Not a bad idea

Today’s Quote 12/7/09

That feeling of over-due bills, of bills coming due, of accounts overdrawn, of tradesmen unpaid, of general money cares, is very dreadful at first; but it is astonishing how soon men get used to it.  Anthony Trollope

Once again, you have to read Matt Tiabbi if you want to know about the financial meltdown and who is at the helm

Matt writes for Rolling Stone. In my opinion, he consistently gets it right, expresses the appropriate horror at who is minding the store and is intent on not letting these guys hide under the rocks. A great theft has occurred, and it continues. Matt keeps the spotlight on and points it to where the guys scurry. You should follow, too.

Before you get in a church fight, you had better read this

Jared Wilson linked to this blog that describes how down and dirty it can really get.  A number of us viewed Perry Noble’s video on how to take criticism, and thought it was bit over the top. Now I know why. Seems like church sanctioned terrorism. The lesson is that you may think your are just having an ordinary fight with your church or vice versa. But some stuff can happen that is anything but ordinary.

High school reunion-year 43

Just got word that my high school class will have a 43rd year high school reunion in Feb 2010.  This will be our only formal reunion since graduation.

I graduated from Norfolk Christian High School in VA. Went there only my junior and senior years, but it was enough to change most everything about my life. It was the place where I first stepped into evangelicalism out of my fundamentalist upbringing. It was the place where I ran into a group of deeply well-intentioned young people who wanted to follow Christ in a thoughtful way. It paved the way for my parents to come out of the fundamentalism of their conversion and mature into a broader view of the Christian life. It then became the place where my younger brother went to school and from there ultimately became the pastor of the church that started the school.

It would be hard to overstate the difference NCH made. Looking at our old yearbooks (my wife is also a NCH grad), I was reminded of the sacrifice of so many to make that school happen. As a kid in school I never really thought about the hopes, dreams, money, work and time put into making this opportunity available to me. But it sure made all the difference.

True conversion-what is it anyway?

Rick Warren recently posted this.

 If you guess life ends at death, please consider that Eternity would be a long time to be wrong. I wouldn’t gamble.

Believe it or not there is a church around here that has the phrase “eternity is too long to be wrong” written across the face of its building.

This is another version of Pascal’s Wager. If you face the decision of whether or not to believe Christianity, the results of believing it and being wrong are much less severe than the results of not believing Christianity and being wrong. Therefore, believe.

I call this “race track” conversion. It is a bet. That’s all it is. Is it really believing, a conversion? Not in any normal sense of the term. And does it yield for us the abundant life, deep peace and contentment, yieldedness to the Holy Spirit, a life of meaning? I don’t think so. It doesn’t even come close to finding the pearl of great price and going to sell all that you may have it.

This is where John Piper’s vision of conversion comes in at a much deeper level, at the level of treasuring Christ. Warren’s aphorism finds no place to land in the heart.

This is also where Kierkegaard stepped in and insisted on the Abrahamic model of faith. It is am immersion of oneself into “tremendous majesty.” It rises above gambling and hedging bets. It is a faith that so entrusts itself to God that it raises the knife to slay Isaac.

I think churches are filled with people making Pascal’s wager. They are “believers” but there is no heart in it. There is no dare, no risk, no “do.” It is mental assent, belieivng that if they so believe and make some measurable contribution they are on the right side of things. It is really not a heart thing. Their heart is yet unconverted. It loves what it has loved all along. Nothing inside has changed. The landscape has the same vistas, and the inner eyes of the soul look upon the same objects upon which it has always longed to gaze.

Of course, Warren is write. The penalties Jesus describes that are attached to an unconverted life should wake us up, make us think about how we make our decisions. But conversion it is not.

New York Magazine article on Tim Keller

Keller is a significant force in the evangelical movement. He has kept out of the Reformed ghetto and maintained a broad-based leadership style. I like his style. Click here for the article.

I Love To Tell the Story

Singing hymns this way is a good thing

more about "I Love To Tell the Story", posted with vodpod

Why I will not sign the Manhattan Declaration

If you need more info on this, click here. It is another attempt by the church (RCs, Orthodox and Evangelicals) to take a stand for the sanctity of marriage and human life with freedom of religion and religious expression thrown in.

I won’t sign it.

I won’t sign it until the church itself holds its own members accountable for divorce and abortion. How extreme of us to hold our political leaders accountable for what we do not even hold our own members accountable for. Until the RC church bars from communion those who are prochoice, until the Evangelical church has higher standards on divorce and remarriage such statements as the Manhattan Declaration are nothing more than a resurrection of Moral Majority tactics that fall on deaf ears.

Thoughts on a Sunday at another church

My thoughts in no particular order (which is generally how I think!!!)

1. Someone else did all the work. Thank you, Lord.

2. I was the ultimate consumer. This Sunday it was all about me. That probably makes me a bad Christian

3. Visited a church of about 1,000. Two services. Went to the late service. At the start maybe 75 in seats. Stayed that way for a while. Twenty five minutes into the service most of the seats filled. Major discontinuity between what was happening on the platform and what was happening in the audience. Two different worlds. It was like the platform was happening on a screen as at a movie theater and the rest of us were watching but still doing our own thing.

4. Never saw so much coffee in a service in my life. Dunkin Donuts cups galore. One family also brought in their box of donuts to share during the service. Church has its own coffee bar so the “java jump” was doing its magic.

5. Bible – what Bible?

6. Gospel – what Gospel?

7. Tremendous attempt on part of worship leader and Pastor to relate “down at our level.” I actually think they did such a great job of this that they got below our level.

8. If there ever was a church that followed the exact formula for having no barriers between the church and the seeker (or guest, or nonchurched or whatever) this was it. It was so exact I was stunned that something could be that formulaic. I expected something to be nuanced and contextual, but nothing.

9. In my own church there has been some exploration of deep church, a sense that we don’t get to make up church out of thin air. There is the controlling influence of the Bible, for starts. And then there is the era of Classic Christianity of the first four centuries. This service was completely ahistorical.

10. No trinitarianism. This is an evangelical church, and I know they believe in the Trinity. But there was no trinity in this service. Sounded like monotheistism without biblical pluriformity to me, not even a tip of the hat.

11. It was great to be in a crowd. I love large churches. But I would have to sacrifice this desire and go to the ineffective, small fundamentalist church rather than return to this church. The fundamentialist church might not be successful as people count success but it would be a more faithful carrier of the 2,000 year tradition than what I saw yesterday.

12. I expected some intelligent attempt on the part of this evangelical church staffed by bright young people to connect their church with The Church. I couldn’t find anything where I saw a subtle but real attempt to move people from the casual to the intentional, from the front door to the rooms of the house. It just wasn’t there.

13. This is personal. Excuse me if my theology is showing. At the end of the service they ordained one of their women staff to the pastoral office. She is now Reverend. It’s not women’s ordination I am concerned about so much. I just wonder what else a church doesn’t get if it doesn’t get that the Apostle Paul was pretty clear about the gender-specificity of the office of the elder. If you can make Paul casual about this, you can pretty much make Paul casual about anything. And, quite frankly, evangelicals are making Paul casual about any number of things as of late.

I am fairly broad in what I can appreciate as a contribution to the larger body of Christ. But yesterday I surprised myself by how many lines I was drawing in the sand. I have been to services at Willow Creek, Saddleback and any number of churches trying to do the same. They fit into my vision of evangelicalism even if it not in my part of evangelicalism. Yesterday I saw what I could only interpet as a lowest common denominator attempt at a formula driven service. I know the staff can do better than that. They should.