often and leisurely, so that we can recognize each other as close companions on the way of the cross and be available for counsel and encouragement to each other."

(Eugene in a talk with his Elders, told in Under the Unpredictable Plant, pg. 39)

Spiritual Direction is being attentive to what God is doing in people.

Summarizing Quotes:

"I want to be a pastor. I want to lead people in worship each Lord's Day in such a beautiful way that they will be brought into something larger and beautiful-- into God and His salvation...And I want to be with them through the days of the week at those times when they need verification and clarification of God's continuing work and will in their lives..."

(Under the Unpredictable Plant, pg. 173)

"What are the actual means by which I carry out this pastoral vocation, this ordained ministry, this professional commitment to God's word and God's grace in my life and in the lives of the people to whom I preach and give sacraments, among whom I command a life for others in the name of Jesus Christ?

"The answer among the masters whom I consult doesn't change: a trained attentiveness to God in prayer, in Scripture, in spiritual direction. This has not been tried and discarded because it didn't work, but tried and found difficult...and so shelved in favor of something or other that could be fit into a busy pastor's schedule...The fact is nobody has an aptitude for it. It is hard work. It is unglamorous work...Still...none of us can mature into excellence without a lifelong persistence of trained attentiveness to God."

(Working the Angles, pg. 16-17)

So help me, God.

In Defense of Tradition

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a follow-up piece to my "Liturgy" post I wrote for Relevant's www.neueministry.com. Read it HERE.]

Famous Ones: Is Influence Overrated?

Hi friends and casual readers,

Over the next several weeks, I will be writing for Relevant Magazine's online resource for their network of ministries (www.neueministry.com). I will continue to post different blogs here, but from time to time I will provide a link from here to there...especially in weeks when I find it difficult to write two new posts! 

So, for this week, click here to read my first post, "Famous Ones: Is Influence Overrated?"  I would love it if you left a comment.

Peace,

Glenn

Overrated Christian Virtues

There’s been quite a discussion at work lately about how a pastor should dress when he goes to work. It struck a nerve. Tensions rose, tempers flared, and a new dress code policy was hammered out. Frankly, I’m good with where things landed. But somewhere in the course of pontificating about the advantages of blue jeans, it occurred to me that there are some personal preferences that we’ve named as virtues. Church authorities have typically gone a step further to christen them as Christian virtues. But strip beyond the thin layer of God-speak, and you’ll find nothing more than someone’s opinion. Opinion is a thin thread, but a Christian Virtue is worth mandating obedience.

So, here are a few Overrated Christian Virtues of our day that are worth questioning in the light of Jesus and his time on earth:

1. Punctuality

I confess: I have taught, sometimes ruthlessly, on the value of being on time. I run a ministry school that trains worship leaders for local churches, and I have had rules that severely punished the tardy. One year, for every minute a student was late, he had to run line sprints for three times that amount of time.

Being late is often a symbol of laziness, irresponsibility, or a lack of respect for the people whom you are late to see. It is often that, but not always. Sometimes being late is the result of being fully present in your previous appointment. How many times have you rushed through a two o’clock appointment with a friend who needed you simply because you had a three o’clock with someone else? How many people have we paid half-attention to because our minds were racing to our next appointment?

Jesus was never like that. As purposeful as we imagine his life to be, he sure was interrupted a lot—by children, by bleeding women, by blind beggars. Never once do you see Jesus saying, “I’m sorry. I really care about your needs. But can you schedule an appointment with my executive assistant so we can better serve you?” Or, “I hear what you’re asking for, and I have just the program for that.” Jesus didn’t answer needs with a program or a curriculum or an appointment to grab a quick cup of coffee. He let himself be interrupted then and there. And it often made him late. A surprising truth: Jesus was often late. And he was late to some pretty big events. His dear friend Lazarus, even in his sick and dying state, couldn’t make Jesus ignore interruptions and pick up the pace. Jesus lived by one rule: he did what he saw the Father doing. He followed no one’s timetable or expected schedule. And consequently, he was never in a rush. He always had time to be fully present with the people who needed him most.

This convicts me.

The kind of lateness we mean to correct is the kind that comes from laziness or irresponsibility or disrespect. We would do well to teach the virtues of diligence, responsibility, and respect. But to extol punctuality at the expense of taking care of people is simply missing the point.

Interesting thought: Jesus performed his greatest miracles when he arrived on the scene late.

2. A Clean Image

We love to imagine a clean, mild Jesus, hair neatly parted, eyes sparkling blue. Did you know that the physical description of the tender Jesus seen in our modern paintings comes from a bogus source from the year 1514, claiming to be a first century letter? Perhaps it was a ploy to convince young men to be neatly groomed since “Jesus was”. (It is particularly ironic to me that many an uptight denomination or ministry school has a “no-beard” rule even as a portrait of a bearded Jesus hangs on their walls.)

I don’t know where our infatuation with the “respectable” image comes from. Maybe from Paul’s admonishment to “live above reproach” or to “avoid the appearance of evil”. But was Paul talking about dressing “professionally” or with “elegance”? Could Paul possibly have been inspired by the Holy Spirit to anticipate an age of khaki pants and starched collars? Somewhere along the way, dressing like a banker from Mid-town Manhattan became the definition of a “respectable Christian image”.

Perhaps it’s been too long since John the Baptist walked the earth in camel hair with dried bits of honey hanging off his beard, and locust legs stuck in his teeth. We would certainly not have ordained him, let alone given him an office at my church campus. To be honest, I would have been quite afraid to approach him. If I had driven by, I may have rolled up my window.

Perhaps it’s been too many years of subliminally brainwashing ourselves with Western depictions of a respectable Jesus that we’ve forgotten that the Gospels describe one public perception of him as being a “glutton and a drunkard” (Luke 7:34, NIV). Now, who would you be more apt to call a glutton—the guy who’s 6 foot 2, a shade under 200 pounds or the dude that’s 5’8” with his gut hanging over his already sagging pants? I’m not calling Jesus fat; I’m just asking you to consider why he was called a glutton. And then ask yourself why he was mistaken for a partying fool. Do either of the Gospel descriptions meet what you had in mind for a “respectable Christian image”?

Maybe the virtues we mean to teach are restraint, modesty, and deference to a weaker believer. But to hail a clean image as a Christian Virtue is nothing short of ignorance.

3. Social-Adjustedness

This is my favorite neo-Christian virtue. “We want Jonny to be a nice Christian boy, to play well with others, to be well-respected and well-liked,” Christian parents say. “I don’t want my kids to be too smart or to know too much of the Bible; I would rather they have good social skills.”

Now, certainly Jesus was good with people. Crowds flocked to him. They would stay for days on end, sometimes without food, just to hear his words. He was captivating. He would call men to leave their jobs and follow Him and they would.

But is that really due to what we call “social skills?”

Consider this brilliant quote from C. S. Lewis:

He was not at all like the psychologist’s picture of the integrated, balanced, adjusted, happily married, employed, popular citizen. You can’t really be very well “adjusted” to your world if it says you “have a devil” and ends by nailing you up naked to a stake of wood.

(As quoted in Philip Yancey’s “The Jesus I Never Knew”.)

Perhaps the virtue we mean to teach is a selfless love for others, a compassion that moves us to act for the needy. But social-adjustedness? Not exactly the Jesus of the Gospels.

Here’s the million-dollar question: have we embraced cultural norms or stylistic preferences and called them Christian Virtues, but found ourselves further from actually becoming like Jesus?

Food for thought.

The Myth of More, Pt. 3 of 3

OK, so you can probably guess where this is going. This is the last installment of the Myth of More. It’s time to talk about the Myth of More Stuff. And I know you think you know all about this. Actually, you probably do. You and I know all about how more stuff is not the answer to a more meaningful life. We understand that we’re not supposed to be materialistic or to care that much about the stuff we have.

But there’s what we know, and there’s the reality of our lives. If you’re like me, and if you’re brave enough to admit it, you like stuff. Just this past week, I was in Woodbridge, Virginia, playing at a big youth conference. We had time to kill between sets on Saturday so our host offered to drive us to a nearby outlet mall. I walked in with nothing in mind that I was looking for, and, truthfully, nothing I needed. Yet three hours later, I walked out with 4 bags of stuff. All stuff on sale, all great bargains, all things I just had to get because it was just such an incredible deal. Here’s the worst thing: I don’t really regret it. I like the hat I got. I really dig the cool black shirt I found. And the sweater was just a steal. The pair of black and white shoes—well, those were a touch pricey—but, hey, they’re a quality pair of kicks that will last a long time. They’re virtually a “wise investment”.

We have our reasons behind every purchase. The new car is about our safety or the safety of our kids, the new home is so we can host more people and “serve the Kingdom”, the flat screen TV is…um…well, for football season. As weeks turn to years, the bargain deals, impulse buys, and “wise investments” slowly accumulate to a house full of stuff. You find that your income has increased, but your disposable income has not. The mortgage is suffocating, the membership fee for that really cool health club shows up with surprising regularity, and any extra expense is an unbearable burden. What happened?

Quite simply, as my father-in-law is fond of saying, possessions possess. The more stuff you have, the more stuff has you. But what are we to do about it? Most of us are not going to abandon it all and move to a commune. (I’m sorry Shane Claiborne, some of us have families.)

While I appreciate the reminder and the challenge offered by the now-hip neo-hippie movement, it can have the same effect that the first monastic movement had on the average Christian. Early monasticism unwittingly communicated that if you truly wanted to follow God you needed to quit your job and devote your whole life to prayer, the Scriptures, and community service. As wonderful as that was and in spite of all the good that came from it, it alienated the majority of the population. It made people feel like if they had to keep their jobs to feed their families they were second-rate citizens or lesser Christians. The truth Martin Luther recovered is that we are all priests, no matter what our vocation on the earth. In a similar way, the Christianity-as-a-commune philosophy tells us—perhaps unintentionally—that the only way to be un-materialistic is to not own anything and to never set foot in Wal-Mart.

Some of you may be screaming that Acts describes the church as having “all things” in common. I would argue that it was only that way in the beginning…and that it was that way out of necessity because they began as a fledging, unpopular religion, a sect of Judaism. As it grew and expanded to other cities, you don’t see much talk about their having all things in common. It shifts to passages on generous giving. Why would generous giving, like that of the Macedonians, be applauded if they had all things in common? It seems that people owned stuff, but were admonished to hold them loosely. Remember that even Paul asks for Timothy to bring him his cloak and scroll, things it seems that he himself owned. People owned stuff and people shared stuff. The commune answer is one solution…and it is certainly working in Philly for Shane and his peeps.

But there is another way. Or perhaps a larger principle at work that has other expressions. It is simply this: living a generous life.

Living a generous life means at least these things:

1. We recognize that nothing have is ours

Deuteronomy 8 is the perhaps the best Old Testament passage on recognizing wealth as something that comes from God. But the stern reminder is to never believe that any success or wealth or blessing is the result of our work or effort. It is always—always—a gift from heaven.

2. We understand that everything we have has been given to us for a reason…and that reason is usually not us.

Stewardship is the old-fashioned word for saying that we have been given stuff so we can do something with an impact beyond our selves. Furthermore, it means that we have to give an account for everything that we’ve been given. God is watching. Every dime is His. If you really believed that, would it change the way we spend? As Jesus said, “To whom much is given, much is required.” We want to be the ones to whom much is given. But can we bear to be the ones of whom much is required?

3. We believe that possessions are not the greatest blessings.

Even though material things are often indicators of God’s blessing—I didn’t make this up and I am not at all a fan of TV prosperity Gospel preaching; it’s seen through the Old Testament—it is not God’s greatest blessing. As we make the shift from Old to New, we find that all the obvious physical signs of God’s approval—rain, increase, wealth—are only shabby hints at the spiritual blessings we now have in Christ. Paul writes that we are “blessed with every spiritual blessing.” To have love is better than to have wealth; to have peace is better than to have a security system; to have Jesus—to have Jesus—to know Him, to be loved by Him, to be called by His name is far better than all the best this world could give. Those are words we sing. It’s high time they become words we live. And the proof is in our generosity.