The gospel in three parts . . . times three

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.