On a Mission

WORSHIP SHIFT: Your Best Worship Now [Part I]

2010-03-03T18:30:00.005-05:00

Thanks to those of you who have been following this Worship SHIFT series of blogs. I hope its been helpful to you. I may be on my last one (split into two parts), unless someone poses me some new question, so feel free to email me yours at [mark@sunriseaustin.org].

This blog entry will be large-scoped and far-reaching - more philosophical, big picture stuff. Many of you know that my main gifts are in administration and the creation of systems in the area of worship has been a great part of the success of the worship transitions I've been a part of. Worship transitions often fail because people have no idea what they are working toward. You may not like everything on this list - but I'm fairly certain that, if you do each of the things, they'll cause your worship ministry to flourish. I think that if you do some of them, it might help - but I recommend all.Hopefully this list helps.

Permanent Teams: There was a time in my life in ministry where I thought the creation of permanent worship teams was just a nice thing, but the longer I do this, the more I feel it is essential - the most essential piece of transitioning a worship ministry, in fact. Perhaps the best reason for this is the chaos that not doing it creates. I talk to so many worship people who are drowning in their positions because they have to recruit new teams of people every week, teach them new songs, create on the fly and have no sort of debriefing or evaluative mechanism. The critics will say, of course, that creating permanent teams is exclusionary and doesn't allow for maximum participation in worship. But, last I checked not everyone is gifted for participation in worship - probably not even 40% of people. Why put people on stage just to put them on stage? Additionally, creation of permanent teams is almost always accompanied by the creation of a system for team entrance, be it auditions or whatever. The pros to permanent teams are immense. First of all, creating permanent teams creates community - a small group atmosphere - where people can live in purposeful relationship with eachother. This has a spiritual benefit, but also a musical one. Most live bands practice for hours upon hours before ever playing a song in public - they need to know the other musicians, know the songs inside and out and understand the direction of the band. Why would we think worship teams are any different? Every church that I've seen build a team structure has benefited in the long run through cohesiveness, quality elevation and overall experience of the musicians. Rotating your teams also creates weeks off for band members - an essential to stopping the all-too-common problem of musician burnout in churches. I always set as a goal that NO ONE plays every week. The end result of this is two or three or more solid bands that grow together and support eachother - if you do no other thing on my list, please consider this one.
Identify Permanent Team Leaders: The next step after creating your teams is identifying team leaders for each team. Some people are opposed to having a "worship leader", but let me tell you that the benefits are immense. At my church, my worship leaders conduct the entire service, other than specified announcements and the message. Worship leaders are primarily concerned with flow. Flow is the key to quality worship in the modern environment and without someone directing the show, flow won't happen, I promise you - make awkwardness your enemy because it will chase away any guests that venture into your worship service. So where do I look for leaders? Sometimes its obvious and sometimes its not. And, in the interest of full disclosure, sometimes those who seem obvious for the job are the worst ones. Never hire anyone who is self-interested. Look at sports - selfish players ruin teams. I would sacrifice musical quality for selflessness any day of the week. If you have a piano player who wants control, do not give it to them. The best leaders are often those who don't want control, but are willing to lead. Once you have your leaders, make it obvious on stage - have them stand in front of the backup singers. Let them take the entrances so the congregation knows when to sing. Let them pick the songs. Let them develop the program. Support them, because they will feel like absolute crap on Sunday afternoons - we all do. Elevate them as leaders in the church. Make sure that when the band practices, the worship leaders ALONE are in charge of the sound, the order of verses/choruses/etc., prayer and every other aspect of practice. Worship leaders must be in the band - I've been in churches where someone on the worship committee, etc. picks the songs, directs practice but isn't actually on the team - its a recipe for disaster, folks. Your worship will only be as good as your worship leaders, trust me.
Midweek Practice: If you're trying to do worship transition and aren't willing to make your band practice midweek - give up now. If musicians won't commit to midweek practice, let them find another place in the church to serve. Any time a change occurs anywhere in the church, if you want that change to stick, it needs quality. If you need another reason, we're doing it for God - its our firstfruits - so why give him our half-best? Please promise me right now you won't try to do modern worship in your church without a minimum of two one-hour practices for each service (we do Tuesday nights and Sunday mornings and both are longer than 1 hour). Your midweek service is the time to try stuff out - to fail. Your Sunday morning practice is strictly a dress rehearsal.
Fill Your Band: Here is a revelation some of you need: 15 singers is not a band, its a choir. Choirs do not sing modern worship songs, bands do. Modern worship is written for modern worship bands, which consist, at the minimum, of a rhythm guitar, a lead guitar, a drummer, a bass guitar and vocalists. Keyboards are nice, but are optional. Some of you just got a queasy feeling. If you're wondering why your worship doesn't sound good, start with the band. If all you have is a keyboard and singers, please don't try to sing Hillsong. Please? - it just makes all of us look bad. Making sub-par music in a transitioning church is the #1 sure way to ensure people will fight you. Making quality music in a transitioning environment is the #1 to ensure your transition will happen. But I don't have musicians! (I heard you whining that just now). You can find them and there's advice in my previous posts about what rocks to look under. Stop whining - whiners seldom make good worship leaders.
Debrief: One of the number one ways to improve your worship is to use some form of debriefing - and some way of evaluating. The best way I've found is to do a simple recording of the worship service and make everyone in the band watch the video, through YouTube and at practice - and then identify ways we can improve. But, if you lack that technology, you can have one team evaluate the other - honestly. The best way, however, is to make people watch themselves, listen to themselves and critique themselves. Unless they're people of low integrity (who shouldn't be on your team in the first place), they'll be horrified the first time. Being horrified is okay, if it puts you on a trajectory for improvement. Some people might quit after hearing themselves and, they might need to. Improvement always involves front-end quality checks and back-end quality checks. Make sure you pay attention to both.

Hopefully these get you rolling.........I'll have about 8 more next week. Until then, enjoy.

WORSHIP SHIFT: The No-Band Band

2010-02-18T22:30:00.008-05:00

I'm currently watching USA's "Burn Notice", where spy Michael Weston reveals how spies do the things they do - the secrets, if you will. Well, one of the main problems churches come to me with is lack of pieces for their band. Its a common moan and groan - one I've had myself at times. But, like most problems, there are multiple solutions.

The one thing you do not want to do in any worship transition is transition to something that is not done well. I've seen far too many churches switch to blended, contemporary or modern worship from traditional worship only to trend backwards again because the musical quality of the new style was poor. The poor quality can come from a variety of places - such as inexperience or congregational uncomfortability - but more often it comes from the band being incomplete.

Really, band incompleteness is no one's fault, but it seems to be a problem for most transitioning churches and the reasons are fairly obvious. Churches that are transitioning are transitioning FROM something - probably something most musicians (other than organists) are not attracted to. Second, many transitioning churches still fall into a quandary - paying organists/pianists while not paying band members who often do more and more complex work. Whatever the reason, the end result is that guitarists, drummers, bass players and pop vocalists are not prevalent in transitioning churches unless you're willing to pay for them to be there. But, attempting to play modern worship without the key instruments (rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, drums) is unwise.

So what then? Find it or fake it.

Find It

If you take this option, there's a few rocks that are always good to look under. For instance, even though you might not have any electric bass players in the church, you might have high schooler who plays cello in the orchestra - the principles are almost exactly the same. Other good places to look for bass players: people who can sort of play a 6-string guitar and anyone who plays a band/orchestra instrument in the bass clef - trombone, tuba, etc. In fact, almost any band instrumentalist will be able to pick up electric bass with some time and a YouTube account. [Best bass player I've found: former bassoon player]

How about a drummer? Drummers are everywhere - they just need to be found. The only non-negotiable for possible drummers: lack of rhythm. Just don't start new drummers on a full trapset. Start them on a shaker (egg shakers are about $3). Then, move them on to a djembe or bongos (djembes have a nicer sound). Then, let them play with the trapset, but use a clicktrack in your monitors to help train them (easy to create through GarageBand or with drum machine listed below). [Best drummers I found: teenager in pep band at local high school who couldn't play at his Catholic church and 50-year-old drummer I found on BandMix.com who used to open for Alice In Chains]

Guitar players are more difficult, but the same rule from above apples - no one who can't keep a rhythm, which excludes more people than you think - rhythm is rarely learned. Can they clap on the beat - even complex beats? Start there. Check your local college for guitar players - find local teenage bands - kids are often just looking for a place to play. Good drummers often make the best guitarist, by the way - challenge them to make the progression if you have enough drummers. [Best guitar player I found: lead guitarist for local teenage death metal band who would play Sunday mornings after raves on Saturday nights].

Fake It

One of the most impressive things I've ever seen was a young man who was the self-described "solo musician" at his church. He played a kick drum with his foot, played bass with his left hand and piano with his right hand. What's funny is that it sounded better than many "full" church bands I've seen. And, while I realize most of us can't pull this off, it illustrates a couple points: 1)DO NOT compromise the rhythm section, whatever you do. Keep in mind the modern worship team hierarchy (above). 2)Less on each instrument still sounds like more when you have more instruments, or three instruments playing less is better sounding than one instrument playing three times as much.

Let me assert that I think you can pull off a modern worship band with one person. You have two, you say? Well then just insert your creativity and make it happen. How can I make this claim? Because I've done it. Here's how I run my solo rig:

Guitar: This one's hard to fake, so I play a rhythm guitar. What you CAN do is make playing guitar easier. Using a cut capo (right), you can turn any regular chord in the key of "E" into a one or two finger chord. Add a regular capo and you can now play any regular chord in any key with one or two fingers. What this means for the player is less concentration, less dedication needed on the guitar alone. And, since many worship artists like Chris Tomlin and Billy Foote write for the key of E, it works (trust me!).

Bass: This is also hard to fake and you could probably go without it, if you have to, but what's easy to do is pick up an octave pedal, which simultaneously doubles low notes an octave lower, in bass range. I use a Boss OC-3. You can also play on your low strings only during bass-driven parts of the song to create the same effect.

Drums: Many people hate the sound of drum machines, but they're not the worst thing in the world. As one of my vocalists said to me this week: "Wow, that thing never screwed up!" And he was right. But even if you don't like the mechanical nature of it - drum machines are better than no drummer (not to mention better than many real drummers). My drum machine is an Alesis SR-16 with two pedals - one for tap tempo (so I start the guitar, tap the tempo and it comes in at that tempo) and the other for on/off. I can also put in fills with the tap pedal.

Keyboard: Although keyboard isn't essential to the modern worship band (see my previous posting), it helps, especially in this setup, to have some smoothing ambient sounds. But where is your favorite 80's synthesizer rocker? Nowhere....and that's just fine. Grab your laptop, download ambient pads for free in every key from this website [http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1006691], open iTunes and turn on the repeat-2 function. Suddenly, you've got yourself the best keyboardist you've ever played with. Run that signal through a volume pedal and suddenly you've also got yourself fade in/fade outs.

Other Options: There's many directions you can go with this - many things can be done with loops that you can download online that will essentially work like full background tracks, which allow you to add and subtract instruments as you need them. Get yourself a program like Reason, Cakewalk or even GarageBand on your Mac and you can produce an entire band sound without the band. You might also try a loop pedal, which allows you to make live loops (ie, smack your guitar for percussion, loop it, play the rhythm part, loop it, play the lead part, etc.). I've seen guitar geniuses do this and imitate full bands, as well - but you have to know what you're doing.

Whatever you do, do it well. And please, please repeat after me: "I will never allow my church to sing songs to a CD." There, we just made the world a better place.

Worship SHIFT: Piano As the Golden Calf

2010-02-11T12:01:00.001-05:00

I’ve consulted on worship to what’s going on a hundred churches now from all different areas of the country and with all different issues, but there seems to be one commonality between most of them. If they say they have issues with their worship, the first thing I ask for is what the keyboardist is doing. Most issues can be traced back to a wrong role for the piano – trying to play Hillsong or Tomlin with piano leadership because the keyboardist won’t back down or because the church thinks it needs a piano leading to sing. It struck me in watching the “Hillsong Creative Training” DVD the other day, that modern worship has found a creative place for the piano on the stage: nowhere.

A little history lesson on worship as it relates to keyboards throughout history. For the first few years of the Church’s history, instrumentation wasn’t a key issue with singing, since much of it happened through chant or through basic accompaniment. However, with the advent of the pipe organ, the European church fell in love with four part hymn singing to that sound and it migrated with the immigrants to North America. Worship music was largely written for piano and organ for years, except for a few pockets of Great Awakening hymns drummed up by mandolin players in the Kentucky hills. But, a worship revolution coincided with a church revolution in the 1970’s-1990’s. Although groups like the Gaithers had been using popular instrumentation, churches across the country started to use guitars and rhythm instruments in worship. This change should not be taken lightly as many a “worship war” split churches and people. Around the year 2000, a more significant change for our discussion happened. Worship music became more of an industry, more mainstream and more focused on a few key centers of output with a few key leaders setting the tone. Worship leaders Chris Tomlin and Hillsong United emerged as the key leaders of today.

There is one other note that should be made. Many people equivocate “contemporary” with “modern” worship. I argue for a difference between the two, and the difference is key in understanding changes in the use of the keyboard. This difference can be seen very evidently between contemporary leaders, such as Michael W. Smith and Darlene Zscech versus their national successors – Chris Tomlin and Hillsong United (led by Joel Houston rather than Zscech). Whereas Smith and Zschech’s music makes heavy use of keyboard as a lead instrument, Tomlin and Houston’s use the keyboard only as an accent/support instrument, if at all. In many cases, especially in live performances, laptops are subbed for keyboards altogether for ambient effects. This change is laid out in great detail by both Hillsong Church, who replaced Zscech with Houston in the 2000’s to change their style and Smith, whose live worship CD released in the 2000’s, “A New Hallelujah” features virtually no original songs after his 1990’s releases “Worship” and “Worship Again” featured mostly original content. Smith’s songs have mostly dropped out of the CCLI Top 25 (most used music in the worldwide Church), while Houston/Hillsong’s music dominates it.

This leaves churches in a bind. The first thing to realize as a church is that you must diagnose what stage you are currently in and not try to jump two stages at once. If you are traditional, the jump to modern could kill your base if you don’t move to contemporary first. The move to modern must be done, as all changes must, well. If your church does not have a strong rhythm section (rhythm guitar, bass guitar, drums), attempting to shift to modern worship is an almost impossible task. There is a reason the worldwide Church went through contemporary worship on the way to modern worship – it is a bridge style with some traditional elements, including logical versifications and piano-based leadership, in many cases.

In modern worship, however, the keyboardist is asked to step to the back and simply serve as a support or accent instrument. Even keyboardists for major leaders in the industry such as Hillsong United rarely use two hands on the keyboard – often playing one or two notes at a time or laying down ambient pads to undergird the sound.

This change in the keyboard’s role will, obviously, be felt the most by the keyboard player. For churches who are transitioning, recognize that all keyboard players will not be happy with the change. Traditional piano players are used to playing with both hands, laying down bass, treble, alto and soprano lines, setting the rhythm and leading the congregation. To shift from that to simply playing accent notes and laying down ambient chords is not only difficult to swallow, it can be downright insulting (not to mention many churches pay organists/piano players and modern worship means their paycheck goes away).

Recognize that you may have keyboardists that may quit and that isn’t the end of the world. In some ways, training new keyboardists for the new style is optimal compared to trying to fit traditional keyboardists into a modern keyboardist role. It is important to realize, however, that keyboardists are artists and, when pushed aside or asked to do something limiting, will react harshly unless they are blessed with a high degree of humility. I cannot tell you how many churches this scenario repeats itself in. At conferences, I’ll often mention the “piano Nazi” and someone jumps into everyone’s mind because the experience is so common to all of us.

The key is to approach worship change as necessary and with love. If you love too much and let the keyboardist run you over, they will. If you are too adamant about their role, you could run off a very good potential band member. Do not be afraid, however, to move forward if your keyboardist will not come with you. Find someone else (you can fake keyboard in a modern band with very limited knowledge if you have good rhythm and knowledge of notes, using the right keyboard patches) or simply download some ambient mp3 sounds from the internet and use a laptop in the keyboardist’s place. Often, it sounds better.

Make sure everyone realizes that, in this style of music, keyboard is not lead. That needs to be said and said again. If your band and church isn’t comfortable with that – play some 80’s/90’s music that’s written for piano leadership. Muddying the waters will only hurt you in the long run.

Worship SHIFT: Why the Word “Blended” Scares Me as a Worship Style

2010-02-03T18:23:00.002-05:00

Churches suffer for many reasons. In some cases, they are subject to moral failure, to stubbornness or to attacks from the devil. But, nothing kills a church or ministry faster than the greatest devil of them all: ambiguity. When people don’t know what the boundaries or definitions of terms everyone’s throwing around are, other people get hurt. When words like “blended” enable everyone to attach their own particular meaning, people fight.

The ironic thing is that many churches strive for ambiguity under the guise of “freedom” or “inclusivism”. What’s interesting is that we fail to take into account our theological perspective on human depravity – that, given ultimate freedom with no boundaries, we fail every time. Boundaries don’t necessarily limit freedom so much as they provide an open space within which to create. You spend less time worrying about what is “acceptable” and more time focusing on continued innovation on the norm, which is key to worship in any style or context.

I’ve seen far too many churches choose “blended” for the wrong reason. You’ve generally got the traditional camp thinking to themselves “how much are we willing to give up to appease the contemporary side?” and the contemporary camp asking themselves “how far can we push the limits before the traditionalists bite back?” Of course, the problem with all of this is that no one is thinking about the bigger issues – how does God want to be worshipped? How does our immediate neighborhood/target demographic want to worship and what sort of music to they listen to?

Really, it brings out the selfishness in everyone – each side determining to themselves that they’ll define what sort of blend we’ll have – 80/20 instead of 50/50, for instance. Both are blended – but both include concessions from one side or the other. You can call my latte a blended drink regardless of the percentage of milk, espresso or flavoring.

So what’s the positive solution? There could be many, but I’ll propose one. If you truly want a mix of traditional, contemporary and modern elements – try on this word: eclectic. Unlike “blended” which simply implies the presence of two elements (99/1 is still blended), eclectic has qualitative degrees. For instance, something with 10 elements is more eclectic than something with 2. To be eclectic is to notice when the presence of a particular element is under-represented or simply missing.

How would you describe your church’s worship?

Worship SHIFT

2010-02-03T18:17:00.003-05:00

Some of you may have noticed I haven't blogged in a while - some you definitely have not. Well, one of my 2010 professional goals is to take up blogging once again, now that I'm settled in the Republic of Texas.

For the upcoming months, I'm going to do something people have been asking me to do for a while - espouse a little on the topic of shifting worship in a traditional, established church towards a more contemporary or modern style. I'm calling it Worship SHIFT and they'll start coming hot and heavy since I get passionate about this stuff. This blog will feature topics that are more philosophical in nature. If you are looking for more nuts and bolts type advice, feel free to email me [mark@sunriseaustin.org] or join us on the new CRC Network, if you're CRC, of course. Post questions in the Worship forum and I'll be happy to take it from there and we'll have the luxury of hearing more voices. But here, you only get mine. Lucky you.

Let My People Go!

2009-08-12T22:11:00.003-05:00

So, yesterday I attended a conference put on by Feeding America to address food shortages in poverty-stricken areas in West Michigan. These are generally pretty good events and I like seeing the different ways in which needs are being met across the area. But as I looked around the room, I noticed something I hadn't before: every one of the volunteers were very blue collar and the youngest person there besides me was 30 years older.

This got me to thinking: I represent two demographics in America - white collar professionals and 20-somethings. Unfortunately, these are not two demographics that are keen on serving in areas like food distribution or poverty alleviation. Maybe its because we graduate from college, get married and are so focused on our careers, buying houses and starting families that we just forget to help the poor? Or maybe its that we're willing to volunteer, just not help organize? Or maybe its what an older pastor said to me once (and it made me throw up a little in my mouth): Well, you're in your 20's....you need to focus on you now and you can start giving when you're 30.

Now, I'm not saying all white collar 20-somethings need to go out and sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor (although Jesus did to a rich young man), I'm just saying - lets lend our financial resources and expertise to help do poverty alleviation better. Have you ever volunteered at a soup kitchen or food pantry and thought to yourself, wow - this could be run MUCH more efficiently? I know I have. Have you ever thought, why is this place only open from 10 AM-noon on weekdays when those who are actually working need to be at work? I know I have. Have you ever walked into a massive mega-church and wondered how much good they could do if they even threw 10% of their personnel/ministry resources at poverty as well as money. I know I have.

Of course its easier to give money than volunteer your time, but think about this - how much farther would everyone's money go if a few of us with organizational talents helped out just a little - making programs more efficient, using technology to make processes easier. Perhaps it is the case that those who have been closer to poverty in their own lives feel more of an obligation to the poor, but denying your expertise and skills to an organization simply because you can throw money at it just ensures that the cycle of poverty will grow larger and larger until, eventually, it rolls us all over.

And the Oscar Goes To....

2009-02-23T00:04:00.002-05:00

So, I'm watching the Oscars on TV and it strikes me - movies and churches have a lot in common. Bare with me here. You ever notice how all these no-name tech people and foreign film directors get awards for the first 2/3 of the night and nobody really cares? In fact, if those people happen to thank too many people, the Oscar producers look for a chance to start the into-commercial music and shoo off the recipients.

For many people, church is the worship service - never mind the Bible studies, the pastoral care, the committee meetings, the Wednesday night programming and everything else going on at the church throughout the week. For "up-front" personnel at worship services (speakers, worship leaders, liturgists, worship bands, etc.), this means that what you do reflects on your entire staff and, for visitors, on your entire church.

My wife will often wonder why I feel so emotionally burned after a Sunday morning, but it follows a pretty easy logic trail: if there's a sound malfunction or a PowerPoint faux pas, it reflects on the worship leader (nobody thinks to blame the sound booth). If the speaker delivers a poor message, it reflects poorly on the church's council and on the church as a whole - as if this is the best speaker our church can produce. Similarly, one bad acting role can ruin an entire movie - ruin a perfect soundtrack or ruin great wardrobe/makeup.

Of course, all this is accentuated by a consumer-driven church culture, but despite all the church "purists" defamating consumer-driven church, the fact is that we live in a consumer-driven (or "seeker sensitive") church world. And, quite frankly, rather than just complaining, we as churches should try and make ourselves better because God asks for our firstfruits - firstfruits in daily life and firstfruits in ecclesiology. For churches, that means good speakers and good worship. Whether you preach from the lectionary or very practically - whether you have traditional worship or modern worship - do what you do and do it well. Why? Not for the consumer, but for God.

On Location

2009-02-11T15:03:00.002-05:00

Fair warning: I'm re-reading the book "The Shaping of Things to Come", one of my favorites, and many of the concepts of these posts will be mental nuggets, agreement or argument with that book, even though I may not directly reference it.

Today I got to thinking about what it means for the church to physically be where people are. There's a few different directions this concept can go. The first is perhaps the simplest. We've had a rash of churches moving out of our city limits for the grassy knolls of the countryside where new buildings can be built without regulation and where signs are not distractions to passing motorists. Another added benefit/problem of moving out of town is the ability to handselect attenders. Let's face it, most people new to a community or seeking a church family are not first going to check out a church in the countryside. Of course, this isn't a hard and fast rule, but it would seem to make the most logical sense (and, since I'm Reformed, I'm allowed to tie logic to faith). For many churches, this ability to handpick congregants could be a big plus. After all, those with vehicles and the will to drive to church are also those most likely to tithe. People who walk to church could have any variety of issues - homelessness, lack of transportation, low commitment, etc. So I guess the real issue is deciding who your target group is, determining what your vision is and adjusting your location likewise.

Many churches are guilty of the we-got-given-a-property-so-we're-building-there syndrome. Maybe its not a reality where you are (although I bet it is if you look for it), but in every community in which I've lived (South Dakota, Iowa, New York, Kentucky, Michigan), churches love to set themselves up just outside of town or on the outskirts of town. You really have to ask yourself why. Some churches move to these locations because they can. Given our economy and the regulatory practice of many municipal boards, that might be a reality. Some churches deem their current buildings unable to meet their current ministry needs, for whatever reason (age of building, size of building, etc.). This seems more legitimate, but leaving town should be a last resort, as far as I'm concerned. Some churches, particularly in the Midwest, sit where communities used to sit - that is, they are the only building left in "town", or the families who built the church simply thought the current location would be some sort of half-way point. This is a harder reality, but it seems to me that the latter discussion should still be pertinent. Some churches move there so as not to offend the elderly person donating the plot of land. This seems somewhat short-sighted. Some churches move simply because they don't think through the situation logically (and get caught up in the excitement of something new). That seems undiscerning at best - dumb at worst. The final option for a church moving out of town is that they particularly decide they would rather minister to those who have the means to come to where they are. That seems simply contrary to the Gospel.

What I'm not saying is that the location of the church determines its missional nature. I truly believe that a downtown or neighborhood location throws open the doors of possibility and stands as a continual reminder to the missional reality of what we must do, but many churches have put themselves on the outskirts of town ideologically. This point, to me, is far more important than where a building is located. There are really two perspectives on the church, borrowed from Frost & Hirsch:

CHURCH AS REFUGE FROM THE WORLD: The church building is seen as the gathering place of the saved at least once per week to escape the onslaught of modern society and the world around. There is a holiness to the building that is fundamentally different than the buildings of daily life.
CHURCH AS LAUNCHPAD FOR MISSION: The church building is just another building in our community where we live our Christian lives. The difference of corporate worship or discipleship is that we gather at this central location to sharpen eachother's witness so that we may live our daily lives more consistently.

The idea that the church building is wholly other from the rest of society is the same logic that makes Sunday wholly other from the rest of the week or makes the words we speak in church wholly other than the words we speak in day-to-day affairs. It is dualistic and it is inconsistent.

For years, the church has asked people to come to it to get saved, come to it to grow in its faith, come to it to experience the full blessing of Christ. While Jesus did spend time in the synagogue, it was on hillsides, in homes and in Samaria where He taught His greatest lessons. For thousands of years, there have been great learned teachers in institutions or churches that have been willing to share their knowledge and understanding with anyone who would come to them. Consequently, hoardes of white collar, upper middle class students have gone through mega-church youth groups and attended Bible colleges. Jesus ministered to the prostitutes, tax collectors and the unclean. If He had set up shop in Nazareth and asked all these folks to come to Him, they would not have. Because He went to them and did "church" there, He gained the audience He desired.

Get your milkcrate - we're going street preaching!

WAR and Sympsi....ummmm

2009-02-02T15:11:00.004-05:00

This is me finding my way back onto the map once again after (yet another) hiatus. I get in these funks sometimes where blogging isn't a priority. Some of you know what I'm talking about - the rest of you probably stopped reading my blog months ago.

I wanted to reflect a little on the last two weekends for myself and others who attended both the Worship Arts Retreat in Greenville and the Calvin Worship Symposium at Calvin College. First, WAR. Our first attempt at a modern worship conference in mid-Michigan can't be viewed as anything but a success. When you take into account the fact that we spanned six denominations and had churches from up to three hours away for our first go-round, it makes me grin from ear to ear. However, I think it was the content that set this WAR apart. The temptation, of course, was to put on something that was low-quality the first time around so as to not set next year's expectations too high and give the people what they paid for (entry fee was $0). However, our speakers were fantastic, our sectional leaders were of great quality and the amount of pure information that was distributed over the course of 8 hours was absolutely phenomenal. For me, that's the trick - the information is all out there, but the true test is how quickly and how efficiently you can get that information into the hands of those who desire it most.

In contrast, this past weekend, I attended the Calvin Worship Symposium at Calvin College, mostly because it was free to me as a last-year seminarian. I'll move right past preferences here to feelings: Symposium disappointed me. It was not for a lack of information, nor for a lack of qualified individuals teaching, nor for a lack of resources. What disappointed me was Symposium's lack of validity for the future Church. As a guitarist, as a modern worship guy, as someone who had just put on a meager attempt at a conference the weekend before, I was saddened that the Symposium has not only trended towards traditionalism in worship (or what I like to call Reformed neo-traditionalism) - it has sold out wholesale to organists, choirs traditional worship.

I am not here to say that I think there's anything wrong with traditional worship. In many ways I prefer it and envy those who put together traditional services - there's less things that can go wrong, less musicians needed, less monitoring of cultural trends that must be done. But it is pure folly to think that Symposium is resourcing the Church of the future. Rather, it is accommodating the Church of the past and roughly a third of the Church of the present (at least in the US). What blew me away were the amount of Reformed people that told me outright that they would rather attend my fledgling Worship Arts Retreat at a wholly Wesleyan church than attend the Symposium at Calvin's campus. Its true for young pastors, as well. One of my old professors commented that he was shocked to see me at Symposium.....not because I work in a Wesleyan church, but because I was under the age of 40.

There is nothing wrong with leading a conference on traditional or neo-traditional worship. Go ahead. But isn't a travesty that the premier worship institute in the Reformed world can't offer a handful of sectionals and worship services to teach Reformed churches how to do modern worship well - especially when so many are foaming at the mouth for it? I have no solid research, but common sense would seem to support the following logic: CICW (Calvin Institute for Christian Worship), think about all the churches in the CRC (its home denomination) that are growing. Now, what percentage of churches are running a modern worship style and what percentage of those churches are running a traditional or neo-traditional (world music) style? I would dare bet the vast majority on the cutting edge of growth are also on the cutting edge of worship. If that's the case, why are we throwing 70% of our energy into supporting the dying ones to keep them doing what they're doing?

Its not as if the CICW doesn't have modern worship practitioners at its disposal. Greg Scheer, Paul Ryan, Ron Reinstra and other in-house options could at least run a second track - a modern track - for Symposium. It causes me to reflect on the Hymn Society of America: when you base an organization or a conference on a dying art, you will eventually end up dead. Yes, they may be the ones who support you financially now, but down what path are you leading them - innovation or perpetuation?

I'm not asking for a complete overhaul of the Worship Symposium, but for pete's sake - can't we acknowledge the large percentage of Reformed churches already doing modern worship and, even more so, those who deeply long to but are hopelessly lost?

Let the Children Come to Me

2008-12-06T21:34:00.004-05:00

There's a strange phenomena that happens in churches that unites new churches, established churches and mega-churches: a high commitment to childrens ministries. Whether that means a simple "Sunday School" or a more recent approach such as "Children's Church" or "Kidzone"-style separate worship services, childrens ministries are often one of the first areas for any church to create, staff and develop. Missional churches do it as a way to attract the coveted "young family" demographic and established churches do it as a way to keep the young families from leaving or coming back after sowing their wild oats.

Childrens ministry, like youth ministry, often receives imperative treatment - we have to have a program for that, we need to develop that ministry, we can't cancel that program this week - and the classic "I think kids are the future of our church" (which everyone says euphorically, as if they were the first person to think of such a concept). There are various childrens ministries issues that could be discussed, but I'd like to try this one on for size: bus ministries can ruin a community.

Now that I've got your attention, [insert rural evangelical church name with bus here], let me explain. A town to the south of us, where I do a significant amount of work, is spiritually dead. But, its a different kind of spiritually dead than you might find in other places. In this city, folks have been inculturated to think that church is for old people and kids. Like King David, we might look aghast and ask "Who did this?" But like David, the finger is pointing back - it was the churches themselves.

Four churches (three Baptist and one Nazarene, though many more around the country are guilty) own buses or vans and participate in what has become a Sunday ritual known the town-over. At 8:30 AM, as if it was a school day, kids are picked up by the van-load and carted off to churches in the countryside where straight-haired, KJV-reading, suit-and-dress-wearing pietists welcome them in with open arms.

Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Each of these churches have stellar childrens ministries. They teach Scripture. They disciple children. They report hundreds of "decisions" for Christ annually. By 5 year olds.

What is the net effect? This town is FILLED with former bus kids - former children who made "decisions" for Christ. I don't want to quench the power of the Holy Spirit, but almost church in the town has an average attendance age of 70. Q-Tip churches. I have had dozens of conversations with unchurched adults in that community and, to a person, each one has uttered the same words, "My kids really need to go to church. I don't want to take them, though - do you have a bus ministry? Its really important that they go." Ouch.

But, I'm not leaving you out, mega-churches and trendy evangelicals. How many of your current adult attenders went through a Kidzone-style childrens ministry? If you're like most churches, not many. Mega-churches around the world are beginning to ask themselves if worshipping with all ages might not be such a bad idea. Multi-gen ministry is one of the hottest topics in the church world today. The reason? People are inculturated as worshippers. When they're inculturated to consumer-based childrens ministries, its hard to transition to student ministry worship, even if its also consumer-based. And, its hard to transition students into "adult" worship. At each transition, huge numbers are hemorrhaged.

Children are the future of our Church. Really? Then let's start re-evaluating.

To Plant or not to Plant

2008-12-04T21:47:00.003-05:00

Lately, I've found myself trapped between two worlds within the Christian scene: the established church and the church planting movement. These worlds might not seem to be at odds at first glance, but once you're stuck in the middle - you'll know it.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I think one of the keys to future leadership in my home denomination was to stop the herding of leaders into either the church planting track or the established church track. Additionally, seminaries need to stop serving one side or the other exclusively, particularly in the practical parts of education.

The deeper reason that this happens, however, is that churches have separated themlseves into these categories, so putting their future leaders into them is important. From that point, established churches can ensure that their future leaders are people they desire and those who are less desirable can be sent to the church planting realm. In a similar way, since the church planting realm doesn't really want those folks who are "tainted" by the established church, so it works out.

But what of those of us who would not want to write off the established church? I had a recent conversation with a graduated seminarian where we lamented the fact that we've been made to feel somehow guilty for wanting to bring change to established churches that makes them more viable. In some ways, we're guilty for not writing off the established church and going into planning and we're guilty for trying to innovation instead of perpetuating the status quo in the established church.

What gives?

Pretty Positive TV

2008-11-28T18:23:00.004-05:00

As I write this blog entry, I'm watching "The Tony Peace Gospel Hour" on TCT. I've found myself strangely drawn to TCT, TBN and EWTN recently, asking myself the simple question: what is it about these stations that feel so wrong to me? In a way I feel guilty - am I simply a product of my GAP-driven, hippie-wannabe generational influence? Have my churches inculturated me to detest people in suits, people raising their hands in worship excessively and giant globes on preaching stages with toll-free numbers running across the screen? Is there anything inherently wrong with Benny Hinn, Robert Schuller, The Signature Sound or even Ed Young's TV presence?

I haven't fully thought through this (so I'd love some thoughts), but here's my best approach to it right now. Watching these stations makes me reflect on a denominational gathering I recently attended where I felt very uneasy in worship. Now, let me tell you that it takes quite a bit for me to be uncomfortable in a worship service - I've worshipped in Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Mennonite, Vineyard and many other church services that were "different". What was different about this service for me was what I can best describe as "inauthenticity". In particular, there was a woman who had a constant smile, a constantly raised hand and a constantly exuberant expression. It was the kind of worship service that makes me see why many people identify the worship genre as "happy clappy". My guess is that there was a time in worship music where folks were simply reacting to a "sad pietism" and reacted by writing happy, upbeat music that was meant as an alternative hymnal to the one in the pew. What resulted was what many rural churches refer to as "praise and worship" time which is meant to be wholly positive.

The problem, of course, with positivism and "happy clappy" theology is that it is a horrible reflection of real life. If someone sees worship service as a "pickup" for the week to aid in the rest of life, the fake positivism is probably the necessary product. If, however, one views a church service as the intersection of daily life and God's presence, it is very difficult to believe that this is an accurate representation of daily life. To me, a worship service should encompass the realities of sadness, anger, disbelief and messiness as well as joy, happiness and smiles.

Of course, there is a certain segment of Christianity that wants a faith that is happy all the time. The problem is that that kind of faith is impossible to find and was never something Christ promised us. So here's where the rubber hits the road: when visitors and children see their 40-something parents in pretty suits and dresses on stage acting like their lives have never had a wrinkle and then meet them during the week, the only result can be disappointment. If your music, if your worship shows no authenticity (the reality of the whole spectrum of emotion), you will lose your chance at most visitors and at most of the next generation.

Take a minute and put yourself in the shoes of an unbeliever. Why, if I were flipping through the channels, would I stop on TCT? Frankly, I like Southern Gospel (I can even appreciate the Gaithers and the Lawrence Welk-style Christian variety hours). Maybe, just maybe if I heard the musical harmonies on the radio, I might stop. But, every person on these stations is pretty. Some are large, some are bald - but all of them are wearing their Sunday-best. What's more, their smiles seem painted on, their eyes never seem to blink and I get the impression I'm tuning into a cult broadcast. I have a grand ecumenical stomach, but this gives me an honest gag reflex.

That brings me back to TCT. As I watch this station, there is a single demographic. It does not indicate a racial divide - there are blacks and whites. It does, however, indicate a generational divide. It makes me wonder, as a viewer at home, if the TCT, TBN or EWTN producers realize that there is hardly anyone in the audience under the age of 35. Strangely enough, at our meeting a month ago, I was also one of a handful of people under the age of 35.

Nice suits, slick haircuts and positivism might sell well to the bankrollers of TCT (which I assume to be Christian retirees), but it makes me uneasy. What's more, I think it damages our witness. Strangely enough - this pretty positivism has a similar effect to the Baptist unbeliever-damning sign in our city: it gives us, as a generation, a hole to work out of - not a baton to carry forward. My generation, and those within ten years of me in either direction have a unique ability - we can spot scams. Even as a believer, this honestly feels like a scam. As if our secular culture did not offer enough hurdles for building the future ministry of the Church, Christian culture gives us even more.

Omission by Commission

2008-11-25T20:36:00.003-05:00

This past week, I've gotten two unique perspectives on Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats. The first was a fairly typical approach - highlighting ways in which we should respond to the story by acting in certain ways towards the poor. He highlighted ways we could reach out to the hungry, the thirsty, the sick and those in prison.

The second was a bit different, shared with me by a retired pastor who had a great perspective on the story. He pointed out that the parable of the sheep and the goats was actually highlighting sins of omission versus sins of commission. Jesus, at a point in His ministry where He was giving some of His final instructions, focuses on things that we do not do rather than things that we do. Isn't it interesting that we often view these committed sins as the litmus test for holiness in our Christian lives and in the lives of others?

It got me thinking, if sins of omission were that important to Jesus, it seems to me that it must be important to Him what exactly we are filling our time with that prevents us from not doing what He asks us to. I went to a purely Kuyperian college that taught me to view all of life as spiritual (similar to the "new" ideas of Rob Bell). However, while I agree with that concept at its core, I've also seen the adverse effects of Christian laziness and apathy towards holiness that can come along with a Kuyperian worldview.

Once again, this seems to be an issue of people magnetizing themselves towards the extremes - either they focus on holiness so heavily that they view culture as somehow evil or they focus on the goodness of creation that they forget to focus on holiness. The common denominator to both, however, is they both bear the temptation to fill up their lives with things that hold them back from ministering to the hungry, thirsty, sick and those in prison. The holiness camp fears tainting their purity and the Kuyperian camp doesn't feel the constrictions of Biblical rules or regulations. Feeding the hungry, giving drinks to the thirsty, caring for the sick and visiting those in prison gets relegated to the Christian third way: liberals. Since both holiness folk and Kuyperian folk dislike the concept of theological liberalism, getting near the "least of these" is now given even more stigma.

Kuyperians, you want something to redeem in culture? Redeem serving the poor!

The Pastor's Capacity for Self-Deception

2008-11-20T22:32:00.004-05:00

True or False: Pastors have a greater capacity for self-deception than any other profession.

Lately, I've been hearing lots of stories of pastors who have become at-odds with their congregations, pastors who want to teach their congregations a lesson and pastors who cry themselves to sleep every week because they feel unloved or unsuccessful. Let me be clear, there are most definitely those pastors who have gotten a bum rap from their church or those who have simply become victims by no cause of their own, but for today, I'd like to honestly approach the issues which I feel make the above statement true. Obviously, many pastors are very humble, very discerning and very successful, but let's air out some of the temptations.

The God Factor: Let's face it - at the core of most of the issues surrounding the pastor's temptation for self-deception is their "connection" to God. If God is a card to be played, then no one plays it quite as much as those with the collar. Throughout history, pastors have used God to legitimatize all sorts of unimaginable crimes against humanity because of the factors that follow, and the temptation is real to use it yourself.

The Holy Domini: In many traditions, including the one I grew up in, there is a history of reverence for the pastoral office. Pastors were often called "Domini" or "Reverend" as titles that were not to be forgotten. Still, to this day, I hear pastors who insist on people calling them "Rev. Johnson" in all situations, simply to remind the laity that they are not of your stature. In many ways, respect for pastors is not a bad thing - we all appreciate the month of October - but the best pastors have no need for requiring this sort of title recognition, as if it makes one of higher rank in Christ's kingdom.

The Expert Theologian: The previous temptation begs the ultimate question: what is it that sets pastors apart from everyone else in the bench? Depending on the tradition, it might not be very much at all, frankly! Some believe it to be a supernatural call from God, some believe it to be the whimsical decision of the person already holding the position. Still others believe that it is earned through a series of educational or professional stepping stones, as if achieving ordination was some sort of survival run through the drudges of denominationalism. What is common to all, however, is the idea that pastors are gifted with some sort of theological knowledge that is superior to most of the congregation (this seems to be more true the lower on the socio-economic scale the congregation is). Knowing more than others is always a key piece of power. When the pastor can reason away any decision he/she makes from a Biblical/theological proof-texting, they often remain untouchable.

The Scared Porcupine: Pastors often operate from a position of fear. Believe it or not, pastors are often some of the most insecure, fearful people in the world. Some of it because of their circumstances - many churches teeter on the edge of existence and closure, all pastors have people in their churches who want them gone and most pastors, despite the reverance mentioned earlier, go under-appreciated verbally and tangibally. However, some of it is a direct result of the same personality that drives pastors to their positions. Most pastors match one of two personality types - those who are high-intelligence but poor with people or those who are creative people-people but lesser administrators. Without a ready recognition of weaknesses, many pastors are left to react harshly to critique leveled against them. This is why many pastors can be found to be at odds with their congregations when they try to be the authority in every area of the church. Inevitably, they will be weak in their weak areas and, when questioned, may lash out claiming a coup or persecution.

The Great Martyr: There are a great many pastors in the world who see themselves as the ultimate discerners of God's will. Of course they won't admit it - they'll even set up committees to get the opinions of others. However, when their forced ideas don't work, their sermons are only interesting to themselves and they struggle to connect with anyone outside the four walls of their church building, they automatically assume that Satan is lodging an assault against them through culture, innovation and members of their own congregation. What percentage of pastors wake up on Monday morning bemoaning their people, their volunteers, their predecessors, their culture and look for greener pastures when they could be examining their own practices, programs, content and ability to motivate their people and impact their community?

Job Security: How many pastors hold their current positions because it pays for their expenses and fills a need in their stated denomination? If that's your only motivation for ministry, then your vested interest in doing things better will be horribly compromised.

There are really two questions to be answered: How did we get here and how do we get out of a bad situation for many churches and pastors? I have thoughts.......but I'd rather hear yours! God is good.....let the Church arise.

Hello CRC

2008-11-17T22:21:00.003-05:00

Well, this is officially my first post as a Seminary graduate and I could not be more pleased to be "out". There were great parts about seminary and bad parts about it, but quite honestly, Calvin Seminary can be a frustrating place for some people who don't fit the mold all of the time, and I'm one of them. But now, as an official "candidate", I can start imagining my role as a Christian Reformed pastor. For my final exam at seminary, my professor posed the question, "what is good pastoral leadership, what issues do you see in the CRC in the next 10 years and what steps must be taken to address them?" Big question, but here is my best stab. There is undoubtedly more to come......

Excerpt

"Day by day, I am more convinced that the key to effective leadership in the Church is humility – a characteristic that is often very lacking in our profession. I have a colleague at the Seminary who wisely says that the only acceptable sin among Christian Reformed pastors is pride. It causes me to reflect on leaders I have known within churches, at seminaries and in other areas of the “Christian” world. I think this is reflective in the servant leadership we have begun to address in the CRC. Some might assume that just because someone becomes a pastor they are naturally prone to servanthood because of what they give up. But we should know better than anyone that this is not always the case. The definition of leadership from the CRC's "Effective Leadership in the Church" booklet says that “good leadership is helping the congregation embody in its corporate life the practices that shape vital Christian life, community and witness in ways that are faithful to Jesus Christ and the gospel and appropriate to the particular group’s setting, resource and purpose.” I think one of the first keys to this definition is “helping” – which I read as synonymous with “equipping”. This attitude of pouring into others before we worry about ourselves is the essential key of leadership. The contextualization of such a stance is addressed in the second part of the definition which references a particular group of people’s (ie, a congregation’s) unique ministry setting. This is precisely the way that Jesus led, matching His leadership style to the people that were around Him – always a servant, but also always cognizant of the situation that He found Himself in. Reformed polity also supports this line of thinking by making the pastor one of the elders – and giving the group of elders ultimate authority in an individual church. Together, as servant leaders, this group is able to meet the felt needs of the community in which they find themselves.

I believe that the gap that must be bridged in the next decade (if it is possible that soon) is to realize that this servant leadership is a principle and our traditions are often matters of selfish longing. I believe that the CRC, from the top to the bottom, needs to realize that its individual churches are in community contexts which are increasingly distant from and abandon the selfish clinging-to of traditions which inhibit local ministries. It is a sad fact that many of our churches are dying and that precious few are even pretending to keep up with population trends. We have sectionalized evangelistic growth to the “Home Missions” crowd instead of finding ways for established churches and new churches to inform one another for the betterment of us all. Denominationally, we have prioritized perpetuation over innovation and failed to reach many of our communities at their own place of need. Instead of encouraging spiritual growth and discipleship, we have fooled ourselves into thinking that one-day-per-week preaching is far and away of most importance and poured our resources into that area. Our buildings are all to often seen as fortified castles rather than ministry launchpads for impacting our communities.

I believe the task of bridging this gap is a enormous, but I think it is, quite frankly, a matter of life and death for the CRC and it all starts with personnel. If we insist on intellectual capabilities as the most important determinant factor in who can become a senior or lead pastor, we will continue to perpetuate these mistakes. If, however, we begin to see leadership as intellect, love, humility, compassion, service, wisdom and self-sacrifice as co-equal capacities of future leaders in our church – starting in our own Seminary – we may see change not in a decade, but in five decades. This needs to start with professors and mentors who also value these capacities equally. Second, we need to stop the new church/established church standoff that currently exists in our denomination. Each has something to say to the other side, but both are slow to listen. If leaders are simply identified as “churchplanters” because they’re innovative or transformative, then we will continue to perpetuate less innovative and less transformative leaders in established churches, which will seal those churches’ fate. Finally, we need key leadership at the denominational level that will guide us into the next century. Financially, we need to harness the stewardship power of baby-boomers to finance the next decades of work towards innovation – not simply into throwing our resources behind churches that perpetuate. If we can accomplish these grand tasks, we will need to live into that booklet’s definition more than what we currently do."

Pointless Perpetuative Preaching

2008-08-31T00:15:00.005-05:00

For those of you who "preach" or "teach" on Sundays, do you ever wonder what the point is? Far too often, I hear the comment, "I really liked your message - I actually remember what you said Sunday", as if that's a shocking thing. Don't hear me as saying I get those comments a lot, because I've preached plenty of bombs in my young career, but doesn't it get you to thinking: if people don't remember the message of your message or remember the words of one of the songs you sang, what's it really worth?

I was reflecting on the passage from Isaiah which talks about honoring the Sabbath by not speaking "idle words". How would you define idle words? How about half hour sermons that no one remembers 10 minutes after they're given or that don't give any impact to their lives. How about songs that are comfortable or eradicate our white guilt because they're in a different language? Come to think about it, I've sat through quite a few worship services that were chock full of "idle words" - its why there's some churches (and even the chapel at my own school) I have trouble sitting in, even though I affirm a universal Church. The words just seem so empty, as if they're being said for the sake of the words themselves. And yet, there's a strange normalness to it that reassures you that this is "just how it is". Its also why I'm disillusioned more and more with doing pulpit supply. How can someone coming into an unknown church, picking 5 hymns at random and preaching a "canned" message be anything but idle words?

For Pete's sake: if reading the newspaper is as spiritually transformative as going to church, why are we surprised that people don't want to come?

In being frustrated about sermon-giving and sermon-receiving throughout my lifetime (and especially my seminary career), I've often thought that maybe, just maybe, the redemptive panacea for sermonizing was some sort of combination of dynamism and content. After all, people remember when you suck as a sermon-giver (usually more than if you're marginally talented). And when preachers suck, its usually because they lack dynamism or content. Some preachers lack both, and while that's a topic for another day, just consider the main criteria we look for in future pastors: academic excellence (yes, the same academic excellence most churches could care less about).

However, I think that maybe non-idle preaching (or teaching) is more than just personal dynamism or content and I'd like to propose something new: How about if the words you're about to speak or the words you're about to lead people in singing are not passionate, authentic and transformative, keep them to yourself. Seriously....if it comes down to Sunday morning and you haven't got something that meets that criteria, just don't speak or sing. Would it really alter the course of anyone's spiritual direction? Other than make you look like you're not working your 40 hours, would people's lives be any different than if you would have spoken or sung?

I think what Isaiah is getting at in 58:13 is that God's day is not the time to waste time on our own fruitless measures. It sickens me when preachers preach messages that only benefit themselves. It troubles me when preachers try to impress their congregation by what they have to say or what research they've done. I think its unfortunate that so many preachers stand up on Sunday mornings to deliver a message because its what's supposed to be done to continue their "ministry of maintenance". There are a lot of well-educated, talented orators that just need to get off their high horses (or high pulpits), wake up and realize that their speaking is just noise because the chief beneficiary is the self. That is anti-Sabbath.

I've stopped repeating sermons. I hope if you're reading this, you do, too. Unless you really reshape the sermon to fit the context, you run a very high risk of speaking idle words. Preaching/teaching should always be driven by the unique situation to which you are addressing your words. We're far too often tempted to just do things the way they were done in our home church or in a church where we saw it work or how they told us to in school. The disciples were not charged with perpetuation, they were charged with innovation. They didn't do ministry exactly the way Jesus did it in exactly the same places - they each used their gifts and took the message to transform lives where the Spirit led.

I think we all (as speakers and worship leaders) need to own up to the fact that we've spoken "idle words" - words that are just words - with no power to evoke passion, no power to transform, and with no innovation. There might be times when we need to challenge the perpetuation norm. There might be times when we need to just shut up.

Doing Worship Ministry Poor

2008-08-25T15:14:00.004-05:00

There is perhaps nothing in the church that gets me as passionate about ministry as poor, rural churches doing worship ministry well. After all, its where I got my start in ministry and its one of the few areas my brother and I are forcibly harmonious on.

Certainly, worship ministry has become a focus within the last 50 or so years in the Church at large. There are some that would say, and I'm often tempted to be one of them, that worship ministry is currently in an evolutionary pattern, from something that was not sustainable to something that is sustainable for the future growth of the Church. Without getting into that argument's validity, I think its important to point out that churches across the US have positioned themselves at one step along the path from traditional worship to post-modern worship (what I would call post-contemporary worship). Many churches claim to be blended, but blended often only means that you have one foot in two different places on the path or that you can't do anything well at all. That said, one of the main issues in worship ministry today is quality or, as some would put it, excellence. While this might be a commercial/advertising term in many cases, in its purest form, it is attempting to give of our worship "firstfruits" - giving our best, as a congregation, to the Lord.

I've spent my time in several churches over the years that, like all churches, have had their own unique issues in worship music. I've been yelled at, argued with, praised, chided, cheered for, walked out on, gossiped about and about every response you can have in ministry in the short time I've been leading worship. As I stated in the previous post, however, doing ministry in the Greenville/Belding area is often an exercise in the undone - exploring truly new ways of doing things and being resourceful with what you've been given. Once again, these are not all my thoughts, but have been contributed to by fellow worship pastors. To that end, I truly appreciate the thoughts of Dan, Nate, Scott, Jeff, and Paul. This is a journey we traverse together.

As with Youth Ministry, I very much wish somebody would write a book about doing ministry in a poor, rural environment. If that were not possible, I would settle for a book about either a poor or rural environment. In lieu of a book I am not yet experienced enough to write, here are some thoughts specifically about doing worship ministry poor:

Shallow Talent Pool: For years, I neglected to consider how lucky I was to have not one, but two Christian colleges in my backyard in Orange City. It is truly amazing how many college students, both male and female, are capable of being phenomenal worship talents. If you don't believe me, check out your local Christian college's worship service. In many small communities, this worship service is the best thought-out, well-equipped service to be found for miles around. This isn't a mistake - its because in every Christian college dorm, there are 20 guitar players and vocalists galore. Even if you're nowhere close to a Christian college, however, living in a city provides so much untapped talent. Within a few blocks of your church's campus, my guess is that you can find hoards of talent in local bars, coffee shops, high school talent shows and lots of other artistic venues. That simply is not a luxury that affords itself to rural America. Artists, by their very nature, are driven away from the rural, the uneducated and the rural, "Redneck" poor. You don't see poetry readings or Jack Johnson concerts or hippie hangouts in small rural America. You also don't find loads of musical talent.
There is Little Appreciation for the Arts: This point is exhibited by the previous point to some extent, but it should be noted that you cannot prepare an urban worship leader for what they will experience in taking the stage in a town like ours. I've often talked with fellow worship leaders (who are far better musicians than I) about the feeling of disgust and disappointment they feel after walking off the stage of their worship gatherings. In places where the arts are appreciated, musicians on stage are blown away by the energy, passion and sound of the crowd. Here, if you play a musically fantastic or musically defunct service, you get the same response - nothing. In short, there is little motivation for playing well, little motivation for giving your musical "firstfruits" to the Lord. Often, our job as rural worship leaders is to build up and compliment our musicians for a job well done because we know that if we rely on the normal complimentary spirit of the congregation, our musicians will burn out because they feel unsupported.
Artistic Personality + Power = Trouble: There is a truth about those of us with an artistic persuasion that is true - we are moody. I think most artists and musicians would admit to you that they have weak moments of moodiness - depression, elation, rage and passion. This isn't so much a bad thing - its what fuels the beauty of the arts. However, what happens in many small churches is that it provides an opportunity for the worst parts of an artist's personality to become paramount. Think about every small rural church you know of that does not have paid worship personnel; isn't there one person who has taken over the show, bent it to their own needs and desires, driven many other people away and, even though they may be talented, brought the entire worship ministry down with them? Sadly, this is also true in many churches with staffed worship personnel. The sad reality is that any ministry, when there is a leadership void, will produce a leader who exercises control to their own tune over time. When you multiply this reality with the passionate personality of the artist, this is magnified. It is a sad reality that many worship programs - the most visible aspect of a church's ministry - can be and are being done in one or two people.
Lack of Balance: It is a sad truth in many rural congregations that there is a lack of balance between outreach-driven attractional ministry and inreach-driven self-service. It is a true fact that all churches need dimensions of outreach and all churches need dimensions of inreach, but many churches are unable to find anything close to this balance. Sadly, many err dramatically on the side of inreaching. Many times this is due to an ugly combination of inexpensive and undesirable leadership, uneducated perspective, stubborn mindset, unintegrated Christian lifestyles and a disjointed view of outreach. This may sound judgmental, but last weekend I watched a church bonfire with one attendee, a corner Baptist protest with signs condemning motorists with KJV fire & brimstone, a hip-hop concert called "Summerfest for Jesus" and a ministry year kick-off with roughly one half of the church attending the one Sunday morning service. There are things that happen in the rural, poor church that are inexplicable, personalities that are disgusting and ideas that are horribly ill-formed. Without a system of accountability, many of these activities happen within our church walls and are branded with the name of Christ.
Irrational Discussions: I've often heard the comment from younger folks who are working for worship change: "Why should I continue to embrace the other side of this discussion when they are simply tolerating us to our faces and gossiping behind our backs?" It is true that there are many irrational discussions that take place behind the scenes and sometimes on the scene of worship ministry based almost completely on personal preferences that have been misidentified as Biblical norms. We've all seen it on both sides. However, in a poor rural culture that believes email forwards about Barack Obama being a Muslim and the starting petitions to stop the government from charging to use your email, its easy to see how irrational arguments can become stubborn shouting matches
Burnout: It is not surprising that so many people burn out. For the average church musician in a small town, you might be the only drummer or only guitarist your church has access to. In that case, they want you to play every Sunday, every service. For paid worship staff, this means that the grass looks greener in the city with every passing day and the endless cycle of talented ministry staff fleeing for large, suburban churches is perpetuated once again. It is tiring to run a basic worship ministry in your average suburban church - it is maddeningly exhausting to run one in a poor rural church where you are under-appreciated, often-maligned and tormented for shielding what musicians you do have from church persecution.
Good Leadership is Hard to Find: If you've worked in a poor, rural church you already know about this one. Whereas in many churches, you'd have a quick short list of people who would be good leaders and point people for areas of worship ministry, doing ministry in this kind of a setting is often a one horse parade. You're happy if one of your musicians listens to Christian radio and knows some of the songs. You're happy if your instrumentalists will commit to showing up every two or three weeks. You're happy if you ever can hold a practice with everyone caring enough to show up. However, if you've worked in a suburban church, even a small one, you know that these pleasantries of the rural church are not enough to base a consistent, quality worship ministry on. They're a start, but they're not everything.
Under-Resourced: When I came to my current church, the entire area of worship ministry had a budget that was just big enough to buy bulletin stock and communion supplies. Even with a good degree of lobbying on my part, we still are working with lots of equipment that either belongs to our musicians or has been donated from our own personal stashes. We cobble-job electronics all the time, we work EBay and Craig's List so we can buy the bare essentials and have some money left over. We have equipment that's not even legal by Federal Government standards and often times violate copyrights out of necessity. And we're a well-resourced worship ministry in this community. It is amazing to hear stories from other churches about shortcuts they've used, laws they've violated and one-man-band-type performances because they were not given the resources to do what was asked of them. Good worship ministry takes money - even bad worship ministry takes money. Don't take it for granted.

As I said in my previous post, many of the aspects of doing ministry poor can be horribly frustrating. Its no surprise that the most talented staff and church attenders with an artistic barometer head for suburban and urban centers. There are services after which (and during which) I would like to break down and cry or just cancel. One of my fellow pastors said to me that he often feels he could be replaced by a musical chimpanzee with cymbals and the congregation wouldn't bat an eye. But perseverance pays off. Our worship ministry is leading the way in our church in terms of growth and accountability. We're plugging in non-Christians who become part of our community of faith. We're resourcing other churches to help give them a step up (check out the free Worship Arts Retreat). We've become an artistic haven for those who, at the very least, can gain energy from other artists even if they don't feel it from the congregation. We're dedicated to not burning out talent, but home-growing it through the involvement of people without compromising our "firstfruit" excellence. And most of all, we're offering our worship to a worthy God who loves the redneck as much as the white collar, the rural as much as the suburban and the farmer as much as the lawyer. Our labor is not in vain.

Doing Youth Ministry Poor

2008-08-20T21:43:00.003-05:00

Back to a little blogging before the start of my final few classes which will, undoubtedly, get me riled up enough and leave me bored enough to get back into the blogosphere. So, here is the first of three blog entries about Doing Ministry Poor.

I was thinking back the other day about my Youth Ministry education in college compared to what my youth ministry looks like today. I've further reflected on it in conjunction with two fellow area youth pastors who have had to do ministry amongst the culture shock of post-factory Greenville and Belding, so thanks to Dan and Paul for their thoughts.

What is clear to all of us is that we are in a situation that our youth ministry educations and youth ministry experience did not prepare us for. Its very interesting to me, and rather frustrating, that the vast majority (if not all) of the ministry innovation resources you can pick up at your local Christian bookstore are geared at middle class and higher folks in urban or suburban areas. Don't believe me? Search CBD or Amazon and, other than Tex Sample, you won't find anything under the category "rural" or "blue collar". Theoretically, ministry innovations and models are conceptual, and therefore just need to be applied differently in urban, suburban and rural churches. What we're finding more and more is that it is the very models of youth ministry which must be altered to work in our area.

The one experience which does inform ministry here for me was working in Appalachia. Having known folks working in Martin County, KY (the former poorest county per capita in the country) is consistently similar to working in Montcalm County, MI (the current poorest county per capita).

Many churches have given up. Some churches have given up because they have been backed into a financial corner by their own parishioners or by poor mortgage decisions. Some churches insist on doing white collar ministry in a blue collar community, pinning their hopes on the bank employees, civic leaders and Grand Rapids commuters. One such church recently left our neighborhood and built anew 5 miles outside the city limits. Its really hard to blame them - after all, ministry innovations, resources and concepts are geared for white collar ministry, seminaries train pastors for white collar ministry, white collar ministry is more economically secure and white collar ministry is usually more consistent, with people taking responsibility in areas of volunteerism and leadership.

Other than when I lived in Appalachia, I have always been a part of white collar ministries and it is all I knew. Its all many of us knew before coming here. Its all many of our churches knew before the factories left town. Its all older brothers and sisters of current young people knew and now their younger siblings are left with scaled-back programs and non-staff leaders.

The distinctives of doing "poor" youth ministry, as I see it, are as follows. First of all, events must be low-cost or free. We give away virtually everything and when we do plan the occasional out-of-town trip, we end up covering the entire cost of those kids whose parents can't afford food for their own tables or like to spend the money on themselves. Second, "poor" youth ministry doesn't value the arts or technology like white collar ones do. While kids everywhere still love Guitar Hero and big screen TV's, blogs, big name Christian concerts, contemporary worship services, art shows and the like are out the window. Third, teaching must be more innovative. The brunt facts are that lecturing is not attractional and small groups are hit or miss in terms of effectiveness. Where you go from that depends on how creative you can get. Fourth, good lay leadership is tougher to come by in blue collar churches. This is especially true for anything that happens on a day other than Sunday, but its true for Sundays, too. Fifth, community collaboration is the one of the few rays of hope for smaller churches which can't afford a youth staff position, but that truth is unequivocally hitched to the benevolence of larger churches who are willing to be sacrificial of themselves. Sixth, it occurs to me that "success" in youth ministry might be measured differently in the blue collar community. Whereas in a white collar ministry, success might be students in discipleship programs, individual mission efforts, Christian college attendence or marrying a Christian partner, it seems to me we might be ecstatic about our students not winding up in jail, getting into community college, not getting pregnant before age 21, or, ironically, getting out of town. Finally, in a more immediate way than in an urban, educated area, quality rural churches do not start at ground zero in terms of legitimacy. To put it another way, extremist churches, which often gain a more prevalent voice in less-educated communities, leave level-headed churches with ground to make up, even before being evangelistic or missional in their communities. In short, we need to convince the public that we're not naive idiots before we can even have an audience to share the gospel. If you don't believe me, check out my pictures from our good friends here in town: Liberty Photos.

What occurs to me is that youth ministry here (and in Appalachia) feels like a more needed ministry. Ultimately, in the consumer-driven culture that is youth ministry (maybe the biggest consistency between urban & rural), its sometimes easy to go home at the end of the day and wonder if your presence was really needed - if your youth ministry is even really needed. After all, stats show that kids who graduate from churches with dedicated youth programs fall into moral decay at the same rate as those without them and ultimately spiritually mature parents generally spawn spiritually mature students and vice versa regardless of what we do as youth pastors. However, in an area without hope such as Greenville, Belding or Appalachia - where depression is as much psychological as economic - where entire generations have become non-religious, perhaps doing youth ministry here, no matter how thankless and frustrating, is youth ministry in its very best form.

The Church of God had it Right All Along...

2008-05-29T12:34:00.003-05:00

I had a short chat with my senior pastor on Sunday after church that really got me thinking about the future of ecclesiology and the mindsets of Christians within our context and that of my context when I'm his age. We were reflecting on the patterns we've seen in our experiences of the Church and he remarked, "I think the Church in general is moving towards a real Church of God theological perspective, but I don't think the Church of God, or any other denomination, really likes it!"

He really had a pretty good point. As I think about some of the Church of God distinctives, what comes to mind right away are membership, sacraments, ecclesiology and theology.

Certainly theology sets the Church of God apart. What is strange is that, even though Wesleyan holiness is the main theological vein in the movement, there is a general openness to other theological perspectives that, although limited, is less limited than other traditions. It also leaves room for a theological perspective that is not "sold out" to either one side or the other - neither 100% Calvinistic nor 100% Arminian or another theological perspective. Its rare to find purists like this outside seminaries anymore, and this seems to fit in fine with a Church of God perspective.
Secondly, the Church of God has always seen itself as a movement more than a denomination. Sure, there's denominational tendencies that are inescapable, but the movement has a core value of individual church autonomy and state-by-state autonomy. This is certainly a trend in the Church at large, even in the heavily-centralized traditions such as Methodism or Lutheranism. The focus is less and less on the denomination as a centralized power and more on the denomination as a willing association of churches.
Thirdly, the overarching feeling in the Church at large on the topic of sacraments seems to be less sacramental than ever in terms of mystery. Certainly, they are still seen as a symbol and as a tangible reflective instrument, but little more.
Finally, the Church of God's approach to membership at its outset may have been well ahead of its time. Its approach says that all Christians are automatically members of the Church and thus they have no reason for keeping membership data. Free movement between individual churches is not that big of a deal in our movement and all Christians, regardless of where they worship on Sunday morning, are considered full brothers and sisters (communicated most directly through an open table). A recent article in the Grand Rapids Press highlighted the very fact that this is a trend across Christendom and we all have to deal with it. People are no longer swayed by the name on the front of the building.

Now, these are interesting points, but in our estimation, these will be even more interesting in 40 years. For now, there is still a good chunk of the Church that is over 60, many of which who are still loyal to a name on a building or a family's direct history with an individual church. What will all this mean for the Church in 40 years. While some might think this is profoundly scary, I think its profoundly hopeful - pushing the Church to focus on holistic, missional ministry and a community-based approach. Churches who are still relying on their denominational affiliation or a family loyalty will probably close their doors - and that's probably alright. Maybe the Church of God had it right all along...

The Marker

2008-05-28T09:51:00.003-05:00

The picture I chose for my new blogger title banner for a purpose. If you saw Rob Bell on tour last summer or have watched the "Everything is Spiritual" DVD, you probably already know where I'm going. Bell has a unique way of looking at things that really fits the way I think about things and often makes me wonder why his approach is so revolutionary.

As part of his long talks last summer, Bell used the illustration of the marker he held in his hand to show the difference between how people see things in three dimensions. He explained that if you look at a marker from the side, it appears to be a rectangle - a square with two long sides and two short sides. However, if you look at it from the front or the back, you see it as a circle. Any cylinder would have the same effect - a pop can or anything else similarly shaped. He asked how you would respond if someone asked you if it that marker was a rectangle or a circle - all you could say would be "Yup." He then made a simple theological example: predestination versus free-will. Is it possible that God looks down on all our bickering about black-and-white theological concepts and just says, "Yup."

Now, I have to be careful since I'm in candidacy limbo in a particular denomination that really likes the "black" of the "black-and-white" distinctions, but I have to say - is he that off base here? How small must our view of God be to say that his dealings with our world happen according to our pithy human philosophical and theological categories? And yet Bell comes away from this looking like a revolutionary....or a heretic.

What kind of micro-structured theological bio-dome have we created for our almighty God to live in? I think God makes sense - I think He's logical. I think we can trust the revelation of God in His word. I also think that you can still say you think that a Reformed or Wesleyan or Catholic way of looking at things is most consistent with God's revelation. But I don't think its out of line to say that, within the wideness of God's nature, there is at least the possibility of fuzzy categories - of individual discernment - of logic that surpasses our own. I think that's a good thing, not a heresy.

Re-Launch

2008-05-28T09:12:00.002-05:00

I've decided to relaunch my blog. Part of the reason is that I want to take a slightly different approach to what I write about. I figured I was being far too negative and instead want to emphasize the positive. I'd rather define myself in terms of what I believe instead of what I do not. Its my dream that this is a direction the Church would go, as well. The second reason for re-launch is that I'm in a different stage of my ministry career....post-seminary. Even though I still have two classes yet to finish, I've jumped through all the major hoops and will essentially just be dotting I's and crossing T's next fall. This means I have much more time to focus on my ministry and really begin seeing myself solely as a pastor - not as a pastor/student hybrid. I hope this means I'll blog a lot more....maybe even every other day.

But finally, I want to relaunch because I'm convinced now, more than ever, that missional living is a key for Christianity - throughout time and especially in today's world. Therefore, while I'll keep commenting and keep some semblance of an "edge", I'll also keep a focus on how missional living manifests itself in today's world. So look for the practical, look for the missional, look more often and hopefully you'll not be disappointed.

Labrynthspel - Walking the Line

2008-02-05T00:04:00.001-05:00

First of all, my apologies for, once again, taking a month off from blogging. I had a rough end of December/beginning of January that caused me to reflect, but now I'm back on track and no less tantalizing or scintillating than before. Also, as most of my good blogging ideas do, this has come to me paired up with another....so a second blog entry has been written and will be posted shortly.

Now then, when I was younger, we had this game closet which stored all the crappy games my mom had picked up at rummage sales - some busted, others boring, and the occasional cool one. Most confusing to me, however, was one of these monstrosities you'll see on the right, a labrynthspel. "A what?" you might ask. A labrynthspel. Essentially they consist of two floating wooden surfaces controlled by knobs on two connected sides, one to control the north/south movement, if you will, and one to control the east west movement. The idea is to keep the tilt correct enough so that the marble which is sitting on the top of the board doesn't fall in one of the holes, but rather, makes it through the maze to the other corner.

Today, I had a conversation with another student who's having a rough time seeing themselves as Christian Reformed - not because of the theology, but because of the people and because of the practice. I have to admit that this is something I struggle with a lot, even being told point blank, "Mark, you're not CRC!" Maybe I am just embarking on a vocational facade, trying to be a non-CRC pastor in the CRC church. Maybe the only people who "get me" are the fringe home missions-types who challenge the norm. Maybe I should just stick with the Church of God or go non-denom or just find a denomination that isn't so out of character for me.

But my conversation today helped. He was complaining to me that CRC people are just too obsessed with "walking the line" when it comes to our engagement with the culture. You know the line - being in the world, but not of it - engaging and transforming culture rather than sticking our heads in the sand. This is what Dordt College is all about! But his argument went something like this: people in the CRC go too far to the "worldly" side of things - they immerse themselves so much in culture that there is not enough distinguishable difference between Christians and the world. There are just some things that Christians shouldn't do. Porn would be an easy example...but what about television, what about movies (and what kind of movies) - oh, and what about music? You know, even the Christian music market has become dreadfully commercial, so should we boycott that, too? All this is very confusing.

It has been fascinating to work in the Church of God, a holiness denomination, which stresses holy living, perhaps best represented by the commonly heard phrase, "We don't smoke, drink, dance or chew, or hang around with those that do." Many of our older members can quote that off the top of their heads as the common refrain of their parents. My senior pastor recently attended a denominational pastor's retreat where the issue of alcohol use came up among new people applying for ordination, often a common theme in emerging-type churches. While it fascinates me that they can hold to any sort of belief as a non-confessional "movement", it fascinates me even more that they tow the party line on alcohol for no apparent reason. Even my senior pastor, who is a tetoller like myself, admits that there's no real Biblical support for the position, its more of a traditional purist holiness party line. But its a line.

Now, granted, the Church of God or Wesleyans in general might have more lines than the CRC does, but it doesn't line off everything! In fact, it only tends to line things off that are culturally contextual (alcohol is a no-no in the American Church of God, but the German wing drinks). So, in the Church of God, we've got lines, but they're limited in scope and rationality.

What my friend was arguing with me was that, in the CRC, we need more lines. He said that, because we have so much ambiguity and allow for so much Christian freedom in so many areas, fallen people have no real direction to go other than a downward spiral. He argued, like my ethics professor, that Christians can get involved in politics and movies and the like, but the risk of falling into that lifestyle far outweighs the possibility of redeeming it, and especially to what extent it will be redeemed.

This hit me hard as a Dordt College Defender. After all, Luke Schelhaas, writer for "Touched by an Angel" and "Smallville" was touted as the heroic alumni for engaging culture and attempting to redeem it. What about Kuyper describing Christ as shouting over every square inch of creation, "This is mine!"? What about Colson arguing for Christian worldview defining the approach as Christian or secular instead of defining the action as Christian or secular? There might not be Christian art or Christian music, but there sure as heck is a way to do art or music as a Christian in a redemptive way. I actually side with Carl Zylstra on this one....I don't have to go to NC-17 movies to reach my culture for Christ, but I sure as heck better be engaging His good creation.

Still not convinced? How about this. There's really only two extremes here when it comes to "worldly actions" or "worldly amusements" as the CRC has historically called them. On the one hand, you could fully submerge yourself with culture, like a chameleon, unable to tell you apart from your backdrop. The other option is the Amish one - pull yourself completely out of culture and try to be affected by it the least. Anything else is a matter of discernment. Yup, I just said it. Let's take TV as a good example. You've really got three logical options as a Christian. First, you watch whatever you want to, whenever you want to and get sucked in little by little. Second, you don't have a TV at all. Once again, good logical option, especially if you follow my friend's logic. Third, you keep the TV, count technology as a good gift of God's creation and watch TV in a Christian way. That isn't a comment on posture or on which channels or on maximum TV rating - it is an example of starting with a Christian worldview, enjoying God's creation and practicing discernment. What is not logical is dumping cable out of moral precept and keeping the TV for local channels. Half an apple is still apple. So, I would argue that for almost every forseeable action and worldly amusement, there are two Christian approaches: abstain or engage with discernment.

But here's my issue. I don't like drawing lines in the sand where Scripture does not. My Greek professor at Seminary said one thing I actually valued: "Shout what Scripture shouts and whisper what Scripture whispers" - be obnoxious about the obvious things, and tread lightly on things where Scripture goes either way. The CRC is not Mennonite and it is not holiness and its not fundamentalist. What it is is a culturally-engaging denomination. But with privilege comes responsibility. What my friend saw was selling out to culture - a moral decay within the CRC community that was as bad or worse than the one outside it. So we've reached the crux of the matter: if we are going to be a denomination or a Church that walks the line, then we sure as heck better be preaching discernment.

If you're going to throw rocks at culture, throw rocks at culture. If you're going to abstain from culture, abstain from it. But, by all means, if you are going to engage culture for Christ, then you better be constantly practicing discernment. For pastor and leaders in general, it is our responsibility to remind people where they are walking the line. Teach discernment - teach engagement. But pastors must also be thermometers - able to tell if a group is swinging too far in one direction or the other. When you normalize an audio file, you pitch the extremes - the high sounds and the low sounds. We need to realize in which directions we're overstepping the boundaries and swing the crux of the people back to the middle again. The pastor is like the labrynthspel operator, tilting the table back and forth, trying to keep the balance because discerned balance is a commitment of the church he represents.

Especially as a postmodern, blurry lines with boundaries are good - in fact, they're all over in Christianity. But we need to keep reminding ourselves and others that we're walking the line.

Postmodern Christianity: Part I

2007-12-10T14:41:00.000-05:00

In a recent conversation with a former church planter, we ran into a bit of a impasse about the place of denominational churches in post-modernity, especially in terms of church planting and newly-developed churches. To shed even more light on the topic, the conversation had implications for me as a future pastor of such a church and the flexibility of the CRC or any denomination with a church order to enfold a church plant as an "organized" member. Of course, there are monumental things at stake here: the accountability of individual churches to a denominational body, the theological cohesion of a new church to the church order of all the other member churches, the ability of self-determination within a congregation, the integrity of the church planter and Elisha pastor and the theology of church splits.

The issue centered around this idea: if a newly-developed church has theological convictions or even polity convictions that are contrary to the receiving denomination, the new church should either override its own convictions for the sake of the denomination or find a new denomination. I understand the concept, at least in theory. For one, most church plants are denominational, meaning that they are funded by a denominational body with set governing rules and creedal or confessional statements. In addition, the argument is put out there that people should join a denomination with which they fit theologically. The rules are there; if you don't like them, find another denomination! There's 25 churches in this zip code, after all! This is the "don't-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out" approach. In fact, it might even have a nice ecumenical face: we're all part of the body of Christ, but this part has its own way of doing things.

I have several objections to this argument laid out by my professor. On the one hand, theological congruency is necessary in practice for the sake of unity. However, theological congruency in theory should not be nearly as absolute. If the above concept of "just find another denomination that fits your beliefs" holds, then we should have never experienced any change to church order, no change to confessional standards, and no change to church structure. In fact, we've experienced each of those to such an extent that we can't even publish a hymnal with the RCA because our confessions look so different. To put a face on this issue, take something like women in office. If you hold to the line of thinking that says "try the church up the street", a change should never have happened in the CRC's interpretation of women in office. It did. Why? Because people believed in the denomination enough that they weren't willing to leave it over one non-salvific issue. Now take an issue like infant baptism. You might be inclined to tell a new church that if they want to dedicate infants instead of baptizing them that they should just find a new denomination, the system is not working. There is a system in place where churches or individuals can appeal to governing bodies, both regional and national, to challenge such a non-salvific issue. That these processes are in place is evidence in and of itself that the system was meant to be elastic. Maybe the challenge is denied. Then that church must make a decision to stay and comply or disagree and go.

In reference to my last post, we also differed on what it meant to be ecumenical. In a way, polite denominationalism is a form of ecumenicity. Their definition includes keeping the status quo and shuffling people into pre-existing categories according to theological conviction. My theory on ecumenicity is a communal one, one that that seeks the combination of denominations, however idealistic. In their mind, they were more ecumenical than I was, and in my mind, I was more ecumenical than they were. We were speaking different languages.

What we acknowledged, as well, is that there is a deeper philosophical difference that we had. Both people on the other side of the table from me were 55 or older and here I was as a (new) 24-year-old. Their mindset is logical and denominational. My mindset is post-modern and communal. As one of the men talked with disgust about the tendency of "emerging" churches to gather together and decide on what direction their body should take, I thought to myself how similar this sounded to my own convictions and how similar it sounded to the church language of creating a vision or mission for our churches. Of course, this concept is dangerous for denominationally-planted groups. While, out of the one side of their mouth they say to join the church that fits them theologically, they have to acknowledge that a denominational church planter who does not tow the party line and allows theological or administrative incongruencies is irresponsible and reprehensible. Why? At the heart its all practical. We commissioned this planter and we paid the bills. They have a point.

Many people ask me why I'm still in the CRC, or in a denomination at all. Why subject yourself to three years of onslaught? Why subject yourself to the pains of Greek and Hebrew exegesis? Why subject yourself to the narrow theological viewpoints of the education at Calvin? Why join and pastor in a denomination where you don't completely agree?

Firstly, I love the Church - the holy catholic and apostolic one. Second, the CRC has faults like any other denomination, but it is one heck of a solid product. I mean, from top to bottom, this is a well thought-out, well organized, efficiently run, perspective-laden, quality and faithful organization. Other than the Mennonites, no one can boast a program like CRWRC. No other denomination can pull off the kind of publishing quality that the CRC does. No other denomination can initiate a version of the Bible that replaced the KJV. No other denomination can survive the kind of split the CRC did in the 90's without missing a step.

And I believe this denomination is elastic enough to endure much more change than it already has. I think that the next 25-50 years in the CRC will bring forth an unprecedented rate of change. I think Christian education will decline on a national level, infant dedications will happen within our denomination, strictness in church polity will be abandoned, theological congruency will be held less high, and that homosexuality will prove to be much more of a non-issue than we previously thought. And I would be surprised in 50 years if we had not joined with the RCA.

Elasticity of theological congruency is a post-modern value and will lead to more and more questioning, more and more re-evaluation of things that had previously been accepted at face value. People shouldn't be surprised that I'm a post-modern thinker and remaining in a denomination. People should realize that the only reason I can remain within a denomination is because I am a post-modern thinker.

Apophaticism (Say what?)

2007-11-26T13:30:00.000-05:00

I learned the other day what I am. Theologically, that is. One of my professors put the term "apophatic theology" on a list of terms we should know before we graduate. Initially, I had no clue what it meant, but the more I studied the topic and learned how it functioned in Christianity, I was more able to see that its exactly what I've been grasping for throughout my upbringing in a doctrine-focused denomination and now seminary.

Apophatic theology is based around the idea of describing God in terms of what he is not instead of in terms of what he is. Its closely related to negative theology. For example, instead of saying that God is "good", we would say that God is "not evil". While that sounds stupid, it has profound implications for how we do theology. If you're an avid reader of my blog, you know I've proposed in the past that one of the great weaknesses of the quality theology in the Reformed tradition is its lack of priority when it comes to the issue of the acknowledgment of mystery. Of course, I'm not fully apophatic. I believe, as Reformed theology points out, that there is something called revelation: God showing us something about himself. There's special revelation that we receive in the Scriptures, general revelation which is revelation we receive in nature and one another, and then there's divine accommodation, or God making ultimate principles real to us on our own terms.

So then the question in my mind runs right to percentages, since I have an economics mind. As far as I know, no writer of systematic theology or catechism teacher has ever made a statement like, "We know about 95% of what God is like," but often times that's the way it comes off, if not higher. In all the rigmarole of arguing theological principles (often times even those veiled in mystery), we often completely forget about the part of God that he has not or can not reveal because it is too grand. Its natural, of course, to spend time on the known. We have to, in fact, because we can't have seminary classes where all we do is wonder. Wondering is hard to grade.

But try this on for size. Let's say, apophatically, that we know 3% of who God is and the workings of the universe. Would that be enough for salvation? It has to be, because the Bible says so. Could it be that God is big enough that we only know .0000001%, and that's enough? Of course it is....God's infinite. Now what kind of implications would this have for theology? How much time would you spend on systematics? How much time would you spend in the Word? How much time would you spend in prayer? There's a lot of implications here.

So maybe .00000001% creates a deistic God or an impersonal God. I'll compromise. How about 20%. No? You still want 95%? I think the origin of the earth, the mystery of human choice, and the spark of life at conception should be worth at least 6% on this scale. So no, I won't buy at 95%.

Here's the point: don't promote a theology that explains God 100%. Its an easy trap to fall into. In fact, I would argue that many of the Reformers and the systematic theologians who followed them got stuck trying to explain 100%. What if we acknowledge only 50%? What does that do for church splits? How many denominations would we have? 50% less? Where does that put my discussion of new churches joining denominations?

In many ways, the Reformation was a reaction against the RCC claiming they had too high a percentage. In many ways, the non-denomitional movement and the Emerging Church is a reaction to our assertion that we know too much. You know what? They're probably right.

I love theology, I really do. I wouldn't be at seminary if I didn't. I wouldn't write in this blog if I didn't. But I want to give theological discussions and catechisms and treatises and even (gasp) the Bible a perspective check. Where do you fall on how much you think we know about God and the way things are? 10%? 98%? 40%? Where does your church (to an outsider) stand?

Let's roll.

Experiencing God Diffently in Worship

2007-11-03T22:06:00.000-05:00

This past weekend was the General Assembly of the Church of God in Michigan, and I served my role as a delegate. This is my second year going, and so I'm more free to notice things rather than try to remember everyone's names and network with lots of new people.

I had a sort of epiphany during our closing worship service. Our worship leader was an African-American woman who I thought looked like Condoleeza Rice and her TV anchorman husband on the bass guitar. She had lots of energy and was a great worship leader....for her context. I was sitting up in the front corner, so I got a chance to observe almost everyone in the place. First of all, I noticed her own son, with his head on the table, probably napping-clearly uninterested sitting at the table next to me. Next I noticed the large contingent of African-American leaders in the group experiencing worship like they had been all weekend - fists pumping, amen-ing, mmhmm-ing, raising hands, etc. Then I noticed a large contingent of middle-aged white people: a little milder than their African-American cohorts, but still with hands raised, swaying, pointing to heaven, etc. I noticed the few people in my age group (20-30), mostly youth pastors, interacting with the music but not selling out. Finally, I noticed my table, good stone-faced Danish people from my church, similar to the Dutch ones I'd grown up with.

All this got me to thinking: how do I experience God, and do I look down on other people if they experience Him differently? I'm met with this constantly in Detroit at Sinai-Grace Hospital. Often times, the God of the African-American Baptist people I talk with seems so much different than my own that I feel like I have more coherence with my Orthodox Rabbi professor. In that case, it may just be that my Rabbi is used to putting his theology into logical categories, like I am. In worship, I'd probably place myself between the arm-folded Danes and the charismatic middle age types.

I think one of the ways that this really rears its head is worship style. The truth of the matter is that those of us who are worship leaders have all drank the "experiential" kool-aid to some extent. We have to because its undeniable. What's interesting for us as is that our jobs, by their very nature, seem to require us to pander to whatever the current generation is because we're at a point in time where the way people experience God has changed drastically and distinctly in the last 50 years. We still have people in our benches that experience God best through straight-up organ hymns. Then, even though the CRC seems to completely have missed this step, there is an entire generation of "big worship" people. This is the classy-suited-big-haired-mega-church style people who sing all songs that were popular from about 1985-1993 (Majesty & Thy Word are classics and, interestingly, not that dissimilar). There's a surprisingly large amount of these people - they're Wimber's folks - raising hands, yelling amens, but still very skeptical of modern worship or emerging church stuff. Finally, there's this whole generation coming up now that identifies with the emerging style of worship or the Chris-Tomlin-modern style of worship. Add into that a fairly consistent worship African-American gospel style, and you've got 4 different kinds of oil being thrown into water.

So, is it okay to say one way is preferable to another, or do we have to acknowledge all as equally good, in true politically-correct style? Now, I regularly get disgusted when I watch Christian cable television, even though I know many churches in the South that eat that stuff up. I find the theology of many of the patients (and the pastors) I meet in Detroit poorly-formed and illogical (not just because I disagree, but I objectively think its illogical). You can really take this argument a long way. If your experience of God is co-equal with everyone else's (as my CPE program tells me it is), then you have zero basis for questioning an experience that is Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu. These are just different experiences of God, be they in other faiths, or in other theologies (ways of talking about God).

Ultimately, someone has to make some sort of qualitative statement, so here goes one try: I think that emerging/modern worship is more seeker-friendly than "big worship" or organ-based hymns. Now that might evoke a "duh" out of you because you know there's no churchplant in any denomination that has ported in a pipe organ in the last 10 years, but really, that's a judgmental statement. Do I think there's a place for other experiences of God? Yes. But I think we have to be realists here. Churches that have not gotten modern, emerging or experiential in their worship have shrunk, as a general rule. Now, there are churches that do traditional worship REALLY well that manage to grow, but I would offer that quality tradition is simply a better prescription for delay of the inevitable than others have found.

So try this on for size: I felt uncomfortable in our GA's worship service today because of all the amen-ing, hand-raising, fist-pumping, liturgical-dancing, and old-people-that-can't-clap-on-the-beat. And, for a while, I felt guilty for being uncomfortable. After all, I'm a worship pastor, I should be able to "get into" all sorts of worship, and usually I can. But I couldn't help thinking to myself: if I took a non-Christian in here right now, they would be scared shitless and think we are crazy. Now, some might say its because the Spirit was moving. But last I checked, the Spirit also empowered mission and God is not in conflict with Himself. I don't have a good answer for this question, but I do know that I can be most faithful to my calling by playing coffee-house-style-white-20-something worship music in my context and its growing the Kingdom. By their fruits shall you know them. Can we be evaluative of people's ways of experiencing God, or is that just politically incorrect?

Alcohol & Holiness

2007-10-30T21:19:00.000-05:00

This Thursday, our Seminary community will take up what will undoubtedly be one of the most controversial topics ever addressed, let women in office: alcohol consumption by Christians. I've never quite known what to think about this subject, and I'll be the first to admit that my defenses for not drinking have changed over the years. In that light, it might be possible to say that I'm predisposed against alcohol consumption and therefore any argument I try and present is tainted because its simply a new sheath for an old sword. While that might be true, I've found lots of congruency in the holiness movement, understanding their approach to issues of social morality such as this, and I think its a helpful point to consider as I approach the town hall meeting on Thursday.

We have always been taught in Reformed circles that there are two types of people: those who try to earn their salvation (Catholics & holiness types) and those who rest in the election and consequent freedom of God's grace (Calvinists & Lutherans). Those are pretty distinct lines to draw. For one, there's no way that either tradition could totally rest in those categories and have any sort of relevancy. If Catholics and holiness traditions truly had no other purpose in theology than to try and achieve perfection, the movement would have fallen apart. Same with Calvinists/Lutherans: there has to be some moral and social conscience to temper Christian freedom (Paul's admission that all things are permissible for him is grossly expanded here).

I think both sides have their positives and negatives, but in the interest of space and time, I'm going to make an argument for the holiness side in the issue of alcohol consumption because I think it is more legitimate than my Calvinist colleagues are willing to admit.

First of all, we need a redefinition of "Christian freedom" from a holiness perspective. After all, they don't deny Christian freedom, but simply recategorize it. Instead of saying that Christian freedom is the right to do anything God doesn't specifically prohibit, it instead lays the doctrine at the feet of Jesus, saying that Christian freedom is the right to follow Christ more closely. See the difference? One is scouring the Bible for loopholes, while the other is giving the Bible the benefit of the doubt and filling in those cracks. Rather than not doing what the Bible doesn't say we can't do, holiness attempts to do more fully that which the Bible says we should do.

Secondly, the very definition of holiness has its roots in sanctification. Yes, John Wesley went to far at the end of his life, as others have, to promote a perfectionist doctrine. However, if you look at the roots of sanctification, its not pharisitical at all.....its the the same continuing sanctification Calvinists & Lutherans talk about. So if the rule of holiness is sanctification, then there is, at the very core of holiness, a concept of being "set apart". Yes, God sets us apart by dividing us from unbelievers at the last day, but lets think harder about this. How are we "set apart" during the week? Of course, this looks different for all of us. But in some way, we are all attempting to set ourselves apart from the world through moral action as the continuing work of sanctification is applied by the Holy Spirit. Paul continually calls us to a life that is different, a life that is "beyond reproach". In an age where alcohol has become the common currency of our culture, a legal drug, isn't it worth considering that maybe it is worth setting ourselves apart in this area - not in condemnation, but in faithful submission?

Thirdly, this is a different question for those in leadership or in future leadership than it is for laity. Sorry, but its true. In my current charge, my contract specifically states that neither my wife nor I are to drink any alcohol while employed by the church. My wife initially bucked this, not because she's a raging alcoholic (she's mostly given up alcohol for my sake), but because it violated her definition of Christian freedom. The church doesn't have a right to take that away! Well, thankfully, I've found a community that, like I, has chosen to use abstinence from alcohol as one way of "setting themselves apart". Its a very practical one in our congregation - we have several recovered alcoholics, several people with relatives who were victims of alcohol-related deaths, and people who are stuck with alcohol-related birth defects. Our community drinks their problems away - we do not. Now take this seriously, pastors and leadership in churches: you are held to a higher standard. Why are you willing to subject yourself to a suit & tie standard, a living-in-a-stinky-parsonage standard, a roast-pastor standard, a church polity standard, but not an alcohol-free standard? There's lots of things I don't do now that I'm a pastor that I might have done as a Christian in laity: TV shows, language, cigars, reckless driving, being a funny nuisance, playing pranks on Wal-Mart employees....all things I might not consider sinful, but also don't consider to reflect well on my church, reflect well on my congregation. Hanging out in a bar (and I would argue drinking at all) is one of those things.

Finally, there is the issue of the weaker brother. You may have been biting your tongue the entire time you read this, but now want to scream: "Why can't Christians reclaim alcohol for the Kingdom of God? Why can't we model a faithful use of alcohol?" While this is the one point at which I'm usually willing to yield the floor, I have continually been bombarded at the denominational seminary by drunkenness and pressure to drink. To this, I simply have to shake my head. My wife doesn't like it when I smoke cigars every once in a while. What would happen if I smoked them a lot and then blew the smoke in her face? You know. Well, I've got news for you, "Christian reclaimers of alcohol": don't blow smoke in our face. I'll stand with several of my respected colleagues and students who have consciously chosen not to drink for a variety of reasons: mine just so happens not to even be a moral objection. Additionally, Asian students, which comprise an ever-increasing chunk of our seminary community, are more offended by this than I am. There are constantly jokes made in classes and daily conversations at school about how commonplace alcohol is in social settings at our school. After many social invites comes a BYOB or a snicker about getting sloshed. Give me a break. Use that classis money with a little bit more dignity than blowing it on booze and then showing up at our school's food pantry to ask for food you can't afford. I am sad to say that I've had professors, staff people, graduated (& ordained) pastors, and students all joke about alcohol with me - with no acknowledgment that it might be offensive. Luckily, I'm past the point where open comments and joking about alcohol abuse offends me - heck, I'm a hockey player. What I don't like being told is that I would drink if I fully understood Christian freedom, especially when its slurred.

I guess at the end of day, I want for this topic what I want for all topics I post on this blog: recognize that there might just be two legitimate sides to every coin and perhaps we can show more tact and consideration for those who might suffer from alcoholism, have been affected by alcohol-related deaths/problems and those who choose not to drink out of conscientious objection. Are we able to have this debate as people who don't feel like we already know it all? I hope so, but I more so hope that we can have this debate sober.

Ecumenicity: The U.N. of the Church

2007-10-16T22:42:00.000-05:00

Once again, my apologies for limited postings. This is a rough quarter for me, but I promise I'll get back at it. Its my last year at seminary, so there's lots of things to consider. And maybe sometime, like Ryan, I'll have to shut down my blog so I'm more marketable :) Until then, read on.

One of the blessings of my current job is that I've gotten the opportunity to dip my feet into the waters of ecumenism like never before. I've had experiences in the past of bi-lateral ecumenical projects, working with one or (at the most) two churches on a mutual interest. The sadness of the Greenville situation is that, with churches feeling the inevitable pocketbook pinch the parishoners are feeling, staff and programs are being cut at such an alarming rate that our only choice is to link up on things. Its a blessing in disguise.

I've gotten the opportunity most recently to be involved with a couple different community-wide youth ministry groups. What I find interesting is that when senior pastors get together, they often meet at a fancy restaurant and function largely as a social support group. Of course, that's needed, but what's been great about the youth groups is that they're very much action-oriented. It makes sense, after all, that we plan events together if our kids all go to the same schools and are faced by the same issues in the community. We get to pool our expertise and get to pool our knowledge.

Theoretically, this works, and, for the most part, I'm appreciative of them, like I said. But like anything, there's pitfalls. So, for as apt as I am to paint rosy pictures of ecumenicity, here goes some ventures of critique.

My main thesis is what my title says: ecumenical bodies look like and function like the U.N. Now why is that bad, you say? My wife will tell me that the U.N. is the greatest thing ever to happen to the world, and I'll agree to a point. The problem, of course, is two-fold. On the one hand, the U.N. gets held captive by the reluctant and the crazy and the rich (or some combination of the three). On the other hand, because the U.N. has the interests of everybody in mind, it really has the interests of nobody in mind. Its very similar in community ecumenical groups. When the senior pastor group runs a community dinner for poor people, the rich people foot the bill, the church with the most volunteers hold the most influence, and the few crazies in the group are the loudest ones of all, wagging their fingers at people, telling them they'll go to hell if they don't repent over their mashed potatoes. When the local ultra-fundamentalist church puts in their bulletin the following Sunday that 25 people "got saved" through the free turkey give-away, and the Methodist Church can't recall anyone coming to faith, you see the heart of the matter. Or consider the other scenario: the community youth pastors band together to host "insert-crazy-youth-event-here". Many kids come, but have no clue who put it on or how to move along in this new fascination they've found. If you allow one youth pastor to hand out business cards, you open the floodgates for crazy recruitment fairs instead of sensitive youth events.

Like everything, the answer has to be somewhere in the middle. If you read my blog a lot, you'll remember my comparison of the CRC folk and the Amish in our community. That's not a good alternative, but polite hand-shaking community events aren't the answer either. I've more and more been leaning on what Steve Anthony is doing in Toledo, OH. He runs an organization which unifies local churches like a denomination.....not based around doctrine, but based around common interests (ie, local poverty, local schools, gospel missions, shelters, etc.). So, you set up an administrator for the "ministry shares" to be dispensed instead of each church fighting the daily barrage of people asking for electric bill payments (my daily exercise of answering machine cleaning). In addition, the churches participate in mutual agreements about encouraging Christian accountability by fighting church shoppers. Each church agrees to not receive members (or even deter visitors) who have not made peace with their former congregation and been "released" by their council/board. Its radical, but its realistic and effective.

In the end, the needs will inform the means. If you're in a community like ours where needs are so great, then a coordinated effort of Anthony's model is about the best thing one can think of. In other scenarios, the needs may be different and so should the means. What this requires is a great degree of trust and a great deal of theological humility. To be sure, we in the CRC can take this lesson to heart, but its just as true of conservative Lutherans or Baptists, as well. We often practice what Pope Benedict preaches: our church is the only true church and the others are a nice try. Make the starting point "The Church" not, "our church" and maybe we'll start getting somewhere.

Professional Jesus People

2007-08-22T10:01:00.000-05:00

Somewhere down the road (although it scares me), I may wind up as a senior pastor or even a solo pastor at a church. At some points, this is really exciting....something I really look forward to. At other times, I think I'd like to keep the job I have forever.....hanging out with teenagers and playing my guitar for a living.

What perhaps frustrates me most about being a pastor are some of my future colleagues. To be sure, this is no slam against my senior pastor, who is one of the most laid back and socially adequate pastors I've ever met. What drives me crazy, however, is the constant flow of pastors who come back to my seminary classes and try to impress the professor or us as seminarians with their large storehouse of knowledge. A couple semesters ago, we had this guy in one of our classes who we called "Professor Student". He was obsessed with sharing every bit of knowledge he had ever acquired and pumping up his own abilities in Greek and constantly reminding us how we were still in seminary and "not there yet". Yesterday, one of these guys just reeled off four sentences in Hebrew while he talked about how he uses it so effectively in his ministry.

I know the church he comes from...its floundering. Maybe try some English.

There's a catch 22 here. Having feet in two denominations has opened my eyes about the necessity of seminary education. Its obvious that certain pastors and leaders in my current denomination would have benefited (some just a little, but some huge amounts) from a mandatory seminary education. Firstly, the Biblical knowledge and theological perspective would help. However, exposure to ministry in different settings and the cross-fertilization of ideas would benefit them greatly. On the other side, ministry in the CRC seems to be defined by intellectuality, and it drives me crazy! When churches want to call you as a pastor, they want to hear your sermon tapes, as if sermons are the only thing you do. In order to get my license to preach in CRC churches, I have to promise to preach Christian Education and Heidelberg Catechism. Never mind relevance. I've taken multiple "exegesis" classes, learning how to interpret the scriptures for preaching and teaching. What did we do? Memorize the original languages. Argh. Today we discussed how we would teach about the Hebrew language and applications of the Jewish mishnah in adult bible study classes by lecturing. Wow.

One of the things that really cracks me up is the pride that pastors take in programmatic development and how closely its success is related to themselves. I addressed this in my most recent sermon. We always view ourselves so highly, as if our churches would become a hole in the ground if we would leave or somehow the passing down of the gospel will cease if I am not the facilitator. Shame on us.

My greatest concern when I go to fill pulpit supply now is not how prepared my sermon is, or how well I can announce songs (because everyone knows hymns are the only music we use), but whether or not I'll get a swift kick for not wearing a suit. If being a preacher means wearing a suit on Sundays, dressing up like a bank owner during the week, trying to dispense knowledge at every turn, and enjoying the sound of my own voice, then I'll stick with plucking my guitar.

Minutes from the Red Hat Society Meeting, August 8

2007-08-08T14:47:00.000-05:00

I was at our local coffee shop writing a sermon, when a group of 80 year old women stopped by and had a meeting. They were all wearing red hats, so they might be part of that Red Hat Society thing. Either way it was hilarious. Here's the notes (verbatim) that I took from across the room, with my own topical headings:

Race Relations
My granddaughter is married to a black man. Do they have troubles? No, its a good marriage, but everyone has troubles. Her kids are the cutest things. Mulatto, I guess you would call them. When they have birthday parties, they can only invite two friends, and they never invite white kids. Why can't more people be like that? Her daughter can't get a boyfriend. The two boys both have girlfriends, but nobody will date the girl. When she was younger, the school wouldn't believe she was bi-racial because she looks so white, but she has nappies in her hair. One time, her teacher told her to prove she was bi-racial, so she said, look at the nappies in my hair! Have you heard about that Klu-Klux-Clan in Indiana? Yeah, I've heard about that. That's terrible, people shouldn't discriminate.

Politics
I think Barack Obama would make a great president. Have you read his book? No. You should, its fantastic. I don't think Hillary would make a very good president. No, I don't think so either.
All I know is that either would be better than President Bush. I don't blame him, I blame his cabinet: they run him. They have no clue what they're doing.

Air Travel
I found out the hard way that you can't fit two people in an airplane bathroom. Did you drop something heavy in there? (Laughter) Well, my friend is married and her husband lives in Arizona and she lives in Grand Rapids: that's one way to keep a marriage working. Pilots aren't allowed to fly as much as they want. If you think you have to run from flight to flight, you should see pilots. They get off one flight and have to run to the next. Did you see NASA pilots were flying drunk? Its their own lives they're taking in their hands. Its just like people who get in cars and drive drunk. You have to be down to Grand Rapids two hours before a flight, then they put cancels on, and then you run around for a day and a half looking for a flight. My son had that. He yelled at the airport attendant because he needed to be at a wedding in Grand Rapids from La Guardia. He got on the flight, but they lost all of his luggage. He'll never find it back. My daughter says I need all my flight things in black and white. She bosses me around when I fly. I don't even know why I get the ticket. She bosses right up the counter and bla bla bla bla, and somehow we take off 10 minutes earlier on some other airline. All I get is a wad of paper and get on the plane. I don't even know why she lets me have any say in it. We never went anywhere that was actually on my tickets. Instead of driving, I fly to Milwaukee now. They shoot you across on a rubber band, I think. Its a World War II plane. Never do they get my luggage to my airport. One time we got all our luggage lost, so the pilot drove us to Wal-Mart to buy underwear. One time my grandson, who is a musician, lost all his luggage and someone drove him to Wal-Mart to get underwear, but his rental car broke down.

Auto Industry
There are so many recalls these days. What do you drive? Horse & buggy? (Laughter). I took my car in to get the oil changed, and the mechanic yelled at me. He said if I wait 3,000 miles to get my oil changed, I'd be dead before then. He said to change your oil according to the weather. If I let it keep going, all the oil would be on the floor and fill up my garage.

Air Conditioning
I very seldom turn my air conditioner on unless someone is with me. There are some places I can't go because its too cold. I was in Wal-Mart yesterday and it was way too cold. Marylou turns the air way up, but I can't handle it. I got pneumonia from the fourth car I had from the air conditioner. I tried sitting in the backseat and it didn't matter. Marylou liked it.

Animal Rights
What's that? An ant farm. Did you know they're illegal? They're illegal because they can carry things. My kids had those. Those are coffee beans! You can't watch ants doing their thing now. The humane society put a stop to ant farms. We used to sit their mesmorized watching them. My son wouldn't be quiet, wouldn't take a nap, until I got him an ant farm.

Submitted respectfully.

Public Apology

2007-07-10T22:30:00.000-05:00

Just a memo to all Church outsiders in the world: we're sorry.

Let's face a simple fact here: the way Christianity is presented to the world through many different outlets is idiotic and ridiculous. Sometimes when I make my commute into Grand Rapids, I feel self-conscious if I pass someone going 65 because I'm afraid they'll see the Christian fish on the back of my car and assume all Christians are law-breaking vigilantes. But that doesn't compare to the ridiculousness of the face that Christianity presents to the world in many different ways. If I were an outsider, I would think Christians are the most backward, bigoted people in the whole world.

Of course, this isn't true in all areas. Certainly, there are many churches who present a socially conscious self-respecting message to the world without sacrificing the truths we all stand for. But I think this is even more true in the very places the gospel needs to have more relevance: smalltown America.

For example, we've got a fundamentalist church that is positioned right on the main entrance to town that somehow got their hands on a lighted-up sign. Of course, they use that sign to do the Lord's work, like condemning the NIV, associating tattoos with Satan, associating body piercings with hell and telling everyone who drinks that Jesus would disown them.

Come on.

I went to a rummage sale last week where a nice, well-meaning Christian man sold me an entertainment stand for our youth room for $1. He was selling his possessions from his trailer park home so that he could go on the mission field for two years. Even though he knew I was a pastor, he still handed me a tract. As I was leaving, I overheard him trying to "evangelistically" speak to some Harley bikers in a beat-up pickup truck. When he saw one of them wearing army pants, he used this keen line: "You're in the army, huh? Well I'm in the Lord's army!"

Nice. And our numbers are dropping?

And how about that Christian TV. Strong showing for Christianity there. Whether its poorly produced "extreme sports evangelism" or Biblical "health supplements", somehow we've managed to put our least relevant foot forward as a Christian community. Why is it that the only relevant Christian message on television is spoken by vegetables? I was watching South Park the other night on Comedy Central do a caricature of the 700 Club, and it was probably the most accurate thing I've ever seen. If you want to check it out, its episode #311: Starvin Marvin in Space.

I'm tolerant, I really am. We played church league softball a couple weeks back against a team where all the girls wore skirts during the game. But they're socially adjusted! Good Ghandi. Lets just throw in the towel if we really think talking in old English, condemning piercings, or even clinging to Christian education are the kinds of things we need to cling to so Christianity is Christianity. I'm not one of these argumentative emerging-church-only types. I just don't like it when I work all day long to help my church do legitimate ministry as Christ would and we're simply trumped by the louder, prouder arm of the Church that has lost complete touch with their own culture. Like it or not, marketing is part of evangelism, and we suck at it. Some people just need to be shook.

Or maybe I'll just drive the speed limit.

Letters from Arminia

2007-06-25T16:09:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, there was me. Me, being a good little Reformed boy knew the Heidelberg Catechism like the back of my hand. For fun, I used to page through the tune name index of the gray hymnal and looking for congruences between the Canons of Dort and the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Now I find myself in a place where none of that really matters, where we daily walk the line between the Church falling apart and staying together, and where I learn lessons everyday about how the majority of Christendom operates. This is Arminia.

Not very many towns in America are absent of some sort of Presbyterian Church. The ones that are usually have some sort of UCC or Reformed presence somewhere in their midst. Rarely, especially in Michigan, do you find a town where there is not a Reformed soul to be found. A town where the Lutherans are almost ready to close the last of their 3 churches, the baptists welcome people to town with condemning phrases from the KJV, and the Christian minority is almost entirely Catholic, Congregationalist or Wesleyan. Welcome to Greenville.

I wouldn't be surprised if I was the first Calvin Seminary student/graduate every to work in this town, of if I was the first commuter to the Calvin campus in the city's long history. Reformed thought is irrelevant here, it would seem.

Ironically, however, I would like to dissuade people from believing that Arminians are inevitably bent on their own personal choice to the exclusion of all else, that they baptize every congregant every Sunday, and that a Reformed person can get chewed up and spit out within a few Wesleyan sermons. I believe that this is untrue just as much as I believe its untrue that election is a core belief in many of our Reformed communities in this country. The Church is a melting pot, just like the US, and that might just be okay.

People often ask me how I can exist at an Arminian church. How can you reconcile your beliefs with theirs? How can you sit through a worship service, a sermon, an altar call? How do you deal with perfectionism and the like?

Many people describe my senior pastor and I as people who have "agreed to disagree" on some theological topics, and since we get along well, you might think that. However, I think the greater truth is that we both acknowledge what I wrote about in my previous blog. Calvinism and Arminianism, while both eloquent and well defended against one another, are simply a peephole into the grandness and wondrousness that is the actual theology of God, or that which God knows about himself. How we speak about God, our theology, is but a speck of dust compared to God's theology, or how he speaks about himself. If any theologian would deny that to me, I think I might have to pop him in the face.

My senior pastor, Dave, is not an hard-core Arminian. He does not believe that people can achieve perfection this side of glory, as Wesley hinted at in his later years. He's offended by determinism and fatalism, the flaws that he sees in Reformed thought, especially hyper-Calvinism. But then again, so am I. I shudder at the thought that we're just stagnated linemen on some cosmic foosball table, and I don't think its Biblical either. I like theologians, like Aquinas, who give me a way out here. They identify God as the primary actor, but do not push the ideas of election/predestination/etc. While I might confess those if you held a sword to my neck, its not necessary for my daily ministry that I push those on my laity. In fact, I think Dave and I would both say quite openly that while we're comfortable in our own theological recliners, neither of us would be surprised if, at the end of time, Jesus lays out a far different theology than anything Calvin, Wesley, Aquinas, Augustine, Luther, Chrysostom, or anyone else has laid out. Why? They're not God.

While we've come a long way from the way Calvin treated Servetus and how the Reformers treated the Anabaptists, its sad that we really still just don't get it. In communities around the world, ecumenism is broken down by theological cockiness. There are a lot of pastors and churches that just plain weird me out. Some of them are Arminian, some of them are Reformed, and some of them are so "out there" that I can't identify them. Recognize the affinity that you have with people across denominational lines because they, like you, hold up the primacy of Scripture, which is so trampled in today's world and because learn from the things they do better than you. Our church's worship library is now a fully-integrated Reformed/Wesleyan resource, and I hope the same would be true if I find myself in a Reformed congregation someday.

Few Reformed people get the opportunity that I get to see the inner workings of a solid, comparable, Arminian denomination from as up close and personal as you can get. I continue to urge as many people from both sides of the table to sit down and talk....sit down and cooperate. Often times, you will have far more in common than you think. And remember, no matter how big your allegiance to Calvin, Luther, Aquinas, or Wesley is, your greater allegiance is to the Lamb of God, who is not a follower of any of those four. Let God's theology of Himself and His Church increase as your theology of God and His Church decreases. And let all churches, Calvinistic and Arminian alike, ascent "soli deo gloria."

Baptizing at 150

2007-06-18T11:31:00.001-05:00

First a couple of much-needed apologies:
1. To those of you who have been crazy enough to keep up with my blog over the past year, you were likely stunned when I stopped spouting off for a good while. Sorry about that. Rest assured, I'm back on track, and I'll be able to see who has an RSS Feed on my account when only a few people check in on this post.
2. Normally, I don't comment on proceedings in either of my denominations particularly, but this post will be as much relevant to some of my Arminian friends as it is to my Reformed ones, I promise :)
3. I'm getting a C.S. Lewis complex, even though I could never hope to author the kinds of works he did. I've gotten myself a leather chair and footstool for my office, purchased a "pipe rack" with six wonderful pipes, and even started in on a book, although I don't know what will become of it, so don't get your hopes up.

Belaboring my Point

If you were one of the lucky ones to attend the 150 celebration at Van Andel for the Christian Reformed Church a Sunday back, you may have run across my name in the worship booklet right around the centerfold (If you weren't, you can check it out here). The intuitive CRC person would recognize right away that a CRC contributer from Greenville is strange because there's no CRC in this city. Luckily, they didn't list home churches, or there may have been some real feathers flying.

I had all but forgotten writing this quote sometime back in the spring, but was amazed to see how accurately it reflected my vision not only for the CRC, but for the Church in general. It addresses a few problems with the denominations of which I've been a part. First, we suck at going into cities. We can minister really well to farmers and housewives, but we're particularly bad at ministering to urban and even suburban settings, which explains why our membership has been so stagnant over the years. Passion, yes. Humility, yes.

BUT, the major point of my theology that drives my professors nuts at seminary is shackled at the end of this quotation: "that our greatest theology is dwarfed by the richness of the mystery and transcendence of our holy God." If you want to package the Mark Hilbelink theology in one phrase, that's it. Look, I love theological discussion and debate. In fact, my seminary friends and I had a "Synod Party" to do just that around meat. But, every systematics class I take seems to assume that we know about 95% about God and 5% is left to mystery (give or take). There is the argument given that God has made himself sufficiently known to all creation for the purposes of salvation. Absolutely! But I would like to make the case that we worship a God that is so unfathomable and incomprehensible that 5% might just get us by with sufficient knowledge for salvation. In that sense, I wish that every systematic theologian from Aquinas to Wesley would have started their theologies by acknowledging that we are arguing and debating strictly the revealed part of God, which may be only a touching of the outer cloak of who God is. The reason they can't? It makes their own theologies less important. Bummer.

Dedicating our Children

For those of you who know me well, you'll know that I was watching this past CRC Synod on tiptoes waiting to see what it would do with the Alberta classis' overture for a committee to study the practice of infant dedication in the CRC and what that might mean for its future. I have long held the belief that infant dedication can be just as illegitimate a form of committing a child to the Lord as infant baptism within the Reformed context. Also, I like to ask the question: which of these seems more plausible: 1)That the apostles intended that baptism be a replacement for covenantal circumcision OR 2)That the Reformers maintained infant baptism from the Catholic Church in the Reformation because it would have rocked the boat too much to propose anything else.

I had an interesting conversation with the associate pastor from my home church in Iowa last Tuesday, who was, incidentally, a Synodical delegate. He had attended Mars Hill Church in Grandville the Sunday before and heard Bell's explanation of the baptism/dedication debate. While he affirms infant baptism wholeheartedly, he agreed with me that you could easily hold non-infant baptism position faithfully within the Reformed tradition. However, his argument, admittedly influenced by Bell, was that if you held that position, dedication was not necessary since its even less Biblically-based than infant baptism. My argument on the other side was that implementation of infant dedication within any Reformed tradition would have to include some sort of dedication, not as a sacrament, but as a commitment of the parents and Church family to maintain their covenantal responsibilities. I compared it to the laying on of hands, which is a very Biblical concept, seldom practiced in Reformed faith communities.

If we agree that baptism as a sacrament is nothing hokus pokus nor salvific, then it seems to me the sign should be a confirmation of election, as it described in the Bible, as Romans 8 says, "creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed". Instead, they continue to baptize infants based on the faith of their parents than on the power of the Spirit to raise up the elect.

That being said, I can stomach the Reformed position on infant baptism because I see virtually no practical difference between baptism/confirmation and dedication/baptism, but I wish the CRC would have taken the opportunity at 150 to let a committee seriously study this concept and its theological implications.

Prank Calls

2007-03-13T15:31:00.000-05:00

Being a seminarian gets you introduced to lots of buzz words. Some of these are distinctly Reformed, but some are buzz words across the denominational lines, and most of them bug me like heck. Having attended two Lilly-funded institutions and having a mom who works for a third, I've certainly gotten my share of rhetoric about "discovering your calling". I used to think this idea of calling was pretty profound, maybe even Biblical. After all, Lilly sent me to Turkey for a sight-seeing trip to "discover my calling". However, after sitting through a nauseating presentation today where three people were put in front of a group for a mass group counselling session, I have to ask myself: do we have any idea what we're talking about when it comes to calling?

My initial thought is no. Let's start with something simple. Is "my call" something I get because I'm in ministry, but that my friend Jon doesn't get because he's in architecture? Absolutely not, chime in Dordt & Calvin, but why are seminarians pigeon-holed for this type of self-discovery? No one asks my friend Mick if he's really "called" to be an insurance salesman, but God help my soul if I'm not really called to be a pastor. Now sure, I've been taught to tell my calling story, and its pretty impressive how God has worked in my life and made me fit to be a minister in the church. What I've been taught to do is tell about things that have any hint of pastor-like situational benefit and anoint each one to be one of those big lighted signs with the arrows on top that led me into the ministry. To be left out: being a pastor is a legitamite career, pastors make more money than their average congregant, pastors get to count coffee and golf as ministry expenses, working at a particular church because it was situationally helpful.

Conveniently, the CRC believes its every pastor's calling to go to seminary for three (cough, four) years, or at least Calvin for a quarter. Well, senior pastors at least. That's not how evangelists or youth pastors are called, apparently. Kudos to God for consulting with our denomination about that first, when He sees perfectly fit to "call" other people to ministry through monestaries, one year of seminary, or no seminary at all. That's cool, though, because God has a different set of standards for calling Methodists and Catholics.

After all, becoming a pastor is contingent on "getting called" by a church. Notice, though, how if a church needs a secretary, custodian, youth pastor, or organist, they don't "call" one of those. Those jobs only warrant a newspaper ad and the submission of a resume. See those people running towards the janitor? Yeah, they're the Christian scholars coming to baptize his hiring as "discovering his calling". However, it'll be those same people at the council meeting two years from now deciding that janitoring is, in fact, not his calling because he doesn't know how to make toilets shine.

Now, theoretically, if three faithful churches call you as a senior pastor, what the heck are you supposed to think? Obviously 2, or maybe 3 of those churches are just crappy at "discovering God's call" for them, just like they were 2 years ago when they hired the "man of God's leading" and had him leave over allegations of sexual misconduct. Kind of sounds like a stereotype of election, doesn't it? People in the Church are elect forever and ever....that is, until they leave the Church and then they never were elect to start with or they're still somehow elect and in denial.

What this really all reminds me of is my high school relationships. Since I hung out with a good group of Christian youth-group-attending girls, my dating life had great overtones of providence. Those of us who were most pious would say things like "I think its God's will that you date me" or "I need to break up with you because its not what God wills". Possible. Maybe. Laughable? Absolutely. The truth is that while we can sometimes hear that "still small voice" in our heads, its often our own subconscious. We are also adept at getting "confirmation" from our like-minded friends.

Oh brother.

Here's what I think. Somehow the pundits have found a mystical union between the idea of calling as both prescriptive and descriptive. We know how the prescriptive extreme works: God decides before we're born what our calling is and we just live that out. Yay for fatalism! On the other hand, descriptive calling seems only like subjective nostalgic interpretation: God did this in my life, and this, and this and it was because he wanted me to be a pastor (oh, and I recently graduated from a Christian liberal arts school with no direction plus the pastors have uber job security).

Maybe I'm off my rocker here, and its not to say that I think retelling the action of God in our lives is a bad thing. But lets stop telling high school and college kids to wait for some mystical "calling" that is just as much descriptive as it is prescriptive. One of the major problems that our seminary's high school calling discernment program has had is that kids who get rejected from participation feel that they might not be called to ministry. The year after I participated, they opened the field up to 50 participants from 35 for particularly that reason. What kind of monster have we created this "calling" to be? Can't we just focus on grateful, faithful Christian living instead of passing around ideas about a non-graspable, individualistic buzz word?

The Opportunity Cost of Service

2007-03-05T09:55:00.000-05:00

There's been two growing strains within the North American Church within the last couple of years regarding service trips. If you've ever been on one, then you've undoubtedly come into contact with this debate in an implicit or explicit way. The reality of this situation is that we have litereally thousands of churches in the US who are sending kids and adults away on service trips around the corner and around the world to do service for people around them.

There are a lot of people who are very quick to jump up and say "Amen" at this proposition. Most of these are the "nodders" from the congregation who think sending as many of our own congregants to do service projects is the definition of what Jesus commands us to do. Another group who has a similar reaction to service trips are those who have gone on a trip that they really enjoyed because they liked what they did, liked the people they went with and liked how they felt about themselves when they came back.

Modern liberal Christian thought has told us this is wrong. In many ways, they've hit a good nerve. Many churches and schools spend literally thousands of dollars per person to send laity overseas for a week at a time. They come back with the impression that they've changed the world, ebbed closer to their salvation and gained the right to tell every person within five feet of them about every aspect of the trip. The reality, as the pundits point out, is that often times these people do little to no good, sometimes even hurting the ministry that they go to help because of something an immature Christian says, displaying an inconsistent lifestyle and simply acting on general bias with an imperialistic notion. Hey! We're the cocky Americans here to help you because you're mostly worthless, on our own terms. People generally get indignant or repentant when shown the errors of their ways here. Okay, we're the bad guys, we get it.

Lets consider the other side of this for just a minute. On the one hand, yes, ministry would be FAR more effective if we took all the money we spent on our own lavish service/vacation projects as North Americans and gave it to indigenous missionaries/aid workers who are culturally sensitive and work for lasting change without bigot abrasiveness we often bring. However, if you think that indigenous missionaries would automatically get the same amount of cash as teenagers doing a carwash to go themselves, you're wrong. People give for various reasons. Among them are good things like a heart for missions, a care for others and a servant spirit, but also among them are things like reactions to a real and present service team, emotional first-person reports afterwards, and a general guilt about not helping out the service trip as much as everyone else in the pew around you.

But, there are also ministry opportunities where outsiders can do the work more effectively and more efficiently than the local staff. Take the current situation in the Gulf Coast region. There are many, many opportunities for work, and nearly no one who is willing to put their hands to work. Those who are there are overwhelmed, untrained, and hopeless about their situation. The cost of labor for bringing in a contractor paid for by a church in Kansas IS less effective than bringing in a team that can and will do the work of drywalling, stilt-setting, roofing and painting (granted, this does not refer to the inevitable tendency of high schoolers to paint eachother during service trips...ugh). The fact is that you can put a team down there, including travel costs, for cheaper than the cost of bringing in a contractor, plumber, painter, roofer, drywaller, etc.

This is a basic economics concept known as opportunity cost. It refers to what one has to give up in order to accomplish a goal. This could be money, but it could also refer to time and other resources.

A month ago at a fundraiser, a random homeless guy showed up at our church who had been hitchhiking around the country and read about our fundraiser in the paper. He came just to encourage in what we were doing because "kids need to see what is out there". I can stomache that. What's harder for me to stomache is everyone who says that we need to give people a "heart for missions", which means that we turn them in to mission trip addicts, often ones that need to get bigger and better every year to feed this "heart". What would the church's mission program concept look like if we considered the opportunity cost of what we do before going in on a trip rather than going "because it sounds fun" or "because we can help other people (as if they're the main beneficiaries of our trips". And when we realize that cost, are we willing to be efficient, responsible servants in our mission trip planning?

Points of Contact

2007-01-31T22:59:00.000-05:00

I've had an increasing number of conversations in the past couple weeks about the fact that there is a difficult balance in churches between creating a community within a congregation (or tradition) and making that a gated community. There's two particular situations which have come to my attention because of my current position, which has both led me to see things in the denomination I currently serve and, for the first time, being an outsider of my other denomination within an observable distance. Its also come from conversations with pastors, parishoners, class discussions, and other observations. What I don't mean to do is call anyone out or be abrasive, for all of the communities I will talk about are communities which I have grown to love.

A Tale of Two Islands
The town which I live in has various ministry opportunities and challenges which I've addressed previously, but our community is one that encompasses a large portion of rural community surrounding it because we're the last outpost with retail/restaurants before the dead expanse which is central Michigan. For this reason, our church draws from not just one community, but rather four or five within 20 miles of the city. Throughout my travels and interactions thus far, I have been able to profile other churches in our community, for good or for ill. We have two faith communities in our larger geographic area which stand out to me as similar: the Amish community to the north, and the Christian Reformed community to the south. At first glance, my CRC readers will wonder at this comparison, but that's intended. The similarity? Both communities have few points of contact with the community at large. In my interactions with community church groups, shopping, eating out, etc., I've never once run into a CRC person, although I often meet Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, and Congregationalists. Of course, the Amish shoot for this "set-apart"-ness, but what causes CRC folk to be like that? The first and most obvious thing to me is Christian school/public school dynamic. I attend public school events weekly (sometimes more often) such as sporting events, concerts, etc. There I meet members of other churches and non-believers. People care passionately about their local school system, often even more than their own church. I would suspect that if one of my parishoners were to try and establish a friendship with a family who sent their kids to the Christian school (which is sequestered out in the country, just like the Amish school), their conversations would not go all that far because the experience is not common enough. For the Amish and the CRC, both churches lie about five miles out of town, and this symbolic non-presence in the community is not overcome easily because its practical effects are far-reaching. The second is a class issue. The local CRC's in our area are suspected by people of being upper middle class. Once again, having expendable income for Christian education is not something most of our parishoners can understand. Upper middle class people often have a much higher liturgical preference, as well. We've discussed this with other churches in our town, which is progressively becoming lower class. People don't want academically-driven preaching and high liturgy. That was hard for me to swallow as a worship planner/preacher, but its true. This was reinforced by a CRC pastor I met with who ministers in inner city Grand Rapids. Even though his people live in close proximity to the church (which is rare for the inner part of GR), they can't make inroads into the community for the same two reasons: kids are in different schools and class issues. Schools are the centers of community life, often, and if those communities are different than the larger community, points of contact are diminished greatly. Five years ago, I might have resonated with this concept, but I see it now much more clearly: I want you to join my church, but I won't invest my time or children into your schools, and you should worship on my terms. Don't take me as nay-saying Christian education or the CRC, or even our local one (they do a great community pre-school). Plus, Christian schools paid the bill for our house for the first 18 years of my life. However, if we are going to willingly forfeit huge quantities of points of contact with our communities, then it would be an offense to the Great Commission if we don't put programs and attitudes in place to counteract these effects. The

Plank in Our Own Eye
I would be remiss to cast stones at the Amish and CRC here if I'm not willing to look at the denomination I currently serve as well. If we're talking about created communities without gating them, its important to identify where our possible gates might go up. For the last two examples, its physical distance from the community, schooling choices, liturgical preference, class limitations, etc. For the Church of God, at least one of these is denominational association. I have had multiple people come talk to me about how greatful they are that I've come in from another tradition because I don't speak Church of God-ese. This denomination has such great ministries, a great intellectual tradition, great inter-connections. All these things are great, and we gain great benefit from them. However, when an outsider who comes in, its often difficult to learn that denominational language. What's Anderson? Why are adults going to camp? Who is considered Youth? What is State? I thought St. Louis was in Missouri. What are heritage songs? What's a Jesus Birthday Offering? What's the difference between SYC, IYC, ISL, ATL and YISL? Good questions! I've finally figured some of them out, but these types of things are big hinderances to someone coming in from the outside. My wife and I were talking the other day about how learning this Church of God language helps us reflect upon similar community gating in our denomination of origin. Most notable among these is Christian education, but liturgical inaccessibility and theological snobbery/preoccupation are other major concerns as we observe the CRC from the outside.

Ungating the Community
If there's any sort of conclusion to be made, I think that all churches and denominations face these kinds of issues, but it is the responsibility of the particular group to counteract the effects of their potential community gating. Christian education and denominational community are both good things, but can become pitfalls if they become the major concern of the given body. Counteracting these will hopefully give us the points of contact with our communities that lend themselves to reaching out to others in the name of Jesus.

Youth Ministry to the Detriment of the Church

2007-01-15T16:27:00.000-05:00

There's something that they don't often teach you in Youth Ministry in college, and something most youth ministry people don't like to think about. Its the dark side of youth ministry which often causes more problems than good. Statistically speaking, youth ministry is one of the most unsuccessful ventures the Church has ever embarked on, and yet it has caused nearly the same amount of turmoil where absent as Contemporary Christian Music has. Half my income comes from youth ministry, so I'm not about to advocate the removal of it from churches across the country, but I think that we would be wise to consider the ramifications of this beast we've created.

The thought started in the late 80's and early 90's that high school students needed their own staff member at churches. It would be helpful, at this point, to notice that this movement came from an internal outcry of young people, which was not alone, but simply louder than that of other age groups. For instance, there were hardly any churches at this point with paid Worship Pastors, Congregational Life Pastors, Evangelism Pastors, Children's Pastors, etc. We should immediately recognize what effect a staff member with a targeted age group has on a church. The positive is that the group is usually blest by this person and therefore enjoys the addition. In the case of youth pastors, parents were also pleased because their kids were receiving a greater deal of attention while paranoia ran rampant that our kids were being marched off by a secular pied piper wholesale. What was lying in the background of these hirings, however, were the host of people who had little or nothing to gain from a teenager-focused staff member. Children, young couples, middle-aged adults, older adults, and sometimes even parents were told that they were less important in the church's eyes, not by a word off the pulpit, but by the church's checkbook. This was evident not only in the hiring of youth pastors, but in the program funding that would inevitably blossom.

This is not to say that hiring youth pastors often makes a church angry. Many of the people in the congregation get a martyr-like attitude with respect to youth. One of the classic lines I hear over and over again in churches is: "We need to lay aside our preferences because they are the Church of tomorrow!" I suppose there is some noble truth to that statement, but suddnely you have entire generations of passive Christians that believe their non-involvement and the lack of ministry to their age group has a direct correlation to super-fueled ministry to teens.

In fact, passivitiy is one of the harshest drawbacks to the hiring of any staff members at any position. Teachers feel teaching is covered, singers feel worship is covered, youth leaders feel youth ministry is covered, but the passivity of the "sacrificial lambs" in the congregation is perhaps the greatest loss. While we often complain about those who only want things their way, we often also lose those who don't feel hip or with it and are just fine with clamming up. All of this is often a direct result of any pastor who is a "do-er" and not an "enabler".

The other thing that we as youth ministers often like to forget is the simple fact that youth ministry is very rarely effective. Ouch! Of course, my more careful colleagues will be quick to point out to me that "effective" is not a good word to use in ministry. After all, ministry should not be results-driven, but might simply be God planting seeds in the hearts of kids. Given, but those who take a quick inventory of kids they graduated five years ago from their programs are often very, very humbled by the fact that many of those have wandered to other churches or often from the faith completely. If our goal as youth pastors is to keep our kids in the pews from cradle to grave, then most of us would admit that we are failing greatly.

One of the reasons for this phenomenon is that youth ministry has been a narrow-scoped concept from the very beginning. The Church as a whole was losing people to the world at a near-record pace and we needed to do something. The most logical something was to stop the obvious bleeding - our teenagers who were uninterested in church and rebelling because, well, they're teenagers. What youth ministry has accomplished in that respect is a delayed exodus, with the Church now maintaining huge numbers of high school students, but losing huge percentages in the first couple years following graduation. Those who even dare attempt college-aged ministries are frustrated by kids that are uninterested in developing their faith past the music-festival experiences of their local youth group.

Another reason that the scope should be considered narrow is that science does not support our most common conviction: that high school is the most formative time in a person's life with regard to faith commitment. Psychology and research clearly indicate that the most formative time for faith development and commitment, for whatever reason, is much earlier. To this end, ministry focuses have continued to get younger-reaching. Many churches have developed Jr. High ministries, and many churches have hired Children's pastors. Research indicates that the largest percentage of people make a faith commitment in the 4th-6th grade range and the percentage gets exponentially less each year after that. We missed the target.

Churches that do have successful educational programs outside of Sunday morning worship are churches that do not gap their ministries. While this is true for the developmental ages we've just talked about, it is just as true for adult ministries which are often lacking or non-existent in many churches. Some black eyes that many churches don't want people to see: junior high ministry, post-high/college-aged ministry, singles ministry, new believers ministry. All of us should do a self-inspection to see that our overall ministries do not suffer because of one ministry. A wise speaker I once heard commented that the devil can use church programming by setting one program against another or creating an idolatry in one program or another. For instance, if hiring a full-time youth pastor means cutting three other ministries, perhaps the motivation is poorly founded. This is true not only in your local church, but in denominational programming, funding and ciriculum development, as well as other tell-tale signs. We in youth ministry need a slice of humble pie, sometimes, as we drain our congregations of volunteer hours and resources that could be used for other purposes. How can we promote holism in our churches which promotes the good of the community for the benefit of everyone?

A Foot-Washing Hierarchy

2007-01-02T19:41:00.000-05:00

I haven't been on the job very long at my new Church of God family in Greenville, but the entirety of my two months in this denomination has taught me vast things about differences and similarities between it and my previous two denominational experiences (Christian Reformed and PCUSA).

First and foremost, my experience thus far has further engrained in me the utter silliness of denominational differences. Some people find me to be wacky, unorthodox or impractical when I make statements like that, but its the truth. Greenville is very similar to Salem, NY, the city I served in a couple years ago, and similar to many cities in this nation right now, from many accounts. The fact of the matter is that the Church is in the dying minority in so many cities across our nation, whether we will admit it or not. Some of these cities, like Salem and Greenville, have this to a more advanced extent than others. Its hard to believe that a city 30 minutes from Grand Rapids could have such a small population of Christians, but my initial estimates put this city at about 1 in 15 weekly attending Christians.

1 in 15.

What that means, in conjunction with the massive poverty and job loss in our community, is that we have no choice but to bond together. Unfortunately, it is often the tough times that cause our bonding, but it is bonding nonetheless. I meet monthly with a group of youth pastors who span Lutheran, Catholic, Congregational, Orthodox Presbyterian, Non-Denominational, and myself from the Church of God. Our pastor is involved in similar groups which do similar sorts of ecumenical ministry. We need eachother and the rest of the denominational world will figure that out at some point, I know. One more point for comparison. Having been intimately involved with my past 3 congregations, West Hebron, Calvary, and Greenville First, I am willing to make the bold statement that, minus infant baptism & Catechism references, the worship, the confession, the committee structures, and even the sermons would be interchangeable at face value. That's quite a statement in and of itself - and its not one I made, rather it is one they are each making to the world, implictly ecumenical if not explicity.

Enough of a prologue. The real point of this blog is to affirm something in the Church of God that I am both fascinated with and covet for my own faith tradition in the Reformed faith: hierarchy. If you are a good modern Calvinist, you'll regard what I just said as a cuss word. After all, that's what we split from! We hated the corruption that Catholic hierarchy brought. We were even disdained at Luther's holdover, and more recently, the Anglicans/Episcopalians. However, what we gained by eliminating that hierarchy is burning out pastors today at an alarming rate not only in the CRC, but in others like her who leave pastors of churches as lone rangers.

A contrast is helpful. Church groups in the Church of God in the US are done by state. It helps to have a large enough denomination to do this, but its the geographical thought that counts. So far, there's an analogy in the classical system of the CRC. As opposed to the typical classis, however, whose meetings last for a morning on a Saturday, State General Assembly meetings are a two-day event with live worship, fellowship and pastoral education. The state affiliation goes far beyond this two-day event, however. The state hires its own staff. We have a state pastor, a state youth pastor, and numerous other employees that facilitate the work of the individual congregations. Underneath the state pastor are several regional pastors who look after and mind pastors at churches as well as serving their own.

One of the key benefits of this system is that pastors are not left out to dry. Most pastors start as associate pastors with a bachelor's degree working under an experienced pastor. Some go to seminary, but some move straight on to ordination. Whoa! People need seminary! Really? How much do you know about St. Augustine or others in the middle ages who became pastors by mentorship or apprenticing. Just a conspiracy theory to try on for size: Could it be that non-hierarchical traditions need seminaries as a buffer because toughness is essential since once these students achieve ordination they are on their own? A seminary student is now judged ready for ministry by a psychologist's recommendations, rather than an apprenticeship. Calvin Seminary recently abandoned its traditional 2 concurrent years and 1 year internship field education requirements for a Lilly-dictated 15 weeks of real pastoral experience before ordination. 15 weeks before we set pastors loose in the church!

15 weeks.

This is not to say the CRC isn't making moves in this direction. It has to. In my estimation, that need will grow if we refuse to apprentice our young pastors with different levels of readiness. The CRC has created a Pastor-Church Relations office and an initiative called Sustaining Pastoral Excellence which provides opportunities for mentorship, peer learning, and continuing education. Unfortunately, these are still very optional. My home classis recently hired a part-time classical youth coordinator, which is an inspired move for a classis of small churches. We must acknowledge the benefits of regionalization and localization of ministries within the denomination. We're beginning to see it, but I want to point out the beauty of the Church of God's structure. No pastor is a lone ranger: they cannot be. I am thankful to be a part of both traditions during formative years as a young pastor. May our future pastors be open to this kind of molding.

U2charist

2007-01-01T16:54:00.000-05:00

The Guilt Problem

2006-12-15T11:03:00.000-05:00

It wasn't until yesterday around 9:30 AM that I realized how different my views on the preemininece of guilt are in the Reformed evangelism realm. What to do? Blog, of course. Here you go:

The Church has a fascination with guilt. Yes, its true. Tell me how you would go about telling someone about Christ? Think about it for a minute. Okay, minute's up. We've been addressing this issue this past week in my evangelism class. Most people would identify the "bridge" method as one of the best ways for presenting the gospel. If you're not familiar with this message, it points out the chasm that exists between human beings and God: a chasm that exists because of sin. In a triumphant soveriegn engineering feat, the cross gets lodged in the chasm and creates a bridge to walk across to where God is. Ha! If that's Reformed, Calvin just rolled over in his grave. My vision of Reformed theology is a lasso being sent across and Christ pulling us across kicking and screaming.

Okay, so maybe you don't subscribe to the bridge. Let's try something more familiar: the Heidelberg Catechism. If you paid attention in Catechism class, you know that the presentation of doctrine goes along these lines: Sin -->Salvation-->Service. Or, Q&A #2:What do we need to know to live and die in the comfort of God? "Three things:first, how great my sin and misery are; second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery; third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance." The commonality of these two presentations I've made is the fact that the gospel takes root in guilt, period.

On that front, I made the argument on Wednesday that we don't necessarily need to present the gospel by starting with guilt. [The crowd goes aghast.] What's more, its necessary to find other ways to seed in the gospel because our culture does not feel guilt! What did he just say? I'm not saying no one feels guilt, certainly I feel guilt and you do too, but the cultural emphasis on moral subjectivity has all but chased guilt into a shadowy corner. Like it or not, the generation we are currently raising does not identify with guilt the way the previous ones did. If we keep harping on guilt, we will find ourselves preaching to teddy bears.

Ron Martoria presents a helpful concept for this discussion. He argues that there are multiple themes in the Old Testament such as covenant, exodus, exile and priestly atonement. His point is that the Church has triumphed the idea of priestly atonement for years to the detriment of the other themes. And its worked! Think about how the prophets worked: Go to a city, tell them they are sinners, offer them a reward for repentence. Fastforward. Jonathan Edwards and his fire-and-brimstone sermons capitalized on the exact same principle: Go to the pulpit, tell people they're on the fasttrack to hell, tell them God will save them, but only barely so that people aren't tempted to step outside the lines for fear of burning off an extremity.

Go into any city in America, urban or rural, stand on a milk crate, and preach this at the top of your lungs. Go ahead, I dare you. Its foolish. Why is it so heretical for me to present the idea that there might be other ways to motivate people to God other than threatening them with hell! Hell might just be the greatest weapon the Church has had in its arsenal. Dan has some good thoughts on this here. Are you seriously telling me that we've been around for more than 2,000 years and the most convincing argument we can make for worshipping God is fear of hell? Bush administration anyone? Fear built basilicas in the 1500's, it brought people out in droves into Puritanism and Methodism during the Great Awakenings, and we've used it in the Reformed tradition to "scare the elect out of bushes". Sweet! Regardless of the focus on numbers, it spoke their language and was thus a useful evangelism tool. In Europe and North America today, its not. Perhaps if Jesus saved us from terrorism, Christianity would sell.

I don't like to present problems without some ideas about a solution....that simply makes me a rock-thrower. I'm working on it, but I think acknowledging the issue is half the problem. One idea I have is to repackage sin. Moral relativity has virtually eliminated a preoccupation with sin and guilt. Okay. Let's try that again. Brokenness is undeniable. What's happening in Iraq isn't okay, regardless of what your moral stance is. What's happening in Sudan isn't okay regardless of where you find yourself in the spectrum of moral relativity. Systematic poverty is a problem, unless you're a social Darwinian. Its a small start, but addressing brokenness is not only a better way to present sin to a sin-ignorant culture, but its also probably a better way to present Christ as a solution because it increases the scope of Christ's redemption. Focusing on individual sin as the only problem makes a person-focused Jesus the only Savior.

If we keep on our current path, the only thing we'll feel guilty for is losing a generation and boarding up our church windows.

Inbred Worship

2006-12-08T13:11:00.000-05:00

A few friends of mine back at Dordt have a blog called What Grinds our Gears. If I had to write an entry about what grinds my gears, its problems with worship events in churches. This is particularly important to me now in my new job as Pastor of Worship at my church. We're starting to throw around a new term these days in our worship meetings: inbred worship. This is no slam on my wife or anybody from northern Michigan, its a term we use to stop ourselves from the temptation of making worship ours. This blog assumes Biblical worship categories and considerations....don't jump on my back unless you're attacking the actual text here.

There is a large temptation in the Christian worship arena that wants to make worship something that belongs to us. A current mission statement might look something like this: Worship is done by our congregation, with our congregation, and by our congregation for the benefit of our congregation in the context of our congregation. Ouch. The problem with this is, obviously, that it doesn't make room for God. Of course, we would all claim that our worship is for God, unless we're way out of line. But worship planning and practice quickly becomes a circle we enclose ourself within.

For example, as a worship planner, I'm in charge of reading our context. Then, I'm in charge of creating a relevant worship service. I pick songs I like (or I wrote) or that I think would "speak the congregation's language". After that, I go to worship and benefit greatly from the service. If its done right, my evaluation tells me we did a great job!

My worship class is attempting to teach us out of that idea. It said, lets not ask what worship can do for people, but how we can equip believers. Great idea. However, while we're equipping believers, here comes a non-believer. What are equipping them to do? Find Jesus, hopefully. But what kind of sermon equips believers and altar calls? I ain't got one of those on my computer.

In order to make worship that's not inbred, we should allow doors in our circle for entrance. These doors can be things like a gospel presentation in every service (not hoping for people to glean it off of our ritual). Another way is a highly accountable worship staff. I'm in the process of recruiting music people and non-music people to serve as service critiquers. Grandpa Frank who's plowed fields his whole life can be as good an evaluater of my service as Mrs. Jones who teaches music for a living. Why? Only asking music people about your music is back to the inbred. Its like one of those concerts where the choir does lots of really musically cool things, but the audience hates it because its completely irrelevant.

This isn't just music. Its preaching, its kids ministry, its offertories. Our prostrate nature in worship should limit our ultimate control over it.

Innovation in Theology?

2006-12-01T12:42:00.000-05:00

I've been struggling with the idea of whether or not theology is allowed to be innovative. I'm not talking about the practice of theology, but theology itself. Are new ideas okay within the realm of orthodoxy or even a particular tradition?

Our gut reaction is yes. Of course we like new ideas, new approaches and new allegories for how God works. If theology is speaking about God, or prolegomena, then we certainly should allow for innovative theology. What happens when an innovative theology comes out, however, is that it is very rarely taken on within a tradition, but rather pushed to the outskirts or the creation of a new tradition in and of itself. Why do we let our fear of innovation drive us?

Innovations in theology can still be tested against truths. For instance, if you know my ideas on baptism, then you know that I favor adult baptism, but favor it within a Reformed context. Regardless of how you feel about believer baptism, could you accept this as a Reformed person within your church or would you point me to another denomination that fits that view better? One of my seminary profs did.

Take then, my previous posting about the nature of God's love for humanity and the need for escape. Hold it up against your theology. Is it Arminian? Is it Reformed? I don't think so. Does your view of God's sovereignty make logical sense? You tell me why there was a tree in the garden. I love church history, but what I love about it is the continuing innovation, much of which got people burned and then weaseled its way into our churches anyway.

Read Rob Bell's "Velvet Elvis". He argues for taking out the bricks and examining them without having the whole structure falling apart. Beautiful. Confessions, catechisms, creeds: imagine these as the walls on the gym you move in rather than the seat you're strapped into. Now what?

The Great Love Story

2006-11-27T10:59:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know I haven't blogged in a month or so, but thanks to those of you who keep checking and hoping for little bits of things I say to tick them off spiritually. I think that's probably formative. You're welcome.

Yesterday I djembe-ed, sang and preached (or lay-exhorted, if that keeps the CRC happy). This blog entry is my attempt to summarize my sermon, and provide a less sojourning way of understanding what I was saying rather than trying to sift through my cruddy rhetoric off the pulpit. Here's the basic gist:

If you haven't read Søren Kierkegaard's parable, "The King and the Maiden", you should now. I will attach it as the first comment on this blog.

Advent has been too far removed from Lent in our Christian minds. We often baptize our gift-giving frenzy at Christmas by saying that we model our gift-giving after God's gift of Jesus. However, the "gift" of Jesus was more like the sacrificial lamb given to Old Testament Hebrew families which ended up being re-gifted to God to satisfy His desire for atonement.

Kierkegaard's parable points out questions we often bury so that it doesn't rattle our spiritual cages: if God is all-powerful, why doesn't he _______? The ultimate of these questions is why would God put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden? Sadism? Do we tempt our teething infants with razorblades? This is a question Catechism classes have left me with. I have not heard a better explanation than the one I taught Sunday.

The Christian life is God's love story. As with the King in Kierkegaard, God's hands are tied by his kingliness. He could have created us with no option to sin in the garden, but that would have rendered us slaves. Love, which is presumably a creation of God, is, in its own nature, a two way street. Love needs an out. There are two options for relationships such as ours with God: love (or a derivation of love such as hate) OR servitude. Think about marriage. Marriage works because divorice exists. Marriage works because a choice is made. Marriage works because of a choice for love and commitment, BUT it also is dependent on a choice to be made for NOT divorice. Forced marriages, where the wife is required by religious or societal fears and pressures to remain faithful do not foster love, they foster servitude. Can they foster love? Possibly. But, the husband can NEVER know for sure that the wife loves him unless she freely chooses NOT to leave.

The second strain to this story is that the King in this story MUST become a peasant in order to gain love from the maiden. He gives up many things to accomplish this. The King was not the King among people, but the King with people. He had to deal with everything the people dealt with. This is Christ, God himself, coming down to earth to be God with us. Christ was necessary for atonment, for sure. But, if that's all he was good for, then the Father could have had him crucified at age 20, or even 15. But that's far too utilitarian a view of Christ. Christ came to show us the methodology of God's infatuous love for humanity. We see in Christ what love for people means. People who love people like God loves people are attracted to those who suffer, who struggle, and who are despised. If you love yourself, you are attracted to those who can help you, those above you in social standing. Check your temperature in this respect. Christ lived that, as well. Isaiah 53 says there was nothing about Christ that would attract us to him. He was despised and rejected by men. He wasn't just human, he was a loser. His personality and social position was designed to reach those for whom he came. If he had a God entourage, he never would have reached the lepers, the tax collectors, and the prostitutes.

The crux of this message is that the incarnation signals a message of hope for those who suffer through humanity's mess, and a direction for those who are looking to serve. If the Church functions according to God's love story, then the sufferers and the ministers will be connected. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son....

Ron Martoia

2006-11-10T14:15:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to listen to Ron Martoia, a postmodern church growth guy who has some really good stuff to say. Here are my quick notes, if you want explanations, you can ask me or check out his website : Velocity Culture.

· Our current situation: Deep change or slow death

· Semiotics: Reading the signs and context of our times
o Why is Extreme Home Makeover so popular?
§ It showcases real people with real problems
§ People are willing to give if they can be convicted of the cause
§ Tripping our emotions is often the key to realizing the importance

· We need a ecclesiology based on missiology rather than doxology
o Our view of the church must be based in mission as well as praise

· Information does not guarantee transformation
o We have a narrow scope of cramming information into our parishioners
o We often preach a fall/redemption paradigm. We need a Creation/Fall/Redemption paradigm
o Categories: Fidelitas, Feducia, Visio, and Ascencis
§ Ascencis is far overplayed in today’s church (doctrinal/creedal)

Knowing --> Doing
· This paradigm doesn’t work
· We need more steps
· Knowing-->Seeing-->Sensing-->Doing

· Plant when a church reaches 400. This should be a mothering relationship rather than a “planting” relationship

· Old Testament Themes
o There are three stories which set the tone of the OT
§ Exodus
§ Exile
§ Priestly
o We primarily teach the priestly story, which is not holistic
o Modern people operated with a guilt mindset, in which priestly themes were perfect
o Postmodern people feel no guilt
o If we do missions overseas, we learn the language. We need to learn the postmodern language.

· Our current programs are perfectly constructed to get the results we’re currently getting.

· World Religions: Islam, Buddhism & Hinduism are descriptive of our current human state. Christianity is prescriptive of the life that we ought to live and will live. It does not accept the status quo.

· Salvation
o Zaccheus wouldn’t have been saved in most churches today
o Christ made the initial statement, justifying him before he asked

· Isaiah 61 is foretaste of Luke 4. It is a Rabbinic telos.

· In developing programs, go deep, not wide at first

· Leadership from Leath
o Leaders must cross thresholds
o Commonly associated with death

· Change is like trapeze artistry
o One must let go and hang on

· Three requirements
o Logos: Speaking the Word
o Pathos: Feeling for your people
o Ethos: Living in the present

Holiness?

2006-11-08T14:04:00.000-05:00

Psalm 15

1 LORD, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill?
2 He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart
3 and has no slander on his tongue, who does his neighbor no wrong and casts no slur on his fellowman,
4 who despises a vile man but honors those who fear the LORD, who keeps his oath even when it hurts,
5 who lends his money without usury and does not accept a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken.

Diversity vs. Community

2006-10-19T23:31:00.000-05:00

Today's subject may be a bit sensitive, but what the heck. My thoughts are not necessarily coherent so much as yearning to get out on paper, but the general gist of the matter is questioning the whole premise behind striving for diversity. I just finished reading a Synodical report from 2005 and heard a lecture by Faith Alive Resources which both tooted a very familiar horn: diversity.

My problem is not with diversity. I think cultures, ethnicities, languages, and cultures should be celebrated and discovered by each person as they attempt to be more and more struck with awe at the beauty of God's creation. Of course, lets not kid ourselves here. Unless you're a higher critic of Scripture, then you'll remember that the confusion of language (and implicitly culture) was the result of sin! And not just any sin, the sin of self-idolatry. So lets remember that God is tinkering with a broken mechanism. Even so, the beauty of culture, the variety of foods, languages, and cultures are a fantastic discovery of the age of information.

So what's my beef? I take issue with those in the Church that would say that diversity in and of itself is a goal to strive for. Really? I'll buy a nuance in the New Testament that argues for the equality of women and I'll buy implicit themes which argue for the abolition of slavery (niether of which are explicitly stated), and I might even baptize my infant even if I can't find it in the New Testament, but where do we find diversity in and of itself to be something that the church should strive for?

After all, its not like people of other skin types and languages haven't been elect over the years. Its just that not many of them have made their way into the CRC for whatever reason. There are certainly issues there, but we need not enforce affirmitive action in every church to attain some sort of quota which satisfies our diversity ideal!

The issues which hinder diversity are real: bias, unfriendliness, elitism, traditionalism, patriotism, selfishness, fear, etc. But here's a thought: don't those all sound like fault lines for a more historic, more fully-orbed Christian idea? How about the community or koinonia? The fact of the matter is, Christ didn't summarize the 10 Commandments by saying "Love the Lord your God....and your neighbor as yourself and work hard for diversity." Why not? Because diversity is a natural outcome of community and an intersection with diverse culture. Passing over a white beggar for a black one simply because you want diversity is racism.

I don't want to look like a bigot here, but I hope you see my point. Diversity is a subpoint of community, or the horizontal nature of our Christian walk, it is not an all-encompassing point. There is also a unique risk with talking about issues such as this. Anyone who questions diversity is somehow a racist or a bigot. I hope I'm neither, but my love for my cross-cultural neighbor doesn't come from a diversity command from Christ, it comes from His command to love one another.

Your Local Christian College: Foreign Misison Field

2006-09-13T12:26:00.000-05:00

I recognize that most of the people who read my blog are either college students or recently graduated college students. If you're older, good for you. If this blog causes you to get defensive, good. Maybe it will cause you to question your own college-life spirituality OR maybe it will get you on board with finding ways to reach our college communities. Either way...good luck.

College is a wonderful time in many people's lives. In fact, most people. If you're one of the chosen few who went to a Christian college, its not only a bonus if you have a god experience in college...its expected. You're expected to make friends, you're expected to gain skills, you're expected to become a democrat for six years or so, and you're expected to find a spouse. I've had the privelege of bouncing around visiting several Christian college campuses as well as meeting up with lots of committed Christians fresh out of Christian colleges at Seminary. There are a few common threads, but one of them is not church involvement. In fact, even at the Seminary, it was considered radical to implement a change last year which required students to declare regular attendance at a local church and 20 hours of church involvement during the quarter.

Let me set a context. I attend a church that meets in the chapel of Calvin College, a body of 5,000 or so students. Even though our church is on campus, our average attendance out of that body is roughly five students. Five. So our church is conservative in worship style...that means they're going somewhere else, right? If you've lived in a dorm, you know the answer.

I grew up in Orange City, IA, home of Northwestern College, and a skip and jump from Dordt College. I grew up seeing college kids at the gas station, at restaurants, coffee shops, at Pamida, student-teaching, and across the street from my house. Where did I not see them? Church. Could be a fluke....maybe we couldn't advertise well.

When I chose to go to Dordt, I kept attending my home church. I was one of two kids within four years of graduation from high school that regularly attended. Out of about 60. I thought it was our fault, something we could change. As I moved through college and now talk to people from all over North America, people conclude the exact same thing....the majority of Christian college kids don't go to church.

My church threw out the bible study book. We threw out the "inviting worship" book. We threw out the seek & greet book. We started to give things away. We gave them their own room to have premium coffee in the basement, and hooked them up with free meals.

Sound like a soup kitchen? Sound like a foreign releif effort? Bingo. College kids are not reliable, they're not responsible, and they are horribly self-concerned. Try talking to any college kid without hearing the word "busy". Yes college kid, we know you're busy. Yes college kid, we know you're tired. Yes college kid, we know you're financially strapped (except the rich kids). Yes college kid, we know you prefer contemporary worship at school. Yes college kid, we know we're hypocrites.

WELCOME TO THE CLUB, or as we like to call it - the Church.

That said, we still need to minister to this group. Given the four-eight year cultural considerations I've given, I propose we need to completely throw out the book on how to run a church ministry for a group. We need a new praxis. The soup kitchen mentality is helpful, even if the attendees are wearing Aeropostale and Abercrombie. You will get a few that are willing to be discipled. You might get none. Either way, keeping kids linked with local churches is worth it, if for no other reason than it keeps people in the pews. Most of our local churches are missing the 20-something age group. Unfortunately, eventually the 20 something age group will be the whole church. Or....it might not be the whole church.

Christian Reforming

2006-09-02T23:54:00.000-05:00

Friday I had the privilege of meeting two of the top dogs in the Christian Reformed Church - the financial director and our new executive director, Jerry Dykstra. Most people who read this blog will be familiar with the CRC, but for those of you who aren't, we're a blip on the Christendom radar. The way I think about it, the CRC is to world Christianity what Pamida is to the retail world.

Granted, the CRC has her strengths to duel with the denominational big boys (see CRWRC), but we'd be kidding ourselves to think that we are a major player with a membership around roughly 275,000. An interesting point to be made is that there are more Catholics in the Grand Rapids area than there are CRC members nationwide.

To me, comparing denominations to retail chains isn't that far of a stretch. The only three entities who are able to saturate major and minor markets to a high level of efficiency are fast food restaurants, retail chains, and churches. The common denominators? Easy duplication of processes, efficient distribution (of products & ideas), strong internal structure and communication of a unified vision. This is why you don't have a chain of Bob's Bars or Sack's Fifth Avenue in every podunk town over 5,000 across the Heartland. But Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and the Catholic Church can pull it off quite well.

That is why it was strangely reassuring to see possibly the two most powerful men in the CRC standing in front of me in business suits with cell phones on their hips. It reminded me precisely of the retail corporate types I'm used to seeing in my own store. Why was this reassuring? Maybe its because I'm too prone to using a business model in the church because of its efficient nature, although Bill Hybels pulls it off quite well. Maybe its because I like having the confidence that the ministry shares which contain my tithes are being well-handled. Maybe its because like most evangelicals, even the Calvinists, I am an Arminian in practice while being a Calvinist in thought because the hands and feet of Calvinism make the least sense to me of the whole scheme.

Dykstra did have some good things to say. He communicated that the CRC needs to minister to this generation. That is a far cry, I'm ashamed to say, from what goes on in the vast majority of CRC's today. That doesn't mean we need to break our backbone or be simply more "hip", but it does mean encountering today's culture where its at instead of waiting for Calvinism to conquer post-modernism like a knight on his steed. Then some good business principles. First, he talked about communicating the vision. In three days, he had been in Albequerque, NM, St. Paul, MN and Grand Rapids, speaking to some 60 pastors about communicating a denominational vision for change. Second, he is realistic about fault lines. Instead of just letting older ladies pray for the church to fix itself, he has real ideas for helping hurting churches. Thirdly, and probably most transformative, he argued for making our ministries "ministries of choice". There is a realization in the denomination that simply labeling ministries CRC does not bring in guilt-laden Dutch people anymore. To that end, our programs must be some of the best out there, our materials must be some of the best out there, and our approach to ministry must be excellent. Whew, what a breath of fresh air!

Does all this limit what power we believe the Holy Spirit to have in growing the church from the inside out? The question is valid. But if we are willing to let the denomination die at the hands of the very culture we are supposed to be reaching, then we haven't done our job. A balloon inflated by the breath of the Holy Spirit does not lose air quickly. I'd like to sit down sometime with Dykstra and just ask him how hard it is to balance a business model growth mentality with a spirit-led growth mentality.

Who knows where the CRC will be in 50 years. Watch out, Wal-Mart.

One Nation Under NASCAR

2006-08-06T12:11:00.000-05:00

Burton has the pole today at the Brickyard in Indy. Stewart won that last year, but his troubles this season and Gordon's ability to win at this track make it highly improbable that Stewart will repeat.

I wouldn't have known any of that three years ago during my freshman year of college. Some of that is because ESPN didn't cover NASCAR then, but some of it is because of my job. As many of you know, I work at Pamida, a small retail store which has taken me all over the country. I've worked at stores in Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Kentucky. While the geographical distance between these stores is great, the socio-economic condition of both the employees and customers that frequent these stores is quite unvaried.

There are two major themes that I have noticed since working at Pamida, which, with the exception of my Orange City store, lies outside the confines of "Christian-ized" society. First, there is an entire culture which has developed on the coattails of urban American society, a sizable group which is largely ignored by mainstream media (except maybe Larry the Cable Guy). The second observation is that the Christian community has largely ignored this segment of the population, which is quickly becoming the majority, either because they consider this group reprobate or because they simply don't know what to do with them.

This group is hard to define. In the past they would be known as "hicks", "blue collar" or "rednecks". They would also be considered in some circles "white trash". The rest of society has always relied on the "drive of the American spirit" to inspire this group to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and let capitalism motivate them to rejoin "real" society or get crushed for the betterment of the gene pool. The change has not occurred in the makeup of this group, but rather, the change has occurred in their mindset. No longer to they feel the need to elevate themselves into "normal" society. Contentedness with and even identification with their current socio-economic level is the important change that has occurred. There are the sterotypical interests of this group: alcohol, cigarettes, sex, motorsports, making enough money to get by, and a sense of entitlement. There is NOT, however, what we "red-blooded" Americans would expect "normal" people to innately have: a driving desire to have a better life, bigger house, better name in the community, strong church affiliation, latest technology, or political action.

Given this, who's life outlook is better? The ratrace American who strives to get the best of everything and constantly improve their lives, or the person who is content with where they are at and would rather enjoy where they are than tirelessly work to get ahead? How can an adult male work at a job where he makes $7 an hour? Because he can. Why isn't a trailer enough? Why isn't relaxing after your 9-5 with a few beers more appealing than killing yourself at work to buy an SUV or lakehome? Who's your senator? How does the internet work? What's the stock market outlook? Its simple: who cares?

In church we hear about the poor in other countries who are content with the little they have. We have a society of post-capitalistic content people living right here in America. This is the very reason welfare doesn't work. Its easier to swallow one's pride than to give up free money and labor again. What's more, while this group may be less politically correct than their white collar counterparts, they are, for the most part, more closely in line with the worldviews of minority groups such as inner city African Americans and immigrant Hispanic working groups. The tendency to prioritize nice trucks and satelite dishes over nice clothes and large homes with picket fences is a foreign concept to many of us.

Newsflash to churches in small communities: this is why your churches are declining in population. Life is easier if you don't care. The Church has always been reliant upon people caring, and hoping for a better future. That's why the Church has historically thrived amongst the poor. The church has died everywhere people see no point in hoping and working for a better future. What is the church to do about post-modern thinkers? The better question might be: what is the Church to do about post-capitalist thinkers? If the church really is an "opiate for the masses", then we've lost because the "masses" have found a few other culturally-acceptable opiates.

The Longest Two Hours in the World

2006-08-04T23:07:00.000-05:00

Most of the time while living in Grand Rapids, I'm just unemotional towards things. Cities tend to do that to a person. They kill the uptightness that is generally associated with the small farming communities, but they also tend to kill all motivations other than greed/self-gratification. I was looking into housing a while back and the company's website explained a novel concept which placed houses in such a way that they encouraged community. It was quick to point out that such an effort hadn't really been made since the 50's.

One thing that really has gotten me irked since living here is the inability of Grand Rapids, one of the wealthiest and believer-infested places in Christendom, to reach out to its dying neighbor, Detroit. At the risk of sounding like one of the coffeehouse should-ers from my previous posting, I have a great conviction that there should be some outreach down the interstate to the most hurting city in the nation outside of New Orleans(I'm not just saying that - there was a study that confirmed it released this week).

The fact of the matter is that if I wanted to go into any sort of ministry in Detroit for internships or a "real" job, it would have to be as a church planter or in a different denomination. The host of CRC churches/classes in Grand Rapids have not recently initiated a single churchplant or denominational ministry in the city, except for one Christian-Muslim Friendship House, which holds a loose association with the denomiation. The one existing CRC church in Detroit is located where you would expect it: in the suburbs.

I will grant that Michigan is hurting on all levels. No matter who wins the next governor race, this state is screwed until we figure out a way to curb the sense of entitlement which persists at all socio-economic levels in this state. There is, however, at least in Grand Rapids, a concentration of wealth in the churches. Many churches are run corporate-style, with top-down leadership or with projects needing to be approved by certain wealthy members. Yet, the biggest hinderance to the CRC's involvement in Detroit might be that its skill largely lies in planting suburban-style churches with largely caucasian middle class populations. The kind of cities that Detroit is are usually the subjects of world missions type ministries.

Sometimes I need people to keep me accountable (who am I kidding, that would be most times). Think of this as my way of helping to wake up accountability about man-made disaster area. Its time to end the charade. We may be two hours away from Detroit, but it seems like a world away. To walk the downtown area of Detroit is to feel like you are in a recent warzone. Perhaps the need is so great we don't know where to start. I've got an idea. How about the thousands of buildings at ground zero that are falling apart as we speak in the wasteland they call a downtown. What a big problem like this needs is an army. Here is your army.

Courtesy Message: My Blogging Philsophy

2006-08-04T22:19:00.000-05:00

As a general rule, I hate blogs. I also generally dislike people who blog. Depending on who you are, those two facts might offend you, please you, and/or come to the inevitable conclusion that I'm a flaming hypocrite.

Most of my dislike of blogs come from my observation of other people's blogs and the attitude with which I envision them typing said blog. Is it just me, or do you see in your mind people sitting at their computer with this incredibly stern look on their face, stroking their would-be beard and wondering what wonderful thoughts the rest of the world can't live without. Undoubtedly, these people base their lives on the assumption that, if the world were perfect, they and their coffeehouse buddies would most definately be on some sort of equilateral council that would decide what would be best for the world.

Most of the discussions of this council would surround what should be done about global warming, what should be done about fair trade coffee (even though nearly every company now sells it), and (at least in Christian circles) what should be done about a whole host of systemic social problems they assume can be changed at the flip of a switch. After discussing these issues, these bloggers pat eachother on the back, look down their noses at the factory workers who couldn't go to college, and go to bed after having a bottle of some sort of foreign nasty-tasting (but novel) beer.

I'm writing this blog to use up spare time and to provide a hobby for myself after I'm married and the Tigers are in the offseason (or when they start losing like normal again). If you want to read it, great. If you don't, that's fine too. If you know me, you know I have two modes: crazy phrase-slinger with no restraints and thougtfully argumenitive. My guess is that this blog will navigate the waters between those two extremes. Don't read this and think, "I can't believe he's in seminary" or "He's got no idea what he's talking about it". I'm just writing, spewing, releasing. You opened the blog. Its your choice to read it. Here we go....