Church Voices

“Often people will be told, ‘invite Jesus into your heart, become a Christian and then everything in your life will become great.’ They do this and then find out it’s not all happy and great and feel betrayed. So on the front end, what we ought to do is say ‘Please join up, we would love it if you became a Christian- join us and then take up your cross and we will bleed and die together. Welcome.’ We ought to be much more honest up front and then people won’t feel the bait and switch later.”

~Rob Bell, Sermon on 4/13/08

HT: Joe Martino

I can’t ask for God’s protection and expect that bad things that happen to other people won’t happen to me. I can’t ask for God to straighten out messes in a miraculous way and still honestly say I believe what scripture says about what it means to follow Christ in my life.

Jesus doesn’t run a protection racket, and he isn’t a rescue squad. He gives meaning to suffering and shows us the way of kingdom repentance and the cross. That’s where I am these days. I don’t want to tell unbelievers that God works things out for me because I’m on his team.

HT: Internet Monk

Of course we point and laugh at health and wealthers (as we should), but we also buy into a more subtle form of it when we expect to wear Jesus like a magical cloak that will repel cancer, divorce, death, pneumonia, and car accidents. If we expect becoming a Christian to be some sort of life bettering decision like earning a degree from an Ivy League university we may be in the wrong religion (if this is what you’re looking for Scientology might be a better fit), because scripture doesn’t promise us a magic carpet ride to easy street.

What we can expect from God, however, is to prepare and comfort us when life decides we’re due a gigantic heaping helping of hurt. There’s a scene in the movie Juno after which the title character has just given birth and has given up the baby for adoption. Juno is laying there, exhausted, and hurting from the pain of birth and of giving up a child, and her father strokes her hair and says, “Someday, you’ll be back here, honey. On your terms”.

Perhaps God as our Father looks a lot more like that than he does a super hero saving the day. Or maybe, that’s the only way Father God can look, because if God is nothing more than a gravytrain, or a magic shield protecting us from harm he becomes Rich Uncle God, or Banker God, and as good as it is to have a rich uncle, a super hero, or a banker, none of them are as good as Father.

This group of comments saddens me greatly because it is indicative of a general attitude found within the church which views God as an unapproachable deity that is closer to Islamic theology of the ineffable Allah than it does a heavenly father.

Consider this comment from that same thread:

Ultimately we (all people) live under the threat of eternal death if we worship improperly, do we not?

Or this one:

The Bible does not say God is “love, love, love.” It does say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.”

And then consider this:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!
Luke 13.34

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[m] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8.38-39

The scriptures describe God as father, Christ as brother and husband. Any theology that fails to relationally connect His people to Him in this way is a theology that is devoid of Christ because it is through the sacrifice of Christ that we have been added to his family and are able to approach the throne of grace.

Peter’s words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?”

Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is to you, and to your children, and even to the Gentiles—all who have been called by the Lord our God.” Then Peter continued preaching for a long time, strongly urging all his listeners, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation!”

Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all.

Being raised and educated in a non-denominational denomination that puts a huge emphasis on baptism I know all the verses about baptism. I could put together a nice big powerpoint presentation for you, write a paper, justify my position, and generally get all academic up in this hizzle.

I wonder sometimes, if we don’t make an idol of the Bible. If what once brought joy now has turned into “much study[ing] wearies the body”. There were no NT scriptures at this point, no Romans 6, or words like “baptismal regeneration”.

Only the knowledge that forgiveness of sins was there, waiting.

Have we exchanged joy for a power point presentation?

Josh writes something that sums up what I’ve noticed about myself and thinking for the past year or so.

You really can’t sum up the life of Jesus with the doctrine of active obedience. That might be part of it, I guess, but his life isn’t a mask for a doctrine. I’m at the point in my Christian life now where I really don’t want to hear doctrines about Jesus anymore. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in them, as I understand the importance of the various orthodox dogmas. However, I feel like the stories in the Gospels themselves are far more important. I find myself more and more dealing with life by mentally referring to a Gospel (or sometimes OT) story than by referring to a doctrinal formulation.

During one of our gatherings one of our elders asked if anyone would like to share any of their favorite verses. One guy stood up and said the (pretty close) to the following:

As we were sitting here I recalled the passage in Isaiah which says “come let us reason together”, as we go about our day we carry out the great commission in conversations in our everyday life

Boy that’s awfully missional. It was spoken by a guy approaching his 60s, who was raised in a very traditional church in what is usually seen as a traditional non-denominational denomination.

Later this week I’m going to post an interview I did with Virgil Vaduva, in our post-interview conversation he told me that a minister that he is very close to made the comment to him that emerging/emergent had already been done 150 years ago in that same non-demoninational denomination.

Many of the emerging/emergent ideas that are viewed as controversial by outspoken critics are simply gems of the past re-discovered by the church. So much so, that when I’ve stripped out names of authors and buzzwords from many of these ideas and presented them to people who were raised in traditional churches there’s very little disagreement.

Want to revitalize a church? Have some advice:

This principle was confirmed in a huge way in our study of Comeback Churches. According to Comeback leaders, the key to making a comeback was this - “renewed belief in Jesus Christ and the mission of the church.” That was the highest-rated single item in the study. How simple and basic is that!?

Here is the account of a guy who left Restoration Movement for Lutheranism.

As I read through his account it struck me how different the teaching I’ve received are from what he received. Check out his account of the Lord’s Supper:

In the Restoration Movement, the Lord’s Supper had always been about how well we cleansed ourselves via our sense of humilty before taking the Lord’s Supper. Instead of the sacrament being about how God touches His people, it was about how His people ascend to him through an impossible exercise of spiritual purity.

Contrast that with this from The Faith Once For All by Dr. Jack Cottrell, “The Lord’s Supper likewis is both worship and edification. We take the emblems not only as a memorial to honor our Savior, but also as a means of reminding ourselves that his blood is the only reason we are saved.” Now, I am by no means equivocating a sacramental view to the Restoration Movement, or to this particular statement. What I am saying though is that this view of the Lord’s Supper and the view that the Lord’s Supper is some sort of works based leaping towards God don’t equivocate either.

In fact as I found myself reading over his journey to Lutheranism I found myself thinking that if I were presented with the same sort of faith through the Restoration Movement that he was I would probably be Lutheran today as well.

Sadly, his story didn’t surprise me. Unfortunately, due to the decentralized nature of the Restoration Movement, and taking our theological identity from baptismal regeneration* there is a riptide of works based theology. I believe its fading, but its still out there, and I would rather have someone journey to Wittenberg than flail about in a vain attempt to work their way into the kingdom of God.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ingrid over at Slice of Laodicea continues in her quest to be holier than God with this little nugget of terrible theology:

I am going to say publicly that I believe the tidal wave of sex sermon series is due to the prurient interest of both pastors and parishoners.

Actually the “tidal wave of sex sermon series” has a lot more to do with the way the church has taught about sex in the past. It is a restoration of what the Bible actually teaches. The Bible does have a lot to say about sex, unfortunately in the past people like Ingrid made sure only half of what the Bible teaches gets out. The other half, the half that says that sex is a wonderful pleasure shared between married people was somehow, left out. The end result of this terrible methodology has been the impression (by many in the church and especially out of the church) is that sex is at worst, detestable, and at best, tolerated.

That is, of course, a bunch of crap. And thankfully, the church is starting to correct the malfeasance of the past by teaching what the Bible actually teaches about sex.

Ravi Zacharias has made the observation that the arts (music, photos, movies, etc) get around the normal brain functions and make their worldview by aesthetics rather than by arguments. For some reason the same thing happens when money gets involved. Inject money into a situation (no matter how little) and normally lucid individuals become outraged activists. Apparently the word “money” circumvents the rational part of the brain and strikes directly at the outrage center.

Here’s a prime example:

Contemporary worship songs, on the other hand, are a revenue stream for copyright holders and music publishers. They are aggressively promoted and now make up a significant share of the $4.5-billion Christian retail market…. And that, my friends, is a tragedy – another triumph of Mammon in the modern evangelical church.

In other words the fact that churches pay copyright holders is a horrible thing that elevates money over God.

What? Let’s ask a few questions. Why is it wrong to pay for materials related to singing, but its not wrong to pay a minister to lead the service and preach? Or, an even better question: is paying for Bibles with copyrights wrong? I don’t see how you can be consistent and take the position that paying for Bibles and paying a minister is a-ok, but paying for songs just crosses the line.

Ah, you say, the problem isn’t the principle of the matter, the problem is the way its gone about. From that same article:

Contemporary worship songs, on the other hand, are a revenue stream for copyright holders and music publishers. They are aggressively promoted and now make up a significant share of the $4.5-billion Christian retail market.

In other words, the problem is that they’re aggressively marketed.

That’s an interesting argument, but I don’t think its successful because Bibles and ministers are aggressively marketed. Open up any sort of magazine sold to Christians and in the ads you’ll see various translations of scripture being advertised, skip around the internet you’ll see entire blogs devoted to appreciation and analysis of translations of scripture.

On the minister side of things, I talked to a guy recently who had finished heading up the search team for his church. In a four month period of time they received over 200 resumes. Guys were sending pictures, CDs, DVDs, extensive resumes that included philosophies of ministry, personal theologies, and all of this came in neatly packaged folders and envelopes all designed to impress.

In other words, both ministers and Bibles are aggressively marketed.

But maybe you’re going to grant a special dispensation to ministers and Bibles as the author does. Lets look at that perspective.

Contrast this with the “old” method. Hymn books contain songs that are mostly in the public domain and have little or no licensing fees. They have historically been published by denominational publishers who make them available to congregations more or less at cost.

Absolute crap. You don’t run a publishing house, not even one that publishes hymn books containing only public domain music and sell at cost. Someone owns that publishing house, and they expect to get paid, and their employees expect to be paid as well. In fact, the only person not getting paid in this scenario is the actual author of the music (who is either dead or so old their use for money is based on their diaper consumption).

But even with all that being said most hymnal publishers have at least some copyrighted hymns. Brethren Press, Concordia (Lutheran) and United Methodist publishing houses are examples of denominational publishing houses that distribute hymns under copyright.

Given all this what possible reason is there to object to the use of copyrighted works during worship services?

Wait for it… wait for it…

If you’ve been to a church at any time in the past 30 years, you have no doubt been subjected to the “worship wars.” Contemporary vs. Traditional. Modern vs. Postmodern. The worship wars have been fought in virtually every evangelical church at some time during the past generation. Those on the traditional side say the conflict is ultimately a matter of theology. Those on the contemporary side say it is ultimately a matter of relevance.

I’ve got my own opinions about this question, and – just for the record – let me say that I’m a traditionalist when it comes to matters of worship.

And there it is. The author has found himself on the losing side of a preference issue. Most people (and that is to say reasonable people) have rejected the argument put forward by hymnophiles that the scriptures demand, as a matter of theology, the use of hymns. Once that argument was rejected, and people began to choose based on preference hymns quickly became used less and less frequently. And so a new argument had to be devised, and the form the argument is taking is that the specific type of music being used and how that music is distributed.

Now we’re getting into the area of judging motives, which can be tricky, but when excessive rhetoric like this is the conclusion of the article:

And that, my friends, is a tragedy – another triumph of Mammon in the modern evangelical church.

Ooh, I stand POWERREBUKED!!!! Mammon! That’s like the super triple fatality of rhetoric when it comes to money. Unfortunately its being sadly misused. And not just misused, but its being used in an anti-Biblical position.

Oh yeah, I went there. The stance taken in this piece is the opposite of Biblical teaching. Check it out:

For the Scripture says, “You must not muzzle an ox to keep it from eating as it treads out the grain.” And in another place, “Those who work deserve their pay!”
- 1 Timothy 5:18

Next time you walk into a church look around. Every thing you lay your eyes on was paid for either by the church or a generous donor, and no one would suggest things like chairs, projectors, pulpits or anything else inside of a church should be ripped off by the church. The people who made those things deserve to be paid for their efforts. No one would ever suggest that there was a “triumph of Mammon” because a church paid for everything inside of a church (and the church itself).

So why is it different for worship music?

Read the rest of this entry »

As I noted before I’ve been following the Driscoll church planting video “controversy” closely and came across this from Tall Skinny Kiwi. What was telling was this comment from a particularly nasty egalitarian named Paul. Check out his condemnation:

The men here who are defending the Driscoll view of women are strangling themselves with the long cord that runs from ancient female oppression in all cultures through to the burqa today.

I pity you all for the trajectory of history is not on your side.

Now, egalitarians consistently tell us that they have honestly and legitimately come to the conclusion that scriptures doesn’t just allow for the option of female elders, but demands it in the name of equality. In other words there’s a scriptural mandate for female elders.

So why is it when I see egalitarians condemning complementarians it is never in terms of scripture. Take a note of Paul’s rhetoric, he’s claiming that God, through his word, demands female eldership, yet, the biggest condemnation he can level is that the “force of history is not on your side”. You’d think if someone believes you are violating God’s commands and twisting his word that he’d be a bit more concerned about the trajectory of God than the trajectory of history.

This is why I don’t take the vast majority of egalitarians seriously (by that I mean those in the blogosphere, and especially those that crank up the rhetoric to holy war level). While they claim their views are grounded in scripture, it doesn’t really seem like even they take that seriously. I’m casting a wide net here (and I realize there are exceptions) but we’re generally talking about people who believe when Jesus said “its harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle” he meant “its harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle” while doing backflips with texts that read as complementarian supports on their face.

Meanwhile, their ultimate judge is the “trajectory of history”. And that’s what I keep coming back to. Choosing that as the judge of complementarians is so telling. When Tupac rapped “Only God can judge me” that resonated with a lot of people, because that’s understandable. After all God knows the truth, God knows our hearts, God knows what is just. There isn’t anyone or anything more qualified to judge us. So when someone writes “the trajectory of history is not on your side” thats far more than just smack talk. Its indicative of what that person believes our ultimate judge will be. In this case complementarians aren’t being judged by God, they’re being judged by the “trajectory of history”.

Maybe I’m wrong here, but when I read egalitarians, especially their hysterical outrage, I don’t get the sense that scripture is driving their rants, rather that they’re outraged because of their culture, and their view of history. Not their view of scripture.

As I stated in an earlier post, I would prefer to open the doors of the eldership wide to women. But I can’t do that and remain faithful to scripture. Sadly, from what I’ve read in this latest dust up egalitarians in the blogosphere are letting their culture shape their theology, instead of the scriptures.