BCC is Broken

Full Circle

2007-08-06T07:33:00.000-07:00

I've moved! Check out The Gospel-Driven Church

A year later, I do believe Bellevue Community Church has completed the initial transition out of the brokenness. We are in a new transition now, of course, but under new leadership, it is one of building and spiritual formation. I believe BCC is Broken has served its purpose, and as I'm sure most of my readers have noticed, the posts here have become less and less "our church"-centric and more and more "churches"-centric.

My thoughts, commentary, and reflections will now be posted at a place better designed to be speaking from and to a greater context. I'll continue to talk about church, discipleship, spirituality, and the awesome gospel of Jesus Christ, but I'll be doing it at Gospel-Driven Church.

Thank you so much to the commenters, emailers, readers, and even critics for making the BCC is Broken blog such a blessing. Thank you most of all to my Bellevue Community Church family for the honor of speaking to you in this bizarre way. I thank God for all of you.

See ya at the other site? :-)

A Year Later

2007-07-30T12:27:00.000-07:00

Last week marked one year since Bellevue Community Church, wanting to bring peace and justice to a toxic leadership culture, fired pastor David Foster for verbal and emotional abuse, abdication of leadership, deceit, and compromised propriety of church funds.
It was, all told, a good decision and a godly decision.

I don't have a long reflection for this occasion, but I do want to say how honored I am to be a part of a church whose leadership is willing to risk nearly everything to remain faithful to God and to take care of its staff and members. Our elders risked reputation, health, comfort, and even their own financial solvency to make a very difficult decision to exercise discipline. Even traditional churches these days don't exercise church discipline. In the sort of church BCC is, bringing it to bear on our popular pastor was like stepping out into a canyon and trusting the invisible bridge is there. But they understood reconciliation is not possible without repentance.

You can revisit the nuts and bolts of this brokenness in the archives here, as well as the devotional/spiritual reflections on sin, repentance, forgiveness, grace, and reconciliation the mess inspired.

A year later, we have largely moved on. Our new lead pastor David Perez was hired in March, and we are already 3 sermon series' deep into reforming the teaching vision of the church. The student ministry, now fully supported and amply staffed, is growing like crazy. Our children's ministry is being transitioned from a daycare format to a worship format. Our small groups are growing and maintaining momentum and increasing in the availability of Bible study. We now have a growing college and young professionals ministry. We are incrementally making the necessary move from a church that exists for the weekend service to a church that exists to exemplify the full reconciliation of the Gospel, a church that realizes God did not call us to simply make converts (much less simply to entertain people) but to make disciples.

I have been honored and blessed to have played a role in the process of growth and healing coming out of the mess. The response has been overwhelming to me, and months and months later I still meet the occasional person who says "Your blog helped me so much during that time" or "Your writing really helped me see the situation more clearly." That blows me away.
Thank you for the opportunity to minister to you in that way.

I am hopeful for our future.

So here we are, a year later. Watch this space for an announcement related to this blog. Will post it probably a week from today.

Grace and peace.

America's Next Top Pastor

2007-07-30T12:20:00.001-07:00

This is hilarious.
As the noted cultural critic Homer J. Simpson once said, "It's funny because it's true."

When it gets to the "pastor" showing a Braveheart clip, I was laughing out loud.

HT: The Internet Monk

The New Legalism: Dissatisfied with Christ

2007-07-24T06:41:00.000-07:00

We are studying Paul's letter to the Galatians in the Element Monday night Bible study, and last night, as we were discussing Paul's frustration with his Gentile readers over trading in the Gospel he preached to them for the Judaizers' "Jesus plus" false gospel, we saw it as illustrative of everyone's bizarre compulsion to add to the completed work of Christ.

One guy at the study said he grew up in a very legalistic independent Baptist background and went to a very legalistic Bible college. His personal church history was one in which it was very much ingrained in him to "do stuff" (and to not do stuff) to keep God from zapping him. He asked what the modern equivalent of this is, as more churches seemed less that way and more, as he put it, "normal."

My response was that most churches today still deal in legalism. We just don't think of it that way because it is happy, it speaks of grace, and it is not explicitly condemning. But in my mind, every time churches focus primarily on How To ________ or Six Steps to a Successful _________, they are dealing in legalism, because what is legalism but a gospel of works?

This new focus on our works distorts the pure joy to be found in the true Gospel. What it does, in message format for instance, is spend the majority of its time giving us stuff to do to achieve whatever, and then tacks on at the end a brief message about choosing Christ's free gift of salvation. In my estimation, this is bass ackwards. A Gospel-driven message focuses on Christ's work, on God's work on our behalf, and then moves to an exhortation or application. In most sermons in evangelical churches, the focus breaks down to 90% Helpful Tips and 10% Jesus Did it For You (if that much). But I think the reverse should be the standard.

The result in our present gospel misfocus is a practical legalism. It's just legalism with a better marketing plan. It's legalism that sells better than the old kind, because it promises practical, worldly benefits. It promises results.

And that's the real demon in this false gospel. Even as the new legalism pays lip service to grace, as it plays up the need to do this, this, and this to achieve success or victory in your work/marriage/life, it sets up success and happiness as the goal of the Christian life. Those are not bad goals, but they are not specifically Christian goals. The problem with focusing on our work with the promise that it will produce results is that we end up working for results, rather than for Christ. And when results are slow (or nonexistent), it only breeds dissatisfaction, and ultimately, despair.

An illustration: Whenever ministers cover the touchy subject of wifely submission, they inevitably try to soften Paul's instruction here by saying to husbands, "If you will love your wife as Christ loved the church, then she will be more inclined to submit to you." This makes the call to wifely submission somehow more palatable because it now hinges on a husband worthy of being submitted to.
This is true as far as it goes. Meaning, it is (usually) true that a husband who is loving, sacrificial, servant-hearted, tender, and safe will be easier for a wife to submit to than one who isn't. But what happens when he a husband is not perfect? Does the wife get to opt out?
What happens when a wife is not perfectly submissive? Does the husband get to opt out of laying down his life for her?

The new legalistic approach to this situation, and others akin to it, cannot adequately answer this problem. Because it does not address sin. It is focused on results, on what "works," and therefore sets up a person to person dynamic that is, again, a distortion of the Gospel call to righteous living.

The real Gospel of grace, however, calls us to submit to each other out of reverence to God. A wife should submit to her husband not because her husband is deserving of being submitted to (because no husband really is), but because it honors God. A husband should sacrifice and serve his wife not because she deserves it, but because it is a reflection of how Christ loved us. The difference is that we do these good works -- all good works -- not because they will get us stuff or make us happy, but because they are done for and by and unto God Himself. They aren't steps to __________; they are done out of reverence for Christ.

This is because the new legalism, for all its talk of grace and love and tolerance and anti-condemnation, is just like the old legalism in that it tells us not to be satisfied with Jesus. Don't be satisfied with Jesus' work on your behalf, it suggests. That's not enough. Do more, be more, become more. Because the real goal is not satisfaction with Christ, but success in life. I can't think of anything more "anti" the testimony of the New Testament. Health, wealth, prosperity, conquering dysfunction -- the Bible just isn't really concerned with this stuff. At least, not in the ways the modern church is.

The Bible is concerned, however, with our finding joy and peace and satisfaction in Jesus Christ. The Gospel is about living being Christ and dying being gain. The new legalism says living is gain and Christ is for after death. The real Gospel just isn't sexy.

Ambition

2007-07-17T07:02:00.000-07:00

I read this article on bloggers in the Southern Baptist Convention and I don't know what to think.
I was anticipating really enjoying hearing about the renegade bloggers' challenging of the increasingly tight circling of the wagons of the political old guard.

Instead I found myself thinking both "sides" are more alike than they think.

Near the end of paragraphs and paragraphs of journalistic text -- some of it reflecting incisive commentary on the conflicts/movements, some of it reflecting a basic and biased ignorance of the people being examined -- comes this almost offhand note, perhaps the most telling of all the observations in the ostensibly investigative piece:

The successful vote on the Faith and Message was [Ben Cole's] valedictory -— he plans to participate more at his church (the parking lot was finally repaved) and less in SBC politics.

(Emphasis mine.)

Ambition. Aspiration. Success.

The Church does not need brilliant personalities but faithful servants of Jesus and the brethren . . . Pastoral authority can be attained only by the servant of Jesus who seeks no power of his own, who himself is a brother among brothers to the authority of the Word.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(Related: To God be the Glory)

(HT: Bene Diction)

Wow

2007-07-12T07:27:00.000-07:00

John Piper is hard core. I find him tremendously moving and inspiring. Not least because he frequently makes me very uncomfortable (which is to say, less and less satisfied with myself).
Here's a snippet of a rant of his on the Prosperity Gospel set to a Jars of Clay song:

That discomfort you feel may be the scandal of the gospel.

The Gospel Awakening

2007-07-10T18:34:00.000-07:00

The Jollyblogger on The Gospel Awakening transforming American churches.

This Gospel Awakening would be marked by three shifts:

1. The Bible as Story - here's an excerpt from Drew's excerpt of a coalition statement:

In this perspective, the gospel appears as creation, fall, redemption, restoration. It brings out the purpose of salvation, namely, a renewed creation.

If this understanding of the gospel gains pre-eminence it will change our view of the gospel as being primarily concerned about the salvation of the individual soul, expanding it to see that the gospel offers salvation for soul and body, and for all of creation.

2. The Gospel as bigger than a salvational entry-ticket.

That follows from the above but emphasizes that gospel transformation is an ongoing lifelong process, not a one time event.

3. A Missional posture towards the culture.

This would be in contrast to a confrontational/oppositional posture towards the culture.

I think he is right - such understandings will radically alter the way we do Christianity and do church.

David Wayne (and Drew Goodmanson, who inspired his post) are speaking from within a Presbyterian context, but I believe we can see the beginnings of this shift in various branches of evangelicalism. In Vineyard churches, in Baptist churches, coming out of seminaries, in the emergent churches, in college ministries, in evolving "seeker churches," etc.
I am really hoping the American Church is on the verge of this shift also. Something's in the air, and while I'm not one of those "revival!"-mongers, I am praying for reformation. That was one of the mottos of the Reformation, after all -- "Always reforming!"

Tidy?

2007-07-10T14:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a great personal post from Jeff at Under the Grace:

One of the things that greatly bothers me is how tidy the lives of evangelicals can be. There is no dirt under their fingernails. We’ve got our theology stitched up to the nth-degree, our practice down to perfection (if you can call staring at the back of someone’s head on Sunday perfect), and our icky little private habits hidden from sight. It’s pretty sick.

I’m a recovering legalist, spiritual snob, Christian-fake… you can probably fill in the blank at this point. One day I woke up and had had enough of trying to keep my pastor, friends, and self happy. I decided (through much time and turmoil) that Jesus was happy enough for me so that was it.

I’ve discovered, as I’ve said here before, that Jesus is enough. If his sacrifice doesn’t make me acceptable to the Father then I’m as good as smoked. I’m banking that my faith in the finished work of Christ is enough to make me acceptable to God. So most of the pressure is on Jesus for my salvation. It’s his gig. He gets the credit and the pressure.

Sure, there’s stuff that I need to be doing: resting in the finished work of Christ, communing with the Holy Spirit, and loving my Father in all I do. This not-so-subtle change in thought has done my heart good. It’s revolutionized my faith. It makes me feel that, despite my many failings, I’m going to be OK.

Personal Mission Statement(s)

2007-07-10T10:41:00.001-07:00

These words from Paul on the Gospel are really driving me these days:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes . . .
-- Romans 1:16

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
-- 1 Corinthians 2:2

I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus . . . I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace.
-- Acts 20:21,24

The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God. As the Scriptures say,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise
and discard the intelligence of the intelligent."
So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe. It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.
But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
-- 1 Corinthians 1:18-24

The Gospel According to Bono

2007-07-06T10:28:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday evening at Element I alluded to an interview with U2's Bono in which he contrasted the grace of the Christian faith with the karma of other religions and vague spiritualities. The interview was with Michka Assayas in Christianity Today. Here's the relevant excerpt:

Assayas: I think I am beginning to understand religion because I have started acting and thinking like a father. What do you make of that?

Bono: Yes, I think that's normal. It's a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.

Assayas: I haven't heard you talk about that.

Bono: I really believe we've moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace.

Assayas: Well, that doesn't make it clearer for me.

Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that "as you reap, so you will sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff.

Assayas: I'd be interested to hear that.

Bono: That's between me and God. But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep s---. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity.

Assayas: The Son of God who takes away the sins of the world. I wish I could believe in that.

Bono: But I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb. I love the idea that God says: Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there's a mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and, let's face it, you're not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That's the point. It should keep us humbled… . It's not our own good works that get us through the gates of heaven.

Assayas: That's a great idea, no denying it. Such great hope is wonderful, even though it's close to lunacy, in my view. Christ has his rank among the world's great thinkers. But Son of God, isn't that farfetched?

Bono: No, it's not farfetched to me. Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: he was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn't allow you that. He doesn't let you off that hook. Christ says: No. I'm not saying I'm a teacher, don't call me teacher. I'm not saying I'm a prophet. I'm saying: "I'm the Messiah." I'm saying: "I am God incarnate." And people say: No, no, please, just be a prophet. A prophet, we can take. You're a bit eccentric. We've had John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey, we can handle that. But don't mention the "M" word! Because, you know, we're gonna have to crucify you. And he goes: No, no. I know you're expecting me to come back with an army, and set you free from these creeps, but actually I am the Messiah. At this point, everyone starts staring at their shoes, and says: Oh, my God, he's gonna keep saying this. So what you're left with is: either Christ was who He said He was—the Messiah—or a complete nutcase. I mean, we're talking nutcase on the level of Charles Manson. This man was like some of the people we've been talking about earlier. This man was strapping himself to a bomb, and had "King of the Jews" on his head, and, as they were putting him up on the Cross, was going: OK, martyrdom, here we go. Bring on the pain! I can take it. I'm not joking here. The idea that the entire course of civilization for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me, that's farfetched . . .

Go read the whole thing. It's great. And very telling that the world's biggest rock star articulates the Gospel better than some of the world's biggest preachers.

Independence

2007-07-04T10:04:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th of July, Bellevue Community Church (and lookers on)!

Remember that when the Son sets you free, then you are really free.

My prayer is that you have the grace and peace of family and friends to spend this day off with. We are so thankful for a church that has provided this sense of community for us, and this evening we will be celebrating with a group of close, close friends we met at BCC only 8 months or so ago. God is amazing and so, so good.

On this day, and days like it, it is tempting and somewhat natural for our spiritual heritage to become conflated with our patriotism. Let us never lose sight of the fact that for however great and free our country is, the kingdom of God is not about borders or nations or governments but about the power of God reigning in the hearts of men and women of all races, nationalities, and ethnicities through the reconciling work of Jesus Christ.
Here's some great stuff from John Piper, given in an address at our nation's capital:

More than ever since 9/11, Christians in America, and especially Christians in the U.S. government, should make clear that there is a radical distinction between Christianity, on the one hand, and American culture and the American political system, on the other hand. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, atheists, and all other non-Christians need to know this for Christ's sake.

They need to know that Jesus Christ-crucified for sinners, risen from the dead, and reigning as God from heaven today-was accomplishing his purposes, gathering a people for himself from every culture, and building his church before America ever existed, and will be omnipotently doing the same centuries from now, even if America becomes a footnote in world history. Christianity and American culture are radically distinct. It is possible to be a faithful Christian under any regime in the world-and may be easier to be a radical, cross-bearing disciple of Jesus in regimes less prosperous than America.

We should make that clear over and over in these days.

That said, while "God and Country" can dangerously lead to a misfocused "Jesus plus something," we can and should be thankful that God has shed his grace on America the beautiful. We can and should be grateful for the freedom to live and worship in a culture where we are not risking death every time we go to church or mention Jesus. We can and should be grateful that God empowers and allows men and women to protect us and defend the innocent and pursue justice.

We can and should thank God for the blessings of a free nation. And we must not and should not take this gift for granted.

Element Has a Blog!

2007-07-03T08:01:00.001-07:00

Check out The Element Meta-Blog.

This is Element's newest foray into developing communication and interaction within our community. Check the space often for Element news and updates, as well as commentary and reflections from the leadership team.

A Shift of Assumptions

2007-07-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

Here's a short video of Mark Driscoll explaining the difference between a seeker church and a missional church. Some good stuff here about market assumptions vs. theological assumptions, bringing people in vs. sending people out, etc.

Spirit and Truth

2007-07-03T07:06:00.000-07:00

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
-- John 4:23

There must be something in the air.
Last Sunday night at Element, I preached on "Snuffing Out Spiritless Spirituality," which was (my attempt at) a prophetic call to repent of the disconnection between "spirituality" and theology. My point was that while good works, fruit, and Christian spirituality are required for life in Christ, they don't trump right belief or make sound doctrine optional. You can't live God without knowing God.

Anyways, just now I find this excellent post from Phil Johnson. Here's an excerpt:

Biblically, our theology is an important aspect of our fruit. "Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son" (2 John 9).

Moreover, the notion that what people do is ultimately more important than what they believe flies in the face of the very same proof-texts that are normally used to support it. [Scot] McKnight, for example, quotes James 2:20: "Faith without works is dead" But that verse doesn't suggest that what we do is more important than what we believe; James's whole point is that the two things seen properly are perfectly symbiotic. One is just as important as the other.

And in terms of causal priority, faith does take first place over works, because any truly good works we do are the fruit of our faith—and James expressly says so at the start of his argument: "I will show you my faith by my works" (James 2:18).

That's the same cause-effect relationship between faith and works that Scripture consistently stresses. Titus 2 describes good works as adornments for sound doctrine; not vice versa. According to 2 Peter 1:5-8, Christian virtues are the necessary accoutrements of authentic Christian faith.

And later:

The Emerging penchant for making orthopraxis primary over orthodoxy has produced rhetoric and behavior which at times seem to imply that sound doctrine is almost wholly optional. The whole way of thinking is upside down. But that's not the worst of it. Take the notion that behavior always trumps belief to its logical conclusion, and you will end up making a person's own works the ground of his or her hope for justification.

Yes. That was the thrust of my message last night, which was to say when we divorce right practice from right belief, we suddenly make our salvation about our own righteousness, not Christ's. And as some of the folks who listen to me every week are beginning to notice (if not grow weary of :-), it is always, totally, completely, wholly, and finally about Jesus and his work, not us and ours.

Celebration of Freedom!

2007-07-03T07:02:00.001-07:00

Don't miss it!

Tonight at 7:00, BCC has its annual Independence Day party, The Celebration of Freedom. Come for a great musical retrospective of Americana, stay for fireworks and dessert.

Doors open at 6 p.m.

Picnic Photos

2007-06-21T07:55:00.000-07:00

Reader Chip Curley emailed his photo album from last Sunday's Father's Day Picnic and Car Show.

Thanks, Chip!

Pastoral Care (from the Other Angle)

2007-06-19T11:48:00.000-07:00

These stats, reported by the Resurgence Blog, are sobering:

Pastors

* Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
* Fifty percent of pastors' marriages will end in divorce.
* Eighty percent of pastors and eighty-four percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
* Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
* Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.
* Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression.
* Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.
* Seventy percent said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they are preparing their sermons.

Pastors' Wives

* Eighty percent of pastors' spouses feel their spouse is overworked.
* Eighty percent of pastors' spouses wish their spouse would choose another profession.
* The majority of pastors’ wives surveyed said that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage and family was the day they entered the ministry.

(Sources are Barna and Focus on the Family.)

We would all do well at this point to ask ourselves if we are more tempted to criticize our leadership than we are to encourage them. When you are inclined to "speak up," is it more out of disagreement than affirmation? When was the last time you sent your pastor/teacher/whatever an email, letter, card, or phone call just expressing a simple message of thanks?

What are our churches doing to take care of our pastors and their families?

Yes!

2007-06-19T11:42:00.000-07:00

You really should be reading Mark Lauterbach's blog, GospelDrivenLife. It is phenomenal.
Here's a bit from a recent post on the patience of Jesus:

But pride in me is foolish. I would never think it right to wait until I am healthy before going to a doctor. But I do that kind of thing all the time. I wait until I am better to confess sin. I wait until I am better to give a testimony. I wait until I am better to flee to the Savior.

I have a Savior who simply says, “Come” – and in him are riches of grace and mercy that is is both willing and desirous to pour out on me. I am called to flee from all hope in my self, my good works. I am called to fall at the Savior’s feet and receive grace for my soul – and to do so every day.

"For a fallen man to pick and choose how he will imitate Christ is treacherous territory indeed."

2007-06-19T11:37:00.000-07:00

He's a bit high-falutin', but here's an excerpt from a doozy of a post on a "tough customer" Jesus by Doug Wilson:

I hope it is possible to say this with all reverence, but Jesus was a tough customer. Contrary to popular opinion, the Lord of the gospels was not the original flower child, and He did not come in order to make us all feel better about ourselves. The image that many have of the Lord’s personality and strength of character comes more from man-made traditions and saccharine portrait painters than it does from the Bible. One easily envisions the image of a genteel limpwrist standing outside the door of someone’s heart, gently tapping, because of course the doorknob is only on the inside. The only thing missing from this vision is the ribbon in his hair. I have sometimes thought that a far better picture of Jesus knocking at the door of my heart would be a commanding hand from offstage, two rows of angels with a battering ram, and a worried-looking troll peeking out over the wall of a castle.

Otto Scott put it well when he said that the God of the Bible is no buttercup. And when Jesus came He revealed all the attributes of the Father, and not just those things which we can easily interpret as comforting to ourselves. But the Lord’s words were simultaneously blunt and pointed, and as Chesterton put it, He did not hesitate to throw furniture down the front steps of the Temple. However, we like to hear all about love, and mercy, and comfort, and kindness. This is not bad in itself; these are all biblical revelations of God’s nature and character. But we present them out of context; we neglect the wrath, and holiness, and justice of God. We do not neglect these attributes because they are contradictions to the first set; we neglect them because we do not know how the Bible reconciles them. Notice how the apostle seats them at the table together, as though they were good friends. "Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness" (Rom. 11:22). We must constantly remember that a half-truth presented as the whole truth is an untruth. God is kind, and God is severe. Jesus reveals the nature of the Father to us; Jesus is kind, and Jesus is severe . . .

It's all good. If you can hack through the density of his prose, and the length of the post, it's worth the effort.

Religion vs. The Gospel

2007-06-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

I hate that we apparently can't rehabilitate the perfectly good concept of religion, but in this instance, as it means "salvation by doing stuff," this piece by Mark Driscoll is right on.

The Difference between Religion and the Gospel

By Pastor Mark Driscoll

Religion says, if I obey, God will love me. Gospel says, because God loves me, I can obey.

Religion has good people & bad people. Gospel has only repentant and unrepentant people.

Religion values a birth family. Gospel values a new birth.

Religion depends on what I do. Gospel depends on what Jesus has done.

Religion claims that sanctification justifies me. Gospel claims that justification enables sanctification.

Religion has the goal to get from God. Gospel has the goal to get God.

Religion sees hardships as punishment for sin. Gospel sees hardship as sanctified affliction.

Religion is about me. Gospel is about Jesus.

Religion believes appearing as a good person is the key. Gospel believes that being honest is the key.

Religion has an uncertainty of standing before God. Gospel has certainty based upon Jesus' work.

Religion sees Jesus as the means. Gospel sees Jesus as the end.

Religion ends in pride or despair. Gospel ends in humble joy.

Father's Day Car Festival

2007-06-14T09:24:00.000-07:00

What could be better than a Father's Day outing that involves food, fun, and cars? BCC will be hosting Dad's Day Car Festival right here on the Hope Park campus on Sunday, June 17. Kids, bring your dads, and dads, bring your kids out to the BCC parking lot right after the 11am service. We'll have free burgers and hot dogs, live music, and of course, lots of antique and classic cars for the whole family to enjoy. Admission is free.

Whatever Works?

2007-06-14T08:58:00.000-07:00

The greatest threat to the gospel specific to today is the indirect challenge of pragmatism among evangelicals.
-- Mark Dever

Some random personal opinions (of mine) related to this issue of pragmatism in the Church:

1) There was a point at which a considered concern for removing unnecessary traditional or religious cultural barriers between seekers and churches became a passion for doing "whatever it takes" to get people in the doors. I don't know where that point was, and I'm sure it happened gradually, but it obviously resulted from changing a focus from saving souls to gaining numbers.

2) Consequently, and somewhat ironically, the current equivalent of the 80's-90's seeker churches are not really bringing the lost into the life of discipleship so much as they are attracting Christians who have become bored with their previous church.

3) Consequently, many churches have become suppliers of spiritual milk not to new believers but to "old" believers who have never matured into the desire for meat.

4) Worship time has become more entertainment driven not as a means to attract the lost but to ensure that a church's "show" is better than all the other churches' shows.

5) The embrace of pragmatism affects nearly all of a church's aims, so that even the largest churches with the most resources do not actually plant new churches so much as they are franchising themselves. We see this currently with the satellite church movement, in which large churches with popular teachers do not raise up pastors to plant missional churches elsewhere but set up "spin-offs" where the main church teacher is shown on video screen.
This means that either a) really big churches with lots of money and personnel are somehow unable to raise up and train quality teacher-pastors, or b) they are able to do so but prefer the attraction of the celebrity quotient of their pastor. Either of those options does not bode well for the state of the missional church.

6) The first question we must ask when planning teaching, music, creative elements, fundraisers, marketing and advertising -- basically anything the modern church does -- is not "What will people think?", but "What will God think?"

7) Fidelity to the Gospel should always trump "whatever it takes."

Impact

2007-06-13T07:46:00.001-07:00

The impact God has planned for us doesn't occur when we're pursuing impact. It occurs when we're pursuing God.
-- from Phil Vischer, co-creator of VeggieTales

Felt Needs

2007-06-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

From a spot-on post by J.D. Hatfield at Voice of Vision:

The problem is that people aren’t looking for salvation as being reconciled to God. The old (real) gospel starts with an offended God. The new (false) gospel starts with a wounded “us”. The truth is not that we are wounded but that we are dead!

The gospel is not a commodity, and unlike what we hear preached as the gospel these days, Jesus isn’t very passionate about some of your greatest felt needs. There is nothing distinctly Christian about the new gospel messages at all, that is why they are so popular.

Via Thinklings, which was via Transforming Sermons

Element(s)

2007-06-12T07:24:00.000-07:00

It has been my great privilege since last fall to get to know and to get to serve the emerging generation in and connected to BCC's community. We call the ministry to these college students and young professionals Element, and as each week goes by, I become more and more in love with the hearts and the spirits of those who wander into the Element community.

From the beginning, those of us charged with steering the church's ministry to this group decided we didn't want to just put on a program. I for one was never interested in just hosting a 13th grade-type of attraction. We wanted to foster community, we wanted to not just hand out some information, but to actually bring young people into a more vital discipleship to Jesus. We are attempting this not just by holding a Sunday evening worship service, but by making small groups just as big a priority, and by making community service just as big a priority. Those are the three foundational supports of what we're trying to do -- worship (in music and teaching), community (in group studies and social events), and service (cooperating with service ministries in Nashville and helping out the needy in the BCC family).

In my estimation, these great people I get to do life with are doing a great job. In the span of just a few months, we have grown from one small group meeting in a living room to three groups. We have made monthly service projects not just a feature of our ministry but a commitment by our ministry. And in the worship service, we have gone from getting our feet under us (the first service was my first time delivering a message in about ten years) to seeing a committed group worshiping enthusiastically, voices loud and hands raised, and tuning into the teaching with focused faces and meaningful responses.

The personal feedback I get from people entering the Element community is so encouraging. Lives really are being changed. The personal stories one may hear in share times at the Bible studies are testaments to the work God is doing through this effort, and for every one of those stories, there's one or two more emailed or MySpace messaged to someone on the leadership team.

These are exciting times in the life of Bellevue Community Church. The future is bright, not because we are talented or productive or "spiritual" -- but because God is good.
It is an uphill trudge weening people off of self-help Christianity and into the exciting Gospel-driven life of real discipleship, but love speaks volumes, and while the effects are not always instantaneous, they are lasting. They are eternal. Because God's Word does not return void.

Thank you, BCC, for giving Element to me, to us, to the young people in Nashville. This burgeoning discipleship community is a great investment in the progress and future of the BCC family.

You Don't Have to Get Your Act Together For Jesus to Love You

2007-06-12T07:18:00.000-07:00

Here's an excerpt from a great article by John Piper:

In Luke 17:5 the apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith. How does Jesus help them? In two ways, both of which are by telling them truth. So even in the way he responds he shows us that faith comes by hearing. Knowing certain things should increase our faith.

First, he strengthens our faith by telling us in verse 6 that the crucial issue in accomplishing great things to advance the kingdom of God is not the quantity of our faith, but the power of God. He says, "If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and be planted in the sea'; and it would obey you." By referring to the tiny mustard seed after being asked about increased faith, he deflects attention away from the quantity of faith to the object of faith. God moves mulberry trees. And it does not depend decisively on the quantity of our faith, but on his power and wisdom and love. In knowing this we are helped not to worry about our faith and are inspired to trust God's free initiative and power.

Second, he helps their faith grow by telling them in verses 7-10 that when they have done all they are commanded to do, they are still radically dependent on grace. Jesus gives an illustration. You might want to read it again in verses 7-10. The gist of it is that the owner of a slave does not become a debtor to the slave no matter how much work the slave does. The meaning is that God is never our debtor. Verse 10 sums it up: "So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say, 'We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.'" We are always his debtor. And we will never be able to pay this debt, nor are we ever meant to. We will always be dependent on grace. We will never work our way up out of debt to a place where God is in our debt. "Who has ever given a gift to him that he should be repaid?" (Romans 11:35).

When it says in verse 9 that the owner does not "thank" the slave, the idiom for "thank" is provocative. I think the idea is that "thanks" is a response to grace. The reason the owner does not thank the slave is that the servant is not giving the owner more than what the owner deserves. He is not treating the owner with grace. Grace is being treated better than you deserve. So it is with us in relation to God. We never treat God with grace. We never give him more than he deserves. Which means that he never owes us thanks. God never says "Thank you" to us. Instead he is always giving us more than what we deserve and we are always owing him thanks.

So the lesson for us is that when we have done all we should do – when we have solved all our pastoral care problems and fixed the attitudes of all our people and mobilized the most missions and loved the poor and saved marriages and reared godly children and boldly proclaimed Christ – God owes us no thanks. Instead we will at that moment relate to him as debtors to grace just as we do now.

This is a great encouragement to faith. Why? Because it means that God is just as free to bless us before we get our act together as he is after. Since we are "unworthy" slaves before we have done what we should, and "unworthy" slaves afterwards as well, it is only grace that would prompt God to help us. Therefore he is free to help us before and after. This is a great incentive to trust him for help when we feel like our act is not together.

So two things increase our faith: 1) that God himself and not the quantity of our faith is the decisive factor in flinging mulberry trees out of the way; and 2) free grace is decisive in how God treats us before and after we have done all we ought to do. We never move beyond the need for grace. Therefore let us trust God for great things in our little faith, and let us not be paralyzed by what is left to be done in our lives and in our church.

Graceless Christianity

2007-06-12T07:05:00.000-07:00

I think we ought to help our fellow followers of Jesus develop practical, applicatory ways to live out life in the Spirit. Faith is not living if it doesn't work, no doubt.
But the more I hear this plea for "practical application" as the substance of biblical teaching and preaching, the more intrigued I am as to why people prefer homework over simply hearing the announcement that Jesus has done the work necessary to redeem us, and that there's nothing we can do to earn His love and favor. Why isn't it an awesome thing, an inspiring thing, to hear the proclamation of the Gospel itself? Are we so un-enamored with the person and work of Jesus that we consider the atonement irrelevant, boring, or peripheral to getting a Christian honey-do list?

As sinners saved by grace, we must get far more excited about hearing what Jesus has done for us and will do in us than we do about The Six Steps to _________. The cult of application is just a newfangled works religion, and while our faith should produce fruit, and while we should commit ourselves to the service and sacrifice for others, and while we should dedicate ourselves to spiritual disciplines, when we subjugate the Gospel proclamation to practical application, we are preaching a graceless Christianity.

Jesus Didn't Come to Make You Happy

2007-06-08T06:53:00.000-07:00

This is where that Debbie Downer sad "wah wah" sound effect comes in. :-)

No, but seriously. Taking off from that choice quote on discipleship from the Mike Ayers message I highlighted yesterday -- "To be a follower of Jesus, you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life" -- I think it's very important to note the place we tend to go off the rails most when trying to find God's will and to follow Jesus. We have this notion that difficulty or trial or problems are somehow indications of being outside of God's will, conveniently forgetting that Jesus himself promised us trouble, that Paul himself called suffering a privilege, and that the entire testimony of Scripture speaks to difficulty as the very refining process through which our faith is matured and our characters are made most like Christ's.

There's nothing wrong with seeking safety and ease, except when we do so at the expense of faith, and therefore at the expense of holiness. Jesus did not come to enhance our lives, to somehow give us the American dream of "life, love, and the pursuit of happiness." He came to give us life, because we were dead. He came to give us the gift of God's grace and love, and many times the experience of grace and love finds us smack dab in the ups and downs of a life requiring patience, faith, endurance, and hope.

The fruit of the Spirit are not comfort, happiness, convenience . . . The fruit of the Christian life is not meant to be circumstantial and emotional. They are deeper, faith-rich qualities born of adversity.

Jesus did not come to make you happy. He came to make you holy. And there is a joy in that process we can find that is much deeper, much greater, much better than the happiness we are far too easily pleased with.

Conexus is Coming!

2007-06-08T06:50:00.000-07:00

BCC is gearing up for the summer semester of Conexus, our small group program. If you care about connecting with other people, if you care about being a real part of community, sign up for a group. There's no better way to meet people, to -- as part of our mission states -- "know people and be known."

Conexus directories come out this weekend, but it's already available online. Throughout the weekend services and Happy Hour, visit the Conexus Rally in the atrium, get some info from group leaders, and sign up!

Great Words

2007-06-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

Do you listen to sermon podcasts? Can I recommend two great ones to you that I just listened to today?

That video clip I feature a couple posts down is from a recent Mark Driscoll sermon called Examining Two Enemies of the Gospel (religion and idolatry), that he delivered at some conference in Texas. I listened to the whole thing today while watching the girls at the pool, and holy cow -- it just may be the best sermon I've ever heard.
Seriously. No exaggeration. I'm racking my brain trying to think of a better message, and I've heard lots of good messages in my short life. I can't think of one.
In content and delivery and style and engagement, it is very near perfect.
You can listen to it online at the link above, or download the mp3 from Mars Hill's media library.

The other message is from the man I consider my mentor-pastor. His name is Mike Ayers, and he's the founding pastor of The Brook Church Community in Houston. I listened to his message "Counting the Cost" today, and it's really good.
A choice quote: "To be a follower of Jesus, you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life."
Wow! True dat.
There's no individual link for the message, but go to the Brook's sermon audio page here and look for the title "Counting the Cost." You can listen to it online or download the mp3. (A personal testimonial about the MasterLife program from a church member starts out the message, so if you download the audio, feel free to start your listening at the 8:23 mark.)

Two great messages. My gift to you. :-)

The Myth(?) of the Persecuted Church in America

2007-06-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

From BeliefNet's Rod Dreher:

I had lunch today with a three Christians, one from Europe, one from the Middle East, one from Southeast Asia. Here is a summary of our conversation:

The Middle Easterner: We are being terribly persecuted. Our people are being killed and deprived of their rights in every way. Many of us are emigrating to escape. The government does not protect us. Everyday life is martyrdom. Our biggest challenge, aside from survival, is how to love those who kill and persecute us. We don't understand why Christians in the West, and the Western media, doesn't tell our story.

The Southeast Asian: Christianity is formally permitted, but our people and our clergy face constant persecution, and we are so relatively small in number that there's very little we can do except endure.

The European: Our churches are virtually empty. We are tolerated because we are irrelevant. Christianity is seen as a hobby, but that's it. We look around at all our magnificent churches, and see that the faith survived all kinds of immense hardships and challenges over the centuries, but Christians made it. Now, in our time, Christians are completely free to worship as they like, and everyone has all their material needs taken care of, but there is a real question of whether we are going to make it. Wealth and freedom is doing to Christianity in Europe what centuries of suffering and privation and persecution did not.

And there's me, the American, feeling rather ashamed of myself. Perhaps I should have told these people about the war on Christmas in my country.

HT: Boar's Head Tavern

American Idol(atry)

2007-06-07T07:33:00.001-07:00

Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church Seattle, with a powerful anecdote on idolatry in America:

Revamp

2007-06-07T07:29:00.000-07:00

I've overhauled the sidebar menu. Changed a few things around. Deleted broken links. Added a short blogroll under a new heading ("Read").

Part of updating the blog is keeping the links fresh.
Enjoy!

Jesus Was Never Too Busy

2007-06-06T19:34:00.000-07:00

From Abraham at the Desiring God Blog:

Sometimes I pretend I don't have time. All the tasks on my to-do list are incredibly important.

I'm too busy to answer that email. Too busy to help my neighbor—anyway, I don't even speak Spanish. And I can't give my wife a hand—too much to do. I've got a meeting. I've got to get the sermon posted. I'm blogging. Terribly important, indeed.

Then there's Jesus.

When his cousin and friend John the Baptist had just been beheaded, Jesus tried to go to a lonely place to mourn, but the crowds beat him there. He healed their sick and he served them all dinner. Only then, in the evening, did he get a chance to be alone. And even that was interrupted (Matthew 14:10-25).

Another time when he was alone praying, Peter sought him out to let him know everyone was looking for him (Mark 1:35-39). He did not respond at all irritably. Perhaps that seems like no big deal, but think about the meeting that Peter broke up when he interrupted Jesus. When God and his son are talking it is more important than any conference call or international summit we can imagine. Two beings whose job is to create and maintain universes are consulting with one another—and they don't mind little Peter breaking in with information he is convinced is important.

Even when his life was on the line, Jesus had time for other people's problems.

When someone threatens to kill you and you don't think it's quite time to die, escaping will jump to the top of your task list, won't it? It did for Jesus, but he still let himself be bothered by others' urgency:

The Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him. Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there. And many followed him, and he healed them all. (Matthew 12:14-15)

It would be like if your pastor was willing to stay up front after a service and pray for you, knowing there was someone in the building waiting around to shoot him.

Isn't Jesus wonderfully peculiar? Everything he does is infinitely more important than what I do, but every time I interrupt him, he pays attention. Nothing prevents him from loving us. During immense sadness at his own loss, he made sure others were happy. When he was in the most important meeting in the world, he listened to a nobody. And when he was fearing for his own life, he saved others' lives.

He always had time and he always will, and I don't feel very busy anymore.

A Useless Crucifixion?

2007-06-06T19:18:00.000-07:00

I've said elsewhere what an exciting day we live in when the cross of Christ is even a scandal in American churches. This is because the evangelical culture has traded "Christ as life" for "Christianity as help." But rather than despair over this deficiency, as so many within the Church are, I tend to see it as a great day for the scandal of grace. Those who get the Gospel get to pull a big freak out on Christian and non-Christian alike! :-)

The Internet Monk is talking about this stuff this week too:

A highlight for me is a discussion of just how useless the crucifixion of Jesus is in much of evangelicalism today. If our great need is to be delivered from the wrath of God, then Jesus is our mediator. But what if our big problem is losing ten pounds? Finding a bigger house? Paying for college? Getting out of debt? What if the guilt that concerns us is the guilt of not having a pool like our neighbor? What if the center of our prayers is the moral life of our kids or our physical health? Do we actually need a crucified Jesus for any of these things?
. . .

The prosperity gospel isn’t on the fringe any more. As William Willimon says, churches now advertise that they “have what you are looking for.” What is the average American looking for? A bloody savior to deliver from the wrath of God? Or success in life?

Toying with Returning

2007-06-06T19:10:00.000-07:00

A good friend recently suggested I hang a CLOSED sign on BCC is Broken. I can't deny I've thought about it. But I can't bring myself to do it. I have flirted with the idea of resuming posting here when I finish the Old School Jesus series at Element, but the truth is, finishing one series won't exactly free up a whole lot of blogging time. I'll be starting another one immediately after.

But I do miss writing for the great readers I had here, and since SiteMeter informs me weekly that people are still checking in (although obviously not as many as in the blog's heyday), I think I will try to cultivate a readership again first with some quality links and then, as soon as can be managed, a return to original posting.

We are enjoying a new chapter in the life of our church. David Perez has been at the helm since Easter Sunday. We have seen the rise of new generational ministries (Launch for middle school, Element for "college and career"), as well as the unabated continuation of service ministries that BCC has always been known for (rescue mission work, Habitat builds, Soles 4 Souls, soldier support, children's home volunteerism, etc.). We have clung to what is good of the old and have moved on to the new with hope and faith.

There's still stuff to talk about, isn't there? :-)

Grace and peace to you.
More coming soon . . .

Hello Out There

2007-02-16T09:18:00.000-08:00

No, dear readers, I haven't forgotten about you.

I'm just ignoring you. :-)

For now, anyway.

Actually, if I can figure out a way to get the stuff I'm writing/doing for BCC's Element ministry into post-able blog form (meaning, if I can figure out how to post message outlines and podcast summaries in ways that don't look like message outlines or podcast summaries), I will be able to post with more regularity. Until then, though -- and I hope you will understand -- most of my studying/writing time is going to Element.

Love you, though!
And thanks for continuing to check back. I hope not to leave you hanging for too much longer.

Element Imminent

2007-02-08T08:23:00.000-08:00

BCC's Element now has an official website! Visit us online at www.elementnashville.org
.
---

And if you know of anyone between the ages of 18 and thirtysomething, please tell them to join us starting this Sunday at 6:30 p.m. in The Onion for the Element worship service. We are kicking off with "Stripped," a four part series on Philippians.

Christian Integrity

2007-02-08T07:53:00.000-08:00

Discipleship to Jesus Christ means following Jesus Christ. It means going where He goes, doing what He does. It means being apprenticed to Him.

You might think that stuff goes without saying, but I'm guessing I'm not alone in thinking we have gone far off the mark of real discipleship. What we have is "Christianity as help," when what we need is "Christ as life." This is true even with the "It's a relationship, not a religion" crowd, since "relationship with Jesus" tends to be more about personality augmentation than life transformation.

A real Christian life is one infused with the qualities of Christ himself. But we have replaced submission, service, and sacrifice with salesmanship, self-help, and success.
Here is an excerpt from a challenging article written by someone who may surprise you. Read it first, and I will tell you who wrote it after.

When Martin Luther lamented at the end of his life that he might not be justified, he must have seen something dark in himself in relation to the Scriptures, something that we in the modern church might be overlooking.

The Scriptures say that we are to be known as followers of Christ by the evidence of our love for one another, but we’re not (see John 13:35).

The Scriptures say that we are not to boast about what we have or what we have done, but we do (see Jer. 9:23-24).

The Scriptures say that in the last days people will be lovers of themselves and lovers of money, and we are (see 2 Tim. 3:5, NKJV).

Very often we charismatics rejoice in the power of God, and rightly so. But we subject ourselves to ridicule when we boast that we are not among those “having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5).
We claim that we have spiritual power and others don’t because of our openness to accept and operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
But our words fall short when our marriages don’t work, our children are wild and disobedient, and we refine the art of giving and receiving money to the point that we could qualify as the experts in greed that Peter warns about in his second letter (see 2 Pet. 2:14).
We have a credibility problem. We have some wonderful churches, but increasingly, people do not seek to be connected . . .
. . . Maybe we’re not Christians. Maybe we’re just the most popular religion of the day, using the power of persuasion, the force of our numbers, and the strength of our money to advance our ideology.
Maybe we just believe whatever makes sense to us by default, and we don’t truly—as individuals and as communities of Christians—seek to be genuine disciples and to do God’s work of caring for the fatherless and the widow of our day.
Could we be Pharisees? Our own books, television programs and prophecies should make us wonder.
I believe that we all know and love the Word, but we live in earthly vessels with a fallen nature. We feel and see the hopes of the Spirit within, but we also end up doing the very things we do not want to do.
When we preach, write, lobby, raise money, build, broadcast, threaten, sue and spin, we present conflicting images that don’t stand up very well against the tests of time and scrutiny. We are confusing the world, other Christians, and our families.
This isn’t something that can be changed with a list of practical exercises. This is something that has to be dealt with deep within us by exposing ourselves to the wisdom of the Scriptures, to one another, and to God.

"Maybe we're not Christians." Ouch.

He has a very real point. As long as our churches -- religious, irreligious, and anti-religious -- keep preaching Jesus as one who makes your life better rather than Jesus who makes dead people live, as long as we keep teaching Christianity as the gospel of personal fulfillment rather than the call to self-crucifixion -- we are proclaiming Christianity as an unneeded cure for a mythical ailment.

The truth is not that we don't like ourselves enough, have enough success, get happy enough, etc. The truth is that we are sinners in need of resurrection. If no less a giant than Martin Luther could acknowledge this, what makes us stumble over admitting it for ourselves? I think it is because we are prone to believe the problem is everyone and everything else -- but not us. It is not safe or "nice" to talk about this stuff. Sin is a forbidden word in the American church. We don't want people to be uncomfortable or feel judged.

But if we are not honest about the real problem facing us -- inside of us -- we cannot be truthful about salvation. And if we are not truthful about salvation, the people we are so fearful of offending or irritating will face a discomfort and a judgment that is eternally more uncomfortable and judgmental than some hurt feelings this side of the second coming.

Christianity is life or death stuff.

The writer of the above article excerpt is Ted Haggard. Three years after its publication, he would resign from the pastorate of his Colorado megachurch because he was cheating on his wife with a man. This is how he concludes his article:

We have to get this right. Even though the global church is stronger than we’ve ever been, we in the American church are showing early signs of impotence. We are in a global theatre now, which means that our words, actions, investments and thoughts have greater impact. Thus, we have the opportunity to do unprecedented good, but also the dangerous ability to do unparalleled damage.

Let’s make the right choice. If you are like me, you are conflicted. I don't like this column. Granted, there is a part of me that does. But most of me likes the comforts of the church I serve, the way I travel, the way I'm treated by both the public and the body of Christ. I enjoy the political platform we Christians are given.

But at the same time, there is a dark cloud in the back of my mind woondering if God isn't stirring another Martin Luther to nail his theses to our church doors.

I would rather have us return to our foundations of integrity by the prompting of the Holy Spirit and the illumination of the Scriptures, rather than have us defending our lifestyles, edifices and power to future generations as they read history books recounting our demise because of our own hypocrisy.

We need to ensure that we are not the whitewashed tombs and snakes of our day (see Matt. 23:27, 33). We need to be sure.

Are we willing to embrace this sort of Christian integrity? Haggard's words here are piercing, penetrating. They are also chilling in retrospect. This is obviously a man wrestling with sin, a sin that, as the Bible promises, "found him out."

Can we be honest with ourselves and about ourselves? Are we willing to trade in the gospel of personal fulfillment for the gospel of Jesus Christ, who was pummeled and pierced for our brokenness? Will we trade our right to happiness for real joy? Will we trade in our desire for conflict-free lives for real peace? Will we trade in our selfish optimism for real hope?

Will we trade our Christianity for Jesus'?

That is God's call upon the life of the follower of Jesus. That is God's call upon the life of His churches.

It's Not About You

2007-02-08T07:30:00.000-08:00

This is a plea for hope and joy, and it may or may not irritate you.

We have a new pastor. It's natural that in a church our size a few folks may not be happy with the arrangement or the choice made.

For me, it comes down to a few questions:
1) Do I trust my elders?
2) Do I trust the staff?
3) Do I trust God?

The answer to all these questions, for me, is Yes. I have learned enough about the elders over the last few months to know they are not acting naively and unwisely; I know their only agenda is BCC's best interest; I know they are men of prayer and conscience. I have learned enough about our staff over the last few months to know they are eager for a leader and a shepherd, and all I've spoken to believe Perez fits the bill. And I have learned enough about how the Spirit guides a church over the last few months to know God's plan for our church does not hinge on any one person but has actually been made manifest in our flaws and frailty.

And therefore, whether I've been able to sit down with David Perez and have him babysit all my insecurities and answer all my theological and ecclesiological concerns is besides the point. If I thought church was all about mirroring my wants and needs, I would have left BCC a long time ago (and would probably be still looking for that mythical Church That Fits Me).
This is not to say one should always agree with everything church leadership says or does. God knows, I don't. And I'm not encouraging anyone to ignore their conscience.

But I am saying you should bag your baggage. Zip it up in a duffel bag with a few bricks and toss it in a lake.
The Church -- and therefore the church -- is bigger than you. Do you think it exists first and foremost to serve you, or for it to be served by you?

I don't really know of anyone who objects to Perez's arrival. But I assume such people exist, and if one of them happens to be reading this . . . Suck it up. We are on kingdom business, and if you think the church is only as good as who's speaking, you haven't been paying attention for the last seven months.

These are exciting days, and I think we should be excited about them.
---

You can watch David Perez's announcement sermon to his Colorado congregation here.

Know News

2007-02-04T13:20:00.000-08:00

If you were at one of BCC's services this weekend, you know we now have a new lead pastor. David Perez, currently the pastor of Colorado Ridge Church in Broomfield, Colorado, has accepted our church's invitation to come join BCC's pastoral teaching team and be our senior pastor.

You can read a letter from Perez to his Colorado Ridge congregation here.

Yea, God!

Element Kicks Off

2007-02-01T07:33:00.000-08:00

The Element Super Bowl Party is this Sunday at 4:30 pm in The Onion!

If you're 18 to thirty-whatever, a college student or young professional, single or married, cool or super-cool, come join us for free food, food drinks, and the big game on the big screen.
This is our launch party for the Element worship service, which begins the following Sunday (February 11) and continues every Sunday evening at 6:30 in The Onion.

Please note that Element kickboxing may not be as "extreme" as advertised; in fact, it may consist mainly of playing Rock'em Sock'em Robots. Or hopscotch, if we can find some chalk.

Conexus is Coming

2007-02-01T07:21:00.000-08:00

BCC has experienced a renaissance of fellowship and discipleship in its community over the last six months. One of the best ways you can join this inward-outward-upward growth is to get involved in a Conexus small group.

Directories will be available this weekend. Pick up a print version at one of the weekend services or check out the listings on the Hope Park website.

The Conexus Rally will be held the weekend of February 10/11, so feel free to browse the group tables in the atrium, chat up group leaders, peruse materials, and get your name and info on a sign-up sheet. (As always, you can sign up online, as well.)

If you've ever complained about not knowing anybody at church, here's your opportunity for a remedy. Some great things happen in these groups. Great relationships form and real reconciliation happens. Don't miss out!

Conexus officially starts February 18.

Love is Never a Waste

2007-01-24T07:43:00.000-08:00

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
-- Galatians 6:9

There was this time when Peter came up to Jesus and basically asked, “When I can I stop forgiving someone who keeps wronging me? After seven times?”
I can almost hear him saying, “Please tell me after seven times.”
But Jesus responds to him, saying “No, not seven times. Seventy times seven times.”

For those of you doing the math, that comes to 490. The bad news (or good news, depending on which side of the forgiving you’re on ☺) is that this is a symbolic number that basically means “forever.”
Jesus was saying to Peter, “No, you don’t give someone seven strikes. You just keep forgiving them . . . forever.”

Now, Jesus is a smart guy. In fact, if we believe he is who he said he was, we know he has all the omniscience of the God of the Universe. So he knows this is a tall order. He knows it doesn’t “make sense” in our world of abuse and betrayal and pettiness and vindictiveness and pride and arrogance and egotism.

So why does he do this? If he knows our capacity for love and forgiveness is finite, how can he call us to persevere in these things toward others? The short answer, I think, is because God Himself perseveres in them toward us.
Jesus goes on to tell Peter a story about a servant who was forgiven a huge debt by his master. The servant goes on then to punish a third party who owes the servant much less. When the master finds out, he has the debt-pardoned servant thrown in jail and tortured. And Jesus says – this is the scary part – that’s what will happen to us if, spurning the grace given us by God – we withhold grace from others.

Because God’s love toward us is a) despite sin worthy of eternal punishment, and b) relentlessly patient in its eternal perseverance, we have no Christian right to say to someone who has wronged us, even if they continue to wrong us, “You have reached your limit with me. My love for you stops now.” Doing so fails to truly see the depths of our sin in the light of God’s holiness. And if God, who is perfect and holy, will forgive and love we who are most certainly not, on what basis do we have to be unforgiving and unloving to others?

I am guessing most of us agree with this in theory. There’s not too many Christians who will say, despite Jesus’ instructions, that it’s okay to hate your enemies and curse those who persecute you.
I think the place where we really have trouble with this stuff is when it comes to people who are hurting us that we actually do really want to love. We really do want to keep forgiving them. But we are weary. They are wearing us out. We don’t know how much longer we can go on. We want to know if we can give up, but we’re scared what that might mean. Surely God does not want to us to keep enduring this pain. Surely he will understand if we just . . . give up. Things aren’t working. The results aren’t being seen. Efforts are not bearing fruit. I’ve changed, but he or she hasn’t.

Most of us know 1 Corinthians 13 really well, but let’s revisit a piece of it again:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres . . . Love never fails.

That’s some scary stuff right there. For we who are used to thinking of love as romance or warm-and-fuzzies or butterflies or sex, Paul has Jesus in mind as the model of love when he tells us, “Love is about sacrifice and service. And it keeps going. It never fails.”

How can this be? We think of those who have tried to love someone back from the brink only to see the person eventually go over. Certainly love fails in these circumstances, right?

I don’t think so. I think that’s true only if we are thinking of our love in terms of a results-based value. But that is not what Jesus is telling Peter. And that’s not what Paul is telling us.
Jesus does not offer Peter a loophole. There is no Forgiveness Contingency Plan. There’s no limited time warranty. Whether the person you’re loving embraces your forgiveness or not, you keep forgiving. Whether the person you love is changed by your love or not, you keep on loving.

In this sense, I don’t think “Love never fails” means “Love always gets the result the lover wants.” I think it means what it says: Love is not a failure.
Love is not a failure regardless of the results.

This is why: Because God is not a failure, and God is love. When we are loving someone with a persevering, sacrificial love, we are reflecting the eternal goodness and grace of God Himself. We are glorifying God, and there is no higher calling than that. None.
We love – not because it will “change the world” (although it may) – but because God loves us (1 John 4:19).

You would think this might incline us toward a begrudging love, then. “Oh, well, if it’s just for God, maybe I should stop hoping for change in the person I’m loving.” But Paul says love “always trusts, always hopes.”

Always trust that God is not content to honor your sacrificial love with a sympathetic pat on the head. Always hope that God is using your sacrificial love to change hearts and minds. (Maybe yours.)

Love always perseveres. Love never fails. So don’t give up.

Whoever you are, wherever you are: Don’t give up.
To the parents trying to love a wayward child back from the world, to the husband trying to love his wife back from drug addiction, to the wife trying to love her husband back from pornography or adultery, to the girl trying to love her friend back from bitterness, to the guy trying to love his friend back from despair – Don’t Give Up.
Don’t give up, don’t give up, don’t give up.

Whatever happens, whenever it happens, your love is not in vain. You are not alone, for God loves you and has approved your love through the sacrifice of his Son. Cast off despair; cast all your cares on Him.
Love never fails. Love is never a waste.

Submission and Sacrifice: Or, When Grace Gets Touchy

2007-01-23T09:46:00.000-08:00

Last night in the Element Bible study we covered Ephesians chapter 5, which includes the (in)famous passage about wives submitting to their husbands.
What was really interesting, and impressive actually, is how a group of young, mostly single folks treated the discussion with sincerity and intelligence and, as a few began to share their hearts, surprising vulnerability.

In Jesus, grace has a face. And as BCC has learned over the last several months, the practice of being the Body of Christ, the working of grace included, can get messy. So I thought I'd bring the husbands/wives conversation to this blog, since there are likely to be more married readers here than there.

Grace sounds nice. The practice of grace in a messed-up world can frequently be less than nice, though, can't it?

An initial objection is that Paul is being a chauvinist. I think this is a reflection of a recurring idea in New Testament scholarship that Paul somehow “invented” Christianity. Some scholars allege a disconnect between Jesus’ message and Paul’s instructions. I think that’s nonsense.
The more I read Paul, the more I see practically explicit connections between Jesus’ teachings on and proclamation of the presence of the Kingdom of God and Paul’s writings. As one of my favorite scholars, N.T. Wright, suggests: It is as if Jesus gave us the sheet music for a masterwork symphony, and Paul is now teaching the Church how to play it. I love that imagery, and I think it’s true.

In Ephesians, for instance, Paul continually refers to an “inheritance,” which echoes more than a few of Jesus’ parables. And of course whenever Paul talks about the exalted Christ (king) and the kingdom, he could not make a more clear connection between his teaching and that of Jesus. In Ephesians 5, Paul also talks a bit about light and darkness, which is a recurring dichotomy in the Gospel of John. It also appears as one of the similitudes (salt of the earth, light of the world) in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

I'm about to start talking about wives submitting to husbands and husbands leading their wives, which I know is like clog dancing through a minefield, but I really think we ought to keep the Sermon on the Mount in mind here, because what Paul appears to me to be doing is taking the kingdom ethic mandated by Jesus in that sermon and saying “This is what the kingdom life looks like in real life.”
So he begins by contrasting kingdom behaviors with worldly behaviors. And he continues by, in the latter part of Ephesians 5, teaching us what the Kingdom life looks like in a typical household. And the whole submission/service dynamic is all over the Sermon on the Mount.

I won’t try to state the obvious or say all that can be said about the contrast of a wife’s obligation with a husband’s obligation, but I do want to briefly touch on something – something that is perhaps a little . . . . well, touchy.

We (rightly) say that when a husband is truly emptying himself out, cherishing his wife, sacrificing as a servant leader, and loving her as Christ loving the Church, it inclines his wife to want to and enjoy submitting to his headship. Certainly “submit” does not mean “become a doormat,” just as “love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for it” doesn’t mean “treat your wife like a poorly paid maidservant.”

But notice that the text never says to either husband or wife “do this if your spouse does that.” In other words, neither wifely submission nor husbandly sacrifice comes with conditions. Please hear me out on this: I am NOT saying, just as extreme examples, a wife should submit to an abusive or adulterous husband or a husband should be obligated to continue serving an adulterous wife. What I am saying, however, is that in a “normal” household, making one’s biblical responsibility to one’s spouse contingent upon the spouse’s “worthiness” misses the point entirely. We have to, ideally, get to the point where wives submit out of reverence to God to husbands they don’t always agree with, and husbands lead through service and sacrifice despite their wives’ response to such service.
In other words, “I will submit . . . but only when he agree with me” and “I will serve sacrificially . . . but only when she starts putting out” (or whatever :-) is the exact opposite of what it means to be “in Christ,” because it is the opposite of grace. Grace is divine favor given to us even though we do not deserve it.

The irony in making our own responsibilities conditional upon someone else’s fulfillment of theirs is that we think we are insisting upon improvement or “doing our best” when really we are setting up an exchange that is actually settling for less than God’s best. When we make our efforts always about rewarding someone’s efforts toward us, we are, as C.S. Lewis says, “far too easily pleased” (but, honestly, somehow always displeased, right?).

Grace. That is what we need more of. In our workplaces, friendships, churches, homes, and lives. We need more grace.

And in our marriage relationships – as in all relationships -- God is glorified and the Kingdom life is really demonstrated as the brilliant, life-changing counterculture it truly is when we are constantly cooperating to cover each other’s sin and hurts with grace and love.

Grace and peace to you.

The "Where I Am Right Now" Post: BCC Version

2007-01-23T07:04:00.000-08:00

Should we take our church's temperature? Should we check the spiritual barometer?
In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer says ministers should not be constantly measuring their church. I really don't know exactly what he meant by that (although I could guess), and while I love Bonhoeffer and I love that book, I'm going to ignore his suggestion. :-)

In the comments of the last post, Dirk asks:

Is there a way you might circle information back and apply it to the life of BCC?

I can try!

This was my response:

"The application I think BCC can (and is!) making, just like any Christian or church should make, is that spirit and truth are not an either/or proposition. They are a package deal. And what I tend to see is churches trying hard to specialize in one or the other.
So, on the one hand, you can have some fringes of the charismatic community really reveling in "spirit" but going clear off the rails doctrinally, and on the other hand churches in very heavy liturgical or traditional communities that mind all their doctrinal p's and q's but look as if they're having a root canal while they're doing it.

I think, at this time, BCC is doing a great job. There's always room for improvement, and since nobody and no church is perfect, there's always room for valid criticism, but I think we are on a great upward trend, getting closer as we grow to where Spirit and truth intersect."

"Spirituality" and Life in Christ

2007-01-22T13:54:00.000-08:00

(Note: Background for this post may be found at two previous entries of mine: What It Means to be a Christian, which was posted here, and Spirituality with a Capital "S", which is at the Element MySpace.)

Here is a great passage from Dallas Willard's The Great Omission:

I'm sorry to say this, but too much of what we call Christian is not a manifestation of the supernatural life of God in our souls. Too much of what we call Christian is really just human. And now I'm going to say something really terrible, so brace yourselves or stop your ears. The church of Jesus Christ is not necessarily present when there is a correct administration of the sacrament and faithful preaching of the Word of God. The church of God is present where people gather together in the power of the resurrected life of Jesus Christ. It is possible to have the administration of the sacraments and the preaching of the Word of God and to have it be simply a human exercise. And the misunderstandings of the church in this respect is one of the things that create a primary problem for the integration of theology and spirituality. Because, as was emphasized yesterday, a bad theology will kill any prospects of a spirituality that comes from life in Christ.

. . . [L]ife in Christ, and therefore biblical spirituality, has to do with obedience to Christ . . . [L]ife in Christ is a matter of the "spirit" . . . [S]piritual life is a matter of living our lives from the reality of God . . . Christian spirituality is supernatural because obedience to Christ is supernatural and cannot be accomplished except in the power of a "life from above."

The will to obey is the engine that pulls the train of spirituality in Christ. But spirituality in many Christian circles has simply become another dimension of Christian consumerism. We have generated a body of people who consume Christian services and think that is Christian faith. Consumption of Christian services replaces obedience to Christ. And spirituality is one more thing to consume. I go to many, many conferences and talk about these things, and so often I see these people who are just consuming more Christian services.

Some reflections:

1. I like that Willard begins with an indictment of Spiritless religion but immediately draws in the equally errant alternative -- Spiritless "spirituality."

2. The integration of theology and spirituality! Yes. What tends to happen in evangelical communities these days is an either/or tyranny. Either a church is mired in soulless intellect, or it radiates an emotionalist spirituality. And neither option, regardless of lip service, is vitally connected to Jesus Christ.
Jesus said that true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. This is why discipleship, obedience, community worship, and true religion are necessary (that's worshiping in spirit). And this is why theology, study, reflection, preaching, and teaching are necessary (that's worshiping in truth).
After all, the Great Commandment does not give a buffet option to the choices of "heart, soul, mind, and strength."

3. Which brings me to my favorite thing about this passage, and that is the connection Willard makes between "being in Christ" and "biblical spirituality." I read reviews online for a certain book by a certain famous speaker/writer today, and while many of them championed his vision for the Kingdom of God and the implications for such a counterculture, the most obvious thing that seemed to be missing from this Kingdom description was the most important one -- namely, that the Kingdom of God thrives on Jesus Christ as King. The vision of the kingdom I read about as explored in this book was all about personal fulfillment and cultural expansion, community revolutions and political and artistic renaissance. Those are all great things, as far as they go. But none of them gets to the heart of what it means to be a Christian, what it means to really enjoy Christian Spirituality, and what it means to really live and love in the Kingdom of God now present.

So many churches today define themselves -- and advertise themselves! -- based on what they are against, or what they are not. This often works in appealing to people, especially if it reflects current fashions on what (or who) is not fashionable.
And too many times these self definitions and advertisements creep into the philosophical culture and collective identity of the community, so it becomes less about marketing and much more about message.
America has an abundance of churches that are against boredom, "religion," traditionalism, sophistication, formality, insensitivity to seekers, etc. What the world is really in need of -- and what the call of Scripture upon the biblical community mandates -- is a church that is for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that worships, lives, eats, reflects, follows, and revolves around Jesus Christ. And that isn't ashamed or afraid to say so, market research be damned.
The point of Christianity is Jesus Christ himself.

My prayer is that Bellevue Community Church continues in its great love for the Savior, which as many of us have discovered, only multiplies and magnifies its love for the lost, for the broken, for the hurting, for the impoverished, and for each other.
That is Spirituality. That is life in Christ.

My Jesus, I Love Me -- er, I Mean Thee

2007-01-22T06:55:00.000-08:00

Over the last four or five years I've been spending time with "historical Jesus" studies. Scholars like N.T. Wright, Howard Marshall, Ben Witherington, and Scot McKight have refreshed and revolutionized the way I read the Gospels.
These studies typically involve historical reviews of previous "quests" for the historical Jesus, and the common consensus is that most quests involve a scholarly look down the deep, dark well of history and result in the looker seeing his own reflection.

But lest we think "Jesus in our own image" is a sin solely owned by so-called "liberal" academics and historians, we should at least acknowledge the Western Church of the modern world is frequently just as guilty. Just because our Jesus looks different doesn't mean He's the historical Jesus.

Justin Holcomb has a good post this week at Common Grounds Online called Jesus is For Losers:

I am currently reading Stephen Prothero's American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, which investigates the various constructions of Jesus in American history. He argues convincingly that what Americans have seen in Jesus has been a reflection of themselves. I haven't liked most versions of Jesus that Prothero sees in American cultural history—Enlightened Sage, Manly Redeemer, or Superstar—because they are mainly reflections of American ideals and hopes. While reading American Jesus I also read the Gospel accounts of Jesus and saw another interesting version: Jesus as Loser Lover (thanks to Steve Taylor for his brilliant song "Jesus is for Losers"). Jesus loved the spiritual losers: swindlers, whores, and drunkards. These were not people "achieving growth in noble virtues." Jesus told us what to think about his mission for losers: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

I'd suggest even more errant Jesuses propagated by American evangelicalism -- Success Guru Jesus, Mystical Experience Jesus, Politically Correct Jesus, Fundamentalist Jesus, Patriotic Jesus, Co-Pilot Buddy Jesus, Tony Robbins Jesus, Personal ATM Jesus, and last but certainly not least My Own "Personal" Jesus.

How do we sort through these myriad Jesuses, each of which has just enough truth in them (even if just a dash) to make them dangerous, to find the real Person Jesus Christ? I think we ought to start with the Gospels, which usually are the last texts consulted. We think we are quite familiar with them, but we are not. We think we know their stories and have been building on them for years, but the army of false Jesuses marching in the hearts of well-meaning Christians testifies otherwise.

And the Jesus Cottage Industry is making a killing on all the ways we have Jesus without the gravity of His real personality. We have endless books offering alternative histories and secret messages and "what he really said" and hidden gospels. When, if we cared to see it, the four Gospels we already have contain enough truth to challenge, comfort, convict, and create us for eternity.

Yes, I said "create" us. It was G.K. Chesterton who, in his defense of Christian orthodoxy, said, "I did not make it. It is making me."
Can we say that of Jesus? Can we say the Jesus we believe in, rest in, trust in is the Jesus who is making us? Or is He the one we'd prefer, the one who's most like us, who's safer and nicer, who reflects all of our personal or political values and idiosyncrasies? Is Jesus making us, or is he the Jesus of our own making?

It is quite possible to make an idol of Jesus. Which is not to say that Jesus is not to be worshiped. He is the only Man worthy of worship. What I mean is, it is possible to project a self-idolatry onto Jesus, to mistake our own satisfaction with ourselves for authentic discipleship, instead of worshiping the real, living God in the real, resurrected person of Jesus Christ.

Here's one personal test I subject my own reading of the Gospels to (which actually works quite well when reading any Scripture):
Is it freaking me out? :-)
Am I convicted, challenged, impressed, scared, or inspired? Am I moved?

The Word of God -- both the living Word and the written Word -- is transformational revelation. If we are not being transformed by Christ and Scripture, we are not reading them right.
And if we constantly find them confirming our sense of self and our prejudices, leaving us unrepentant or unmoved, we have the chief indication we are looking down the deep, dark well of our own heart and seeing our own reflection.

Making Disciples of Ourselves

2007-01-19T10:09:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Dallas Willard's new book The Great Omission (in snippets while I wait in the car line to pick up my daughter from school in the afternoons), and it's a great indictment of the way we tend to accept Christ for the fire insurance and occasional crisis management but tend to forget the Great Commission calls us to "make disciples," not converts.

Here's a great quote from Eugene Peterson on this subject:

The great danger of Christian discipleship is that we should have two religions: a glorious, biblical Sunday gospel that sets us free from the world, that in the cross and resurrection of Christ makes eternity alive in us, a magnificent gospel of Genesis and Romans and Revelation; and, then, an everyday religion that we make do with during the week between the time of leaving the world and arriving in heaven. We save the Sunday gospel for the big crises of existence. For the mudane trivialities, . . . we use the everyday religion of the Reader's Digest reprint, advice from a friend, an Ann Landers column, the huckstered wisdom of a talk-show celebrity. We practice patent-medicine religion: we know that God created the universe, . . . [b]ut we can't believe that he condescends to watch the soap opera of our daily trials and tribulations.

I hope to start exploring more of the ways the Sunday gospel can be let loose on our Monday thru Saturday lives in the days and weeks to come.
I know I promised regular blogging this week, but life's what happens when you're making plans, eh? My wife has been home sick all week (viral infection in the throat -- weird, huh?), and I've been focusing my study and writing primarily in preparation for the launch of Element in a couple of weeks, so time's been scarce.

Regular blogging will resume . . . um, soon. (Sorry, Adam. ;-)

Grace and peace to you and yours!

Death Expectancy

2007-01-17T08:12:00.000-08:00

When they aren't outright murdering church members, they are burning churches in India.

Buddhists are attacking Christians in Sri Lanka.

You can find hundreds more stories like these.

The Element crowd is currently going through some of Paul's prison epistles, and as we continue to look at Paul's talking about the "privilege of suffering" and considering oppression and persecution as blessings meant to conform us to the likeness of Christ, it has been important to remind those of us sitting on couches in a warm living room, un-cheap coffee in hand, gathered for a meeting that is publicly announced and advertised, that in Paul's day, becoming a Christian meant immediately and severely lowering your life expectancy.

And for most parts of the world -- the modern world -- the situation is still the same. Taking up one's cross to follow Jesus, which in Jesus' day meant embracing death, means for most Christians in the 21st century embracing death. The decision to accept Christ is the decision to lower your life expectancy considerably.
In our part of the world at this time, accepting Jesus typically means altering our lifestyle to some extent. Adding some Christianization to our routine. When it's real, there is real life change. I've seen redemption of the most powerful sort even in my short life.
But for none of us does "taking up my cross" mean following the likeness of Jesus unto death.

Now, I'm not one of those praying for a time of real persecution on the Church in the Western world. People who are practically begging God to test us with fire seem to me a little crazy.
I enjoy sitting in my Dada chair in my warm house, sipping coffee, reading a good book while my two little chickadees dance around without a care in the world. I enjoy being able to do all that without worrying about some nutjob throwing a malotov cocktail through my window. I don't worry about gunmen entering my church during worship (although that has happened in America in recent years).
I'm not saying martyrdom automatically makes one a better disciple. I'm not saying I'd like to have it hard.

But I am saying we -- and by "we," I mean the average American Christian -- ought to realize we have it easy. And we ought to, at the very least, thank God that we do. And pray for our brothers and sisters who don't.

New News is Good News

2007-01-15T16:01:00.000-08:00

Dirk Plantinga has a reporter's tenacity and therefore has the scoop on the lead pastor search.

Conexus and FOCUS both return to the BCC schedule last week of February.

The new Element worship service starts Sunday, February 11, with a Super Bowl launch party occurring a week earlier, February 4.

More details to come on all these happenings and more. 2007 promises to be an exciting year.

Dispatch from the Great Busyond

2007-01-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

Yikes. I'm a slacker, ain't I?

Actually, I've been slacking in the blog department so that I won't slack in the Everything Else department. Thanks to all who keep returning every day (I still check my Sitemeter), I suppose in the hopes that I've touched base. I'm sorry to send you away with nuffin'.

My plan is to resume regular blogging Monday, the 15th. There are lots of exciting things coming up in the life of BCC, and I've got a kettle full of post ideas waiting to find written form. And I promise to follow up on that "homework" assignment.

Till then . . . Grace and peace!

Element Is Coming

2007-01-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

Homework

2006-12-22T16:29:00.000-08:00

Sorta. :-)

In 2003 some friends and I started a group blog called The Thinklings, which has, in the almost four years of its existence, hosted discussions and debates on all manner of subjects related to Christianity and the Church. We are really proud of the diverse community we've gladly cultivated over time, people from all over the world and from all kinds of religious backgrounds. Including irreligious and antireligious backgrounds.

Recently a few of my Thinkling brethren have been carrying on a lengthy dialogue with an Australian atheist named Ray. Ray is frequently friendly, occasionally insulting, and always relentless in his questions and criticisms. I haven't engaged in the conversation too much myself, mainly for lack of time. But I've been eavesdropping, and the fellow does not lack for penetrating, "hard" questions. I'm going to reprint below his latest comment, and I'd like the readers here -- the ones who follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior -- to look over them and contemplate how they might answer. Feel free to use the comments to tell us how you'd answer Ray. These are good, honest questions, and I think they're things lots of nonChristians think about and wonder about. It might behoove us to brainstorm some answers to them.

So let me get this right...

God implants woman to make her pregnant. Half human son is born. Son grows up to become a prophet and without sin. In fact worlds first sinless human and God loves him. God has secret plan to have son killed. Sometime in the future, He is picked up tortured and nailed to a cross all of which is Gods perfect plan. 3 or 4 days later, God breathes life back into cadaver and has him back on earth again. Later to be "beamed up" to heaven.

The questions:
1. Why does God have to have him tortured? why not kill him quickly?
2. Isn't this some form of child abuse?
3. How does punishing the single one sinless "good guy" become a lesson for
humanity?
4. God gives us illness and misfortune all the time why not punish sin person by person?
5. If he can create 1x Sinless Jesus why not 5 billion sinless us? Jesus had free will right?
6. Jesus dying when he did was a tragic waste to the world. Wouldn't a Jesus that lived another 20 years been of whole lot more use to humanity?
7. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son at this time, so that he could bring the same son back to life and live in the glory of heaven at Gods side so that man would feel guilty about sin, of which God designed into the human psych in the first place. It just doesn't make sense on any level. If there is one thing you could do for me over Christmas when you have a few mins is pull apart my thinking on this? could you?
Why not make us all like Jesus or angels or saints or anyone else considered
sinless? Why make a faulty product and then destroy the good working one in vengeance?

It makes no sense

I will try to post my response sometime before the new year.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas!

Peace

Time Out

2006-12-18T14:42:00.000-08:00

I love Houston rain. I don't know how it's different than any other rain, but it just makes me feel like I'm home.
It's a heavy, long lasting rain, and it sounds incredible landing on wood and stone.

I got outside during the hard rain that fell today, smoked a nice cigar, and listened to this Mark Driscoll sermon about the prophecies Jesus fulfilled on my iPod. It's a good one; I recommend it. (Actually, Driscoll's whole "Vintage Jesus" series is quite good.)

Anyways . . . I'm enjoying vacation right now. Blogging will be sporadic.

I hope you have a great holiday. Spend it with people you love, and if you can't do that, love the people you're spending it with. :-)

Peace

Life is Not Long, But It's Hard: A Christmas Reflection

2006-12-18T14:02:00.000-08:00

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
"A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more."

-- Matthew 2:16-18

My good friend and fellow BCC blogger Dirk Plantinga has a heartfelt post up this week on holiday suffering. It is an unavoidable reflection for those going through some very difficult stuff right now; and it ought to be a required reflection for those of us who call ourselves worshipers of Jesus. As we celebrate the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ this Christmas season, we ought to never forget it is the Incarnation we are celebrating. The Incarnation, in which God Himself deigned to take on the messy, fleshy, vulnerable, hard-going, troublesome, temptation-fraught, hurt-filled mantle of all it means to be human in a messed up world, is the cornerstone idea of what it means to have Jesus for us.

So while it does not often ease our troubles or grief, it certainly gives meaning to them. It has been this way since the first Christmas. Remember that Joseph had to take his wife and child away from Bethlehem to escape the murderous King Herod. So even 2000 years ago, while Mary and Joseph were celebrating their eldest son's birthday every year, there were many families remembering the day Herod's men came to kill their children. The day that marked the coming of salvation in the birth of Jesus was a day of agonizing memories for many.

This is the double edge of Christmas. While there is joy, there is grief. While there is family and friendship, there is loneliness. While there is fun, there is hurt.
This is the double edge of the Incarnation of Jesus. Jesus was born to die. The fullness of God became the frailty of man. And this was for us too.

Did Jesus grieve the loss of friends and family? Did Jesus suffer hurt and harm? Did Jesus ever feel abandoned or lonely? Did Jesus worry about his family? Did Jesus agonize over the future? Did Jesus die?
If you know your Bible, you know the answer to all of these questions is yes.

This is why we worship Jesus Christ with such fervency this time of year, and why we should do so every day of every year. Not because He is the exalted God so far removed from our lives and concerns, but because He immersed Himself in our lives and concerns, and because He still does. Does He know life is short and hard? He does. He knows not just in a God omniscient sort of way, but in a sweating blood, where-are-my-friends?, extremities pierced, back flayed, Father-forgive-them, suffocating on a cross, dead at the young age of 33 sort of way.

There is an ironic joy in having a Lord who knows what it's like to be me and you. And we find joy knowing the story does not end there.
In his new book Simply Christian, N.T. Wright writes:

From the very beginning, two thousand years ago, the followers of Jesus have always maintained that he took the tears of the world and made them his own, carrying them all the way to his cruel and unjust death to carry out God's rescue operation; and that he took the joy of the world and brought it to new birth as he rose from the dead and thereby launched God's new creation.

Jesus came to die, but he came to give life. Jesus died, but he lives. He is in the death-defying business.
The lonely will be comforted, the betrayed will be befriended, the grieving will be rejoicing, the hurting will be healed. The dead will live.
Maybe not today or tomorrow, but in the "fullness of time." Life is hard; thank God, then, that it is short, right? :-)

In Matthew 2:19-21 we read that after Joseph, Mary, and infant baby Jesus (thank you, Ricky Bobby) fled Herod's murderous henchmen in fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy, Herod himself succumbed to death. And an angel visited the family in Egypt and told them the news. The fullness of that time had come, so the family went home.

So many people need the peace that passes understanding right now. And most of them will not find it apart from our being Jesus to them.
Even so, come Lord Jesus.

Urgent Prayer Request

2006-12-14T07:50:00.000-08:00

Please be in prayer for the family of Brian Drinkwine, who is BCC's associate minister to students. His father passed away last night of a heart attack.

I've only come to know Brian recently, through the Studio 215 ministry, but he's a great guy with a great, big heart for God and kids. Please pray for him and his family as they mourn this terrible loss. Thanks.

Update:
I've been traveling all day today, so I was out of the loop. Apologies for the delayed information. Received this update via email:
The visitation for Brian's dad continues today (Friday) until 9 PM at Hickory Chapel on Nolensville Rd. The funeral service will be tomorrow at Judson Baptist Church at 2 PM.

If you have a MySpace account, it might be nice to leave a prayer or word of condolences at Brian's page.

What It Means to be a Christian

2006-12-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

In the Studio 215 Bible studies on Monday nights we've been going through Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Last night we focused on chapter 2, and one thing that struck me in the passage (and the surrounding ones) was how Paul used the phrase "in Christ." He most certainly does not use "in Christ" as some vague, "spiritual" feel-goodism. He is talking about nothing less than the power of the Incarnation (in which Jesus became "in man") accessible to us in the great inheritance grace-granted by God to us; we are -- concretely, realistically, personally -- in the person of Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ is in us. This is why Paul uses the phrase in specific contexts:
We are created for good works "in Christ" (Eph. 2:10).
Being "in Christ" does something for us, as it brings us near to God (2:13).
We are all joined together into a living picture of the temple (which is where God lives) when we are "in Him" (2:21-22).

This is what it means to be a Christian. It means to be "in Christ." It means to be connected in a lifeblood way to the redemption and resurrection Christ gives to the faithful.
It is not about admiring Jesus, liking Jesus, having Jesus as your MySpace hero.

Robert Short, in The Parables of Peanuts, his book on spirituality in the Charles Schultz comic strip, writes:

The nominal Christian, then, will see Jesus as a name, a representative, a symbol, a personification, a prototype, a figure, a model, an exemplar for something else. The nominal Christian pays homage to something about Jesus, rather than worshiping the man himself. For this reason, nominal Christians will extol the moral teachings of Jesus, the faith of Jesus, the personality of Jesus, the compassion of Jesus, the world view of Jesus, the self-understanding of Jesus, etc. None of these worships Jesus as the Christ, but only something about him, something peripheral to the actual flesh-and-blood man. This is why when the almighty God came into the world in Jesus, he came as the lowest of the low, as weakness itself, as a complete and utter nothing, in order that men would be forced into the crucial decision about him alone and would not be able to worship anything about him.

So you have Jesus saying things like "If you want to save your life, you gotta lose it" and "The first will be last" and "You must deny yourself." This is no call to some generic optimistic aspirations, no matter how "Christian" they are packaged. This is a call to cease being one's old self. To stop being dead, actually. To die to death and live . . . "in Christ."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer says that when Christ bids a man come, he bids him to come and die. That's not something you hear from America's pulpits too often these days. We are more accustomed to learning about how to let Jesus make us successful at whatever it is we are trying to do. But when Jesus said "Take up your cross and follow me," the flesh and blood people who heard him 2000 years ago thought only of death. We have the luxury of thinking of "taking up our cross" metaphorically, like it is some ordinary life burden to bear. A difficult spouse or boss. A nagging doubt. A problem with our self esteem. Financial debt. Whatever. But the disciples of Jesus had seen hundreds of literal bodies decaying on literal crosses. "Take up your cross" did not mean "put up with something irritating."

So over and over the New Testament, from Jesus in the Gospels to the apostles in the epistles, tells us -- urges us, commands us -- to be "in Christ." That is where real life is found.
Back in Ephesians 2, verse 14, Paul says that Jesus himself is our peace. Paul will not let us believe for any second there is any virtue or value worth having outside the person of Jesus Christ. Peace is not a general feeling or a universal moral virtue. Jesus Christ himself is peace. Just as love is not niceties or altruistic kindness. God Himself is love. The Bible does this to us over and over again -- it continually points to the triune Creator as the epitome of, the manifestation of, the giver and the gift of all the things we think of as good and right and necessary.

Jesus is not a pop song, snuggly sweater, affectionate boyfriend, poster on your wall, self-help book, motivational speech, warm cup of coffee, ultimate fighting champion, knight in shining armor, Robin to your Batman. He is blood. And without blood, you die.

Vision Night Video

2006-12-08T12:32:00.000-08:00

Looks like I jumped the gun yesterday. :-)

The video from Wednesday's Vision Night is up today at the Hope Park website. Go here and scroll down to BCC Special Events.
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Unrelated, but:
I know the new profile pic is fuzzy. That's because Macy took it. :-) But I figured it was time for a new photo. May try to get a non-fuzzy version up soon.

Happy Friday!

Weekend Linkage

2006-12-08T08:55:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've done one of these. So here's a collection of quality links to take you through the weekend.

"I just had to go to church."

More on joy from Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog.

Do you suffer from Quiet Time Guilt? This post is for you. :-)

My wife Becky has started blogging at her MySpace page.

It's sort of a long post, but it's a good one: The Internet Monk on the inherent hardship of real ministry.

Christianity: What's the Point?

Community Christian Church in Naperville, Illinois has produced a series of "Christian vs. Christ-follower" ads that parody those funny Apple/PC commercials. They are quite clever and pretty well produced.
I'm no fan of Christian subcultural kitsch substituting for authentic faith, but I am really wearying of this whole "us vs. them" thing, particularly when it comes down to dividing up who really follow Jesus better. What I think these things communicate, although surely not purposefully, is "I'm the better Christ follower because I'm cooler than you." Which is just as awful as one assuming they're a better Christian because they know more stuff, listen to the right music, and have a Jesus fish on their car. It smacks of reverse Pharisaism to me, and I'm seeing lately all the stinkin' time: "I thank you, God, that I'm not like those religious people over there . . ."
When will we figure out we all need each other? That none of us can say to another, "I have no need for you"?

Finally, if you haven't seen U2 singing "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" (with a little help from the Pope, George Bush, Tony Blair, and Oprah), you really should.

Happy surfing! See you next week.

A Personal Note

2006-12-08T08:26:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to take a minute to say Thanks to all of you who continue to read BCC is Broken, and especially to those who continue to express their appreciation for my meager meanderings. I am constantly humbled by the notion that anybody's getting something good, let alone edifying, out of the writing here, but as it is certainly my aim to do that, I find your feedback very encouraging and edifying myself. There is still someone every weekend at church who approaches me to thank me for the blog, and I'm still not used to it. I would have thought it'd be "old" by now, but apparently it's still a blessing to some folks, and knowing that is a blessing to me. In fact, just this last Wednesday at Vision Night, three people introduced themselves to me and thanked me for the blog. I didn't think the evening could have gotten any better, but those conversations really made my night.

For a while, aside from these brief personal encounters, I had no way of knowing if there were many people still reading the site. I figured that after the hoopla died down in the media, and as I trended away from "news" and the gory details, people would lose interest. The drop-off of commenting seemed to confirm this suspicion. But a few weeks ago I installed Sitemeter so I could track readership, page views, duration of views, referral stats, etc. Turns out BCC is Broken averages about 80 unique visits a day, which is pretty good for a little Blogspot blog about a local church that is not on many people's blogrolls. Actually, checking this morning, I see the average daily visits is 104. I think the news about the lead pastor candidate visit and the elder introductions probably spiked the average up a bit.

And readership is not limited to the Nashville area either. BCC is Broken has regular readership -- and by that, I mean, it's not just a random visit by someone arriving via a search or something -- in Michigan, New Jersey, California, Colorado, Washington, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and even our neighborhood to the north, Canada. Persons living in cities in these areas check the site out every day. And of course there are lots of Nashvilles, Brentwoods, Franklins, Murfreesboros, and Kingston Springs(es?).

It has been an honor to serve BCC in this newfangled way. And as long as people continue to demonstrate interest and to profit in what is posted here, I will continue posting.

I also wanted to say a few words to the folks who have been telling me in person and via e-mail how they wished I had been selected as an elder. I very much appreciate the thoughts. It's a cliche, I know, but just being nominated was an honor, and all the notes of support I received leading up to the announcement multiplied the encouragement hundredfold.
The truth is that throughout the process I have reserved the right to withdraw my name from consideration, based primarily on the fact that I didn't think I'd have the time to serve the way the position and the church require. I have already committed to leading two small groups and also to teaching in the upcoming alternative worship service for the Studio 215 crowd (at this moment named Element). Those commitments, plus just regular family commitments, my continuing publishing efforts, and the promise of a regular freelance editing gig had me very reluctant to take on a position that, at this stage in the life our church, would require loads of time and focus and a practically undivided commitment.

The elder board was on the exact same page, being aware of my previous commitments to the church. The reasons expressed to me for my not being selected are in fact the very reasons why I would have withdrawn my name from consideration. So the end result would have been the same; either way, I would not be serving as elder.
The elders have made wise and prayerful decisions -- as they have all along -- and the men they have voted as their incoming members are great guys with lots of faith and wisdom. I know two of them personally, and they are just fantastic guys.

So while I appreciate the expression of "disappointment," please don't assume that I am disappointed or hurt by the results. I am encouraged by the direction of our church and think the world of our elders (past and present, outgoing and incoming), who have given up so much of their time and gifts (and occasionally health) to love our church as Christ does. You can trust these men.

Well, the note turned into a novel. Sorry about that.
But all of that to say, from the bottom of my heart, Thank You Very Much, friends and readers. It is a joy to write for you.

Peace

Covered in Joy

2006-12-07T09:22:00.000-08:00

We are listening to a lot of Christmas music at our house. Have been for quite some time, actually, as Becky had our tree up the first weekend of November!
Today, Grace and I were listening to "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen," which she liked very much. But she misheard the phrase "comfort and joy" and was singing it "covered in joy."
I may actually like that better! Covered in joy. That's awesome.

"To save us all from Satan's power
When we were gone astray
Oh, tidings of covered in joy
Covered in joy!"

And as it came from a child named Grace, I like to think of the concept as a gift of grace. The gift of grace in the gift of forgiveness in Christ should overwhelm us with the joy of salvation.

How are you today? Are you covered in joy?

But let all who take refuge in you be glad; let them ever sing for joy. Spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may rejoice in you.
-- Psalm 5:11

How to be Spiritual

2006-12-07T09:12:00.000-08:00

Since not all of us can retreat into a cave and live a hermit-like existence living off roots and berries, wearing animal carcasses, and spending all our time praying and reading Scripture in the original languages. Some of us have to find ways to live in the Spirit in our cubicles, breakfast nooks, grocery stores, and bedrooms. This post from Once More With Feeling is for the rest of us and proves the Bible's got us covered too. :-)

-- Drink and eat a lot with family and friends (Deuteronomy 14.22-27; Ecclesiastes 9.7).

-- Include strangers, people below your socio-economic status, and characters of ill-repute in these parties–if you notice they aren’t being treated in a really welcoming manner, you may need to invite fewer of your friends in order to produce the right environment (Deuteronomy 16.10-15; Luke 14.12-14; Luke 15.1, 2).

-- Have frequent sex with your spouse (Ecclesiastes 9.9; First Corinthians 7.2-5).

-- Enjoy your work (Ecclesiastes 9.10).

-- Work hard (Ecclesiastes 11.6).

-- Worship God in public with other people (Psalm 100, ad infinitum).

-- Sing really violent songs as prayers (The Psalms).

-- Loan money without expecting payment in return (Luke 6.35).
-- Pursue profit in business–otherwise you are never going to be able to afford to be open handed (Luke 19.20-26; Ephesians 4.28).

-- Enjoy the luxuries you have (Ecclesiastes 9.8).

-- If it is an especially holy day, and you hear the Law of God and are feeling especially convicted for your many sins, make sure you don’t weep but rather go party and share food and fellowship with others (Nehemiah 8).

-- Gently restore people you catch in wrongdoing and don’t demand payback when you are the victim (Galatians 6.1, 2).

-- Teach your children to be spiritual(Deuteronomy 6.1-9).

-- Don’t care if anyone else judges you or your children as unspiritual; care what God thinks (Romans 2.28, 29).

(Hat tip: Alan, one of my compadres at Thinklings)

Vision Night

2006-12-07T06:59:00.000-08:00

A recap of last night's Vision Night at BCC and some reflections. This will be hit-and-run style, 'cause my three-year-old is asking me to play Candyland with her, and I cannot say no. :-)

If you happened to miss last night, I've been told video of the "presentation" portion of the service will be available at the BCC website sometime today. If you weren't able to make it, you should definitely watch it.

Lionel started us off with a great time of worship. It's been a while since I've sung "Spirit of the Living God" (which may not be the right title, not sure), but I love that song.

Dennis presented a neat "imaginary reenactment" of the Last Supper for us while we celebrated communion.
I don't know if you realize this -- heck, you probably do -- but communion is a vital ingredient in the life of the Body of Christ. I will probably post on the Lord's Supper sometime in the coming weeks, but for now I just want to say how grateful I am that it seems to be more at the forefront of our corporate worship than ever before.

After worship and communion, Bill West took the stage to address the congregation.
Okay, can I just say I flippin' love this guy? It was not a planned portion of the evening, so Becky and I were holding our breath, afraid he was about to announce his resignation. I've sat through a few such announcements before, and they are heartbreaking when the minister making the announcement is someone you've grown attached to.
But Bill said two things that needed to be said. First, that he has a great peace about knowing he is not God's man for the lead pastor position. Second, and perhaps most importantly, he knows BCC is where he's supposed to be and he is not going anywhere.
You need to watch the video at this point, because the spontaneous and lengthy standing ovation Bill received at this point was the most powerful moment of the entire night.

Look, we've needed a pastor, and Bill has more than filled the role. I have to confess in always suspecting I was in the minority regarding my appreciation of Bill. It was an encouragement to me to know I'm not alone, and what a dramatic statement it was to Bill and to each other that everyone felt the simultaneous compulsion to let Bill know we love him, appreciate him, and praise God for him. And obviously it was a great encouragement to him, as well.

After Bill's address, the elders began taking the stage to make their individual presentations.

Mike Hueneke introduced us to the four incoming elders. They are:
Mike Dillon
Mark Freeman
Tony Rich
Billy Williams

These are four great guys with a lot of faith, wisdom, intelligence, and expertise between them. I think our elder board has made a great move in voting these guys in. Let's remember to keep them in our prayers as they take the reigns of our leadership during this continuing transition. And if you happen to see one of them at church sometime, please tell them congratulations and thank them for their service.

The update on the lead pastor search is that there is really only one guy in the pipeline, and it was the candidate we heard from last weekend. Our elders are continuing to talk with him, and all parties involved are continuing to pray for God's leading in this area. The next stage may be inviting him back for a town meeting-type Q&A with BCC folks. The elders are well aware that you can't know much about a guy just by hearing how good a speaker he is.

Minister Search, the firm we are using to find candidates for us, does not have any other viable candidates for us to engage with us at this time.

Alex Poston took the stage to tie up a loose end from the original cottage meetings, a final piece of data from the initial "fallout." Lots of folks continue to wonder about the expense account audit, and as recently as the last Tennessean article, dollar amounts continue to get bandied about. The elders felt it important to address this clearly and directly.
Apparently the final figure the auditor came back with is $369,000 of undocumented expenses; that is to say, $369,000 charged to expense accounts that did not have receipts. There is no way to know what this money was spent on.

A few folks in the Q&A time wanted to know what this means. Nobody would really say what they meant by "what this means" and consequently the elders did not really just lay it out there.
This is my interpretation, and I'm sure it could get me in trouble. :-) Basically, we had to turn in a real figure to the IRS for our own tax purposes. It was not done in any retaliatory way against the Fosters. But to maintain the church's non-profit status -- essentially, to stay in good with the government regulation of churches and non-profit agencies -- we had to cooperate in this process. But after handing this information over, it is now out of our hands. That could not be more important to say. Anything that happens from this point on is not the responsibility of BCC. Anything that may result from this data's surrender will not be done by BCC or done on BCC initiative. And when I say "anything that may be done," I'm talking about any legal ramifications involved.
It is in the IRS's hands now, and whatever is to be done about this unaccounted for 369K, if anything, will be their decision.

Randy Holland addressed the ministry needs of the church. There is a huge need here for people to continue stepping up to volunteer in some ministries (particularly in the student ministry, which is growing extraordinarily (from 12 to 60 in a few months) and in Kids Place). He also announced a family and couples focus for a new small groups initiative. Randy will be spearheading that effort, and he is looking for 2 or 3 couples to volunteer to lead these groups. He is committing to assisting and "mentoring" the leaders.
Conexus will continue, as well, and we are always looking for new leaders.

Trey Adkisson gave us a financial update, and I won't even attempt to recall the exact figures involved, because I have a terrible memory with such things. I've been told that last weekend was great in terms of giving, as would be expected given the larger than ordinary crowd present to hear the lead pastor candidate, but in terms of per capita giving it was a huge spike.
But we are still in need of increased giving. Thankfully we have enough money at this point to maintain with current staff and mortgage and such at least until Fall, but we are hoping and praying for increase in meeting budgetary needs in the coming weeks. The general view here is sober but optimistic. And as the lead pastor process progresses, and as attendance continues to improve, we are trusting God will provide the resources necessary to keep BCC itself a full-capacity resource for all who come.

Well, that's the short of it. I probably missed something, and I'm not even going to try recounting the entire Q&A with the elders at the end. I'm not sure if that portion of the evening will be included on the video, but if is not, the elders continue to make themselves available for questions or concerns. Their e-mail addresses are available on the BCC website, and the incoming elders' addresses will be, as well. Don't hesitate to ask somebody.

And please watch the video when it is available. It will fill in all my gaps and give you a greater sense of the flow and spirit of the evening.

It's Candyland time for me! And Grace has been very patient, as this post was not as brief as I intended it to be. :-)

Peace

Don't Forget!

2006-12-06T08:24:00.000-08:00

Vision Night is tonight at 6:30.

We will worship and receive communion. And will meet our new elders and get an update on the lead pastor search.

Childcare is provided.

Spirituality For all the Wrong Reasons

2006-12-05T08:20:00.000-08:00

You probably know Eugene Peterson as the writer behind The Message translational paraphrase of the Bible. Peterson is a phenomenal pastor/writer/scholar who has written some extraordinary works. I am just now finishing up Eat This Book, which is about reading Scripture for transformation (as opposed to just information), and it is quite possibly the best book I've read this year (and I read a lot of books!). Peterson's little book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, which reflects on the life of discipleship by focusing on the Psalms, is one of the best books on basic Christian living available. Peterson is an insightful, intelligent guy, and he always writes from a pastoral heart, with a deep affection for the Church.

One of his best "works" (and perhaps most provocative) was actually an interview with Christianity Today editor Mark Galli that came out last year. The interview was titled "Spirituality For all the Wrong Reasons" and it made a huge splash in the Christian blogosphere. It's about church and pastors and "religion" and how Christianity interfaces with culture (and vice versa). Some of the issues raised are of vital importance to the vision and values of BCC and churches like it.

I've had a difficult time finding the article online, because although the full text used to be available free at Christianity Today's website, it is now only available to subscribers. But a resourceful reader at The Thinklings found a link to the full text for me, and in the interest of posterity -- and because it is that good a read -- I'm going to reprint the whole thing here as well. It is rather long. But it is very worth the time it takes to read.
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What is the most misunderstood aspect of spirituality?

That it's a kind of specialized form of being a Christian, that you have to have some kind of in. It's elitist. Many people are attracted to it for the wrong reasons. Others are put off by it: I'm not spiritual. I like to go to football games or parties or pursue my career. In fact, I try to avoid the word.

Many people assume that spirituality is about becoming emotionally intimate with God.

That's a naive view of spirituality. What we're talking about is the Christian life. It's following Jesus. Spirituality is no different from what we've been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. It's just ordinary stuff.

This promise of intimacy is both right and wrong. There is an intimacy with God, but it's like any other intimacy; it's part of the fabric of your life. In marriage you don't feel intimate most of the time. Nor with a friend. Intimacy isn't primarily a mystical emotion. It's a way of life, a life of openness, honesty, a certain transparency.

Doesn't the mystical tradition suggest otherwise?

One of my favorite stories is of Teresa of Avila. She's sitting in the kitchen with a roasted chicken. And she's got it with both hands, and she's gnawing on it, just devouring this chicken. One of the nuns comes in shocked that she's doing this, behaving this way. She said, "When I eat chicken, I eat chicken; when I pray, I pray."

If you read the saints, they're pretty ordinary people. There are moments of rapture and ecstasy, but once every 10 years. And even then it's a surprise to them. They didn't do anything. We've got to disabuse people of these illusions of what the Christian life is. It's a wonderful life, but it's not wonderful in the way a lot of people want it to be.

Yet evangelicals rightly tell people they can have a "personal relationship with God." That suggests a certain type of spiritual intimacy.

All these words get so screwed up in our society. If intimacy means being open and honest and authentic, so I don't have veils, or I don't have to be defensive or in denial of who I am, that's wonderful. But in our culture, intimacy usually has sexual connotations, with some kind of completion. So I want intimacy because I want more out of life. Very seldom does it have the sense of sacrifice or giving or being vulnerable. Those are two different ways of being intimate. And in our American vocabulary intimacy usually has to do with getting something from the other. That just screws the whole thing up.

It's very dangerous to use the language of the culture to interpret the gospel. Our vocabulary has to be chastened and tested by revelation, by the Scriptures. We've got a pretty good vocabulary and syntax, and we'd better start paying attention to it because the way we grab words here and there to appeal to unbelievers is not very good.

This corruption of the word spirituality even in Christian circles -- does it have something to do with the New Age movement?

The New Age stuff is old age. It's been around for a long time. It's a cheap shortcut to -- I guess we have to use the word -- spirituality. It avoids the ordinary, the everyday, the physical, the material. It's a form of Gnosticism, and it has a terrific appeal because it's a spirituality that doesn't have anything to do with doing the dishes or changing diapers or going to work. There's not much integration with work, people, sin, trouble, inconvenience.

I've been a pastor most of my life, for some 45 years. I love doing this. But to tell you the truth, the people who give me the most distress are those who come asking, "Pastor, how can I be spiritual?" Forget about being spiritual. How about loving your husband? Now that's a good place to start. But that's not what they're interested in. How about learning to love your kids, accept them the way they are?

My name shouldn't even be connected with spirituality.

But it very much is.

I know. Then a few years ago I got this embarrassing position of being a professor of "spiritual theology" at Regent. Now what do you do?

You make spirituality sound so mundane.

I don't want to suggest that those of us who are following Jesus don't have any fun, that there's no joy, no exuberance, no ecstasy. They're just not what the consumer thinks they are. When we advertise the gospel in terms of the world's values, we lie to people. We lie to them, because this is a new life. It involves following Jesus. It involves the Cross. It involves death, an acceptable sacrifice. We give up our lives.

The Gospel of Mark is so graphic this way. The first half of the Gospel is Jesus showing people how to live. He's healing everybody. Then right in the middle, he shifts. He starts showing people how to die: "Now that you've got a life, I'm going to show you how to give it up." That's the whole spiritual life. It's learning how to die. And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your illusions, and you start being capable now of true intimacy and love.

It involves a kind of learned passivity, so that our primary mode of relationship is receiving, submitting, instead of giving and getting and doing. We don't do that very well. We're trained to be assertive, to get, to apply, or to consume and to perform.

Repentance, dying to self, submission -- these are not very attractive hooks to draw people into the faith.

I think the minute you put the issue that way you're in trouble. Because then we join the consumer world, and everything then becomes product designed to give you something. We don't need something more. We don't need something better. We're after life. We're learning how to live.

I think people are fed up with consumer approaches, even though they're addicted to them. But if we cast the evangel in terms of benefits, we're setting people up for disappointment. We're telling them lies.

This is not the way our Scriptures are written. This is not the way Jesus came among us. It's not the way Paul preached. Where do we get all this stuff? We have a textbook. We have these Scriptures and most of the time they're saying, "You're going the wrong way. Turn around. The culture is poisoning."

Do we realize how almost exactly the Baal culture of Canaan is reproduced in American church culture? Baal religion is about what makes you feel good. Baal worship is a total immersion in what I can get out of it. And of course, it was incredibly successful. The Baal priests could gather crowds that outnumbered followers of Yahweh 20 to 1. There was sex, there was excitement, there was music, there was ecstasy, there was dance. "We got girls over here, friends. We got statues, girls, and festivals." This was great stuff. And what did the Hebrews have to offer in response? The Word. What's the Word? Well, Hebrews had festivals, at least!

Still, the one big hook or benefit to Christian faith is salvation, no? "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." Is this not something we can use to legitimately attract listeners?

It's the biggest word we have -- salvation, being saved. We are saved from a way of life in which there was no resurrection. And we're being saved from ourselves. One way to define spiritual life is getting so tired and fed up with yourself you go on to something better, which is following Jesus.

But the minute we start advertising the faith in terms of benefits, we're just exacerbating the self problem. "With Christ, you're better, stronger, more likeable, you enjoy some ecstasy." But it's just more self. Instead, we want to get people bored with themselves so they can start looking at Jesus.

We've all met a certain type of spiritual person. She's a wonderful person. She loves the Lord. She prays and reads the Bible all the time. But all she thinks about is herself. She's not a selfish person. But she's always at the center of everything she's doing. "How can I witness better? How can I do this better? How can I take care of this person's problem better?" It's me, me, me disguised in a way that is difficult to see because her spiritual talk disarms us.

So how should we visualize the Christian life?

In church last Sunday, there was a couple in front of us with two bratty kids. Two pews behind us there was another couple with their two bratty kids making a lot of noise. This is mostly an older congregation. So these people are set in their ways. Their kids have been gone a long time. And so it wasn't a very nice service; it was just not very good worship. But afterwards I saw half a dozen of these elderly people come up and put their arms around the mother, touch the kids, sympathize with her. They could have been irritated.

Now why do people go to a church like that when they can go to a church that has a nursery, is air conditioned, and all the rest? Well, because they're Lutherans. They don't mind being miserable! Norwegian Lutherans!

And this same church recently welcomed a young woman with a baby and a three-year-old boy. The children were baptized a few weeks ago. But there was no man with her. She's never married; each of the kids has a different father. She shows up at church and wants her children baptized. She's a Christian and wants to follow in the Christian way. So a couple from the church acted as godparents. Now there are three or four couples in the church who every Sunday try to get together with her.

Now, where is the "joy" in that church? These are dour Norwegians! But there's a lot of joy. There's an abundant life going, but it's not abundant in the way a non-Christian would think. I think there's a lot more going on in churches like this; they're just totally anti-cultural. They're full of joy and faithfulness and obedience and care. But you sure wouldn't know it by reading the literature of church growth, would you?

But many Christians would look at this church and say it's dead, merely an institutional expression of the faith.

What other church is there besides institutional? There's nobody who doesn't have problems with the church, because there's sin in the church. But there's no other place to be a Christian except the church. There's sin in the local bank. There's sin in the grocery stores. I really don't understand this naive criticism of the institution. I really don't get it.

Frederick von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree. There's no life in the bark. It's dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within. And the tree grows and grows and grows and grows. If you take the bark off, it's prone to disease, dehydration, death.

So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive. And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn't last long. It disappears, gets sick, and it's prone to all kinds of disease, heresy, and narcissism.

In my writing, I hope to recover a sense of the reality of congregation -- what it is. It's a gift of the Holy Spirit. Why are we always idealizing what the Holy Spirit doesn't idealize? There's no idealization of the church in the Bible -- none. We've got two thousand years of history now. Why are we so dumb?

Since the Reformation, though, we've championed the idea that the church can be reformed.

Hasn't happened. I'm for always reforming, but to think that we can get a church that's reformed is just silliness.

I think the besetting sin of pastors, maybe especially evangelical pastors, is impatience. We have a goal. We have a mission. We're going to save the world. We're going to evangelize everybody, and we're going to do all this good stuff and fill our churches. This is wonderful. All the goals are right. But this is slow, slow work, this soul work, this bringing people into a life of obedience and love and joy before God.

And we get impatient and start taking shortcuts and use any means available. We talk about benefits. We manipulate people. We bully them. We use language that is just incredibly impersonal -- bullying language, manipulative language.

One doesn't normally think of churches as bullying.

Whenever guilt is used as a tool to get people to do anything -- good, bad, indifferent -- it's bullying. And then there's manipulative language -- to talk people into programs, to get them involved, usually by promising them something.

I have a friend who is an expert at this sort of thing. He's always saying, "You've got to identify people's felt needs. Then you construct a program to meet the felt needs." It's pretty easy to manipulate people. We're so used to being manipulated by the image industry, the publicity industry, and the politicians that we hardly know we're being manipulated.

This impatience to leave the methods of Jesus in order to get the work of Jesus done is what destroys spirituality, because we're using a non-biblical, non-Jesus way to do what Jesus did. That's why spirituality is in such a mess as it is today.

But many pastors see people suffering in bad marriages, with drug addiction, with greed. And so they rightly want to help them now, by whatever method will work.

Yes, except something backfires on you when you're impatient. How do we meet the need? Do we do it in Jesus' way or do we do it the Wal-Mart way?

Spirituality is not about ends or benefits or things; it's about means. It's about how you do this. How do you live in reality?

So, how do you help all these people? The needs are huge. Well, you do it the way Jesus did it. You do it one at a time. You can't do gospel work, kingdom work in an impersonal way.

We live in the Trinity. Everything we do has to be in the context of the Trinity, which means personally, relationally. The minute you start doing things impersonally, functionally, mass oriented, you deny the gospel. Yet that's all we do.

Jesus is the Truth and the Life, but first he's the Way. We can't do Jesus' work in the Devil's way.

I get exercised about this because many pastors are getting castrated by these methodologies, which are impersonal. There's no relationship to them. And so they become performance oriented and successful. It's pretty easy in our culture, at least if you're tall and have a big smile. And they lose their soul. There's nothing to them after 20 years. Or they crash. They try all this stuff and it doesn't work, and they quit, or quit and start doing something else. Probably 90 percent of the affairs that pastors have are not due to lust, but boredom with not having this romantic kind of life they thought they'd get.

What if we were to frame this not in terms of needs but relevance? Many Christians hope to speak to generation X or Y or postmoderns, or some subgroup, like cowboys or bikersâ€”people for whom the typical church seems irrelevant.

When you start tailoring the gospel to the culture, whether it's a youth culture, a generation culture or any other kind of culture, you have taken the guts out of the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not the kingdom of this world. It's a different kingdom.

My son Eric organized a new church six years ago. The Presbyterians have kind of a boot camp for new church pastors where you learn what you're supposed to do. So Eric went. One of the teachers there said he shouldn't put on a robe and a stole: "You get out there and you meet this generation where they are."

So Eric, being a good student and wanting to please his peers, didn't wear a robe. His church started meeting in a high-school auditorium. He started out by wearing a business suit every Sunday. But when the first Sunday of Advent rolled around, and they were going to have Communion, he told me, "Dad, I just couldn't do it. So I put my robe on."

Their neighbors, Joel and his wife, attended his church. Joel was the stereotype of the person the new church development was designed for -- suburban, middle management, never been to church, totally secular. Eric figured he was coming because they were neighbors, or because he liked him. After that Advent service, he asked Joel what he thought of his wearing a robe.

He said, "It made an impression. My wife and I talked about it. I think what we're really looking for is sacred space. We both think we found it."

I think relevance is a crock. I don't think people care a whole lot about what kind of music you have or how you shape the service. They want a place where God is taken seriously, where they're taken seriously, where there is no manipulation of their emotions or their consumer needs.

Why did we get captured by this advertising, publicity mindset? I think it's destroying our church.

But someone else might walk into Eric's church, see him with his robe, and walk out, thinking the whole place was too religious, too churchy.

So why are they going if it's not going to be religious? What do they go to church for?

Of course, there's another aspect to this. If you're going to a church where everybody's playing a religious role, that's going to be off putting. But that performance mentality, role mentality can be seen in the cowboy church or whatever -- everybody is performing a role there, too.

But we're involved with something that has a huge mystery to it. Are we going to wipe out all the mystery so we can be in control of it? Isn't reverence at the very heart of the worship of God?

And if we present a rendition of the faith in which all the mystery is removed, and there's no reverence, how are people ever going to know there's something more than just their own emotions, their own needs? There's something a lot bigger than my needs that's going on. How do I ever get to that if the church service and worship program is all centered on my needs?

Some people would argue that it's important to have a worship service in which people feel comfortable so they can hear the gospel.

I think they're wrong. Take the story I told you about this family in front of us on Sunday. Nobody was comfortable. The whole church was miserable.

And yet, they might have experienced more gospel in going up and putting their arms around that poor mother, who was embarrassed to death.

How do we know when they have moved from merely adapting ministry to the culture to sacrificing the gospel?

One test I think is this: Am I working out of the Jesus story, the Jesus methods, the Jesus way? Am I sacrificing relationship, personal attention, personal relationship for a shortcut, a program so I can get stuff done? You can't do Jesus' work in a non-Jesus way and get by with it -- although you can be very "successful."

One thing that I think is characteristic of me is I stay local. I'm rooted in a pastoral life, which is an ordinary life. So while all this glitter and image of spirituality is going around, I feel quite indifferent to it, to tell you the truth. And I'm somewhat suspicious of it because it seems to be uprooted, not grounded in local conditions, which are the only conditions in which you can live a Christian life.

Pure Biblical Teaching

2006-12-05T08:08:00.000-08:00

Not just preaching from the Bible -- actually preaching the Bible!

At the 2006 Worship God Conference, a pastor by the name of Ryan Ferguson recited Hebrews 9 and 10 in a very dramatic, very powerful way. This is biblical preaching at its purest. But it doesn't sound like a recitation or a reading. It sounds like a good preacher preaching. Please watch; it's pretty stinkin' awesome. (It's about 11 minutes long.)


The Holy Bible, English Standard Version is copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Back to BCC: Gutcheck Time

2006-12-04T07:52:00.000-08:00

This is one of those posts that may make some folks angry, and I'm okay with that, because this is one of those "hills worth dying on" things for me. And if we're going to do this thing called Christian community, I'm of the conviction that we ought to do it correctly (which is to say, biblically).

Point blank: If you all you want out of a church is a spiritual pep talk every week, it's not a church that you want. I'm not sure what it is, but it's not a church.

The campus was packed this past weekend, which was a good thing. It was difficult to find a parking spot, which is a good thing. This influx and overflow of attendees obviously had something to do with the lead pastor candidate's visit. And that's a good thing too, I think.
But, look, let's be honest. If you've been withholding yourself from BCC until a "new guy" shows up, let me suggest, as respectfully as I can, that you need a spiritual gutcheck. While you've been absent, biding your time till we have a speaker for you to audition, the rest of us have been actually doing church. We've been rebuilding our spirits and the life of our church. We've been sharing our hearts and lives, and we've been growing together and toward God. We've been learning and growing under Bill West's shepherding and teaching. We've been sharing coffee and laughs. We've been caring for each other's children. We've been dining in each other's homes. We've been studying the Bible together and praying with and for each other. We've been showing up to help at the Nashville Rescue Mission. We've been showing up to help widows and divorcees with the burdens of real life. We've been comforting the suffering and the grieving.

And we've been able to do all that because we've stuck around. We've invested in our church and in each other. And while none of us deny the value of a quality voice on our weekend stage, we've decided church is not about speaking to a gathering but growing in a community.
We realize that it's not a great speaker that makes a church -- it's the community itself. And so the "voice" we are looking for is one that comes not just from a good preacher but a great pastor. "Pastor" means "shepherd." And looking for a shepherd presupposes a care and concern for a flock.

For those who have been holding back, waiting to see whether the show will go on, let me assure you that it will . . . and it won't. BCC will always value dynamic, engaging speaking and incredible, energetic music. But it now also values biblical, pastoral teaching and authentic, God-honoring worship. And we are growing from a collection of individuals who attend into a Body that grows. We desperately want you to be a part of this way God is redeeming us. But it might require relinquishing your self. (Just as Jesus said that to follow Him, one must "deny himself.")

BCC is a great church and a great many of us are enjoying it very much. I can't count how many people I've heard say that this is the happiest they've ever been at BCC. These are real people, by the way, people who grieved over the mess we went through, not people with axes to grind or bones to pick. What has surprised many of us is how close this thing has made us, how comforting the healing process has been, and what an incredible blessing it's been to refocus on what it really means to be a church. And how we've been able to do this under the assumption that we've been "going without."
But the truth is, we haven't been going without. We've had what every good church needs -- loving people and a faithful leadership. A new speaker would just be gravy. :-)

Peace

On Our "Guest Speaker"

2006-12-04T07:26:00.000-08:00

If you happen to not know, we had our first lead pastor candidate teach at BCC this weekend. While it appears the "powers that be" aren't too concerned about keeping his identity under wraps (plenty of people I spoke to already knew his name and point of origin before the Saturday evening service, and his message will be available for download on the Hope Park website sometime today), I don't plan to use his name, simply out of respect for his home congregation. I'm sure there are folks there who know, but as I'm unclear on how common this knowledge is in his church, I'll maintain confidentiality. But if you didn't hear him, you can obviously get his name from any BCC'er who attended or from the sermon audio.

People are asking what I thought.
Well, first of all, did this guy have ginormous hands, or what? Seriously. He has mitts like frying pans. He could swat a plane out of the sky on accident. :-)

Really, though, he was a great speaker. Very dynamic, very engaging. Very energetic. Very easy to listen to.
More importantly, at least in my estimation, he brought a Gospel-driven and thoroughly biblical message. The guy had a lot of Bible in his message, and that is a very, very good thing. And he didn't use it haphazardly or buffet style. He preached contextually and narratively, and he proved a message doesn't have to be a self-helpy topical outline with some quotable quotes thrown in to engage a listener.

One approach I liked in particular was the way he connected, by way of contrast, passages featuring the "early Peter" in the Gospels with the writings and outlook of "late Peter" in the Petrine epistles. What a unique and powerful way to demonstrate, with an actual biblical illustration, the way Christ following changes the identity of the Christ follower.
Making the connections between biblical texts is so important in this day of biblical illiteracy, even in the church. Showing how the pieces fit the whole, how passages separated by many pages fit into the same Story of redemption and God's work in history, is a much needed exercise, and that it was done from our stage in such an exciting, loving, and applicable way was a joy to behold.

I didn't get a chance to meet our guest in person, but I've spoken with a few folks who did -- both in meetings and in informal, get-to-know-you encounters at Coffee Connection -- and I hear that he is warm, friendly, and personable. I have listened to enough folks in the last few weeks to know that accessibility and openness are forefront values in our church's shepherding these days. It seems, at first glance anyway, that this candidate fits that bill.
In our reorientation and reevaluation, we are of the conviction that it is not a speaker we need, but a pastor. And there is a difference.
---

Don't forget to attend Vision Night this Wednesday evening (6:30 p.m.) for an update from the elders on the pastor search.
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Dirk Plantinga has a couple of good posts up on the lead pastor candidate and his weekend message.

Inheritance

2006-11-30T07:54:00.000-08:00

At our last Studio 215 Bible study meeting, we covered Ephesians 1, and I thought I'd share some thoughts on this great passage with you. (This is a slightly edited version of the post available at the Studio 215 MySpace.)

It can be awfully easy to miss the theological grandeur and epic historical sweep of the portrait Paul so breathlessly paints in the chapter. It's an inherent danger in all detailed Bible study, sort of a "forest for the trees" type of thing. But in this chapter, and in the chapters following, Paul paints with broad strokes, expressing a great dizzying sense of what it means to be a Spirit-sealed, Christ-worshiping child of the living God. As we mentioned, Ephesians parallels Colossians in a lot of ways, but Ephesians highlights the major notes and plays them more loudly. Colossians is like Paul as DaVinci; Ephesians is like Paul as Van Gogh. And if you don't know the difference, look up paintings by both of those artists and see for yourself.

The idea I see most prevalent in Ephesians 1 is this idea of inheritance. It is an idea that would have a lot of resonance for the letter's recipients. For one thing, inheritance features prominently in the ancient stories of the Israelite faith. And just culturally speaking, inheritance was a concern in many families. At the same time, inheritance conjured up plenty of applications to the culture Paul was writing to at the time. Ephesus, as a Roman provincial capital and a place of major business and trade, placed its Christians in the muck and mire of Roman commerce and even its interconnection with the paganism of the day. The world Paul was writing to loved money, and when you factored in the polytheism of the culture, in which one might "prosper" personally and professionally depending upon which god you honored or which god presided over your family or business, it's not a stretch to think plenty of Christians felt pressured from within and without to attribute their relative poverty to a lack of divine blessing.
Notice that many Bibles place a subtitle in Ephesians 1 that reads "Spiritual Blessings" or something similar.

So Paul is concerned first with declaring the sovereign control of the one true God, the God of Jacob, who not only guided and presided over the patriarchs of the Old Testament, but is alive and faithful and in control over the world of Jew and Gentile believers under Roman oppression. (Keep in mind that many Jews believed the arrival of the Messiah would free them from Roman governance, and so this was a major stumbling block in the culture for the acceptance of Jesus as the messiah. If he was the messiah, why was Caesar still king?)
Paul's not just talking out of his rear with all the stuff about God putting all the rulers and authorities under heaven, in this age and the age to come, under the feet of Jesus. He's assuring them that looks can be deceiving. (Remember, too, that he's writing this from house arrest, so if anyone knew about being subject to another authority other than Christ, it was him.)

Paul is assuring his readers -- then and today -- that despite how it looks, God is control. Before anything went haywire, he had a plan in place. And it was not a contingency plan. He decided to adopt us as His children before the world was even created. And because we are His children, the inheritance belongs to us.

Now, before you go translating the cattle on a thousand hills into contemporary currency, remember that "spiritual blessings" thing. That's not to say God never blesses anyone materially or financially -- obviously, he does -- but the inheritance promised is greater than an infinite amount of money or things. God does indeed want to "lavish riches" on us, but notice what those riches are (v.7).

So what is the inheritance? What are the riches of God's grace?
The answer according to Paul is God Himself. God the Giver gives the gift of Himself. So we see in Ephesians 1 that we get God as our Daddy, Christ as our everlasting King, and the Holy Spirit as our seal and guarantor.

And when do we get this inheritance? The answer delves a bit into the realm of what's called eschatology ("the last things," or "the end times"). A proper biblical eschatology maintains a tension between the "already" and the "not yet." It is the idea that in our salvation, we have a fulfillment of God's kingdom now, in our present lives. Yet we also await a final consummation at our Lord's glorious return. We await the fullness of our inheritance when the fullness of time comes, but in Christ's sacrifice and resurrection, we have an advance, so to speak. Our salvation is secure and guaranteed; we experience eternal life right now. This is the underlying theme of the last section of Ephesians 1. That the mighty power we wait to save the world in the age to come, has been already been given us in our salvation. That the riches of God's grace, powerful to raise Christ from the dead, are accessible to us now. God is mighty to save, and that truth, born out of Christ's sovereign authority over the universe and his shed blood for our redemption, ought to give us a great hope. A great hope for the end times. And a great hope for the troubles of today.

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints . . .
Ephesians 1:18

Submission

2006-11-28T09:28:00.000-08:00

At Common Grounds Online, Meghan Gouldin writes about what true spirituality looks like. With the help of the late, great Christian thinker Francis Schaeffer, she decides "submission."

We have discussed what our response to the truth of the Christian faith should look like: our response is characterized by active submission and trust.

Active submission sounds like an oxymoron and submission of any kind sounds like punishment in 21st century western culture where submission is associated with weakness. However, when glimpsed through the Christian worldview, submission becomes more lovely and freeing than otherwise imaginable. We are creatures made in the image of the Creator with the ability and privilege to be in relationship with the one who created us for Himself, to love one another, to think, to live responsibly, and to act as stewards over the earth. No part of submission is passive for a creature with a will and his/her own desires.

Trust must accompany the active submission, knowing that in this world we must walk by faith and not by sight. I know in my case that some days the walk is more pleasing to Him than other days. But we are fortunate, for it is not on our own strength or psychological motivation that we must depend for this journey. Schaeffer writes:
"When God tells us to live as though we had died, gone to heaven, seen the truth there, and come back to this world, he is not asking us merely to act on some psychological motivation, but on what really is."

This is what is true. The reality is Christ came, Christ died, Christ rose, and he left the Holy Spirit to work as an agent of change among us and through us. Psychological motivation is neither deep enough nor sufficient enough for creatures in search of meaning in a messy and broken world.

This is my prayer and my praise this week: that as I rise each morning to greet 12+ hours at a demanding job, that I may know the truth, and the truth will set me free â free to listen and respond to Him with joyful obedience and trust.

Good stuff.
It reminds me a bit of one of my favorite descriptions of what it really means to "get saved." Scholar and writer N.T. Wright says salvation is about "embracing the yoke of God's sovereignty." The "yoke of God's sovereignty" connotes submission to God's control, while "embracing" indicates an active, willing, and even joyful acceptance of that control.

Vision Night

2006-11-28T06:58:00.000-08:00

BCC's next quarterly Vision Night is next Wednesday, Dec. 6, at 6:30. Our new elders will be introduced, and we'll be filled in on the lead pastor search and get a financial update.
We will also have a great time of worship and celebrate communion.
Childrens programs will be available.

Lead Pastor Candidate

2006-11-28T06:56:00.000-08:00

Don't Forget!

Our first lead pastor candidate will be guest speaking in the services this coming weekend (Dec. 2-3).

Don't say you ain't heard! :-)

Staff Opening

2006-11-28T06:55:00.000-08:00

The church has an immediate opening for a Staff Accountant. This person will be responsible for all general accounting activities related to BCC. They prefer someone with 3 years experience with a 501c3. Detailed job descriptions are available at the
Info Table. If you know someone who may be a great fit, have them contact the church office and fill out an application. Applicants can email resumes to fbartleson@hopepark.com.

Giving

2006-11-28T06:40:00.000-08:00

Please forgive the absence of late. I didn't intend to take all of last week off from blogging, but I'll be honest in saying I didn't mind it. We had a fun, busy week. Beck had the whole week off from work, so we just maximized the time spending time with each other and the girls. Did a little Christmas shopping. Had company over for Thanksgiving. It was a good week.

I hope you had a good holiday week too. Christmas is only twenty-some days away, and while for a lot of us this season evokes only feelings of sweetness and light, for a not insignificant number of folks it can be very difficult. People close to us are dealing with all kinds of pain and grief and loss, and the holiday season can be a very lonely time.

Take time to reach out in the coming weeks. Be mindful of those around you, those you encounter on a regular basis who may be aching for a kind word or a friendly chat or an invitation to dinner. BCC has many service opportunities coming up, so take advantage of those ways to help the less fortunate. But remember to keep your light shining in the "off" moments -- in the checkout line and in the waiting room, in a meeting with a client or at breakfast with your kids, in the traffic on the interstate or in the traffic of the housewares aisle at Target, in the boardroom and even in the bedroom. Christmas is a celebration of the Incarnation, that glorious event when God became man. Let's remember that to be a Christian is to be a "little Christ" and so to treat each moment with the quality of eternity, with a deliberate grace that authenticates our citizenship in the kingdom of God.

They won't know we are Christians by the plastic nativity in our yards; they will know by our love.

Peace

The Gospel Doesn't Need Help

2006-11-16T12:35:00.000-08:00

Here's a good, but challenging, article by Matt Conner for Christianity Today.
An excerpt:

The problem is that we, as Christians, are falling for the belief that the gospel needs our help in some way. While we may not say that is true, our actions speak differently. We spend countless hours and dollars developing ways to be a unique and creative voice within the media landscape. Sometimes we even go the crazy route, all in an effort to attract attention to ourselves in the hope that our voice can be heard.

When we do this, we are attempting to add to the gospel. What we are saying is that the gospel is not enough to change lives—that it needs our help in some way to make it more acceptable or palatable. Our actions state, "Maybe if I present the gospel in a slick enough way, maybe someone will accept it."

It's quite a provocative piece, especially as it runs counter to standard approach in contemporary Christian culture.
From my own perspective, without denigrating the values of connecting to our culture and carrying out everything we do with excellence and authenticity, I would offer a couple of thoughts I personally believe quite firmly:
1. We can't make the Bible relevant. The Bible is already relevant.
2. We have to get to a point where, in our communication and presentation, we are not trusting ourselves for the salvation of others. We should do what we are called to do as well as we can, because we are really doing it for God, but we should trust the Holy Spirit for the results. Faithfulness always trumps cultural relevancy. Always.

(Hat tip: Common Grounds Online)

Spirituality with a Capital "S"

2006-11-15T12:57:00.000-08:00

I have a post up at the Studio 215 MySpace on the Holy Spirit. Thought maybe readers here might be interested in it.

Or maybe not, what do I know? In any event, it's there. :-)

Making it Harder Than it Really Is

2006-11-15T11:59:00.000-08:00

The other evening in a brain-straining philosophical/theological conversation with a couple of friends, one of the guys brought up a verse of Scripture scrutinized in a Bible study he once attended. The verse in question was Genesis 3:22, which reads:

Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever--"

Apparently the folks at this study were getting their beltloops hooked on the first clause: "the man has become like one of us." The point was that (the argument goes) the Fall of mankind was about Adam and Eve actually becoming "like God." Naturally this leads to two rather non-traditional interpretative consequences: the serpent wasn't lying when he told his prey they'd be like God and God's punishment of them was out of jealousy.

The way the tricky verse was brought up pretty much directed the way we ended looking at the text. I basically went into Genesis 3:22 trying to solve "the riddle." As a result, I ended up not really reading what it said.
It is like those optical illusions, in which, depending on how you're looking at it, you see a pretty young woman or a ragged old crone. It can take a while, some minute adjustment, to stop seeing the one you're presently seeing and make yourself see the other.

The plain reading of Genesis 3:22, in my estimation, is that when God says man has become "like us," He means "in knowing about good and evil." Because before the Fall, man had no knowledge of sin. So the Fall was not an actual elevation, but, well, just what the traditional understanding says -- a fall.

This reminds me of a time I spoke to a family member about a Bible passage that had intrigued him. He was studying in 2 Chronicles and came across the following verse:

[I]f my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
(7:14)

I emphasize the phrase “then will I hear from heaven,” because that’s the phrase my relative was hitting on, thinking it was saying something peculiar.
He asked me, “What do you think that means, ‘I’ll hear from heaven’?” The implication was that God was saying He would heal their land, but first He’d have to hear from someone in heaven. To get permission? Counsel? I don’t know.

I explained that I thought that was definitely reading too much into the text. I think it just means “God in heaven will hear the cries of His children below.” He’s not saying He’s going to hear from another in heaven. A more earth-bound analogical example would be if I told my neighbor, “Hey, if you need anything, just yell from your house, and I’ll hear from my house.”
My family member said he was still going to look it up.

The Bible says plenty of hard things on the surface. I’m not sure why we have this need to invent more hard things between the lines. I’ve been guilty of this myself. I've spent plenty of time looking into things like whether or not hell actually has fire in it, whether people's names are really written in the Book of Life to begin with, whether Jesus was saying non-Jews were dogs, whether Jesus was saying the kingdom of God comes with physical violence, etc. And all of these textual inquisitions were based on two things: a) reading too much into the biblical text, and b) coming to the text like it is a puzzle to be solved. Ever treat the Bible like a literary X-Files and yourself as an exegetical Mulder? (Or Scully? :-)

How easy it is to forget that the Bible is not just a book to be read, but a Book that reads us. (More on that in an upcoming blog post.)
Sometimes I get so busy reading between the lines, trying to fill in gaps I've imagined, that I miss what the lines actually say. And the gap is not some crypto-theological riddle to be unraveled, but the deficiency in my spirit that causes me to think of the Bible less as Spurgeon's wild lion uncaged than I do myself as its lion tamer.

You know, sometimes it just says what it says.

Toward a Healthy Marriage, In More Ways Than One

2006-11-13T12:28:00.000-08:00

Ever heard the oft-repeated statistic that Christian marriages suffer the same divorce rate as those of non-believers? Thanks to pastor David Wayne, The Jollyblogger, we know that stat is missing some crucial data:

Most of us who are neck deep in the evangelical subculture have heard the alarming statistics that the divorce rate among "born again Christians" is as high or higher than the divorce rate among the more secular.

In an interview on women and marriage in Christianity Today, sociologist Brad Wilcox says this:
This idea that Christians are just as likely to divorce as secular folks is not correct if we factor church attendance into our thinking. Churchgoing evangelical Protestants, churchgoing Catholics, and churchgoing mainline Protestants are all significantly less likely to divorce.

When asked how much less likely these people are to divorce, Wilcox says:
I estimate between 35 and 50 percent less likely than Americans who attend church just nominally, just once or twice a year, or who don't attend church at all. It is true that people who say they've had a born-again experience are about as likely to divorce as people who are completely secular. But if you look at this through the lens of church attendance, you see a very different story.

The bottom line for Wilcox is that, statistically speaking, church-going evangelicals tend to have far more stable marriages than the more alarmist figures indicate. Of course, this doesn't negate the troubles of divorce when it does happen, but it does show that the marriage picture among church-goers is a little more rosy than we might think.

My only comment to add is that a vital faith seems to be the sine qua non of stable Christian marriages. The most stable marriages aren't necessarily those where the couple has read all of the Christian books on marriage, gone to all of the marriage seminars and retreats and learned all the techniques. It's where Jesus Christ is the dominating factor of their lives and where His grace permeates the relationship. Because of that, I think technique-based marital counseling (i.e. the typical stuff that comes across in most books and seminars on communication, understanding, sex, etc.) is only of limited usefulness. Jesus has to be the dominating factor of all of life for the parties to be able to practice the self-denial and show the grace that makes a marriage work.

Of course one of the marks of a Jesus-led life is the active participation in a community of Jesus followers -- a.k.a. the church.

In semi-related news, the latest Men's Health magazine reports:

Kissing may reduce allergic reactions and help fight infection. In a recent Japanese study, researchers measured blood levels of immunoglobulin E (IgE), antibody that can start an allergic reaction. They checked people with pollen, dust-mite, and latex allergies before and after the participants kissed someone for 30 minutes. At the end of the make-out session, the study subjects' levels of IgE had dropped 40 percent. Researchers think that kissing reduces the allergic response by increasing the production of Th1 cytokines, white blood cells that have been shown to halt IgE production.
To make the most of a lip-lock, turn on soft music; the participants were serenaded throughout the study, which has previously been shown to improve immune function.

So for a marriage that is spiritually and physically healthy, you should obviously divide your time between BCC and Inspiration Point. :-)

Not married but eager to get started? BCC has a pre-marriage mentoring program. If you're engaged or about to be engaged, do check it out.

This has been a public service announcement from your friendly neighborhood churchblogger. :-)

Studio 215

2006-11-13T07:19:00.000-08:00

Did you know there is a weekly Bible study for college, twentysomethings, and young professionals? Do you fall in that generational gap (18-35) or know someone who does?

Check out our page on the BCC website or the Studio 215 ministry MySpace page (also accessible from the right sidebar menu under Connect) for more information.

We meet every Monday evening from 7:00 to 9:00 to hang out, snack, do a Bible study, and have a great discussion. And we'd love to have you. Check out one of the above links for contact info or directions, or e-mail leadership team director Chris Thomas at cthomas [AT] hopepark [DOT] com.

The group is ongoing, so you don't have to worry about getting in late on a study or anything like that. We are growing fast and having a great time doing it, so if you'd like to jump in, we'd love to have you. Or if you know someone who'd like to get connected, let 'em know we're saving a seat just for them!

A Toast to Spiritual Health

2006-11-13T07:14:00.000-08:00

From Dirk Plantinga's post on BCC's new Happy Hour:

Happy Hour is working. Last week I didn't hang around very long. But as I was walking through the concourse about 10:15, I noticed that there was quite a bit of fellowship taking place! That's just what we had in mind I thought.

This week, our Conexus group finished up at 10 and I was invited to take advantage of the buy one get one free coffee deal. Much of our group reconvened in the atrium and spent the next hour visiting. Happy hour is like attending a church health club. But it's strengthening your relationships, not your muscles . . .

I was asked during this time how I thought BCC was doing. And it turns out I'm not the only one that thinks BCC is better than ever despite the challenges we face. We're finding out what it means to be a church family; how family members lean on each other when times get tough and those relationships grow stronger.

Around the BCC Happy Hour table, The Jesus Creed comes to life. Here's how Scot McKnight expresses it:
"A spiritually formed person loves God by following Jesus and loving others.
As an expression of loving God and loving others, a spiritually formed person embraces the stories of others who love Jesus."
(The Jesus Creed by Scot McKnight)

From my viewpoint, BCC is better than ever. We need to share it now more than ever.

New Children's Ministry Director!

2006-11-13T07:08:00.000-08:00

From a letter to parents by Bill West:

I am excited to tell you that after several months of searching and praying, God has led us to hire Rachel Zook as our Children's Ministry Director to lead and oversee the area of birth through 4th grade.

Rachel has been a part of the BCC family for over nine years. She graduated cum laude from Lipscomb University with a B.A. in Teaching K-8 and has been teaching kindergarten in the Metro School District for over two years.

She has volunteered in the Children and Student Ministries here for several years and has a strong commitment to the mission and vision of BCC. Rachel has a passion for children to learn about God and come to know Christ at an early age. She is committed to recruit, train, and develop a strong team of volunteers who are equipped to meet the needs of children. She is also committed to partnering with [parents] in the spiritual growth and development of [their] children.

Awesome!

Reading for Transformation

2006-11-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

Over a year ago at Shizuka Blog, I wrote a piece called Wielding the Word, Living the Word that was about the difference between "using" the Bible and having ourselves changed by it. It may sound like a subtle difference, but it really is not. Too many of us, when we bother to read Scripture, read it for information or with some end result or answer predetermined, rather than read it so that God may be revealed to us in and through it.
A bit from that post:

[We] use Scripture as a tool (if we use it at all), rather than as the motivating muse for and lifeblood of what we are trying to say.
The early church, though –- those put-upon, persecuted, finding-their-way through the heresies and the apostasy and the violence and the prejudice early Christians -– wrote God’s Word in such a way as they lived it. The authors of the early church wove the Bible into the fabric of their writings, because the Bible was inextricably woven into the fabric of their lives.

I may be alone, but such knowledge convicts me. I am a toolbox biblicist, not a lifeblood one.

Feel free to go read the whole thing.

I am currently reading a book by Eugene Peterson (author of The Message translational paraphrase of the Bible) titled Eat This Book. Peterson's primary aim in the book is emphasizing the Christian's need to not merely read the Bible for inforation, but to feed on it for transformation. Here's a good excerpt:

The blunt reality is that for all our sophistication, learning, and self-study we don’t know enough to run our lives. The sorry state of the lives of the many who have taken their own experience as the text for their lives is a damning refutation of the pretensions of the sovereignty of the self. We require a text that reveals what we cannot know by simply pooling the acquired knowledge of the ages. The book, the Bible, reveals the self-revealing God and along with that the way the world is, the way life is, the way we are. We need to know the lay of the land that we are living in. We need to know what is involved in this Country of the Trinity, the world of God’s creation and salvation and blessing.

God and his ways are not what most of us think. Most of what we are told about God and his ways by our friends on the street, or read about him in the papers, or view on television, or think up on our own, is simply wrong. Maybe not dead wrong, but wrong enough to mess up the way we live. And this book is, precisely, revelation, a revealing of what we could never figure out on our own.

Without this text, firmly established at the authoritative center of our communal and personal lives, we will founder. We will sink into a swamp of well-meaning but ineffectual men and women who are mired unmercifully in our needs and wants and feelings.

Ouch.

Here's my question for today: When was the last time you read your Bible?
Not just opened it to look for something, but really read it?

Peace

The Parable of the Raising of Lazarus

2006-11-06T08:29:00.000-08:00

Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. "Take away the stone," he said.

"But, Lord," said Martha, the sister of the dead man, "by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days."

Then Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"

So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me."

When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

-- John 11:38-43

No, this is not a parable. The raising of Lazarus actually happened.

But I see in this true life tale a parable of our own salvation. We are dead in sin until Jesus brings us to life.
I imagine it might have been a tad difficult for Lazarus to find his way out of the tomb. You know what it's like when you've watched a dark movie in a dark theatre for two hours and then suddenly walk out into the glaring afternoon sun? It's quite a shock to the ol' optics. Lazarus had been dead for four days, so I imagine coming out of such sleep was hard on the vision. I'm sure the grave garments he was wrapped in didn't help.

I imagine his body was sore and achey. I suppose he might've gotten turned around once or twice on his way out of the dark tomb. Maybe he bumped into the walls, tripped on a loose stone, stubbed his toe.
Are you making the connection? Lazarus was once dead but now alive; finding His way out of the tomb to the "glory of God" (v.40) could have been a messy, confusing, frustrating process. It was likely a short journey, but I'm guessing not a perfect one (from the tired, sore, disoriented, constricted Lazarus' perspective).

Are not our lives like that? We've been raised to walk in the newness of life ever since Jesus saved us, but we find ourselves stumbling and bumbling and getting turned around. This journey of sanctification, which from God's perspective is gradually purifying us, seems from ours very messy and confusing. For now we see very dimly. But someday, we will find ourselves completely removed from the place of sorrow and stumble into the bright, blinding glory of the Son.

Here is an encouragement for me and you straight from Lazarus: We might be sore and hurting, confounded and confused, in the dark and in the depths. Heck, we might completely stink. But thanks to Jesus we are alive.

Odds 'n' Ends

2006-11-06T07:18:00.000-08:00

I'm a little late in mentioning it, but the final FOCUS service of this year was outstanding. Did you miss it? If you did, you really missed out on the foundational hallmarks of the life of any church. Chris Wilcoxson and Guy Kaminski led us in a great time of reverent, awestruck worship. Then we dedicated BCC's latest baby boom. We watched our children recite a passage from Romans 8 in sign language (our Macy was the littlest one :-). We baptized a few folks. And we celebrated communion. This, folks, is the life of the church, from generation to generation and from covenant to confession -- all in one place at one time. More than a few eyes were misty that night.
In all, and as a conclusion to this portion of our corporate midweek study of Romans, I think it was a great service -- monumental even in its simplicity -- and a great, understated way of marking the transition of healing and growth in our church.

Dedicating babies and baptizing grown-ups. That is the testimony of a growing, healthy church.
I especially liked the testimonies read for each person baptized. Getting to hear some very dramatic stories -- for instance, the married couple getting baptized together and the young man with a painful past whose conversion was as incredible a tale of repentance as I've heard in a long, long time -- in such a dramatic moment was an awesome way of shouting the redemption of Jesus as His death, burial, and resurrection is re-created in the passing through the baptismal waters.

Let me just say that every week I am increasingly proud of being a part of Bellevue Community Church, and last Wednesday was one of BCC's proudest moments. The glory of God and the power of Jesus to save were all over that service.
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Also last Wednesday, the last of the initial interviews with the nominees for elder were conducted. The next step will, I think, be follow-up interviews with the elder board, and I am told the three incoming members will likely be voted on before the end of this month.
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I am seeing new faces all the time. Let us not forget that BCC will continue to receive guests and visitors who have no idea about our "past." And let us remember that we have an exciting mission and privilege to bring the grace of God to folks who are attracted to our church simply because it seems like a safe place to bring your hurts. Maybe one of the good things to come out of this transition will be our increasing ability to faciliate the healing of those with troubled pasts of their own. That might be one practical way to "count it all joy."
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Dirk Plantinga has changed the name of his BCC blog.
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Some other links you might find click-worthy:

Dan Edelen concludes his "Being the Body" series today. All the installments are linked in the final post.

At Jesus Creed, Scot McKnight uses the recent Ted Haggard scandal to talk about the need in our church culture today for an "environment of honesty".

Les Newsom on "the worst sin in the Bible".

Mark Driscoll talks about church attire. The key question, I think, is "If God is our Father and the church is our family, should we view going to church services as a formal event or a family event?" But he asks some other good ones too.
---

Yesterday morning in our Conexus group, we continued telling our "Jesus stories" (what you might call our "testimonies"). This has been the most profound and powerful experience of our short time together.
I am convinced that every believer has a story. Or, if you don't have one, you will have one eventually. It is remarkable, but not surprising, how much pain, grief, suffering, doubt, depression, and trouble every single person in our not-exactly-small group has gone through in their journey to and with Jesus Christ. And as I sit in with the Studio 215 crowd on Monday nights, I see that the younger generation is not lacking for these sorts of stories either. The experience of pain and grief and fear is universal.

Here's the incarnational connection I want to make. God, in the messiest and bloodiest way necessary, conformed to the image of man in giving us Jesus Christ. He emptied Himself of His full divine rights to share in our pain, grief, and trouble, that we might share in His Sonship. He conformed to the experience of our anguish that we might be conformed to the image of His glory. And that is what our troubled lives ought to really work in us. Why do we suffer? I am not so arrogant as to assume I really know, but I do know the Bible says our pain and our grief are ways God conforms us to His will and to the image of Jesus. He shared our pain so that our pain might bring us closer to Him.

So the trick here is not to be stingy with our stories. We should not be ashamed of them. But provided there is, as Professor McKnight is urging, an environment of honesty -- provided our churches can somehow approximate a redemptive community that brings grace and mercy -- we should be free to share our sins and struggles. The real glory is not merely that Jesus helps us in our stories, but that our stories are part of His Story, the great big story of redemption God is telling in the world throughout history. That is part of what makes all of our separate Christian testimonies into the living testimony of the Church, the Body of Christ.

Peace

Once Saved, Always Saved?

2006-10-31T12:01:00.000-08:00

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith . . .
-- Hebrews 12:2a

This post is inspired by a reader's comment left on a previous post titled Grace and Faith, Law and Works. It is a bit of a theological rabbit chase, but I do think it's a valuable one, particularly as it relates to the work of salvation and to a Christian's assurance of salvation. (For a bit more background on where I'm coming from on the issue of assurance, you might want to check out the following posts: How Mustard Seeds Dislodge Mountains and Faith Wavers, Grace Sustains.)

The primary question before me right now is: Is the idea "once saved, always saved" a true one?

The short answer is Yes.
The long answer is "It depends."

Because I believe the work of salvation is done by Jesus, that it is accomplished in his sinless life, sacrificial death, and bodily resurrection, I have a hard time believing in any sort of tenuous salvation. I believe what Jesus did accomplished salvation, and because what he accomplished was effectual for the salvation of sinners, the sinners who are saved will stay saved.
In John 6:39, Jesus says, "This is the Father's will, that of all He has given me, I will lose none."

Typically what someone means when they ask the above question is this: "Do you believe someone can pray the so-called Sinner's Prayer and then go on doing whatever the heck they want for the rest of their life?"
The answer to that, for me, is No. And the reason is because someone who goes on living exactly as they had before the prayer has not really repented. This does not mean, of course, that every believer stops sinning. But it does mean they don't want to. It does mean they are truly attempting to follow Jesus. It does mean they are convicted and/or grieved over their sin. It does mean, at the very least, that they recognize their sin as sin, and as sin that offends God.

The sticky wicket here in this question is emphasizing the need for the life of discipleship as evidence of one's salvation without making it sound like you have to do good works to be saved. The other tricky part is talking about these things with any conviction without making it sound like you can tell who's saved and who isn't.

This is what I believe:

Those whom God saves stay saved. I believe the Bible teaches this.
Even those whom God saves still sin. I believe the Bible teaches this too.

Those who are saved will evidence the fruit of their salvation in their life.

The life of discipleship is not a perfectly upward trajectory. It's messy. It's bumpy. It's confusing. There's times of joy and times of pain. There are times we feel close to God and times we feel very far away from Him. There's times we are sure of our salvation and times we wonder how God could ever be interested in scumbags like us.

You can't lose your salvation, because you didn't win it in the first place. Jesus won it for you, and once you are in His hand, nothing can snatch you out (including yourself). The Bible says nothing can separate us from the love of God; not height nor depth nor angels nor demons nor the present nor the future, etc. When it says "nothing" can separate us, I assume it means nothing can separate us.

More properly stated, I believe in the Reformational concept of the perseverance of the saints. (For you Calvinism curious out there -- and I know you're there -- that is the P in the TULIP acronym.) Perseverance of the saints basically means that those who are saved will persevere in their salvation; they will, for lack of a better way to put it, be found faithful on the day they take their last breath or the day Christ returns, whichever comes first.

This sort of gets at the commenter's original remarks, which spoke of the thieves on the cross and deathbed confessions. All I know is that Jesus does the saving and that He requires repentance and faith. If you've truly got that from the beginning -- I mean, if you really repent of your sin and you really exercise faith in Jesus -- then you will be truly repentant and truly faithful at the end, whenever that is. So I, for one, am not comfortable deciding who was sufficiently unbackslidden between the beginning and the end to slide in to heaven. I'm glad God makes those decisions, and I'm glad His grace covers all the times of my unfaithfulness throughout the course of my life. I don't think I'm as bad a guy as I can be, but I am bad enough to deserve hell, so I suspect some will be surprised to see me beyond the pearly gates, just as I'm sure we will all be surprised to see some we never thought would make it.

The bottom line is that simply reciting the sinner's prayer and then going on with life as usual demonstrates not really meaning the sinner's prayer. But the overarching point, for me anyway, is that it is not the sinner's prayer that saves, but Jesus. And if He wants you, me, or the jerk down the street on His team, we're on His team. And there's no trades.

"What if you want to be released from your contract?" I hear you saying. The simple answer to that, as harsh as it may sound, is that anyone who wants out and stays out wasn't really in to begin with. They just wore the jersey.

Now, I know good Christian folk who will disagree with this view. I have some friends, including a very close friend who is a pastor, in the Free Will Baptist denomination, and they believe that one may, in essence, forfeit his or her salvation. (Don't say the phrase "lose your salvation," because aside from it not really capturing what they believe, you will see them getting snarky and patting their pockets, mocking, "Salvation? Salvation? Where'd you go?" My pastor friend does that, the jerk. ;-) No, what they believe is that as someone can choose salvation with their free will, they can then give it up with their free will. (They also believe then that person can't get saved again, which always makes me wonder what happened to free will, but maybe it went wherever the lost salvation goes. Wherever socks escape from the dryer to, maybe?)

The key text for this issue is Hebrews 6:4-6, which talks about those who have "tasted of the heavenly gift" and have yet fallen away. The passage says such people cannot be restored. Theology nerd though I may be, and despite studying this and related issues in this passage and many others for years, I'll be honest in saying I have no idea what this refers to. My theory is that, by "tasted of the heavenly gift," the author of Hebrews is referring to people who participate in the visible church -- specifically, people who take part in the Lord's Supper -- yet who are not really Christians.
Obviously I could be wrong about that, but the main reason why I do not think those who have tasted of the heavenly gift yet fall away are true Christians is that the author contrasts this situation with "things pertaining to salvation" in 6:9. In that verse, the author appears to be saying, "But I know better of you, the ones who are truly saved . . ." Check it out and see if you don't agree.

To some extent, I think a lot of these issues could be tempered, if not resolved, by changing the focus of the work of salvation. Because while I certainly agree that saved people act saved -- the alternative is, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "cheap grace" -- I don't think any amount of acting saved saves anyone, just like I don't think any amount of acting unsaved gets you unsaved. In our sin, we are condemned. But in Christ, we are redeemed. And when the Son has set you free, you are really, truly free. If the work of salvation is accomplished by the strength of Christ according to God's will, and if Christ's strength and God's will are perfect, then the salvation of those who trust Jesus is sure, regardless of their slip-ups, slidings, or silliness. And God, unlike us, always finishes what He starts.

He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it . . .
-- Philippians 1:6

Now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever.
-- Jude 24-25

Happy Reformation Day!

2006-10-31T06:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, so today is Halloween. I don't know if your family "celebrates" this day or not, and my personal opinion is that whether one "does" Halloween or not is a matter of Christian liberty. I won't make fun of you for abstaining, and you don't condemn me for dressing my girls up like fairy princesses and taking them door to door for candy. As far as I can tell, fairy princesses are cute, candy is a gift from God, talking to my neighbors is a good thing, and if any of that pleases Satan, he's a bigger idiot than I thought he was.
But anyways . . . ;-)

Bottom line: Every day is the day the LORD has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118:24). God owns every day. The devil owns none.

Today is also Reformation Day. On October 31, 1517 a hacked off Augustinian monk traipsed to the Wittenburg chapel and nailed a notebook to the door. The hacked off monk was Martin Luther, and the notebook was his now famous "95 Theses," which were mainly a list of grievances about how the Church was selling salvation to people willing to pay for it, but which ended up lighting the fuse on the Protestant Reformation.

You may not think that's a big deal, but if you believe in salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and you attend a church that lets you believe that, you have an irrascible, constipated, beer-drinking, foul-mouthed monk to thank for that. And God for creating him.

On this Reformation Day, the 559th anniversary of the posting of Luther's diatribe, why not think about reformation in your own life? What parts of your heart and mind need a spiritual revolution? Where do you feel God most at work in your life? Maybe there's a relationship you need to mend; maybe there's a sin or bad habit you need to ditch for good; maybe there's some spiritual discipline (prayer, Bible study, worship, etc.) you ought to undertake more deliberately. Nail a resolution to reform on that area of your life.

Luther was obviously marked for death once he left the reservation (so to speak). At one of his trials he was ordered to recant his belief in justification by faith, and facing death, he could not violate his conscience. "Here I stand," he said. "I cannot do otherwise."
Pick your battle. Tell Satan and your "old man" that they don't own you or this day or you on any day. Speak to Jesus and into your own life the words of commitment, "By the grace of God, here I stand. I cannot do otherwise." And just see if the spirit of repentance fully embraced doesn't bring a spirit of renewal and reformation in that area of your life.

Peace

Signposts of the Gospel

2006-10-26T06:55:00.000-07:00

You may have already noticed I have added a What I'm Reading list to the right sidebar menu. It precedes my list of general recommendations and consists of the books I'm currently reading.
~~At the top of the list is The Radical Reformission, subtitled "Reaching Out Without Selling Out," by Mark Driscoll, founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington.~~* This is the first book of his two books, although I read the second one first, and wow, is it good. Very good. Driscoll's often blunt plainspeak may not communicate well to all readers, but I think anybody interested in growing a church that reaches the lost while still maintaining consistent fidelity to the Word and the Gospel ought to read the book, particularly those in the leadership of such a church effort.

I'm about halfway through Radical Reformission, and there's a lot of things I'd love to share from it, but the portion that stands out the most is from the fourth chapter, in a section where he elaborates on Seven Signposts of the Gospel. These are things Driscoll thinks are important in reconciling people to Jesus Christ. Below I am excerpting the last three points, as I think them most relevant to our ongoing efforts at BCC:

signpost 5: the gospel builds a spiritual family

One of the prominent metaphors of the church in the New Testament is a household -- or an extended family -- held together by the blood of Christ. No wonder the New Testament tells Christians to treat one another as brothers and sisters. In our day of devastated families and generational fracturing, churches that operate like loving spiritual families, caring for and correcting one another in love, can be the most convincing proof of the power and benefits of the gospel.

signpost 6: the gospel is about participation with God

While it is true that we are saved not by our good works but by the good works of Jesus (Eph. 2:8-9), it is also true that we are saved to good works (Eph. 2:10). The gospel is not simply about getting my sins forgiven and then sitting around until I get to heaven or until Jesus returns. The gospel compels us to participate with God in the culture we live in. Any gospel that does not compel us into mission overlooks both the duties and delights of being a Christian.

signpost 7: the gospel is about Jesus as the means and end of our salvation

Simply, Jesus is not a means to things such as wealth, health, heaven, happiness, wisdom, and success in marriage, church, ministry, theology, or politics. Anytime that Jesus is used as a means to an end, a false gospel has been introduced and the thing improperly focused on becomes a false god. To remain on task with reformission, we must continually be about Jesus as the means and end of God's will, and we must both proclaim his truth and live his lifestyle . . .

* Having since finished the book, it is no longer on the What I'm Reading list. I have added it to the list of Recommendations, however.

How Two of the Hardest Things to Comprehend Reflect the Two Things We (Ought To) Enjoy the Most

2006-10-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me a day or so ago that the two Christian doctrines we have the most trouble understanding and explaining -- the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the Incarnation -- are perhaps the two most vital in the Christian's knowledge of God. Lots of so-called "Christian" churches and movements have done their darndest to jettison these theological truths, perhaps out of frustration over their irrationality, and plenty of have tried to augment them, reshape them, redefine them, or dillute them with lame illustrations and metaphors. We should go easy on such people, because honestly, anyone who claims to really understand how Three Persons can simultaneously and coherently exist as One God, or how one Person can be simultaneously and coherently both the God of the Universe and a flesh-and-blood man, is lying. These are lofty truths -- big stuff about a big God -- and it's only natural that finite minds can't wrap themselves around them.

But we need them. The Trinity and The Incarnation are the theological foundations of who we are and what we must do. Here's why:

It is all about connections. We were made to be reconciled to God and to be reconciled to each other. God designed us for fellowship with Him and community with each other. From the beginning to the end, and all points in between. Man cannot live without God, and it is not good for man to be alone.

The Trinity, for instance, gives us a great God-picture of relationships. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit share a unity of will and holy love that demonstrate to us that even in who God is, relationships matter. There are three Persons in the Godhead, and each is equally and eternally God, but they each represent different roles and serve in different functions. Reminds me a bit of how the church is called the Body of Christ. All believers make up one Body, and even though we each have different gifts and serve in different capacities and with different levels of strength, we are equally and eternally the Body of Christ.

The scholar Miroslav Volf has written a book called After Our Likeness that surveys the ecclesiology (views of church) of several important leaders across the spectrum of modern Christianity (the then-future pope, Joseph Ratzinger is one of them), and the recurring theme Volf distills these disparate views into is how the diversity in unity of the Church universal mirrors the triune God who instituted it.

The Incarnation is a redemptive truth we cannot do without, lest we endanger salvation. In emptying Himself out to assume manhood, Jesus came to live the sinless life and die the atoning death that only man should have done, but only God could have done. (I'll talk more about how the Incarnation relates to "getting saved" in an upcoming post.) In the Incarnation, we see not only "God with us," but "God for us."

I just read a story online about a pastor who took his youth group to a ministry to the homeless called Church in the Park. He wrote about meeting a homeless man who couldn't speak due to some disability; the man wrote down everything he wanted to communicate. One of those messages included these words: "'Jesus wept' is the only verse I know."
But what a verse to know, eh? I imagine this man may have clung to those two words in some of his darkest hours. The glory and beauty of the Incarnation are in the fact that God redeems our pain and suffering by sharing in it. We are low, stooping people, and we have a God who made came low and stooped to save us.

And this stuff is there from the beginning. Right at the start, God created Adam to be in fellowship with him. Adam was made for God. ("Adam" means mankind, don't you know, so the real truth there is that God made mankind for Himself.) And the Incarnation gets foreshadowed in the very creation of Adam: God formed man out of the dust of the ground and blew His breath into him. Adam was alive with the breath of God. And once we fast-forward to the New Testament, we see that Christ is called the New Adam. He even underwent a three-fold temptation by the devil as Adam did, and redeemed that mess.
Then God gave Adam a girl, because he knows dudes dig chicks. And because we were not made to be alone. We were made to be with God and to be with others. And then if you really wanna complicate the thing, you can see the man-woman romance reflected back onto our relationship with God. Notice how the Bible talks about Jesus being the bridegroom and the Church being His Bride. And how God commands husbands to love wives like Christ loves the Church.

It's there in the Ten Commandments too. The first table represents our relationship to God and the second table represents our relationship with our fellow man.
And then Jesus echoes the Ten Commandments and the relationships commanded in them when He gives the Great Commandment: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus puts the bottom line of Love on the Law, and is there anything more crucial to relationships than love?

We echo these important truths when we gather for worship. We become a living picture of our reconciliation with each other, and as we collectively glorify God in worship and the preaching of the Word, we participate in our reconciliation with Him.

The Trinity and the Incarnation: these are the weighty, complex, irrational truths that shape and inform our relationships with God and with each other. They are the theological foundations of who we are and what we are to do. And like human relationships, they often don't seem to make sense and it can be tempting sometimes to think them unnecessary. But I find a thrilling beauty in the idea that the stuff that makes us feel most connected and most whole -- knowing God and loving other people -- comes directly from some infinite place of unfathomable intelligence. And our love for God and our love for others comes from the ineffable God and the love He has for Himself and for us.

For in Him we live and move and have our being.
-- Acts 17:28a

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God . . . We love because He first loved us.
-- 1 John 4:7,19

God's Will For Your Life

2006-10-25T07:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I posted a piece on "finding God's will for your life" at the Studio 215 MySpace page. Worth a look if you're so inclined.

Keep in mind that it is written primarily for the Studio 215 crowd, so my customary sarcasm is ratcheted up a few notches, probably to the point of abrasion.
;-)

Weekstart Linkage

2006-10-24T07:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I didn't get around to posting some weekend linkage last Friday. A buddy of mine called me up with a last-minute editing project that had a Monday morning deadline, so I've spent the last few days diligently proofing some dude's book manuscript. But let's just get in our Delorean, juice up the flux capacitor, and travel back to Friday, where we can pretend I already posted this. ;-)

My very good friend Bill Roberts talks about Maturity.

Glenn Lucke talks about how to be a Christian in the culture.

Dan Edelen, who is sort of like the blogosphere's John the Baptist, talks about the dire need for community in the church.

Mark Lauterbach has a great post on the Gospel and the culture, and writes, "God is not so squeamish." Heh. Here's an excerpt from his conclusion:

We are called to display the heart and holiness of God. If all we do is condemn the sin of our culture -- and give people a moral message, we have conveyed holiness without compassion. God agonizes for sinners . . . God dirties his hands with the rescue work and does not keep safely aloof. Do I?

Good stuff there. Go read the whole thing.

BCC's own Dirk Plantinga has a good post on Choosing Joy.

Finally, here's a re-run from the Thinklings archives: That Groovy Jesus and His Message of Peace, Love, and Good Vibes

Happy surfing!

And stay tuned. I've got more posts percolating: how the Incarnation of Jesus relates to our "getting saved" stories, responding to a recent commenter's remarks on "once saved, always saved," a good excerpt from a Mark Driscoll book, and I might even reveal God's will for your life (if you're extra nice to me ;-).

Peace

I (Heart) BCC

2006-10-24T07:25:00.000-07:00

I have been so in love with our church lately. Haven't you?

I know I haven't posted anything in a few days, and I have no way of knowing -- save by a few comments and the occasional "Enjoy your blog" from someone at church -- if anybody's even stopping by here on a regular basis. But I'm going to try to keep the site active, even as I think the primary reason for starting it is no longer necessary. We are still going through, and will go through in the future, some interesting and exciting transitions, and I do know from comments and e-mails and personal conversations, that people in our church still have questions (about all sorts of things related to the Christian life) and still desire connections. So as long as BCC is Broken can serve in that way, I'll keep posting.

Did you attend the picnic two weekends ago? If you didn't, you missed a great time. The food was fantastic, the games and activities for the kids were fun, and the spirit of community was electric. We've been going to BCC for about 9 years, and while we knew a few folks, it has only been in the last couple of months that we have felt truly connected to the people at our church. And I know, because people keep telling me, that a lot of others feel the same way.

I heard the estimate that about 500 people attended the picnic, but it never once felt like hanging out with a bunch of strangers. I don't know how else to put it, and I dare not elaborate just for the sake of propriety, but it certainly feels like a burden has been lifted off BCC. And that's all I'll say about that.

This last weekend in our Conexus group, we did something a little different. Instead of going through the scheduled session in our study (Grace by John Ortberg), we went around the room and shared our "coming to Christ" experiences. In the olden days of churchianity, we used to call this "giving your testimony." ;-)

It was probably the best session our group has had. We even ran out of time and plan to continue at our next meeting with those who didn't get to share. There's a whole separate blog post brewing on my reflections on our time together, but for now let me just say that hearing people's stories, with all the pain and yuck and mess and struggle, but also with all the joy and victory and faith and hope(!), renews my confidence in the church -- in our church -- as the instrument of God's power to save in Jesus Christ.

Hearing everyone's story also does this: It lets you know you're not alone. And one of the flaws that can pop up in churches like ours -- a thing that by design is valued for the "safety" of seekers -- is a culture of anonymity. It is important that people checking out the church for the first time (or the first few times) not feel singled out or cornered. They want to investigate in anonymity, and that's not a bad thing. (Remember the days when churches told guests to raise their hand so everyone could look at them? Or wear a sticker that said "Visitor"? Yikes.) But the trick lay in cultivating a community that prevents long-term anonymity. The thing that was so attractive at first (being left alone) becomes a frustration, because one of the purposes of Christian community for those who want to be in it is to be connected with other believers in the Body of Christ.

Bill West has been doing a great job. He is picking up steam and developing a rhythm. The message topics and main points have really been some great, truthful, powerful stuff. And every week, I hear share a reflection from a past message of his, some bit of truth or wisdom that has affected or impacted them.
I tell ya, it is a scary -- but exciting -- time when just speaking the grace of Jesus seems so revolutionary even to people in the church.

I think BCC has always skirted the line between "including the Gospel" and being "Gospel-driven." It is my perception that we have now crossed, and my hope that we will continue to cross, the line into really being a Gospel-driven church. We are in the process of speaking grace to all generations and doing the hard work, from the pulpit and from the hearts of those in the trenches between weekends, of reconciling people to Jesus Christ.

Grace and Faith, Law and Works

2006-10-19T08:32:00.000-07:00

It started last week when, in an email exchange with a reader, I touched on the difference between doing works to earn God’s favor and doing works because you have God’s favor. That same week I was thinking about “faith and works” quite a bit and feeling disappointed in a few things written on the subject in the Christian blogosphere. (I tried to flesh out some of my criticism in that 30 Theses thingamajig.) Then, Sunday morning, my wife and I talked with a friend who has experienced some pretty heavy religious moralism in her church background after our small group meeting, and we discussed “works” and legalism. Then Monday evening I was hanging out at BCC’s twentysomethings Bible study, and as we were talking about grace and forgiveness (in relation to Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well), someone mentioned how Jesus often included admonitions to “stop sinning” in these encounters, a fact often overlooked. Then, a friend commented on my theses from last week, asking me to further explain #27, which talks about salvation by grace and works religion. The capper was Pastor Bill West’s message on Romans 6 at last night’s FOCUS service.

So after all that, I’m thinking, “Hmmm. Maybe I should say something more direct about this stuff.”
Romans 6 is a wonderful place to get some meat on this specific subject – the relation of The Law and Works to Grace and Faith. Re-read it, if you don’t mind. What I’m gonna write below draws largely from what Paul says in that chapter.

So here are a few things I think important about faith and works and grace and forgiveness and obedience, etc.:

We all agree you cannot earn your salvation, right? I mean, that’s sort of one of the fundamental doctrines we Protestant types got from the Reformation. The official nerdspeak is sola fide, which means “faith alone.” The Bible says, and therefore the Reformers said, that salvation is by grace alone (sola gratia) through faith alone in Christ alone (sola Christus). (By the way, there are five solas, and if you’re interested, you can read more about them here.)

So if we all believe you can’t earn your salvation, that it is a free gift of God given by grace and received through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ (rather than the person and work of ourselves), than why do we so easily fall into this practical mixup of works and obedience and all that?
Well, I guess there’s an odd comfort in that this stuff is nothing new. Paul addresses it right there in Romans 6, and there are basically two errors Christians tend to fall into, represented by two extremes in response to belief in the Gospel. These extremes were problems even in the early church are highlighted in Romans 6:1-2 and Romans 6:15, the two “Hell no!” passages Bill referred to last night.

The first error (6:1-2) is the extreme called license. This view takes the perfectly correct assumption that as Christians our sins past, present, and future are forgiven by God and further assumes that it then doesn’t matter if we sin. In fact, there were at Paul’s time, and there are some in our time now, who sin freely and wantonly, in essence making their “coming to the Lord” some sort of “Get out of obedience free” card. But the thrust of sola fide is not that Christians are not commanded to do good works or to obey the Law, but that we do not have to do those things to “get saved.”

The truth is, before salvation, we could not do those things anyway. It’s not just that works aren’t the designated path to getting saved, it’s that it is impossible to please God with works before you’re saved anyway.

The other error (6:15) is the extreme usually referred to in academic circles as antinomianism. Antinomianism is just a fancy word that basically means “against the law.” This is the view that because we are saved by grace under the new covenant in Jesus Christ, the Law has been rendered obsolete, defunct, worthless, unnecessary, etc. Remember, though, that Jesus said he did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it.

This gets tricky, because obviously if you look back at the fullness of the Law in the OT, there are all kinds of restrictions most of us consider non-binding today. Eaten any shellfish lately? How about pork? Worn any clothes that have blended threads? Touched your wife while she was having her “lady’s deal”? Mowed your yard on the Sabbath day?

Bible scholars tend to differentiate in these cases between cultural and ceremonial aspects of the Law as applied to the nation and people of Israel, and what’s called the moral law. I tend to believe that in the new covenant, as Jesus replaces Israel as the focus of the community of the kingdom of God, the cultural and ceremonial markers are deleted, if you will – fulfilled in him. This is why we no longer, for instance, make animal sacrifices in the temple, even though they were prescribed by Jewish law. Because Jesus was the final and fulfilling sacrifice, and because the Holy Spirit is present in every believer now, not located in a building (“Your body is the temple . . .”). Also, throughout the New Testament, you specifically find these ceremonial and cultural laws explicitly declared “over.” We’re told that all food is clean now. We’re told that one doesn’t have to conform to Jewish ceremonies and rituals to be a Christian. We learn that obeying God is no longer about culture or ceremony, because the Gospel is for both the Jew and the Greek and the vessel of the salvation community is the Church universal, not the nation of Israel.

But the moral law – you know, the ten commandments and the direct applications thereof – are still in effect. They are still binding. Now, as then, the moral law does not save. But they are still what saved people do. Does that make sense? If it doesn’t, the letter of James in the NT will really drive you bonkers. Martin Luther called James “a right strawy epistle,” and if the human sparkplug of the Protestant Reformation wanted to chunk James’ letter, no wonder we rubes have such trouble with it today. But if you doubt the importance of works to the life of faith, re-read James today. Wear a helmet.

Paul says in Romans that the Law condemns, that it does not have the power to save. The mistake we often make, then, is to believe that the Law is bad. But the Law is good. It is God saying “This is the standard of holiness.” Now, he knows we can’t meet it perfectly, and he knows we can’t do any of it on our own power. So the expectation is not that we will get ourselves saved or earn God’s favor through following the Law. The expectation is that once God saves us and once we have received his favor, we will want to obey his good Law out of gratitude and willingness. Obedience, then, is not merely an obligation, some dry religious duty we mope through so Jesus will put a gold star on our homework. Obedience is an act of worship. Obeying God’s law is not how you get saved; obeying God’s law is what saved people do.

Following the Law will not get you free. But once Jesus sets you free, suddenly you are now free to follow.

Another related extreme not mentioned yet is legalism. Legalism is really the opposite pole from antinomianism. Whereas antinomianism says the Law is abolished and Christians no longer need obey it, legalism says obedience is how you get God’s favor. Legalism is the thing we all pretty much agree is bunk – works salvation. And most Christians will say they are not legalists but end up practicing or preaching legalism anyway. It has many subtle forms.

For instance, there are many good Christians who will tell you that salvation is the free gift of God given by grace and received through faith alone in Jesus Christ, but will nevertheless suggest you tuck your shirt in before sitting down at Christ’s table. There’s this idea that one must “get cleaned up” before coming to Jesus. This error confuses many prospective believers, who in their confusion really want to follow Jesus, but worry that they haven’t quit smoking yet or haven’t kicked their addiction to pornography yet or haven’t kicked their boyfriend out of the house yet. See, we recall correctly that Jesus’ encounters with sinners in the Gospels usually included him saying “Go and sin no more,” but we usually forget that Jesus typically says this at the end of his encounter with them. He never says, “Hey, come have lunch with me after you stop doing such-and-such.” He says, “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” He says, “I will give you living water.” He says, “Neither do I condemn you.” He says, “Come, follow me.”
He doesn’t tell anybody to stop sinning in order to get their golden ticket. Because he knows they’re going to keep sinning even after they’ve got it. Jesus is a pretty realistic guy when it comes to human nature. ;-)

But what he does say is, “Your faith has made you well” and “Go and sin no more.” There is a clear call to obedience, a clear call to become obligated to rid ourselves of sin. And Paul addresses this, again, in Romans 6. All that stuff about crucifying our flesh, about dying with Christ, about the process of sanctification.

Here’s how the process works:
Justification – this is us being declared righteous despite our sin because of our faith in Jesus to forgive us from our sins.
Sanctification – this is the process of getting “cleaned up,” which is declared as a once-for-all reality in the way God sees us through His Son, but also an ongoing reality in the way he conform further to God’s will through our continued faith and applied obedience.
Glorification – this is the end result of the ongoing sanctification, where Jesus comes back when the Game Over message pops up, and we are finally delivered physically and spiritually from sin and death.

This process is evident in Jesus’ interaction with those who came to him. He declared them justified and then sent them off on their sanctifying journey. He didn’t put the cart before the horse, in terms of telling them to get sanctified before he would justify them. That is essentially what legalism is: get yourself rid of sin before Jesus will save you from sin. But, obviously, if you could sanctify yourself, you wouldn’t need Jesus to save you, would you?

I hope some of this makes sense. I think this stuff is really important, because even in modern, grace-driven, “hip” churches like ours, these errors can creep in and be held by sincere, nice people without them even knowing it. We can believe we don’t need to think about our sin because Jesus is our homeboy (license) or we can believe we’ve got to worry about our sin all the flippin’ time because Jesus wants us nice and polished (legalism) just as easily today as the early church did centuries ago.

(Apologies for the length. I haven't posted in six days, though, so maybe you can just think of this as 6 posts in one. ;-)

30 Theses (Give or Take): A Ramblin' Rant in Helpful Bullet Point Format

2006-10-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

The following is an informal list of basic principles relating to discipleship and "doing church" that I try to think and live by. I share them only because I think, whether I'm right or wrong in my assessments, that the issues themselves are very important. Every generation must wrestle with the way it lives and presents the Gospel to a dying world. Every generation must put walking shoes on its theology, so to speak, and in some cases, helmets and body armor. (And in some cases, take the armor off.) This is my little way, in my little corner of my little world, of nailing my little Post-It to my little Wittenburg door.
---

1. Discipleship is designed to be experienced in community. God saves individuals, but He does not save them to an individual faith but to a kingdom life populated with other citizens who share that faith.

2. The Bible designates one vessel to hold this kingdom community, and it is The Church. You might fraternize with other believers in coffee shops, informal communes, online chat rooms or forums, blogs, bars, or the big outdoors, but only biblical churches satisfy the discipleship need for The Church.

3. Honest Christians will differ on what constitutes a “biblical church,” and while disagreement is understandable and okay, beware of any church that says, explicitly or implicitly, “we do it right” or “we do it better” than the church down the street.

4. Ecclesiological one-upmanship (“My church is better than your church”) is a sin.

5. The reason you should not give up on church or The Church is because Jesus did not give up on you. And if He calls the church His Body, giving up on it means giving up on Him.

6. There are no perfect churches, especially if they have people in them.

7. Expecting a church to “fit” you or to always be comfortable or catering to your needs is arrogance and foolishness.

8. You can pick your friends and you can pick your church, but as in all families, you don’t get to pick who’s in The Body. Only God can do that. And when you decide certain people (or certain churches) are not worthy of your presence, ask yourself if you are worthy of God’s. (Hint: You’re not. But he came into your life anyway.)

9. My friend Bill Roberts has been doing church work for years. Two blog posts he’s written you really should read are More on “Why Church?” and Is the Bride Beautiful?.
Seriously, click on them and read. They are important.

10. If the entirety of your churchy desires consists of filling a seat to experience a good service, you are not a congregant in a church but a consumer at a concert.

11. What you win people with is what you win them to.
Win people with flash, spectacle, presentation, etc., and that’s what you win them to. Don’t be surprised if, like all consumers and what attracts them, they eventually get tired and move on to the next attraction. Don’t be surprised if, provided they remain, they continually request more, better, higher . . .

12. Church leaders don’t really need to choose between fidelity to the Gospel and engaging the culture. They just need to make sure they put them in order. First things go first and inform secondary things. Fidelity to the Gospel should inform your cultural engagement, and not vice versa. If your first aim is to please man, you will please some god, but it won’t be the God you want to please. But if your first aim is to please God, you will please some men.

13. Some men won’t be pleased if your first aim is to please God. This is called “the scandal of the cross,” or “the offense of the Gospel,” and it can’t be helped if you are faithful to God’s Word.

14. Decide if you’d rather give people what they want to hear or what they need to know. People need to know they are sinners in need of a Savior. People want to hear that deep down they’re okay and their good buddy J.C. affirms them in their okay-ness, which is b.s. that helps nobody.

15. You don’t have to beat people over the head when telling them what they need, and in fact, if preached well and practiced incarnationally, you will find that you will win more than you’d think.

16. You cannot program a church into success. Programs are great, but they are applications. They are the “how” of doing church. Give up the tyranny of results and start with the “what” and “why” questions first.

17. A church’s success should be neither entirely nor primarily measured by its attendance. Also, a church’s growth should not be entirely or primarily measured numerically.

18. It is okay to think about numbers and numeric growth. Beware of church growth philosophy extremes. But the litmus test for whether something should be done in or by a church should never be “will it increase attendance?”. Naked ladies giving away free Krispy Kremes will increase attendance. Hiring Oprah Winfrey to speak (preferably clothed) on self esteem will increase attendance. It is okay to think about and strategize for numeric growth. But when you cut corners on the Gospel or pander, you are not trusting God for that growth; you are trusting yourselves.

19. Churches that advertise more in terms of what they’re against (“religion,” “tradition,” “formality,” other churches, etc.) are playing to people’s bitterness and will likely be filled with bitter, prideful people.
Defining yourself by what you’re not gets old quick.

20. Religion is not really a bad thing. Religion just means “how faith is practiced.” Jesus was a pretty religious guy; he was observant of the Jewish feasts and festivals. He followed the Law. The New Testament book of James tells us about “pure religion.”
The word “religion” has taken on a bad connotation because of all the loser churches who took Jesus out of the equation and made religion about legalism instead of liberty in Christ.
In other words, religion does not save you; it is what you do because you are saved.

21. Tim Keller wrote, “Irreligious people seek to be their own saviors and lords through irreligion, worldly pride. ('No one tells me how to live or what to do, so I determine what is right and wrong for me!') But moral and religious people seek to be their own saviors and lords through religion, 'religious' pride. . . . Both irreligion and religion are forms of self salvation."
Since I don't think religion is inherently a bad word or a wrong concept, I would replace Keller's use of "irreligion" and "religion" with "antinomianism" and "legalism," respectively, since that's really what he means.

22. Let’s be clear: It’s not a sin to be unhip. If “religious” to you just means “not down with the times,” religion is not your problem; idolatry is.

23. C.S. Lewis said, “To go with the times is of course to go where all times go.”

24. It’s not a sin to be unhip, but it is a sin to be boring when talking about God or presenting His Word. It doesn’t actually say that in there ;-), but if you believe it is true when it says we shouldn’t be ashamed of the Gospel because it has power to save, you should at least act like you believe it.
This means that, whether you’re doing the preaching or listening to it, if you are angry, sad, or cynical more than you’re happy, joyous, and hopeful, you’re doing it wrong.

25. On the flipside of “it’s a sin to make the Gospel boring,” is that you can’t make the Bible relevant. The Bible’s already relevant. Generations of churches made it sound irrelevant but it wasn’t because they were unhip but because they were unfaithful. Be honest about, engaging with, and faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and people will see its relevance.

26. The phrase “personal relationship with Jesus,” while informed by a conflation of several very biblical ideas, is not in the Bible. Neither is “ask Jesus into your heart.”

27. Lots of people who think they have traded religion for a relationship with Jesus have actually done no such thing. They’ve just traded an outdated religion for a newer model.
It is true that works will not save you – in fact, the truth of salvation by grace in Jesus Christ should be shouted from the rooftops – but if your “Christianity” is about incorporating Jesus into your life in order to be happy or successful or generally more at peace with yourself, guess what? That’s religion. And it ain’t even a good one.

28. You can be just as prideful and in just as much “stale religiosity” in a casual, informal, rah-rah “yea Jesus” church service as you can in a dressy, formal, “serious” one, particularly if you are proud of being casual and informal and rah-rah.

29. I stole the above idea from Dallas Willard, who writes in The Divine Conspiracy, “You can be just as 'man pleasing' and 'fleshly' in extemporaneous and informal religious exercises as in preestablished and formal ones -- perhaps even more so -- especially if you are proud of being informal.”

30. Worship is about connecting with God, telling Him and your fellow worshippers how much He is worth. You can just as easily do that with loud drums and electric guitars as you can an organ (and vice versa), provided your heart’s in the right place. It has nothing to do with style and everything to do with substance. You know you care more about the former than the latter when you start thinking more about performance than praise.

31. Worship is not just something you do to music. The quality of the Christian life is one of worship.

32. These things are not things I’ve known so much as learned in my slow, imperfect journey with Jesus, and in the ongoing purification process the Bible calls “sanctification” but which I frequently think of as “becoming less stupid.”
---

While posting a list like this seems even to me a bit self-involved, I thought I'd at least offer the possibility that I didn't make all this stuff up. References that guide my thinking on these matters include:
1 Corinthians 12:1-27
Ephesians 2:8-22
Hebrews 10:18-25
James 2
James 4
Romans 1:16
Galatians 6:2-10
Acts 2:38-47
John 6:41-68

Peace

Weekend Linkage

2006-10-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

Some surf-satisfying links to get you through the weekend.

Andy Rau at ThinkChristian asks an uncomfortable question about the goals, plans, and programs of churches and ministries: "Is this benefitting the kingdom of God?"

At Intellectuelle, Bonnie asks, "What part should maintainance and/or building of a church facility play in the stewardship of a Christian or a congregation?"

Mark Lauterbach hits one out of the park every day at GospelDrivenLife. Here's a recent example, all about the importance of Story in studying and teaching the Bible's story of Jesus and theme of redemption. This approach really resonates with me, and I'm willing to bet it does most others too. "Narrative preaching," properly executed, can be a great and effective bridge between expository sermons and topical sermons.

Similar to my recent bit on In Jesus' Name, Scot McKnight blogs on Paul's phrase "To the Lord"

There are so many conferences for Christians, preachers, teachers, church leaders, worship leaders, et cetera et cetera going on in the evangelical landscape today that "Christian conferencing" has become a cottage industry in itself. But I'm willing to bet the latest Desiring God Conference would have been worth twice the admission, what with leaders like John Piper, Tim Keller, Voddie Baucham, and Mark Driscoll speaking. At Reformissionary, pastor Steve McKoy shares a couple of pull-quotes from the conference. One is a good one from Driscoll on Calvinist "contenders," but the one I like is this from Keller:

There has to be a lifelong process of realizing the wonder of the gospel. Religion gives you control which is why it's so popular. Religion is "I obey, therefore I'm accepted." The gospel is "I'm accepted, therefore I obey."

Milton Stanley's Transforming Sermons is another blog you should add to your bookmarks. (And not because he quotes and links to me more than occasionally. ;-) He just writes great and helpful stuff, and when he's not writing it himself, he has a knack for finding the folks who are and links to them. For instance, he found this gut-punching post from Christianity Today's Kent Carlson on the brutality of pastoral ambition. Milton's pull-quote will be mine as well:

Something has happened in the past thirty or so years that has shifted our pastoral ethic from one of faithfulness to one of productivity and success. I believe this has stirred the fires of ambition. Given the nature of our American culture, this doesn't surprise me. It also doesn't surprise me that the battle with ambition will be a ferocious one, for the tendency toward self-absorption plagues every one of us. I just wonder why this is not a front burner item that is being addressed with greater passion in the popular Christian media. It would be so refreshing to hear Christian leaders in some panel discussion copping to the fact that they struggle with it and it often drives their ministry. We all know it's there. If only we could start being honest about it.

I just added Confessions of a Reformission Rev by Mark Driscoll, pastor of Seattle's Mars Hill Church, to the Recommendations list in the sidebar. It is a great, great read for anybody interested in both growing a church for the lost and remaining faithful to the Gospel. Driscoll describes himself as theologically conservative and culturally liberal, and he must be doing something right if he can go to one of the least Christian cities in the nation, preach hour long sermons full of theology and calls to repentance from sin, and somehow turn a steady crowd of drug addicts, porn addicts, punk rockers, ex-gays, "loose" women, and the occasional demoniac or nutcase into a vibrant and still growing congregation of about 10,000. I don't agree with all Driscoll says (apparently he thinks stay-at-home dads are sinful sissy-boys :-), but I recommend the book for anybody interested in pastoral honesty, integrity, and, perhaps more importantly, plainspeak in a world of prepackaged pastoral buzzwords and "church growth strategies."
Read the Internet Monk's review of Confessions of a Reformission Rev. for more info.

If you can avoid drowning in his characteristic ellipses, BCC'er Chuck Leonard has a neat post on keeping the Sabbath.

Finally . . .
Studio 215, BCC's burgeoning ministry for twentysomethings, college & career, and young professionals, now has a MySpace page. Check out Studio 215's MySpace.

Happy clicking!

Last Minute Reminder

2006-10-13T06:55:00.000-07:00

Don't Forget! The BCC BBQ Picnic is this Sunday from 12:30 to 3:00 on the lower lawn outside Kids Place.

Food, fixin's, and drinks will be provided, but if your last name begins A-K please bring a side (like a veggie tray and dip), and if your last name begins L-Z please bring a dessert.

There will be activities for the kiddos.

Bring a blanket, some lawn chairs, and plan to spend some fun time with the church family.

To God be the Glory

2006-10-10T08:07:00.000-07:00

What is the meaning or purpose of life? What are we here for? The Westminster Confession of Faith addresses this aeons old question this way: The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
Notice there's nothing there about self esteem or success or "victorious living." Those things might be part of your specific package deal, but for the Reformers, the purpose of our existence is to bring glory to God and enjoy His presence. This is undeniably personal, but it is also undeniably theo-centric (God-centered).

This week I and others praised the Pennsylvania Amish community for their radical grace in response to the most heinous of murders. This humble community of Jesus followers demonstrated an openness and an obedience and a willingness that puts most of our feeble attempts at Christlike living to shame. But that's sort of beside the point. Because as much as the Amish are due honor for their granting forgiveness, we must be careful that it is not the Amish who are glorified. What they did would not have been possible without the work and power of Jesus Christ.

So the media -- including some Christian bloggers -- is providing analysis that is deceptively inaccurate. The Amish deserve kudos, but God deserves the glory. What happened in Pennsylvania in the wake of that tragedy is not only or primarily a testament to the humility, faithfulness, or meekness of the believer; it is a testament to the inestimable grace of the Almighty God.

We Christians today are accustomed to commenting on the strength or size of our faith and the faith of others. When someone overcomes impossible odds, we may say, "She had so much faith." When someone fails -- maybe it's ourselves -- we are tempted to think, "Maybe he (I) didn't have enough faith." I won't discount the necessity of faith. How could I? It's all over the Scriptures. We are justified through our faith. But did you know even your faith is a gift from God? That's right. Your faith, big as a mountain or small as a mustard seed, is there because God willed you to have it.

Last week I shared with my Conexus group and with the readers of this blog a message by John Piper called Sustained by All His Grace. An excerpt:

[W]e really do work, but all our working is the fruit of enabling grace. Paul explains this in Philippians 2:12b-13:
Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

We work, but when we have worked by faith in God's enabling future grace (rather than for the merit of the law), we turn around and say about our work, "My work was God's work in me, willing and "doing his good pleasure."

So when we say . . . that we are "sustained by all His grace," we do not mean sustained like friends sustaining a broken wheelchair while we do our own independent work. We mean that everything in this spiritual dynamic is sustained by God's grace. "Treasuring all that God is" is a work of grace in my heart. I would not treasure God without a mighty work of grace in my life (Acts 18:27; Phil. 1:29; Eph. 2:8f; 2 Tim. 2:25). "Loving all whom he loves" is a work of grace in my heart (1 Thess. 3:12; 4:9; Phil 1:9; Gal. 5:22). "Praying for all his purposes" is a work of grace in my heart (Phi. 2:13; Heb. 13:21). And "meditating on all his word," is a work of grace (Psa. 119:36).

Why has God set it up this way? Because the giver gets the glory. God has established the universe in such a way that it magnifies the glory of his all-sufficiency. You can see this really clearly in 1 Peter 4:11:
Whoever serves, let him do so as by the strength which God supplies [that's grace]; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

God gets the glory because he gave the grace.

But who gets the glory in our lives, in our day, when a great faith is exercised? Is it ever God? Maybe. Is it always God? I don't think so. The Bible talks about "heroes of the faith," and therefore so should we. But we should never make our heroes into idols, and at no time is that more tempting than in our culture of celebrity Christianity. Who gets the glory at Lakewood Church in Houston? Who gets the glory at Saddleback in California? Who gets the glory at Willow Creek in Chicago? Who gets the glory at Potter's House in Atlanta? Who gets the glory at Bellevue Community Church or at The Gathering in Nashville, Tennessee? Who gets the glory in your church, in your family, in your life?

Whose reputation are you trying to further?
If you say it is Jesus Christ's, are you ready to apply to your own life, whatever it takes, the fact that He had to go through shame to get to glory? However monumental your own work for the Lord is, it is not your doing, but His. Hebrews 12:2 says Jesus is the starter and finisher of your faith, and that to get to "enjoying God forever," he endured the scorn and shame of the cross. In your life, are you too busy planting your flag to take up your cross?

Your faith has made you well, but God is the healer. Your faith has saved you, but He is the Savior. When you do good works so that men may see, is it to further your career, your public perception, or your renown? Or is to glorify your Father in heaven? If we were to put a spiritual magnifying glass over your house, over your church, over your office, over your personal portfolio, over your promotional website, over your heart -- who would be magnified? I think like most people, I find myself crying out to God when I feel weak but tooting my own horn when I feel strong.

But if I am a real follower of Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life I live with flesh and blood I actually live in He who loves me and died for me. I hope my life of faith is lived with the explicit and implicit acknowledgment that both my life and my faith are gifts from God and that therefore it is He who gets the glory regardless of what I achieve or don't achieve.

It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God -— that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."
-- 1 Corinthians 1:30-31

For through the grace given to me I say to every man among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.
-- Romans 12:3

Happy Hour

2006-10-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

It's official. Poll results were overwhelmingly in favor of the church service time transition, confirming the leadership decision to start, on October 29, the new BCC Sunday morning schedule. (This is the same day Daylight Savings time ends, by the way.) The new Sunday morning schedule will look like this:

9:00 -- early service
10:00 -- Happy Hour!
11:00 -- late service

Happy Hour will be a time of community fellowship, where you hang out at Coffee Connection or elsewhere in the atrium or outside on the patios. One of the great innovations of this community hour from 10 to 11, in my mind, is the two-for-one drinks. When you buy a coffee or bottled drink, you'll get a second one free. And that second one you're supposed to give away. I think that's pretty stinkin' cool.

Also please note that while Kids Place programs will continue during both morning services, there will be no childcare available during Happy Hour. Maybe you can make it a family breakfast time!

Elder Nominations

2006-10-09T07:21:00.000-07:00

The deadline for congregational nominations of elders has passed, and the list is in. This month select BCC staff and current elder board members will begin the interviews process with the nominees, culminating in a November-December election by the current board of its three incoming members. (~~Remember that three of the current elders will be rotating out.~~ Remember that there are three vacancies at this time. Two will serve four years, one will serve three.)

The nominees are:
Mike Dillon
Mark Freeman
Larry Hall
Tony Rich
Devon Weller
Billy Williams
Jared Wilson

And a sterling bunch they are, yours truly humbly excluded of course.

At this point, if you have cause for concern for any of the nominees or know of a legitimate reason for their disqualification, please contact church staff or one of the elders.
Remember to think more along the lines of biblical guidelines or our specific church's guidelines, not necessarily that Devon Weller cut you off in traffic one afternoon. I mean, I think Billy Williams is a certified nutcase, but unfortunately "insanity" is not listed 1 Timothy as a disqualifier for eldership. Oh well. ;-)

The next step of course is Elder Fight Club, where the last three men standing move on to serve.

Peace!

BCC in the Wayback Machine

2006-10-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

What a delightful surprise to have Jason Pettus-- er, um, excuse me: I mean, Dr. Jason Pettus bringing the message this past weekend. To those who have found a bittersweet homecoming in this rebuilding transition at the church, having a former minister to students beloved by many return to guest preach was surely a blessing. Jason -- I'm sorry again -- Dr. Pettus ;-) is now the lead pastor at Living Hope Baptist Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky and came to deliver part 5 in BCC's Relational Realities series after a postponed engagement to speak at BCC in the Spring.

I remember when I first met Jason. It was probably 1998. The church was still meeting at the middle school, and I had e-mailed just expressing interest in where Becky and I might plug in to ministry. Jason took the time to meet me for coffee at the Bean Central (?) on Murfreesboro Road, and so he was the first (and really only) staff member I knew from then on for several years. I started volunteering in the student ministry, and I always enjoyed hearing his heart for youth. His speaking style I would always characterize as "warm."
Seeing him this weekend was great, and I see he's only gotten warmer.

Jason said a lot of great things this weekend -- among them highlighting how we tend to touchy-feely passages like 1 Corinthians 13 that ought to scare us to death -- but my favorite was probably when he shared a word of exhortation and promise regarding our lead pastor search. He said God is right now preparing our new lead pastor for us just as He's preparing us for our new lead pastor. I thought that was a good word reminding us of God's sovereignty in this situation. God cares about our church; finding our shepherd will not be a crap shoot.