Live Generously

After Seven24 tonight I’ll be heading up to Lake Arrowhead for a church staff retreat, and then when I get back on Tuesday I’ll be leaving immediately for the Grand Canyon.  I’ll be back on Sunday in time for Seven24.  Have an awesome week, and I’ll be back to posting next week!

Last night I finished my message for this Sunday’s Seven24 (and I’m embarrassed to say that’s the earliest it’s been done in quite some time). If all goes according to plan this will be, by far, the most interactive talk I’ve ever given. Rather than walking through the passage and breaking it down and presenting it’s meaning, I’m going to lead a discussion about the passage where we as a community try to come to understand it’s broad meaning and then try to personalize it so that we can all consider how the passage should effect our lives. There will still be a decent amount of teaching, but there will be significant interaction. The hope is that the interactive format will help all of us to arrive at conclusions on our own, rather than simply having me say, “here’s what you should think about this.” It’s my hope that this can be a big step in helping all of us understand that when we come together as a community the Spirit of God is at work not just in the person on stage, but in every member of the community.  A person doesn’t have to speak for that to be true, but I think participation can help make that more evident.

The inspiration to try this new way of teaching has come largely from the book Preaching Re-Imagined by Doug Pagitt that I just finished reading. I’ve already blogged about the book extensively, but to review, Pagitt essentially argues that uninterrupted teaching (speaching as he calls it) doesn’t work, and he instead advocates what he calls “progressional dialogue”, which involves more interaction.

As I’ve considered this approach to teaching, I’ve realized that, especially with college students, the 35-minute monologue may not be the best means of communicating truth. It’s got me thinking that perhaps we as a community can work through passages of scripture together and discover truth together rather than simply having be download my perspectives.

At the end of the day the important idea is that of “implication”. What are the implications of Jesus’ life for us today? What are the implications of the fact that on Sunday nights a group of people from all around North County comes together for worship, teaching, and community? In other words, why does it matter and what are we trying to accomplish? The book I’m currently reading, The Great Omission by Dallas Willard has also inspired these questions as it has discussed the importance of discipleship and it’s absence in the church. As I’ve been working through these questions I’ve realized that what’s important is that all of us, as a community of God, understand that church isn’t just a place where we come to sing songs, listen to messages, and perhaps pick up some nice applications for our lives. Instead, we need to understand church to be a place where we are implicated into the story of what God is doing in the world. In other words, it’s the place where we gather as a community, where God’s Spirit dwells, and where we are commissioned to live missionally in the world. I’m inclined to believe that active involvement in the truth-discovery process has the potential to be a great way for all of us that are a part of the Seven24 community to understand the implications of who Jesus is and the implications of biblical truth.

I’m excited for this Sunday night. I look forward to seeing you there if you’re a part of our community, and if your not I’d appreciate your prayers.

I just told Christie the title of my most recent blog post (which admittedly wasn’t the most exciting title in the world). Here is her reply:

“Geez, that is what you wrote about?!?! You are so dull! That’s the most boring title ever! I’d rather read a research study about rats!”

Ok, fine, maybe she has a point…haha

There were two particularly interesting articles in this week’s issue of The Economist. The first was an op-ed piece commenting on Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ suggestion that “the symbiosis that existed in practice between the law of the land and Muslim institutions, especially those that regulate marriage, property, and inheritance, should be recognised and formalised.” (British spelling) The op-ed piece then said that Williams’ remarks revived the age old debate about where to draw the line between church and state, and that he got it wrong. The full text of the article can be read here, and the article that reported on his original remarks can be read here. While I’m not really in much of a position to comment on the specific Muslim laws themselves, the article did get me thinking about church/state issues. Being an American, it’s difficult to imagine having a national church like the one that exists in England. Similarly, it’s difficult to imagine having Congress approve church prayer books or having church bishops serve as members of the Senate (although maybe part of why that’s tough to imagine is the fact that my denomination has neither prayer books nor bishops ;-)). The article goes on to say:

“The archbishop proposes to expand the privileges of all religions. It would be better instead to curtail the entitlements of his one. It makes no sense in a pluralistic society to give one church special status. Nor does it make sense, in a largely secular country, to give special status to all faiths. The point of democracies is that the public arena is open to all groups—religious, humanist or football fans. The quality of the argument, not the quality of the access to power, is what matters. And citizens, not theocrats, choose.”

I agree that in a pluralistic society it doesn’t seem right to give one church or religious group formal power. The public arena ought to be open to all ideas, and people of faith should be required to formulate good ideas and effective public policy if they want to be heard in the public square, just like everyone else. Furthermore, as a Christian who is horrified by the way that Christians in power have too often abused that power, I am very uncomfortable with Christian leaders having a presumed “access to power”. I also firmly believe that the Christian faith is practiced most authentically when it is practiced from the margins. Rob Bell at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, MI, gave a brilliant sermon a few weeks ago where he spoke from the perspective of the Apostle Paul and declared that the idea of a Christian state deeply concerns him. It concerns ‘Paul’ because if that happens Christians will become lazy in their faith and they will be vulnerable to getting sucked in to the lust for power that too often accompanies solidarity with the state. History has proved that fear to be valid. In the final paragraph of the article the author writes:

Let religion compete in the marketplace for ideas, not seek shelter behind special privileges.

And my point in all of this is simply that the separation of church and state is a good thing because it requires the church to be more like the church and less like the state. It requires those of us who call ourselves Christians to take seriously texts like the one I’ll be talking about this Sunday where Jesus says, “Whoever would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me,” rather than focusing on power and authority. Similarly, it requires those of us who call ourselves Christians to get creative politically, and think deeply about what the issues are that Christians ought to care about in the public square, and how our approach to these issues can lead to the good of all people regardless of their faith. This is a needed alternative to blind alignment with moral disasters like the Religious Right. A clear separation between church and state will help the church spend less time trying to be heard and more time making sure we actually have something positive and constructive to say.

The other story that caught my attention, that I’ll discuss much more briefly, was the cover story on Barack Obama. The cover simply read, “But could he deliver?” The sub headline goes on to say that America needs to start evaluating Obama the potential president rather than Obama the political phenomenon. I sometimes suspect that I, as much anyone, have been captivated by Obama the phenomenon. I loved his book The Audacity of Hope, his skills as an orator are first class, and the way that he speaks of changing the political game in Washington is inspiring, but the article does point out that in some cases his position on key issues isn’t quite as nuanced as one might like. I agree with the author of the article that perhaps now that Obama is the Democratic front runner it’s time to raise the bar and hold him to a higher standard. Rhetoric is nice, but a plan is better. I remain confident that in the coming weeks and months Obama will be able to rise to the challenge and prove that he can be a competent president, but he certainly needs to start doing that quickly.

So, this isn’t quite as cool as 207 people freezing on cue in Grand Central Station….but it’s dang close.

One of my all-time favorite book is The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In it, Bonhoeffer draws a distinction between what he calls ‘cheap grace’ and ‘costly’ grace, and he essentially makes the argument that discipleship is something that cost us something, but that the cost is worth it. Recently I started reading The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship by Dallas Willard. Willard’s premise is basically that we have made discipleship optional within in the church. In other words, we have made a great omission from the great commission (go and make disciples…). The result, Willard says, is that there are many who say they are Christians yet are doing very little, or even nothing, to continue to grow in Christlikeness. In the book he has a section entitled “The Cost of Nondiscipleship” in which he addresses the consequences of this. Willard writes,

“It was right and good of Bonhoeffer to point out that one cannot be a disciple of Christ without forfeiting things normally sought in human life, and that one who pays little in the world’s coinage to bear his name has reason to wonder wher ehe or she stands with God. But the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater- even when this life alone is considered- than the price paid to walk with Jesus, constantly learning from him.

Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstance,s power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, nondiscipleship costs you exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10). The cross-shaped yoke of Christ is after all an instrument of liberation and power to those who live in it with him and learn the meekness and lowliness of heart that brings rest to the soul.”

I think it would be fair to say that we don’t spend much time in church considering the cost of nondiscipleship. I certainly don’t spend much time thinking about the cost of nondiscipleship in my own life, and perhaps that’s a bit of a problem. Last night at Seven24 I briefly mentioned that in our western culture today there are as many opportunities to worship false gods as there have been in any culture at any time in history. Many of us, myself included, are often drawn to worship these false gods (money, material success, work, social status, etc.), with the consequence being that we seek to find our identity in those things rather than finding it in Christ. This does indeed cost us the abiding peace that can only be known through following Christ.

Next week at Seven24 we’re going to talk about the passage in Mark where Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” That is an intense statement to be sure, and while the way of Jesus most certainly does entail sacrifice-namely sacrifice of the self- it is also, as Willard says a means of liberation for those who will carry their cross with Christ and learn the meekness and lowliness of heart that brings rest to the soul.

One thing I also said last night is that our worship of false gods is very subtle in our culture today. In other words, we can be doing it without even realizing it. The logical extension of this is that it is then more difficult to recognize our need for the liberation that can come through this sort of self-denial that Jesus speaks of.

I don’t really have a particular conclusion that I’m drawing for all of this just yet. These are just some of the many issues that this book is inspiring me to try to work through in my own life. I’m trying to identify the false worship that takes place in my own life, and I’m similarly trying to identify the practices of my life that are interfering with my participation in the journey of discipleship with Christ.

My former college pastor Rhett Smith recommended this blog, exploringcollegeministry.wordpress.com, to me last week.  A guy from Texas named Benson Hines is on a year long road trip visiting college ministries around the country.  It’s been interesting reading about his experiences. He just passed through San Diego a couple of weeks ago, so we missed the chance to invite him to Seven24, but he did a cool write up of a few different churches in San Diego county. Whether you’re in college ministry, in youth ministry in general, or a college student yourself, his blog is definitely worth taking a look at.

This morning I spent my entire two-hour train ride from Oceanside to Los Angeles working through chapter 4 of the workbook Learning to Lead, which was an assignment due today for my Biblical Organizational Leadership class at Fuller. The chapter dealt largely with the concept of failure in leadership, an idea that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Consider the following quotation:

“For a lot of people, the word “failure” carries with it a finality, an absence of movement characteristic of a dead thing, to which the automatic human reaction is one of helpless discouragement. But for the successful leader, failure is a beginning, the springboard of hope.”

The book then took me through a variety of questions that encouraged me to recall failure in my own life. I thought about times when I’ve failed, times when others have told me I failed, and how I felt in those sorts of situations. The overall idea of the chapter was to learn to embrace failure as a type of growing experience that, when properly understood, can in fact be a sort of springboard to hope.

I’m inclined to think that in society at large we suffer from being failure averse. That’s not necessarily a bad thing (I don’t recommend pursuing failure), but what is destructive is the fact that as a society all too often we are conditioned to be unwilling to admit failure.

Instead, whether from a personal or organizational level, there is tremendous social pressure to always have things together, to never admit weakness, and always show how we’re better than our competitors (yes, I realize I’m straw-manning here, but hopefully it makes sense).

That sort of thinking has crept its way into the church, and I believe it is wildly destructive. There is pressure to always present one’s church, book, article, ministry, small group, whatever as good, better, and best. Self-promotion within the church is nothing short of an epidemic, and I believe it compromises authenticity in leadership.

I would suggest that one of the most valuable skills a leader can have is the ability to comfortably be authentic with those whom he or she leads. Rather than leading from pressure to be perfect, a Christian leader ought to lead from a position of humility and dependence. When we fail, instead of trying to cover it up, we should be comfortable enough with ourselves and those we lead to be able to own it. Perhaps we can even laugh about it. Furthermore, it is my deep conviction that leaders ought to be completely honest with those who they lead. At my church I have the privilege of working with two very talented young worship leaders on a regular basis. I’ve worked a little bit with both of them on helping them get more comfortable speaking to the congregation in between songs. One thing I’ve made clear to them is that at our services we will not, under any circumstances, tolerate people saying things from the stage that are designed to elicit a reaction out of people. I simply can’t stand that sort of inauthenticity. For that reason I’ve told both of them, “don’t say what you think is going to get a reaction out of people…speak from your heart.” I should note that both of them do a very good job of speaking from their heart, something that is difficult when getting used to speaking in front of people. Such speaking and self-disclosure forces any leader to lead from a place not of self-promotion and pride, but of authenticity and humility. It allows for failure, and it allows a leader to admit that his or her program maybe isn’t the biggest or the best and that’s ok. It also, in my opinion, encourages increased dependence on God.

To be honest, I don’t want the pressure of trying to prove how great my church or ministry is all the time. Also, at the end of the day, I don’t really care what people think of Seven24, because we’re not trying to convert people to Seven24, we’re trying to help them know, understand, and authentically follow Jesus. If God sees fit to let Seven24 play a part in helping people do that, what a humbling honor that is. I also don’t want the pressure of trying to always look cool and relevant. I’d much rather be authentic. It may not always be popular, but at least it will allow me to sleep at night knowing I’m being faithful in being who God made me to be. The great irony, that I’ve noticed, is that often when churches abandon authenticity in the name of appearing ‘cool’ or ‘relevant’, it is then that they unfortunately become uncool and irrelevant.

For leaders out there, do any of you feel pressure to ‘put on the happy face’ and promote yourself or your ministry? To what degree should the church consciously pursue ‘relevance’? Am I totally off base in what I’m saying? For others, do you want that sort of a leader? Are you uncomfortable with a leader admitting failure? I’d appreciate any other thoughts you might have…and sorry that this post is all over the place.

Last night I finally finished Preaching Re-Imagined by Doug Pagitt, a book I’ve blogged about quite a bit in the last couple of weeks. All things considered it is a worthwhile read for anyone entrusted with the responsibility of teaching people in a church setting. I’ve discussed the book with one of my colleagues, and we both agree that Pagitt does a great job of “tearing down the wall”, but doesn’t do all that great of a job of re-building it (but then again, that’s just the way Emergent types like to do things, right? ;-)). In all seriousness, I think that was his intent…rather than providing answers, I think he sought only to encourage a deeper level of thinking about how we approach the preaching event and what roll it can play in communities of faith. He certainly accomplished that goal.

The final two chapters of the book deal largely with the importance of listening in a community of faith. Pagitt writes,

“Speaching has caused speech making to be elevated to one of an “effective” pastor’s primary skills. But for all the work involved in developing the skills required to be a good speaker, the most important one is often the most neglected. For speaking–particularly for pastors–involves knowing how to listen. And listening is not simply hearing. It’s a practice requiring interpretation, intuition, and openness.”

I completely agree with Pagitt on this. I think the reality of our present church culture today is that pastors are judged for more on how well they can speak then on how well they can listen. Furthermore, the relationship between these two skills that Pagitt is alluding to is often overlooked. I would suggest that the reality is that being a good “speacher” is important for building a large church, but being an good listener is more important to truly be a pastor to a congregation of people. I’m realizing more and more each day how much more I desire to be someone who walks alongside college students as they wrestle through the complexities of following Jesus. I was having coffee with Ron Gollner, our creative arts pastor, a few weeks ago, and he encouraged me to make it a practice of my life to try to make sure that the people around me succeed more than I do. In other words, he encouraged me to be a good listener, and be someone who is most interested in helping those in my care achieve their highest potential. What a tremendous way to live life that is! The problem is, it doesn’t come naturally to me. I like talking more than listening, and I like receiving attention more than giving it (hey, I’m just being honest here). That being said, I’m striving to take more time to listen to the students at Seven24 and see what I can do to help them grow in their relationship with Christ and realize their fullest potential. That is proving to be not only very rewarding, but also a lot of fun. I look forward to developing the skill of pastoral listening for the purpose of using my life to enrich the lives of others. I’m beginning to understand the reality that, more often than not, listening is a far more effective means of helping someone understand the reality of who Jesus is (and the implications of that reality) than talking, or even preaching.

Pagitt closes the book with this:

“Listening to the voices of others is an essential part of being the church. We were never meant to close in on ourselves. We were never meant to engage with only those who share our positions. We’ve been called to live in the way of Jesus, who sought out the ordinary, the outsider, and the unbeliever, not only to make them whole, but also to bring his followers into the fullness of life in the kingdom. For it is often in the life of others where we find God at work in the most profound ways imaginable.”

Listening is indeed an essential part of being the church. I believe that a listening community is a community that encourages active engagement rather than passivity, and it’s one that can be open to a variety of perspectives while still proclaiming truth. It is one that recognizes the value of all voices, not just the voice of the one with the microphone, and it is one that recognizes that as the church we are invited into “the fullness of life in the kingdom.” That’s a wonderful, amazing, fantastic truth, and it’s my hope that as Seven24 continues to move towards becoming a more interactive, listening community that we can find God at work in remarkably profound ways.

Next of the list of books to read before bed, The Great Omission, by Dallas Willard. I’m sure that will raise a lot of interesting issues as well. Also, I’ve been formulating a post in my head called “When the Church isn’t Christian” that is the result of some different things I’ve been thinking through, so you can expect to see that one soon (hopefully!).

N.T. (Tom) Wright, a bishop in the Church of England and one of my favorite theologians, recently did an interview with Time magazine discussing the concept of heaven. It was fascinating to read the thoughts of such a respected voice in the Christian world speaking about a subject that is so widely discussed in the Christian world. My church recently finished a series on heaven, and Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven has certainly created quite a buzz in evangelical circles. I appreciate the way that Wright sort of sets the record straight on a number of misconceptions that many of us have about heaven (I gotta say, I’m a little bummed about not getting a harp). The entire interview is well worth reading and can be found here. One thing that I particularly appreciate about much of Wright’s thought is that he focuses heavily on the implications of who God is and who he calls us as a people to be. Those subjects are dealt with extensively in his books Simply Christian and Following Jesus, both of which I wholeheartedly recommend. I’m anxious to take a look at his new book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, because judging by the title it will clearly dive even deeper into these ideas. I guess I just get frustrated at times because it seems like we’re so fascinated with trying to figure out what heaven will be like and yet we’re so often disinterested in beginning to live like heaven on Earth (I’m as guilty as anyone on this). I’ll close with a quote from the interview where Wright touches on the New Testament concept of rebirth and renewal and how that is sometimes at odds with traditional “Christian” understanding.

Much of “traditional” Christianity gives the impression that God has these rather arbitrary rules about how you have to behave, and if you disobey them you go to hell, rather than to heaven. What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell. And when he returns to fulfill the plan, you won’t be going up there to him, he’ll be coming down here.

That’s great stuff from a great scholar. I certainly believe that coming to this sort of an understanding of rebirth, renewal, and heaven has the potential to radically transform the way we think about what it means to follow Jesus.