Unchurched folks like old church architecture

Monday, April 14th, 2008

Appar­ently, unchurched Amer­i­cans pre­fer going to medieval-style church build­ings instead of con­tem­po­rary build­ings, accord­ing to a Life­Way Research sur­vey. This includes util­i­tar­ian and/or multi-purpose build­ings aim­ing to be seeker-sensitive. I sup­pose this means that those seek­ing God tend to go where they think God might be. Go figure!

I do notice that when unchurched peo­ple come into a church sanc­tu­ary, they’re a lit­tle more quiet, respect­ful and con­scious of things numi­nous (i.e. the spir­i­tu­ally “other”). This is why I think our wed­ding min­istry is an impor­tant out­reach to our com­mu­nity that we haven’t fully realized.

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New Seven Deadly Sins

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

You may have heard that the Vat­i­can revised the list of Seven Deadly Sins to empha­size that sin is not just an indi­vid­ual mat­ter but has “social res­o­nance.” The new list is:

  1. Drug abuse
  2. Morally debat­able experimentation
  3. Envi­ron­men­tal pollution
  4. Caus­ing poverty
  5. Social inequal­ity and injustice
  6. Genetic manip­u­la­tion
  7. Accu­mu­lat­ing exces­sive wealth

P.J. O’Rourke’s reac­tion to these new Seven Deadly Sins is hilar­i­ously tongue-in-cheek:

Not to argue the­ol­ogy with the Vat­i­can, but envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion is hardly among Satan’s strongest temp­ta­tions. Pol­lu­tion is not a pas­sion we resist with an agony of will for the sake of our immor­tal souls. I’ve been to par­ties where all seven of the orig­i­nal dead­lies were on offer in car­load lots. Never once have I heard a rev­eler shout with evil glee, “Let’s dump PCBs in the Hud­son River!” …Unfor­tu­nately Bishop Girotti’s late-model sins make as lit­tle sense as a Jere­miah Wright ser­mon. They have no grav­i­tas. Imag­ine the reac­tion in the con­fes­sional when you say, “Father, I have littered.”

At some point I’ll have to draft up my own list of seven deadly sins. I think “smug­ness” might be at the top of the list. Kyrie Elei­son!

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Tired: Good or Bad?

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

When asked “How are you doing?” the most com­mon answer I hear is “Fine” or “Pretty good.” Can you guess what is the second-most com­mon answer is? Peo­ple say, “Tired.” Part of the rea­son I think is that there is a bit of virtue in being tired: “I’ve been work­ing hard” or even “I’m really busy and, there­fore, a pro­duc­tive person.”

In response to peo­ple say­ing “Tired,” I’ve been ask­ing recently: Is that a “good tired” or a “bad tired”? After a bit of a pause, the other usu­ally responds, “What’s the difference?”

I think there is a big dif­fer­ence. C.J. Mahaney writes a lit­tle about the difference:

There is a dif­fer­ence between being tired and weary. If I am tired, then sleep will bring appro­pri­ate refresh­ment and restore my strength. But if I am weary, sleep will be insufficient.

Mahaney is talk­ing about pas­tors and min­istry, but I’d sug­gest this is applic­a­ble for any believer. “Good tired” comes with a sense of accom­plish­ment and being a part of some­thing larger we think is ulti­mately worth­while. “Bad tired” comes from a lack of direc­tion or pur­pose and cyn­i­cism toward ulti­mate ends. “Bad tired” leads to a circling-of-the-wagons atti­tude: pro­tect my time and energy at all costs against any­thing or any­one that would sap it while I do the bare min­i­mum to get my job done.

To dis­cern between between being tired (i.e. “good tired”) and weary (i.e. “bad tired”), Mahaney says (regard­ing pastors):

So if I was inter­act­ing with a pas­tor, I would want to draw him out about the present state of his soul, the pres­ence or absence of affec­tions and pas­sion for the Sav­ior. And I would want to talk to him about whether min­istry is a joy for him at present, or a bur­den. Is his soul glad, or is his soul weighed down and weary?

For lay per­sons, I think it is sim­i­lar. It is about the joy of work and the joy of min­istry and cul­ti­vat­ing a pas­sion for God’s glory in the midst of it. (To bring work and min­istry together, we’ll have to await a more detailed dis­cus­sion about voca­tion, work and call­ing.) In the mean­time, I’m a big fan of what Bill Hamel wrote in EFCA Today, Sum 2005 (.pdf):

…I con­stantly meet believ­ers whose lives are dull, flat and with­out much spir­i­tual influ­ence. This tells me they have not yet found the joy and intense sat­is­fac­tion of mean­ing­ful min­istry. One of the great­est gifts, then, that church lead­ers can give mem­bers of their con­gre­ga­tion is help­ing them dis­cover, test drive and grow in their area of gift­ing. In fact, the job of pas­tors is to give min­istry away to faith­ful, gifted peo­ple. …In the end, it is about releas­ing God’s gifts.

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How to Pray for Preachers

Saturday, April 5th, 2008

Justin Childers sug­gests how to pray for preach­ers:

  1. Dur­ing the week, pray for God to reveal the bur­den of the text to him.
  2. Dur­ing the week, pray that God would grip the preacher’s heart with His glory revealed in the text.
  3. On Sun­day morn­ing, pray that God would free him from distractions.
  4. On Sun­day morn­ing, pray that he would pro­claim the truth boldly and clearly.
  5. On Sun­day morn­ing, pray for God to pow­er­fully speak through him.
  6. On Sun­day morn­ing, pray that Christ would be trea­sured by all gathered.

It would be worth con­sid­er­ing how to pray for hear­ers of preach­ing. That could be an inter­est­ing list. After­all, preach­ing involves both speak­ing and lis­ten­ing. I’d prob­a­bly start that list with a medi­a­tion on Mk 4:9.

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“The Absent are Safe Here”

Friday, April 4th, 2008

“The Absent are Safe Here” declares a plaque on the liv­ing room wall of Robert­son McQuilkin, so the story is told by Had­don Robin­son (and writ­ten about by Ray Pritchard). To deter him­self and guests from speak­ing ill of oth­ers behind their back, McQuilkin put the plaque on dis­play to look to when words drifted astray. I espe­cially admire the list of types of neg­a­tive talk Pritchard gives to avoid:

No cheap shots
No shar­ing of gos­sip
No repeat­ing of rumors
No judg­ing of motives
No shar­ing of details that should remain pri­vate
No trash talk
No insin­u­a­tions
No angry invec­tives
No mak­ing your­self look good at the expense of oth­ers
No max­i­miz­ing the sins of oth­ers
No adding aggra­vat­ing details to make the absent look worse
No dis­miss­ing an unkind remark by say­ing, “I was only joking.”

If we all watched our speech with these rules, I think we’d go quite a way in build­ing a com­mu­nity of trust and grace. I don’t know what McQuilkin’s plaque looked like, but I made a ver­sion for my cubi­cle. If you’d like a .pdf file, let me know.

The Absent are Safe Here - rlew.com

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Why pray aloud when God knows our hearts?

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

David Powli­son writes about ver­bal prayer ask­ing: Should we really call it a “quiet” time?

So the stan­dard prac­tice for both pub­lic and pri­vate prayer is to speak so as to be heard by the Per­son with whom you are talk­ing. Prayer is ver­bal because it is relational.

…I’ve known many peo­ple whose rela­tion­ship with God was sig­nif­i­cantly trans­formed as they started to speak up with their Father. Pre­vi­ously, “prayer” fiz­zled out in the inter­nal buzz of self-talk and dis­trac­tions, wor­ries and respon­si­bil­i­ties. Pre­vi­ously, what they thought of as prayer involved cer­tain reli­gious feel­ings, or a set of seem­ingly spir­i­tual thoughts, or a vague sense of com­fort, awe, and depen­dency on a higher power. Prayer mean­dered, and was vir­tu­ally indis­tin­guish­able from thoughts, some­times indis­tin­guish­able from anx­i­eties and obses­sions. But as they began to talk aloud to the God who is there, who is not silent, who lis­tens, and who acts, they began to deal with him person-to-person.

Powl­in­son sur­veys Bib­li­cal exam­ples of prayer and con­cludes that con­tem­pla­tive prac­tices like “lis­ten­ing prayer” or “cen­ter­ing prayer” are never taught in the Bible. (“Never” is a bit strong, as he also admits. e.g. Ps. 46:10.)

The main thrust of the arti­cle is that “God is pro­foundly and essen­tially ver­bal” because (I would add) God is pro­foundly and essen­tially rela­tional. God is not tri­une to sit in silence with him­self. Nor does he speak his Word to us so that we never utter a word to him.

With that being said, silence, reflec­tion and con­tem­pla­tion point us toward prayer. “The true God qui­ets us so we notice him” (Powl­in­son, ibid.). Quiet­ness cre­ates a rev­er­ent space for us to per­son­ally offer to God our heart, build­ing a rela­tion­ship that he so gra­ciously ini­ti­ated with us through his first words to us.

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Put Fears to Rest

Monday, March 31st, 2008

What do you look for when shop­ping for a bed? Size? Com­fort? Cost? How about pro­tec­tion from bio-chemical attack? Bul­let­proof plat­ing? Intruder prox­im­ity detec­tor? For “the safest rest ever,” try the Quan­tum Sleeper: 

Safest Bed ever

(I don’t think this is a ship­ping prod­uct.) I don’t mean to make light of people’s fears, but I am amazed at how fear-driven our world has become. C.J. Mahaney writes:

Fears reveal lies and lusts. Fears reveal idols. Fears reveal func­tional gods. When we sub­mit to fear we sub­mit to a false god rather than serv­ing the God of Scrip­ture, the God we seek to serve.

Mahaney quotes from Edward Welch’s Run­ning Scared: Fear, Worry and the God of Rest (Greens­boro: New Growth Press, 2007):

…We know that worry and fear are more about us than about the things out­side us. They reveal what is valu­able to us, and what is valu­able to us in turn reveals our king­dom alle­giances. We also know that God is patient and com­pas­sion­ate with us, and he gives grace upon grace. Though alert to our divided alle­giances, he per­sists in call­ing us away from fear and worry, per­suades us of the beauty of the king­dom, and gives more than we can imagine.

I humbly sug­gest adding this corol­lary to G.K. Chesterton’s famous line: “When we cease to fear God, we will not fear noth­ing, we will fear anything.”

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“Am I Happy?”

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

For this past weekend’s Easter ser­vice, I was thrilled that Acts of Wor­ship put together a drama. For those not present, it was an encounter between “Justin” and “Michelle” — two con­trast­ing char­ac­ters bear­ing a slight resem­blance to the sis­ters Martha and Mary (Lk 10:38 – 41) except with a few twists to increase both the ambi­gu­ity and challenge.

Both are believ­ers, though Justin only nom­i­nally so (or at worst, a hedo­nist). Michelle is a faith­ful believer, com­mit­ted to serv­ing (slav­ing?) at church. By the end of the encounter, Justin declares that he is happy while Michelle is left won­der­ing, “Am I happy?”

While it’s easy to say Justin is mis­guided — we’ve heard plenty of ser­mons about that — I’m just as pas­sion­ate in say­ing Michelle is mis­guided as well. (Isa 1:11 echoes here.) Justin seek­ing plea­sure in the world misses his true and last­ing joy. Michelle serv­ing the church and yet won­der­ing about hap­pi­ness also misses her true and last­ing joy.

The trick to the drama is the per­son we don’t see. The miss­ing char­ac­ter in the drama is actu­ally ever-present. Because he is not depicted does not mean he is not there. And because we don’t see him, we open the door to won­der about hap­pi­ness and joy.

I’m speak­ing of God, of course. God is the “all-satisfying Object“[1] who, if we lose sight of then ques­tions about hap­pi­ness or “Is it worth it?” creep in. Los­ing sight of God or think­ing he isn’t in the story drains our joy and hol­lows out our ser­vice. In Martha and Mary’s story, Jesus stands right there and it is plain as day who is in the right place. His pres­ence is all-satisfying and awe-inspiring. We are to bask in him, soak in him and then serve to make him known to any­one with the ears to hear.

This, then, is what this web­site is all about: To seek a God-entranced Vision of All Things. To lift my dull eyes to see God at the begin­ning, mid­dle and end of all things. Any­thing less is just not worth the time.

______
[1] John Piper quot­ing C.S. Lewis in Desir­ing God.

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For Parents of a Prodigal Child

Friday, March 7th, 2008

For par­ents of chil­dren who walk away from Christ, John Piper’s son Abra­ham Piper tells his story and gives sage advice. One sug­ges­tion: “E-mail them. When you read some­thing in the Bible that encour­ages you and helps you love Jesus more, write it up in a cou­ple of lines and send it to your child. The best exhor­ta­tion — bet­ter than any cor­rec­tion — is for them to see Christ’s joy in your life.”

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Elements of Spiritual Revival

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

Have you ever been in a spir­i­tual revival? The word “revival” comes bur­dened with great expec­ta­tions and unclear notions of what it actu­ally is. J.I. Packer writes:

“I have wit­nessed remark­able evan­gel­i­cal advances, not only aca­d­e­mic but also pas­toral, with churches grow­ing spec­tac­u­larly through the gospel on both sides of the Atlantic and believ­ers matur­ing in the life of repen­tance as well as in the life of joy. Have I seen revival? I think not — but would I know?” [1]

When it comes to “Revival,” some of us expect too lit­tle when it comes to God trans­form­ing hearts. Per­haps this is due to a lack of faith or the com­fort of low expec­ta­tions. On the other hand, some expect too much drama (for lack of a bet­ter word) from God when we speak of revival. Because of such great expec­ta­tions, we are shy to claim we have expe­ri­enced revival. Packer continues:

“Touches of reviv­ing, I sus­pect, sur­round us, and we are not always aware of them… What is cer­tain, how­ever, is this: God calls us, and wis­dom directs us, to seek for our­selves the full real­ity of reli­gion as [Jonathan] Edwards describes it, and to pray for the fur­ther reviv­ing of reli­gion, by God’s grace and for God’s glory, that all our com­mu­ni­ties have need of at this time.”

To clar­ify expec­ta­tions of what is meant by the word “revival,” J.I. Packer sum­ma­rizes ele­ments of revival as laid out by Jonathan Edwards. I sug­gest we pray for and aim for these in our ministry:

  1. God comes down (Isa 64:1)
  2. God’s Word pierces (1 Thes 2:13)
  3. Man’s sin is seen (Acts 2:37)
  4. Christ’s cross is val­ued (1 Cor 1:23 – 24)
  5. Change goes deep (Acts 19:18 – 19)
  6. Love breaks out (Acts 2:44 – 45)
  7. Joy fills hearts (1 Pet 1:8)
  8. Each church becomes itself (1 Cor 12:4 – 5; 14:24 – 25)
  9. The lost are found (Acts 2:41, 47; 4:4; 5:14; 6:7)
  10. Satan keeps pace (Eph 6:10 – 20)

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[1] Jonathan Edward’s list of ele­ments of spir­i­tual revival is from J.I. Packer, “The Glory of God and the Reviv­ing of Reli­gion: A Study in the Mind of Jonathan Edwards” in A God-Entranced Vision of All Things, Cross­way 2004)

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