Sending the Equipped

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One of the benefits of taking notes when reading through a book is the ability to go back very quickly and revisit some of its ideas without having to do a full reread. I’ve been reading through my notes of a book I read a few years back and absolutely loved, R. Paul Stevens’ The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and Ministry in Biblical Perspective (here’s my original blog post). Many Christians wrongly view their experiences of Sunday worship as punctuation so that Sunday becomes sacred while the rest of the week remains secular. I wouldn’t argue that Sunday isn’t a special day; certainly the gathering of the redeemed people of God for corporate worship is a special event. I would only argue, with Stevens, that it is not the division between the sacred and secular parts of our week, but rather the event that turns the whole of our weeks into sacred days. It is the time in which we are nurtured together to sent out to all the different places God has called us. Here’s how he put it:

“The church, like the gathering and dispersion of blood in the body, is a rhythm of gathering (ekklesia) and dispersion (diaspora)…The church gathered must not be separated from the church dispersed any more than the heart and lungs can be separated from the body. Gathered, the blood is cleansed and oxygenated. Sent out, it fights diseases and energizes” (p. 211).”

So come and go, Church. Come to be energized, equipped, and encouraged; then go and be salt, light, and priest to those around you.

Same Kind of Different As Me

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Ron Hall and Denver Moore. Same Kind of Different As Me

I cried! There i said it. Several times. I really enjoyed this book and went through it pretty quickly. Being from the DFW area, it was interesting to hear places talked about that I was familiar with. I really thought this book had it all: it was modern-day tragedy meets compelling vision, deep faith, and dogged perseverance. To be allowed along for the ride as these two men recounted their adventurous journey together was indeed a privilege. I left with a renewed appreciation for my family and my friends, as well as the renewed perspective that life is short. My favorite line from the book was the introduction made by Ron Hall before Denver Moore spoke at a church in the Ft. Worth area: “Tell them i’m just a nobody trying to tell everybody that there’s somebody who can save anybody.” Classic.

a year removed

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How interesting that it has been almost exactly 1-year since this blog was updated. I’ve been thinking lately about how we can relate better to those who love and support us from afar. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about time? It’s an interesting thing. It is invisible and yet we treat it as a commodity. We save it, make the most of it, waste it, etc. And yet time is just time. I’m sure we’ve all gotten a laugh out of the overused bit in which parents complain that their kids never call or write or visit, right? The reason? “I just didn’t have the time.” What does that mean, really? Does it mean that instead of getting 24 hours in the day like everyone else in the world, they were only getting 18? Of course not. It means that they didn’t make (here we go again with the commodity language) the time.

Well i’m certainly not trying here to make myself feel guilty, i’m only saying that I’m really interested in communicating. And while it is difficult sometimes being so busy and so far removed, it is important.

So let’s do it…

Sinners in the Hands of a Gracious God

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I borrowed this title from an article done by a former professor of mine. It’s obviously a play on the famous sermon by Jonathan Edwards. The change, while playful, is also helpful; for the sermon is not simply about the hell that awaits the lost. No, more than that, it is about the God who, in His mercy, holds those same lost in His hand while they may repent. It’s a great article and an even greater sermon.

One ambition I have for the coming weeks would be to take the famous sermon by Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God,” and paraphrase it in today’s language. I want to do this for several reasons. First, because it will help me to understand and appreciate it more fully to wrestle more deeply with the words and images he uses in his description of sinners, and hell, and God. Second, because I want to preach it. I understand that it can certainly be preached on it’s own merit; but, let’s be honest, we don’t speak the same language that was spoken in Edwards’ day. Further, many in our church here in Galway are not native English speakers. Perhaps it would be unrealistic to expect even native English speakers to fully grasp, track with, and appreciate the sermon in its original vernacular; much less foreigners. Third, perhaps one of the reasons why so many people who know very little of Edwards or his sermon, seem to think so little of it is because they don’t understand what he’s saying. Or maybe it’s just too convicting and not politically correct in our present context.

That’s not to say that it isn’t fantastic in its original form. What could be more compelling to a person under the conviction of the Holy Spirit than the idea that God has preserved you and saved you from hell for this very purpose…that you might repent right now and receive His mercy! It really is a sermon more about God’s mercy than His anger.

I’ve been reading, studying, and preaching through the Sermon on the Mount. As we’re drawing to the end, we are coming to Jesus’ conclusion which comes in the form of 4 warnings. He states that there are ONLY 2 paths, 2 trees, 2 claims, and 2 houses (or maybe foundations). That’s it. Which, as D.A. Carson notes, is to say that if you choose wrong, there is no hope for you except destruction. I quote from his great little book on the Sermon on the Mount – which I have thoroughly enjoyed. 

“Two ways, and only two. The Sermon on the Mount does not end with lofty thoughts of human goodness, sprinkled liberally with naive hope about the inevitability of human progress. It offers two ways, and only two. The one ends in life (7:14), good fruit (7:17), entrance into the kingdom of heaven (7:21), stability (7:25); the other ends in destruction (7:13), bad fruit and fire (7:19), exclusion from the kingdom along with other evildoers (7:23), ruination (7:27). Solemn thoughts, these; a man will ignore the weight of these blessings and curses only at his own eternal peril.” – p. 122

Related to reason number 2 and my desire to preach it so that my people could understand it, I want for it and the stark words of Jesus in this final section of the Sermon on the Mount to move myself and my people to a deeper desire for evangelism. It isn’t just the lost who live like hell is not a real place. Sadly, I do too from time to time. Jesus pulls no punches in His sermon, and Edwards doesn’t either. 

God, please help us to remember that hell is real and that there is nothing that keeps people from going there right now except your mercy…and then help us to go to them in boldness to share with them about that mercy.

Penn and Bible

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I’m going to try and embed this video here (thanks for sending it, Bill), but not sure how successful i will be. So here is the link. A friend of mine sent this to me. This is very interesting, i must say. Penn is…well, i’m not entirely sure what he is…he’s a performer and maybe a magician??? Anyway, you’ll probably recognize him in the video (although he really should pull his hair back and place his webcam a little higher up because he looks REALLY scary).

So in the video (he’s an atheist by the way) he shares about a businessman who gives him a Bible after one of his shows. He makes a couple of interesting comments that, perhaps, we should all take to heart. He says in one place, “I don’t respect people who DON’T proselytize.” He says, “If you believe that there is a heaven and a hell and that people go there when they die, why WOULDN’T you tell people, even at the expense of being socially ackward.” (OK, i shouldn’t have put that in quotes but i’m too lazy to go back and change it – that is the gist of what he says). He then goes on to say that if you know that a truck is coming down the road and will hit someone, you tell them, even if they don’t believe there is a truck coming.

I’ve been thinking about this alot lately. What is the balance between sensitivity and apathy. God help us from placing a higher value on being socially acceptable (read: not stirring the waters) than on the souls of people who need to hear that Jesus died to restore them. 

So watch the video…and be challenged by the words of an atheist! Time is short and hell is real. If people don’t hear from us, from whom will they hear?

God’s Politics

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Jim Wallis. God’s Politics: Why the Right is Wrong and the Left Just Doesn’t Get It.

It isn’t often that a book so poignantly intersects with the direction of your thinking and the movement of the culture around you that it leaves a lasting impression. Many times, we remember bits and pieces from books that we’ve read; notching our belts and checking them off of a “read” list. This book was different for me. I have been reading and thinking for some time about the ethics of Jesus. I’m still working through Yoder’s Politics of Jesus, but have been deeply impressed in my own study of the Sermon on the Mount as we’ve been preaching through it at our church. For me, the Sermon is radical, and while it is absolutely political in the sense that Jesus is The King and we are citizens of His Kingdom; it isn’t political in any kind of modern-day political sense. Jesus isn’t Che. So while all of that thinking has been going on, in walks this book by Jim Wallis.

I don’t feel this often about books that run over 350 pages, but I really didn’t want this book to end. While it is verbose in some places, he addresses topics that I have really been trying to think deeply about and does so in a way that challenges the ways that I have thought about some issues. Wallis refers to himself as a “progressive evangelical.” He loves the Word, believes that Jesus is THE only way to God, and believes that we should be telling people about that. But he seems to believe that just because we think those things doesn’t mean that we have to abandon the poor, support the Republican Party, or disassociate ourselves from any group who believes different (not that all evangelicals do those things – but many do).

Perhaps his main argument (again bear in mind that he is thinking about the Christian’s relationship to the political process) is that the Republican Party has messed up in that they have limited discussions on moral issues to abortion and gay marriage. The Democrats have messed up because they have allowed the Republicans to co-opt religion and define moral issues in these ways without challenging them.

Wallis makes very compelling arguments that poverty, war, injustice, foreign debt relief, AIDS, the Middle East are all moral issues and that, as the Church, we need to be standing up for these with as much vigor as for anything else. All of this while arguing that protest in and of itself is ineffective. We must be willing and able to offer alternative solutions or our protests ring hollow.

Wallis wrote this book during or just after the Bush/Kerry elections of 2004.

It is worth the read. I recommend it.

Galway bay

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So my friend and neighbor, tom, and I went through our annual ritual of jumping in Galway bay on Christmas day with about 500 other people. This was actually the most crowded I remember. For those not familiar with the north Atlantic ocean…it’s cold. Think titanic. Good times.

Fashion

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I’m not a snob, but I really don’t like tennis shoes and blue jeans. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived outside the states for almost 6 years (I always wore this combination before I moved). My friend asked me once to articulate why. I’m not sure I know why. I just don’t do it. It is ok if you do, though! But the other day I was feeling a bit nostalgic so I wore the dreaded combination…for a couple of hours anyway.