THEOphilUS

Rethinking Assumptions

2012-02-03T17:16:00.000-05:00

The first church that had to endure me as pastor was a gracious lot. I was 23 years old, idealistic, and sure my convictions were right. I had been raised in a Mennonite church, steeped like grandma’s canned cinnamon crab apples (don’t knock ‘em till you’ve tried ‘em!) in a particular brand of Anabaptism and unaware how much I had to unlearn.

In my first pastorate, one who taught me much was Mike, a World War II veteran. It was war that had brought him to Jesus. I’ll never forget the Sunday when horrendous feedback ripped through the sound system, and Mike hit the floor yelling, “What the hell!” It added a touch of authenticity to the morning’s worship! He was reliving Italy in 1944 where his life was saved, he later told me, when the voice of the Lord told him to break rank on a march. As he did, a mortar crashed where he had been, instantly killing a number of his comrades. War is hell, and feedback can take you there.

Mike challenged my thinking. He loved Jesus in a simple way, and hated what war had done to his generation, but couldn’t deny that it was vital in his own path to redemption. What’s a young preacher, so sure of the path of nonresistance, to do with such conflicting reports from the front?

This is just one example of how my assumptions have been challenged as I’ve served as a pastor. My memory of Mike, and being at his peaceful bedside as he drifted into the arms of Jesus, has often caused me to cast a critical light on my own convictions, particularly how I came to them. Is what I believe today in light of my experiences, relationships, and culture-shifts, still tested by Scripture, or is my theology simply assumed, second-hand God-thoughts?

Re-engaging assumptions

We may be at another important moment as a people of evangelical-Anabaptist confession. Might we be living off a theological memory (which must not be forgotten), while ignoring the challenges this day presents? For what it’s worth, allow me to throw out a few assumptions those Menno-shaped members of the family of God might do well to re-engage these days:

First, do our assumptions on peacemaking require a rethink? I once spoke at a Mennonite high school where I heard nothing but a political brand of pacifism defended by students regarding Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan. I did not hear one theological or biblical reason for not using the sword to help girls have the chance to go to school in the face of blatant religious oppression. I heard politics (and second-hand politics at that), but not the politics of God’s kingdom. How much of our conviction of being a peacemaking people is more political than theological? Have we wrestled with Scripture on this lately, or only with pundits?

Second, have our assumptions that we are a Christ-obeying, counter-culture been wrong? Anabaptism originated from the courageous, Christ-absorbed faith of young idealists who risked everything because of a vision of another kingdom. They shaped a long culture of saints for whom “radical” was normal. As a youngster, I recall many young adults I admired entering a period of volunteer ministry service for the sake of the world because Jesus is Lord of it all. There they often met a spouse, and created servant homes founded on alternate priorities. Are we still impacting our world this way? If so, why are young adults increasingly absent from, disengaged from, and bored with our particular form of “radical?”

Third, we should never assume Anabaptism is an ethnic heritage. Anabaptism is a radical declaration of life surrendered to Jesus Christ. I have re-baptized several who identify themselves with Jesus in believer’s baptism despite their infant baptism. One young couple inspired me when they made this decision against their parent’s wishes, choosing to proclaim their own faith in Christ, not wanting to offend, but to challenge the tradition handed down to them. It was a poignant moment when they described themselves as true “Anabaptists.”

I am beginning to wonder if these “new” Anabaptists – and those of nationalities who have never spoken German – are really the future of our branch of God’s family tree. They see it’s all about Jesus. Might some of us have other assumptions?

Start With Why

2012-01-22T01:21:00.001-05:00

On a rainy Lower Mainland Friday night my son and I hit the slopes. It turned out to be a beautiful evening on the mountain, where the rain turned to snow and the coniferous trees hung with powder. The line-ups were short and the runs long.

I ski. My son snowboards. As the night drew to a close, he put out the challenge that we swap equipment. I have never snowboarded. I am an old dog; don’t teach me new tricks. But pride is capable of grinding clear thought to a halt and I agreed. I took off the familiar two sticks and strapped myself onto that one board. Perilous. Stupid. How would my Sunday sermon go with a concussion?

I managed one run down the hill. Okay, I was a human snowball. Painful! I never knew falling could happen in so many different ways. Sheer German stubbornness and insulation overcame a multitude of good reasons to quit.

The whole way down one burning question echoed through the apparent empty cavern that had become my skull: Why am I doing this? I knew what I was doing, but that “what” was meaningless without the why. And the why was simple: I needed to show my son I could do it. That why was inspiration enough. That why was the starting place for what I never thought possible.

Author Simon Sinek developed “the golden circle” from his study of what motivates humans, to help us understand how the best and most inspiring leaders and organizations function. He notes they consistently start with why, then ask how, and only then get to what they do or produce. Why are we doing this? Why do we exist? Why? It’s a huge question that we don’t ask often enough—because it’s too hard. It’s too threatening a query. It’s too revealing.

In our churches we would do well to learn from Sinek’s golden circle insights. We generally spend time talking endlessly about what we do, what we should do, what we wish we could do and almost zero time asking why. Perhaps we assume the why is a given. But go ahead and ask the question, and see what type of responses—or non-responses—you get.

Once we ask why, it can initiate some rather unsettling soul-searching and angst. Is what we are doing and how we are doing it even remotely connected to the why of our existence as the people of God? There is no end of what can be done for good in this world. Furthermore, plenty of good is being done by organizations whose starting point of why is not the same as that of Christians. Are we unique? If so, why?

I have to agree with Sinek: those who inspire and make the biggest impact always start with why. And if the church exists because Jesus Christ has risen from the dead to form a citizenship of another world in this present one, then what might emerge from our local fellowships if we had the courage to ask why?

Our early inquisitiveness as children begins with why, so why not live a childlike faith that seeks this understanding always? Start with why and get ready for a healthy struggle that will make learning how to snowboard a comparative walk in a prairie park. But it might begin new inspiring adventures for the glory of God.

The Church is Like Plastic Wrap

2011-12-24T01:10:00.000-05:00

Ever been pulled like plastic wrap over a warm roast pan? I was cleaning up after a great meal prepared by my beautiful wife. The roast pan had some leftovers, well, left over, and so out came the plastic wrap. The warmth of the pan gathered the clear plastic to itself, enabling me to pull the wrap so tight I could see my reflection staring back at me. Scary sight to be sure. It reminded me I needed a haircut. And in this most common, everyday task, a metaphor for the journey I’ve been on emerged.

I’ve been stretched tight lately. This church stuff is wearing me thin. This life of being a servant of the King is a humble privilege and a royal pain in the nether regions. I’m not being trite or disrespectful. Truth is, being the church can be deeply painful. That pain can find places best left undisturbed. At least that’s the way we see it. Not surprisingly, this is not necessarily God’s perspective.

This is my recent experience. This is my church’s journey. We’re learning the challenge of being a fellowship, the earthquake of shattered assumptions, the threadbare-ness of the end of a rope.

But what if this is where I discover what it means to be shaped by grace? What if this is the only way we become people with anything remotely meaningful to offer our world? What if God is simply disinterested in making me happy? In this culture, where my happiness is apparently the purpose of virtually everything, what shall I do with such a thought?

I checked, and “Blessed are the smugly satisfied” has been unhelpfully edited out of Jesus’ sermon on the mount. Perhaps a newer paraphrase will replace it. Barring that unforeseen extra-canonical rescue, what if the happiness God intends for me, for a church like mine and yours, is really the blessedness of the poor, the mourning, the meek, the merciful . . . and the peacemakers?

That will mean, will it not, that we have to be led—yes, led—into the admission that we simply can’t do it anymore. We must learn lament. We may need to discover that all we have to offer is mercy, because mercy is all we can hope for ourselves. We may have to be sent to the frontlines of conflict when it would be easier to just golf, grumble about what’s wrong with the world, and watch another movie that steals a couple of hours we can never get back.

Don’t mock me. If you haven’t felt this way at some point about the cost of discipleship, about the cost of becoming the community of the King, you’ve probably not yet considered the awesomeness of the call of Jesus to follow him. Seriously, have you tried dying to self? Yeah, we talk nobly about it, so long as it doesn’t involve the suicide of the selfishness of numero uno. However, the opportunities at the end of our rope, the blessedness of being possessed by the kingdom of heaven, will only be realized when we become pliable in the hands of someone doing clean-up in “aisle me.”

So I stand there looking at my reflection in plastic pulled taught over noodles. My life and the life of my church is like this wrap, I think to myself. Only when we’re stretched, only when the heat grabs hold, only then do we begin to reflect his glory, his beauty, his blessedness. Only then do we taste the joy of leftovers.

Rethinking Jerusalem

2011-11-14T01:50:00.000-05:00

I recall watching footage of the 1994 Rwandan genocide from the comfort of my living room. Images of machete-wielding young people have staying power in the personal video recorder that is my brain. Almost one in seven people perished in just over three horrible months. Most troubling was the sad fact that the vast majority of Rwandans at the time of the genocide would have identified themselves as Christians. How could this be?

A few weeks ago, our church hosted three Rwandan guests. Their ministry to young people and women with HIV/AIDS is making a difference in the small African country. Facing daunting realities, these servants have acted with vision, rather than wallow or run for sanctuary elsewhere. They took their Jerusalem seriously.

One team member, Luke, had never visited a western nation before. He was like most of us who travel somewhere new, bringing as he did many stereotypes with him. Those assumptions of Canada were shattered as he roamed Vancouver’s Lower East Side, Canada’s “poorest postal code.” He was deeply disturbed. The shock of what he saw on our streets messed with him as much as the jetlag from which he was recovering.

When the group’s leader spoke to our church family on Sunday morning, he gave a powerful challenge. Coming to our Jerusalem from the ends of the earth, he spoke of how hope in Rwanda is replacing despair after almost 20 years of reconciliation and repair. He spoke of spiritual renewal and signs of life, and of the persistent need for transformation and healing. He invited our people, so ably fitting Luke’s stereotypes, to join in financially supporting their important work. But he also brought things back to our Jerusalem. “Don’t come and help us if you won’t look after your Jerusalem first,” he said with straightforward clarity. That arrow of truth sunk deep.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,” said Jesus in Acts 1:8, “and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” The world everywhere is a goulash of the beauty and the broken. There is no end of worthy projects to support; of places to send eager servants; and of people who need the wholeness of the gospel that saves sinners, restores dignity and rights wrongs.

All of our churches in some way participate in this immense task in creative and generous ways. Like Luke, some of us will go where our stereotypes will be evaporated and others of us will say our part is to help Luke get there. All this is important, but what are we doing with our Jerusalem? How is our witness of the wholeness of the gospel going there?

So easily do we live with the mess of our own backyard. We can be emotionally moved by stories from far, far away, while the brokenness we pass by in our own Jerusalem is ignored. The familiar is seen with a critical eye. The Sunday
morning prophet’s challenge sounds deep, like sonar for the soul: We must rethink Jerusalem or our witness to the ends of the earth will ring hollow.

Our Rwandan friends knew firsthand what can happen if the witness in Jerusalem is neglected. These brothers were not outside consultants, but spoke from the credibility gained by enduring the worst and working towards a different future in their Jerusalem. And that was precisely what gave heavenly weight to their message.

Tell Somebody To Tell Somebody

2011-10-31T00:12:00.001-04:00

Every once in a while, a conversation happens that reminds you what it’s all about.

That happened recently when a friend I grew to love and appreciate when I served as his pastor sat face-to-face with me for the first time in a long time. He was reminiscing on his growth as a follower of Jesus and particularly on his surprising call to serve as an elder of his fellowship.

His is a winding journey, filled with highs, lows, laughter, and disappointments. I recall seeing something in him that I believed needed to be cultivated, and we had spent a lot of time together. We had shared conversations about politics, church, theology, sexuality, and baseball. He challenged me. I challenged him. Life together was all brought together under the lordship of Jesus.

What was so enlivening and renewing for me in our reunion was the realization that the apostle Paul knew what he was talking about, and that I had been blessed by heeding his direction to Timothy: “You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Timothy 2:1–2).

Three generations of disciples

I am increasingly convinced that the primary test of the fruitfulness of my pastoral ministry is not so much the size of my congregation, but how well the faithful I have been entrusted to lead can teach others to teach others the good news. Paul’s word to Timothy implies a disciple-making leavening that always has in view three generations of disciples beyond the mentor. The disciple-maker (in this case Paul), teaches Timothy, who entrusts to dependable persons, who can then teach others.

Tell somebody to tell somebody to tell somebody!

So, my serendipitous conversation with an old friend reminded me of this once more, but it also spurred me on in new ways. Because of what I and others had invested in his life, he was influencing people in a way I never could. The real test of my disciple-making, however, might very well be what is planted by those he is teaching.

This is telescopic discipleship. It’s the equivalent of measuring your parenting by what your grandchildren will teach to your great-grandchildren. This is Christ-centred mentorship that sees its fruit in what grows out of those with whom we probably have little or no first-hand influence. It is discipleship that essentially gets itself out of the way by getting people on the Way.

Ironically enough, at the same time as this meeting happened, I was reading through Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. In his memoirs, he reflects on the contingency plan he developed in the early 1950s to make it possible for the African National Congress to survive should it become an illegal entity under the tightening screws of apartheid.

The “Mandela Plan” was centred on small cells of about 10 households led by a cell steward. Mandela confesses that it was that cell steward, often far removed from the influence of ANC leadership, who was the “linchpin of the plan.” In essence, Mandela – who, perhaps not surprisingly, was baptized a Methodist – developed his scheme to ensure the survival of a group that would in time bring down one of the most heinous political systems of recent memory, using the logic of the apostle Paul. Tell somebody to tell somebody to tell somebody!

I’m afraid much of our disciple-making is too short-sighted and even self-centred. What might change in the health of our churches and in the telescopic influence of our fellowships if we took Paul’s words seriously? What if we looked for the long-term fruit of our ministries in what three generations of disciples hence are doing with the gospel we’ve nurtured them on?

To be sure, this requires a decentralizing of the way we think about church and even a reorganizing around what demands primary attention, but it may make for greater kingdom impact in our cities and side roads. It may inspire another Mandela. It may lead to another lazy afternoon conversation that warms the heart and inspires the soul.

What Are They Looking For?

2011-10-17T23:32:00.000-04:00

If you could choose a church from scratch, what would it look like? Much of our angst about being the church seems rooted in our desire to look good. Are we a fellowship providing what people want? Do we roll out the programs and splashy events people will flock to? Are our buildings comfy, our coffee organic, our bulletin font trendy, and our preaching happily short to match our attention spans that can somehow stay dialed in to a two-hour movie, but can’t seem to endure a half-hour soak in the Word of God?

The fearful reality is that the only people who seem concerned about these questions are already church folk. Reginald Bibby, the noted Canadian sociologist who tracks religious and social trends, recently pointed out that, contrary to the very low percentage of the population that attends weekly worship, upwards of 50 percent of Canadians would be ready to engage in the life of a church if they found it worthwhile.

That sounds encouraging. But before we run off to repaint the lobby to look like Starbucks, Bibby points out, “People are not looking for churches. People are looking for ministry.” In short, people are not searching the Yellow Pages looking for something they can spiritually consume; they are yearning to be participants in something greater than themselves, something more grand than a mall shopping spree. Does the church of your liking engage in this?

It should send a tremor through our committee meetings if most of the things we bluster about are focused on answering questions no one is asking. Could it be that much of what we’re worried about is primarily geared at making ourselves happy? Could all our agonizing over what will make people want to join us only result in sheep shuffling from a passé-church to a popular-church?

Seriously, when was the last time your church grew through the conversion of those from the wider culture, rather than the transfer of sheep from another fold? Could it be that we’re gleefully engaging in unholy competition with our Christian brothers and sisters who meet down the road, rather than passionately initiating attractive transformational ministry of kingdom grandeur? Could it be that much of what we do as churches is unconsciously un-Christian, founded almost entirely in our view of the spiritual seeker as a dumb consumer, and not as a parched, searching soul who thirsts for meaning, significance and hope?

Why do we who grumble about the shopaholic reality of our culture still go and shape our churches as if that’s what people really want? What if people still haven’t found what they’re looking for because we’ve hidden the pearl of great price? Perhaps, to our great shame, we have misread the lingering image of God in our neighbours, whose hearts pound to join in the beat of eternity?

I have to confess that these thoughts disturb me. As a pastor, I continually find myself caught between people clamoring for the church life they’ve always wanted and these realities. If I read between the lines, however, I can’t help but think that most church people actually hunger for that same participation in meaningful ministry—in kingdom adventure. So why are we so reluctant to just say it? Why are we so hesitant to simply allow ourselves to go there? And what will it take for us to convert from church people to kingdom people?

Don't Fear The Fight

2011-09-21T00:52:00.001-04:00

I once endured the excruciatingly dreary annual meeting of a non-profit organization. The endless evening reaffirmed my conviction that there is a hell.

When the floor opened for questions, the gentlemen next to me stood and raised the insignificant matter of the meeting’s location. “That’s the least of this meeting’s concerns,” I thought. This pressing issue off his chest, the man sat down satisfied, leaned over and whispered, “I don’t really care where they have the meeting, I just wanted to see if there was a pulse in the room.”

Conflict is not necessarily bad and it is unavoidable. In fact, it is sometimes the best thing that can happen to a family, organization or church. It strengthens resolve, rattles the rust, galvanizes conviction and clears the air.

But most churches are very uncomfortable with conflict. Our desire for peace—or maybe it’s really comfort—trumps all, including the waging of necessary battles. But when you’re not waging necessary battles, it probably means you’ve stopped doing anything of ultimate importance.

In Mennonite fellowships, this is perhaps the result of an unbiblical reading of what it means to reject the use of the sword. Has pacifism led to our pacification? Has it led to an inability to differentiate between the sinful, fleshly use of the sword that Jesus turns us from, and the proper place of healthy conflict for the sake of Christ-centred unity, faithfulness to God’s truth and commitment to God’s mission?

This reality leaps off the pages of the Book of Acts. The early church is in conflict with political and religious powers everywhere she is led by the Holy Spirit. This conflict is not against flesh and blood, and in this battle zone the church rightly practises Christ-centred non-resistance. Trusting God while living the resurrected life together, they endure suffering to proclaim God’s good news and obey God rather than human authority. If our churches are not feeling spiritual conflict, perhaps we’re missing the mark?

Conflict in Acts, however, is also an internal reality. Ananias and Sapphira were fearfully confronted, and the result was not an “aw shucks” shoulder shrug, but a situation that still strikes wonder all these centuries later. The integrity of the church and her practice could not be air-brushed.

In Acts 6, there is conflict over the care of the socially vulnerable. The result is clarified purpose, mission and the raising up of new Spirit-filled leadership.

Theological conflict needing head-on engagement emerges in Acts 15. The content of the gospel, and the nature of grace and salvation, were at stake. They navigated the cultural, scriptural and experiential maze to discern vital truth, knowing that drawing a line in the sand would mean future conflict.

Healthy conflict will result in right decisions not everyone likes. Good decisions made in the heat of conflict will not eliminate future variance, but simply open up a different front in the battle. The question is: Are we fighting the right battles?

And then there is that strange endnote to Acts 15, where Paul and Barnabas, seemingly joined at the hip, disagree and part ways. The issue is the inclusion of John Mark, who had failed miserably as a team member. The conflict leads not to disunity, but disagreement—there is a huge difference—and the mission of God benefits in the long run.

Even intending good produces conflict, which is often what happens in our churches. We would do well to not fear the fight. It’ll show we have a pulse that beats with heaven.

A Eulogy For Dying Churches

2011-09-07T01:52:00.001-04:00

In Katherine Paterson’s children’s novel, Bridge to Terabithia, a fascinating conversation takes place. Leslie, the new neighbourhood girl, is riding home after her first Sunday morning church experience with Jess Aarons and his peppy little sister May Belle.

Despite their ages, the Aarons children are church vets. They’ve been there, done that. The wonder of the gospel seems lost on them, but not Leslie. She says, “I’m really glad I came. That whole Jesus thing is really interesting, isn’t it?”

The other two children can hardly believe their ears. “It ain’t beautiful,” pipes up May Belle, “it’s scary. Nailing holes right through somebody’s hand.”

“It’s because we’re all vile sinners God made Jesus die,” says Jess.

“Do you think that’s true?” queries Leslie.

“It’s in the Bible, Leslie,” states Jess, matter-of-factly.

Leslie silently ponders the juxtaposition between the message she heard, the songs she sung, and what she hears from her two new friends. Then she says, “You have to believe it, but you hate it. I don’t have to believe it, and I think it’s beautiful.”

Jess and May Belle Aarons are a metaphor for the dying church in North America. The church, God’s missionary, is to carry and embody the hope of the world that every neighbourhood child should have access to. But, in Canada and the United States that possibility and probability is waning as fellowships disband and “die.”

Eulogy means “good words.” What good words can be spoken over the masses – yes, masses – of dying churches across North America?

The stats

In The American Church in Crisis, David T. Olson observes that between 2000–2005, an average of 3,707 churches closed each year in the United States. During that same time an average of 4,009 new churches launched; a net gain of 303. These statistics appear hopeful, except for one not-so-small detail: the actual gain needed to keep up with population growth is 3,205 new church starts per year.

In Canada, the numbers are even less encouraging. The United Church of Canada, at one time the largest Protestant denomination in the nation with almost 7,500 local churches in 1927, now has about 3,400 and is closing one church a week. Since 1965, active church participation in United churches nationwide has gone from just over a million, to slightly more than 500,000.

Anabaptist churches have not seen that type of decline, but we are now beginning to feel the effects of being awash in a post-Christian culture. North American culture will inevitably chip away at the religious social fabric, which has, up to this point, served as a guard against the overall drift away from local church participation.

I once served in a denomination where one of the mother churches celebrated its final service before closing for good. It was a church that had done so much good, produced scads of missionaries and pastors, was known for her faithfulness, and was now no more. A credible neighbourhood witness of God’s good news in Christ had passed away. Surely this would only hinder the advance of the kingdom. Or would it?

The cemetery of church history is full of grave markers. Looking through the New Testament, we find cities that were incubators of the early church – the seedbeds of Scripture – but now fill a long list of ecclesiological obituaries. Ephesus, Colossae, the churches of Galatia – all these may yet have a small remnant of Christian believers, but for the most part the influence of these key Christian centres has gone the way of the dodo and they are now part of secular and Islamic Turkey. Who would have thought that in AD 425?

Speaking of which, the primary theological voices of the church in the second through fifth centuries were found in North Africa. Augustine exercised his influence from Hippo – no, not on the back of a large mammal – but the African city. Athanasius, who almost single-handedly saved orthodox Christianity from the Jesus-deconstructing heresy of Arianism (i.e. similar to today’s Jehovah’s Witnesses teaching) was also African. Today, of course, North Africa is the land of Islam, the locale of frontline and extremely patient and covert Christian life and mission.

Time to celebrate the past

So, what good words can be said about this? Plenty. Apart from the faithfulness of those churches in Galatia or North Africa – or other places that have fallen off the radar – you and I may never have had the opportunity to hear the good news. The Spirit used these churches for the glory of God and the charge against the gates of hell.

The shifting sands of time, political turmoil, and persecution can wreak havoc. A myriad of challenges can seemingly silence vibrant centres of Christian witness while becoming a source of gospel-pollination of more fertile territory through the wind of the Spirit – the story of Acts and the impact of the persecution of Anabaptists and Puritans standing as glorious examples.

So, we should accept that there is a time for everything under the sun and God is sovereign. Because the church is an organism, birth and death will be the norm.

Time to say goodbye

Having said that, here is another sober morsel to chew on. A 2010 London Free Press article quoted a church leader saying, “We do have too many churches for the number of customers, to put it in purely secular terms.” No good word can be said about this. This leader is responding to the reality that aging buildings and pastoral salaries can’t be carried by the dwindling faithful.

Many denominations and local churches are feeling this pain. To stem the tide, or delay the inevitable, many will pursue a path of revisioning, rehiring, or rehearsing what once worked.

This generally does not work, and it’s not because the faithful are unfaithful. No, the reality is that in some cases, as in all of life, it’s sometimes better to let something die, celebrate what was once vibrant and used for the glory of God, and stop artificially propping up what should be eulogized.

Often, the life support afforded dying churches shows a deficiency in our modes of discipleship, which are rooted in half-baked ecclesiology and missiology that place too-high value on bricks and mortar and window-dressing. We assume if we can’t afford a building we’re no longer a church.

Or, we assume that keeping people comfortable is a spiritual value.

This is simply not true. One blogger notes, “Most congregations, no matter how sincerely they may claim to want to move from maintenance to mission, simply don’t.” So, in the end, even recognizing the problem will not necessarily breathe life.

Time to repent

Which leads to one more troubling thought: could it be that a church is dying because of spiritual unfaithfulness? The risen Jesus speaks to seven churches in Revelation 2–3 and to five threatens judgment. He says he will snuff out their light, remove his blessing, even war against them. The risen Lord seems to have a chip on his shoulder! He’s vehemently opposed to his people losing the plot.

Slipping into spiritual indifference and immorality, seeking their own welfare, leaving heresy unchallenged, all this is more than regrettable or simply the result of the shifting sands of time: it is sin. It must be repented of. Jesus has no eulogy to offer these fellowships. They will close. They are already dying. And, there is only one path toward resurrection: repentance.

This is a hard word we dare not shrug off. As multi-dimensional as the issues are, perhaps there is a time when we may simply need to repent. Repent of wanting life and church on our terms. Repent of comfort trumping vibrant mission. Repent of our love of the world, the heresies that make us feel smart, and the immoralities we justify.

This is a hard word, not a good one, but perhaps a necessary one as we embrace another generation of Leslies who need to hear that Jesus truly is beautiful.

What the City Can Learn from the Country

2011-08-30T02:20:00.000-04:00

About 80 percent of Canadians are city-dwellers. Despite the expanse of our nation, slightly more than a third of us dwell in only three metropolitan areas: Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver. I live in one of them.

I grew up, however, in Hicksville. My backyard was an open field that provided the seasoned aroma of freshly spread manure. There was no cable TV, only bunny ears and Saturday night hockey games in a snowstorm. There was no Tim Horton’s or Starbucks within a 30-minute drive. Without such luxuries we just went to each other’s homes for Sunday dinner and coffee. Strange, I know.

Am I waxing nostalgic? Not really. Having lived and served in rural and urban Canada, I would propose that those who follow Jesus in cities could learn a few things from their rural cousins. Not only do much of the Scriptures require an agricultural lens to bring clarity, but there is an earthy wisdom found in the “sticks” that could teach us a lot about living the Word and being the church in this ever-changing world that sends ripples through all our ponds.

So, what could the city could learn from the country?

• First, seasons happen.

The push of urbanization is to never let anything rest. Produce, produce, produce is the anxiety-inducing drive of the city. I wonder how this has caused us to misread the rhythms of life in the church?

But the country teaches that there is no production without a time of fallowness. The pace of life changes with the seasons. There are full-on times to make hay when the sun shines and necessary down times to be embraced.

• Second, it takes fertilizer to grow things.

No “lilac spring” aroma therapy could adequately deal with the smell wafting from the field behind the home of my childhood. It was awful. Still, we never wrote a letter to the township asking for the establishment of a poop-patrol. Rurally, you accept that it takes fertilizer to grow things. Organic is as organic does.

Have we forgotten that the church is an organism and organisms actually require and produce fertilizer? The urban myth is that we should—without inconvenience or any bad smells—access what we need, even spiritually. When there is manure, the assumption is this church stinks and many run to the next place where the grass appears greener. I wonder how many Christians and churches have missed amazing growth opportunities through an inability to accept the gift of fertilizer?

• Third, the world is a collection of villages.

One rural area I served in had these towns near each other: Dublin, Zurich and Exeter. In this small area there is a collision of Irish, Swiss and English histories. Of course, time bleeds out some differences, but in a rural context these differences are not so quickly blended or forgotten. That can become nasty or, from a missiological perspective, be a great tutor.

If we are going to reach people for Jesus, then we have to realize the cultural DNA that shapes histories and locales. People really are not metropolitan at the end of the day. Our relational spheres and sense of place are more village-like than often assumed. Urban areas champion the “towns” within the city.

What might change if we’d see the opportunities of a little small-town thinking—rather than big-box marketing—in how we live out our mission with Jesus?

The End of Nice

2011-08-16T19:12:00.001-04:00

I had a nice house: the wide front porch my wife always hoped for, a great backyard the kids could frolic in, a garden, a master suite with fireplace and claw-foot tub. It was all so, well, nice.
Then God called.

I wasn’t expecting to hear from him as clearly as I did. At least not in an Abrahamic “Go west, young man!” kind of way. But, with a myriad of subtleties, this is what the Lord did. He came with his still, too-quiet voice, and disturbed my nice.

Had I not known of Abraham and his strange propensity to heed the speaking silence, I may have concluded I had lost my marbles. Instead, there was an unquenchable rightness and drive to pack up and hit the trail. My wife and I both felt it. Our kids recognized something holy in the wind. We said, “Yes, Lord.”

Risky speech

“Yes, Lord” has always been risky speech. If you want safe and nice, avoid this “yes.” Of course, that will be like throwing wet sand on the campfire of your soul, but, let’s be honest: “Yes, Lord” changes everything.

“Yes, Lord” will disturb everything you hold as nice. It will be the most right and wrong thing you ever say. You will know you know you want to say it, and then – much to your chagrin – you discover the Lord is up to more than merely satisfying your itch for adventure and self-fulfillment.

I should have known something was up when our house wouldn’t sell. The weeks passed and not a hint of interest. We prayed, oh, we prayed. We spruced it up. Not a whiff. Days dropped off the calendar, a sinister countdown to a nomadic life with nowhere to lay our heads. This is not nice.

Then, an email. A generous family in our new city, 4,000 kilometres away, would open up their basement apartment for us. All seven of us. In a two-bedroom basement suite? “Yes, Lord.” We packed up to head in an occidental direction wondering if this was an accident waiting to happen.

I should have known something was up at the airport. Our earthly possessions boxed and shipped, we arrived as a clan to wing our way west. Our youngest, still bearing signs of the chicken pox, was spotted by an anal – I mean diligent – attendant. The threatening 10-month-old would not be permitted to fly. The plane was boarding as we stood rejected and dejected at security. Five of us would go ahead. My wife and red-spotted, blonde-topped son would stay behind. Nice. “Yes, Lord?”

Reunited in a land far, far away, we awaited the sale of our home so we could settle in the land of call. Nothing. Nada. Zip. As the months passed, it seemed we were destined to raise our kids in someone else’s basement while our perfectly nice house sat empty an inaccessible distance away. So many signs of the Spirit’s leading; so many logical arguments to run in the opposite direction. I wrestled with everything. I wrestled with God. Like Abraham’s grandson, I asked for blessing.

A perilous adventure

“Yes, Lord” is perilously adventurous. “Yes, Lord” gives verbal consent to holy refining. I should have known better. In this year at the end of nice, I have been thoroughly tested.

Am I God’s man or the man of my own making? Do I love my wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her or am I just a selfish bundle of all-too-adolescent testosterone? Will I live bound in a self-concocted and self-controlled world of nice or free as a bondservant of Christ? Is my parenting based upon what others perceive or on what God requires of me? Is my sense of worth built upon a comfortable, middle-class house of sticks? Am I fickle, shallow, and so self-absorbed that I have equated God’s call with God’s obligation to make me happy? Will I only love and serve God if he’s nice to me? Do I really believe mission, true Missio Dei, can come cheap?

These are the angels I wrestle with. They are not demons. These are divine messengers that confront my world of nice and help me accept the call with joy, trust the leading hand, and learn contentment. These angels are not nice. They rarely answer direct questions with direct answers. They beat around the bush. They beat upon my weary soul. They leave me with a limp. It is not nice.

But, “yes, Lord,” it is good, and I know by now that something is up.

Who is to Blame?

2011-07-22T02:39:00.000-04:00

The Vancouver Canucks’ inability to score and some people’s penchant for blowing things up has caused me to agree with a zealous atheist. “Religion poisons everything,” contends Christopher Hitchens. He may be on to something—at least to the degree “Hockeyanity” has become Canada’s de facto religion.

In British Columbia we observed two months of Stanley Cup worship. Streets were empty like Christmas Eve on game night. People gathered together. Prayers were offered. One church sign declared the prophesied end of the world was postponed because of the playoffs. Candles were lit. Actually, those were police cars.

That was the moment a game ceased being fun and the spectacle became an orgy of human depravity, mob mentality and disappointment with a god of the age. How could fine Canadians from fine Canadian homes move from fans to fanaticism? At least riotous protests in other parts of the world are about a cause. What exactly was this craziness about?

The Canucks, whose marketing slogan is, “We are all Canucks,” suddenly claim the hooligans were not their fans. We must not stain the brand.

Others want to throw the book at anyone who joined in. Some businesses fired employees instantly if they were seen in photographs published like Old West “wanted” posters on the Internet. This strategy works marvelously if you enjoy the power of public shame.

Then there are the revelers themselves. Swept in the tidal wave, many claim it was just one big alcohol-infused, sore-loser-induced, anarchist-fueled brain cramp: “I went to a hockey game and suddenly I was posing in front of a burning car chugging an energy drink I pilfered through the shattered store window. It’s all a blur. Oh, and I had the wherewithal to gloriously boast online, before my ‘bff’ texted that I’m probably implicating myself.” Apart from the contrition of a few—and mostly because they were caught red-handed—we fervently excuse ourselves.

There are experts. One posited that the riot was a “holdover from the pathway of evolution.” Taken to its logical conclusion, hooligans are thus absolved by reason of the temporary suspension of evolutionary progress. Clearly it’s not a case of survival of the fittest. Other experts have slyly joined the anarchist cause, blaming city officials and the authorities for having the party in the first place. With some mental gymnastics we can blame it on nature or lay it at the feet of big brother.

But why are we determined to name a culprit? Because the relativistic ethos of the day has yet to erase a hunger pang for right and wrong. In contrast, though, we readily forgive if someone will just admit they were a dork. Isn’t that peculiar?

And, to the consternation of aggressive atheists, we are very, very religious. We’ll even make a sport our altar. Why is it that, having turned en masse from the fear of God, we can’t shake being religious?

Even at the end of days that point to these deep mysteries, it is striking how reluctant we are to confess that the problem is not genetics, evolution, policies, ideologies, authorities or alcohol. The real problem is, we have misplaced our worship and, to quote a guy who knew something about riots, are “without excuse” (Romans 1:20). We are not all Canucks, but we are all to blame. Let us begin there and find the power of grace, re-creation, and love, which covers a multitude of sins . . . and stupidities.

A History of Birth

2011-07-11T13:21:00.002-04:00

Ever looked at a crowd of people in their splendid diversity and wonder where they came from? A crowd is diverse, but each person entered human history the same way: through a birth canal. Yup, big or small, regardless of race or creed, everyone started life painfully. Birth has got to be the most wonderful and horrible thing on the planet. And, every birth changes history forever.

The parallel truth is that anything human beings then set their hands and hearts to must also be born. And any such new birth – whether a business, a settlement, or an organization – means something changes everything – again. Nothing is birthed without pain. But nothing good enters the the world apart from that same pain.

What follows is an all too brief survey of Holy Spirit-birthed multi-site movements that began small and painfully, but changed the world. Hopefully we’ll be thrilled to see that what the Holy Spirit is doing in many mission-focused communities these days is not inconsistent with his moves throughout the centuries that have been beautiful, fruitful, but nonetheless, like any birth, painful:

1. The Early Church. This may surprise us, but the first church birthed following the resurrection and ascension of Jesus was really small and experienced major labour pains. Only a small circle of 12 and a wider circle of 120, the first followers of Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, became a multi-site church in various locations (note how Paul address his letter “To the churches of Galatia” [Gal.1:2] and how his letter to Christians in Rome name a diversity of people who met in multiple “churches” throughout the city [Rom.16:1-16]). They shared leadership, focused Gospel presence locally, and wrestled through the realities of God changing up the game plan. It seemed to work out quite well, don’t you think?

2. St. Patrick and the Irish. In the fifth century a young Brit was captured and taken to a small island as a slave. Though he escaped, he could not shake the call of God to serve his captors. So, he voluntarily returned as a missionary to the very people who enslaved him. This was Patrick. He threw himself into preaching the Good News, demonstrating the love of Christ among the wild Irish, but perhaps most importantly, he founded a flourishing multi-site community of Gospel outposts that, sharing his vision and Jesus-centered DNA, transformed Ireland and beyond. God birthed the multi-site mission outpost vision of Patrick and it played a major role in preserving the Christian gospel at a time when it appeared to be floundering and splintering. We can thank the Irish for a day to celebrate all that is green, but more than that, we should be thankful for the difficult birth that produced a great multi-site movement.

3. The Saving of Simons. In the early 1500s a new Holy Spirit movement took the reforms initiated by Martin Luther to its logical conclusion: that the church of Jesus should not be tied to a particular state you enter into simply by being born in a certain place. Instead, the church of Christ is entered into voluntarily – symbolized by baptism upon the confession of one’s own faith (that’s why they were called Anabaptists – literally “re-baptizers”) – and these believers become a radical people serving one another and their world, even to the point of suffering, because that’s what Jesus did. The birthing of this radical reformation was very painful. Many were martyred for their convictions. It even looked like the whole thing would fall apart due to persecution and the excesses of some nutcase extremists. Then along came a reluctant Catholic priest named Menno Simons. Convinced the Scriptures taught what the Anabaptists were living, he abandoned his privileged position and gave his life to settling and shepherding a new birthing of the Spirit. He and his family lived on the run, avoiding those who wanted his head, and guided a movement that, instead of dissipating into history, survived, thrived, and leavened the whole course of church history. These first “Mennonites” were really a multi-site church on mission saved from a premature death in infancy by a Dutch priest.

4. The Methodists. John Wesley was an Anglican minister who became convinced Jesus intended his followers to be united as a deeply committed, small-group, mission church. He reluctantly left the institutional church he loved to oversee a wild movement of the Holy Spirit that was instrumental in changing the 18th century English world. Wesley’s” Methodists” were a multi-site, cross-cultural church centered on personal commitment to Jesus, small groups, shared leadership, mission-verve, and enormous courage. It sounds all good and normal to us now, but in his day Wesley was considered a kook by those who forgot new birth was not only normal, but necessary, and a heck of an adventure!

5. The Denomination. Each of the above multi-site movements, and others, eventually became institutionalized as “denominations” (i.e. Methodists, Mennonites, Baptists, etc.). In principle, a denomination is the organizing of a Holy Spirit-birthed multi-site church; not necessarily a bad thing. Over time, however, denominations – like every local church – risk losing their mojo and adventurous spirit in the name of comfort, predictability, and self-preservation. This is a killer and, it must be said, completely out of sync with the new life the Holy Spirit seeks to birth in every age and generation. Currently many denominations are struggling to find their way in a new cultural climate. Some are dying. Some are the walking dead. Others are seeing new life birthed and, very often, this new life is emerging as another maternity ward of multi-site churches, of whom Gracepoint should be humbled to be part of. This is never of human origin, but of the Holy Spirit’s doing and, while it can be very painful, it is as much a beautiful thing as the diversity of peoples we see on our streets every day.

A Different Sort of Challenge

2011-06-18T13:59:00.000-04:00

A few months ago our four-year-old daughter was overheard singing a song with only one line, which she repeated irritatingly till my patient wife didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Our little fireball of estrogen was singing a song of her own creation ripe with ironic truth: “I’m a different sort of challenge.” Amen, little sister.

We are all different sorts of challenges. I am one, you are one, and if we open our eyes we see we are communities of Jesus-followers in the midst of a whole host of unique challenges. The urban is not the suburban is not the rural. In fact, even supposedly similar places end up being starkly unique. Montreal and Vancouver are both cities, but it would be foolish to say they are therefore the same. Rural Saskatchewan and rural Newfoundland are both in the “country,” but no one would be so dumb as to say they are parallel universes.

Even neighbouring communities can be completely unique. I once lived in Ayr, Ont., which, as a community that rolled out the haggis to celebrate its Scottish heritage, was just up the road from Paris. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to sniff that there are different histories, DNA and challenges at work there. Sure, the passage of time brings change, just like a four-year-old will not always bring four-year old challenges. But even new realities for a locale—like a sleepy village becoming a bedroom community—create challenges that cannot be ignored. This dynamic is easily forgotten by churches, and especially churches with a long history in a community that has developed an unhelpful immunity to change.

When the church sends missionaries from one locale to another, we assume they will learn to think like a landed immigrant in that culture. They will think like a missionary and learn the language, adapt, and build friendships and understandable and credible bridges across a river of different challenges. In fact, any missionaries who fail to do this will simply not make an impact. They will, in reality, not even be missionaries.

The same must be said about the church as it now finds itself in Canada. A recent National Post article states, “Evangelical Christian children of immigrants feel they cannot openly practise their religion, and worry that Christianity is no longer a guiding force in Canadian society, while Muslims say they are free to follow their faith in this country but face other forms of discrimination.” The study reveals a number of interesting trends in Canadian culture, but at the very least it should make us aware that, whether we’ve been in Canada for a short time or a long one, we are all living in the epicentre of a different sort of challenge.

This can—but must not—elicit fear. Fear, of course, will be sure-fire proof we have ceased living and thinking like missionaries. In fact, if this current challenge arouses fear it should make you very afraid that you have sacrificed the missionary call of Jesus and the church, which is sent as a beacon of hope into whatever challenging reality is set before it, for a closed, protectionist society of the religiously comatose.

Very clearly this historical moment presents a different sort of challenge. The times invite us to think and live like missionaries yet again, or perhaps for the first time.

Pastors: Champions of Adoption

2011-06-06T02:55:00.001-04:00

The New Testament writer James had an adopted older brother. It took time, but he eventually came to see that this sibling was no rival; He was Christ the Lord.
Scripture is silent on most of the dynamics within the home of Mary and Joseph, but something in James’ life experience, combined with his love of the Hebrew Law, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and his awakening to the wonder of the incarnation that came so close to home, inspired James to write, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27). What our Father in Heaven accepts as the faultless display of the believing life must include the care of the fatherless and motherless.
The Christian Church has been at the forefront of providing care for parentless children for centuries, with James’ words a key spur. These words must inspire us still and, in these days of so many broken homes and abandoned children, pastors must be at the forefront of calling the followers of Jesus to foster and adopt.
Why should pastors pay attention to this issue?
First, because it is rooted in the very nature of God Himself. The Scriptures reveal a God who makes spiritual orphans His children through adoption. The Apostle Paul writes, “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by Him we cry, “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:14-15).
God is the adoptive Father of many daughters and sons. Pastors must pay attention to the needs of the orphan because, if we don’t, we are not paying close attention to the heart of God. And if we’re not paying close attention to the heart of God, we will not be speaking and teaching rightly about who God is and we will be half-baking our theology.
Second, members of your church family are living the multi-faceted realities connected to adoption and fostering. On the one hand, you have couples struggling with infertility who are desperately seeking to enter parenthood, and you will inevitably also have some who have given up a child. On the other hand, you will be preaching every week to some who are fostering or adopting and several who are fostered or have been adopted. Take even a random survey of your people and you will discover just how living a reality this is among your flock.
Further, if your church is even remotely involved in the community, you will encounter those with apprehended children and find yourself staring social instability right in the face. If you do not pay attention to this issue, you are ignoring how the reality of a sinful world hits the first place of human development – the relationship between child and birth mother and father.
Third, the statistics are stunning. In Canada more than 80,000 children are in foster care – a number similar to the population of Nanaimo, British Columbia or Kanata, Ontario and larger than Fredericton, New Brunswick or Medicine Hat, Alberta. Of these 80,000 children in foster care, 30,000 are legally available for adoption. Worldwide, UNICEF reports the number of orphans is somewhere between 143 and 210 million – that’s about five times more than Canada’s entire population. Enough said.
Fourth, the opportunity is so great. If the Church takes seriously the call to live this pure religion, we could see some of the most hurting and wounded in our society brought into the healing embrace of Jesus and His Church. Foster and adoption is an opportunity to show and tell our faith in one of the most holistic ways possible.
Further, Christians are often sought out by family and child services because of the quality of care they provide. Thus Christian families are providing a powerful apologetic for Biblical faith in a post-Christian, secular society. In addition, it is a powerful declaration of our desire to reduce abortions.
Fifth, obedience matters. “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” Thus commands the Lord from His divine council seat in Psalm 82:3-4.
Both Old and New Testaments emphasize the charge to embrace the orphan. Therefore, we who lead God’s people and shape a Biblical ecclesiology must be obedient in raising the profile of this tangible expression of the heart of God.
But how? How do we pastors influence this type of culture in our churches?
First, preach it. It’s in the Bible; don’t avoid it. The very human stories of barrenness and human frailty are replete in Scripture. The commands to care for the orphan are everywhere. And, don’t forget, adoption is clearly the Biblical image of how we all enter God’s family by faith alone, through grace alone.
Second, expose it. Find ways to have stories of adoption and fostering told from all sides, but do it with honesty and sensitivity, and lace it with the hope of the Gospel. Find space for agencies and organizations to be profiled among your people.
Third, learn about the unique challenges facing adopting and fostering families. Many adoptive and foster parents feel in over their heads because they are dealing with wounded children who aren’t always excited that someone “chose” them. Often these parents find it very difficult to participate in what everyone else is excited about and are sensitive – rightly or wrongly – to the judging eyes of others with “normal” kids.
Don’t jump to conclusions about adopted and fostered kids when they push every button a Sunday school teacher has (and some they never knew they had). Find a way to equip your children’s ministry volunteers to respond well to the uniqueness of these great kids.
Fourth, make the care of the orphan another one of the unquestioned ministries of your church. It could be argued that this has more Biblical precedence than Sunday school, youth ministry or many of the other things we can’t imagine not doing. Make adoption and fostering expected. It should be considered abnormal – and even heretical – for God’s people not to be about this element of faultless religion. It should simply be what Christians do.
Of course, not everyone can or even should foster or adopt, but a church family can make it easier for people with a call to open their homes to do so. Make financial assistance available to those adopting internationally or privately. Equip caregivers to provide respite for weary parents (because many adoptive and fostering parents just can’t hire any babysitter and even extended family members find it difficult).
Beware of making an idol of the nuclear family and instead teach what the Scriptures say about the family of God and how the local church is an expression of that family bound together, not by human blood, but by the blood of the Lamb. The truth is, for many people, the Church is the only “real” family they know in our fractured social fabric.
Fifth, consider modelling it. Don’t do it just to be a do-gooder or martyr for the cause – the needs of these kids are too precious and precarious for that – but do pray about how you as a leader might somehow lead the way. You might never be an adoptive or foster parent, but you could serve at an orphanage, learn about your local family and children’s services, or be a big brother or big sister. You are shaping the culture of your church; consider how you are shaping this aspect of it.

Capitulate No More

2011-05-27T03:49:00.000-04:00

Capitulation is tantalizing. Tucking our tails is tempting. This is why stories of the persevering human spirit are so inspirational. Those who overcome the black hole of capitulation surprise us by their tenacity. Mark Twain, with whimsical honesty, captures our capitulating nature: “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it a thousand times.” This “giving up” is so easy to do. Long-suffering is in short supply. Given the opportunity or faced with trial, we will retreat. The magnetic pull toward desertion is strong—even logical. Just ask Judas.

The church has always wrestled with what to do with those who give up. The third century Novatianist controversy raged over what to do with baptized believers who offered pagan sacrifices when faced with persecution. Anabaptists suffered because they were deemed traitors in the sixteenth century European milieu. These same Anabaptists then had to figure out what to do with their own who surrendered to capitulation. Desertion is such a kick in the gut that human beings always need to do something about it.

Apart from the Holy Spirit—whom Jesus said would empower disciples in the hour of testing—we will throw in the towel. The Spirit gives strength to stand when our knees knock. However, we can wrongly think we’re standing firm when relying solely on human wisdom and self-justifying religiosity. Capitulation is disastrous, but capitulation that speaks with a forked tongue is insidious.

Believers are called to long-suffering faithfulness rooted in this Good News: Jesus Christ came as God in human flesh. He suffered and died because sin demanded payment and he would not give up despite his very human desire to do so. He was buried, seemingly capitulating to those who would not give up their cultural and religious thrones, but he rose from the dead and lives today as Deliverer, Saviour and Lord of a new Kingdom that is on a mission of love and transformation in a treasonous world. Everything Christians are to be about is sourced in this just and loving act of God on our behalf. Jude urges us to contend for this faith, despite those who would appeal to our human tendency to give up (Jude 3-4).

The pressure on the church to capitulate comes in two forms: First, from cultural forces that see the cross as foolishness. Second, from religious forces that look at the cross as a stumbling block (I Corinthians 1:23). This second pressure is the most dangerous. External pressure tends to galvanize zeal. To build upon Twain’s metaphor, a diagnosis of cancer can often muster up the nerve to finally give up smoking. Conversely, the internal craving for a smoke can actually trump the confessed risks of inhaling poison. Likewise, the internal pressure to redefine or stumble over the uniqueness of Christ and his cross of judgment and grace is much more destructive because it normalizes and even rewards capitulation. Ever wondered why Scripture saves some of its harshest words, not for external persecutors, but the internal false teacher?

So, does the church take capitulation seriously? How do we—even against the clear teaching of The Book—minimize and even glamorize false teaching? It is easy to do. It sells and feels good. It keeps the peace. It is philosophically sexy. It avoids the risks of making the mistakes of the past, all the while making the greatest mistake of all. To deny the Gospel of a loving and just God made flesh, crucified because of sin, and risen from the dead as Victor and Lord of all is to capitulate either to cultural trending or religious self-justification. And, this giving up becomes another sad footnote in the annals of church history littered with tales of regrettable capitulation.

Reviving A Community Spirit

2011-05-23T00:59:00.001-04:00

Reviving A Community Spirit

Are we no longer communities of the Spirit?

We believe in the Holy Spirit. Our confessions and creeds tell us so, though for the life of us many can hardly describe him/her/it. Ever have a family member with a job no one else in the clan can quite figure out? That’s kind of like the Spirit; he’s that person everyone appreciates, but shrugs with eyebrows raised when asked to explain. Still, we like the third person of the Godhead for his personalized benefits: personal awakening leading to salvation, personal holiness, and the blessing of personal gifts and experiences.

The theologies of the Spirit that dominate the Christian landscape – and peddled by some churches and religious broadcasting – make the Spirit’s work almost completely an individualistic matter. Undoubtedly the Holy Spirit is decidedly at work in the individual believer. However, it is half-baked to limit the Spirit’s work to the personal world of me, myself, and I. We can snobbishly treat the Spirit like a divine butler.

This Spirit-blindness is causing us to stumble in a variety of ways:
First, we love experiences of the Spirit, but go light on the fruit. We hunger and travel long distances for some tangible touch of the Spirit, but you don’t hear quite as much pining for more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control (Galatians 5:22-23). The Apostle Paul spoke of some incredible personal spiritual experiences – like being caught up to the third heaven – but he grounded those experiences in the practical living out of Spirit-fruit life as we rub shoulders with sinners and saints, not cherubim and seraphim (2 Corinthians 12:1-10). We are off base when we chase experiences of the Spirit for our personal religious tourism or satisfaction and minimize yearning for the fruit of the Spirit that is with struggle and delight harvested in relational community.

Second, we exercise the gifts of the Spirit to stroke egos or agendas rather than to edify the body and serve the Kingdom of God. I’m all for helping people discover their spiritual wiring. It can be freeing and a catalyst for the church on mission. Often, however, spiritual gifts probes end up being the equivalent of reading the Chinese zodiac calendar placemat description in between buffet table visits. In other words, it becomes only curious information and does not translate into action that benefits the community and the world. Paul’s corrective word to the Corinthians was to stop chasing gifts that could make you look spiritual and instead yearn for the gifts that help the local body actually be a transforming spiritual reality (1 Corinthians 14:12). It would seem we are still in Corinth.

Third, we are too often communities of despair rather than communities of hope. Many local churches and even whole denominations are confused by changing neighbourhood, demographic, and cultural realities. We are bewildered when what has always worked no longer seems to. So, we look for some magic pill, program, or paranormal pastor to lead us back to Egypt. Like the children of Israel we’ve given up hope of a Promised Land. We wander about building golden calves from the trinkets and souvenirs of a day that once was. We become communities of despair. This is, perhaps, the primary sign that we need to rediscover a community Spirit.

Stuck at a pivotal historical moment where we thankfully don’t know what to do, many churches have been brought to the brink of hope. Only the Father can rescue his children. Only the Lord Jesus can save his church. Only the Holy Spirit can revive dry bones. The abundant hand wringing about what must be done should be exhibit A that we have been brought to that glorious moment where only the Spirit’s power can transform the community of God’s people once more. The Spirit breathes conviction and comfort, but never despair. The Spirit resurrects. The Spirit gifts surprise and joy. Hope will rise; so let us pray, let us follow the pillar of fire, let us walk with a limp, let us be open to some divine Counseling; let us long to be a holy nation, empowered by a community Spirit, rather than an archipelago of individuals.

Relax

2011-04-25T01:46:00.001-04:00

I was handed a paper that I shoved in my pocket unread. But, later, the title caught my attention as I was about to drop it in recycling: “Relax.” That word thrust me back to a “Teen-dom” ruled by mullets and neon, where “relax” was used to call people back from hysterics because of some youthful limit-pushing.

The article must have been written with that in mind. Here’s a snippet: “Everyone now take a step backwards and a quick, deep breath, and remember, before it begins, what this is supposed to be about. It is supposed to be about kids and too often we—the adults—lose perspective and get caught up in our own . . . ambitions.”

This caution was for parents in my son’s baseball league: A written notice for adults to cease the vein-popping, hernia-inducing stupidity that comes with believing your kid is the next Jose Bautista. It is plain talk: Relax and remember what it’s supposed to be about. Baseball is about enjoying leather and laughter, bat and ball, sunshine and sweat. Adults, not kids, turn it into ambition and agendas.

This relaxation primer should be given to some people in the church. When once we first believed—when the wonder of grace, the love and justice of God, the passion of the cross, the depth of our sin, the glory of resurrection, the transformative power of the Holy Spirit and Jesus-centred community first startled us awake—did we not pour from our depths the words of that peculiar band of my youth, “Send me, take me, use me, spend me, I am not my own”? These are the self-abandoned sentiments of first love.

Then, slowly, stealthily, we succumb to agendas and discontent. Someone lets us down. A decision we don’t like is made. Something is called “foul” that we’re convinced is “fair” (or vice versa). Someone else is given a responsibility we covet. We suddenly forget what this is all about. We make the kingdom about me or about those who think like me. We lose perspective. We turn on each other. We get caught up by ambition or trapped by past pain. It’s as if we need a note that says, “Relax.”

This world is a broken place inhabited by broken people. Abortions of baby girls in India are staggeringly rampant. AIDS is producing a generation of fatherless and motherless kids. Folks in Japan and Haiti would simply be glad for a house. Your neighbours drown in a sea of debt as their marriage crumbles. That awkward kid on your child’s team is being abused. Loneliness is pandemic. Countless many are heading towards eternity bound by sin and blinded by idolatry.

And you! You have been made alive in Christ by faith. You have been set free by the gracious act of God. You are following a new master and are a citizen of a new land. You are part of an amazing community of saints in heaven and on earth who carry a treasure in jars of clay. Have you lost the plot? Have you placed your ambition ahead of your Lord’s?

Relax. Step back before you start another parking lot conversation, letter campaign or Facebook defriending. Take a breath before you make some political play rather than gospel move. Remember who this is for and what it’s all about before you ruin it for the kids, before tarnishing both your name and his.

Mapping The Interior

2011-04-02T00:16:00.001-04:00

Maps intrigue me. It’s fascinating where people settled, why, and the names given to those crossroads and deltas. Sadly, with our growing dependence on GPSs to cheat, map reading may be a skill forced into extinction. This may have more dire consequences than we think. Maps record our histories, guide return visits, and point us to new frontiers. Dots, lines, and letters on a page reveal what has shaped us and the convoluted roads we and others have tread.
The Plains of Abraham. Queenston Heights. Dawson City. Vimy Ridge. Bay Street. Walkerton. Mayerthorpe. The names alone tell a story. Marks on a map invite us to take a journey into the soul of a people. Outdated maps uncover the ever changing ebb and flow of human geography. For instance, why did the Ontario city of Berlin, where sausage and sauerkraut are staples, change its name to Kitchener? Whatever became of Frobisher Bay? Look internationally and Leningrad is no more and the 2008 Summer Olympics weren’t in Peking; and yet they were. Curious, isn’t it?
Explorers like David Thompson are fascinating and most young males imagine mapping wild interiors like he did. Once upon a time some friends and I mapped a scavenger hunt that took participants around our township by car. All they had to do was follow our clues and directions. Many left. Few returned. Of those who managed to straggle across the finish line no one actually completed the hunt as charted. The reason: we had made a grave error in our mapmaking. At a crucial intersection we had sent people left when they needed to turn right. We were no David Thompsons.
Navigating the contours of our own interiors can be, similarly, full of good intentions yet marked by utter failure. There are diverse locales in a man’s heart that even he, homo-erectus-who-needs-no-mapus, is hesitant to explore let alone lay down a path for others to follow. Like a closed country, we do not easily open ourselves to the outside world. We can be our own North Korea.
Recently this became personal. A conflict awakened things in me I thought I had moved beyond. Apparently there are “further up and further in” lands in me I am unfamiliar with. I hardly knew what to do with this uncharted terrain. Where did these emotions come from? Why is this bothering me so much? Lord, cartographer of my heart, what is going on? I could hardly put it into words. Ever been there? Ever been too scared to travel down that dark lane?
This most recent mapping of my interior required some means of grace.
I required the grace of Scripture. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” croons Psalm 119:105. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” instructs Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16. The ancient Word has taken so many on surprising and transforming internal journeys and it happened to me again too.
I needed the grace of companionship. Every Lewis needs his Clark. Every Lewis and Clark needs their Sacagewea. We can’t map the interior alone. Many claim to have tried, but I’m convinced that’s just a line of Buffalo chips on a trail to nowhere. Saying you’re okay and you’ll go there alone is a big smokescreen to hide fear of back roads. I needed a mentor and friends. I needed my wife. Through their words, listening ears, wisdom, prayers, embrace, and rebukes, I found my way again.
I found rest in the grace of the incarnation and the resurrection. Everywhere you go, there you are. So goes the irritatingly pithy yet nonetheless true declaration that I can’t escape myself. Thankfully and gloriously, I can’t escape the risen Jesus either. Everywhere I go, he is. He knows all about mountains, valleys, and even agony in a garden. He was tempted in every way as I am. God himself knows what is true from false in me and still he calls me “Son” because I trust him. For those afraid of what lives in the back country this is enormously hopeful and frees the boyish explorer to venture into the interior that the fearful man risks cutting off from the outside world.

Deliverance From Somewhere Else

2011-03-17T01:20:00.000-04:00

The story of Esther is stunning in its providential beauty and hope. Despite God never being named, the book bearing a Jewish Persian Queen’s Gentile name—a wonderful twist of biblical irony—is received as Scripture, as God’s very speech. Esther is God doing sign language. God writes himself out of the story, but not out of history. The I AM receives no cameo. No token merci, gracias, danke or thanks is given the Almighty. God is silently active.

Uncle Mordecai’s poignant challenge (Esther 4:14b) to his queen-niece is oft recited: “And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” That’s a moving question. That dog will hunt. Them there words will move you to the core.

There is, however, a subtle danger in hinging the praiseworthy courage of Esther on these words. It can leave deliverance in human hands. Somehow we will do it. The story without God risks becoming a “Yes we can!” fairy tale. Were that the case, it would never have been received by Jewish or Christian tradition as Scripture. Hence, the story’s power, although revealing Esther’s courage, must find its source elsewhere.

Back up a few lines before Mordecai’s question and hear this: “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish” (Esther 4:14a).

We could say fear of impending doom was the key motivator in Esther’s risky breach of Persian protocol. But, again, that misses the point and makes the story a human yarn. Look more closely. Mordecai confidently articulates the sure hope of deliverance. Salvation will come for the Jews. It does not depend on Esther; she simply has the providential responsibility and privilege of right place and time. Deliverance depends on the unseen hand. Esther can either be swept along or be swept away. Rooted in her trust in the Lord as the “one who delivers,” who acts and is acting even when it seems he is conspicuously absent, Esther steps into the gap.

Many are bemoaning the demise of the church. We get all overcome with emotion over what we can do to deliver ourselves from extermination, sure that salvation rests in human ability rather than God’s action. We risk writing a story that is not worthy of being called tradition in the long run.

God is a deliverer. He is always acting and stirring. He is always providential even when his silence screams. He is acting now. He is presently transforming lives, neighbourhoods and congregations. He is birthing new movements of the Spirit. He is on the move. Jesus said the gates of hell will never prevail against his church.

The question is whether or not we, as one strain of the Christian tradition, will stand on this confidence and join God in another wave of his gracious acts, or will he need to use someone else who will join him even at the risk of perishing. Have we become so confident in our own ways, comforts, religious systems and supposed wisdom that we will simply drift into the archives rather than be present participants with the providential deliverer?

Will we, as church planter and pastor Ed Stetzer, author of the LifeWay Research Blog, asks, “be the groups that reach postmodern culture, or will God have to bypass us and use others?”

Skate in Another's Sledge

2011-03-01T23:46:00.001-05:00

Where were you on Feb. 28, 2010? For Canadians, that was the glorious day of the golden goal: St. Sidney’s slick shot that eluded American goaltender Ryan Miller. Not only did Canadian water consumption ebb and flow with the intermissions of that game as fans left Sidney, Roberto, et al to visit “John,” but the day showed again that Canadian culture is increasingly entwined with the new myth of hockey.

Eighty percent of Canadians watched some part of that gold medal game. We were dragged willingly into the meta-narrative of a new patriotism, as the vast majority of us wanted to be identified with this moment of national self-definition.

Where were you on March 19, 2010? Unless it’s your birthday, chances are you can’t remember. That was the day Canada’s sledge hockey team lost the bronze medal game to Norway at the Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver. It passed almost totally unnoticed and without the angst that would have filled the airwaves had Canada’s other Olympic men’s hockey team had to settle for silver. We are selective in our devotion and prejudiced in our “religious” affiliation.

Until a couple years ago I played hockey regularly and loved it. Then life with a quiver full of little people caught up to me, and mustering the time, energy and money to get out with the guys became a challenge. As it’s been over two years since I’ve laced them up, that makes me a Canadian backslider of post-biblical proportions.

But in this new year, my son and I decided to return to the ice. We wanted to do it together, but it’s difficult finding a place where a teenager and 38-year-old can play together—until we found sledge hockey. Once a week we strap on the pads and slide our heinies into a sledge and “skate” with people of various ages who see the world from a completely different angle. The vast majority of participants are disabled.

We have chosen to do this, but this is life as they know it. The experience has become a great teacher. Not only am I keenly aware of new parts of my behind that can go numb, I am also newly aware that life as I see it—even from a mere 172 centimetres (5’8”)—is not the be all and end all.

As I bomb around the ice knowing I can get up and walk away, I see able-bodied people watching me like I’m from another planet. I am an anomaly to them, an alien, a peculiarity. They gawk and leave, wondering at this strange sight. I overhear conversations between parents and their kids: “Just be glad you can walk!”

Then the missiologist in me kicks in and I realize many Christians look at their world this way. “Be glad you’re not like them,” we say, whoever “them” is. Or we just stare, bewildered by strangers and their strange ways.

I am learning once again the need to leave the world as I know and want it, to engage the world from an unfamiliar angle. Is this not the essence of the incarnation that has wrought my salvation? Have we forgotten that this way of life is not only a command—“As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21)—but also what has made Christians of every age strange? Maybe that’s what Peter means when he reminds us we are a peculiar people (I Peter 2:9). Perhaps, saved by grace, we are to skate that grace in another’s sledge.

Welcome to Sociological Purgatory

2011-02-10T01:06:00.001-05:00

I grew up in southwestern Ontario where – by my childish observations – most everyone was religious, or at least made excuses if they weren’t. The statistics verify my early mastery of sociology. A recent Globe and Mail article (“Canada Marching Away From Religion to Secularization,” December 11, 2010) notes, “Before 1971, less than 1 per cent of Canadians ticked the ‘no religion’ box on national surveys. Two generations later, nearly a quarter of the population, or 23 per cent, say they aren’t religious.”

I was born in 1972. Apparently, I ruined everything.

The Canadian religious landscape has transformed so dramatically that it’s almost as if we live in a completely different country from the one I entered the year Paul Henderson jumped for joy in Moscow. While 80 percent of Canadians still claim belief in God, only 27 percent attend a religious service at least monthly. Worship participation once a month is the new “regular,” which makes those of you who gather weekly – and even more often for a small group or service opportunity – rabid extremists. Canadians are, as another study defined us, a nation of believers, not belongers.

Even more revealing, among those Canadian-born and dipped in maple syrup like me, 28 percent state no religious affiliation whatsoever and another 24 percent claim affiliation without participation. Recent immigrants are more likely to prioritize faith (only 19 percent declare no religious affiliation) and, given where the majority of Canadian immigration currently originates, this means that by 2017, non-Christian religions will comprise 10 percent of the population.

Do the math. Canada is emerging as a conflicted place: with the majority of natural-born residents being thoroughly secularist, Christian immigrants will likely be the most passionate gospel witnesses and immigrants of other religions most passionately opposed, while we sing together, “God (or god or Allah or Sid the Kid) keep our land, glorious and free.”

But, wait, there’s more. Having just feasted our way through Christmas, it might surprise us how spiritually irrelevant the holiday is. The Globe and Mail study reveals that 51 percent of those over 60 believe Christmas is more of a religious than social holiday. That alone is startling given the illusion we’re under that “old” people are Christian simply by virtue of their hair colour, Buick-rides, and love of Smitty’s on Sunday afternoons. The numbers slip-slide away from there until we arrive at 18–29 year olds, only 26 percent of whom consider Christmas a religious holiday.

In a generation, the nativity story has virtually become a niche peculiarity. That means the majority in our culture look at what we just did at Christmas in the same way we look at Sikhs during Diwali and Muslims during Ramadan. The Globe and Mail concludes: “If you’re a young person, born in Canada, chances are you don’t know the true meaning of Christmas.” Welcome to sociological purgatory.

Unfortunately, too many Christians still waste time pining for 1971. Many expect the same old tricks to work and demand that from their leaders. Church leaders, meanwhile, are discovering the 1970s have indeed gone the way of the dodo. Other religious leaders are just blind guides. One religion sociologist notes that what attracts native-born Canadians to church these days is parking availability, great preaching, and kids programs.

That’s all we need: another expert declaring yet another stylistic, programmatic formula as our panacea. Pave the parking lot, channel great oratory, play cute cartoons for busy kids and our churches will be able to pay the bills. Orthodoxy, orthopraxy, Scripture, radical discipleship, and selfless mutuality – all these are secondary and even unnecessary, it seems. Do we actually believe this? In this age of religious secularization, isn’t something else required of us?

The early church faced insurmountable statistics in the days following Pentecost. The odds of the fledgling Way making any dent was as likely as the Leafs winning the Cup, and yet we know what happened.

But how? One prayer with two requests: “…enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand…” (Acts 4:29–30). A people in sociological purgatory knew only one way out – purified, bold confidence in the gospel and assurance that God’s hand can work wonders. What might happen if, regardless of the stats, we started there once more?

New World Metaphors

2011-01-20T01:38:00.001-05:00

Human ingenuity cranks out things that are windows into the heart of the age. Our technological dreamworks become tools of convenience, toys of amusement, gadgets of annoyance, and objects of idolatry. Since Babel, every epoch has had its technological metaphor. The great tower of Genesis 11 betrayed humanity’s cultural self-understanding. We were kings and queens of the castle, then we got confused.

Dash forward and we can trace a fascinating series of tech symbols since the 15th century. Gutenberg’s printing press of 1450 was a technological wonder. His press made culture-quaking ideas capable of spreading like wild fire. It expedited literacy. It empowered the individual to rise from the dust of a feudal cultural grave.

Fast forward a couple of centuries to philosopher Blaise Pascal. This calculating “homme,” who defined the emerging individual rationalism of the Enlightenment with “I think, therefore I am,” was also apparently the first to wear a wristwatch. If individual reason had won the day, why not individual time, too? The clock became the technological metaphor for a new era, one in which time became money, and the dirty second hand, not the rhythms of creation, ruled the roost.

Things ticked along until the “thingamajig extraordinaire” was sprung upon us. The computer hotwired Gutenberg’s press and Pascal’s watch into a plastic tower making power personal and Pacman an icon. With the Internet the world, quite literally, came home. The computer now amuses, aids and controls. The web connects us to a wide world and disconnects us from our family and neighbours. It can save time and waste it. It can liberate and imprison. It can bring order and disseminate chaos. It is the technological metaphor for the world we all know.

But we haven’t stopped there. The technological metaphor of the dawning world is the smartphone, which puts a shrinking world in my pocket. It seems to have life and yet has none. It is the perfect metaphor for the entitled culture I find myself swimming in. So much of our lives is dominated by these technologies.

How does this apply to the life of the church? Well, for one thing, everyone in our churches is treading in these cultural waters. Even those determined to stay untainted by “the world,” ironically put the world in their pockets or depend on people who do. Pretending we can deconstruct what’s been constructed is irrational.

Furthermore, we are conditioned to think very mechanistically and therefore look at our churches in the same way. True to our technological metaphors, we believe we can and should be able to program the ideal church to put in our pockets. But the church does not exist to be the virtual spiritual equivalent of your favourite app; the church exists to give glory to God!

It’s not that we don’t love the church. We do, but perhaps wrongly. We love her so much we want to control her by making a technological widget out of her. However, we are not called to love the church; that’s what God does (Ephesians 5:25). We are called to love God and neighbour, make no graven image, and, confessing Jesus Christ as Lord, be a resurrected people through whom God reveals his wisdom, not ours, to the powers that be. Without doubt, this requires the creative tools of our technologies, but, even more so, the surrender of our need for programmatic control to the wild, creative and unpredictable breath of the Holy Spirit.

Boys Will Be Men

2011-01-17T01:05:00.001-05:00

My sons and I once took on the challenge of fixing the front porch of our old home that required some significant TLC. I’m not much of a handyman, but I can wreck things with the best of men and so we set to work ripping out aluminum soffit in order to get at the beams that were failing after a hundred years of enduring the elements. To add to the fun we discovered a rather substantial accumulation of bat guano piled high on that old soffit as well. What great hilarity for a couple of boys and their dad! Trying to hit each other with bat poop-bombs really impressed the females in the Wagler tribe.
Seeking to reestablish myself as the mostly responsible father, I made it clear we were going to dispose of this crappy aluminum post-haste and so we threw it with an emphatic clatter into our old trailer. To my great dismay one of my sons became determined, despite my protests of what ills will befall him should he play with the guano-infested metal, to build an Ironman suit out of the junk – just like the one in the movies – that would fly and shoot down unsuspecting sea gulls at will. “Good God,” I prayed, “change my son’s mind, or at the very least, build a poop-protecting force field around him – oh – and I beseech Thee, keep his mother from seeing what’s going on.”
What is it with boys and their crazy ideas? What is it with fathers and their attempts to tame their sons? I fought every nerve to pull my son back to reality. This hair-brained scheme was pointless. Still, I let him go – even gave him some tools – and went to distract his mother from getting near the back yard where all this amateur NASA engineering was going on. The suit never got made. Turns out building a rocket propelled suit out of soffit is slightly more complicated than one might think. Still, it was a joy watching the attempt be made and it reminded me of the wonder of being a boy.
Allow me, for just one moment, to ask the men out there this: You were once a boy with crazy ideas, what type of man have you become? Tamed? Tepid? Tired? Ticked? Tactless? Telf-seeking (I really mean self-seeking, but needed a “T” to keep the prose going)?
The truth is that boys will be men. Every man was once a boy, but what kind of man is he becoming? What kind of man am I becoming? Am I more and more the man of God’s making, of Jesus’ rescuing, of the Spirit’s transforming, or just a boy trapped in a body that won’t stop motoring in the wrong direction?
Boys who are becoming sons of the Kingdom are men after God’s own heart. Men, the Kingdom of God is a great adventure! It is, believe it or not, even greater than building a guano-stained Ironman suit. Boys will be men; that you can count on. So, gents, what kind of man are you becoming? Whose man are you? And, how might you join the Kingdom adventure with other men who were once boys like you too?

Three Wise Men

2010-12-20T00:59:00.001-05:00

The most unsettling participants in the “Christmas story” are the most biblically literate. Asked by magi where the king of the Jews was to be born, King Herod turns to expert priests and scribes for help. Confidently the clerics reference the answer in the scroll of the prophet Micah: “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet. . .” (Luke 2:5).

King Herod the Horrible devises a sinister plan. If the Word is true and the time is ripe, then his hold on power is tenuous. He will act, because of Scripture, and Bethlehem will mourn like never before.

After providing their scriptural answer, the priests and scribes recede to the silent margins, pulling them out some 30 years later to justify killing the child of promise, just like Herod.

The gentile magi of the east act because of Scripture and venture in faith towards Jewish Bethlehem convinced stars and Scripture have aligned undeniably. Often missed in our re-telling of the Christmas story is that these foreign astronomers alone responded rightly to the prophetic promise of Scripture. This is deeply troubling and laced with hope.

It is troubling for me because, as a pastor, I am supposedly a biblical “expert.” I would have been among those asked to find the answer. There is plenty of justifiable angst about the pathetic level of biblical illiteracy these days. At the same time, we must be careful. Biblical literacy does not automatically produce biblical living or even mean the acceptance of biblical authority.

Knowing chapter and verse can merely produce religious obesity, where we recline on our spiritual couches, instead of putting feet to the promise. In Luke’s account of the epiphany visitation, the most biblical are the most irrelevant and, ultimately, irreverent. The magi—and even Herod—respond as if Scripture might actually be living and active, whereas the students of Scripture miss the plot while knowing it best.

Some Christians—and even some Christian scholars—treat the Word as if it were intended for our pompous and expert deconstruction and revision, rather than a lamp for our feet and a light for our path. This should disturb us and drive us not from careful study, but to the practical hermeneutics of wise men and women who blend the signs of the times, the truth of revelation, and a readiness to obey the authority of what God has breathed into a mosaic of living and active faith.

Despite all this, there is hope. Given the post-Christian culture we live in, the Scripture speaks with fresh power and profundity to those on a search. Those who grew up with the biblical story can forget how incredible its revelation is. People adrift in a decadent, rootless age are often primed and eager to hear from Scripture, and even receive it as living and active hope. To them it is like fresh bread in a world of day-olds. They are the new magi. Have the story-keepers become the complacent experts?

So let us search the Scripture diligently, but let us not stop there. Let us proclaim its truth relevantly and unashamedly, but let us not stop there. Let us receive what it declares and go all the way to “Bethlehem” and then return home a different way—because the Word has been made flesh, and this world and all its kingdoms will never be the same.

The Life Within & Without

2010-12-09T00:56:00.002-05:00

I am thirty-eight years old and keenly aware that my body is not twenty-eight or eighteen anymore. I am beginning to understand what “old” people like me were talking about when I was ten or twenty years younger. To maintain a healthy body moving forward I need to take good care of the life within and the life without. In other words, I need to eat right, exercise, and take care of the inner workings of this wonder of life, while at the same time maintain healthy relationships and participation in the world around me that I enter each day.
The church is no different. We are, as the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12, a body. As such we have many different parts and those parts have different functions. In order for the church, the body of Christ, to remain healthy, we must maintain a healthy tension between the life within and the life without.
I have often found that two primary camps emerge within a church family. The first is of those who are determined that we should primarily be concerned about the life within. We should make sure we are knowing each other, discipling each other, walking with each other, and caring well for one another. Who can argue with how important that is? No one, of course. Jesus did say it was by our love for one another that people would know we are his disciples (John 13:35). The second camp is of those who are determined that we should primarily be concerned about the life without. We should make sure we are serving the poor, doing acts of justice in society, planting churches, and sharing the Good News far and wide. Who can argue with how important that is? No one, of course. Jesus did say we are to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20).
But a funny thing can happen if we’re not careful. These two camps can come to believe that theirs is more important than the other. They can even come to suspect that the other is wrong and misguided. Whoa! Hold the phone. God has wired his church so that these two realities, the life within and the life without, are held in perfect tension. Rather than judge the other we ought to celebrate our need for one another. We ought to rejoice in the wideness of God, the opportunity we have to lean on each other’s strengths, and never make light of what it takes to be healthy as a body.
After all, my thirty-eight year old body is going to need that same within and without balance if I am to see forty-eight and beyond.

Which Hill To Die On?

2010-12-01T02:47:00.000-05:00

I’ve entered that stage in life where something called a “teenager” meanders and groans its pimpled way through our home. It’s interesting to watch and talk to. In this new challenge – which I’m loving by the way – I’m learning the art of compromise.
It’s impossible to live in relationship and not compromise. None of us always get our way and those of us who think we should are really miserable to live or very lonely. You can’t not compromise. We build Maginot Lines to our own detriment, so let us learn to unearth our hardened embankments.
The local church, a goulash of saints with a cornucopia of opinions, oddities, tastes, and redemption histories, is the perfect place to practice compromise. Unfortunately, this is not always done well.
We can twist the priesthood of all believers into a license for everyone to get their way on the one extreme or majority rule democracy more intent on popular opinion than radical corporate unity and obedience on the other. This distorted and culturally-shaped understanding of the priesthood of all becomes a twisted version of “my rights” culture hiding behind biblical language. Still, feverishly convinced we’re practicing the Reformation ideal of de-clericalizing the priesthood, churches argue and divorce over things we should compromise on and risk ignoring things we should never surrender. Trust me; if you rage uncompromising battle royals over trivial matters as a body you will most likely abandon the more weighty matters of justice, mission, truth, and active love – and will have abandoned the priesthood of all believers in the process.
If I do that with my teenager it’s a recipe for disaster. There are hills to die on but they are few and far between.
So, what should we be willing to compromise?
At an elementary level, anything that fits the category of taste. If it’s merely a matter of likes and dislikes then we should be ready to not only compromise, but even be ready to completely surrender our way if a more effective mission strategy that is biblically faithful, Kingdom-advancing, and Jesus-glorifying is put forward. Ultimately, this will mean not just living on the shoulders of past compromises, but actually continuing to learn the art as a people.
So, does it really matter what hairstyle a teen wants to self-torture with? They’ll have to moan over the pictures in twenty years and it’s really a matter of taste-testing self-identity. This is not a hill I will die on. Besides, I like his shaggy hair and whatever’s living in it, but maybe I’m just conciliatory out of envy over my own failing crop.
We must learn as churches to compromise and surrender our way forward. We were once a people ready to die for the sake of Jesus, now we seem to only save such uncompromising zeal for music, buildings, politics, and budget lines. We seem to have constipated our compromising. This is a bloody shame, because usually when we’re busy digging trenches over things we should meet in no-man’s land over, we unwittingly compromise what should never be abandoned.
Eugene Smith writes about the four major compromises of Christian mission over the centuries: with the state (which Anabaptists have led the way in rejecting marvelously), with the culture (which Anabaptists have been rather clumsy with), with disunity in the church (yeah, we’ve gorged ourselves like teen boys at a buffet on this one), and with money (which we can guard more religiously than the gospel itself). I would argue that every local church leans toward compromise in one of these areas. Which area of compromise is your fellowship most likely to succumb to? And, conversely, where are you learning the art of healthy compromise in new ways? Which hill are you willing to die on?

Surprised By Laughter

2010-11-26T00:35:00.001-05:00

Life is serious business. There are bills to pay. There are people to please and those we’d rather not please. There are children to discipline and marriages to work on. There are strained relationships. There are “honey-do” lists to be done today and “what-I-want-to-do” lists that get set aside for tomorrow, again. There are disappointments and challenges. There are wars and rumours of wars. Life can be seriously sufferable; how is one to cope?

Abraham Lincoln faced much as Civil War President before a bullet took him down at Ford’s Theatre. In light of the sobering leadership challenges he faced, Lincoln said, “With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.” Ironically, the most revered of Presidents was assassinated during the funniest line of the play “Our American Cousin.” John Wilkes Booth intentionally waited for the burst of laughter to muffle his shot that changed history. Suffering and laughter are strange and oxymoronic bedfellows.

We all know this is true. As Saturday Night Live’s Jack Handy once said, “Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.” Great comedians can take the serious stuff of life, even the politically incorrect, and surprise us with an angle of thought, a twist of the tongue, an irreverent notion, that tickles the funny bone. In that strange moment something wonderful happens: we laugh. You can try to suppress it, but you have to be seriously stubborn – and perhaps comatose – to contain a good chuckle. A laugh is a beautifully surprising thing and it’s upon that part of our nature that comedians prey.

“Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs,” wrote the crusty German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.” While Nietzsche, whose ideas on the death of God and the meaninglessness of life still shape our culture, might not exactly be considered a reliable source of snigger therapy – except for perhaps his wild 19th century mustache – he might be on to something. Human beings uniquely, among all God’s creatures, laugh. Even Hyenas are only “laughing” because we think they do. Given the other possibilities for coping with the sobering realities we face, laughter may very well not only be the best option, but a divine gift. It may, in fact, be part of the image of God in us.

God gave Abram a promise that through him all nations on earth would be blessed. Quite an unlikely promise given that Abram and Sarai were childless and beyond even Viagara-aid. The idea of those two procreating is kind of like going down the fearful path of thinking about your grandparents “doing it.” Yeah, enough said. Nevertheless, God keeps his word. The impossible becomes reality and the suffering couple’s hopeless, faith-filled journey into retirement is upended by the arrival of a bouncing baby boy when Abraham is one hundred. They boy is named Isaac, which means, “he laughs.” Sarah rejoices, “God has made laughter for me…” (Genesis 21:6). God makes laughter – what a marvelous thought.

Have you ever thought that God loves to make us laugh? Where is God making laughter for you?

The laughter of God’s making that refreshes and washes the soul is most often surprising. Sarah had attempted to create hilarity by giving Abraham her maidservant and Abe, the drooling old fart, went along with it. That didn’t go so well and created bitterness, competition, and a lot of difficult conversations around the nomadic campfire. Conversely, the laughter of God’s creation surprisingly interrupts our reality with his faithfulness, often in spite of our sad attempts at humouring ourselves. God’s laughter-making is hinted at in the art of the comedic, but is only truly experienced in the discipline of being open to surprise. And, the discipline of surprise is a position of faith that is sure God alone can invade the mundane and even the painful with the surprise of a smile, a giggle, and eventually a hearty belly laugh that can revolutionize the world as we know it. And, in that light, laughter may very well be a gateway to worship – the suffering human beings wonder and surrender to the God who will one day wipe away every tear and fill our mouths with shouts of joy.

The Wrong Question

2010-11-20T03:00:00.000-05:00

The silly season will soon arrive when you will hear, “What do you want for Christmas?” Endlessly creative lists of desires will follow. Others will go all high-horse and not ask for anything, while silently hoping you can read minds. Still others will completely miss the point and wish a bride for Prince William or a Stanley Cup for the Maple Leafs—only one of which seems remotely possible.

But given that Christmas is rooted in the Great Gift-Giver, should we not be asking, “What will you give for Christmas?” This would be, despite all the trappings and absurdities that have become part of the sugar overdose of Yuletide, at least one small step in the right direction.

Many approach the wonder of the church in the same way we have been conditioned to view Christmas. We bring sloppy church-thought to the fore when we say something like, “I want a church that will meet my needs!” We almost stomp our feet when we say this, and there is much worth puking over in this type of toddler-tantrum.

The local church is no drive-thru. A church is the neighbourhood expression of the people of God, saved by a cross of grace, resurrected from the dominion of self, and called out of the world only to be sent back to it as one body. The church is gathered by the Father to live like Jesus in the world in the power of the Spirit, not some abstract entity for Christian cherry-picking. When we treat the church like consumers, we are participating in heresy.

The abundance of churches in most communities means some Christians, bulging at the seams from being force-fed the lie that they are the centre of the universe and having never wrestled biblically with the nature of the church, look at church buildings in much the same way they view strip malls: “I wonder if that church will make me happier,” or, “I’m sure this one will give me what I want, and probably for a better deal.” The variety of the body of Christ is thus reduced to the equivalent of competing catalogues and sales events.

A more biblical, and perhaps even history-altering, approach would be akin to that other Christmas question. Instead of selfishly hoping for a church that will meet my wants and needs, what might change if we would say, “I want to join God in meeting the world’s needs! I have graciously received. What can I now give and who will I do it with?”

* First, it might actually begin correcting our sloppy church-thought and recover a biblical ecclesiology that sees the church as God’s idea to change the world (Ephesians 3:10) and not his department store for spiritual shopaholics.
* Second, it might give us a greater appreciation for those who serve and lead the church. Rather than see our leaders as holy service providers who need to put out or move on, we might become an army of kingdom agents asking, “How might I serve?” instead of, “What have you done for me lately?” It might also be just what our leaders need to be freed from the tyranny of performance that keeps many shackled and fearful.
* Third, it might actually make us happier. We may discover that joining God’s mission to meet the world’s deepest needs is exceedingly more exhilarating, and unifying, than having another itch scratched. We may, in fact, discover the joy of the Great Giver himself.

Elders Trump Pastors

2010-08-19T10:03:00.000-04:00

Pastor or elder? Which is more important to the long-term health of a local church?

Scads of cash is invested every year developing current and future pastors. This is important in so far as it shapes leaders and not managers, prophets and not puppets. Well-formed Kingdom servants rooted in an evangelical faith that cannot lie sleeping and smitten by the person of Jesus, his church, and the power of his resurrection are needed.

However, money for degree-centered pastoral formation is increasingly sparse and the model itself is undergoing seismic-shifts in a post-Christian cultural climate. Many pastors now come to church ministry second career—which is wonderful—but this presents new challenges in regards to family and finances. And, it also begs a question: if so many pastors are coming to vocational ministry later in life, why can’t the local church see its eldership as the workshop of pastoral apprenticeship? Why do we assume the distant ivory tower rather than the local coffee shop is the most realistic locale for developing leaders for Jesus’ church? What if every local church saw it as a divine responsibility to develop leading elders with Christ-like character, theological depth, and vocational ministry capability? And, perhaps even more outrageous, what if training institutions saw it as their unique call to partner with local churches and their elders and not just be that far-off place a few struggle to get to?

So, again, which is most important: pastor or elder?

Many say the pastor of course! Pastors come with resumes chocked full of reasons why they are the greatest thing since Simons, Spurgeon, or sliced bread. Three cheers for the certificates on my wall!

But. Yes, we must face this big “but.” In the life of the vast majority of congregations it is elders who outlive pastors. If a congregation finds itself in a pickle, a deadlock, or facing new realities, who is most likely to leave or be asked to leave? Very, very seldom will it be an elder. Elders trump pastors. Read ‘em and weep.

Fully understood, pastors are first elders in character and only secondly those called to live out a particular gift-mix in a unique way. A “pastor” is essentially an elder with benefits in that they are those of elder quality called and freed to focus their time on the health of the local body.

Paul did not instruct Titus to appoint pastors on Crete, but elders (Titus 1:5). He says, in essence, that the whole Jesus movement depends on these people. I concur. Any church I have been part of is as healthy as her elders. In fact, good elders can save a church from a bad pastor, but a good pastor can rarely save a church from the debilitating affects of bad eldership. The future of the church is helped, but does not hinge upon what is produced in colleges and seminaries

What trumps all is the elders we disciple in our churches—of whom only a small minority will ever end up with a nicely matted piece of paper to hang in their office.

So, what might happen if pastors—those with elder quality well equipped through the strengths training institutions have to offer—would spend more of their time making disciples of elder quality instead of running themselves ragged doing tasks that look good on a year-end report?

My hunch is we’d have oodles of elders capable of enormously solid spiritual oversight and so many pastors we’d need to start more churches to give them all something to do. Now, there’s a crazy thought!

From ‘Imagine’ to ‘Material Girl’

2010-07-08T08:50:00.001-04:00

As a fledgling whipper-snapper the great inherent threat to my young soul was said to be the subliminal messages being “backmasked” into music that would hoodwink me into becoming morally reprobate, or, worse, a Montreal Canadiens fan. Determined, and thoroughly misguided, religious groups fought to have backmasking on vinyl records banned forever.

Why, pray tell, do we hop happily down such rabbit trails to nowhere? Feverishly focused on what wasn’t there, we missed what actually was. Each generation’s anthems reveal a lot about its soul and map cavernous cultural expanses that are far from subliminal.

Let’s begin with John Lennon. The ex-Beatle released “Imagine” in 1971. I wasn’t born yet, but even I can discern the clear message of this boomer hymn: “Imagine there’s no countries / It isn’t hard to do / Nothing to kill or die for / And no religion too / Imagine all the people / Living life in peace.”

Imagine a world where the eternal and anything worth dying for is rejected, where today alone matters. Lennon was nobly challenging the imperialism and pie-in-the-sweet-by-and-by faith he believed led to wars and rumours of wars.

His mantra sounds eerily similar to the utopian dreams of some Christians who believe peace is the Babel-construct of our imagination, rather than the overcoming victory of the Prince of Peace. It’s a moving secular ballad that produced exactly what it imagined: a generation casting aside the eternal and any grand purpose for the self-imprisonment of the here and now.

Fast forward 15 years and a new singer found her voice. Following Lennon’s logic—though likely not to his liking—an upstart named Madonna declared: “You know that we are living in a material world / And I am a material girl.”

A world without the eternal suddenly fills with narrow materialists setting their sights not on Lennon’s utopia, but on the paradise of the mall. Milk this world for all its worth, and thanks be to John, who justified our imagination!

A not-so-subliminal cultural rhythm was being danced to, yet it was at this very point many Christians were scurrying about flummoxed over backmasking! Instead of engaging the empty doctrines of the day with the present and future hope of the gospel, they plugged their ears and missed the Acts 17 moment to answer the poets of the day with the prose of God’s story.

We went silent—or judgmental—and now wonder why boomers can’t imagine a church that doesn’t bend over backwards to satisfy their imaginations and why twenty- and thirty-somethings are being choked out by the concerns of a purely material world!

Now emerges a new cohort of poets. One of today’s top bands, Hedley, has uncovered its own generation’s shame. They scream: “All the sole survivors / Still stranded on the island / Lying through their teeth for money / So everybody dance, everybody sing! / If you wanna go far, if you wanna be a star / Yeah we can swing it, Cha-ching.”

Daily splashed before us on TV or YouTube is a generation ready to not only imagine, but literally do anything for, mere minutes of fame and any prize a material world has to offer. Cha-ching!

Hedley is sarcastically prophetic. They call out the hopelessness and shallowness they see among their own, but offer no solution. How will those who know the hope of the Eternal One do more than merely imagine a response?

No more cheap church

2010-06-15T09:30:00.000-04:00

Nearly four score years ago Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship. Every Christian should read it because the German martyr was on to something: He exposed the scourge of cheap grace. “Cheap grace,” he wrote, “means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian ‘conception’ of God.”

He saw the church peddling grace as an idea about God, not proclaiming Jesus Christ, whose lavish sacrifice and invitation to follow demands unconditional surrender. “Cheap grace,” Bonhoeffer continued, “is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” The drift of religious Christianity is towards this bargain-store spirituality; we like God and his benefits on the cheap and with as little personal cost as necessary.

The contagion of cheap grace is cheap church. If we expect God and his goods on our terms, with our desires untouched, we will want church just as conveniently.

Dare we admit that many adhere to the doctrine of cheap church and fervently believe it to be true. We want church that costs nothing beyond our cash, interests and occasional attendance. We want church that will not require the gruelling tasks of loving, forgiving and offering grace to those we’re sure shouldn’t get it. We want to consume our bargain-store spirituality and happily shop with others who think the same. We want a church of the holy potluck, the holy project, the holy huddle, but we’re not so keen on a church of the Holy Spirit.

I mean, really, have you read what the Holy Spirit did to the church in Acts? Who wants that mess and cost anymore? Now that we’ve got everything pasteurized and organized, we can get on with church on the cheap and defend it almost like we mean it and mean it as if we like it!

We seem to expect church to be unrealistically perfect for our sakes. We want our church to have the spit and polish that convinces us we’re really something. We’ll give to that—particularly if there’s a tax break to be had! We’ll raise our communion shot glasses to that!

The church is foremost and always God’s cherished possession. Church is not something to horde, but give away! We give away Christ and with him always a costly piece of ourselves. God in Christ spared no expense and yet many who have been absorbed into the body of Christ by grace long for church on the cheap.

The church does not exist to prop up our wants. Rather, it requires us to collapse in the costly joy of dying to self and living alongside others who are not always easy to love, because Christ died for us—and them—and is risen from the dead! The church is to be a window into what can be when people spend themselves in forgiveness, reconciliation and mission together precisely because the grace they received was lavishly expensive.

Jesus still wears scars. How can we who are now his earthly body expect to wear anything less? The church extracts a cost many may have never fully embraced: It will cost us our rights, preferences and comfort.

The church is not easy! Get over it! It is a costly adventure in being a resurrected Holy-Spirit-endowed people, and the cheap church many practise is as much a swindle as cheap grace ever was.

The Tech of the Amish

2010-06-03T10:11:00.000-04:00

I grew up in technological no-man’s land. My childhood was shaped by the plain-living non-conformity of Amish and Mennonite bloodlines and locale.

There was no television in my home until I was nearing my teens. I remember the absolute magnetism TV held for me initially. I watched everything I was allowed. Weren’t the Smurfs amazing!? La, la, la-la, la, la…precious memories…I digress.

My parents agonized over that purchase. They had grown up in a religious tradition that banned such worldly things. Mom and Dad had left such legalistic religiosity for a new world before I was born and that new world inevitably meant the blessing and curse of doing technological ethics alone.

In their old community technological rights and wrongs were decisions made by church leaders for the sake of the community. Certain things were permitted (like cars – but they had to be black and radio-less – and tractors – which strangely could remain whatever shade they came in). Other things were forbidden (like televisions and instruments in church buildings). These decisions were not made willy-nilly nor in fear, but designed to balance the need to provide and do good while curbing the corrupting affects of “the world” on the souls of the righteous. The motives were pure, the aim admirable, and the fruit at times beautiful (see the incredible servant nature of these communities, their mutual support of one another, and commitment to live the God-ward life simply and lightly). However, avoiding certain technologies could not undo one sticky reality: it is not technology that corrupts the human heart, it is the human heart that corrupts technology. And so it was that my first exposure to the technological wonder of the glossy porn magazine came via some who were not allowed to have a TV or listen to rock and roll. How’s that for irony?

I’m now a parent. Today VCRs collect dust next to 8 Track Players and Atari consoles and I’m raising my kids in an iPhone and Wii world. What’s a man to do? Now it’s my parents who have cable TV while our kids endure bunny ears (which at least made the Vancouver Olympics look snowy). We have a cell phone, but not one as savvy as those of my relatives who don’t have radios in their cars. I’m typing this on a laptop, while some of the Old Order Mennonite boys I went to grade school with drive horse and buggies and operate businesses out of their sheds that require the internet. So, who has the best handle on this tech stuff after all? Are we all just a bunch of hypocrites? Or, could it be that we’re all just negotiating that treacherous tightrope between technology and theology?

“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7).

Technology is. Technology is ethically neutral in that it has no power for good or ill on its own, but it is not spiritually neutral because we who create technologies are natural born worshippers. While humanity is gifted to create technologies that advance and amuse, the disturbing pattern is how enamored we become with what our hands create. We are smitten idolaters and idol-makers.

Want proof? Ever tried avoiding email on your day off? Ever watched two people sitting at a table texting all the while avoiding eye contact and conversation with each other? Ever threatened to take a video game away from your teenager? Ever tried to work up the courage to get rid of cable? Ever talked yourself into a toy you didn’t need, just because you thought is was cool?

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with enjoying technology, the reality is many of us could afford a sober spiritual evaluation of our love affair with technology. Some communal Amish-testing couldn’t hurt toward that end: Is use of this going to deaden our souls and close our eyes to one another? Will it weaken our ability to live as a community and be a unique witness to our world? Will it unnecessarily tie up our money in ways that will hinder our ability to be generous? Will this technology become our god and master? Will its use enable us to do more good and bring God more glory? Should we take some time before jumping on a new tech bandwagon (whether gas, solar or equine powered) until we can think, talk, and pray through the long-term implications on our following of Jesus, our ability to be human, and on creation?

Those are sobering questions. They are questions we must be willing to ask and keep asking in a world where horses and chariots of a more docile kind can become the tech-idols we never advance beyond.

The Dangerous Question

2010-05-07T09:57:00.003-04:00

When I popped the engagement question I was pretty sure what the answer would be. I was 100 percent sure she was the one for me and 99 percent sure she felt the same.

As the moment to propose approached, though, I began to understand that the answer was about to change everything. The question was a launch pad into another world, into another form of existence, into a life that would fundamentally transform me. Rejection would be devastating, but a yes would be, too! Any hope of the world revolving around me would be obliterated if she agreed to make me her husband. The dangerous question would inevitably reinvent and reorient who I was and what I would do.

There is a dangerous spiritual question that we need to ask: Who is God? And after answering that, we need to answer a corollary question: What does that mean for who we are and what we do?

If God is truly God—if he is more than the figment of an overactive human imagination and is holy, just, compassionate and the Lord of all—then that pretty much changes everything. If God has ultimately revealed himself in Jesus Christ, and resurrects and animates our deadness by the Holy Spirit, then that really matters. If God has acted in history and uncovered his ways and what he loves and what he hates, then that’s worth paying attention to. If God is determined to redeem sinners, judge evil and do justice, transform lives and places, and usher in a never-ending kingdom, then that should shape everything about those who know him and gather in his name.

A “yes” to God cannot leave us the same. Yet many who have apparently married themselves to the Holy One live as if the question were a mere formality. We plan our ways forward—or dig in our heels—based on who we want to be, not who God is. This is a fundamentally flawed and godless starting point.

We want this safe starting point for our religiosity and “churchianity,” but God will have nothing to do with it. What we want to do and who we want to be, or remain, inevitably results in our reducing God to an idol. Such a managed, tamed, cultured, plastic, in-our-back-pocket god formed from such questions is not God at all.

It’s as if we believe God revolves around us! And, horror of horrors, it turns our churches into selfish, visionless, joyless factions where joining God in his mission is reduced to maintaining our traditions and thinking almost entirely about our comforts and preferences. This cannot be. If who we are and what we do is not fundamentally rooted in who God is, then we should stop doing it now!

Who is God? And what does the answer to that mean for who we are and what we do? This is the only starting point for a holy and sent people. It should leave us unable to remain unchanged. It should leave us distraught at the tepid and manicured religion many of us are living and asking our churches to maintain on our behalf. If God is God, and he is who he is and has done what he’s done, then we must be fundamentally and dangerously changed. Our answers should free us to revision, reawaken and renew. It is as much the launch pad into another world as the big question a young man asks a young woman.

The gospel in three parts . . . times three

2010-04-15T09:35:00.002-04:00

Before reading any further, answer this question: What is the gospel?

You didn’t do it, did you? You just kept reading. Bad reader. Return to line one.

Thanks.

Many Christians go into blushed silence when asked to articulate the good news of God’s reign. However, if we are to be cracked pots spilling out this glorious message, the gospel must be understood and lived. To that end, let’s look at three unique, yet interrelated biblical images of the gospel.

• First, Paul describes the gospel as rooted in the historical event of the three-part passion of Jesus: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

To begin, the gospel is about the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. It is historically enacted and foretold. The gospel is deed and word. The good news is the culminating event of God’s declared commitment to transform the dust and grime of the world.

• Second, Paul describes three radical implications of this gospel event. He begins with our own resurrection: “[B]ecause of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions” (Ephesians 2:4-5).

This results in our participation in God’s renovation of the world: “[W]e are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).

And, further, the gospel event ushers in reconciliation: “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two [Jew and gentile] one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:14).

The gospel event of Easter brings with it the implications of resurrection (new life for those dead in sin), renovation (our participation in God’s work in the world), and reconciliation (our becoming a new people defined not by our ethnicities or traditions, but by Jesus).

• Third, to the Corinthians seeking to understand how to function as a “good news people,” Paul erupts poetically in the “love chapter.” Sadly misused at most weddings, I Corinthians 13 is primarily about how the church lives out the good news. Paul declares: “[N]ow these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

The gospel, founded on the historical Easter event and implying the transforming implications of resurrection, renovation and reconciliation, is now brought to its climax. How do we live this out? In three parts:

• First, by clinging in faith to what happened according to the Scriptures and sharing that with our world unashamedly.

• Second, by offering the hope of God’s good works to our world to initiate now what will one day be fulfilled.

• Third, and most gloriously, by expressing this the same way God expressed himself to us: through love.

So, what is the gospel? It is the historical event of Easter in three parts: the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. It is the radical implications that event entails in three parts: resurrection, renovation and reconciliation. And it is the way we live it out in three parts: faith and hope, all crowned, salted, expressed and sourced in love.

Convert ... or die

2010-04-01T09:59:00.001-04:00

It’s quite unfashionable these days to think people should change their minds. This is a strange thought that, well, needs to change.

In some parts of the world—places some Canadians look at with disdain because of their backward “fundamentalism”—to change one’s mind is an act of high treason. Think of those strange bedfellows Iran and North Korea. One is a theistic state, the other atheistic, yet both systems are equally paranoid of people changing their minds.

What we Canadians are less aware of is that the secular-humanist mindset that dominates our culture is just as freaked out about the same possibility. It’s not that we prohibit individuals here from changing their minds about how they want to live; we tolerate pretty much every decision, even irrational ones.

No, what we seem to have lost our palate for is those who actively seek to change other people’s minds. Live like you want, change your mind as often as you change your underwear, but don’t try to convince anyone to convert to your private conviction: This is the tyrannical world of the self we have converted to.

Most of our leaders are now asked to simply manage life as we want it. So our leaders no longer paint vivid pictures of another world. They rarely challenge us to the conversion of our living or the renewal of our minds. Sadly enough, this cultural fundamentalism that denies change is epidemic among Christians and their local churches. This is tragic. Why? Because changing one’s mind is central to what we believe about being human.

It is ultimately what Adam and Eve did in the garden. It is what Saul did on the road to Damascus. There is always conversion going on around us and it is a peculiar thing that Christians have bought into the fundamentalist culture that says we should never ask another to do so. This has caused many congregations to sideline one of the central tenets of what the church has always been about—conversion.

In fact, many churches in the Great White North have almost completely ceased seeking to change other people’s minds. We have “pooh-poohed” evangelism. We are no longer about conversion, we are almost completely about retention. We do not go out to make disciples who will be challenged to change their minds because Christ has risen from the dead. Rather, we seek to maintain religious institutions that never change. Almost everything we do is geared for those who have forgotten they once needed to convert!

How is your church actively planning and praying for the conversion of your neighbourhood, town, sideroad or city? Does the thought scare you? Are you worried what people will think? Are you worried what it will cost? Have you forgotten that the gospel is good news? Are you worried about the comfort you might lose if the church as it should be is no longer the church as you want it? Are you afraid of having to change your mind?

We have abandoned a passion to see people choose the salvation of Jesus Christ into gatherings so “cultured” we have lost the plot. But the church only exists where people have changed their minds and converted, and have begun living out the reality of another kingdom. There really is no such thing as church retention; only conversion saves the church. And, even more sobering, churches that do not convert, die.

Who is right?

2010-03-16T10:47:00.003-04:00

Who is right?

Many battle royals have raged over that query. Such melees rarely settle anything, but they can reveal who is swiftest, strongest, and best shot. Truth is, so much of what happens in this world hinges on that question. From parliaments to courtrooms, from backyards to bedrooms, “Who is right?” is a truly human quandary with potentially beautiful or disastrous ramifications.

I love being right. Don’t you? There’s something supremely satisfying about coming out on top and being lauded as brilliant in our own minds and legends in our own times. And yet, being right is sometimes a matter of fortune rather than brilliance. We can be seen as more “right” by fluke of birth. Perhaps that’s why some are drawn to gambling – the chance of being right, even if by luck, is so appealing and addicting.

Still, being right is not necessarily all its cracked up to be. With rightness comes responsibility. So, who really wants to be right? Perhaps that’s why relativism is so seductive. If I’m right and you’re right and we’re all okay with no one being wrong then we can all happily dispatch of the heavy burden of truth.

And then there is this unsettling reality: those convinced of their rightness can be obnoxious and irritating. I’ve known such people and I don’t really like them or care one iota what they think. I’d like to say I’ve never been one of “those,” but that wouldn’t be, well, right. I know I’ve too often been a pompous donkey in a desperate attempt to prop up my particular view of things. We like being right, but we don’t really like those who think (or know) they are. Which is why the class clown is always a more privileged position than the straight-A nerd in grade school.

It would be one thing if our sense of rightness only manifested in grade six geometry. But, human beings present themselves as deadly accurate about mysterious matters as well. When rightness gets attached to worldview and religious conviction we become especially dangerous creatures. And this is because we are not honest about this: in the realm of worldview and religious truth we are out of our league. I can prove my rightness about sports stats with a little help from Google, and I can demonstrate my vocational or mathematical prowess through a little hard work and determination, but when it comes to issues of the soul, to questions of the heart, to the big mysterious questions of life, death, eternity, and ultimate meaning, I find myself looking through that glass they put in bathrooms to give light, but actually keep you from seeing.

So, who is right about matters of faith?

I grew up convinced the world as I knew it was right and couldn’t possible be wrong. I was right. Wasn’t I? I wanted to be right and I could muster all kinds of blustery and blistering arguments to prove my brilliance even if they were just parroted. Boy, was I wrong! And that was the breakthrough moment. My transformation into a humble confessor of truth came when I finally admitted I was out of order myself. G.K. Chesterton once responded to an editorial asking, “What is wrong with the world?” with the simple, yet piercingly accurate reply: “I am.”
Yes, I am wrong. In that admission I am now free to discover who is right; and it’s not me. In a world going stark-raving mad to prove who is right or that no one can be, my confession of wrongness produced the freedom of knowing I didn’t have to be. I only need to know the one who is right. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). He claims to be right and if he’s right, then the rest of us – no matter where we came from or what sense of entitled rightness we carry – are wrong. If he is right, then the rest of us need no longer be shackled by the sinful insanity of having to prove we are and can finally know truth that sets free. And that surprising, humble freedom is an all right place to be.

Pastoring the flock out along the fenceline

2010-03-04T11:56:00.003-05:00

Or what the urban church needs to know about its rural neighbours.
There I was, the country-bumpkin pastor amidst all the really important people at the National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa. Such an event is quite the shindig for someone from the sticks. Being asked where you’re from and having to “get them there from here” is quite humorous. Most people gauge where you’re from based on proximity to a major urban centre. “Is that near Toronto?” “Oh, that’s close to Edmonton!” You get the picture.

The picture is blurring for those of us serving and leading the body of Christ in the vast rural areas of our country. If you check a map you’ll find Canada is overwhelmingly rural. Oh, I know most Canadians live in the big cities. I’ve been there and lived there, but in order to get anywhere in Canada (by “anywhere” we tend to mean a concrete jungle) you have to go by rural routes. Yet despite the charm of country Canada (I’m suddenly humming Bruce Cockburn’s Going to the Country), serving Jesus and his people “out here” is beset with new challenges.

First, much of Canada’s rural expanse is increasingly empty. Most rural places, including where I live in Zurich, Ont., are in numerical decline. In almost all of Boondock Nation you’ll find this trend. Out here we live with the reality of the exodus of our future, the emigration of our youths to the big city.

A pastor from Saskatchewan said, “We are situated in a community of about 150 people . . . most of the young people leave for the city when they graduate from Grade 12. Sometimes it is very frustrating and discouraging wondering what will happen to our church.”

This emptying creates an unhealthy congregational self-understanding that can be debilitating and hopeless. Add to this the discouragement that, when a rural congregation finally finds a good—read also “young”—leader, they are all-too-soon whisked off to the city to a bigger—read also “better”—church. Who will lead and love the flock in an increasingly empty nowhere out along the fenceline?

Shaped by urban myths

Second, rural life is increasingly shaped by urban myths. Villages that are growing are mostly within a quick commute to a city. This growth forever changes our towns. Some of our communities are now just a bedroom for sub-suburban-urbanites who can’t understand why there’s manure in the air. It’s not that we’re unwilling to change or unhappy you’re here; we just wonder why “here” needs to become the city just because you arrived.

Furthermore, today’s technologies mean our communities are no longer shaped by what happens in the town hall or local coffee shop, but by the same sound-bite politics, media and corporate trends that define urbanity. Our banks move because someone in the city concludes we don’t need one anymore.

The urban myths of success and growth are powerful and create unrealistic expectations for many rural church leaders, whose people are smitten by that cool ministry they see every week on TV. The closest many of us can get to Hillsong or Willow Creek is standing on a hill by a creek whistling while our people drive into the city where “church” is done better. This is crippling to our commu-nities, not to mention ecclesiologically bankrupt.

Further still, while much good ministry training is from and for the city, to many of us it is like teaching an engineer to construct skyscrapers, then sending him to Punkydoodle Corners to build a driving shed. One is no better than the other, just different in design, use and expectation.

And when denominations expect the same preparation litmus tests for urban and rural settings, the issues are exacerbated. This not only creates financial expectations that struggling rural communities are increasingly unable to bear, and pastors are unwilling to enter, but it begins to communicate that such churches are of a different—and second—class.

Rural truths explained

Rural folks are not dumb, ignorant or unaware, but they are simple in the best sense of the word. They want good biblical teaching, preaching, care and leadership, but are less concerned with degrees than with seeing a life preached before them well. They are enormously generous and care less about what we’ve done in seminary—or whether we’ve dissected a bishop or deconstructed modernity—than about who we are and whether we really know Jesus and can help the next generation do the same. Do we have a simple well-founded faith? Do we know their grandkid’s name? That’s what they’re looking for.

Rural places do tend to be more traditional, but why is that so bad? Urban myths ask us to reject what our homesteaders knew to be true. We find it ironic that the recent discovery of everything “green” is simply common sense out here, and the advertising of every new cookie-cutter subdivision as “Oakfield Village” makes us smirk. Everything we watch and hear from Toronto, Vancouver and Hollywood sounds like it’s coming from people who’ve taken the pickles we send from our fields and deposited them in the wrong end!

Our self-understandings have become a smorgasbord of what we know from Grandpa and what we’re told by Bay Street, Sussex Drive, McGill, the Lower East Side and Citytv we should really care about. We respect and pray with our city-mouse brothers and sisters, but we have lots of poverty and social issues to deal with, too, that never make the news or receive the funding profile cities demand.

Pastoring the pastures

Leading in this setting is unique and demands unique preparation and expectation. There is a smattering of places where such training is being done and considered, most requiring travel to urban settings. It would be great for ongoing training to take place in rural settings, where the apprenticing of church leaders takes place alongside the lives of those living the cultural, intellectual and systemic realities of rural folk.

As James Watson of the Salvation Army states, “If we do not pay attention to the need for resources for . . . leadership in rural areas, we may suddenly look at the country and wonder where the churches have gone.”

Finally, rural Canada is a vast mission field. We might assume the conservative leanings and quaint church buildings of hamlets mean a lively Christian witness. Uh, no. Churches are closing or consolidating faster than depopulation is happening. Whole villages are a few funerals away from no visible neighbourhood church presence. At the same time, a Christendom memory lingers that says: Since Grandma goes to that church, or I went to Sunday school and was baptized there, or we expect a “real” Christmas program at the local public school, then we and God must somehow be cool. But try countering this heritage of naïve religiosity with the gospel and the shine begins to come off that cornfield sunset.

It is my belief that what is needed in rural Canada is not mere institutional caretakers, but more mission-shaped leaders who will renew long-established churches and start many new “on-mission-with-God” gatherings of the saints in order to initiate a new lifecycle of Christian witness and presence.

This will require longevity and a new vision for the unique demographics and complexities of making disciples in rural Canada. And it will require that rural congregations re-imagine who they are and why they exist. They are not just there to keep memories of the past alive or the old church building heated.

No! They exist because of the risen Lord and are called to keep the gospel fresh and alive in word and deed for the sake of those outside the kingdom who live just down Main Street or out on Orchard Line. That task must be accepted again with a freshness only the Holy Spirit can instill and a stubborn resolve only the Boondocks can muster.

In the blink of an eye

2010-02-23T11:00:00.000-05:00

When that horrible earthquake shook Haiti on Jan. 12, I was busy. I had some writing to do, some people to meet with and a meeting to prepare for. Important stuff, you know. I was busy and, although I saw the headlines, I didn’t have time to read them. It would be another day before I really caught up. All this ambivalence despite our family having a heart-connection to Haiti through friends and my wife’s journey there that is the source of some beautiful paintings hanging in our home.

My first response to such tragedy is to want to ditch what I do for something that “really matters.” Maybe I should quit my job and do something that actually makes a difference. But the best we could do as a family in January was watch the images of pancaked homes, and share our money and our prayers.

I suddenly felt the tediousness and irrelevance of what I do. Does it really matter if our Sunday morning runs smoothly when children lay buried beneath the Port-au-Prince rubble? Will anybody besides my editor notice if I don’t meet my writing deadline? Does it matter that the Maple Leafs play hockey like my grandma when aftershocks continue to rumble? My life is starting to sound like a rerun of Ecclesiastes: maybe I should just eat, drink and be merry?

Perhaps I’m the only tortured soul who wrestles such demons. But when life for so many changes in the blink of an eye, what do I do with my blinking eyes? Where should they turn? Should they just stay closed? So much is suddenly made trite and so much is suddenly made clear when major catastrophes happen, even if a world away.

I’ve never experienced an earthquake. I’ve never seen existence so instanta-neously altered, but that doesn’t mean my eyes can’t see. If I pull myself away from the Internet long enough, I may begin to see the proverbial earthquakes people are living through around me. They may even be happening in my home. What do my blinking eyes see?

In his great novel, The Chosen, Chaim Potok tells the story of a boy named Reuben and his search for identity. Reuben’s father passes on a profound perspective: “I learned a long time ago, Reuben, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. [God] can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant.”

To be a people on a mission with the God who sees (Genesis 16:13) is to take this fatherly advice. There will always be things that change in the blink of an eye that we are mostly powerless to change. The real wonder is that my eye blinks. My eye is attached to me. It is, as Jesus said, “the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light” (Matthew 6:22). What I am given to behold, in the particular locale where God has placed me, is what I am primarily called to add a “kingdom” quality to, despite what little difference it might seem to make. So, give to Haiti and beyond, but perhaps even more so, live and strive to see the kingdom come on the street corner, the neighbourhood and around the table where your eye does the blinking.

Cars are for travel, not talking

2010-01-21T12:12:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time we had a talking car. I hated that vehicle. I won’t give away the company—it’s in enough trouble already—but my hunch is the idea emerged when a few auto nerds had too much punch at a party. It’s one thing being trapped with a passenger who won’t hush up, but when it’s the automobile itself, that can drive you around the bend.

Come to think of it, the idea may have been a stroke of marketing genius. In the late ’80s, when music was all about the synthesizer, why not have cars that sounded the same? Perhaps this was simply cultural synthesis in its most logical form. In the age of the technological gimmick, that’s precisely what our family car was.

One of the neglected pieces of being the church in this post-Christian age is the way we design things. Over time, churches tend to add new layers and dimensions of structure that only end up frustrating, rather than liberating. In fact, some of our structures and levels of committee bureaucracies, although well intentioned, actually work to hinder being a mission-shaped people, rather than aiding it. Some believe the church should be structure-free, but I have yet to see a body that worked well without a skeleton.

That, however, is the least of most churches’ concerns. Many established congregations are over-endowed structurally. The majority of people-gifts and ministry time is expended in justifying and legitimizing how we “run” the church, as opposed to releasing people-gifts for Christ-centred ministry involvement with the whole of life. We spend a lot of time trying to get a car to talk and very little time just making it drive well.

When I finally had the chance—and money—to buy my own vehicle, I determined it would be as simple as possible. It would definitely not talk. A car is meant for transportation; I don’t need it to be my therapist.

Similarly, what might happen if we simplified our church structures with mobility and the forward movement of the kingdom of God as our prime values? Volunteers simply want their spiritual and natural gifts to be shared with purpose. To release our people, and thereby our churches, in this way, may I make some humble suggestions:
• First, ask committees to be leaders in mobilization of gifts and mission, rather than doers of deeds. Such teams should lead the church into effective ministry, not do ministry for the church.
• Second, simplify your bureaucracy as much as possible. Take a hard, honest evaluation of whether you are unnecessarily over-structured and then repent of it, simplify, and move on. Most structure that begins as a good idea is only “good” for so long and then needs to be rethought. That’s not bad, it’s called being awake to your context and the leading of the Spirit. Even Moses needed to be challenged on this when it came to leading well in a new day (Exodus 18).
• Third, design your structures with God’s glory and the good of people in mind. Over time, we can become slaves to our structures. We call that idolatry. We must design things with biblical wisdom in mind, recognizing that the “right” way to structure is not outlined in Scripture. If our structures do not empower God-glorifying service to people, then they’re probably about as helpful, not to mention as frustrating, as a talking car.

A pastor’s dirty little secret

2009-12-17T09:38:00.000-05:00

There is a dirty little secret we pastors want you to know, but are reticent to share because we’re afraid. We’re afraid the flock will hysterically charge the fences if we’re honest. We know how woolly a sheep stampede can be. Mutton hits the fan, usually ours. So we keep quiet.

Enough fear already! You need to know this dirty little secret, so here it is: We need to be reminded what it is we’re supposed to be doing.

Let me explain. We like you and love you, and we want you to like and love us. We know you do, we think. Actually, to be truthful, we’re not always sure you do. And since we’re so skittish, and because we’re very human sheep, we are prone to hedge on what we’re supposed to be doing.

Now don’t start thinking we’re a gaggle of hyper-active, insecure tweens desperately searching for acceptance! It’s just that as much as we serve because of God’s call, we can be easily seduced by the call to please God’s people—and there’s a fine but distinct line between the two. See, you pay our way, or at least some of it. You can vote us out if you don’t approve and we know that what we’re really supposed to be doing will not always receive your approval.

This is the minister’s great conundrum. And so to fan into flame what burns—or should burn—in us requires a few of you courageously calling us back to our primary call. It’s what we really know we must do, yet we need you, our sisters and brothers, to lead us to lead you to follow our Leader. You must ask and expect us to stay on task despite well-reasoned arguments and cultural pressure to focus elsewhere. If you don’t, many of us will cave in and then we’ll contribute to the caving in of the very church we all love.

Careful, though! You’re as sheepish as we are, don’t forget. Tempted as we are to please you, you are equally tempted to want us to please you. You’d like us to be therapists, bureaucrats, CEOs, social workers, social conveners, politicians of the left or right, and religious managers, while spouting theology that tickles ears and won’t put you to sleep, but won’t wake you up either!

So the secret is, we need you to remind us of what we’re supposed to be doing, but are you really willing to do it? See, if we reorient, it’s going to require your reorientation too.

Here’s what we need to be called back to, loud, clear and often: “[D]o not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord . . . but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel . . .” (II Timothy 1:8-10).

We must be unashamed lead witnesses among you of the person and power of Jesus. You must be unashamed in expecting us to focus on this task for your sake and for the world’s sake. It really is what we’re supposed to do.

On the Origin of the Torch

2009-12-02T12:05:00.003-05:00

In three months my country will host the Winter Olympic Games. Vancouver and Whistler are incredibly beautiful places and that, like everywhere else on the planet, has its dark side. (See here and here and here.) The beauty and problems of a city are magnified the moment it is awarded the right to go into debt to schmooze the world.

There are plenty of opinions out there about whether the Olympic Games are worth all the effort and cost. National pride, big business, human solidarity and human depravity all mix together in these global gatherings that some love and others hate.

The Olympic torch is currently making its way across Canada. The relay will, of course, end up with a cauldron being lit during the opening ceremonies on February 12. That torch is creating a lot of warm fuzzies for the Great White North as it jogs its way across our wide-open spaces.

All this leads to the interesting question of origins and whether they matter. You see, the original idea for a great national torch relay, which has become the prelude to every Olympics since the end of World War II, belonged to none other than Adolph Hitler. It was part of Hitler’s desire to unite and redefine the German nation that led him to create the first torch relay for the 1936 Berlin Games.

Hitler loved the image of fire and found in the ancient Greek Olympic tradition justification for making it central to his moment in the sun. The torch relay was the tyrant’s way of linking the Nazi movement with the best of Greek history – or so he hoped. Ironically, the modern Olympics were intended to move humanity beyond our warring madness and into kinship and unity. Well, we know how that went and how it goes. We’re still not over our fighting and the torch is now just another commercial opportunity for soda pop and banks.

So, does the origin of the torch matter?

Perhaps the origins reveal more than we’re willing to admit. Hitler wanted to unite his dark dreams with a great ancient civilization. And, truth be told, he did that. Ancient Greece was equally built on warring and conquering, not just tubby philosophers in togas.The light that shines at the heart of the Olympics may unintentionally remind us of just how united we really are in our madness that no fun and games will ever coerce us out of.

The only hope for the Lower East Side or Afghanistan, or anywhere else for that matter, will not be torch relays or two weeks of fun and corporate games. The hope is the light of the world, Jesus Christ, and we who know him must continue to hold him high, resist the madness, engage our world counter-culturally, and not allow our light to be put under a bushel.

Bandage babies

2009-11-12T11:20:00.000-05:00

Ever noticed that strange addiction children have to adhesive ban-dages? What is it about those silly things that deceive us so?

If even once we have a legitimate “ouchy” that demands one of these, it’s as if some plasticized dementia takes root in us. Children will soon be asking for bandages to cover invisible wounds, to heal scrapes and scratches that are figments of their imagination. They become bandage babies and parents become bandage spoilsports, saying, “You don’t need one; there’s nothing there!” Still, the kid screams, “Yes, there is! I need one!”

A tug-of-war erupts where even the fail-proof solution of “kissing it better” is utterly rejected. Finally, in the interests of peace and the future of the human race itself, we find the parents digging into the medicine cabinet for a bandage on yet one more non-problem in order to maintain their own sanity.

One begins to wonder if we ever outgrow this:

• Sexual promiscuity, venereal diseases and teenage pregnancy riddle societies. The solution: Use a pill or a condom, or abort the fetus. Problem solved. Come on!

• Need more stuff? The solution: Use credit to pay off that super-duper-never-to-fail-fruit-scented-automatic-voice-activated-toilet-paper dispenser that was so amazing when seen on TV. Swipe it, accumulate stuff with debt, make minimum payments and my incessant need will be satisfied. Come on!

• Church trouble? The solution: Get rid of—or ignore—the leader or others you don’t agree with. Run to something fresh, or more to your liking, that will make you feel better about your unholy religious addiction and the problem is solved. Come on!

• Relationship trouble? Solution: Buy the book that will solve your partner’s problem and fix the marriage in six easy steps. Or better yet, avoid marriage altogether. Cohabitate and avoid at all lengths having to say “I do” to cover your fanny when you know you won’t. Problem easily solved. Come on!

On and on we go avoiding our depths one camouflaging padded sticker at a time. This is the story in our culture, in our neighbourhoods and in our churches.

Don’t you see? We love to cover things up and then conclude the work is done. But to celebrate this conclusion is to be deceived into a false security and identity. The result of our unwillingness to go to root issues means not just that real problems are ignored, but are, in fact, given increased power to control. Even further, we end up missing what we are actually desperately seeking: Joy. We become joyless, superficial and increasingly unable to see real issues.

To be a people of the cross is to avoid this bandage addiction, and enter a new individual and corporate reality. People of the cross move beyond bandages to open woundedness, confession, repentance and embrace. We cry out for grace and mercy. We seek not self-justification, but Christ-justification. After all, the cross is no bandage, but the freeing revelation that our healing is rooted in one great wound.

Question. Period.

2009-10-20T10:20:00.000-04:00

I sat in a century-old church building surrounded by grandmas. I had been invited by a denomination I really didn’t know well, to talk with a women’s group about the kingdom of God and how we live that out. I began by asking questions to understand the way these faithful saints perceived the life of the church these days. Their answers were questions themselves: Where are the young people? How do we compete with the busy work and recreation schedules of people? What can we do to make church effective and alive again?

I understand their quandary. Many churches in my own denomination, I assured them, would ask similar questions given the opportunity.

We trip and stutter our way towards answers to those queries. Try as we may, this search only leads to more questions and plenty of opinions, many of them polarizing. There were even some sparks in that room full of grandmas!

It’s not that the conversation was heated; desperation would more describe the mood. Hanging in the air was the hoped-for wish that something we could do would change things. That was quickly followed with the despair of trying to figure out what that happy pill would be. I began to see that I was supposed to have brought the prescription along. Yet the further into the answers we plunged, the deeper the pit became.

Throughout the conversation a renewed insight came into view for me. It seems to me that we spend a lot of time asking the wrong question and then end up wasting time seeking answers that only leave us more confused, bewildered and befuddled. We become like a young child trying to undo a knot in his shoes by pulling in the wrong direction.

I am convinced that while many of us, legitimately and with right motives, seek to re-imagine the life of the church for a new day by asking the question, “What can the church do better?” we are actually posing a self-defeating question. Without fail, this leads to endless conversations, meetings and opinions that tend to go nowhere in the long run. The knot just becomes a frustration. Instead of discovering new freedom, we end up with schism and parties that resemble question period in the House of Commons. We’re all present for the same reason and purpose, but an outsider would surely begin to wonder what all the noise is about and how anything ever gets done.

Instead of the non-starter, “What can the church do better?” we need to begin with a truly kingdom of God shaped question: “What will bring glory to God?”

At least in my feeble mind, this question reshapes the discussion. It takes our eyes off ourselves and places it where it belongs: on our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. The question is not, what can we do, but who is God? The question is not whether we can produce more people who think like us, but whether we produce people who look increasingly like Jesus.

The question is not whether people think our church is cool, effective, tolerant or relevant, but whether or not we bring God glory. What will make God great among us and through us? That is the question. Period. That is the question out of which re-imagination begins, biblical thirst re-emerges and new creations are made.

Pastoring the flock in Boondock Nation

2009-10-06T10:08:00.002-04:00

Why Canada needs rural leaders

There I was, the country-bumpkin pastor amidst all the really important people at the National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa. Such an event is quite the shindig for someone from the sticks. Being asked where you're from and having to "get them there from here" is quite humorous. Most people gauge where you're from based on proximity to a major urban center. "Is that near Toronto?" "Oh, that's close to Edmonton!" You get the picture.

The picture is blurring for those of us serving and leading the body of Christ in the vast rural areas of our country. If you check a map you'll find Canada is overwhelmingly rural. Oh, I know most Canadians live in the big cities. I've been there and lived there, but in order to get anywhere in Canada (by "anywhere" we tend to mean a concrete jungle) you have to go by rural routes. Yet, despite the charm of country Canada (I'm suddenly humming Bruce Cockburn's "Going to the Country"), serving Jesus and His people "out here" is beset with new challenges.

Rural exodus
First, much of Canada's rural expanse is increasingly empty. Most rural places, including where I live, are in numerical decline. In most of Boondock Nation you'll find this trend.

Out here we live with the reality of the exodus of our future, the emigration of our youth to the big city. A pastor from Saskatchewan said, "We are situated in a community of about 150 people…most of the young people leave for the city when they graduate from Grade 12. Sometimes it is very frustrating and discouraging wondering what will happen to our church."

This emptying creates unhealthy congregational self-understanding that can be debilitating and hopeless. Add to this the discouragement that occurs when a rural congregation finally finds a good (read also "young") leader who is all-too-soon whisked off to the city to a bigger (read also "better") church.

Who will lead and love the flock in an increasingly empty nowhere?
Second, rural life is increasingly shaped by urban myths. Most villages that are growing are within a quick commute of cities. Such growth changes our towns forever. Some of our communities are now just bedrooms and fillings with sub-suburban-urbanites who can't understand why there's manure in the air. It's not that we're unwilling to change or unhappy you're here; we just wonder why "here" needs to become the city just because you arrived.

Swayed by the city
Furthermore, today's technologies mean our communities are no longer shaped by what happens in the town hall or local coffee shop, but by the same sound-bite politics, media, and corporate trends that define urbanity. Our banks move because someone in the city concludes we don't need one anymore.

Further, the urban myths of success and growth are powerful and creating unrealistic expectations for many rural church leaders whose people are smitten by that cool ministry they see every week on TV. The closest many of us can get to Hillsong or Willow Creek is standing on a hill by a creek whistling while our people drive into the city where "church" is done better. This is crippling to our communities, not to mention ecclesiologically bankrupt.

Further still, while much good ministry training is from and for the city, to many of us it is like teaching an engineer to construct skyscrapers, then sending him to Punkydoodle's Corners to build a driving shed. One is no better than the other, just different in design, use and expectation.

And when denominations expect the same preparation litmus tests for urban and rural settings, the issues are exacerbated. This not only creates financial expectations that struggling rural communities are increasingly unable to bear and pastors are unwilling to enter, but it begins to communicate that such churches are of a different (and second?) class.

Best of simple
Rural folk are not dumb, ignorant, or unaware; they are simple in the best sense of the word. They want good biblical teaching, preaching, care and leadership, but are less concerned with degrees than with seeing a life preached before them well. They are enormously generous and care less about what we've done in seminary or whether we've dissected a bishop or deconstructed modernity than about who we are and whether we really know Jesus and can help the next generation do the same. Do we have a simple faith well-founded? Do we know their grandkid's name? That's what they're looking for.

Rural places do tend to be more traditional; why is that so bad? Urban myths ask us to reject what our homesteaders knew to be true (ironically, the recent discovery of everything "green" is simply common sense out here, and the advertising of every new cookie-cutter subdivision as "Oakfield Village" makes us smirk).

Everything we watch and hear from Toronto, Vancouver and Hollywood sounds like it's coming from people who've taken the pickles we send from our fields and deposited them in the wrong end. Our self-understandings have become a smorgasbord of what we know from grandpa and what we're told we should really care about coming from Bay Street, Sussex Drive, McGill, the Lower East Side and CityTV.

We respect and pray with our city-mouse brothers and sisters, but we have lots of poverty and social issues to deal with too that never make the news or receive the funding profile cities demand.

Rural as a calling
Leading in this setting is unique and demands unique preparation and expectation. But a smattering of places do offer training, but most require travel to urban settings. It would be great for ongoing training to take place in rural settings where the apprenticing of church leaders takes place alongside the lives of those living the cultural, intellectual and systemic realities of rural folk. As Salvationist James Watson says, "if we do not pay attention to the need for resources for…leadership in rural areas, we may suddenly look at the country and wonder where the churches have gone."

Rural Canada is a vast mission field. We might assume the conservative leanings and quaint church buildings of hamlets mean a lively Christian witness. Uh, no. Churches are closing or consolidating faster than depopulation is happening. Whole villages are a few funerals away from no visible church presence.

At the same time, a Christendom memory lingers that says: since grandma goes to that church, since I went to Sunday school, got baptized and expect a "real" Christmas program at the local public school, then we and God must be cool. Try countering this heritage of naïve religiosity with the gospel, and the shine begins to come off that cornfield sunset.

Try countering what has been around forever and was started by great uncle Bart and you'll quickly discover country justice.

Reimagining the rural church
What is needed in rural Canada is not mere institutional caretakers, but mission-shaped leaders who will renew long-established churches and start many new on-mission-with-God gatherings of the saints that will initiate a new lifecycle of Christian witness and presence. This will require longevity and a new vision for the unique demographics and complexities of making disciples in rural Canada.
And, it will require that rural congregations re-imagine who they are and why they exist. They are not just there to keep uncle Bart's pet project alive or even that old building heated.

No, they exist because of the risen Lord and are called to keep the gospel fresh and alive in word and deed for the sake of those outside the Kingdom and just down Main Street and out on Orchard Line. That task must be accepted again with a freshness only the Holy Spirit can breathe and a stubborn resolve only the Boondocks can muster.

Playing Chicken with Evil

2009-09-29T11:32:00.001-04:00

I remember the good old-fashioned butcher parties at my grandparent’s farm. Headless chickens flapped frightfully around the barnyard before dropping lifeless, surrendering to a roast pan future. Precious memories; how they linger. Such imagery drives some to tofu. Nothing against tofu, which has a place in the food chain right next to playdough, but we’ve lost sight of what this world is really like.

I once visited southern Alberta’s Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump (the name says it all) to learn of the amazing ways Aboriginals provided for themselves. A yearly ritual of driving bison off cliffs to their bloody end was needed in order for the community to survive year to year. Life teeters hazardously close to the brink and it’s not always grocery store appealing.

The stark reality of life on our planet has been airbrushed away. As true as this may be with food, it is even more real when it comes to evil. For all the horrors we’re exposed to via the media, the entertainment value of evil has never been higher. We know this is a problem, don’t we? Still, there is the paradoxical belief out there that somehow evil should never actually touch us. We’ve set up ways, means, and securities to make sure it doesn’t and seem honestly aghast when evil slips through our feeble Maginot lines. Now, without a doubt, we—and Christians specifically—should be working with all our might to counter evil in all its chameleonic forms. We know the Good and that in him there is no darkness. Still, I wonder if we haven’t begun, with our culture, to think of ourselves more highly than we ought.

Do we see things too rosy? Do we only see cordon bleu without the plucking mess? Have we swallowed an unbiblical notion of human nature that is highly optimistic, but light on sin and Satan? Have we forgotten that humanity consistently flirts with chaos?

Romano Guardini wrote, “All monsters of the wilderness, all horrors of darkness have reappeared. The human person again stands before the chaos; and all of this is so much more terrible, since the majority do not recognize it: after all, everywhere scientifically educated people are communicating with one another, machines are running smoothly, and bureaucracies are functioning well.” That was penned in 1950, within spitting distance of Auschwitz and Hiroshima. It sounds like it could have been posted on Facebook last week.

We find ourselves in a blind culture. We must be a people of faith and hope striving against evil, but is that possible where we don’t recognize how dark and bloody evil really is?

Perhaps we need courage to name the evils in our communities and begin singing and praying seditiously, “Deliver us from evil.” We do a lot of trying to convince ourselves humanity will grow out of its rebellious stage if only they’d read or vote right. Let’s get over it. Life is messy. That nice lean chicken breast once lost its head and evil will not be overcome with wishful thinking or human philosophies and philanthropies alone. Let’s be honest, we are all—even pacifists—capable of the darkest of deeds, misdeeds, and undone deeds. The head of evil is only smashed-in by Good confronting evil head-on and conquering in love. Have we forgotten the victory of the cross? Have we forgotten what it took to rescue us? Have we stopped praying for deliverance?

So, enjoy your Buffalo wings, join the Lamb in his invasion of goodness, but for goodness’ sake, be awake to the evil that lurks and who the Deliverer truly is.

I'm confused

2009-09-17T12:27:00.000-04:00

The movie Blood Diamond is a fascinating study in what makes men tick. Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a Zimbabwean diamond smuggler who through cinematic fate finds his life tied to a West African fisherman named Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou).

Archer lost his parents tragically as a child and now lives the lonely and dangerous life of a mercenary who makes cheap diamonds a girl’s best friend. He lives for the adrenaline of the chase – the chase for elusive jewels, for money, for women, from enemies, and ultimately, the chase for purpose in his wounded and empty life.

Vandy, conversely, has almost nothing except his family. He is a husband and father in a poor African nation. When his family is torn apart in the brutal Sierra Leone civil war and he is enslaved in the mines everything he does is aimed at reuniting his brood. They are his life. He is as driven as Archer, only his arrow is pointed in the opposite direction.

As Danny and Solomon embark on a final trek to find a valuable and hidden blood diamond it is for divergent reasons. Archer is looking to get rich to escape the life he knows. Solomon is looking to escape back to the life he knew. A telling conversation ensues in which Solomon asks Danny piercing questions of meaning and purpose. Does he have a wife? No. Does he have children? No.

Solomon literally stops in his tracks. It makes no sense to risk life and limb for no real purpose. Why this pointless extreme existence? “I’m confused,” he blurts.
“That makes two of us,” replies the despairing smuggler as he marches off in his perplexity to chase another shiny rock. His life is extreme in its blandness. The rush is a sedative. The karat glint distracts from a heart of stone, a vacuum of purpose, a life with adventure but no meaning.

What’s so extreme about living solely for self? What’s so wild and adventurous about that when we do it all the time? That’s just normal. The Danny Archers and couch potatoes of this world are simply polar opposites of the same reality. The only difference is one goes down in a blaze of glory while the other goes down in a haze of corn chips. Don’t we know if we’re really honest, that such extremes are not extreme at all? At the end of Blood Diamond we pity the tragic Archer whose aim was so late on target, while Solomon’s simple, purposeful, selfless life is always extremely attractive. Which man got it right? Are these the only choices?

Hear the words of Jesus Christ, the Lord of history, “What is impossible with men is possible with God” (Luke 18:27). Any extreme life we might imagine is Saturday morning cartoons compared to what is possible with God. Jesus is responding to his confused disciples about who is in the Kingdom of God. Jesus upends our normalcy, as extreme or honourable as it may be, and invites us into the potential of the Kingdom of God. You see, for Jesus there is a third way besides the way of Archer and even Vandy. Family is good, Solomon has purpose, but Jesus pushes to a new extreme vision for life: “I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life” (Luke 18:29-30).

The extreme life is not focused on self, neither is it focused solely on those closest to us, it is life abandoned unto God. This is the third way, the super-natural life to which Jesus points. We are called to a grand yet single purpose, to leave the wilds, the banal and even the admirable for the impossible possibilities of life in the footsteps of Christ. This is the extreme life that confuses our natural tendencies, but it is what Jesus calls us to. Or, is he too extreme?

A cry in the night

2009-08-18T10:08:00.000-04:00

Over a number of summer nights I was shook from my sweet slumber by the same couple walking beneath my open bedroom window conversing in loud and inebriated tones. Over the course of a week or so they were like clockwork—very loud clockwork—and the conversations were a cornucopia of slurred, liquored chatter that was a convoluted combination of cursing and startlingly deep and thought-provoking sermon material.

On the last night of these midnight visitations, the robust banter went all-out theological. God, Jack Daniels and John Labatt were stirred together in a curious mix, and the results whetted my appetite for more as they rounded the corner and drifted off into the darkness to disturb someone else.

The man was quoting Scripture, talking about life and the reality of God. The woman, consistently the more obnoxious of the two, was throwing a classic God-objection in his face. “I have prayed and tried to see him,” she said. “I have gone to church,” she claimed. She recounted some of the pain in her life, the disappointments and anxieties, and then repeatedly called out to the Holy One: “Where is he? Where the %#&* is he?”

How would you answer her cry in the night?

Elie Wiesel, in his famous little book, Night, tells of prisoners in Auschwitz asking the same troubling and very human question: Where is God? We must take this question seriously. We must be with those who ask it. We must admit that even we who believe ask it. Even the Scriptures wonder, “O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest” (Psalm 22:2). We must have an answer for the seeming hiddenness of God or we’re no longer human, let alone honest.

If you’ve ever walked with the frustrated, you know there are no pat answers. The fact that many rely on pat answers, clichés or Oprahisms is perhaps proof we’ve been far too asleep and in need of a midnight walk. Still, we must be able to point those crying in the night to hope, to some reason to believe, and the hiddenness of God is actually one of the more beautiful aspects of the reality of a loving Redeemer.

In remaining hidden God acts in grace and holiness:

• First, he does not coerce us into belief. God respects our humanity in all its created beauty and sin-induced brokenness.

• Second, he heightens the joy of discovery. God both looks for us and waits to be found, so that our joy is complete, even in the midst of trial.

• Third, and uniquely Christian, God enters our suffering. God does not ignore us, but meets us in our pain, and we are awakened to a grace and love that would never have come into view otherwise.

God in Christ enters humanity’s anguish and answers our question of where he is with a cross that flips the question around: “Where is humanity? Is this what you people do with love and grace? Who do you think you are? Do you crucify the Good and then blame the Good for not stopping you?”

Now there’s a question or two that might keep us up at night.

Russian Roulette

2009-08-04T09:38:00.001-04:00

Those Russians sure are courageous! Legend has it that 19th century Russian soldiers invented the dangerous life-gamble of Russian roulette – a “game” that could only have been concocted with the help of vodka. The “player” in Russian roulette has a 16.67% chance of cashing in all their chips – to lengthen the pathetic gambling metaphors.

What are the affects of gambling on a society? Government-run lotteries, casinos, and sports wagering sell themselves to the masses as the way to fulfill our dreams and good for the social construct (like a steroid-bloated rummage sale or penny auction). “Imagine the Freedom” touts a popular Canadian lottery and the ads encourage us to an ethic and “love of your neighbour” that is not-so-altruistic.

Even further, the popular social acceptance of gambling is witnessed in the growth of Poker as a television event of all things and the reality that most professional sports grow only to the extent that people bet on outcomes (even if that didn’t work so well for Pete Rose). On the other extreme of the gaming industry is the messiness of situations reflected in the lives of Michael Vick and the underground fight clubs that really do exist. Physical and financial risk seems to go hand in hand. Gambling is in many ways a form of financial pornography with many brands, brush-overs, and extremes to choose from and be sucked in by.

The statistics say that in the United States about 3 million people are gambling addicts and up to 150 million people are low-risk gamblers. In Canada where Video Lottery Terminals (VLTs) are almost as common as donut shops and pitched as a close-to-home vacation the problems are equally disturbing. The statistics say that 25% of those using VLTs are at risk or already have gambling problems. One writer called
VLTs the “crack cocaine” of gambling.

Now comes word that Russia of all places has very courageously tackled the issue of gambling as a society by outlawing casinos to, quite literally, Siberia. On July 1 Russia put into affect a law that had been passed in 2006 that will cost up to 10,000 jobs in Moscow alone. The Russian Association for Gaming Business Development estimates the move will cost the state 2 billion dollars in tax revenue. Quite a gamble, isn’t it? Would other nations have such courage or would they risk shooting themselves in the foot?

The rationale for this radical Russian move was former President and current Prime Minister Putin’s contention that the social risks of gambling addiction were greater than that of alcohol. Now, either Putin’s on to something or he has a Potemkin full of Smirnoff stocks.

So, let me put my cards on the table: why have we in the West accepted gambling carte-blanche? Why are we as Christians so quiet on the subject these days? What are we afraid of? Our very public constructs and means of doing good are tied to that which ultimately destroys and yet we keep eerily silent as a troubling version of social Russian roulette spins on. The social risks are enormous for it really is an issue of the stewardship of lives, the exploitation of the poorest (those making less than $20,000 spend an average of 2.6% of income on gambling, while those making more than $80,000 average 0.6%), and a statement about that which matters most in society. Gambling’s growth and prevalence points to both the decadence and desperation of our culture. Where are the voices of those who speak of he who said, “Seek first (the Father’s) kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you…” (Matthew 6:33)?

Safety and Security?

2009-07-15T11:02:00.000-04:00

This spring our family had the opportunity to visit Lynn Canyon in British Columbia. It’s a fretful wonder. A swinging bridge hangs across the chasm providing a view that can turn your legs to Jell-o. Perhaps it’s only short blokes like me who feel jittery peering over the edge of such an abyss. We also had our four children along and, I tell you, to be vertically challenged and clamouring to keep a rambunctious five year old from plunging into a front page headline is heart pounding stuff. Safety and security are important at Lynn Canyon, but should it be an equally high value for the church?

Missiologist David Bosch says something unsettling: “for many centuries the church has suffered very little and has been led to believe that it is a success.” Is he right? Have we cherished, applauded, and even institutionalized our relative ease, peace, safety and security within the Canadian landscape at the expense of our true identity, our true purpose, and distinct witness? Have we surrendered our true citizenship? At times we do seem to be an eternally charged and destined people convinced that the ease and security of the present is what matters most. Along with our culture we’ve sanitized, tethered and helmeted ourselves at such a price that one begins to wonder if the real cost is our prophetic discipleship and the joy of obedient adventure. He who had no place to lay his head and said we’d be blessed to be despised for his name’s sake might be quite uncomfortable in our plush pews as we worship according to our preferences. Is the expression of the local church in Canada a window into heaven?

I think of this every week as I go about my peculiar religious vocation that can be so oft beset by the inertia of people pleasing. An unnerving question keeps pounding in the background of my day like that annoying drip from the faucet I should be fixing: is this what Jesus meant when he said he’d build a church that the gates of Hades could not overcome? Am I alone, or have we accepted and even blindly endorsed a Christian existence that essentially runs counter to our message and even our Lord’s person, example and teaching? Let’s face it, if we’d really live the Sermon on the Mount or cry and strive for justice and righteousness both within the church and culture as the Old Testament prophets we’d be marked men and women. On the other hand, we might leave a very different mark.

It’s not that we don’t like the beautiful wilds of following Jesus, we just like them manageable and safe – kind of like going to an Imax film where you can almost live the adventure with a box of popcorn without having to, well, live it. But the landscape is changing. Our safe and secure segregated spirituality is being tested. We are being asked which we cherish most: safety and security or the counter-cultural witness of a risen Lord, a resurrected life, an uncommon love, and a wild new Kingdom. Our understanding of success will need to be redefined and brought in line, Lord willing, with those historical moments when the church teetered on the brink, looked to be facing the impossible, discovered herself crossing a proverbial canyon, and found herself shining most brightly.

2009-07-02T09:54:00.002-04:00

Know Thyself

I was a chubby kid. Oh, I could score a few goals in a hockey game, but I keenly remember the haunting taunts of “Philsbury Dough Boy.” There were days I would have loved to crush some of my tormentors beneath my fresh-baked buns—if only I could have caught up to them.

The impact of those pre-teen days of identity mutilation took years to overcome. It wasn’t until a crisis moment and spiritual awakening in my late teens that I wiggled free from those traps of mocking and scoffing. I came to know that what God thought of me, how he defined me, was what mattered most. I was to be labelled by grace and mercy. My Creator was no mean Jokester. In fact, he had a plan that required my redefinition, the knowing of myself not in the mirror, but in the redeemed reflection of my Saviour and Friend. We do as we believe we are.

Now turn the corner with me from the self to the community. Churches have self-identities too. Furthermore, these self-identities are crucial in their understanding of mission, purpose, and their relationship to their world.

I don’t have the definitive word on the myriad of self-identities churches live with, but I do note from my experience these broad categories:

Wounded churches: Beat up by cultural or social circumstances, internal strife, or relational issues gone bad, these churches are limping along, believing they have nothing to offer. They are introspective, cloistered, over-sensitive, and prone to knee-jerk reactions. They need to be loved, reminded of their true identity so their woundedness can be transformed into mission and ministry to a wounded world.

Stubborn churches: Shaped by a haughty spirit that is sure of its rightness, these churches lack a spirit of submission, teach-ability and surrender. They are prone to chew up leaders, those not like them, and are reticent to change. They are shaped by strong personalities, recurring power-plays, and a refusal to see where God is at work and to move in that direction. They need to be challenged, confronted, and called to repentance so their stubbornness can become a holy strength.

Wishy-washy churches: Shaped by the desire to please and be liked, these churches fall prey to the latest fads and philosophies. They are well-meaning and often very intelligent, but become anchorless, floundering ships on the tossing waves of cultural drift. They need to be grounded in truth and taught to contend for the faith. They must read their culture biblically instead of reading their Bibles culturally. They have great strength to offer but need to build on the sure foundation.

Blind churches: Like the Pharisees of Jesus’ rebuke, these churches adore righteousness in religious garb, but don’t see that they often contradict the message with their mediums. They live a culturalized Christianity that has long abandoned any transforming power. They cherish the packaging, but have forgotten the product. These churches need their religiosity refined by the fire and freedom of the Holy Spirit that enables them to see more clearly and trust more wildly.

What is the self-identity of your fellowship? You do have one and it’s shaping your mission, ministry, and purpose. What good, bad, and ugly has shaped it? Where do you, like a plump little boy, need the One who gives our true identity?

2009-06-05T10:51:00.000-04:00

A time to blow your top

Capulin Volcano is, quite literally, a freak of nature. Its scrubby bump rises high and imposing above the treeless and sparsely populated grasslands that sprawl across the northeast corner of New Mexico.

The drive to the top of this U.S. national monument is hair-raising. The view is spectacular. You catch sight of Texas and the panhandle of Oklahoma to the east, the expanse of New Mexico to the south, the snow-capped Rockies to the west, and Colorado to the north.

My family hiked the path that circles the top of this lava mountain and my sons and I then descended into its centre. The ancient crater is littered with large boulders—petrified, silent witnesses of an epic cataclysm. The massive hole looks like a monstrous megaphone. In fact, from within the pit our voices, even at a whisper, were heard by the rest of the family far above at the volcano’s lip. And it struck me: the church is like Capulin Volcano.

I am convinced the world longs to hear what the church says, although the message we bear is often not welcome. Peace at all costs cannot be an option for a people who live a God-defined citizenship. If the church is to be volcanic and truly change the landscape, then what we have to say won’t always be appreciated.

South African missiologist David Bosch reminds us that “the church—if it is faithful to its being—will . . . always be controversial, a ‘sign that will be spoken against’ ” (Luke 2:34). The existence of a creator; the gospel call to repentance; the uniqueness of Jesus among all historical persons; the call to justice, righteousness and holiness; the call from idolatry and self; the call to live the new creation; and the reality of judgment on evil—these are what we have heard and must, as Jesus reminded his disciples, be ready to shout from the rooftops. The church is truly an odd bump from the world’s perspective and sometimes they want to hear what we say simply to mock us.

On the other hand, I believe that, given the chaos of the day, the world is straining to hear what Christians are saying about the times in which we live. People are searching for hope and stability in an age of upheaval. It is even assumed, sometimes more clearly by those who do not see themselves as followers of Jesus, that Christians will not simply speak what is popular or politically correct, but will contend and fight for a vision of the world diametrically opposed to that which we’re stuck with at the moment.

Have we muted ourselves? Have we forgotten that the church—the peculiar people defined by God’s word made flesh—is disturbingly volcanic? Have we forgotten that our presence, because of the Holy Spirit’s power at work in and through us, will alter the landscapes we touch?

For generations, Christians in the Mennonite tradition have been the “quiet in the land.” There is historical and some biblical warrant for such a strong, silent life, but this type of witness must be held in creative tension with the need to speak clearly of the hope we profess: to speak biblically, prophetically, counter-culturally, evangelistically and courageously, for there are many longing to hear what we’ve been whispering among ourselves.

2009-05-25T11:23:00.002-04:00

No Holiday in Sri Lanka

Monday, May 18 was Victoria Day, a national holiday in Canada commemorating the British Queen who chose Ottawa as our capitol and was so influential she managed to have both a moral and architectural era named after her. But on this unofficial launch of summer the reality of the ongoing brokenness and complexity of the world hit disturbingly close to home.

Turns out Sri Lanka, once a British colony, chose Victoria Day to bring to a head its 26 year-old civil war and the ripples were felt by holiday drivers on one of Canada’s busiest roads, Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway. The history of the political mess in Sri Lanka is too complicated for this column, but the lies and abuses heaped on one another by the minority Tamil-speaking peoples (who ruled the country when it was a British colony and known as Ceylon) and Sinhalese-speaking majority (who now control the government) have a rather eerie Rwanda-like feel about them (see for example: here and here).

On the weekend, which was far from a holiday for the large number of innocents suffering in northern Sri Lanka, the leader of the Tamil Tigers, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was apparently killed defending (or perhaps escaping) the last bit of Tamil controlled land.

The news was a terrible blow to Tamils around the world and led, in Toronto at least, to six hours of holiday disruption as Tamil protestors of all ages blocked traffic in an attempt to awaken the world to their plight.

There is much for discussion here: First, how should foreign governments respond to situations they are virtually incapable of changing quickly (and maybe waited too long to pay attention to)? Second, what is the proper political response to human suffering when those on the losing side (in this case the Tamil Tigers) are considered a terrorist organization themselves (they are credited with inventing suicide bombing)? Third, what is acceptable means of civil disobedience when it seems no one is listening or caring about your plight?

I don’t remotely claim to have even the preamble to the answers to these questions, but they need to be asked, and not just by politicians. In fact, the church would do well to enter the discussion. Hearing the rhetoric in Canada one becomes aware of a number of important elements Christians have to offer:

First, our humanitarianism (can we call it incarnational love?) need not depend on who is in political office or even on who is mostly right (though we will need to be wise as serpents). We are in the unique position to love all sides because we know that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Second, what if non-Sri Lankan Christians and Sri Lankan Christians (about 6% – including Tamils - are Christian) conversed and presented a united front that communicated repentance, solidarity in Christ, and action that was for people and not just for power? Would not such a move get us beyond civil disobedience that ultimately seems to create more enemies than friends?

Third, though many in North America know little about Sri Lanka (and even the current front page blotter will soon fade into distant memory), ought not our praying as Christians include situations like this? Moving our praying beyond the confines and conundrums of home to a global scale is no longer an option in a world where what happens in Colombo stops traffic in Toronto.

2009-05-19T13:17:00.001-04:00

With My Body I Thee Worship

“With my body I thee worship.” Once upon a time those words were uttered by grooms in marriage vows. To today’s postmodern ears they must sound like utter nonsense. They have a preposterous, even blasphemous ring about them.

Does it not seem like something coined by an amorously tearful bride at the climax of the worst chick-flick of all time? Wrong. It was framed in the seventeenth century by that great English Church Reformer Thomas Cranmer; hopeless orthodox romantic that he was.

I’m now half way through the second decade of married life and still learning to worship with my body. Life, let alone marriage, is quite the sexual journey for a man. Visions of fireworks are quickly doused by the sudden realization that we have much to learn and unlearn. The wise one implored the testosterone-driven male to rejoice in the wife of his youth (Proverbs 5:18). Song of Songs swoons that her smooth, succulent, adventurous beauty is worthy of great joy and, if biblical wisdom and Cranmer are right, adoration. The Word of God frees us to celebrate that season of life when the tree is green and the fire stoked and very nearly out of control.

The gift of youth is virility and fertility. It is a wonder any man survives to tell of a more settled, supposedly contented land beyond Hormonedom. Does it really exist? Can you get there from here? And, what of us who are single and no less endowed?

Each man must wrestle with the gift and problem of sexuality. A few among us actually don’t survive that wretchedly glorious springtime of life when this challenge assaults at our most vulnerable moment. Some men find themselves consumed by that blazing fire in the lower realms. Having not given their bodies to worship, to give what is due both God and woman in on-fire fidelity, they become pitiful slaves to desires that are never satisfied; to a thirst no woman, try as she may, will adequately be able to quench.

All men wander along a raging, potentially consuming libido current and are tempted to unreservedly dive into that river-of-no-return. I have yet to meet a man who is not somehow sexually broken. Admit it. Something has wrecked us. Some of us were never exposed rightly to this part of our identity; others were over-exposed. Some were abused; others abused. Some were baited by airbrush and caught by fishnet; others were hoodwinked by a doctrine of male superiority. We are broken and risk serving our sexuality rather than offering it.

Our bodily functions are not to be served slavishly, but offered in free worship. The fertility cults of the ancients and contemporary Hollywood are disastrously misguided and blinded in this regard when they glorify unbridled smorgasbords of pleasure. Our bodies and all their various hungers and desires were not intended to be fed endlessly like some buffoon at a buffet but, as the Apostle Paul said, to be offered as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1-2). It is our reluctance to offer such worship that keeps us bound in deceptive slavery to that which was to be given, not horded.

We may argue that any joy in sex is equally fitting, like when as a teen I argued I was celebrating creation by watching Revenge of the Nerds. Stupid me, I wasn’t even celebrating good film-making. Such rationale is of course pathetically faulty, for it argues from and for self-worship. If with my body I worship – give to another what they are worthy of – then I must willingly set aside the self; I must die to me. I give what God, my Creator and Redeemer, and woman, my compliment in the image of God, is worthy of. God deserves my obedience; woman my fidelity and gentle awe. I horde no more. I take up my cross and follow Jesus. I surrender to the self-controlling Spirit of God. My manhood becomes beautifully corralled by the divine, not the diva. And then I am free to give woman what she is worthy of: honour, faithfulness, single-mindedness, and my strength. I am free to rejoice, to wait, to give, to offer, to vow, to serve, and to love. It is true: with my body I do worship.

2009-05-07T09:13:00.001-04:00

What’s right for me?

Recently, the world was introduced to a woman so smitten by the Eiffel Tower that she changed her last name to Eiffel. This is not her first fling of monumental proportions either, nor is she alone. A new sexual orientation is now being studied called “objectum sexuality.” Its website claims, “We love objects . . . in an intimate way and this feeling is innate.” The rightness of this architectural affection is justified upon the authority of one’s own experience. If you feel it, it can’t be wrong, so long as you’re not hurting any, uh, building. What a perfect project for postmodern media and psychiatry to drool over.

I have decided that relativism is wrong! I hope you notice the irony in that statement. The chief belief of our postmodern age is that truth and morality are decided at least by personal preference and at most by popular opinion. Yet the populace is not truly free, but is bound to cheer and legitimize what any individual finds fulfilling—no matter how absurd after the absolute voices of science and celebrity reach their definitive decisions.

Can we reason together? If morality and truth are determined by personal preference, why can’t I decide that it’s wrong? Oh, argues the moral relativist, such mean-spiritedness flies in the face of relativism’s cheery companion: tolerance. There are, however, two problems with tolerance when it is based on relativism.

First, and most shockingly, tolerance actually requires absolutes to exist. As Francis Beckwith points out, “I can only be tolerant of that which I believe is wrong or mistaken.” If I claim to value tolerance, but hold that morality is relative, then I am not really tolerant; I’m either in agreement with the moral choice in question (at which point I have ceased tolerating and begun approving), or I’m indifferent about the moral choice (which is not a truly moral position at all).

This leads to the second problem with relativistic tolerance: it is indifferent. It doesn’t care. It can’t care. It turns away. It leaves us too alone, determined to hear only people who affirm us, and perhaps only with inanimate buildings to cling to. A society built on this foundation may well become the most intolerant and disastrously indifferent of all.

So how do those who believe God has spoken absolutely respond? Well, we must abandon the foolish idea that relative truth and morality make sense and can be merged with the gospel. Relativism may produce “warm fuzzies” and cool movie endings, but it is not logical or practical. To say truth is relative, is an absolute statement imposed on others. To say morality is relative, defies how we know how to function. (Try telling a jilted woman that her husband’s adultery was “right” for him.)

Biblically, relativism is nothing new; it is the default of sinners seeking to justify life without God. We’ve all tried it. But there is a firm foundation offered to a confused and increasingly selfishly indifferent culture: Jesus—the way, the truth and the life. God the Son is the fulfillment of the law none of us can keep and gives us power to break free of random natural forces. And there is the far-from-perfect church that is not free to be indifferent, but is given an even higher call than tolerance: to love as God loves so absolutely (including Mrs. Eiffel), and love what he has spoken just as absolutely. That, after all, is something he has decided.

2009-04-27T10:42:00.003-04:00

A Disturbing Rest

I’m on sabbatical. For the first time in fifteen years of ministry I am purposefully resting. It’s hard work.

I don’t think I’ve experienced insanity before, but that must have been what temporarily occurred when we decided to drive the family across North America to retreat on the Pacific coast. We’ve visited fourteen States and two Provinces thus far. We’ve stuck it out and survived, mostly. We’ve learned plenty and realized again that creation is wild, people are diverse, and God is holy and wild himself.

We’re finally at our destination. I write this looking out at high tide. Snow capped mountains rise majestically in the distance. Ferries keep their time like a pendulum before me. My children are doing schoolwork in the background. I am in a place of rest. I am in a place of disturbance.

For what it’s worth allow me to share a few reflections from this disturbingly restful season I’m experiencing.

First, when we’re forced into that country that prefers to be left undisturbed, the uncharted lands of the interior, it is grace. Shed the familiar and routine and you find your self embarrassingly exposed and examined. It’s always safer hiding behind busyness. Extended time with those you love can be joyful strain. The heart comes into focus; and it’s not necessarily pretty. Love is hard work and I’m not always loveable. What wonder that God loves even me! God knows us yet still loves us. To be known by the holy is an awesome and awful proposition that is far too often trivialized. To know God is to come to know your self, and the self is not always a willing or worthy partner in this dance. The self loves to hide; our Redeemer’s love calls us out and tames our wilds. The silence, the rest, the steady ticking of time gracefully disturbs.

Second, there are people everywhere! This may seem obvious, but people are living, working, playing, and hurting the world over. Our vision can become narrow and bordered. Even in this age of a shrinking globe we can only live in one place at a time. Truth is, if we don’t inhabit that space with family, friends, and even antagonists and strangers well we really have little to offer elsewhere. Being on the move has opened our eyes to the drifts of people and especially those who move through no choice of their own. People are constantly shuffling about; it’s as if we know we’re only passing through. I am disturbed by the vastness of people and our hesitancy to embrace the neighbour, the stranger and increasingly restful within the narrow confines I have been given responsibility for. How do I engage this paradox?

Third, the church has work to do. We’ve rubbed shoulders with business people and educators in Oklahoma, motocross racers in Arkansas, cowboys in Colorado, aboriginals in Arizona, gamblers in Nevada, professionals in California, seniors in Oregon, pastors in Washington, skiers and young adults in British Columbia. Good people, the church has work to do! The church must, MUST, get out of her ghetto and engage the myriad of shifting peoples around us. One size fits all, just doesn’t fit! We need a wilder imagination and a more bold conviction of the truth of the Gospel that disturbs and is the only interior rest for people on the move.

2009-04-09T11:40:00.000-04:00

Holy-day boldly

Our national statutory holidays are pathetically outdated. Consider this quick survey of our glorious days off:

• New Year’s Day: marking the launch of another year of our Lord (Anno Domini).

• Good Friday and Easter Monday: Jesus died so we could get the day off? (Many people believe this Friday is good simply because it is a holiday). Children and a few others get Easter Monday off to recover from chocolate hangovers. (Easter Monday is actually a remnant of Roman Catholic influence on Canadian culture).

• Victoria Day: our Victorian (a word now defined as “prudish, moralistic and religiously oppressive”) past is ritualized with trips to garden centres and fireworks.

• Canada Day: people above the 49th parallel remember they are not American.

• Labour Day: the recognition of labour by not labouring.

• Thanksgiving: the name says it all, but many are not sure why or to whom.

• Remembrance Day: a too-short silence to think long enough about what we lost and how we got there. Vicars and reverends still get seats of honour on this day.

• Christmas Day: the birthday of the guy killed on Good Friday. Also known as the day before the world junior hockey championships or the day of rest before Boxing Day shopping.

• Boxing Day: marking with glee that stores are open again. (Yet the root of this holiday is the giving of goodwill “boxes” to the less fortunate. It was set aside for giving, not consuming. Novel idea.)

This brief survey of holidays reveals how terribly behind these post-Christian times we are. After all, the majority are founded on the Christian religion. Why all these Christian holidays remain—if only in name—is intriguing. And the fact that we are now at least acknowledging special days of other religions, including Ramadan and Kwanza, increases the peculiarity of the paradox. If religion is so private and passé, why the increased publicity?

Why all these Christian holidays remain—if only in name—is intriguing.

Don’t you see? Canadian culture, increasingly shaped by gods of self and mammon and the religion of secularism, is undergoing a subtle transformation. Our holidays tell the tale. In fact, they tell new tales—Earth Day, for example. What and how we celebrate ultimately shapes us.

In the early centuries A.D., Roman festivals like Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (“the birthday of the unconquered sun”) was redefined by Christians. They used the existing culture to tell the story of the Saviour and, by golly, it worked famously.

The same shift Christianity once visited upon the Roman Empire is happening again, only in reverse.

This is no argument for state-sanctioned Christian observance. Rather, it is a wake-up call from our holiday slumber as we celebrate a very Good Friday and history-shattering Easter. Of all holidays, these are the most brash, for they invite public scrutiny of the very basis for Christian hope: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (I Corinthians 15:17).

Everything hinges on Good Friday and Easter. The days defy reason and human religious indifference, but then again God has always done that. So, for the sake of our culture losing its memory and bowing before gods that are not God, Christians must holiday boldly and declare unashamedly that the Lord is risen indeed. Alone among the tombs and burial mounds of this world, his has been abandoned and left behind. We who holy-day—not holiday—are keepers of this old, old story that is new again.

2009-04-01T11:59:00.000-04:00

Evangelistic Atheism on the Move

The Atheist Bus Campaign (Alternate U.K version here ) is now an officially sanctioned humanist atheist response to advertising in the name of God. Vocal atheists like Richard Dawkins are gleefully heaving their intellectual weight behind this grassroots, priesthood of all non-believers movement plastered on buses in several large cities. A rather ironic religious zeal is unashamedly central to this new (renewed?) popular atheism. In fact, you can not only give a tithe and offering, but buy t-shirts proclaiming your faithlessness, find social gatherings, and celebrate Darwin’s birthday (I don’t think they call it Darwinmas quite yet).

The controversial bus ads come with the somewhat hesitant slogan, “There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” This ad campaign has found its way into prominent public, and often humorously hyperbolic, discourse. There seems to be great fear by both pro and anti-God parties that the future of western civilization hinges on awakening the slumbering masses with pithy slogans and cool eye-catching graphics. It makes you wonder if the Great Advertiser isn’t really the god of the age! Interestingly, the ancient Christian apologist Athenagoras pointed out to the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius that the poets and advertisers of his day were pumping out words to sway the masses toward the idolatries of Greece and Rome. There’s nothing new under the beating sun.

Should Christians of this day care?

On one hand we should laugh. The slogan itself is rather unconvincing and reminds me of an accusation my son has made that as parents we “almost always sometimes” are too strict. The ads may prove to be counter-productive. If there is “probably” no God then there just might be. Furthermore, the fact that many humanists these days are complaining that religious organizations are granted charitable tax status while donations to the bus ads are eligible for tax-receipts is comically hypocritical.

In addition, the slogan makes personal happiness and selfishness the goal of godlessness – go figure! The fool who says in their heart (or on the bus) there is no God is ultimately interested in self over all and everyone else. Perhaps we’re not laughing anymore, but moving toward sorrow.

On the other hand we should be thankful. Yes, thankful. The underlying stated purpose of the ad campaign is to bring atheism into the maintstream through dialogue. With Christian thought primarily sidelined and scorned in contemporary culture isn’t it wonderful that atheists are now preparing the way for the Lord! Of course, this means that those who know Jesus must be ready, like Athenagoras, to engage the conversation, stop over-reacting and embarrassing themselves, and be reminded that since ours is a secular society we need to be ready to speak, live, and defend the Gospel even at great risk. We will need the life of the church to be the banner of God’s love and truth to a world on the move.

2009-03-16T11:18:00.001-04:00

Not so elementary, my dear Jesus

A study conducted in Britain in 2008 produced shocking results. Turns out Her Majesty’s mostly loyal subjects are struggling to differentiate fact from fiction.

The survey found that 47 percent of 3,000 people believed King Richard the Lionheart was a myth. We could attribute that result to the expanse of time separating the Royal Ricky from a contemporary English world he might equally have imagined as fantasy. However, the survey also found 23 percent believed Winston Churchill, the country’s famous World War II prime minister, was made up too—and he only died in 1965 and you can Google the proof of his existence!

Meanwhile, 58 percent thought Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s imagination, was in fact a real person! Evidently, my dear Watson, there is something elementary amiss.

One wonders how Jesus would rate these days in the land of Cranmer, Wesley and Wilberforce? And how would Jesus poll in your neighbourhood?

Let us consider a crucial question for mission that too many churches have failed to take seriously in a land where we once sang “God Save the Queen”: How do we communicate the fact of Jesus to the world as we now know it?

This is very much the question missionaries must always ask.

Once upon a time we could assume our culture accepted that the man of Galilee did inhabit the planet, even if given no allegiance as the Son of God. Jesus and King Richard were both real, it went mostly without saying. These days, the odds are stacked against that conclusion.

There are even vocal pockets within the Christian religion itself lining up against a real Jesus. Quests for the historical Jesus—often aimed at exposing a “Jesus myth”—produce endless books, receive plenty of airtime (which we’ll probably see again as Easter nears), and neutralize faith. While the roots of this debate go back two centuries, it has only recently become the primary (dare I say only?) expression of the Christ preached by the popular media. The church seems bent on decapitating herself yet again. How can we communicate Jesus to our befuddled world when Christians themselves seem muddled?

The tables have turned on fact and fiction. The past is play dough in postmodern hands and we’re mixing the colours like proverbial toddlers until nothing vibrant remains. When most people get their history from Hollywood, and welcome it as manipulated, romanticized entertainment, doesn’t that produce a culture where fact is viewed only real once it titillates and sells? Doesn’t such history produce a memory for fiction and amnesia of the facts? And doesn’t it just produce indifference, intellectual laziness and shrug-ability once the credits roll?

Let’s be honest, it is a radical move to base your living in the present and eternity upon he who was sent by love 2,000 years ago. What evidence that awakens faith is there that he really lived, died and, even more astounding, rose from the dead? And how do we communicate his reality to our age? The answer to those crucial questions must once again enliven the minds and hearts of believers, so we can give an answer for the hope the living Jesus has unquestionably planted within us, no matter what the surveys say.

2009-03-02T11:15:00.001-05:00

Secular Journalism's Call
(to Christian Mission)

At the 160th convocation of Knox College at the University of Toronto in 2004 Brian Stewart, journalist and news anchor for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, made a shocking admission. Despite these days of viral anti-Christian rhetoric in the popular spheres he declared, “there is no alliance more determined and dogged in action than church workers … when mobilized for a common good.” Stewart also reflected on a recurring happenstance throughout his career when going to “break a story” only to find Christians already at work before the “news” got out. He said, “I have never been able to reach these Front lines without finding Christian volunteers already in the thick of it, mobilizing congregations that care, and being a faithful witness to truth, the primary light in the darkness and so often, the only light” (read Stewart’s speech here).

Maybe Stewart’s comments are just isolated journalistic ear candy. Perhaps he’s just being nice and giving a tolerant nod and wink to his hearers at a church college needing to be affirmed and back-scratched. Then again…

My mind was brought back to Stewart’s words when forwarded a recent article found in one of Britain’s news engines, “The Times.” The piece was by Matthew Parrish and bore this eye-catching title, “As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God”. Parrish makes some shocking confessions of rejecting any notion of God but, having lived with and watching the life of Christian missionaries and churches in Africa he is a believer in, at the very least, God’s people. He writes, “Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do.

Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.”

Some in the postmodern North American church (i.e. predominately white middle class late Boomer and Gen Xers – I see a resemblance of this in my mirror) have gotten into the nasty habit of self-mutilation. The voices booming from this occasionally self-absorbed organ of the body of Christ are often heard slamming the church as a failure. These in-house critiques mirror the oft secular or atheistic condemnations that have been prevalent for some time. They can even be heard apologizing for being Christian, blushing with embarrassment at the Gospel, the deity of Christ, and the truth of Scripture that tells of sinners, saints, salvation, and a different world.

I am beginning to wonder if this is not shaped more than we’d like to admit by our desire to be liked by the very culture we claim to have let down.

This is not to say that a good number of the critiques have not been warranted and necessary – the prophet is always a gift to the church for her maturity – but I wonder if, in our careless (almost gleeful?) disemboweling of Jesus’ body, we haven’t actually despised and judged previous generations who were seeking to be faithful Christian witnesses too. Have we missed the holy and uncommon quality that is the Church through the ages? Are we giving too much volume to the wrong voices? To hear Stewart and Parrish one could conclude we may just have our antennas tuned badly. Perhaps these journalists are seeing something we’re not?

May I propose a few responses to this journalistic call to embrace our mission as the followers of Jesus Christ?
• First, an unashamed culture of calling out young women and men to lay down their lives as servants of Christ and the world. Do Christian parents still pray that their sons or daughters might give themselves to full-time Christian vocation or are we most excited about them landing a “real job?” Do we pastors beckon the young to respond to the needs of this world for Jesus’ sake and not simply their own? The church has always plowed forward because of young souls radically caught up by Jesus’ vision for their community and the far off corners of the world. Where are they now? Are they just backpacking through Europe, working at ski resorts, and preparing to be consumed by the rat race? Who will pray and call them out into the adventure of abundant life?
• Second, an unashamed culture of making the most money possible using the gifts God gives us in order to send more and more people and do more and more good. Does this contradict my first point? I think not. The whole people of God are part of the great task of making disciples and leading the advance of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. That means the Christian lawyer, Christian business person, Christian doctor, Christian auto worker, Christian teacher, Christian janitor, or Christian farmer are partners with their Christian brother or sister who is applying their trade, gift, or skill in a way that pays little, demands much investment, and may even appear to bring little recognizable return. Doing bad costs money and I’m convinced doing good requires even more. The North American church has an unparalleled opportunity to share wealth, send people, train leaders, and meet human need in all its forms but what seems missing is a culture that shrewdly, wisely, and generously uses money for good. Can this change?
• Third, an unashamed culture of celebrating the difference Jesus makes. This begins with our own stories of transformation, but includes the radical wholeness Jesus brings to lives and communities where, as the atheist Parrish noted, “the rebirth is real.” When organizations like Mennonite Central Committee do things “in Jesus’ name” it is not a pithy marketing slogan, but a declaration of unique difference and witness. Jesus does change things! He radically alters reality for those who believe. We believe he is Lord of all, Lord of history, he does make this world better and we’ll never apologize for it. So, Church of the Living Lord, stop the self-absorbed navel-gazing and get on with living up to the high standards secular journalism has come to expect.

2009-02-18T14:39:00.001-05:00

The church at risk

My boys and I enjoy trying to conquer the world. There are few moments quite so peace-filled at our house as a cold winter’s day gathered around a game of Risk.

It’s interesting watching the cognitive tendencies and development of my boys as they learn the strategy of world domination one role of the dice at a time. Along the way we discuss this flat world we are vicariously crisscrossing. They learn geography, and about different peoples and their sordid and sad histories. They talk about the type of ruler they would be—always a stark reminder that boy dictators should be on very short leashes! They learn how to make peace when confronted with a sibling who is also a rival. And they learn that unless they have an eye for protection they will very quickly possess only the eyes of a spectator.

Some churches are masters at protection. My eldest son’s approach to Risk fits this category. He collects pieces and keeps collecting. Only very conservatively and cautiously does he look toward advancing. Similarly, a protective church works diligently to keep everyone feeling safe and secure. They know each other well, occasionally too well and in too closed a circle. Their programs tend toward in-house events for the already-at-home.

There can be great strength in this, just as there can be in my son’s approach to Risk. However, he never wins. While he usually outlasts his brother, eventually his unwillingness to take chances results in the steady dwindling of his resources. Soon it’s just a frustrating matter of time.

Likewise, many protective churches are now finding out that the jig is up. Others will only realize this in the next decade. This type of church needs to hear the words of Wilbert Shenk, “[T]he church is most at risk when it has been present in a culture for a long period so that it no longer conceives of its relation to culture in terms of missionary encounter.” Is this the risk your church is taking?

Some other churches are masters of advance. My youngest son’s approach to Risk fits this category. The game begins and he bolts forward in all-out attack. Try as I may, there is no convincing him that a little consolidation and patience would be wise.

He is usually the first to be swept off the board, his empire banished to the annals of board game history. After first of all making great gains—but without getting grounded or leaving himself with little to protect—he may as well have not even started.

Churches that only think about advance have an incredible way of connecting the gospel to their world. They advance with ease, but quickly discover that their inability to protect well has created a disastrous vulnerability—shallow disciples who are more culturally, rather than biblically, shaped. This type of church needs to hear the words of Leslie Newbigin: “A preaching of the gospel that calls men and women to accept Jesus as Saviour but does not make it clear that discipleship means commitment to a vision of society radically different from that which controls public life today, must be condemned as false.” Is this the risk your church is taking?

2009-02-10T12:30:00.000-05:00

Enough

I remember the moment like it was yesterday. Our family had moved to a new community and I had a new job with less pay. We had downsized of our own free will because of what we believed to be the will of our Heavenly Father.

To top it all off we were a single income family with one child and another on the way. But, not just any lovechild freely conceived in a fit of logic-suspending passion. Oh no, the critter on the way was being adopted internationally. This was family addition that had turned into calculus. Not only had we chosen to adopt because of another of God’s clearly cloudy calls, and to pay handsomely for it, but we had just accepted that his will meant having less money to do it all with. Who had spiked the tap water?

And so it was I came to that dark day sitting in my new office all too keenly aware of our lack. Fees were due to bureaucracies without sympathy and lawyers with more than enough. The cash simply was not there. To be honest I was a mess as I stared out the window unable to focus on the day’s tasks. My wife and I had been praying, scrimping, scrooge-ing. Neither God nor we seemed to have a solution. The lottery seemed temptingly to have better odds.

My glazed gaze was interrupted by a knock on the door. I opened it to the welcome sight of a friend and mentor from our previous community. He was passing through and thought he’d stop by. Long time no see. A sight for sore eyes. I wanted to spill all my angst, anxiety, and anger. Which, of course I didn’t. I was too manly for that; too blessedly proud and pompous.

Instead, we talked over a whole host of things. The job. The weather. Politics. Church. Faith. Family. Sports. We ran the gamut, but never got to the core of my pain and anguish. Eventually he rose to leave. As he approached the door, however, he stopped. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he reminded himself and reached into his jacket explaining that he and his wife had been praying for us. Then, rather unceremoniously, he placed a wad of rolled up bills in my hand. Five hundred dollars. Enough to cover this round of dues and fees. Enough to keep moving forward in faith. Silence. Gratitude. Tears. Enough.

“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” So quotes the New Testament writer of Hebrews (13:5). We tend to apply these words to only the lonely. We elicit them to comfort the afflicted and discouraged. This is all well and good and wonderfully Hallmarkish. But. But, the context of these words is startling given these days of economic upheaval and the rash worship of accumulation in our culture. “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you….” God’s promise to be present is a knock-on-the-door reminder to flee our fretting over and infatuation with money. Money comes and goes; God does not.

Pushed further we discover that this quote is pulled from Deuteronomy in the Old Testament. There, Moses is passing his leadership mantle to Joshua. The wizened saint encourages his people and protégé, because they were as nervous as we can be in seasons of transition and tumult, “…he will never leave you nor forsake you” (Dt.31:6.8). The Israelites were about to enter a new land, with new uncertainties and potential risks and loses. What should have been the glorious fulfillment of God’s promise and leading presence was turning into a fret-fest. How would they ever survive? The wilderness can be hard to live in, but it can be equally hard to leave.

He will never leave. We are not forsaken. He is present. Be content. Love the Lord alone. Be free. God knows. He is not flummoxed by what is seemingly spinning out of control. He knows what we need, and when. He keeps his promises. Our quandaries are no surprise to him. All may appear empty, but he will be Enough.

I remember that day like it was yesterday and it frees me. He is Enough. And his enough beckons me to greater contentment, adoration, and risky faith because he has promised....

2009-01-26T10:53:00.001-05:00

Obamatory

I would like to personally thank Barack Obama for bringing back to the forefront of public life the fine art of oratory. Not that the new President of the free world will ever read these words, but I believe it must be noted that Barack Obama has, at least for a new generation, awakened a love for the speech on a grand level.

Regardless of where we might fall on his politics, there is no denying that the guy can bring it when addressing a crowd and the crowds love it.

Recently a few of my colleagues had a vibrant discussion on the place of the preaching and oratory proclamation in the life of the Church. Is it really necessary? What form should it take? I have been wondering if a new generation, so saturated and bemused by image, was beyond the discipline of listening. Had my cohort and younger colleagues become immune to the power of oratory? This question has profound implications for what it means to be the followers of Jesus Christ.

After all, the Scriptures, though written, are primarily the result of oratory. In the Bible we hear the speech of God, even as it is read. Further, what the people of God bring to the world is a proclamation; we bring the oratory of Good News, even as it is brought to life in our active love and service. If in this age we no longer hear or want to hear the peculiar gift of oratory then is not God somehow, mysteriously, muted?

Among Christians there has been a renewed infatuation with the truthful words of St. Francis Assisi, “Preach the Gospel, and if necessary use words.” Our love for this word is bound up in the repulsion some have had to speech that was not evidently lived. None of us are keen on speech that is merely idea, theory or a dogma. This repulsion to banal speech is understandable, even laudable, but even Francis’ call to preach with our lives was spoken! Good St. Francis did not send it telepathically. His words had bite because they were true, because they were heard and because he lived what he spoke.

What our deadened souls await is to be stirred, inspired, and set on fire. Maybe that is why Obama stirs so many, for he awakens them with his oratory and not simply his policies (probably very few who voted for or against him would be able to articulate his policies at all, but they know “Yes we can”). Of course, speech without meat is no better than meat without speech, but a generation starved for fine oratory is willing to take the risk on that which awakens the depths (Look here for a powerful sign of appreciation for Obamatory).

So, perhaps it’s not so much that we are now immune to the speech. Obama’s oratory has proven to me, at least, that even a younger generation has ears itching to hear. Perhaps, like others before us, we are simply immune to bad speech? Perhaps it’s that we are immune to the speech without follow through? Perhaps we want to hear speeches that stir us, move us, and are lived before us. Thus far, that’s what so many hear of Obama and his oratory. Of course, like others before him, he will be judged and polled on his follow through; on his ability to put flesh on his word.

And, ultimately, this is what God alone has done with his speech in Jesus Christ for the sake of you, me, and Mr. President and his fine Obamatory (John 1:1-14).

2009-01-16T11:58:00.001-05:00

Lead with your tongue

Each of us is possessed with great influence and a great influencer—our tongues. The words we say matter very much. Even further, identifying those who should have influence over us is founded on whether their words are truly from heaven. Are they truly wise? How do we know? We know because those who have golden tongues are those whose speaking matches God’s speech and whose speaking matches their God-shaped living.

The bishop of Constantinople (present day Istanbul) in the early days of official Christendom was John Chrysostom. In the late 300s A.D., Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. With this rise to prominence, the church went from being a dynamic, organic movement to a religious institution, and power and money began to erode the truth of the gospel.

Constantinople—named after Emperor Constantine, who legalized the Christian faith—became one of the main centres of Christianity, and John was the preacher of this important city. Because of his masterful way with words, he became known as “Chrysostom” (the golden mouthed). But John did not play the part that the powerful wanted him to. Instead of patting the back and tickling the ears of the comfortably religious, he called for truth, justice and Christ-like living.

In one inspired moment he waxed eloquently, “Do you pay such honour to your excrements as to receive them into a silver chamber-pot when another man made in the image of God is perishing in the cold?” When a church culture pays more attention to poop than people, you know something smells. John’s tongue was a sword of truth.

Needless to say, his golden mouth got him into trouble and eventual exile to the hinterlands of the Caucasus. If you teach what is right, be prepared! Golden tongues often get not-so-golden handshakes.

The true teacher knows truth is not negotiable. The true teacher knows whom he or she answers to. The true teacher is captured by the Teacher, lives the faith and yearns for faith to be lived. Words matter. We lead with our tongues.

This is why false teaching is a predominant concern in Scripture. A small bit can control a horse, a small rudder can steer a ship, and a tiny spark can destroy a whole forest. Our tongues—connected to what lives in our hearts and minds—can turn the course of lives and communities for good or ill (James 3:3-6).

What we teach and speak, has influence. Remember Eden: What led us under the bondage of sin? It was not the fruit, but the forked-tongue of the serpent: “Did God really say . . . ?” (Genesis.3:1). Since then, our tongues lead towards hell. Destruction rather than redemption can be our witty aim. We use words to tear down and gossip.

Without shame, we’ll even use our sophisticated and learned tongues to twist the speech of God.

Does your tongue guide those you influence into the truth of God? Do your words harness kingdom beauty and strength? Whose teaching is given influence over our communities? Where is the tongue leading these days?

2008-12-17T15:27:00.000-05:00

What a sheephony!

One of the great experiences of my time well spent in the Arrow Leadership Program was a day of preaching. If you think this sounds exceedingly dull and like being court-ordered to some religious management course, you’d be dead wrong. That day was like sitting in on the Kingdom Symphony Orchestra.

We Arrowheads are a diverse and beautiful mix—a variety of leaders from different countries, ethnicities, denomi-nations and vocations. Each is unique and on that day we were each given the monumentally minute task of delivering a three-minute sermon.

I have rarely been so nervous. The mix of trying to impress—that’s not very holy, but it is honest—and seeking to compress the gospel into 180 seconds was enough to drive one to Pepto-Bismol. But a day spent hearing the good news of God’s love declared and embodied through the dynamism of such diversity was divine. What a symphony!

This inspired our church’s elder retreat this fall, where we asked some of our leaders to deliver similar three-minute homilies. It was fun watching them sweat. But it was even better hearing the uniqueness of the gospel declared through their uniqueness and passions. What a symphony! It was, once more, a potent reminder that we need a preaching people, not just a preaching class or profession.

The gospel is not merely a concept or another in the great rivalry of moral ideals. It is the power of God (Romans 1:16)! It is yeast and salt. It is light in the pervading darkness, a whisper of hope amidst the moaning cacophony of the age. It is God’s Word stealthily gossipped in dark alleys and unashamedly shouted from rooftops. The Word becomes flesh. It moves into the neighbourhood and speaks our language. The gospel is a living declaration of good news, a clarion call of another world, of the gregariousness of grace, of a different kingdom that is at hand. And for those who have subscribed to its regular delivery, the gospel is a vocational call to declaration, proclamation and demonstration.

To believe God’s good news is to become a preacher. To “preach” is to proclaim glad tidings. Is this not the task of every believer? The communion of saints is a preaching community. We are sheep hailing our Shepherd. We bring good news of great joy that is for all people. Equipping this preaching community, this gospel band—this flock—is the task of those labelled “preachers.” Those asked to teach regularly are actually called to light, stoke and pour gas on the fire within the believing community and watch it spread. Sadly, we have trained the flock to be dumb sheep instead of roaring lambs.

This is far from the biblical vision. Moses longed for the whole of the Lord’s people to be prophets (Numbers 11:29). Paul yearned for the same beautiful reality (I Corinthians 14:24-25). Jesus, the logos of God and a simple carpenter’s son, declared that the Holy Spirit would release a diverse symphony of good news witnesses on the world (Acts 1:8). We are all to be ready to give a reason for the hope we are convinced of (I Peter 3:15). Preaching is for the people, by the people, through the people, and for the sake of people who need to hear from and see in loving action the sheephony of heaven. Who is waiting to hear you bleat?

2008-12-08T11:31:00.000-05:00

Shop Till You Drop

Well, it would appear our insanity is confirmed. With Thanksgiving thankfully behind us in both the United States and Canada we can psychotically engage in mass consumerism for five glorious, unbridled weeks before starting all over again on Boxing Day. What sport.

The god of the age, however, is demanding sacrifices. On Friday, November 28, 2008 Jdimytai Damour, a temporary worker at a Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream, New York was trampled to death as two thousand bargain hunters surged through the store’s doors at 5 a.m. Yes, that’s right, 5 a.m.! Economic turmoil, I suppose, demands we rise from our slumber early and rush madly after things we don’t really need no matter what the cost. We have lost the plot. We have lost any moral authority to call ourselves civilized. Jdimytai’s death is a pox on all of us.

As followers of Jesus we must take responsibility for our part in what our culture has become. Let us cease our hand wringing and holier-than-thou finger pointing. We are not as pure as our rhetoric declares. We live in the midst of an unclean people and we are they. We ought to bear some of the heart of Moses who pleads for his people. We ought to share the heart of Jeremiah who wept for his compatriots. Are we responding prayerfully, prophetically, honestly, truthfully with what we have become? Or, are we browsing the flyers for the next early morning sale?

The grip of mammon is secure on western society. So sure is the grasp of this false god on us that we are blind to it. In our congregation we recently hosted a whole weekend on faithful, God-honouring stewardship of life and resources. We barely drew fleas. “Don’t go there” seems to be our strident opinion. “Don’t challenge my wanton spending.” “Don’t confront my out-of-control debt.” “Don’t threaten to bring this area of my discipleship into the light of day.” No, we’d rather offer our sacrifices at 5 a.m. under the cover of darkness.

Come now, let us reason together. Let us come into the light. Let us confess, as Neil Postman has written, “we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.” Rather than the fast the Lord has chosen (Isaiah 58:6f.) we are gorging ourselves. Overfed, over-entertained, over-indulged, we are the fat cows of Bashan that Amos mocked (Amos 4:1-3). This will not go unchecked.

The solution, however, is not simply to be found in teaching handy stewardship principles – as important as that is. The solution will not be found in the markets. Even well intentioned prophetic responses risk being received only as a law to those prone to shop for our salvation (this is worth checking out). The solution is spiritual. The remedy must go straight to the heart. The consumer is first and foremost a worshipper. So, the call must be to the surrender and sacrifice and discipline of a life of worship to the only Living God. The call is to repentance. This is not a popular message to be sure, but it is the only solution for the ache in the postmodern soul that is convinced our only hope is to shop till we drop.

2008-11-11T11:06:00.002-05:00

Liquid Times

At the risk of sounding overly academic I’d like to invite you on a brief sociological journey.

In his book Liquid Times sociologist Zygmunt Bauman presents a very interesting picture of the age in which we live. He writes of the perilous place western civilization, indeed the whole world, finds itself in.
To summarize, Bauman points out that the “liquid” nature of society as we know it means several realities.

First, rapid change means we can’t keep up. Things morph so quickly that even well planned and well intentioned responses are outdated almost before they can be put into action.

Second, power is shifting away from local political spheres to broad globalization. We feel locally hopeless at the enormous global challenges (which is perhaps why we’re ready to elect anyone will promise us hope).

Third, this aforementioned power shift makes any sense of community sound “increasingly hollow.” That which holds us together is temporary and fleeting and we are withdrawn and estranged from those nearest to us.

Fourth, all of the above has caused us to live only for the now. We have forgotten our histories and the future. After all, anything we thought we knew feels useless given the current global challenges and rapid changes. The great new skill is being able to forget what you’ve learned.

Fifth, when it boils right down to it we are a society that has moved “the responsibility for resolving the quandaries (of this volatile age) onto the shoulders of individuals.” The individual has been saddled with the responsibility to solve problems that are beyond the capacity of politics, history, and community to solve. No wonder we are medicating ourselves to death!

Having effectively stated that what we have created is an outrageously individualized society midst a globalized and complex world, Bauman declares something paradoxically astonishing: “The future of democracy and freedom may be made secure on a planetary scale – or not at all.” What? Please pass the valium…on the rocks! In essence what this world-renowned scholar seems to be saying is that the only hope for a society with a case of hyper-micro-individualism is deliverance on the hyper-macro-scale! So, we only think about ourselves and yet are somehow to find a solution to our globalized dilemmas on a planetary level!? We’ll get right on that, right after our show is over and the beer has run out.

At first blush Bauman’s words seem startlingly impossible. And they are, until we begin to think theologically, until we think about God, his Word, and his salvation. Isn’t the essence of the mystery of the Gospel the wonder that the global solution has been revealed and this radical Good News Kingdom begins within the individual, who is then connected to a redeemed community who together reveal the wisdom of God as far out there as the heavenly realm (Eph.3:10)? Wow! God must read Bauman!

As those redeemed by grace through faith let us cling to the revealed hope that has somehow captured our very individual hearts. And, let it not stop there, let us be communions of hope, ambassadors of reconciliation, legions for peace in a world taught with a tension that cannot be resolved without Divine intervention

2008-11-06T09:51:00.001-05:00

Buck-licking good times

Recently my son and I saddled some bikes to explore the flora and fauna in another part of the country. To our great delight, we came upon a handful of grazing deer. Hardly bothered by our presence, this photogenic bunch, led by a relaxed buck who obviously has some thinking to do before hunting season, even allowed my son to snap some extreme close-ups. Then, astonishingly, the buck poked out his nose and licked my boy’s hand. Wonder. Smiles. Simple pleasures.

I far too often complicate and petrify life. I can even do this to faith. Let’s face it, the faith and wonder of a child is quickly lost as we grow. I hesitate calling such growth “maturing” because, really, the most mature ones I know have an infectious wonder of simple things. They seem to revel in buck-licking good times.

As the church these days seeks to respond to a world with the dry heaves, we can—even in our call for simplicity (a mesmerizing Mennonite pastime)—lose sight of simple pleasures. Instead of receiving life as a gift, and celebrating the joy of breath beneath the benevolent gaze of our creator and his lavish love in Christ for struggling sinners, we heap guilt trips on the faithful. I confess I can be found wanting here.

In our grand attempts to “save the world” we feverishly tie Pharisaical burdens on people that neither we, nor our ancestors, can carry. Many voices like mine, while hopefully saying some important things, are at risk of making faith a joyless, guilt-infused trip into some religious wasteland. The world is going to hell in a hand-basket and we’re happy to place blame. Unwittingly, grace, hope, joy and love begin playing second fiddle to our laments, complaints and new legalisms. Church is seen as a problem rather than the bride of God’s great delight.

Calm down, I still believe our following of Jesus should be marked by radical differences, but shouldn’t joy and enjoyment be part of a Christ-centred life too?

Think the Scriptures through with me. Nehemiah reminds the sorrowful Jews to stop their blubbering and celebrate because of the joy of the Lord (Nehemiah 8). Ecclesiastes calls us to enjoy simple things like food, drink, friendship, marriage and love. Even sex gets a wink of approval; ever tried to read Song of Songs without smirking?

And what about Jesus, who unashamedly hangs out at uncouth parties and employs things like treasures, lilies, fields and fluttering sparrows to reveal the heart of God. His first miracle was intended to keep a party going, not end it. His last miracle did not transform his slain body into some other-worldly, higher-plane, world-bashing avatar. No, the resurrected Lord seems at home on the beach grilling fish and enjoying redeeming friendship. The Lord’s Supper, which we take with great seriousness, is celebrated in simple things: bread, wine and company. Even Paul’s communion instruction to the Corinthians (I Corinthians 11), although steeped in strong corrective language, reveals an unwillingness to wait for each other and recognize the simple wonder of being saved by faith together.

So can we lighten up a little, please? Is it okay to smile and enjoy God’s good gifts? Can we have some more buck-licking good times? Or has life and faith as we know it become far too serious to make room for a Lord who lavishes and laughs?

2008-10-22T13:09:00.000-04:00

The grind of pastoral life

Some chats with leaders from across Canada and denominational lines have unearthed some disturbing pastoral realities: weariness, despair and quandary.

One pastor friend, sporting a different brand of kingdom wear (he’s Reformed—I still love him, but of course I was predestined to!), reminded me that recent U.S. statistics show 1,500 church leaders leaving ministry monthly because of conflict, burnout or moral failure. They’re not taking a break; most have no intention of returning to the grind of pastoral life.

All this makes the whole idea of the “pastoral life” a horrible oxymoronic and sarcastic kick to the nether-regions. “Pastoral life” can conjure up images of quaint log cabins or hillsides dotted with cud-chewing, tail-swishing cattle. What I’m hearing—and granted this is not every leader’s current experience—is that the life of a pastor is anything but tranquil. This, of course, is nothing new. Leaders have always been fair game from without and within. Those who have experienced the church under persecution realize that the enemy always aims for those living the pastoral life first.

These current trends, however, are a revealing indictment of a church not facing overt persecution. Perhaps the enemy is using more subtle tactics. As an under-shepherd with my weary brothers and sisters, allow me make the following observations:
• The pastoral life is being made weary by the unrealistic demands of consumerist religious idolatry.
This sounds harsh, but a culture demanding what it wants, expecting what it wants, and generally getting what it wants, has invaded our churches without anyone asking for proper identification. We are idolatrous consumers who expect a church life that will feed our spiritual, fee-for-service, drive-through appetites.
Leaders are weary and burned out trying to meet these impossible demands. Too many have been told their job is simply to keep people happy. Too few have been given the charge to simply do the will of the Father.
• The pastoral life is plagued with despair by the dysfunctional mess of our age.
Every era has its quirks, but a unique challenge of this age is the rapid unravelling of the home. While the mess left by a hurricane through your home can produce some wonderful clean-up stories, pastoral leaders are dealing with increasingly complicated family dysfunction that leaves them without answers when they are expected to have them.
Too many pastors are being told they bear responsibility for fixing messes they didn’t create. Too few have been freed to call for the responsibility of the individual and the community to the repenting, embracing and healing process of increasingly broken lives.
• The pastoral life is left in a quandary by the unstoppable shift of culture.
The boundary lines have moved. The church no longer functions anywhere near the centre of cultural conversation. We are a side-show, a nicety for the old, unscientific and ignorant; at least that’s what the culture believes.
To be a leader of this chastised remnant of yesteryear is not a title many clamour after. Many leaders are baffled why pews are empty or their best-laid plans produce nary a blip on the radar.

We wonder if we’re still necessary when Oprah is more popular than Jesus, even in the church. Too many pastors have been told they must simply do what has always been done. Too few have been released to lead their community into full-fledged missionary engagement with the world as it now is.

2008-10-06T10:42:00.001-04:00

Prime Time Elections

The two most northern nations of North America are facing general elections this fall. The United States will choose to anoint either President Obama or President McCain in early November. In Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called an election for October 14 (circumventing the law his Conservative Party introduced in 2006 to hold elections every four years).

In the US the 2008 election has been front-page news since, it seems, shortly after the Revolutionary War. I am trying to remember a newscast without mention of McCain or Obama and can’t conjure it up. With great respect to my American friends, your elections are quite entertaining and are almost full-blown soap operas with scripts you couldn’t even dream up: a first woman seems a shoe-in only to be booted to the sidelines; a second woman rises from nowhere (as a hockey mom from snow-land you’d almost think she’s Canadian) only to become the butt of jokes. Throw in a pregnant teen, a war hero, a first-ever candidate from the African American community, a stock market crash and eye-popping bank collapses, a mortgage Armageddon, and the incredible graphics and banter of nonstop news broadcasts who can make headline news out of even the glasses the candidates wear and you’ve got a hit! Wow, how do you pull this stuff off? It seems like American Idol, the Washington version.

In Canada, our elections are truly boring by comparison. We barely know who the spouses of our potential Prime Ministers are and I don’t see anyone running out to Canadian Tire or Zellers in search of Stephen Harper’s sweater collection. We have a separatist regional party that runs on the national stage. Where we once had two parties to choose from we now have five (although that’s only in Quebec. English Canada has the mind-numbing choice of four flavours). The leader of the Green Party will in this election be on stage in the televised leader’s debate even though her party has no elected members of parliament … ever! Well, maybe we’re not so boring … just banal … and redundant, since we seem to go through this about every 18-24 months.

The political process and leadership of two truly great nations have been reduced to sound bites and who can go negative best (does that make “negative” the new positive?). It’s easy to see why many, especially younger members of the population, have become disinterested or are seeking ways to challenge the current ways and means. Here in Canada the idea of Proportional Representation has been floated, but even more interesting is the vote swapping that is characterizing this election. The questionable ethics of voting now seems to be running neck and neck with the ethics of those seeking the votes.

So, what are we as Christians to do in a world of Prime Time Elections (I’m still waiting for the TV station that will have the courage to voice over their coverage with the guy who does the Monster TRUCK … truck … COMMERCIALS …commercials – it would seem humourously fitting)?

Despite the quirks and quandaries, or actually maybe because of them, Christians must engage themselves in the process. Now, of course, we could debate endlessly whether the “Religious Right” or the “Socialist Left” is most proper for the Christian to support. That, however, would be the wrong place to begin. Christians should engage themselves in the process for two primary reasons:
• First, this world is the locale both of wickedness and the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God. However sarcastic or disappointed we may be with the state of our unions the reality is that we are placed here and now and we have a responsibility to work, as followers of Jesus, for the good of the city to which we have been called for such a time as this. The party politics and banter are sideshows that we must avoid, but to excuse ourselves from working for the good of the land is unbiblical. Even the Israelites in exile were told to settle in and help Babylon thrive while keeping their eyes on the only true and enduring Kingdom. The forced exile of Christians from the public sphere in the twenty-first century does not excuse us from being prophetic and prayerful regarding our nations in hope of seeing resurrection and Kingdom life emerge and prosper. As Lesslie Newbigin writes, “The Christian … has no right to become indifferent to the good working of those authorities which God has ordained for a good purpose but which can easily become instruments of wickedness.”
• Second, we ultimately do not find our hope in the politics of people. This might sound contradictory. If the world is going to hell in a hand basket why not let it go there? This is negative advertising at its best, no? I want to suggest that our working for a better way and more just and righteous world is actually an important prelude to the gospel (please note, however, that it is NOT the gospel as some Christians have been want to conclude). We work and involve ourselves for good in order that the beauty of Jesus may be more clearly seen. If the followers of Jesus engage this broken and wicked world for good, for wholeness, for shalom, imagine what Jesus must be like. In addition, since even our best laid plans and policies ultimately fall short, prove inadequate and need re-working yet again (and sometimes election after election), doesn’t our involvement in the process reveal a humility that allows us to point to our Lord as the one who will ultimately fulfill all our hopes and aspirations for the just society? We serve – and that is a key word - not in futility, not in self-centeredness, not with pompous political prowess, but with a keen awareness of ourselves and a vision for what will one day be. In our political involvement we are not fooling ourselves that somehow we will usher in a utopia – that is the failed modernist vision that we still hear from some political types – but seeking to create another window into the just and whole society that God alone can bring. Our hope is, in John Howard Yoder’s famous words, in the “politics of Jesus.” As our resurrected Lord’s disciples therefore, as those who know the way of the cross politics can lay upon those with truly hope-filled vision, we serve for the sake of Jerusalem, Babylon, Washington, Ottawa and every Adamsville and Zurich in between.

2008-09-24T11:44:00.001-04:00

A Balanced Attack

I’m coaching baseball. Teaching ten year old boys the difference between force plays and tagging up is an agonizing art. It really is like herding cats. Then there’s the fine line between patience at the plate and swinging away. Recently our only hope of winning is if our pitchers toss a shut out and we score a run with a bases loaded walk. Putting good pitching and timely hitting together in the same game has happened with about the regularity of the passing of Haley’s comet and the Cubs winning the World Series. We are in desperate need of a balanced attack.

I’m observing something in the men around me. Beneath the polished veneer, “how ya doings?” and conversations about gas prices and the weather there runs a tight rope over troubled waters. We live with the tenuous tension between what we have and don’t have; who we know and don’t know; what we do and don’t do; who we are and who we wish we’d be. Many of us don’t know whether we’re coming or going, where we’re headed, or who we are. We sometimes hit, sometimes throw strikes, and often feel like we’ve dropped the ball. We are in desperate need of a balanced attack.

I coach boys to become men, not just hitters and fielders. But, they already seem torn and tossed about; small versions of their tattered dads sitting in the stands. They are over-the-top self-conscious, critical, seemingly bearing the weight of the world on their boney shoulders. A culture tells them million dollar contracts rest on the next pitch; that they must own the latest tech-toy or movie; that they should be what everyone else expects them to be. Their souls are cluttered and busy beyond belief; they lack peace. They have no concept of wholeness, of that ancient biblical notion of shalom.

A man of shalom who can find?
Shalom is a beautiful old Hebrew word translated “peace” in English Bibles. But, it doesn’t just mean peace – as in no shots being fired or that glorious moment just after the kids go to bed. Shalom means completeness, well-rounded happiness, soul rested-ness; prosperity from the depths. It is what we secretly yearn for. It is the stillness of the batter’s box from which life can explode into action. Shalom is the source of the balanced attack. And, shalom is a gift received from God when we cease our striving; when we surrender; when we heed his ways; when we believe.

If the boys we coach, employ, and put to bed grow up to be like us, what will their futures look like? The prospects are rather unnerving. The future is beginning to look like an ADHD, fast food, credit card, celebrity-driven unstable mishmash.
If we – I’m talking to the big guys now – are men not bound by faith to the Ancient of Days and the Prince of Peace we have no shalom. Without this sure footing we have nothing but the frantic chaos and tensions of the world and ourselves to offer those boys with bats on their shoulders and the world at their disposal.
Convinced we must experience a piece of everything we are not leading ourselves or the next generation into peace at all. We avoid the wells of the Spirit where we must wrestle with our own darkness, our own inner tensions, imbalances, complexities and sin. Consequently, we never find the source of true joy, freedom, forgiveness, brotherhood and hope. If we are to have a balanced attack we simply must go to these peace-filled deeps.

Without shalom our vision is blurred. We look at the proud man, the loud man, the crowd man and he looks so balanced. He always seems to hit home runs and throw strikes. He seems destined for fame and fortune. But, look more closely. Think more biblically.

I have seen a wicked and ruthless man flourishing like a green tree…but he soon passed away and was no more…Consider the blameless, observe the upright; there is a future for a man of peace/shalom (Psalm 37:35-37).

A man of peace you can find. A boy of shalom can rise from your influence. Wholeness, rest, and peace can be had, but you can’t buy it or strive after it. You have to surrender your way into it. You might even need to strike out a few times. But, having found God’s wholeness – even the hard way – you will finally know and coach a balanced attack.

2008-09-16T10:01:00.001-04:00

Ripe for a new harvest

For the past few summers our clan has bustled about Ontario’s threshing and steam-era shows and small town festivals making and selling homemade ice cream. It’s the continuation of my late father-in-law’s vision to fatten up the population one creamy spoonful at a time. Our kids very much enjoy Grandpa’s vision and Grandma’s recipe!

To be honest, I’m mostly a fish out of water when it comes to these shows and the 1928 engine I’m somehow supposed to know how to run and occasionally fix. I grew up rural and worked on farms, but there’s a good reason cows kicked me!

Actually, it’s really not so bad. We get copious amounts of family time, meet lots of cool people with interesting stories, and there’s nothing quite like a steam engine whistle at five metres to shake loose the cobwebs that build up from reading too much theology. It’s like a call back to where the writing meets the road.

I’ve actually been learning valuable lessons from these jaunts down memory lane.

That whistle is a shrill reminder of a day we hardly imagine existed. A mere century ago things were very different. Cities now sprawl and the countryside is latticed with pavement and patterned by fields worked by tractors the size of the houses the first settlers raised a dozen kids in. There was a time when people actually cleared bush to survive. There was a time when land was worked for the very first time. Those old tractors with steel-studded wheels were groundbreakers in more ways than one.

For me, the sunny days of dust and constant drone of putt-putts has given new vision to my glazed-over screen-saver eyes. Comfortable in our advancements, affluent to a fault, thoughtless and deconstructionist of our pasts, we need a rekindled pioneering spirit. The spirit that shaped much of what made Canada and the United States unique—and which yet can be seen in the lives of recent immigrants—has cancerously become what historian Jacques Barzun simply calls “decadence.” We’ve settled in, hunkered down, upgraded the implements and lost our drive to find space where no plow blade has turned the ground. If personal cost or discomfort is involved, we’re against it. As much as this is true in many of our lives, it is certainly true for the vast majority of churches.

The Apostle Paul was always looking for a place where the gospel had never been preached, but we act like he pretty much swallowed up all the possible real estate. We have memories of an adventurous, entrepreneurial, missionary past, but now buy the secular line that such zeal is unnecessary, misguided and probably mean-spirited. All this works to close our ears to the commission to go, to be compassionate, and to be Christ-centred and Christ-sent people who pioneer with our Lord in inner cities and vacated hamlets.

Where is there ground yet to be broken for Jesus in your neck of the woods? For all of our new-fangled gadgetry, the land around us is spiritually dry, overgrown and unstewarded. The wildness and weeds are choking out life.

Who are the pioneers willing to take long-term, faith-filled initiative for a new day? Is there any room for this pioneering spirit in our churches?

What might the implements of a new pioneering season of Christian mission look like? Someday they too will look out-dated, but Lord knows we need them now. After all, just look to the fields, they are ripe for harvest.

2008-09-08T11:53:00.000-04:00

For God's Sake

It’s harder to live your convictions in the trenches than to nod your head at the confessions in the pews.

Traditionally the expanse between our theological statements and our practice of the Faith widens over years inevitably creating a hunger for reformation, revival, or renewal – pick your revitalizing label. What is stated and what is lived effectively become two different realities and someone, somewhere concludes with the monks of yore who discovered the Gospels, long ignored in a monastery basement, “Either these are not the Gospels, or we are not Christians.” I’m wondering out loud if perhaps our practice is betraying our convictions in regards to the good we do, and why.

Consider our propensity to fundraise, as an example. Is it not the tiniest bit troubling that we increasingly give only if we get something in return? We have meals, accept trinkets, and definitely expect that income tax receipt. In addition, and we especially do this with youth, we expect that they will do something – like feed us, sell chocolates, or shovel driveways – to earn our generosity. All this work to earn subtly models selfishness and teaches that you have to work to earn favour in the Kingdom – and how does this shape their understanding of God and grace? Secondarily, funds raised tend to be spent primarily on ourselves – programs for our kids, conference trips, or to replace that gaudy 70’s orange carpet (okay, maybe this last one has some merit). Is this the essence of service? We should be asking how Kingdom-minded all this really is.

Two theological inconsistencies are at work here – we give to get and we expect what is given to be earned. How does this reflect the nature of God whose grace and salvation is neither earned nor deserved? A deep spiritual ailment has beset us.

Having been wooed by the pleasures of 21st- century ease we are unwilling to part with our hard-earned cash without some earthly return. We revel in Mammon rather than God and only do good for our own sakes.

What has happened to doing good for God’s sake?

Any truly God-centered good is selfless and if I expect something in return I either don’t really believe it’s worthwhile or I’m not truly doing good, but simply performing an act of covert selfishness. If it is worthwhile it is worthwhile because it is good for God’s sake alone!

Sacrificial missionaries raising their own support are questioned by the godly in their new cars as to why they need so much. Youth rarely look toward voluntary service or ministry or seeing all they have and are as mission, but are encouraged (even by parents) to grab as much of this world as they can. We pump dollars into our ourselves, we’re proud of our spires or of not having spires, while the world screams to make poverty history, to solve the epidemic of AIDS, to heal racial divides, for an end to terror, for something to fill the hole in our souls that all our excess has not satisfied – the world cries out for salvation. Meanwhile we, whose commodity ought to be grace, demand to receive in order to give. Is it just me, or does something smell like Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5)? Our practice betrays our theology. Stop this heresy for God’s sake.

2008-08-15T11:59:00.003-04:00

Revive us again

A friend and I discussed the nature of genuine revival while travelling Ontario’s busy summer highways as we reflected on the most recent “revival” people are flocking to in Lakeland, Fla.

“Revive Us Again” was a song sung many times in my childhood. The song implied that whatever it was we once had, had left the building, and the way we sang it made me think it had to be true. The song had a holy groove, even if we didn’t.

The church always needs revival. There must always be a sacred thirst for more of what we have thus far sipped of the divine. Hence, our attempts to rekindle the fire we once knew, most of which we then market as “new”: New leader, new program, new “anointing,” new building, new music style, new social cause. Surely something new is the next avenue of the truly holy and will miraculously revive our comatose spirits!

The disconcerting thing is that this “newness” actually does work . . . for a time. Drive to Florida to take in Todd Bentley or Mickey Mouse, and you will probably experience a new “high.” In fact, you’ll probably come home with a skip in your step while becoming completely frustrated with the shallowness of the people around you: If they’d just received the “impartation” you did, we’d see Parliament Hill parlayed into the Mount of Transfiguration.

But such spirituality tends to produce “super-saint” elitism or it works like a religious drug. We suddenly have all the answers for the dry bones among us or we become spiritual versions of the addict straining for just one more “trip.”

I propose that this is not revival at all. Revival is not an event attended, a blessing sought, a victory won, or a cause championed. No. Revival is obedience to the person of Jesus Christ.

When Peter, James and John find themselves in the cloudy presence of Elijah, Moses and Jesus on the mysterious mount, they marvel at the sheer wonder of it all. Peter seems determined to open up a campground and theme park. Surely this is the moment they have been waiting for.

Wrong! God interrupts Peter while he was still speaking and says, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him” (Matthew 17:5). Even further, Jesus instructs his awestruck followers not to tell of the glorious vision at all. Instead of turning the experience into the point, they were to remember what the Father had said: Jesus was historically unique and was to be obeyed.

Whatever “spiritual” experience we might have, if it does not produce a deeper, more faithful obedience to the living Jesus it isn’t the real deal. Where “revival” does not awaken individuals and the church to a renewed, daily commitment to the person of Jesus—God the Son—then it is counterfeit, no matter what signs and wonders may be attached.

If we look to any “new” thing—like going ‘green’ or going to Florida—as our religious remedy while our radical commitment to follow Jesus as the unique Lord of all is not more selflessly obedient, then we simply are not hearing the voice on the mountain. Jesus is the centre of genuine revival and I fear many—of all revivalist persuasions—have set him aside in favour of our consumerist, religious and pagan visions.

Revive us again, indeed!

2008-07-07T12:23:00.001-04:00

Saying Sorry

On June 11, 2008 Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was sorry. Unlike many other remorseful politicians, however, Harper was not confessing some adulterous escapade that had come to the attention of the masses who enjoy a little spice with their elected officials.

In fact, Harper wasn’t apologizing for his own misdeeds at all, he was apologizing on behalf of us all: on behalf of we white Europeans who thought people different than us could be abused, cajoled, and assimilated into church and colony through some proper education and retraining. Surely if the native populations learned like us they could be, indeed might even want to be, just like us. (It’s eerily ironic that this seems to be the similar tactic being unwittingly employed by the increasingly dominant secular-humanist perspective on those not sharing their “religious” convictions, but that’s a whole other column.)

The goal of the residential school program, run jointly by church and state through the 19th and mid-20th centuries, was to civilize the "savages". Instead, we are only now recognizing how savage the “civilized” world really was. While there are many whose experience of this policy was positive, the repeated tales of children ripped from their homes to be raised as “Christians” by priests and nuns, only to be maltreated and have their identities and century’s old traditions mocked and scorned is heartbreaking. The story is very similar in the United States. This chapter in our histories is not something to be proud of during this week when we celebrate both nations’ birthdays.

In May 2007 I attended Canada’s national prayer breakfast in Ottawa. Two of the featured speakers were Christian aboriginal leaders. Both men are godly and upstanding citizens who cherish their people’s unique identity and follow Jesus, and desperately desire that more natives and non-natives do the same. A year ago I also had the honour of meeting a young native woman whose love for Jesus fires in her a passion to serve her people and build healthy and strong community where currently so much pain and brokenness exists.

What boggles the mind is that these amazing people, so marked by the mistakes of colonial powers and the religion that piggy-backed its way into North America, follow Jesus at all. One Canadian Member of Parliament was, in fact, blown away that after all that has happened there are aboriginals who call themselves “Christians” at all. What is it about this Living Lord that makes him so beautiful even through ugliness?

When Stephen Harper stood in the House of Commons and said, “The government of Canada sincerely apologizes and asks the forgiveness of aboriginal peoples for failing them so badly,” he voiced what urgently needed to be said. Yet, at the same time, we should not lose sight of one thing: Jesus is drawing all nations to himself. Our temptation can be to assume that in the midst of the mistakes church people have made the problem is somehow with Jesus and that we must apologize for him, too. Let’s fess up where we are guilty, let’s walk in humility and honesty, but let’s not throw Jesus out, nor let him be thrown out, with our dirty bathwater. And to follow this analogy further, the problem for a dirty boy is not the soap, but the mud he keeps returning to.

All this necessary apologizing should remind us is that all people, of every tongue and continent, including aboriginals, have reason to be sorry; and should say so. And, as those of every tribe who follow Jesus seek to rebuild what has been destroyed, may we make it clear that we are apologizing not for Jesus, but because of him.

We are sorry we have not lived as the Spirit would have us. We are sorry we used his cross as a sword and did not take up our own cross instead. We are sorry we believed our own hype. We are sorry we couldn’t get beyond our modern prejudices and enlightened snobbery. We are sorry his word to love our neighbour had strings—and purse strings—attached. We are sorry the commission to make disciples was done with such wicked force. We were wrong; and that continues to prove that Jesus is right. Jesus never needs to say he’s sorry.

2008-07-03T10:02:00.000-04:00

Let the youths run wild.....

Most of us have at least one story we’d never want Mom and Dad to know about. Something we did that we think is best left between us, some co-conspirator and the fence post.

This cranial hiccup, combined with thoughtless experimentation, strange music and head-shaking fashion fads, causes our culture to assume that during adolescence the human being is borderline ape. Indoctrinated that we are mostly hairless super-primates justifies our belief in, and marketing of, a life stage that resembles a zoo.

Our culture paints adolescence so appealingly hedonistic that now even supposed grown-ups hardly want to leave the land of monkey-business and acne. Perpetual immaturity is the bedrock of goldmine industries: Witness the line-ups of twenty-somethings sleeping on sidewalks outside stores to buy the latest video game that they will take home to play in their parents’ basement. Now, that’s the life! Just think of the bright future for those able to jam on fake guitars or be consumed by vicarious car heists?

We have made teenage-dom just plain dumb. It’s a travesty—a great tragic adventure in shooting ourselves in the foot—because the youths and young adults I know are far from dumb. I wish the broader culture would stop insisting they be so. Even more so, I wish we would stop doing this in the church!

I recall a conversation among adults about baptism. They were wondering whether a young person, repentant of sin, confessing faith in Christ, evidencing the fruit of the Spirit, and seeking to be discipled and make disciples, could be considered a full member of the church before “adulthood.” What an absurd question. Not only does this reveal an unbiblical notion of the church, by leaving spiritual community defined by state classifications, but it disparages the Spirit’s work in a tender life as somehow second-rate. Does God think teens are dumb too? What happened to the faith of a child?

Further, many churches segregate youths from mature adults. We conclude they don’t want to be with the big, boring people. I wonder if this is just an excuse to keep their inquisitive minds from challenging our own shallow discipleship. Fear not, they notice it anyway. So we turn to a few “cool” adults to entertain and keep the “kids” busy, and present to them a hip Jesus who is Orlando Bloom with tattoos. No wonder Jesus’ call to radical, selfless discipleship goes over their heads!
This knee-jerk reaction to the drift of the wider culture is a ministry of fear. Rather than accept the young as co-sinners in need of redemption, as co-apprentices in the footsteps of Jesus, who need a community of believers to train them up, we insist that pizza and fun are the only things they respond to. The fruit of such ministry is, let’s be honest, not that bountiful. Many who came through such programs are happily absent from the church or are some of the most consumerist Christians in history.

Recently, Tom Roes, our pastor to youths and their families, surveyed both adults and youths at Zurich Mennonite. He learned that our teenagers overwhelmingly had a positive view of adults and the church, while the adults overwhelmingly assumed teens were negative about both. It seems adults believe the cultural lies, while youths are seeing through it. Who are the wise ones here? Perhaps it’s time to let the youths run wild so that the rest of us become less tame.

2008-06-19T10:53:00.000-04:00

I willingly have to

Every Sunday morning a stream of people make a stupendous countercultural declaration. They decide to gather as the church.

Although some youths might disagree, there are very few people who are dragged against their will to gather with Christians for corporate worship, where they experience life beneath God’s Word, Christian conversation, mutual encouragement and pre-Swiss Chalet coffee.

Long gone are the days when stores were closed, playground swings chained and the western world screeched to a Sunday halt out of respect for the gathering of the faithful. These days we shop, golf, play hockey, read the paper or go to work without anyone so much as blinking an eye. Every day is mostly like every other.

This is the day of the truly voluntary, willing church. It should be wonderfully encouraging that anyone gathers at all, given the myriad of options and distractions, work schedules and family realities. For possibly the first time in Canadian history, the church gathered is a willing countercultural statement, and most Christians don’t realize how rebellious they really are. If only they would!

We come together not because we are forced to, but because we have to. Perhaps that sounds contradictory, but there is an enormous chasm between “force” and “have” in this case. No one in our culture is remotely forced to gather with other believers. There is no overt state pressure to be together. There is nothing in the wider culture that encourages or supports the corporate gathering of the church on Sundays, or any other day for that matter. Christians gather—whenever they gather—because of Jesus, because the Spirit draws, and because we have to.

So, we’re not forced, but how is it that we “have” to gather? We have to because we who have determined to follow Jesus with shouldered cross need to be “unperverted.” While it’s true that the whole of life is given to God, that my whole life from breakfast to coffee-break to midnight snack is worship, I live in a world in which I am ever swimming upstream against a raging torrent of consumerism, idolatry, selfishness and indifference. Given that the following of Jesus is increasingly a lonely journey on the street corners, in the factories and in the schools of our nation, it is increasingly necessary for Christians to gather. If we don’t, we inevitably catch the common “cold” of our world, lose the fire of our first love, miss how beautiful Jesus is in the face of our neighbour, and begin to wither.

We simply have to be together as more than two or three—not simply so that hymnals get used, pastors have something to do, or offerings get collected—but because every day we are hammered by the perversion and ungodliness of our culture and we need the time together to “unpervert” ourselves, to remember who we really are, to support one another, love one another and hear the Word again, all in order that we may be re-commissioned to love the world as Jesus does.

We are a peculiar people. We’re really quite strange. Every time Christians gather we are making a shocking declaration that there is another way and only one Lord. We gather because we willingly have to. So, “let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25).

2008-06-06T09:36:00.004-04:00

Boycott Bejing?

China's Olympics and the World's Response

On the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008 the focus of the world – at least the consumer and athletic world – will be on Beijing, China when the XXIX Olympiad begins. Will you be watching or will you boycott?

In March much of the shine went off China’s first foray into the Olympic-host family as their long standing and occasional violent dispute with Tibet garnered great world-wide attention. The timing for the Chinese couldn’t have been worse since the start of the Olympic torch relay in Greece just happened to fall a few days after this latest round of Tibetan/Chinese unrest (there is a long history of love and hate between Tibet and China – a history worth telling but goes well beyond the scope of this column).

The torch relay, designed to circle the globe in order to support the great vision of the Beijing Games to celebrate “One World One Dream”, gave the perfect platform for very public protests of the Chinese treatment of Tibetans and their Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. The relay through cities like Paris and San Francisco turned into nearly comical games of hide and seek. There have been fervent calls for “free” nations to boycott Beijing by keeping their Olympians at home until China frees Tibet by Free Tibet – an organization based in London, England; ironically the home of twentieth century colonial expansion that shaped much of the current situation, along with the rise of Mao Zedong and Chinese communism in 1950.

Interestingly, the last time there were Olympic boycotts Communism was front and center as well. In 1980 most western nations boycotted the XXII Olympiad in Moscow over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (strangely there were no boycotts of the 1980 winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York and the Soviets were not barred from attending though the “miracle on ice” may have been humiliation enough). Four years later the eastern bloc countries returned the favour by skipping the Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games because of anti-Soviet hysteria.

Isn’t it interesting that now, twenty-eight years later, western nations are in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union no longer exists, and boycott-lingo regarding a Communist regime remains? This world is a very peculiar place indeed! Who knows what things will look like should the wordy tarry another two decades?

Some governments – like Canada and France – have said they will not send heads of state to the Olympics’ opening ceremonies in protest of China’s human rights abuses. That’s all well and good and melodramatic, but it seems the good-old days of the full-scale boycott are gone. Goodness knows we can’t afford a full protest of China, since we risk empty dollar stores should they respond in kind. In truth, since the 1980s the Olympics have become more than a big track meet where we learn which political ideology can produce the greatest pumped-up athletes. Now the Olympics are big business with North Americans, Europeans and the Chinese bowing freely at the altar of the almighty buck, euro and yuan. We can’t boycott Beijing, our god won’t let us. Human rights make great headlines, but nothing moves us like money.

What is even most striking for those who follow Jesus ought to be something even more disturbing than western society’s schizophrenia when it comes to who is bad and for what reasons and at what cost. While the oppression of Tibetans deserves justice and righteousness – and Christians ought to join and even lead such calls – where have been the outcries from western nations for a boycott of China because their outrageous persecution of Chinese Christians? Had Tibet not made the news in March one wonders if any of this political hand-wringing would have happened at all. Have any of us heard any news about the Zurich Statement of the Church in China (PDF) issued by the Religious Liberty Partnership also in March?

As Christians we are to stand with those in chains (Colossians 4:18) and even join our brothers and sisters in being willing to suffer for the Gospel (2 Timothy 1:8). Have we done this sufficiently? Have we, midst all the ballyhoo about boycott raised before our governments not just the trouble in Tibet, but the unjust suffering of those who know Jesus in the very country the friendly games will be hosted this summer? Or would that cost us too much? Might that not force us to reveal what race we are really running and where our allegiance lies?

One begins to wonder where the citizenship of those called Christians really lies when we seem disturbed by the ongoing political struggle between two nations and sadly silent about the intense persecution of those whose example of Christ-like devotion and mission ought to humble us. We will too quickly forget about boycotts once gold medals start getting awarded in August.

2008-05-22T13:51:00.001-04:00

The Malthusian Nightmare

I live in a small town in southwestern Ontario. When forced to wait for more than a few cars at the main intersection I begin to wonder what’s wrong and why people don’t just stay at home and stop pushing my road-rage buttons.

Here most everyone knows your name. And that’s not just a cheesy Cheers cliché, they really do. Increasingly, however, there are new faces in our town of 900ish. That’s not a bad thing at all – it has the potential to deepen the gene pool which can only help – and, seeing as this is a great spot to call home, I suspect this gradual population hiccup will continue.

The United Nations predicts that 60% of the world’s booming population by 2030 will be city dwellers. Most likely the spill over will mean that boondocks like my back yard will receive increased bumper-to-bumper traffic, but can you imagine what cities will look like by then? To give an example of how potentially disastrous is the urban explosion afoot, consider that in 1950 Lagos, Nigeria had less than 300,000people. Today, only 58 years later, an incredible 10.9 million people live there and UN projections place 16.1 million within the Lagos city limits by 2015 – an incredible 15 years short of 2030. What awaits such mega-cities? What awaits us all?

Recently my wife and I had a conversation with my cousin and her husband who have been drilling wells in Haiti for several years. They had just escaped or been evacuated (depending on your perspective) from their Caribbean home as food shortage protests and riots caused the virtual shut down of the country they love. Their report was that almost overnight the price of rice increased by four times the already inflated amount. The result, understandably, was considerable unrest among the irritated and desperate population who are already among the poorest on the planet.

All this brought me back to 1798. Yes, over 200 years ago an English economist named Thomas Malthus introduced a theory that has become known as the “Malthusian nightmare” – the moniker given to the dreadful possibility that population growth might surpass our ability to feed ourselves. Malthus wrote his observations in light of the growing slums of London during the Industrial Revolution. Somehow we survived back then – or did we? Could it be that we are only now falling into a sleep deep enough for the nightmare to really become reality?

Truth is that places like Haiti and Lagos are only just becoming the industrial playgrounds London was 200 years back. What London was then, the whole world is now or is rapidly becoming. The staggering possibility is that, given the growing grip the “American Dream” has on the world, it may only be in these days that we begin to taste what hunger and want might really be like. What does this all mean for country bumpkins and city slickers alike? Even more important, what does it mean for anyone anywhere who names Jesus Lord?

While there a plenty of big problems in need of big solutions that will surely produce some big headaches for lots of big shots, let me say this to the body of Christ: we may be entering one of the most crucial times and fruitful seasons for the church to really be the Church as Jesus intended.

Imagine the witness of hope Christians can provide these days and years to come in light of the need, rampant selfishness and price-gouging that is sure to hit numerous places? The work of organizations like Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA), Ten Thousand Villages and other such Christian organizations is at a critical juncture. They need our support and prayers.

Furthermore, where Christians in locales of any size work to grow godly, healthy and even prosperous businesses and household practices and then share and give away their God-given abundance, this will increasingly become an astonishing counter-cultural declaration. In addition, it may mean that not only our potlucks, but our gathering around the Lord’s Table will take on deeper and more evangelistic meaning than we ever imagined. So, the establishment of strong missional churches and the making of radical disciples who think both globally and locally is a job of mega importance.

From small towns to big cities the nightmare may be our great postmodern opportunity to demonstrate now what the banquet table of the Lord will be like forevermore.

2008-04-14T12:09:00.001-04:00

The new energy crisis

Slightly northwest of my home near thawing Lake Huron stands a mammoth windmill. This attempt at the greening of our energy needs was raised skyward a couple years ago, but has yet to work. It just sits there, towering over cattle that seem as baffled by this overgrown propeller Popsicle as the rest of us.

This recent move to harness the wind seems like the “Wal-Marting” of the old mom and pop windmills that occupied a space on many farms for generations. The problem with this particular megaton man-toy is that, apparently, no one thought through how it might connect to the grid. So there it stands, monumental and motionless, a reminder that we’re still trying to figure things out.

There are parallel realities facing this new energy crisis and the forms of church life we know. Our fast-moving, power-sucking culture is being forced to figure out new ways and forms. This is good, but it will take time. Furthermore, there appears to be a rediscovery of what the ancients already knew—hence, windmills.

In our churches an equally profound and confounding shift is taking place. Much church life these days seems disappointing, frustrating and tired. A few generations ago we, in the words of the late British prime minister Winston Churchill, shaped our buildings and then they shaped us. Many of the forms we have relied on for passing on the faith are burning us out, sucking us dry, and lack signs of life transformation. One generation can’t figure out why no one will step up and another can’t understand why anyone would want to. Much of what we’re doing is proving unsustainable for a new world where the church is increasingly on the margins. The church has its own energy crisis.

Allow me to propose a blueprint for moving forward:
• First, we must rediscover the gospel and the Holy Spirit. Jesus and his good news do not change. He, his cross, his kingdom and the breath of the Spirit are our true energy. We are not going to program or politically manoeuvre our way out of this. We need a miracle!
• Second, we must resist the temptation to over-reliance on what we know. No forms will ever adequately contain the power of God. In fact, they might hinder it once we entrench them and become blind to the fact that they’re no longer hooked to the grid.
• Third, at the heart of every form (program, gathering, household and life) must be disciple-making. If we aren’t making disciples, we’re not being disciples. Many of our forms keep us busy but really don’t form radically obedient disciples of Jesus who have picked up their crosses to follow him and usher in the kingdom wherever they go.
• Fourth, we must learn from ancients and currents. Most of what we’re frustrated with has been found wanting previously and renewal has always come from those able to harness the wind for a new day. We can gain courage and creativity by looking back and by being students of current fresh movements of the Spirit, which are often found where we’re not looking.
• Fifth, we must remember that God’s focus is people. Our forms should serve people, people shouldn’t serve forms. God loves people and uses forms; we must be wary of loving forms and using people.
• Sixth, we must return to our knees. It is pathetic how much of what we do is done with nothing more than token prayer. Having erected our forms with our hands, we rarely call on God to stretch out his. No wonder we have an energy crisis.

2008-04-09T15:22:00.001-04:00

When the Mighty Fall

Baron Black of Crossharbour has downsized his living arrangements from mansion to prison cell. Conrad Black, newspaper mogul, king of the hobnob, British citizen – who voluntarily revoked his Canadian citizenship in protest because then Prime Minister Jean Chretien would not bless his call to peerage in the British House of Lords – is now bringing the Ritz to an American penitentiary for fraud. He is a man of varied international abode.

In Canada Black’s little visit to the big house makes front page headlines in the very national rag he founded. Even more fun, Conrad has become a smug, stuffy, and rich punching bag for columnists and comedians alike. Smug is brought low and we’re all gleefully amused by his Icarus-like fall from the heights.

From Lord Black and Enron to Martha Stewart and Brittany Spears this culture that worships Mammon boisterously celebrates the removal of any ahead of us at the altar. Of course, each of these vilified corporate/celebrity monsters broke the law or, in Spears case, abundantly show that make-up hides more than first imagined and sexy clothes don’t reveal nearly enough. These are troubled souls who seem convinced they are above the law and abuse wealth while schmoozing with people like them, who probably don’t really like them at all. Meanwhile, the rest of us feast on check-out aisle paparazzi and sensationalism, gorging our morbid curiosities and need for a distraction from our own inconsistencies and wishful thinking. Black’s fall makes us feel less concerned with our own shortcomings.

I have no desire to defend what the Baron of Crossharbour has done; far from it. He is the glossy poster-boy of wealth, power, injustice and selfishness run amuck. Yet, at the same time I find myself mourning for Conrad and his ilk wondering, what is a true Christ-centered response to these modern day Zacchaeuses and Rich Young Rulers?

Jesus’ interaction with professional level criminals like Zacchaeus was strikingly straight-forward and redemptive. He never ignored his misguided idolatry nor the need for abundance to be generously and justly shared, but at the same time he didn’t protest outside his doors. Instead he entered them. He walked into relationship, supping in Zaccheaus’ lap of luxury for the sake of redemption. In the case of the Rich Young Ruler he looked with compassion, even pity, on humanity crippled by a lie and curse.

So, as our culture – and even some in the Church – enjoy watching the mighty fall, I am wondering how my response can be more redemptive, grace-filled, and compassionate without abandoning the prophetic call to new life and new living in and because of Christ. How, pray tell, will evil become righteous without a willingness of those graciously redeemed to see rich and poor, oppressed and oppressor, prince and pauper through the eyes of Jesus who compassionately and prophetically related to the one and championed the unfathomable need of the other. Both, it seems from the life of the Son of God, deserved to be loved and freed in opposite directions – directions that converged in his abundance and his poverty.

2008-03-20T14:39:00.002-04:00

Sinner and a movie

The arts have a powerful way of helping us know each other. They wrestle with the human condition frankly, often leaving us very uneasy. In fact, the arts may do a better job of defining sin than the church these days, what with our tendency to think that everything should have a happy ending in this world.

The Academy Awards presented five films for best picture this year. The show’s host, Jon Stewart, noted that the nominees—save one comedy about a teenage mother—were rather psychotic in nature. “Tonight we look beyond the dark days to focus on this year’s plate of psychopathic killer movies,” Stewart quipped. “What happened? Does this town need a hug? All I can say is, thank God for teenage pregnancy!”
Hollywood sees the world darkly. But how is the church responding to this sarcastic cry for mercy? The church goes to two extremes: It misrepresents sin, on the one hand, and shrouds the power of redemption for a culture needing a hug, on the other.

The first—with its overemphasis on the inherent goodness of humanity—too flippantly dismisses the depths of our depravity. Sin is downplayed and explained away as outdated or too brutal for our fragile self-esteem. The cross of Christ is merely the symbolic act of a “super-dude in sandals” who inspires us to good things, only to leave us completely distraught because, alas, we simply don’t, won’t or can’t do it.

The second extreme, with its overemphasis on our darkness and sinful acts—especially sexual misdeeds, foul language and tattoos—too flippantly degrades, dismisses and judges people by mere appearances. The cross of Christ becomes a formula or weapon over against the lives of those who aren’t like us.
Both extremes tend to be knee-jerk reactions to the other—not a good foundation for sound biblical reflection.

Sadly, both miss the same mark. They leave redemption in our failing hands, thinking a good pep talk or talking down to can raise us from the dead. Both keep us shackled to ourselves and ultimately without hope, as we carry a weight even our ancestors were unable to bear. Both extremes deal in externals and offer the same thing—a diagnosis of our problem that simply requires we read the right literature and abide by a new regimen until the symptoms of our pathology pass. This is a bogus gospel. This is not good news.

This age in need of a hug requires we speak clearly about sin as our individual and collective condition. Sin is the human disease and we are without natural immunity. It is our inevitable bent to choose our way and justify it at all costs, even with religion. It shows up in sins we can’t outgrow¬—like pimples on an adolescent—in hidden and visible actions, attitudes and asinine self-centred, idolatrous choices.

We ache to be free from sins that hound the race, but we need to be redeemed from sin first. That this is possible in Christ’s cross has always been the hope-filled message of the gospel that has embraced sinners in every age. And this age, like every one before it, requires a people speaking with honest courage: “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin” (Romans 6:6-7).

So, while the movies keep crying out, may our communities be living pictures of redeemed art.

2008-03-12T13:41:00.002-04:00

The Separation of Church and Plate

In December 2007 a retired United Church of Canada pastor named Joanne Sorrill made the subversive and treacherous decision to renew her Ontario vanity license plate. Suffice to say this was no Wittenberg door moment. No, poor Pastor Joanne just wanted to do what any law-abiding citizen is chomping at the bit to do – pay for the permission to slap a cheap piece of aluminum on her bumper and drive Ontario’s fun winter roads. Goodness, with the huge amounts of snow we’ve had thanks to global warming so far this winter (sigh), you can barely tell if a vehicle has plates at all! But, I digress.

Here’s where the whole clash of worldview ignorance, the new-old idol of the State, postmodern paranoia, and sheer politically correct stupidity roar into the intersection, each completely ignoring their stop signs. Turns out that though Pastor Joanne has for years used the cute moniker, “Rev Jo,” on her license plate, this time – in these very tolerant days of the early twenty-first century – it was a threat to the public good and perhaps western democracy as a whole.
The makers of such monumental decisions – who knew even this needed to be over-managed – concluded that “Rev Jo” was no longer appropriate on three fronts.

First, it apparently encouraged road racing. All she needs now is to pimp her ride, garner a sponsorship from the Gideons and Welch’s and she’d be set for NASCAR or F1.
What young man in a hip-hop Honda hasn’t been goaded into a street race with a silver-topped retired woman by her vanity, uh, plate? Perhaps in Florida or Arizona, I suppose.

Second, it promoted Christianity. As a pastor myself, burdened with the institutional title “Reverend” I can tell you that putting “Rev” on a license plate is about as likely to evoke some mass neo-Christendom overthrow of liberal-consumerist-humanist Canadian culture as advertising Chia pets has caused people to stop buying puppies and kittens at Christmas. In fact, it may just speed up the mass religious exodus if the first objection has any merit. If the State believes that Christians are now resorting to vanity license plates as a form of cultural influence and evangelization than they know something we don’t and we’re in bigger trouble than I thought. I can only imagine the angel chorus that will result when we all have PTL plates.

Third, it was felt that “Rev” referenced an alcoholic beverage and may encourage drinking and driving. Perhaps they missed our willingness to be sponsored by Welch’s. Who, on God’s green earth, has really been influenced to do anything because a license plate told them to do it? If the government is concerned that their stuff (a license plate after all is government property) will be used for corrupt purposes perhaps they ought to stop handing out income tax forms too, heck, we might as well ban money while we’re at it. The whole thing is so absurd that I can’t believe you’ve taken the time to read this.

Thankfully, and as a sign of the total ludicrousness of the current climate, the Premier of the province himself had to step in and instruct the committee – who must have been early and deep into the chicken milk (that’s what my four year old calls eggnog) – to let this ride slide.

Is there anything to learn from this little anecdotal evidence that there is a cultural earthquake afoot? Well, let us at least realize this as those who would follow Jesus before any other Lord: the subtle hostility and outright ignorance of the State toward the Church is nothing new and, perhaps, ought to be welcomed.

First, it may drive us back (pardon the puns here) to what really matters and to what sign posts ought really define us – repentance, a humble walk with God, justice, righteousness, a prophetic voice, Christlikeness, and a mission to make disciples of all nations who will radically love one another and their enemies. The end of happy cultural co-habitation draws nigh, and our vocation may only now be coming into focus – we may finally have to live it with our lives rather than slap it on our bumpers.

Second, we ought to exit onto the straight and narrow. There is a broad way that leads to destruction and a narrow road that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14) and we, you and I, must be among the few who find it; actually, who find and cling to Him. Christians simply must be on the way of grace. The new legalism of western liberal postmodern secularism is as enamored with minutiae as the many religious Pharisees they mock. Legalism is legalism whether liberal-humanist or conservative-fanatical. There is nothing new under the sun except the Son himself – His narrow way is grace and freedom, let us be on the King’s highway.

Finally, let us be reminded that stupidity requires no license and the church can be as prone to that as anyone else. The greatest thing we have to offer is Jesus, in fact, He’s all we have to offer. So when they see us, and even our vanity, may they stumble only over him and his undeniably peculiar stamp on our lives and our communities of grace.

2008-02-29T11:00:00.001-05:00

Democracy Watch

These days a plethora of images revealing the state of democracy worldwide are staring us in the face. I am far from a political scientist, no pundit of all these power-broker dynamics, and about to comment on systems and cultures that are diverse beyond imagination. Hence, these thoughts are presented for our thoughtful and Christian discernment humbly, perhaps presumptuously, but wholeheartedly nonetheless.
Image #1 – The White House Sweepstakes
As a Canadian observing our friends in the world’s current Empire work their way toward the crowning of a new Emperor I am struck by the sheer simplicity and complexity of it all. Watching home-based caucuses in Iowa consisting of Skeeter and his cousins given as prominent a role on CNN as a University polling station is remarkable…and strangely intriguing. At the same time, candidates spend hundreds of millions of dollars promoting their image and a smattering of their vision over and against the in-party enemy causing one to wonder if this isn’t simply a grade school popularity contest on steroids (oh, sorry, that’s baseball). And then there is the dainty dance between the political and the religious. Again, as a citizen of the Great White North, it amazes me to see candidates of both American parties speaking in churches on Sunday mornings with as much ease as they do at the union gathering on Monday. In Canadian society such a move would be outright political suicide. In Canada politicians have to closet their religion – especially if it is Christian – and lock the door to remain credible. For all the talk of the separation of church and stat both appear keenly jealous of each other under Uncle Sam’s watchful eye (the First Amendment, by the way, seems quite misunderstood in the USA – at least to this Canuck – and misapplied in Canada, where the constitutional clause doesn’t even exist and yet we love to claim it as a popular Canadian “value”). The White House sweepstakes, for all its peculiarities, seems to reveal that the interests of the democratic state and religion are inescapably linked…or are they?
Image #2 – Eastern Experimentation
Some of the most recent experiments in western democracy are observable in Eastern locales. Places like Pakistan, where assassinating the opposition is one way to make your point; Iraq, where the long, hard road to a new world order is daunting at best even with the dictator six feet under, and Russia, where a President completes his full term and then finds a way in through the back door to hold on to Czar-like power, reveal that planting democracy – at least the western version of it – in lands with different histories and cultural thought patterns is like trying to teach your weathered hound dog to beg like a toy poodle. We are in the midst of – are you ready for it – a long term experiment in democratic global domination; what if it doesn’t work? Have we hitched our horses to a wagon designed for paved roads and now we’re in the gumbo of the prairies in a downpour? And, for the Church, has our identity become so linked to this political vision that we’ve lost our own distinct mission and prophetic song with which to love and embrace these peoples who are so different and yet so similar to ourselves?
Image #3 – Kenyan Chaos
December 2007 democratic elections in Kenya, a relatively stable and predominately “Christian” African nation, really didn’t go well. Fourteen years after Rwanda we sit teetering on the brink of another tribal disaster fed by imperial and tribal colonialism, monarchy, and now democracy. It’s all mercilessly hodge-podge, confusing, regrettable, and seemingly unstoppable. The reach for power and the slippery grip upon it can cause peace to disappear in the time it takes to mark a fraudulent ballot. We in the West watch images of machete-wielding mobs and shake our heads at their inability to appreciate what we’ve brought them…or is it the other way around?
I’m not saying the solutions are simple or that democracy is inherently evil, far from it, but I do believe the time has come for Western Christians to reconsider our politics and our mission, for it seems the two have become tragically enmeshed, on both the right and the left, and among conservatives, liberals, and anabaptists alike. From the White House – whose resident depends on some form of religious ascent – to the East – where our politics is assumed to be Christianity in action – to Kenya – where our form of governing only awakens old divides, we seem to have concluded that the world is us and we are the world. We can’t imagine why everyone doesn’t want it our way. We have assumed our politics rules the day. But, if we are Christian at all, we must say this is not true. Neither we nor our politics rule, only the LORD Almighty does and he has never been bound by any particular form of government nor opposed to using any form for his greater purposes. What he has done, time and time again, is seek out and form a people within the nations who are citizens of another politic altogether, who fix their eyes on what is unseen, and who receive the high and holy task of being a blessing to the nations because of their faith in and allegiance to One high and holy King alone.

2008-02-20T09:44:00.001-05:00

X = Bridge

Driving along in my automobile, my son beside me at the wheel, we are listening to a radio station play “classic” tunes from the 1980s! Besides the fact that “classic” and “1980s” should never be used in the same sentence—Do you remember the synthesizer, leg warmers, New Coke, PTL Club and the Hyundai Pony?—I nostalgically sing along and answer a child’s questions about the good old days.

Despite the Duran Duran influence, this was a divine moment as I became keenly aware of the synthesizing of my thoughts into crushing reality: I was born in the last century and I am old.

Many of you will think this a ludicrous statement. At 35, I am a spring chicken, a young pup, a mere bud on the branch, to probably the vast majority of those reading these words, but that is precisely what troubles me.

My generation—labelled X—is increasingly caught betwixt and between, and indifferent about both poles. We are halfway, but we’re not sure what we are halfway from or to as we begin to find our legs, voice and place in the world, let alone the church. Many of us are floundering because the world of our parents and the world swallowing us up are equally strange. Communism has been traded for terrorism; Pacman eaten up by Halo; the Walkman overtaken by the iPod; Ethiopian famine eclipsed by AIDS; and the VCR, which we’re still teaching our parents how to run when we don’t even use them anymore, by the PVR.

Let’s just say we who inherited the radical challenges and culture-quake of the Boomers are really caught between two worlds. We don’t understand the traditional world our Boomer parents sought to dismantle—even the most conservative of our parents dismantled something—nor this strange place in which we must raise our children, which is maybe why many of us are unsure about having kids at all.

The X of my generation marks confusion. This, however, reveals a challenge I throw at my generational comrades in hopes some catch it: Can we Christ-following Xers already turn our attention to the first true post-Christian generations? It will be our turn in the next few years—if it isn’t already—to embrace the leading and shaping of a church and culture. Like others before, we will be tempted to champion our right to build it to our specs. Dare we lay aside this right?

Thankfully—and what a gift of grace this may turn out to be—we mostly laugh disparagingly at our “good old days.” We can’t take them seriously. Perhaps we knew even then that the times were in transition as we created a culture symbolized by Michael Jackson’s moonwalk (going backwards while appearing to go forwards).

Our mission may very well be to embrace the cost of laying ourselves down as a bridge. We are a demographic caught between a fading age and an emerging, yet fuzzy one. What great joy it may be for us to lie down and get walked on! First, by our Boomer parents, who will mourn a world that is no more. Then by our children, who need us to be a sure Christ-centred foundation, their link to a new day in which the naming of Jesus Christ as Lord is an affront to the Empire.

Because we don’t know who we are or where we fit, I propose we are the perfect generation for this glorious task.

2008-02-06T13:04:00.000-05:00

Confessions of a Guilty Bystander

After returning from a morning walk through the heart of Ottawa. Me, myself, and the Lord had a very good conversation, though I talked too much. Here at the core of all things powerful and pompous I am internally seething.

It’s a sad kind of angry; a mournful rage has built in me after I had dropped my family off at friends one night. I was overcome, crushed actually, by a profound loneliness. Not solitude – that’s a gift of grace – but true aloneness and the troubling sense that this capital is not the center from which life in Canada springs, but the melting pot into which our collective angst is democratically mixed with one great big sorrowful, though stately, sigh. You might not describe it that way. I am, after all, only one person and this may just be my personal dysfunctional moan transferred onto the rest of you without consent.

Still, I need to confess something and maybe my vomiting of the soul (what the Puritans called confession and repentance) can become yours and ours together. I confess that I am a selfish prig and fail far too often to share the holy rage of God for the way things are, how they stay that way, and my culpability in the whole bloody mess. It is disturbingly true that talking is easier than walking and that sight can be blind and feeling callous. I want to cry. I want to weep over my own sin, my own complacency, my own unwillingness to engage the Kingdom of heaven as it is birthed in my heart and mind’s eye by the Holy Spirit. I am disturbed enough to change the world so long as my experience of it stays the same and I can fit it between commercials. Woe is me in a world of mass distractions.

Here I think is the crux of my laptop confessional: I want the world to change, but I don’t want that change initiated in me. I wouldn’t even mind bringing about change, so long as I can be an arms-length lobbyist or consultant who can maintain a sterile, safe existence and leave others to work out the ills I point out. Yet, troublingly, it is in me, in the capitol of Phildom, that the mustard seed of the Kingdom must first find fertile soil and root. If it does I know things will be different, which is what my entire being screams for. But can’t someone else be the prophet or evangelist? Won’t someone else visit the prisoner? Can’t someone else build that relationship? Won’t someone else shelter the orphan? After all there’s a hockey game on tonight that will help me forget all this for a while, and maybe even longer if I’m lucky.

I so don’t want my personal discipleship, and the tidy packaging I’ve stuffed it in, to crash head-on with the residual effects of sin in the world (my thanks to Bill Janzen at MCC Ottawa for feeding this insight). That would only bring about the confusion of both – the unwanted realization that my discipleship is cheap and my view of sin too indifferent. I want a personal Jesus not a powerful one with his peace-wielding sword. I don’t want the violent peace of the cross to disrupt my journey toward a restful retirement. And yet my life of following Jesus, if it is genuinely about taking up my own cross, must ultimately conflict with the stuff I don’t like about this world and don’t like about me. Heck, it must even collide with the things I do like and rather enjoy. Jesus would have that all of me be relentlessly engaged in the thoroughness of his love and transforming infiltration of all things – of things personal, corporate, sacred and secular. Will he be Lord of all?

I believe this is what he seeks: selfish prigs who increasingly lose themselves and their priggishness in Him and discover a bittersweet satisfaction in holy rage; who smile with tears because life as we’ve accepted it, or even named it, is not life as he intended it and who willingly make the confession of a guilty bystander and thereby stand by no more.

2008-01-24T12:11:00.000-05:00

A bureaucracy of barrenness

Professor Barry Walters recently proposed in the Medical Journal of Australia that a lifelong carbon tax be levied on families having more than two children to compensate for the inevitable carbon footprint this extra life will stamp on the planet. Even further, he suggests carbon credits be given to those willing to embrace sterilization or a tithe to Trojan condoms. It seems this obstetrician is determined to make multiplication as difficult, joyless and fearful as the church has.

Most institutional-infected denominations have made it very cumbersome, almost discouragingly daunting, to plant churches and multiply. In effect, we have taxed the church away from her mandate—indeed her purpose and great pleasure.

I have had the privilege of walking with a “fellowship of the king” in southwestern Ontario that is trying to understand what it means to drop anchor, reject church contraception and be a multiplying kingdom community. They are incredible people who have not been afraid to raise and adjust their sails while reading the signs of the times, so we not just multiply, but have multiply-ability.

Is it time for some reproductive conversation around your potluck table?
Alan Hirsch, in his treatise The Forgotten Ways, says, “. . . we have now reached the vexing situation that the prevailing expression of church (Christendom) has become a major stumbling block to the spread of Christianity in the West.” In other words, what we have made church to be institutionally, structurally and economically, is the equivalent of championing contraceptives and sterilization over new life. We have virtually made ourselves bureaucracies of barrenness.

If we can only imagine that a real church requires a multi-function building, a “seminary-strained” pastor, denomination-speak, boatloads of committees and programs, and even our charitable status, then we may well have imagined the impossible and even worse. Since God can at least do the impossible, we may well have sterilized our own imaginations and traded faith for flummox and fear.

Can you imagine the current form of your local fellowship quickly, effectively, joyfully and with faithfulness to the Trinity, multiplying into a neighbourhood near you? Does the prospect give you a headache? Have you even talked about it? If you have, how long did it take someone to point out that the whole idea, while noble and even strangely enticing, just won’t work? Let’s be honest, what we have created is over-taxed and sterilized; we are virtually un-multiply-able.

The good news is that the problem is not the message, but the medium.

Need we be reminded that the early church multiplied quite nicely without any of the “necessities” we cling to? They had true multiply-ability. If you pay close attention to the wildness of Acts, you notice that multiply-ability is the very breath of the Spirit that often needs storms to be released. There is something inherent in Jesus’ people that will spread like wildfire if given the opportunity.

This, essentially, is what we are re-learning as a fledgling multiply-able community—to trust ourselves and our ways less and go with the DNA and fire of the Spirit more. We are asking more often: Is this multiply-able? Is what we are doing here reproducible or are we unwittingly sterilizing and over-taxing ourselves?

Is it time for some reproductive conversation around your potluck table?

2007-12-20T10:06:00.000-05:00

To whom will you sacrifice your children?

I write this at perhaps the only time of year that our culture recognizes the worth of sacrifice—Remembrance Day. Images of battlefield horror may be the glorification of all things military or the uncensored documented proof that all things are broken. Love or hate the day, this individualistic, consumerist, me-first society can surely use the reminder of sacrifice for a cause bigger than itself.
Ironically, the most somber of silences at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month is quickly followed by that most maniacal of marches towards the 25th day of the 12th month. How quickly we move from one form of child sacrifice to the next. In the former, we remember sacrifices made for the state; in the latter, we gorge on sacrifices for the self. In November, we were a people willing to lay down our lives; in December, we are gluttons for sales and easy credit.
Martin Luther once made the chilling statement, “Idolatry involves a question of what you would sacrifice your children for.” The state or the self: Which idol is receiving our children these days? Perhaps, and probably, it is both. The power of any idol is its diabolical clout that convinces us to give up our young in its name.
Now before we get uppity, snap our suspenders and declare ourselves free of such silliness, perhaps we need to be reminded of one limb of the church’s love affair with the political left and the other limb’s desperate dependency on the political right. The state still begs for—and consumes—our offspring. And then there is the surrendering of our kids to the selfish amusement and titillation of an age of decadence and excess with very few questions asked beyond, “Will that be cash or credit?”
As followers of Jesus we know the walk by faith is one of sacrifice—the self-sacrifice of Christ for sinners and the reciprocal sacrifice of the self marked by the taking up of our crosses in an about-face. You cannot be in Christ without accepting the sacrifice for you and making a sacrifice yourself. In contrast to the demands of the state, we are commanded to love even our enemies and name only one Lord. In contrast to the self, we are commanded to give up all that was once for our profit.
Yet even here, beneath a good God’s mothering wing, we do not escape the disturbing image of child sacrifice. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas says, “No ethic is worthy that does not require potentially the suffering of those we love.”
The Trinity gives up the Son. And how many toddlers did Bethlehem lose to the Father’s decision to shine on David’s city? If you choose Jesus, those you love are forced to live with the ramifications of your decision. To choose Jesus under Nero meant the potential suffering of your offspring. Household conversions meant embracing an ethic your loved ones could die for.
Does this still happen? Living with such an individualistic society and spirituality, we forget that it is still the case that what adults choose is what the next generation is forced to deal with. Since, statistically at least, Canadians are abandoning Christian faith faster than the Maple Leafs, it makes you wonder what god and ethic we have sacrificed our children for. And for those who have named Jesus as Lord: Do you still believe this Christmas that he’s worth the sacrifice?

2007-12-03T10:56:00.000-05:00

Temple Raising

In a TV interview historian Michael Wood reflects upon the world’s great historic civilizations and observes that their impressive building programs were implemented in the dying days of their influence. The places modern tourists visit were in fact the last gasps of inflated kingdoms suffering an incurable wound. I doubt the Aztecs designed their temples as the perfect image for twenty-first century tourist brochures. At the height of power they were unsuspectingly raising their own tombstones.
You have probably seen great European cathedrals like St.Paul’s in London or St. Vitius’ in Prague. Though awesome in grandeur the eerie lament of an abandoned faith echoes mournfully midst the ancient pillars. That same dirge is haunting rural and urban Canada where buildings once full sit empty, with the occasional well-intentioned few searching for ways to “save the church” – a thought rich with tragic irony. Our building-centeredness has served as blinder, blunder and burden.
And still the Canadian Church, never more in decline, has entered a new era of temple raising. Will we never learn? Why are we so determined to sink obscene amounts of God’s money into temples he does not inhabit? Why have we assumed this is the only God-inspired model we must follow into eternity? Is it not clear by now that this is a human religious enterprise and not necessarily the heartbeat of our Father? Who are we building these big box monuments for? And, will our children or grandchildren when they bear grey hair care two pence about keeping these new basilicas up to code in a new economic and environmental reality, amidst a culture that will be – actually already is – avowedly secular and indifferent to our steeples and welcoming foyers?
Our culture is headed away from Christian faith at breakneck speed so why do we think wads spent on ourselves will spark some great revival? It won’t. In fact, such decadence may in fact feed and speed the exodus. The issue, really, is not the buildings themselves – they had their use and may yet still, though I hope in a radically different way – but the entrenched Christendom idea of the church that yet binds us. Far too much “church-life” is spent trying to coax people into our hallowed halls. Church buildings have ceased being remotely meaningful to the life of most communities. This is no great loss, for the Church is the body of Christ and her people God’s building. If we wake up we may yet live justly, mercifully, and humbly the radical hopeful kingdom God’s people can build for a society both justifiably critical of our self-centeredness and aching to see what they subconsciously dream we’re capable of.
Can we honestly not read the signs of the times and deduce that our current blueprint is nothing more than the temple raising of a fading empire and that God’s Kingdom does not depend – indeed never has – on church buildings? Is it really a feather in our cap when a non-believer compliments us on our nice church? Isn’t this merely a sign that they have yet to encounter the Church at all? A new imagination is desperately needed that will risk thinking, listening, and conversing with the body of Christ international that has no choice but to live in true fellowship, plant seeds and engage their troubled contexts rather than raise temples. This is no longer a “build it and they will come” world – if it ever really was. If we don’t learn this soon we are primed to join others who built big just before becoming historical curiosities.

2007-11-27T13:19:00.000-05:00

Where is the Church?
Surely many will immediately think of the crossroads upon which a particular meeting house is found and point down the road with a mapquest description about how to find a building? Where the Church is, in this case, is land-locked.

Or, perhaps in response, you think of some pet burr in your saddle – which may explain the uncomfortable gait of some cowboys. You wonder where the Church is when it comes to a pressing issue of the day or hour. What is the Church’s stance on this or that and why doesn’t the Church – and we really mean someone other than us – do something about the mess. Where the Church is, in this case, is in her position papers.

I’m weary of such shallow churchianity. After all, since the Church is not a building if asked where the Church is you should point to yourself and your believing neighbour, don’t you think? And, if you wonder where the Church is in regards to some social tsunami you might consider a conversation with the mirror or look at the collective statement of lives shared in the fellowship of the King. What does the witness of our lives declare about what the church stands for? This may not be a comforting revelation.

The point is that the Church is found where Christ resides – in his people, and specifically, how they live his glory. As such, where the Church is may be in very unexpected places and, frighteningly, where we assume she is may in fact be a mirage.

I know a family, an amazing clan, and if you ask me where the Church is I’ll give you both directions to their home and tell you to watch their lives speak about what the Church stands for. They would be completely embarrassed if they knew you were reading about them, so don’t tell, but that alone highlights the subversive nature of their witness. They, like Christ, do not do what they do for accolades, but because something within demands it. They exist for the glory of Another, seeking to live faithfully in their troubled suburb of Nazareth – or just beyond the middle of nowhere – and fighting, yes fighting, a great battle they often wonder is worth the blood, sweat, and tears.

This family has adopted four incredible children; biologically contributed a couple more, are fostering three others, and dreaming of ways to serve the hungry more effectively in our community. They are not perfect, maybe a little crazy, but they are where the Church is. Their home is the Church. They are incarnating the selfless love of God and yet, tragically, pathetically, there are those who might click their tongues midst the gossip about such sorts in a church building lobby. Where then is the Church?

Believers like this bear an incredible weight. They not only carry the thankless task of loving what often bites back, but they – and others like them – are carrying the weight of the integrity of the Church before a culture that is ignoring our fairweather song and dance, but cannot ignore the long-suffering of those who see hope and give it.

In the current cultural reality it will be homes and hearts like those of our friends who, centered on Jesus and his people, embody that pure and faultless God-ward life found in a long obedience of sacrificial embrace and not in the tidy and trendy buildings, programs, and rhetoric we engage in that leaves many still asking, “Where is the Church?”

2007-02-12T20:22:00.000-05:00

THE ANVIL

The Church leader of yore, Theodore Beza, once said, "Remember that the Church is an anvil that has worn out many a hammer."

We can easily be discouraged and silenced by the apparent death of the Church in Canadian and western culture. Don't sing the dirge quite yet. Right now the Church is being hammered by ideologies of materialism and humanism that boast of the end of Christianity. Don't name the pallbearers quite yet. If God is in it...and 2000 years plus proves he is...then what is happening right now is simply another polished hammer that will soon wear out. Without a doubt much of what the Church has come to see itself as in the west will be smashed by these current blows (this will actually be grace in disguise), but what is truly of the Rock will remain. The anvil will always outlast the hammer.

And this begs the question: Are you part of the anvil or hammer?

2006-12-20T21:45:00.000-05:00

WONDER

So, I just returned from Colombia. My time away and the realities of catch-up mode since my return have meant little action on this particular page lately.

I simply want to reflect briefly on one of the many lessons I learned during my time away: Jesus transforms lives!

For those of you, like me, who grew up without tyring too much of the wild life it can be easy to forget how desparetly we need to be changed from the inside out. Hence, we can underestimate the radical life-quake that comes when a person says with conviction, "Jesus is Lord!"

For those of you who have forgotten this transforming reality, and for those of you who think it's just a bunch of bunk, I can only say that I saw, touched, and heard first hand the truth of what I speak. In Colombia I met people whose lives have been so rescued from the gutter of life, from the trash heap of society, and from the grips of evil that I could only weep. It's not just that they became nicer, or willed themselves into new clothes, no, they were completely and utterly morphed into new people - that's what they said! It's almost like they were born again! Hmmm...

So, the simple truth for you and me this Christmas: That baby transforms people when he is born in us!

I bring my offering yet again...and wonder and hope and smile.

2006-11-19T08:04:00.000-05:00

DROWNING IN OUR PLEASURES?

So, I'm off to Colombia this week to once again have my eyes and ears tuned to things beyond my own parcel of real estate! Inevitably these trips to other places always remind me of a couple necessary truths...
1. God has people who belong to him and are doing incredible things for Jesus everywhere!
2. People with less than me often live more free and selfless than me.
3. I am part of a culture that is drowning in it's own over-abundant pleasures.
Copy and paste this for more on this topic...
http://christianity.ca/faith/faith-and-thought/2006/11.001.html
4. I love being part of what God's doing in the world - including the part he is doing in me!

Where are you being tuned? Where are you being rescued from drowning?

2006-11-09T19:57:00.000-05:00

TRUTH BE TOLD

Let your "yes" be "yes" and your "no" be "no."

Those words of Jesus sound so simple, don't they? Of course I mean what I say and say what I mean - or do I? The discipline of truthfulness and truth-telling is very difficult in this age of spin.

It disturbs me how often I use my words to justify who I am, why I'm doing something or why I'm not doing something. It irks me that half-truths are easier to tell than full-truths. Many of us don't out-right lie, we just withhold or speak our minds behind the back of one who deserved the truth of our thoughts. Even husbands and wives can live in secret from one another - daring almost to live in hiding where they are to be most fully seen. To be a Christian is to know the truth that sets free and live the truth of that freedom.

How can we be the Church if we aren't full of truth? How can we be a body if the right hand deceives the left? It saddens me when distrust infects the body of Christ - when brothers and sisters reject the harmony created by our diversity for a hiddenness, a facade, a camoflouge, a less than truthful co-existence that not only denies the truth, but actually fears it. I think that is actually more to the point - we fear the truth because to speak truth is to come out of hiding and then we have to completely trust God to embrace us and we throw ourselves upon the grace of others with nowhere left to run. In living truthfully we are exposed bringing to life that nightmare of standing in your underwear before the gathered throng.

I pray for more truthfulness in me - more "yes" and "no" that comes from His Truth alive in me.

2006-10-23T16:46:00.000-04:00

LOVING DIVERSITY

Recently I have had several conversations - face to face, phone to phone, or keyboard to keyboard - in which I heard the insecurity of very wonderful people. For some reason we seem very reluctant to share our views, thinking that in doing so we...
a) Will have nothing intelligent to offer, and we don't want to look stupid.
b) Will be rebuked for half-baked ideas, and we don't want to be put in our place.
c) Will be seen as the opposition, and we don't want to create conflict.

I want to emphasize how incredibly beautiful the diversity of the body of Christ is. Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15:36-41) worked through their differences, stood by their personal convictions and multiplied their effectiveness (perhaps this is a generous reading of the text, but I personally believe that they parted on good terms given later references to Barnabas by Paul in his letters).

People - we're all different! And this is a profoundly good thing! Unity is not found in uniformity, but in the diversity of God's gifts planted in a diversity of individuals who in their own unique way offer themselves in humble servie to one another and to their King.

We ought never be ashamed for speaking what we see or sense. Yes, we ought to remain teachable and willing to adjust our sails, but we need never feel like we're stepping on toes by "calling it as we see it" when we're willing to welcome the other's view as well. It is in this way that we begin to realize the presense of the Spirit who leads us into truth and a unity of heart and mind. It is in this way that we will rediscover the discipline of living in Christian community.

So, be you and let others be too - we may just become more whole in this beautiful dance of the redeemed.

2006-10-17T16:44:00.000-04:00

ICING MY GOOSE EGG

How's your embrace of people? How's mine?

Our culture is ultra social and ultra lonely. This saddens me deeply and is causing me to ache for genuine community - for the Church to be about the embrace of people for Jesus' sake. I've got a long way to go.

Copy, paste and go here...

http://www.christianity.ca/church/outreach/2006/10.001.html

2006-10-06T21:14:00.000-04:00

I FORGOT TO LAUGH

Laugh. I think I'm forgetting how.

Today my son ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. He's asked me this before, but this morning at the kitchen table it struck me in a new way that I am none of those things my child-heart was captured by. As I reflected on his question throughout the day I came to the conclusion that I have grown up to be a leader. I didn't choose this vocation, it chose me. And along with this vocation that chooses you can sinisterly arrive the laughter thief.

You see, as a leader, I think about people. I think about problems. I think about possibilities. I think about change. I think about the status quo and then think about how to remove the static. And, as a leader, the dilemma is that you don't just think about these things, you act on them. At least you better, because that's what people need and expect and at the same time what they don't want. A leader is there to take people, whom they deeply care about, through problems to possibilities. A leader is there to create a culture where a better life is shared. And, a leader is very often lonely on the journey to a promised land that can be only a speck on the horizon and as a result you can forget to laugh.

Why? Because you can't accept life as it is and life as you live it as the leader is still life as everyone else experiences it - with its pain, disappointments, frustrations, and of course joys. But, since you're not free to live solely in the now it can mean a heavy heart which does a laugh no good.

Laugh. I want this reborn in me again. Not at the expense of my vocation, but in order to make it alive. American artist Ralph Kozak beautifully captures what this can be like for one who bore more than I'll ever have to and has transformed more than I can every dream.

So it is possible. Lord, teach me your laugh.

2006-10-03T23:43:00.000-04:00

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES?

In light of the evil that invaded an Amish school room in Pennsylvania what does it mean to love your enemies? How is it that we are to live as Jesus' apprentices when you just want to scream and dish out vengeance?

Without doubt we will soon here the Amish community in Lancaster County verbalize forgiveness and the media will marvel at the wonder of such grace, which of course is entirely "pie in the sky" for those of us in the real world. Which camp will you be in?

Justice in this tragedy will never truly be served. Not here. The killer is gone and his family remains to bear the shame. Children died, reminding us once again that something is terribly out of sorts in this world. Sin is. Evil cannot be glossed over. Hell sends postcards. How ought Christians respond? Will we respond as a desparate world expects or as they hunger and thirst for? Will we be windows to a world not made by hands?

If you love those who love you what reward will you get, even pagans and child-executioners do that. Love your enemies, bless those who curse you. These be hard words, but they point to a way of life that is not bound by evil and will shine like a lighthouse in a world of eye for eye.

2006-09-25T16:25:00.000-04:00

TROUBLESHOOTING THE KINGDOM

What is the response of the Church to the myriad of obstacles that oppose the advance of the Kingdom of God in the world? Any disciple of Jesus is aware that we very often respond very poorly to this ever present challenge.

I see five different ways in which we tend to respond to obstacles...

1. Ignorance is bliss - in this case we don't think; don't pay attention to the cultural realities we live in, live in a nostalgic past, and are duped into believing that obstacles don't exist at all. We think this is a faithful position for we're clinging to that which was handed down to us, when in fact it is highly unrealistic, even insane, and not blissful at all, but the place where the blind lead the blind.

2. Retreat and run for cover - in this case we are clearly aware of the obstacles and respond by fearfully running for cover, barring the doors, and segregating ourselves from a corrupt culture in the name of preservation and holy living. Here we observe culture for the purpose of knowing what to abstain from in our spiritual bubbles. This may appear wise, even understandable, but it hides the light under a bushell and produces legalists of the first order.

3. Can't beat 'em, so join 'em - in this case we recognize that the current of culture is truly an obstacle and so we accomodate ourselves to the drift of the world around us. We believe this makes us relevent, when in fact it makes us unnecessary and leaves us without anything to say that prophetically challenges the culture we've swallowed hook, line, and sinker. We end up being irrelevent even to ourselves.

4. Can't join 'em, so beat 'em - in this case we are not living in ignroarce. We also see outright accomodation as an untenable position, but neither is retreat, and so we fully engage the obstacles by beating up those in the opposite camp. We become champions of the "us" versus "them" and become placard waving militants who are constantly berating rather than embracing. We see evil in everyone who doesn't see it our way. We end up incapable of love.

5. Troubleshoot - in this case we clearly recognize the cultural obstacles that stand in our way, but we creatively search for ways to join the debate, live the Christ-life, love our enemies, and advance the Kingdom by all means possible. We are not ignorant of reality, but neither are we naively swallowing every seductive sales pitch or so selling out to the culture that we present no discernably different voice. We look for ways in the power and wisdom of the Spirit to turn obstacles into opportunities that will bring all things under Christ. We have eyes for where God is at work; where he is present; where his Truth is, even if it is presently unseen.

So, how are you joining the advance of the Kingdom of God's light? How are you responding to the obstacles of these days in which you live?

2006-09-06T23:11:00.000-04:00

LEADERS IN BALANCE

I've been reflecting lately on what it means to have balanced leadership in a local congregation.

First, what purpose do leadership gifts serve within the body of Christ? To answer that we need to turn to Ephesians 4 where we find that the gifts of apostle (course-charter and initiator of new Kingdom advances), prophet (those who remind us "thus saith the Lord"), evangelist (they gifted in moving the Church toward effectively sharing Christ), pastor (the nurturers), and teacher (they who awaken our understanding of God's word and make it applicable to daily living) are given to the Church in order to move the body toward maturity and unity. These leaders are called to equip the saints for ministry, not to do ministry for them. They are coaches and trainers, not the athlete before the spectator. Balanced leadership, then, would mean a body calling out people with these gifts and releasing them for their God-appointed purpose.

Second, most congregations hire, after the first or lead pastor, one or more pastors who are generally asked to oversee a specific task or demographic within the body (youth, children, worship, etc.). In essence we add supported staff as new programs are birthed or as problems arise that need fixing or as our volunteer pool runs dry. This is not balanced biblical leadership. Balanced leadership would actually mean having supported leaders that function as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers for the equpping of the saints. So, rather than think of balance according to programming function, can we begin to think of balance in relation to these gifts? We may ask a pastor-gifted servant to oversee youth, but the purpose would be the nurturing and discipling of youth and the equipping of youth for that purpose, not to run a cool program to entertain. The focus here is on balanced equipping of the body to become an initiating, Truth speaking, Christ-sharing, care-giving, and Truth instructing people.

Third, in our own context at Zurich Mennonite I am wondering what this would look like? How do we begin to balance our leadership as above? I see myself as primarily a prophet-teacher and Associate Pastor Tim is an apostle-evangelist (to clarify here: I believe each leader is capable of all the gifts to degree, though one or two will be dominant and the primary place where that individual truly is a "gift" and feels alive - in this sense I would secondarily be an apostle while Tim would be a teacher [according to what I have observed]). So, it would appear we as a body are not as well equipped on the pastor-nurturer side of things and ought we consider what it might look like to call out supported leaders in this area to provide a little more balance? We have taken baby steps toward this by calling out a Leader of Pastoral Care on a volunteer basis for a mere five hours a week, but is this enough to provide true balance?

Balanced leadership fosters a healthy, maturing Church - that's God's plan. How do we move further in this direction?