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The courage of pressing beyond consumerism

August 9, 2010 in Ministry with 0 Comments

G. Jeffrey MacDonald posted a very thoughtful op-ed piece in the New York Times over the weekend, “Congregations Gone Wild.” Responding to recent concerns that clergy are over-working themselves, MacDonald argues that much of the problem comes from the growing pressure for clergy to meet the constantly changing wishes and desires of congregants in a consumerized church.

The pastoral vocation is to help people grow spiritually, resist their lowest impulses and adopt higher, more compassionate ways. But churchgoers increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them. It’s apparent in the theater-style seating and giant projection screens in churches and in mission trips that involve more sightseeing than listening to the local people.

MacDonald concludes that the inevitable result is burnout. “As religion becomes a consumer experience, the clergy become more unhappy and unhealthy.”

In contrast, MacDonald reminds us that ministry is not about meeting felt needs, but about calling people to engage real needs.

At their courageous best, clergy lead where people aren’t asking to go, because that’s how the range of issues that concern them expands, and how a holy community gets formed.

Of course, we can’t ignore what people think they need. But at its best, that is merely a step along the way; at the worst it is a distraction and the road to burnout.

MacDonald concludes by calling on church members to realize the importance of being challenged beyond the ordinary and by envisioning what ministry can be:

When such an ethic takes root, as it has in generations past, then pastors will cease to feel like the spiritual equivalents of concierges. They’ll again know joy in ministering among people who share their sense of purpose. They might even be on fire again for their calling, rather than on a path to premature burnout.

Take some time to read the whole article. It is worth reflecting on.

Man Church: where everybody knows how to grunt

July 16, 2010 in Ministry with 18 Comments

I was really hoping that this was a joke when I saw the First Thoughts post “The Manliest Church in America,” maybe a Catholic attempt at Onion-like parody. But apparently it’s true. You can now attend Man Church in Chandler, Arizona. Here’s the description:

Man Church is church the way a man expects it to be done. No singing, short sermon, time to talk with other guys, no women present, and coffee and donuts. That’s the way men want to do church. The topics of discussion will have a definite manly focus – being the best possible husband, father, employee, leader – being a real man. In fact, every aspect of Man Church is geared for men – not like any other church you have seen. This ain’t your mama’s church!

Here are some of the deeply theological question I have about all of this:

  1. Are they going to bring back live sacrifices so the men can consume raw meat during the service?
  2. How effective will the sermon be, since it will probably consist entirely of grunts and other gutteral sounds?
  3. Do they kick you out if you take a shower and put on deodorant before the service?
  4. Do you have to bring your own club, or do they give you one when they get there?
  5. (Update: I thought oa few more pressing questions.) What happens if a woman does walk in on a service? Do all the guys stop swearing and start using napkins?
  6. Is there a corresponding Woman Church where all the women sip tea and make doilies?
  7. How can there not be any women around? After all, who’s getting the donuts and making the coffee? 

If they want to have a ministry like this, fine. But please don’t call it a church.

Do we need more monocultural churches?

July 7, 2010 in Ministry with 0 Comments

According to Tom Steers in a CT opinion piece, yes. Despite the fact that we live in an increasingly multicultural world, and despite his recognition that multiculturalism  might fit better with the vision of unity Jesus presented in John 17, he still thinks that monocultural churches have an important role to play in the world today.

I have been ministering with people of Asian descent for over three decades, and the variety of people groups coming to the U.S. is expanding exponentially. Today we see thousands of newly-arrived people groups that we never dreamed would be in the U.S.—Mongolians, Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Bangladeshis. From Laos, we have Hmong, Mien, Tai Dam, and Khmu groups. From persecution in Myanmar have come Karen, Mon, and Chin groups. Refugees from Bhutan, mostly Hindu, are presently being accepted into the U.S. at 15,000 per year for four years.

To ask that each of these groups assimilate to one another or to multiethnic congregations—at the same time they are trying to assimilate into U.S. culture—is unrealistic. And it’s not just new immigrants who have unique and particular needs that the gospel can address in culturally specific ways. Most often the 1.5, second, or third generation offspring desire high ethnic identity ministries.

All such outreach needs to be done with wisdom and particular cultural sensitivity. Pioneer workers setting up new works with these people groups must ask, How is the Good News to be communicated for each cultural group? How can the Good News flow to these families and their friends, and even back to families and friends in the country of birth?

He is fully aware of the potential for abuse that exists in a monocultural church (pride, alienation, segregation, etc.), but he argues that we can find a healthy balance that allows us to minister the Gospel to these cultural groups without falling prey to the dark side of racial and ethnic division.

So, he concludes.

Neither multicultural nor monocultural ministry is the answer to our salad bowl society. Let us not idealize either, but only the kingdom of God. In Scripture we have examples of both monocultural ministry (Jesus) and multicultural ministry (some churches founded by Paul). Every person and every group has dignity and validity no matter their ethnic, social, political, or economic roots—and whether they gather mono or multi. And, in the end, every people group will be represented in heaven (Rev. 5:9–10).

To the extent that Steers is pressing us to recognize the central importance of the Gospel in Christian ministry, I can appreciate what he’s saying. Our priority here has to be the ministry of the Gospel. If some groups can be reached more effectively through a monocultural ministry, then that is something that we need to consider.

nonetheless, I think his argument goes astray in (at least) three places. First, he doesn’t want to see this as a purely pragmatic argument (probably because he doesn’t want to be labeled as just another church growth theorist). Instead, he finds biblical support in Jesus’ monocultural ministry. If Jesus can do it that way, so can we. But he does not address the important redemptive-historical differences between Jesus’ ministry to Israel and the church’s ministry to the world. Simply to draw parallels from one to the other is unfortunate at best. At bottom, then, this is a purely pragmatic argument; monocultural churches will reach some cultural groups more effectively. And, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with this argument. Let’s just recognize it for what it is.

Second, I’d have been more comfortable with this argument if he had located individual communities within the larger body of Christ. If a particular worshiping community chooses to express its Christian identity in culturally focused ways, then it’s all the more important that it be vitally engaged with other worshiping communities. Unfortunately, like many evangelicals today, his focus remains largely on the isolated community.

Third, I would have also liked to see more of an emphasis on growing these communities toward being more diverse expressions of Christ’s body. Starting a monocultural church for the purpose of reaching a particular community is one thing. Remaining intentionally monocultural indefinitely seems necessarily to run afoul of the racial and ethnic divisiveness that Steers thinks we can avoid.

But, I also want to suggest that people who attend largely monocultural evangelical churches (like mine) should be careful about criticizing an argument like this too strongly. You wouldn’t want to rock the boat that you’re sitting in.

Should we celebrate national holidays in church?

June 29, 2010 in Ministry with 9 Comments

Since the Fourth of July falls on a Sunday this year, it raises the question even more pointedly than normal about whether (or how) churches should recognize national holidays in their worship services. For some, celebrating the Fourth of July is an important (almost vital) expression of the fact that we are still in the world and our gratitude for the blessings that come from living in a country like America. For others, this serves as yet another manifestation of the church’s captivity to nationalistic ideals and its inability to realize fully that the Kingdom of God and America are not the same thing. And, I’m sure that many fall somewhere in between.

I got into an interesting discussion with some of the other faculty yesterday about what their respective churches would be doing. The answers spanned a pretty wide range. In one church, the pastor will be preaching on “freedom” from Galatians 5 and will be using the Fourth of July as a segue into that topic. Otherwise, the holiday will not be addressed in the service. In another church, the holiday won’t come up at all. But, several large churches in the Portland area make a very big day out of the Fourth , with services complete with flags, uniforms, and patriotic music.

This also connects with the issue of whether Christian churches should display national flags in their services. Mike Bird blogged on this a couple of weeks ago, calling for n annual “remove flags from your church sanctuary day” and arguing that this is akin to idolatry.  Nick Norelli, on the other hand, has argued that there’s nothing necessarily wrong with flags in church and that it’s not idolatry as long as you don’t worship them.

In both cases, the question seems to be about the extent to which churches should or should not participate in public displays of patriotism and/or nationalism. (I think Nick is right that we should be much more careful about throwing around the word “idolatry” in this context.)

What do you think? Are flags and national holidays legitimate in a Christian assembly, should they be banished entirely, or do you have a via media? And, what will your church be doing on Sunday? (Or, if you don’t know, what do you hope that your church will do on Sunday?)

Leaving the Church to start…………….a Church.

June 16, 2010 in Ministry with 2 Comments

I recently read an article by Kevin DeYoung at Ligonier Ministries.  In it he addresses the need for “fewer revolutionaries and more plodding visionaries.”  There seems to be an alarming trend of my generation that desire Christian community, but want to find such community outside of the church.  This manifests itself in an attitude of antagonism towards almost anything associated with the institutional church.  People want to leave the Church to get together with other Christians who love Jesus, want to be taught the Bible, and reach others with the gospel of Christ, and they want to do it all at the newest and hippest location without the restraints of the Church.  In the end, all they really want to do is………start another church.  (I always find the irony in that humorous)  We’ve always just called them denominations, but we seem to have replaced that with new words like: Emergent, Emerging, Seeker Sensitive, (or as in Andy Stanley’s so telling new video) Contemporvant..  Simply said: Christians were never meant to live outside of the community of faith called the Church.  Inside of this community they find accountability, exhortation, a layer of protection against heresy, and hundreds of other benefits that God specifically wove into the fabric of Christian community.

DeYoung’s article points out the unbiblical and immature view of people who are bored with the church and spend more time picking the Bride of Christ apart than connecting in meaningful and “ordinary” relationships.  He says, “It’s possible that our boredom has less to do with the church, its doctrines, or its poor leadership and more to do with our unwillingness to tolerate imperfection in others and our own coldness to the same old message about Christ’s death and resurrection. It’s possible we talk a lot about authentic community but we aren’t willing to live in it.”  DeYoung also makes a great point that much of our lives are “ordinary.”  We are not all going to be Paul’s and we’re going to have to be all right with that.  We were never called to be the next Paul anyway.  We were called to be like Jesus and this means that faithfulness to the Glory of God is the real standard of maturity.  Criticism is easy for those who never try themselves or have not had the test of time applied to their own endeavors.  This includes faithfulness in what many times appears to be the mundane and ordinary, and in the midst of that knowing and trusting that God uses even this to make us like Jesus.

Preaching is a two-way street

June 14, 2010 in Church History, Ministry with 2 Comments

Yesterday morning at church I listened to a talk. It was interesting. I heard some good stuff about book of James, and I double-checked the pastor on a couple of points he made that seemed a little off. It was nice. But, I didn’t hear a sermon. And I don’t think it was the pastor’s fault.

According to Luther, the preacher has a pretty high calling.

Christ ought to be preached with this goal in mind – that we might be moved to faith in him so that he is not just a distant historical figure but actually Christ for you and me. In other words, the purpose of preaching is to make what is said about Christ effectual in us. (Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian (Fortress 2008), 69).

As I was reflecting on this, I was struck again by the fact that those hearing a sermon have an equally high calling. If the preacher’s role is to present the word of God in such a way that Christ becomes effectual in us, then we who are listening need to hear it that way. The responsibility goes both ways.

Please don’t make me go to ugly church

June 12, 2010 in Ministry with 2 Comments

I’ve been listing to Jonathan Acuff’s Stuff Christians Like. Although it can get a bit goofy in places, the satirical look at evangelical life can get quite fun as well (in that awkward “Oh, I do that all the time and now that you’ve pointed it out to me I feel kind of stupid about it and hope that no one realizes that I do that too” kind of way). One of the fun things about listening to the audio book is that he routinely inserts comments into the book that give you little more background about the stories that he was telling.

In one story, he comments on how he felt the first time that his wife pulled out her knitting in church. Apparently he missed the transition that made knitting retro-chic and perfectly appropriate to do in the right kinds of hip churches. Commenting “off the record” he says,

We go to a very kind of cool, hip church. And my wife pulled out knitting one day, and my first thought was, “They’re going to make us go to ugly church.”

That’s fabulous. I think “ugly church” perfectly captures the way many of those in young, hip churches often think about people who attend smaller, more traditional churches. Granted, they’d never think this out loud. They’d think it quietly enough that even they don’t hear themselves thinking it. But it’s there.

Relics and religious experience

June 3, 2010 in Ministry with 0 Comments

Relics are easy to criticize. As Antonio Lambatti points in in a  recent post, some people do really goofy things in the name of venerating relics. (Anyone want a grilled cheese sandwich that looks like Jesus?) Such abuses, and their corresponding critiques, have been around for a very long time. The question is…why. Setting aside the question of whether there are true relics, why is the need/desire for relics so powerful that many people will participate in practices that seem (to many at least) rather absurd.

Lambatti offers the assessment that relics manifest a tendency to objectify the divine. People venerate relics out of a “need to see, to turn their idea of the divine into an object which is here with us on Earth.” And, I’m sure there is some truth to that. And, I wonder if the desire to objectify God doesn’t manifest an even deeper desire to control God’s presence so that he can be more reliably experienced. Rather than a spirit who blows where and when he wills, we have God’s presence infused into a physical object where he can be reliably encountered. I saw this dynamic at work when I was traveling in Israel. Many of the students I was traveling with were frustrated that they did not “experience” God the way that they expected when they visited certain holy sites. It’s as though they believed that these sites had been permanently infused with the divine presence such that they could expect to meet him there. They wanted a more predictable God. Now, certainly God can choose to offer a special manifestation of his presence in particular places (e.g. the temple) or things (e.g. the ark). But, that does not mean that either of these becomes a permanent locus of divine presence (note God’s presence leaving the temple) unless God covenants that it be so (e.g. communion). If I’m right, there may be a sense in which the use (and abuse) of relics has more to do with our desire to possess, and therefore control, God’s presence.

Reflecting on this a bit more, I wonder if the abuse of relics also suggests a failure to appreciate our own bodies, and consequently, the embodied nature of the church itself. People find in relics a tangible, physical expression of the divine, failing to realize that the primary locus of God’s presence in the world has always been in and through his embodied people – his “images” in the world (Adam and Eve, Israel, the Church, the eschatological people of God). That means that if we are looking for a tangible, physical point of connection for worship, we should look first to ourselves and to each other as embodied beings. Indeed, I wonder if the emphasis on relics isn’t a way of distancing ourselves from our own role as God’s images in the world. Rather than facing directly the awesome honor and responsibility that it is to be God’s physical image (i.e. idol) in the world, we can project at least some of that burden onto some other object and make that the tangible point of connection with the divine.

None of this is to say that we should denigrate the role of the physical in worship. I completely affirm that we are physical beings and that we can, indeed must, express ourselves physically in worship. And I greatly appreciate the renewed emphasis on physical worship that you find in some branches of evangelicalism. Done well, that could be a great way to deepen evangelical worship. But, if popular abuses of relics do indicate a strong tendency that humans in gneral have toward trying to control the divine presence and/or distancing ourselves from our own role in imaging God, then we would be wise to be mindful of these concerns as we deveop our own forms of physical worship.

Does Christian character have apologetic value?

June 2, 2010 in Ministry with 3 Comments

In a recent post, C. Michael Patton argued that “Christianity is not validated upon the character of its adherents.” In other words, he contends that whether or not Christians actually live significantly differently than non-Christians  should have no bearing on whether or not we believe Christianity to be true. He concludes, “Christianity is based solely on the historic person and work of Christ.”

I’d be curious to hear what you have to say about this. On the one hand, you have Patton’s argument that the truth of Christianity is not predicated on the extent to which Christians live out this truth. And, you also have all the sociological evidence supporting the notion that Christians do not in fact live lives that are significantly different from non-Christians. Those two pieces would seem to suggest that Christian character does not have apologetic value. It doesn’t work (i.e. there’s no evidence suggesting that Christian character is noticeably different) and it isn’t necessary (i.e. the truth of Christianity stands or falls without it).

Of course, on the other hand you have the life-changing power of the Gospel and the indwelling of the Spirit. These truths would seem to indicate that if Christianity is in fact true, it should be noticeable. Consequently, Christian character is legitimate evidence for (or against) the validity of Christianity.

What do you think? If you were engaged in an apologetic dispute with someone and they raised the apparent lack of noticeable transformation in the lives of Christians, how would you respond?

LeBron-ocentric preaching

June 1, 2010 in Ministry with 5 Comments

Thanks to Pat for pointing out this video clip (HT SI.com). In this video, a pastor in South Carolina offers a reflection on how LeBron James can serve as a shining example for people everywhere. And, in the process, he models what is so clearly missing in the pulpits of America today: LeBron-ocentric preaching. If we just focused more on the Chosen One, all would be well in the world.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YDRDh1UYRg]

If for some reason this did not satisfy your appetite for LeBron-ocentric preaching, you can see the rest of the sermon here, here, and here.

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