Searching for God Knows What

A friend of mine slipped Don Miller's Searching for God Knows What into my hands and said, "this book really rocked my world. Read it."

So, I'm reading it. And liking it quite a lot, as matter of fact. The book has the feel and tone of a story, a first-person narrative full of remembered episodes and humorous side-trips, which I gather are Miller's stock and trade. But the book is about the Bible, in large part, and you get the feeling that Miller has tried hard to get out from under the "Biblical theology" approach to that book in order to read it as a story and to interact with it, to feel it, as a story.

This happens to be something like the approach I've been trying to take myself, so the book strikes a confirming note for me. Here's the insight from Miller that I appreciate a whole lot: the Bible is much more than a collection of life-lessons or sermon-opportunities. It will be very difficult for preachers to get their minds around this fact, methinks. Preachers are always trying to mine the Scriptures for life-lessons. "That'll preach!" they say when they hit upon such a passage.

Since this sort of preaching is often the only way people hear about Scripture, they are soon trained to mine the Word with the same purpose in mind. That is, to search for nuggets that will encourage or assure them, teach them a neat little life-lesson, etc. What they often miss is the broad sweep of the story, Genesis to Revelation, of God's plan and purpose for creation.

Now, mind you, I have heard that kind of preaching. It's not impossible to "preach the story," but it's rare. It's rare to let a parable stand on its own, as Jesus did, without parsing the life out of it with learned exegesis.

In my many years of listening to preachers, I often felt as if the preacher thought he needed to talk me back from the edge of a cliff or something. "Don't do it. Life is worth living. God loves you! Let me show you from the Scriptures!"

Well, the road to therapeutic deism is paved with good intentions . . . just like that other road! I'm sympathetic to Dan Edelen's suggestion (here) that for a time the church should replace preaching with the reading of whole books of the Bible. Imagine that!

Apologetics

Yesterday's post provoked a (shall we say) disappointed response from one reader (see first comment), I don't know, maybe it was his church I visited on Sunday. But his response leads me to want to clarify something. Simply, I've got nothing against apologetics. Some of my heroes are apologists of the faith (C. S. Lewis, for example).

But not all of us are called to do "world-view" combat in the intellectual marketplace. When Christians get hepped up about this sort of thing, it often leads to nothing more than uninformed scoffing at Darwinian evolution and such. I've heard it often enough. Most of us are not going to get beyond rote bullet-point responses to these world-view issues.

But more importantly, the sermonic call on congregation members to practice apologetics seems to crowd out the preaching of the gospel of Christ. Once again we drift into human imperatives with no apparent relation to Christly indicatives! What you often hear in these cases is something like the introductory remarks in a seminary course called "Apologetics 101," and nothing more.

Apologetics people I have known tend to depict themselves as folks who choose content over fluff, head over heart (because the heart is deceptive, don't you know). Their talk often takes on a strident tone, and they much enjoy clashing sabres with straw-man opponents.

Ah well. It is all a far cry, so it seems to me, from Peter's attitude in his first epistle, where he says this:

Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil.

2 things

1. I've begun listening to the preaching of Sinclair Ferguson and Alistair Begg at the Christian Life Conference in Memphis. I've listened to Ferguson's introductory remarks and was simply so blown away I'm going to have to listen again before going on, next time taking notes. Powerful stuff!

2. Also, found out from The Blind Beggar that I live in one of the least religious states in America! Not that I couldn't tell, but it's nice to have your intuition confirmed by the research!

Hey, what happened to my socks?

I've been listening to some of the talks given at last month's Desiring God conference in Minneapolis. Two of these talks in particular have, well, not only blown my socks off, but disintigrated them in a puff of musty malodorous smoke.

Paul Tripp: War of Words: Getting to the Heart for God's Sake

Sinclair Ferguson: The Tongue, the Bridle, and the Blessing: An Exposition of James 3:1-12

Folks, this is wonderful preaching, both convicting and grace-saturated. I cannot recommend them highly enough. Download them to your "device" and listen! You will not regret it.

Essentially Christless

So here's a typical sermon I heard recently:

Title of the sermon was, "Trust God, He's Got Your Back." The gist of it was, Hezekiah trusted God when Jerusalem was under attack. The enemy taunted the Jerusalemites and told them that their God would not protect them. But King Hezekiah trusted God, took certain practical steps to help the situation (diverting the water supply), and God pulled them through.

Moral of the story: we should trust God. All of us are facing stuff, tough stuff, and perhaps the enemy is taunting and threatening. There may be certain practical steps we should take, but above all, trust God, because he's got your back.

I can assure you that people loved this sermon. There was the requisite empathy for the "stuff" we're going through, and the heartfelt urging to do something. The reference to "the enemy," who is apparently responsible for all our bad breaks. But did you notice anything, ummm, missing?

Who was the hero of this sermon? Clearly, it was Hezekiah.

Where was Jesus in this sermon? Nowhere.

The cross? Forget about it.

Sin? You must be joking.

I give this example because it is typical. It is a sermon that I imagine would not be out of place in a modern synagogue or Mormon gathering, not to mention the most liberal mainline denominations generally (to which we evangelicals consider ourselves so superior because we're so true to the Bible and all). There is nothing in it that is essentially false, but there is nothing in it that is essentially Christian.

I would that every preacher got up in the morning with the words of Paul stirring his heart: "Him [Jesus] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ." [Col 1:28]

Dennis E. Johnson on Apostolic Preaching

I'm nearly finished reading Dennis E. Johnson's Him We Proclaim, one of the meatiest and most clarifying books I've ever read. There's a little nugget on page 331, where Johnson states that even when sermons are based on New Testament passages, they are not necessarily "apostolic." He defines that term with these four elements:

• Christ-centered
• attentive to redemptive history
• grace-driven
• missiologically articulated

I suspect that those four descriptors, taken together, make for about as perfect a definition of real preaching as one will ever find.

Me, I heard a sermon yesterday about how if you keep on sowing you will eventually reap (based on Galatians 6:7-10), so don't stop sowing sowing sowing, people! It was not remotely Christ-centered, not the least attentive to redemptive history, driven only by the expectation of one day "reaping," and only vaguely missiologically articulated. I left quietly when I couldn't take any more of it.

Proclaiming and Explaining

We who have believed the good news concerning Jesus Christ--who he was and what he accomplished on our behalf--are the disciples of our day.

There were just a handful at first. Now there are many.

The term "disciple" implies learner and imitator. We learn from Jesus, and we put what we learn into practice. We follow him. This, by the way, is all by the grace of God and in the power of the Spirit, or not at all.

To make more disciples, which is the task that Jesus gave to his small group of followers, is to draw people into this kind of teacher-learner/leader-follower relationship with Jesus, and also to build up and encourage and continue to teach those who have already come into such a relationship. The church, the body of Christ, with its preachers and teachers, exists in large part to fulfill this function.

Jesus, whom the disciples often called "Teacher," proclaimed the good news to all who would listen, but in more private sessions with his disciples--that is, those who had heard and followed--he taught about the consequences and ramifications of believing the good news. These two functions correspond to the terms "preaching" and "teaching."

Note: both these functions, preaching and teaching, are closely related to the gospel message (again, who Jesus was and what he accomplished on our behalf). Preaching proclaims it, and teaching explains it.

Jesus "proclaimed" the gospel to all and sundry. Jesus tended to "explain" the gospel to those who were truly his followers. Especially, Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John, Phillip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, James (the son of Alphaeus) and Thaddeus, Simon the Cananaean, yes and even Judas Iscariot.

If you are a believer, add your name to the end of that list.

Any teaching within the church that is not consciously aimed at explaining the consequences and ramifications of the gospel as it is walked out from day to day, however Biblical that teaching may be in other ways, is of secondary importance.

To put it another way, any preaching and teaching within the church that does not consciously aim at helping people to "work out" what God has "worked in," namely the truth of his grace toward us in Jesus Christ, is a missed opportunity.

Much has to do with how we understand ourselves now that we are believers. Do we understand that we are now disciples? Not merely members of a spiritual club, not merely receivers of blessings, but followers of Jesus.

Faith comes by preaching...

Yes, I'm having a little revival in my spirit from listening to the preaching I've found at Sovereign Grace Ministries. I highly recommend Mike Bullmore's The Functional Centrality of the Gospel and Small Group Leadership. It's long, so give yourself a chunk of time, but as a small group leader myself, this message really rocked me. I'm going to listen to it again, but all I've really got to say is, Sovereign Grace has really done Christians a great service by providing so much of this material for free. Thank you, SGM!

BTW, a condensed version of Bullmore's presentation can be found in writing at 9 Marks. Well worth reading, because it deals with the application of gospel truths in real lives.

Time of Refreshing?

You hear it all the time. Jesus loves you, and he wants to save your marriage, heal your back, treat your depression, etc. He's God, so he can do it. And as I said, he loves you. So if you want him to save your marriage, heal your back ("I'm getting the word 'back pain'"), get relief from depression, etc., just come forward and let us pray for you. Isn't God incredible!

There, that's what they call "the gospel" these days. But of course it is not the Gospel. Clearly, you don't have to be preaching the "prosperity gospel" to be preaching a "me-centered" message. In my experience, there are many church-goers who simply don't understand what the gospel is, because they have never really been told what it is in their own churches. Since the very concept of sin is strictly downplayed (it wouldn't be "winsome," don't you know), the concept of the necessity of an atonement for sin therefore seems rather like an outdated and distasteful doctrine. Many people have come to my own church because they are attracted to just this kind of deliberately Gospel-less message. It even seems to stir the heart and to lift the spirit, however briefly. And in the end it leaves people deeply the same. It is not a transformative word!

Of course, it is not hard to find nutshell descriptions of the Gospel, the true Gospel, in the New Testament. For example, just the morning I was reading the opening verses of John's Revelation. That's where we read that Jesus is the first and last, the one who was and is and is to come, and the ruler of the kings of the earth; and at the end of this doxology we read:

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Hmmm, there's a lot to sink your teeth into there, not least of which is that bit about freeing us from our sin. Apparently, it's a part of the very essence of what Jesus wanted to reveal about himself to John and through him to the seven churches.

Well, but that's just the passage I happened to read this morning, and not even the best I might have cited. How about another example? Try Peter's little talk in Solomon's Portico (Acts 3:11-26). At the end he says this:

And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’ And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days. You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.

Peter doesn't beat around the bush, does he? The problem is sin, human wickedness. A "time of refreshing" is what we desperately need. A turning in repentance to the all-encompassing One, who was, still is, and always shall be, King.

Preaching that Refreshes

Imagine two companions who have been trekking through the desert all day. Their water is long-gone, but they know that up ahead somewhere is an oasis of water and shade. That knowledge keeps them going. But the question is, can they get to it before their strength gives out?

Now imagine that after this long ordeal they have indeed reached their oasis. They have splashed in the water and drank their fill. Now they're lying down in in the shade of the swaying palms, finally refreshed, and they look at one another, and they simply begin to laugh. It's a gut-reaction, a kind of body-joy welling up from deep down; unstoppable, joyous laughter.

On Sunday night Laurie and I listened to (and watched) a message from Jack Hayford. Hayford is one of my heroes, a great preacher in my opinion. This particular sermon was one in a series leading up to Easter. Hayford took us through the story of the raising of Lazarus, all the while keeping in view the events that were already looming on the horizon, Calvary on Friday, and on Sunday morning an empty tomb.

It was a wonderful sermon. Jack's presentation was full of wise and patient application, but mostly it was simply refreshing. Truly, deeply refreshing. Like water to a thirsty soul. When it was over, Laurie and I looked at one another, and we began to laugh.

More on Practical Preaching

It's Saturday morning, new snow has fallen outside (so what else is new?), and soon my honey and I will be walking through the pleasantly crunchy streets of our town to have breakfast at one of our local fine dining establishments. So what the heck am I doing blogging?

Well, I'm thinking about the discussion about practical application now in progress at Dan's place and also Jared's. And thinking about practical application of the Gospel makes me think of the early part of Romans 6, where Paul says, "Look, here's what has happened to you: you have died and risen with Christ. Therefore, here's who you are: slaves of righteousness rather than slaves of sin. Therefore, here's what you should do: instead of submitting to slavery again to sin, submit yourself (your "members," everything you're made of) to God as slaves of righteousness."

That's a fair summary of the passage I think. Note: the imperative flows from the indicative, as usual. Or, as I mentioned in another post, the doing flows from the being. Note also, the application is kind of open-ended. It seems that "righteousness" is going to have to be "worked out" in different ways by different people. Paul seldom gets to the nuts-and-bolts level in his letters.

But what makes the passage difficult, I think, is that it speaks of a reality, a reality about myself, that I don't often feel. I died with Christ? I rose with Christ? Do I consistently grasp that reality. Perhaps I have not consistently felt that way since the early days of my faith, and sometimes I don't feel that way at all. The indicative part of Paul's little equation here has to be grasped by faith, apparently, and friend, my faith is weak.

That's why it's probably good to remember often with John Owen, "The duties that are required of us are not proportioned to the strength residing in us but to the supply laid up for us in Christ."

At the end of the Romans passage Paul restates the basic indicative upon which his imperatives are based. He says:

"...for sin will not have lordship over you."

Douglas Moo, in his great commentary on Romans, says of this verse, "Without this promise . . . the imperative would be futile." I think it's interesting that Paul circles back to a statement about our spiritual condition in Christ. Sometimes it may seem that sin has lordship over me, but that is simply never so for the believer. Again, it may seem so, but the truth is that in that instance we have once again submitted our members to that old boss. We didn't have to, but we did. That really sucks, but there it is.

So Paul circles back again, throughout his writing, to a restatement of the way things are. He expresses it in many ways. Here are a few of my favorites:

• But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. Rom. 8:10
• To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Col. 1:27
• Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.... Eph. 4:15
• I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Phil. 4:13
  

The point is, the muck and mire of daily living can easily distract us from these heavenly realities. In the heavenlies, we are seated with Christ. But in the earthly, well, it ain't pretty. In most cases, the "already" ain't yet.

Which is why, I think, that Paul says elsewhere, "set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth." You notice how so many of Paul's imperatives bring our attention back to the indicatives? I think that Paul would say that there is something very practical about setting our minds on heavenly realities. That in fact, from heaven we get the most truly realistic perspective on ourselves and our world.

This is not to argue against practical application in sermons, but I do think that the highest and correspondingly most difficult task of the preacher is to remind people and drive home to their imaginations the realities of the new birth, because all the practical advice in the world won't help if this is not first understood and grasped by faith.

Implementing the Cross

Dan Edelen is asking good questions. In a post entitled Preaching for Results he suggests that preaching the Gospel without addressing the issue of praxis, making the Gospel real ("work out your salvation in fear and trembling"), is often the missing ingredient. Dan writes:

People in the seats are dying to know how the Gospel works in a practical way in their modern lives. They might hear the world’s best theological explanation of the cross, but if no one will tell them what to do to make that explanation real in their own lives, the message becomes like seed sown on hardened, baked soil.

A bit later on in the post he adds this:

I’m not sure we’re preaching what to do next in Gospel-centered churches. I think we sometimes spend too much time filling people with knowledge they can’t figure out how to use. But if the difference between the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 is what they did and didn’t do, then the people in the seats have to know what the godly next step is for what they have learned. They must have a clearly directed outlet for praxis.

I'll just share some of my first thoughts about this. I don't want to be glib and certainly I don't want to be impractical, but I think you have to start with the Spirit. I think the practical flows from the spiritual. That means that when we receive the truth of the Gospel, and when we respond in genuine praise and thanksgiving, we are soon interceding for people in prayer, and in turn we are also interceding in a hands-on way as the Spirit begins to transform our minds and hearts.

I do not want to imply that suggestions for practical application are not helpful, but they may not be helpful when they do not come within the normal flow of transformed/transformative living, which is "from above." In fact, there seems to be more than enough "practical" advice type preaching that is essentially disengaged from the Gospel, and when that happens it always takes on the familiar colorations of legalism.

It so happens that something I was reading last night addresses this very matter. In N. T. Wright's Following Jesus, we find these relevant thoughts:

How can we celebrate and put into practice this victory [of Christ over the world's powers] today? How can we follow this Jesus into genuine victory? It is surprisingly simple. Every time you kneel down to pray, especially when you pray the prayer of the kingdom (which we call the Lord's Prayer), you are saying that Jesus is Lord and that the 'powers' aren't. Every time you say grace at a meal you are saying that Jesus is Lord, and that the world and all it offers is his, and has no independent authority. And every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we celebrate the victory of Jesus in a way which, by the power of its symbolic action, resonates out, into the city, into the country, into the world, into our homes, into our marriages, into our bank accounts -- resonates out with the powerful message that God is God, that Jesus is his visible image, and that this God has defeated the powers of evil that still enslave and crush human beings today. 'Eucharist' means 'thanksgiving'; thanksgiving for the work of Christ is the most powerful thing we can ever do. The task of the church is to get on with the implementing of the cross; and if we grasped this vision and lived by it, we would be able at last to address some of the problems in the Church and in the world that look so large and seem so intractable. p.21-22(emphasis added)

The Indicative/Imperative of the Laodicean Problem, or, Please, No More Gauntlet Sermons

All across America, on any given Sunday, a Christian church pastor is throwing down the proverbial gauntlet before his congregation. We’ll call it "the gauntlet sermon." He’s probably citing the third chapter of John’s Revelation as his text: the part about the Laodicean church. You remember, that’s the lukewarm one. Neither hot nor cold. God’s gonna spit them right outa his mouth!

The indicative of these sermons is, "God doesn’t like lukewarm churches." The imperative is, "Get off your hands and do something!" These sermons are generally preached by pastors who are frustrated by a lack of enthusiasm and/or a dearth of volunteers for the various church ministries. Not enough ushers, not enough Sunday school teachers, not enough kid-sitters for the toddler-room, etc. Twenty percent of the people doing one hundred percent of the work. How can that be fair? Such people are leaving a bad taste in the Father’s mouth!

Am I striking a familiar cord? I’ve heard the all-out (near tirade) gauntlet sermon, and I’ve heard the more subtle, "kinder/gentler" variety, but the indicative/imperative of all these sermons is essentially the same. Indicative: "You’re not doing enough (i.e., you’re lukewarm)." Imperative: "Start doing more! Or God just might vomit you out of his mouth."

What shall we do with a sermon like this? I mean, where does one begin to describe the sad, anti-Christian dysfunction of such a message? As if the assembling of the saints for worship were essentially a staffing problem. As if church were merely a collection of ministries. Imagine it: people who are trying (or perhaps, sadly, not trying) to love their neighbors, to serve their families, to be salt and light in the workplace, have to endure being told that the true measure of spiritual worth is, apparently, how much they do at church!

I don’t get it. How can something so utterly foreign to the testimony of the Word of God make its way so routinely into the churches of this land? But just in case you were wondering about the Laodiceans, does anyone really think their problem was a lackluster record of volunteerism for church ministries?

I mean, read the passage carefully. Ask yourself, what is the fundamental indicative here? That is, what is the main point that Jesus is making about the Laodiceans? And then ask yourself, what is the fundamental imperative? What is being asked of them? Go read it and come back. I'll wait.

Do you see? The Laodiceans are smug and self-satisfied. They're well-off in the material sense, but in the spiritual sense they are "wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked." That's the indicative. That tells us everything we need to know about the Laodiceans.

And now, what's the imperative?

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

Refined gold and white garments are symbols of righteousness. No one gets such garments out of merit, since no man is righteous. These are a gift of God, beginning to end. Like Isaiah said.

So then, what is the real imperative here?

Simply this: "Repent!"

Does that have a familiar ring? Here's my point. This passage has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with church volunteerism. Pastors, get over yourselves. The one matter of importance here is, Jesus stands at the door and knocks! It has ever been so. It was so before I ever became a Christian, and it is so now. It is so for each one of us, and it is so for our churches. He stands at the door, knocking, letting us know he is there, and that perhaps we might want to let him in.

Now, if I should run to the door and answer, if I should "let Jesus in," will that mean I'll sign-up for usher-duty next week, feeling properly chastised?

Maybe, maybe not. But the point is, what the Laodiceans needed, what I need, what you need, is Jesus. Then, when we go to church, we will celebrate and extol Him, rather than hearing about our supposedly neglected responsibilities.

That's what I think.

We Must Never Assume the Gospel

I'm certainly not the only Christian blogger who is excited about the fact that C. J. Mahaney has joined our ranks. I have a feeling that I'm going to have to put myself on some sort of Mahaney-rationing plan, or I'll be quoting his posts every day. Mahaney was one of the voices amidst all the Christian crowd-noise that calmly called my attention back to the cross, whispering quietly, "Did you forget something?"

I recall discussing a sermon with a friend of mine. I said, "Did you notice? There was nothing of Jesus, and nothing of the Gospel in all of that?" My friend replied, "Isn't the Gospel just assumed sometimes?"

C. J.'s latest post provides the answer to that question. I'm going to snip a large chunk of it here, but by all means go over there and read the whole thing:

We must never assume the gospel. We must always assume that those we serve need to hear the gospel yet again. Any sermon we preach is incomplete and insufficient until we explicitly reference Christ and him crucified.

In the book A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life, J.I Packer writes,

"The preachers’ commission is to declare the whole counsel of God; but the cross is the centre of that counsel, and the Puritans knew that the traveller through the Bible landscape misses his way as soon as he loses sight of the hill called Calvary."

Every sermon must have a sighting of the hill called Calvary, because each passage of Scripture points us to the cross. In Christ-Centered Preaching, Bryan Chapell writes,

"In its context, every passage possesses one or more of four redemptive foci. Every text is predictive of the work of Christ, preparatory for the work of Christ, reflective of the work of Christ, and/or resultant of the work of Christ."

And because every text of Scripture points us to the cross, every topic should likewise point us to the cross. Thomas Jones says, "No doctrine of Scripture may faithfully be set before men unless it is displayed in its relationship to the cross."

The message of the cross is central to the commission of the preacher, is to be on display in every sermon, is cultivated from every text of Scripture, and is embedded within every topic and doctrine intended to nourish the church.

Message Monday

Jared YouTubed Francis Chan on Friday. That got me interested in hearing more from this dynamic speaker. Here's something I found; it cuts to the quick like a two-edged sword:

"Recalibrating" the mission of the church

Our pastor has begun a new preaching series that will, he says, "recalibrate" the mission and vision of our church. This recalibration is a product of much discussion with the elders, and yet it is also his own "prophetic vision" for the future of our church. In other words, it is both a carefully thought out group decision and a vision from God.

Since I have been quietly dissatisfied with my church for some time, this comes as a ray of hope. The need for such a "recalibration" implies a recognition among the pastor and elders (perhaps) that we had in fact drifted from certain practices or emphases that had once been central, but were no longer so. In fact, as we talked it over in our small group last night, several other people seemed to agree with this assessment.

I hark you back to yesterday's post, in which I quote Craig Larsen, who says that the role of preaching and teaching in the church is to transform the believer's personal cosmology from one that is self-centered (i.e., all things take on their importance or usefulness insofar as they relate to me) to one that is God-centered. But it is possible to preach in such a way as to validate self-centeredness on a spiritual level. And this is the curse of the modern church.

So what I am looking for in this "recalibration" of the mission and vision of the church is an answer to the simple question, "What's at the center?" I am cautiously encouraged by this recalibration process so far (optimistic would be too strong a word). My pastor, a man for whom I have great respect, by the way, has preached two sermons in this series so far, the first of these introducing the new mission statement and the second introducing us to the "vision."

Here's my plan. I'm going to blog through this process with you. In the next couple of days I'll get caught up by sharing with you the mission statement and the vision statement that were "unpacked" in those last two sermons. I'll share my thoughts and concerns, and I'll seek your wisdom.

Hey, blogging has become my way of thinking out loud. Humor me!

On "changing the believer's orbit"

Craig Brian Larsen has a great article on Preaching that Promotes Self-Centeredness.

Our greatest challenge in training motives is to change the believer's orbit. Under the full control of their sinful nature, people are self-centered. They have the planetary mass of Jupiter, with God and other people orbiting around them like tiny moons. When people turn to Christ in faith, God begins the revolutionary process of transforming them to be other-centered and God-centered. They begin to see themselves in proper relation to the value of others and the greatness of God. Increasingly they orbit the massive, glorious sun of God's will.

BTW, I found this one through the always valuable Transforming Sermons.

Read it and weep

How to preach a sermon that inspires, excites, and leaves people filled with new resolution, and yet withholds from them the one thing needful: the gospel.

I thirst (part 2)

A couple of days ago I got a little ranty in a post called I thirst. Jared at Gospel-Driven Church uses that as a springboard for his own somewhat ranty thoughts in a post exquisitely titled, For I was hungry, and you told me to self-feed.

As often happens, Jared and I seem to be reading from the same spiritual talking-points memo. His first two main points echo my own thoughts, but I had not yet come to express them clearly. Jared saved me the trouble:

1) There are some lazy, consumerist, adultolescent [btw, "adultolescent"--I like that!] Christians whose "I'm not being fed" is nothing more than a whiny excuse for growing bored with their church's programs and not serving.

2) There are some mature, self-sacrificing, wise Christians whose "I'm not being fed" is a sign a church has gone off the rails.

Exactly. In the past year I myself have quietly made this determination to "self-feed," and while it has been a very rewarding experience, I will say this: it is not enough. I need to hear the Gospel "in community." The reconciliation that Christ won at the cross (in the decisive "Armageddon" victory over Satan) was and is all about the restoration of not simply persons--but "a people."

There is much to be said here, but I don't have the time. I'll leave you with a final quote from Jared:

We must preach the gospel to each other, all the time. Without fail. We need to hear it, we need to ponder it, reflect on it, be moved by it to worship Christ. Pastors and preachers, why are you failing to give it to us, to all of us? It is the one thing we need. Call it milk, call it meat, call it whatever you want, but it is the cure for cancer you are telling us to research on our own when you've got it in your back pocket. It's in that Bible you use like it's Bartlett's.

Rant on!

The Gospel as Weapon

Graeme Goldsworthy said,

All "AD" history is in crisis because the Holy Spirit constantly resupplies the decisive victory of Calvary and the empty tomb through the preached word of the gospel. Goliath is vanquished and now the people of God, armed with the victory of their king, great David's greater Son, storm the cities of the Philistines with the invincible weapon of the preaching of the gospel.

From The Goldsworthy Trilogy (p. 290)