Category: The Church

A Reflection on the Irony of Methodist Denominations and the Kingdom of God

I fell in love with the work of God in and thru the Moravians in my “Church Since The Reformation” church history class in Seminary.

I know that may sound weird. But the Moravians captivated me.

To the point that I forced my wife to go with me to Winston Salem, NC to go see the first Moravian community that formed in the United States.

The struggle and imperfection of the people.

The difficulty of living in close community with one another.

The devotion to prayer (almost 100 years of 24-7 prayer) and confession.

The dedication to taking the Gospel to the whole world (before it was easy – they’d literally send family members off on boats to unknown places only to never see them again).

Hardly any of us in today’s world commit ourselves to anything like these people committed themselves to one another and to God, if we’re honest.

Then, shortly after Seminary, I fell in love with the Wesleys and the Methodist movement in the same way.

Of course, I had learned about them in that same class. But there was something about the practicality of working in a church that created the context for the principles of the Methodist movement to come alive for me.

The desire for all people to hear the Gospel – not just “preach” in a church gathering.

The intentionality of grouping people together to care for one another’s souls.

The balance of relational structures with Spirit-led movement.

Just like the Moravians, it took my breath away. How God was at work in and through people in such normal and yet powerful ways.

And these movements captured me because the Spirit who is in me resonated with the same Spirit in those people. The same Spirit that has always been ushering in the kingdom of God.

Thru the elders and craftsmen of Israel.

Thru the prophets and poets of the Old Testament.

Thru the disciples and apostles of the New Testament.

Thru the priesthood of all believers of the Church today.

The love I felt that drew me toward these movements was the very love of God for His people, actually for all people that He wants to come to know His love.

And this is why, after “swimming in the Methodist waters” for the last nearly decade, I’ve grown even more confused by the “denominationalization” of the kingdom of God.

Yes I just made up a word.

And this isn’t just true of Methodists. I have friends in so many denominations that started as kingdom movements and yet now, let’s just be honest, aren’t.

So we must ask ourselves: Why are denominations consistently the place that kingdom movements go to die or become dormant?

And then secondly, and potentially more importantly, if thats true, then: Why do we keep creating the same things expecting different results?

So many Christian leaders continue to say they want to be a part of something like these kingdom movements that happened outside and alongside the established religious structures of their day, but then attempt to do the work of kingdom movement within the structures that have consistently not allowed for kingdom movement. And then are confused when it doesn’t work.

It’s either ironic or insane. I can’t decide which anymore.

It’s what I did for nearly half of my life. I kept holding out hope for “renewal” or “revitalization” or “reformation.”

But over the last 7 years or so I’ve been asking myself: Is that really how resurrection happens though?

So for the last several years I’ve made it pretty clear that I think God is doing something he’s done before, if people are willing to follow Him into it.

Something He did in Acts.

Something He did in the Monastics.

Something He did in the Moravians and the Methodists and other modern kingdom movements.

He’s calling entire communities of people into renewed relationship with Him and one another.

Not for the “purpose” of revival or awakening. Just simply for the purpose of His love.

Not with a “plan” of creating the next big thing or fast-moving, multiplication model. Just simply with a plan to devote themselves to one another and to Him.

Prayer and presence will mark these communities.

Hospitality and hope will be their commitment.

Sacrificial love and sustainable life rhythms will become their pious work.

Hidden acts of service and homes filled with God’s presence will permeate all they do.

The thing that unites them won’t be organizational, nor performative, nor attractional, nor visionary.

It will be incarnation.

Real life with one another, with God.

They will work and play full of the Spirit.

They will raise kids and grandkids and other’s kids together in the faith.

They will work thru conflict and practice forgiveness as a means of grace.

They will listen and give generously and celebrate God’s creation.

They will be a kingdom movement. Whether they have a name or logo or website or building or bylaws is irrelevant. It will barely cross their mind if at all.

Because they will have one another.

And they will have God’s presence.

And after all, isn’t that what this whole Advent of the kingdom we just celebrated is all about anyways?

God with us.

God among us.

God experienced through our relationships with one another in the midst of our every day life.

That’s incarnation.

That’s a kingdom movement.

It’s simply beautiful.

And it captivates the depth of my very soul.

The Sin of Utilitarian Christianity

The present challenges are new, in the sense that WE have not seen them before. But, they are not new to the human condition. King Solomon’s admonition that there is nothing new under the sun looms large (Ecclesiastes 1:9). And they are certainly not new to God.

Foreword

One of the great tasks of the Church in every culture is to effectively “Preach the Gospel.” In order to do this, a Christian must be able to differentiate between the general culture they live in and the specific culture of what it means to be Christian across contexts. This is not always an easy task, but a necessary one. It requires nuance, reflection, and the willingness to admit you’ve been wrong.

The Church in America has for too long taken on the ethos of America above and beyond worldwide Christianity. There is much about what it means to be American that has been translated into the Church, and unfortunately much less about what it means to be Christian being translated into America. I have attempted to navigate this dynamic thru two consecutive blog series over the last 18 months, posted here on my friend Victor’s blog. He has helped me navigate both these series, and in that process has clarified some of his own thoughts on the underlying issues at play.

This essay does an excellent job of diagnosing the problems (that are not new) and offering a way forward (that also is not new). May we heed the words of critique offered, and together forge a way forward that looks more Christlike than ever before.

Pastor Drew Anderson
Sumter Chapel
September 2021

Introduction

Over the last couple of years my good friend, Pastor Drew Anderson, has written two series of posts. They should be read in order (which I would encourage you to do) to get the most out of the material. In both series he seeks to answer the question of what it means to be Christian, specifically in the American context in which we both find ourselves. I would recommend them both to you. You can find “Part 1” for each here and here.

In light of his thoughts, and some extended reflections from our private conversations, I would like to hone in on something that has been bothering me. As I have thought more on the questions Drew has been raising, I have wondered if this was just a problem in the American branch of the Church, or was there something deeper going on. This post will be a kind of rumination on all of it as I try to make sense of what we, as the People of God in the United States, must begin to consider and potentially do. The present challenges are new, in the sense that WE have not seen them before. But, they are not new to the human condition. King Solomon’s admonition that there is nothing new under the sun looms large (Ecclesiastes 1:9). And they are certainly not new to God.

If God is all-knowing (and I believe He is), then what we have been given in the Scriptures are not only sufficient for the task we have before us, they are also determinative to how we address what we see happening around us. If God’s wisdom is not good enough nothing else will be!

In the rest of this post I will do my best to provide an expanded framework for what I have been thinking and reflecting on. I believe what we see happening in the Church today can be addressed with methods that are consistent with Scripture and God’s character. But those methods have to be grounded and discerned from God’s word. And why is this necessary? Because God’s word is a distillation of God’s mind. Therefore, the wisdom contained on its pages and that emerge from its implications cannot be overlooked or dismissed.

This is not intended to be an exhaustive analysis. It is best categorized as a reflection and possible call to action.

A Dangerous Trend

In the first of the two series I mentioned above, Drew explored a trend he has experienced and witnessed in his journey of faith. Specifically, what he identified was a trend that has been shifting the focus of the Church’s mission in America in unhealthy ways. The problem is, on the surface, we do not necessarily see the inherent dangers present in the movement taking place. There has been a general ambivalence to what has proved to be detrimental to the health and vitality of the Church. The reasons for this ambivalence are beyond the scope of this article. However, the reality of the harm is evident in the problems currently ensnaring the Church.

This shift has been happening in earnest, and in recognizable ways, for the better part of two or three generations. But, I think there is a great deal of truth to the possibility it has been unfolding and expanding for far longer. It takes time and distance to recognize the effects of choices made in the past. The challenge is accepting that something is, in fact, taking place.

What is most troubling is that now, two decades into the 21st century, we have seen an acceleration of the trend. It’s almost as if the consequences of the decisions which were warned about in previous generations have become the accepted norms of the day. The ideas and assumptions that should have been challenged, and possibly rejected, have become the “prevailing wisdom” of the age. The lack of discernment that has been displayed by many so-called thought leaders in the Church has proven to be disastrous to the health and expansion of faithful Gospel ministry.

If I were to offer my own summary of this trend, I would say it is as the “Americanization” of the Christian faith. While this is a helpful description because my friend and I both live in America, I would like to push the idea further out. Mainly because I do not think this is a uniquely American problem. Our context informs our perceptions of the problem, but they do not necessarily define them. So while the “American” expression of our concerns are valid, they are not normative. It just happens to be the way we are seeing them because this is how we are experiencing the trend. This is one of the many challenges we face in making sense of what is happening around us.

The Church’s Identity Crisis

The Church has been and will continue to be under constant pressure from the social, cultural, and philosophical influences in which it finds herself. This is not new. It has always been the case. And, whether we like it or not, it will be the case until the return of Jesus.

Just because our context happens to be the Church in America does not mean this cannot and is not happening in other places as well. I believe it is. I just don’t want to make specific claims about a context I do not live in and am not influenced by on the whole. I will leave that determination of how other sectors of the Church are being affected by this trend to those who live “there”. My hope here is to identify some of the characteristics of the trend as we have experienced it, in the hopes that others may find similar diagnostic tools helpful in other contexts.

I also believe, as Bishop Luis R. Scott has framed this process, we can aptly describe what we are seeing as the steady and definitive secularization of the Church, especially in America. But, as I said above, I don’t think this is happening only in America. The reason we need a more generalized description of this trend is that any nation or culture can have this secularizing effect on the Church. Particularly if the Church is not vigilant in maintaining its own identity within the contexts it finds itself. I will hope to explain this a little bit more below using the American experience as a test case for our discussion.

What do we mean by “secularization”?

I want to take a moment and attempt to clarify what I mean by secularization. The opposite of secular would be the sacred. This should not be difficult to see. We are merely looking at simple definitions. However, in this context and in this sense what we have to understand is that any move away from a religious or spiritual understanding of the world is a move toward the secular. What many people do not seem to grasp is how much of life is actually non-material. Or to say it another way, much of what we do is based on what we believe to be true. In simpler terms, it is spiritual in nature. This is not inherently a “religious” statement. But it does point to a reality too often dismissed.

The human experience is all about faith. All about what we believe to be true. For those who have a religious background of any kind this makes sense. The notions of spirit or non-physical realities are not hard to consider and even accept. However, when we deny this aspect of the human experience, we are denying something more fundamental, that not everything we see or experience can be reduced to mechanical or materialistic explanations. And yet, that is exactly what we, as a society, are being asked to accept. That there is some definitive and even arbitrary line between the physical and the non-physical experiences of life. The kinds of problems this approach to understanding the world creates are far too many to discuss here. However, the effect of this kind of thinking is seen when there is no longer a shared understanding of what is true and real. When each person can determine what is unchangeable, no one can know anything about anything.

As a form of shorthand, we can say that secularization means atheistic, or at the very least agnostic. And again, this is not necessarily a religious category. It merely is meant to show that the person holding these positions is abstaining or refusing to acknowledge the ambiguity of what it means to have a worldview to account for what we experience beyond the material.

Everyone has a worldview. A way of accounting for what they see in the world around us and the events we go through. This does not make every worldview equally as effective in explaining the world. We are just trying to point out the fact all people have one regardless of the efficacy of that worldview to provide answers or perspective.

What does this have to do with secularization? Simply that the adoption by the Church of the patterns, frameworks, paradigms, and nomenclatures of a worldview that does not take into account the non-physical realities of life will have a damning effect on the Church and her ability to be the Church. The secular world has no mechanisms for understanding what it means to be a person of faith. Therefore, when this kind of thinking infiltrates the Church it will invariably move the Church away from the holy, sacred, and spiritual understandings promoted in Scripture.

When the Church fails to challenge and counter the secularizing forces of the world, regardless of their form or source, we are allowing a wedge to be driven between God and his people. The reality of the religious experience, but specifically within a Christian worldview, is that humanity’s relationship with God must inform and constrain how people who adhere to the faith live. Any failure to do so creates dissonance when faced with various theological and ethical problems.

Ignoring how secularization impacts the sociological realities of human civilizations has led to the downfall of empires and the dissolution of societal cohesion. More importantly, from a Christian perspective, the very notion of community is grounded in theological ideas and ethical norms that require faith in God to make sense. When these foundations are removed, the entire system collapses into incoherence. Moral frameworks are necessary for civil society to function. But these frameworks only truly make sense because we are designed by our creator to seek just outcomes. Therefore, believing there is no connection between believing in God and a just society is a primary reason for the breakdowns we are seeing and will continue to see.

Recapturing the Center of the Faith

The second series I mentioned above is my friends attempt to restore some clarity to what is means for the Christian faith to be understood in its proper scriptural, historical, and theological context. It is a call to return and recapture what was and must be the Christian understanding of the faith. This is a difficult challenge. But I salute Drew’s efforts and agree in great measure with his assessment.

I also believe his project is an important call to the Church, both in America and in every nation, to challenge many of the assumptions we have made (or been given as valid substitutes) as the Body of Christ. Assumptions that have proven to not be biblical in origin, but rather cultural and, in many cases, extremely localized. And while there is some sense in which the Church will become a part of the fabric of the lives of the people in every place, there must be a healthy caution to how much “the place” influences and changes the essence of the faith handed down to us.

The goal of the Church is to transform the people with whom they meet. However, when the influence is predominantly in one direction, from the world to the Church, the problems become magnified. Instead of leading people from darkness to light, the Church is the one being lead from light to darkness. This danger has been present from the beginning. We see it in the writings of Paul, Peter, and James. The temptations to import into the Gospel, and with all the multitudinous implications, the thoughts and paradigms of the world is a recipe for disaster. These foreign and antithetical ideas will not aid us in the mission of the Gospel. They will only do damage to that mission.

The Gospel requires no assistance in accomplishing its work. What I mean is that the message does not to be altered, amended, or corrected. We are to merely convey the message, not try and conform the message. The Holy Spirit applies the message to the hearts and minds of those willing to hear what it says and obey what it implies. This belies a certain confidence in the Gospel that is sadly absent in the current Church context.

When we lose our center, the pull of other forces becomes more difficult to resist.

Let’s Speak Plainly

If we were to speak plainly for a moment I would tell you something you may already know. There is something amiss in the Church’s expression of itself in the American context.

The number of definitions of what it means to be a Christian makes it difficult to know which one is right. They cannot all be right. So, who gets to decide which definition we all should subscribe to? There is really only one answer to the question. We must rely on what Jesus said and on what God inspired to be contained in the Scriptures as our guide.

Now, I will willingly acknowledge that much of what is going on has to do with disagreement over what God has said in Scripture. But I believe this is more a byproduct of our unwillingingness to accept what is clear so we can continue to do as we please. This means the problem is not what Scripture actually says. The problem is we don’t like what it says and would rather it say, or at least mean something else. But that is not what obedience looks like. That is not what true faith looks like. That is rebellion and falsehood masquerading as honest searching.

I think we can all agree there will be problems whenever people try to “help” God do what only God can do. There will be dangers to when people are given responsibilities and authority to work in God’s vineyard. However, these problems and dangers can be minimized. When there is a sincere and heightened level of vigilance maintained, the faith we proclaim has a greater chance of remaining true to what Jesus entrusted to his disciples.

The “Why” of the Church

One of the great challenges in any endeavor is remembering the “why”. When the original purpose is lost, misplaced, or ignored, the institutional creep away from effectiveness happens. This is part of what is wrong in the Church today. We have lost clarity of vision and mission. And this loss has been exacerbated by the importation of ideas from a secular American culture that defines success and power and influence and name recognition as the crowning achievements of life.

On the whole, we have failed to see that simplicity is the key to effectiveness. That faithfulness and obedience are the marks of a genuine understanding of who God is and what he expects. Not for better, and definitely for worse, we have entered the game of keeping up with the Jones’s, rather than living in alignment with God’s character and commands.

The Church has adopted ever-increasing complexity under the false belief that it represents some kind of depth of spirituality. This is wrong on two fronts. First, making faith about achievement has ingrained legalism as a feature of the faith. This is contrary to everything we find in Jesus’s teachings and example. Second, we have made competition the means of achieving. This competitive spirit has caused us to see our fellow believers as adversaries rather than partners and fellow travelers. When I need to beat you, I will find it difficult to help you as well.

The more complex a process or mission, the more difficult it becomes to achieve. Just because something is not easy to understand does not mean it is necessarily complex. We may not have enough information to make sense of what we are seeing in front of us. In a similar sense, the Church in America has been convinced that complexity equals being spiritually robust. However, the result of this mindset has not proven true. In fact, quite the opposite. The more complex we have made our faith the further we have moved from God and his purposes for us.

Charting a Path, but not a New One

Now, it is one thing to see that something is wrong. But it is quite another to know how we chart a course back to where we need to be. My friends first series is primarily diagnostic. The second is more corrective. One without the other, however, will leave us becoming overly critical on the one hand, or naively optimistic on the other. The balance needed to get back on track is really an issue of maturity. We all must come to grips with the undeniable reality that something is in fact not right.

It is important to make an important distinction here. When we think about the “Americanization” of the Christian faith, we are saying some things and not others. And knowing what we are saying and what we are not saying is critically important to getting back on track.

What am I saying then? At the root of the trend toward secularization is the danger of assimilating into the Christian faith ideas, concepts, and theological frameworks that are not original to it. In other words, it is the process where foreign and antithetical elements are added to make it a new, and essentially different, syncretistic religion. This happens when theological, sociological, political, and cultural realities from different worldviews and systems of belief are intermingled in unhealthy and unhelpful ways. This kind of amalgamation is dangerous because it obscures rather than clarifies. National identity and ones spiritual identity are not the same thing. They were never meant to be. And they should not be homogenized in a way that makes someone believe that the are.

This problem of trying to synthesize disparate systems is different from attempts at contextualization. In the trend my friend has written about, the specific example he cites there has been a confusing of the Christian identity with the idea of American citizenship. Contextualization is not this (or at least it should not be).

The idea of contextualization can be compared to the process of the translation (writing) or interpretation (speaking) of language. When we are seeking to contextualize we have to find points of contact between two different understandings of the world. There is a search for shared meaning or there is a search for a proximity of meaning. In this search, nuances of meaning, intended meaning versus implied meaning is explored. But, the idea is to make sure that the people receiving the communication actually get what the original communicant was intending.

The entire exercise just described is not really about communicating the exact same things from one language to the next, even though that would be ideal. This is actually impossible. The aim of contextualization is the bridging of ways of seeing and knowing the world so that communication can take place, understanding can be achieved, and two people can have a common point of reference about the world around them. If we are not able to share the meaning of things, we cannot understand each other. We cannot relate to one another. We are left at a distance from others.

One of the assumptions that must be changed is thinking that just because someone knows the definition of a word they know its meaning. Communication is more vibrant and fluid than that. If you speak more than one language you will know this to be true. But even if you speak the same language natively, where you are from will shape and inform how you use that language to communicate. It is easy to know when someone is “not from around here.”

When the Faith became Works

While studying for my undergraduate degree in sociology, I read The Protestant Ethic by Max Weber. He is considered by many to be one of the founding thinkers in the field of sociology. This book is one of the first books in the field of sociological study that sought to make sense of how people’s actions were affected by the cultural forces in which they live. The book is also important in that it looks at the impact of religious faith and the affect it has on people’s expression of self in the wider cultural contexts of a society. You can read a helpful summary of this work here.

This short detour is not designed to provide an in-depth analysis of Weber’s thesis. Nor is it to say he was correct or incorrect in his analysis. I will leave that to more qualified sociologists and philosophers. The purpose of this excursus is to show that there is indeed an effect when worldviews collide. When the edges between understandings of reality are blurred, it becomes difficult to make sense of what someone is saying, arguing for, or simply defending. So, when competing views come in contact they are altered in ways not always perceptible to the average person.

This is especially the case with secular thinking and its influence on the expression of Christian faith. I am not sure this was Weber’s intent. But, I believe it is a reasonable implication of his work when looked at from a Christian perspective. The entire project was to try and “make sense” of what he was seeing in the American culture at the time. What could explain the actions and trajectory of the entire nation?

Part of the answer Weber found was in the growing theological framework of Calvinism, as he understood it, and the societal shifts well underway as a result of the industrial revolution. How these forces worked together or altered each others trajectories was both unpredictable and undeniable. And these kinds of sociological realities have not been considered in the Church for too long.

Why has the Church become more secular?

Now, where do we go from here? How does this short trip down memory lane impact my reflections on the secularization of the Christian faith?

By using Weber’s general framework, I hope to show that the realities Drew and I have been thinking about have been at work for far longer than many of us would have initially accepted. However, the reason for Weber’s inquiry then and the reasons for our considerations now are not the same. But they are not antagonistic to each other either. When considered from a higher vantage point, we can make some inferences that can help us better understand how we arrived at this predicament. And possibly what we can now do to address the problems and concerns this secularizing trend has created.

I would like to make the following three observations in light of our current discussion.

1. There is link between theology and practice.

That is to say, there is a link between the work of the mind and the work of the body. For too long there has been this idea in American Christianity that to have faith is to make a mental assent to the truth claims of the Gospel and contained in the Scripture. This has proven to be wrongheaded and a mischaracterization of the witness of God’s word.

At no time are we give any indication in the Bible that faith and action are two different things. In fact, the letter written by James contradicts this idea in the clearest of terms. I will quote the passage in its entirety.

14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! 20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

James 2:14-26 ESV

What makes this passage interesting and challenging is the link James makes between what a person believes in their “head” and what they do with their “hands” (or life more generally). The link is not just incidental. It is not just coincidence. The link between faith and works in essential to the living out of what is claimed to be believed.

To try and separate them is to do violence to a plain reading of the words and their more simple definitions. What this means is that when Christians claim a particular theological understanding, you don’t really know what it means until you are living it out in your daily life. This implementation of theology into practical action is what can properly and biblically be called faith.

2. When our “practice” is not informed by our theological understanding, we abandon theology altogether.

As we consider the link between what we believe and what we actually do because of that belief, we have to understand that what we believe is more important than what we do. The reason? We will never behave contrary to what we believe. In order to act, we must decide (in our mind) to do so. Even if that action is coerced or manipulated. No external force can change what is happening in the mind. But it certainly can guide it and retrain it to follow different and new paths and patterns.

This is precisely why Pauls says to the Romans,

“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”

Romans 12:2 NLT

The way to change behavior is by changing “the way you think.” This has always been the way, and it will continue to be the way to initiate the process of changing how we live.

What this means within the Christian understanding of the world is this, when we do not think theologically, we will not live theologically consistent lives. What we think about God and what God has said directly impacts what we do. Therefore, when we abandon theological reflection, we will eventually abandon living according to God character.

It will not matter that we attempt describing our spiritual practices as being spiritual. Even though it has become cliche to say that “we are spiritual” people, just “not religious”. When we become detached from God’s thoughts as they are revealed in the Bible we are not being spiritual. We are being secular. But we are just wrapping it up in the language of the religious to assuage our consciences.

A related problem with this statement (of being spiritual, but not religious) is what it does not say. According to what metric are we supposed to measure this alleged spirituality? It can only be done when looking at a faithful Christian life and then trying to compare how closely we mimic what we see.

3. Practice divorced from its theological moorings will lead to a self-destructive understanding of life and faith.

The final observation I want to make is a practical one. And while the other two have had some practical components, this one is explicitly practical.

When what we do is disconnected from what God has said about himself and us, we are left alone with ourselves. We can try and mask this isolation our independence from God creates, but the truth is we will feel its impact eventually. I find this to be a terrifying idea.

The basis for my fear is found in one of the most astounding passages of scripture. It is in Paul’s warning of what happens when we abandon God’s instruction and boundaries and decide we know better than God. The Message Bible offers a striking re-voicing of this verse.

So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!

Romans 1:24 The Message

I can think of nothing worse than “God [giving us] up in the lusts of [our] hearts” (Romans 1:24 ESV). And it is in this moment of being given up that we see the fullest effects of our sin. We will do whatever seems right in our own eyes, convinced of our own wisdom. And that path only leads to destruction.

Considering Some Implications

The trend of moving from a Christian worldview to a secular one; the impact of this drift toward secularization has become difficult to ignore. In a way, the trajectory on which we are traveling can almost be predicted now, if nothing changes.

I titled this reflection The Sin of Utilitarian Christianity. What I have attempted to show is that without a clear, consistent, and intentional theological understanding of what we believe, we cannot sustain the kind of action we hope to embody.

This trend of importing antithetical ideas, concepts, and frameworks into the Christian faith leads to a utilitarian understanding of everything. We no longer see people as intrinsically valuable. They become means to our own selfish ends. And when we use people to achieve whatever goal we want we become villains capable of unthinkable actions in order to achieve what we desire. But it will still be done under the guise of Christian faith, and that is a truly damnable sin.

Why? Because we are taking the hopes of another and perverting it to satisfy our own plans, purposes, and passions.

In the conversations I have been having with my friend Drew and others, I have discovered that one of the problems with this particular synthesis of national identity with religious identity is the problem of importing foreign paradigms that are inconsistent with the Gospel, damaging to the process of discipleship, and destructive to the bond of love needed for Christian community.

When we do not understand or ignore or simply deny the influence of the secular world upon our understanding of God, Jesus, the Gospel, and the gamut of Christian ideas, we are abdicating our responsibility to be faithful witnesses of the faith. As members of this new family and this new community called the Church, we have been entrusted with far more than we may have initially understood. We are living testimonies of God’s grace. We have been brought near, not solely for our own benefit, but also for the good of all whom we encounter on life’s journey.

The trend we have been discussing is a trend away from submission to the highest authority, who is God. When we become a law unto ourselves, we make the same error Adam and Eve were guilty of in the garden. To not submit to God’s directives is to reject God’s authority over our lives. We can feign ignorance if we like. What we cannot do is hide from the consequences of this decision.

A utilitarian understanding of the faith is not the Faith of Scriptures, Jesus, or the Cross. It is a false gospel, offering false hopes, and leading to a false paradise.

There is only one thing we can do if we have been walking on this road for even a moment. Repent.

Turn again to God and trust him only.

This is a Reformation

I’m going to make a seemingly bold (and yet not really all that bold claim):
We are in a Reformation.

In actuality, we are always in “reformation.” This is why the reformers of the 16th century variety coined the phrase “semper reformanda” or “the church reformed, always reforming.”

It’s the reality that we are always being re-formed, if we are active in a relationship with God. On an individual level, being formed continuously into the likeness of Jesus. On a church level, being formed continuously into the body of Jesus for the sake of the world.

However, there are also times in history where there is noticeable change to how The Church organizes itself and is present in the world (or in actuality usually ends up divided in the goal of bringing change). It usually happens alongside noticeable societal change – which is many times indirectly related.

We have seen Reformations (big “R”) like this about every 500 years according to most church historians (it’s not a science, but it’s pretty close to being predictable).

And I would like to suggest that we are in the beginnings of another Reformation right now.

Years ago I heard people claim this was true about the different “nondenominational,” mega-church, or emergent church movements we were seeing. But that didn’t really pan out as an actual Reformation. All of that was really just progressions of what currently existed (whether organizationally or intellectually).

But what’s happening now.
Along all sorts of lines – the failures of celebrity leaders, the issues of racial disharmony, the seeming frailty of the current church models to withstand persecution, and the rise of The Church in the global South and East.
In pretty much every church, denomination, or network.
It looks like a Reformation to me.

The intense and widespread deconstruction that is happening (specifically among many American Christians) must be followed by a massive reconstruction that must look a lot different than what was in many ways falling apart anyways. And what is reconstructed must look more like the early church we read about in Acts.

That was then, this is now

The last Reformation in the 16th century was about The Church in the West returning to God’s intention, but the thing that needed to be addressed most immediately was a problem of right teaching.

This Reformation today is also about The Church in the West returning to God’s intention, but the thing that needs to be addressed most immediately is a problem of  right relationship(s).

It has the same end: to return us to the original Scriptural vision of God’s New Testament people (see the book of Acts).
But it does not have the same means.

Right teaching is important, of course. We should never diminish that. And teaching and relationships are ultimately tied together. And so in the 16th century Reformation there was much to say about doctrinal issues – or what The Church taught. However, the context we are working with today is different than the context of the previous Reformation. And thus, the focus of the Reformation needs to focus on relational issues – how The Church lives.

Part of this is likely because we are in the age of information. Anyone can gain access to all the orthodox teachings of Scripture from excellent communicators of the truth (like The Bible Project). So what people need from The Church right now is less around the forming of correct ideas (though incorrect ideas need to be confronted) and more around the forming of right relationships – to God, to one another, and also to the world.

One leads to the other. And both things must ultimately be held together. But (to use a medical analogy) The Church in the West is hemorrhaging (specifically in America) – and not just numerically, spiritually as well. And to “stop the bleeding,” we must start with right relationship in order to be able to address right teaching as well.

Too many seem to have more of a relationship with their preferred idealized version of church than with the very God who establishes The Church. Too many purport to “know” the Truth without the evidence of being “known” by the Teacher.

And when teaching is placed above relationship (and not alongside of it), and then the correct value of relationship is also lost – it can morph the Gospel into a transactional proposition and not a transforming presence.

It also then influences the way we form relationships with other believers (inside the organized church especially). Churches end up connected by their ideology or vision statement or pithy sayings or denominational perspective, as opposed to by the Spirit that inhabits and knits them together.

We end up forming “Bible studies,” “Sunday schools” and “small groups” in highly transactional ways (not relational ways) and call those transactions “community” or “discipleship.” Of which they are rarely either.

Dissonance and Discipleship

This is a difficult critique of one’s faith or faith community. And I recognize that, because I’ve been living in this difficulty and leading in the church amidst this dissonance now for well over a decade.

I’ve seen how transactional I was taught faith was. I’ve experienced how transactional I was modeled church to be. I’ve noticed how transactional I was trained evangelism should go.

A dissonance has been created. In many cases, as The Church in America, we aren’t who we say we are. Which causes all sorts of discomfort.

That’s the problem with a Reformation really: it disrupts our comfort.

The current Reformation, while targeting ideas as well, is not as much about reforming the teaching of the church – as the most recent one was.

Instead, it’s targeting the values and lifestyle of the church, and is primarily about reforming us to live beyond the shallow and even nonexistent relationships the church has allowed to be counted as “discipleship” for far too long.

Jesus may very well have been after The Church’s “mind” in the last Reformation.

But it seems like Jesus is after The Church’s “heart” in this one.

Jesus may very well have been after The Church’s “mind” in the last Reformation.
But it seems like Jesus is after The Church’s “heart” in this one.

What must change?

The mind will need to be renewed as well, no doubt. But the heart needs a complete reformation this time around.

Too many in The Church have allowed our hearts to be wooed by other lovers.

Politics. Business. Popularity. Comfort. Pride. Greed. Power.

And The Church has too often followed suit in idolizing the lovers of the hearts of its people and leaders.

Thus the need for a Reformation focused firstly upon right relationships.

And our brothers and sisters from The Church in the East and global South should be our guides. We must learn from them how to again live faithfully amidst the difficulties of this world. Leadership for this Reformation in The West will have to continue to emerge. But our best hope for recovering what we have lost is to mutually submit ourselves to our Church family that is thriving all over the world – and stop looking pridefully to ourselves for all the answers.

We must return again to the fullness of a love relationship with God – Father, Son, and Spirit; not merely a conversion transaction for the purpose of going to Heaven one day.

We must return again to the unity of a love relationship with one another – The Church actually being the church across a community, not merely allegiance to “my church.”

We must return again to the calling of a love relationship with our neighbors – for God so loved the entire world, not just the ones we perceive to be “like us.”

And the depth of spirituality that these right relationships will produce can be seen throughout the history of The Church, and is still seen all over the world in the places Scriptural Christianity is thriving. We see it evidenced in the church in Acts, in the early church mothers and fathers, in the monastic communities, in the awakenings and revivals in the West of the last several centuries, and continuing in the global South and the East:

  • Organic relationships that lead to spiritual family being valued over organizational leadership principles.
  • Rhythms of a shared life together being valued over religious services offered by religious professionals.
  • Spirit-led conversations that take place in the context of genuine friendships being valued over strategic “gospel presentations.”
  • Equipping believers to disciple those around them being valued over entertaining church attendees who simply “invite their friends” to a religious experience.
  • Grace-filled and generous servant leaders who model empathy and patience being valued over goal-oriented and gregarious influencers who rarely enter into the mess of the brokenness of their own life nor the lives of others.

Jesus is calling The Church in the West to once again walk thru the wilderness of a Reformation in order to return to the right relationship(s) He’s desired for us all along.

Will we follow Him there?

With that in mind, read the words of God to His people thru the prophet Hosea, as they are still no doubt His words to us today:

And now, here’s what I’m going to do:

    I’m going to start all over again.

I’m taking you back out into the wilderness

    where we had our first date, and I’ll court you.

I’ll give you bouquets of roses.

    I’ll turn Heartbreak Valley into Acres of Hope.

You’ll respond like you did as a young girl,

    those days when you were fresh out of Egypt.

HOSEA 2:14-15 [The Message; emphasis added]

There are No Winners

The events that transpired and the responses of many people, both within my circle and in the general population, left me with a sense of foreboding. There is something wrong in this nation.

Introduction

I went to bed last night with a heavy heart. The events that transpired and the responses of many people, both within my circle and in the general population, left me with a sense of foreboding. There is something wrong in this nation. This feeling reached a high intensity yesterday, leaving me fatigued. But in my spirit I don’t believe we have crested the hill yet. I pray I am wrong. But again, as a student of Scripture and human nature I fear I am not. I believe there is worse yet to come.

In order to contextualize my thoughts I need say a few things first. About 11 years ago I had a conversation with a dear friend. We were journeying in a process of discipleship and he asked me a question. One that I “knew” the answer to, but I had never been asked out loud. I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but it had to do with what I believed God had called and commissioned me to do with my life in the body of Christ. When me met one week later I shared the answer with him. I believe that I am called to serve the Church. Not to a church. But to the whole of the body of Christ. But even as I serve a local congregation, my eyes are keenly vigilant to the greater purposes of God for those who have called upon the name of Jesus in faith. 

I can honestly say, I have not always understood or appreciated what that calling means. Today I feel I have a better grasp on what I means for me. But I will proceed cautiously. 

Our Current Situation

I have not felt the weight of this purpose as strongly as I have in the last 12 months. And in the last 24 hours the magnitude of it has only increased. I am fighting back tears as I write this. My heart breaks for the Church. She has been scandalized and ridiculed from without and within. She has been taken advantage of for personal gain and used as a toy by some who have been called to lead her and be her. The damage has been extensive. The trail of the carnage left in the wake of these acts of malfeasance has become incalculable. The harm has been catastrophic for those who have had to endure this abuse. And the few left willing to pick up the pieces are struggling under the weight of it all.

For the better part of twenty years I have found and grounded my sense of identity in ministry in the life of the Prophet Jeremiah. A man who’s example scares me as much as it inspires me. What I was not wise enough to see as a younger man, and what I have come to realize as I have become older, is that we often pray for peace when discipline is about to be handed down. Jeremiah understood this better than most. 

The problem with this is, as I learned as a child, most often it is too late to stay the hand of discipline when it is coming down on you. And as my siblings learned, discipline will fall on all of us regardless of the level of culpability. 

The Pieces of a Broken Nation

What we saw in the reports coming out of Washington, D. C., and what I am seeing from a smaller circle of friends on social media is what I believe to be an unfortunate misunderstanding of what is happening. Too many in the Church seem to believe what we see happening is political.  That what has happened is the breakdown of the political processes of this nation. So the accusations from every side are being thrown around. Blame is being assigned, but no responsibility is being claimed. Those who support the President are calling out the hypocrisy of those who don’t. And those who support the President-elect are acting like they have been vindicated against the other side. Do you see the problem? It’s taken me some time to see it too.

There are Christians on both sides of this divide. There are Christians throwing arrows at each other about who supported who, and what that says about the “other.” We have reduced righteousness to political affiliation. And do you know who is right? The devil. 

The Sin of This Current Moment Revealed

I am going to say this as simply as I can. I don’t care who you voted for. And I don’t care why you did it. We were wrong in doing it. Not because it was a sin to participate in the civic process. And not because one candidate was better than the other. We were wrong because of the result.

We were wrong because of the chaos it has created. And we are wrong in the rationalizations and justifications and smug retorts that are being thrown around. We have sinned against each other by standing in judgment over one another. There are too many Christians today who think that God is on their side of this political disaster. He’s not. And he never has been. And to say otherwise is to reveal our idolatry.

A political victory is not the grounds for calls to repent. Or for admonitions for reconciliation.

This is why making public political statements has been forbidden in our local congregation since its founding. And it has been the practice of our Pastor for over 40 years of ministry. It breeds division. And it fosters pride. They do not lead to forgiveness or grace. Politics is about victory over an enemy. And if we view other Christians as enemies, we have forsaken the unity of the Spirit. We have become agents of division, all in the name of being proven right.

The church has been infiltrated and the battle line has been drawn within the four walls of our congregations! We have been encouraged to turn against each other over something that changes every 2 or 4 years. We have lost sight of the ultimate aim of the Church. Which has caused us to lose perspective of one another. 

The Gospel is Our Only Hope

What is frustrating to the point of being maddening to those of us who see this festering problem, is we are made to feel like we are going crazy. Well, I’m not crazy. 

Holding onto the Gospel as the only hope for humanity is not crazy. 

Believing that Jesus is the only way to peace with God and neighbor is not crazy. 

Struggling and fighting to live a life that is pleasing to God and satisfying to me is not crazy. 

Serving those whom God has led me to cross paths with is not crazy. 

What is crazy is thinking that any system—political or otherwise—in this world will accomplish anything remotely resembling heaven is not only foolishness bound up in madness, but it is bound to fail. Not because our efforts are not many, but because our strength is not sufficient to the task. Our good intentions are always tainted when not surrendered to the wisdom of God.

This has been the clever façade placed before us by the spiritual agents at work against us. Like a cat trying to catch the laser dot, we have been distracted by the superficial and the temporary.

“This is the most important election of our lifetime.” That’s what we have been told we are supposed to be focusing on. That’s like saying this is the most important breath of air you will take. There’s no end to this kind of histrionic thinking. And now we are seeing how this strategy has not done anything to advance the work of the kingdom of Christ. In fact, it has worked against the purposes of God. 

We are Fighting the Wrong War

As Christians we are not in a battle with flesh and blood. Flesh and blood is the vehicle for spiritual warfare. The war that matters is fought in the prayer closet and in our own heart. “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4 ESV). And there are many strongholds in each and every congregation in this nation.

But, on the surface we are seeing the breaking down of a nation that no longer believes all its citizens are equal. And you can interpret that in anyway you want. Because there will be some kernel of truth to it regardless of your perspective.

What we are witnessing, in real time, is the disintegration of the social bonds that at one time held us together. And again, define that as you want, and you will probably be “correct” to some degree or another. 

However, as a follower of Christ, I feel compelled to point out that what is happening in this nation, and has been happening for several decades, is not new. It is not recent. (Which is another convenient lie we believe and/or promote to justify our actions.) It is the the culmination of where we have been headed for some time. And the question we must ask is why?

Regardless of your understanding of the founding of this nation, what made America prosper was the presence of the Church. Everywhere the Church is, God is. It’s a promise. We are mobile temples of the Holy Spirit. And as long as we are abiding in Christ he is abiding in us. But there has been a drift in the Church in America over the last century. It has been steadily gaining speed. That drift has borne full bloom in our day. It is the substitution of our trust in God for a trust in government. And our move away from God leads to sins and eventually discipline. 

The physical prosperity of the nation has eroded as the spiritual foundations of the Church have shifted. It is a pattern that is as old as the book of Genesis. They have been shifting for a while, and now the spiritual disaster is primed for release. 

We Have Failed to Discern the Times

Societies are always in motion. Nations are always in conflict with other nations who’s interests may or may not be aligned with each other. The difference has been that much of that discourse happened in the halls of national power and in the offices of officials who did not clue the citizenry into the machinations of governing. That is no longer the case. 

Technology and social media and the growing political divides have exacerbated and amplified what used to be remote and foreign to us. But now, it’s in our face and on our screens in an unrelenting stream. 

I started by referencing the Prophet Jeremiah. And I want to bring my thoughts full circle. Jeremiah’s ministry has been described as a failure. He did not change the mind of a single person that we know of. As a matter of fact, he even tried to quit being a prophet. But God would not accept his resignation. 

Jeremiah was disheartened by the fact no one seemed to care about what God had said. The people ignored God and his prophet. They disobeyed God’s law and did as they pleased. Then, when the warnings were not heeded, God judged the descendants of Abraham and they were shocked. And that judgment came at the hands of their enemies. 

Here’s what I have realized. Was the nation of Israel and Judah 100% evil and wicked? Fighting against God? No. I don’t think that is a reasonable assumption. But there was enough intentional sin and enough indifference to sin that the entire nation was held to account. 

We Must Correct Course as the Church

It does not matter what side you feel an affinity to, the judgment of God will fall on all. If one side is the problem, the whole will suffer. If the other side is the problem, the whole will suffer. There are no winners when spiritual discipline is meted out. 

This is one of the reasons, as Christians we should not be aligning ourselves with the systems of the world. They do not belong to us. And we do not belong to them. We have to see that they do not promote nor can they secure the ends for which we have been called into Christ’s service. Regardless of the promises made. The apostle Paul said as much in his encouragement to Timothy (2 Tim. 2:4). But for some reason we can’t seem to figure this out as the Church. It’s as if we keep trying to convince God, and ourselves, that we can serve two masters. We cannot. And Jesus said as much. 

The breakdown of societal norms and political discourse is downstream from the spiritual decay of a nation. As a matter of fact, it is the warning bell of divine discipline. This is not a new pattern. It has been the way societies have fallen since the beginning of time. From Babel to Israel to Rome, from the British Empire to the United States of America. All nations will fall because all nations who reject God must. Only one kingdom will be standing at the end.

So what should the church do? Allow me to offer three actions for your consideration.

First, if you are a Christian, I implore you to stop using political language and political ideology as the paradigm of conversation. Trust in the words of God to convey what you believe should be. We must reject the new, the novel, and even the ancient for the eternal. When we don’t we are tacitly confessing a lack of faith in God’s word to be enough. 

Second, refrain from publicly endorsing and celebrating political parties, candidates, and policies that are not in line with God’s character. And especially stop anything that causes animosity among and between followers of Christ. The only party we should champion is the Church, the only candidate is Jesus, the only policy is the Gospel. Any and every thing else will work to foster divisiveness—in your congregation and in your heart. Being “right” is not worth the soul of your neighbor.

Third, the Church, from leaders to the nursery, must do what it was commissioned to do from the first, it must seek the kingdom of God above all other aims, intentionally rejecting any supposed suitors; it must disciple the nations beginning in our own homes, and it must surrender any and every claim it feels entitled to in the earthly realm. Those treasures are not worthy of our ultimate sacrifice or our deepest allegiance. The cost is too high and the reward too cheap.

A Partisan Church: The Effect of Politics on the Gospel of Grace

We can no longer escape the obvious fact that the world has changed. And that it has not been for the better.

The World Has Changed

It’s getting to the point where it is hard to ignore the volume of political speech on social media. I don’t know if you have noticed it. We may have been there for quite some time. We may have just hoped it would trend back in the other direction.

We can no longer escape the obvious fact that the world has changed. And that it has not been for the better. The drift away from faith in God has become more pronounced. More than I have ever seen it in my lifetime. When I look at the world I sense the fraying of edges of our shared experiences. They seem to be fewer and farther between.

The passions of so many are being constantly inflamed, and not in a healthy way. The rhetoric of so called thought leaders is getting evermore hostile, with the stakes being raised everyday. The opinions of an ever growing percentage of the population is solidifying in ways that defy reasonable discourse. Where is all of this leading us? We are beginning to see the first signs of what led to the Tower of Babel. We have started to believe that we are a species on ascendancy. But we are merely laying the foundation of our own destruction.

The Spiritually Blind Are Driving Now

Jesus looked at the wise and the educated of his day and chided them, calling out their hypocrisy. Jesus exposed the duplicity of claiming earthly wisdom as a cover for not having true divine insight. He listened to their bombastic claims and marveled at the the shallowness of their purported knowledge.

1 And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. 2 He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ 3 And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. 4 An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” So he left them and departed. (Matthew 16:1-4 ESV, emphasis added)

The same is true today. Too many claiming the name of Christ behave and speak as if they know what is “really” happening around them and in the world at large. But they fail to discern that only God superintends the affairs of men. Just ask Abraham or Jacob or King David or the Apostle Peter if they knew what God was “really” doing? No they didn’t and God was walking with them, talking to them, and they still didn’t understand. They still couldn’t see.

The Church Has Been Enthralled By Another Lover

If that were not bad enough. What is most disheartening is that this trend has taken root in the Church as well. We have begun to measure the “goodness” or “vileness” of a person by what hashtags they do or do not confess and promote. The pithy slogans of divergent factions have begun to affect how the church engages the important questions of justice and reconciliation (to name just a couple). 

The modified and augmented versions of these beautiful concepts have shifted the focus from God’s character onto the unbridled sentiments of human imagination. We have substituted the grace of an impartial God for the vengeance of an impassioned politico. Seeming to always question the motives of the former and accepting as pure those of the latter. The people of Israel made this mistake too. They preferred the onions and bricks of their former masters to the milk and honey of the one true God. The pain we know has become better to us than the peace we do not. This is the trap. One that has been sprung on us over and over again. 

 We are hoping to fashion a new world in our own image. An image we forget the moment we move away from the mirror. We just cannot seem to see that this is a project that has never worked and never will. We are trying to create life with borrowed clay.

The Truth Gets More Painful…the Longer We Wait

Now, I’m not saying that there are not problems that need to be addressed. There certainly are. What I am saying is that any and every attempt made from a terrestrial framework will fail. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But eventually. It will come to a disastrous conclusion. We have an avalanche of historical reference points demonstrating the results of human political and societal ingenuity. They have marked the landscape of history with the bones and graves of the countless nameless dead.

And this is the problem and outworking of Adam and Eve’s sin. They thought that because physical death did not meet them at the moment of sin and disobedience, that somehow they had outwitted God. That they had outmaneuvered the omniscient Creator. This is the great folly of sin. Punishment delayed is not punishment denied. The day of reckoning will come.

No dear friends, you have not outsmarted God. I have not.

The unfortunate trajectory of a politicized Church is an impotent and neutered “gospel”. That is to say, there is no gospel at all. And the fact that the Gospel shall endure is not because of any strength in us. No, it is by God’s good grace that the Church will not die, even if it finds its numbers contracted for a time.

I cannot sustain the Church. Only God can do that.

I cannot grow the Church. Only God can do that.

I cannot improve the Church. Only God can do that.

We must stop behaving as if we are not contributing to the decline. The problem plaguing the Church is not what we are being told by the mouthpieces of our culture. The loudest voices are not the most correct. They are merely drowning out the still small voice of God.

The problem the world is facing, the church is facing, is in fact not something new. It is the only problem that has hampered the human race from the moment of creation. We like to think we are like God. That we can eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and suffer no consequences. 

It May Be Too Early To Agree, but it’s Not Too Early to Tell

Am I overstating the situation? I don’t think so. I may only be saying it too early. There are still too many who want to give this old approach a new try. Always with the same refrain: “Our predecessors just did it wrong. But we have learned from their mistakes.”

No, we have not learned. The well-intentioned goals of broken people mean nothing when built upon the faulty foundation of human will. The human being simply does not have the moral engine required to move the sin-soaked-souls of men one molecule in the direction of righteousness.

Yes, I am speaking too soon. There are not enough ready to hear what I am saying. Too many have vested too much of themselves into their “side”. A side that stands in opposition to the character and will of God. I may be speaking too soon, but I am not getting the result or effect wrong.

As a Christian, it is important to not lend our allegiance, whether actively or passively, to anything that clouds our witness. Anything that blurs the work of Christ is not worthy of our overt or tacit approval. It does not matter how well-intentioned the cause, the cost is too great.

The current cultural climate has highlighted several important realities. Realities that have been dismissed but cannot be denied any longer. I will simply list them without much commentary.

  1. Political speech is always partisan. No one who is political can be objective. That is a convenient lie we tell ourselves to assuage our consciences, but it is grounded in self-righteousness, not true holiness. Our politics are more transparently visible than we think. And some are too comfortable with that.
  2. Professional political pundits are not as good at what they do as they think. (See #1 above). What makes us think we can do it any better? We are far worse at it than we may wish to believe.
  3. We risk more of our witness than we can calculate when we enter into an arena in which we have no reason to be. (See #4 below).
  4. The truth of God supersedes the politics of our current national affiliation. If we claim to be Christians, we must remember we are not citizens of this world but of the kingdom of God. This means that we should not speak politically, but prophetically. (And if you can’t tell the difference refrain from doing it until you can. And if you think you can, you are probably wrong.)
  5. This one is directed specifically at pastors. You can be a pundit or a pastor, not both. Thinking you can be is part of the problem. If your punditry is more important to you than your prophecy, it may be time for a change of vocation. Punditry is a seductive harlot and she ravages all who entertain her advances.

A partisan church is not the church of Jesus Christ. We must accept this to our shame and to our peril if we do not.

I offer this prayer in conclusion.

Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace; to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

# 27, For the Peace of the World
A Book of Prayer and Order (2020), pg. 408

A Pastoral Letter to the Church | “Enough is Enough”

To those who have laid claim to the name above every name. We must repent. We must turn away from violence. We must turn away from the hardness of heart that would consume us. We must plead with the Father to replace our heart of stone with one of flesh. We must embrace the prospect that we are like sheep being led to the slaughter. Not as a political cause, but as a righteous act in the name of the one true God.

How we as a nation respond to tragedies of injustice reveals how well we have prepared to get closer to a just society. In the unfortunate shadow of recent events, a horrifying truth has become clear. The lessons of the past have not been heeded. What is worse, they have been used as weapons.

How we as a people called Christian, engage in the conversation of justice also reveals how well we have internalized the Gospel of Jesus, and how well we have embraced the difficult work of the ministry of reconciliation. Again, the events that have transpired in recent weeks have exposed a trajectory that can only be described as devastating. The witness of many claiming to be a part of the Church in these last few weeks has been laid bare. We have rejected the fountain of living water. We have hewn for ourselves broken cisterns (Jer. 2:13). We have walked away from God for the gods and idols of this world.

You would have to be completely blind to miss how the world appears to be growing dark. The light of God seems to be waning in those places where it is needed most. How do we account for this? How do we explain the drift in this direction?

It can only be explained as an abandonment of the unifying and fortifying power of the Gospel of Jesus. It can only be described as a rejection of the most fundamental realities of our identity in Christ.

We have rejected the call to make disciples of all nations (ethnos).

We have rejected the power of the Gospel to transform murderers into saints, prostitutes into princesses, paupers into kings, and slaves into freedmen. We have rejected the purpose of the church to declare truth both to power and to the poor. We have rejected the responsibility of the ministry of reconciliation we have been called to. We have rejected the promise that comes from being made one in Christ and for Christ.

We have rejected the reality that to see as God sees is to see past the flesh and see to the heart. We have rejected the hard work of forgiveness and replaced it with the easy path of blame and even indifference. We have rejected the deep and dangerous call of dying to self and even of forfeiting our lives, even for our enemies.

We have rejected so much of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, a disciple of Jesus, an ambassador for Jesus. We have rejected the power of God for the power of fame. We have rejected the truth of eternal life for the lie of living our best lives now.

We have rejected every good and perfect gift being given to us because we have longed for short-sighted pleasures this world has to offer. We want our reward now. And then we are surprised with the consequences of these exchanges.

This is the life we have chosen, and now we cry out for relief. This is the society we have fashioned, and we have fashioned it in our own image. And now we cry out in horror at the distorted image we see being reflected back at us.

Dear friends, this is us as we are.

We cannot change ourselves, only God can do that. We cannot love our neighbors as we ought, only God can do that through us. We cannot love our enemies when we hate the people we are becoming but cannot escape. We cannot be conformed into the image of Christ when we are trying to incarnate the next version of what social media says is good.

We are one nation. Warts and all. We all are responsible to chart a way forward. The atrocities of the past cannot be undone. They cannot be erased. We cannot escape the consequences. But the past must not be repeated. And it cannot be relitigated. True forgiveness, true learning, true sacrifice requires our letting go of our need for revenge.

How long will we hold on to that which is infecting us, rotting us from the soul on out? How long will we demand justice while perpetrating injustice in the process?

Two wrongs do not make right. They reinforce the evil of the cycle.

At some point we must realize that in order for change to come we will have to receive in our own bodies, the same way Jesus did, the suffering of the unjust realities of life we see. It is only then that those who are longing for change will know how to be free from chains they have felt. Only then will those who are the victims of injustice have advocates worthy of their suffering.

We must learn to be afflicted but not become the perpetrators of affliction to another generation. It was not until today that I have begun to finally understand the words of the Apostle Paul.

8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.

13 Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, 14 knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. 15 For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Cor. 4:8-18 ESV, emphasis added)

Enough is enough. I am not speaking to the world. I have no authority over them. But, I speak to those who, with me, reside within the bounds of the mystical body of Jesus Christ. The walls of separation were broken down at the Cross. We must never take part in building them back up. God laid waste to that which keeps us from one another.

To those who have laid claim to the name above every name. We must repent. We must turn away from violence. We must turn away from the hardness of heart that would consume us. We must plead with the Father to replace our heart of stone with one of flesh. We must embrace the prospect that we are like sheep being led to the slaughter. Not as a political cause, but as a righteous act in the name of the one true God.

This is the burden that I have felt but could not find a way to express. This is the passion that has been percolating within my soul these last few weeks.

The world in which we live is suffering. It is heading headlong into the abyss. And there are some who claim to be Christian, who claim to speak for the church, who are participating in its destruction. Rejoicing in the calamity befalling our nation and communities. May God have mercy upon them.

Whether we have found a voice to our fears or not; whether we have been able to find ways of being instruments of change or not; whether we are ready or not. The time is now upon us. We must call upon our Helper, the Holy Spirit of God, to gird us up for action. It does not have to look like everyone else. But the time for waiting must end.

How do I know? Because through it all, whether through active choice or passive complacency we have forsaken our identity. We have forsaken our calling. We have forsaken the sacrifice of Christ. It is frightening to step into the breach. To take a stand, even if it is among our circle of influence. But we must reclaim what has been slipping away from us.

I plead that all of us repent. Let us turn back to Jesus. Let us turn back to God. Let us turn again to the only weapon we have been given, the “sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God” (Eph. 6:17b).

God has shown mercy to entire nations before. I pray that he will show mercy to us now.

Do We Look More American than Christian? Part 7

Part 7: Spiritual formation is not attractional.

The entire model of the contemporary American church is centered upon attraction and motivational appeals. I grew up in this church culture so I know it well. The contemporary churches of today are merely adult versions of the youth groups of yesterday. My “youth group” experience simply followed me into my adult life.

And the tactics are the same: attract them and then hope you can motivate them.

How well has this “American marketing strategy” for spiritual growth worked out for us? Considering nearly 85% of teenagers leave the church after going off to college…you might say not so well (Click Here to listen to a podcast about this problem between minute markers 19:21 and 21:15).

The problem is spiritual formation is ultimately not attractional. I mean, what’s attractional about a cross?

Calling, not Comfort

And so if our strategy is attraction, at best we are playing a bait-and-switch game in order to get someone to grow spiritually. At worst we are intentionally lying to them upfront and hoping they forgive you on the back end. And most of all we start to look far more like American salesmen than we do little-Christs.

Jesus was never concerned with attracting people. He was concerned with calling people.

It’s fascinating because we can see all of the negative side effects of this sort of model at play in our churches today, but then are scared to do anything different. It’s easier to boast about numbers on the front end than deal with how many are leaving the church on the back end after they find their experience lacking.

When someone is attracted to something, as soon as that attraction goes away they have no reason to stay. However, when someone feels called to something, lack of attraction doesn’t factor into their decision to stay.

Attraction may have brought crowds to Jesus. But calling is what led Jesus to the cross.

Good Growth, Bad Growth

Our over-fascination with numbers has led to all sorts of problems in our understanding of spiritual formation. Not only is the attractional model not producing long-term results, but it’s causing us to quantify spiritual growth or discipleship in odd ways: like offering sequenced classes (as if spiritual growth happens in a straight line), like not taking our time in someone’s spiritual growth but just throwing them into roles of leadership, or like assuming whatever is numerically growing must be healthy.

The reality is that things in nature that grow the fastest and get the biggest are not always healthy and fruitful. Two examples: weeds and tumors.

Yet the narrative in the American church is unmistakable: if your group is not big and does not experience fast growth at some point, you’re not healthy or fruitful.

That’s a tough standard to meet. Even Jesus after 3 years with his disciples was struggling with numeric growth…should make us wonder what the experts today would say about him…

Relationships Matter

Spiritual formation ultimately is not defined by the measurements and strategies of man. This is why Jesus wasn’t offering his disciples a business plan (as if discipleship is a multilevel marketing scheme) but rather relationships. He knew that spiritual formation only truly happens in the context of relationships forged over long periods of time.

In fact, it was Paul who pointed this out in the life of Timothy when he reminded him of how he had been spiritually formed by his grandmother and mother (2 Timothy 1:5).

It’s long past time that as Christians in America we jettisoned these Americanized understandings of spiritual growth and return to the model Jesus lived out and the early church multiplied.

As we close out Lent together and set our trajectory to the cross, death, and resurrection of Jesus, let us read a story that best exemplifies the depth of spiritual growth we see in the life of Jesus that we desperately need in our lives today:

“And He came out and proceeded as was His custom to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples also followed Him. When He arrived at the place, He said to them, ‘Pray that you may not enter into temptation.’ And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, ‘Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.’ Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.” (Luke 22:39-44)

 

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Do We Look More American than Christian? Part 6

Why have we sacrificed our souls for some earthly version of success?

Part 6: Gaining success, Losing my soul.

If our actions reveal:

  • We believe professional success is more important than spiritual success.
  • We spend more time in Church meetings than Gospel conversations.
  • We prioritize planning events over gathering for prayer.

Then the reality is:

We are gaining the world, but losing our souls.

How have we missed this? Why have we sacrificed our souls for some earthly version of success? What is it about the temptation of being popular in the American psyche that it outweighs our true need of being fully known and fully loved? (Check out the song “Known” by Tauren Wells).

Where your treasure is…

Who wouldn’t want the eternal things over the temporary things?

And yet, we find ourselves (“like a dog returning to its vomit” – Proverbs 26:11) in the same cycles of seeking after the things Jesus’s own disciples sought more than they sought Him (Mark 10:37).

We find ourselves wanting the external miracles more than we desire to see a deep transformation within ourselves and others (John 6:26-40).

We find ourselves chasing after earthy things that will only produce temporary results instead of spiritual things that can produce eternal results (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Step 1: Admit I have a problem.

In this moment it would be easy to point fingers at someone else’s life or someone else’s ministry. But it starts with me. It starts with you. It starts with us together learning to focus on our souls and the souls of others more than human measurements of success.

The church world is not any less susceptible to the worship of success over the concern for people’s souls. And we as the American church, I believe, have traded our soul to gain success.

Repent, and believe the Gospel.

So, what do we do about it? How do we gain our souls and lose success?

First, we die to our own “churchy version” of the American dream:
God being the one who prospers me in primarily my earthly life (as opposed to my eternal life). That what garners attention is big buildings and budgets. That what counts as successful are performance stages with audiences. Not to mention the book deals, the platinum worship albums, and the seeking of social media influencer status.

Second, we recover the dream of God for His people:

“Come, let us return to the Lord.
He has torn us to pieces;
now he will heal us.
He has injured us;
now he will bandage our wounds.
In just a short time he will restore us,
so that we may live in his presence.
Oh, that we might know the Lord!
Let us press on to know him.
He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn
or the coming of rains in early spring.”
“O Israel and Judah,
what should I do with you?” asks the Lord.
“For your love vanishes like the morning mist
and disappears like dew in the sunlight.
I sent my prophets to cut you to pieces—
to slaughter you with my words,
with judgments as inescapable as light.
I want you to show love,
not offer sacrifices.
I want you to know me
more than I want burnt offerings.”
Hosea 6:1-6

We put all this effort into doing great things for God in the name of God that ultimately will burn up with the rest of this world. Remember, Jesus shifted the focus from the physical Temple to people as God’s Temple – meaning all physical things become secondary to people’s souls. And what attracts people to Jesus is not the building or experience, but the actual people living out the Gospel (Acts 2:42-47).

This Lent, let’s lay down our visions of earthly grandeur and reclaim God’s vision of eternal glory. May we be willing to “lose” success in the eyes of man in order to gain our souls – and the souls of others – in the eyes of God. Hear this critique from the words of two Christian musicians:

“Check it out,
The paparazzi flashes, and that they think that it’s you,
But they don’t know that who you are is not what you do,
True, we get it twisted when we peek at the charts,
Yo before we part from the start,
Where’s your heart?
You a pimp, hustler?
Tell me what’s your title,
America has no more stars, now we call them idols,
You sit idle while we teach prosperity,
The first thing to prosper should be inside of me.
We’re free…
Not because of .22s on the range,
But Christ came in range, we said yes now we changed,
Not the same, even though I made a fall,
Since I got that call, no more Saul, now I’m Paul.

I don’t wanna gain the whole world, and lose my soul”

“Lose My Soul” by tobyMac (feat. Kirk Franklin, Mandisa)

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Do We Look More American than Christian? Part 5

Part 5: The Numbers Game

We’ve seen a conversation in politics recently around whether the popular vote should matter more than the electoral vote. That debate reveals an ever present desire in our society to focus our attention on high-populated areas as if they are “more significant” than less-populated areas.

I think the farmers who provide significantly for our country have a valuable opinion about this topic…

I don’t think it’s unrelated that some of Jesus’ most important explanations of the spread of the Gospel and how the kingdom of God shows up on earth are agricultural. Here are a couple:

Matthew 13:3-9 – “He told many stories in the form of parables, such as this one: “Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seeds. As he scattered them across his field, some seeds fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate them. Other seeds fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seeds sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. But the plants soon wilted under the hot sun, and since they didn’t have deep roots, they died. Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants. Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted! Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.”

John 15:1-8 – “I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father.”

Farms & Gardens Matter

It’s fascinating that over the last generation many kids in the suburbs and urban areas are having to be taught where their food comes from. Since the advent of modern supermarkets and grocery stores, many people in high populated areas have become more and more disconnected from nature and the way things were created by God to work.

So now, classes take field trips to farms and there has been a whole push for community gardens and gardening at schools. Why? Because we recognized that we cannot get everything we need as humans from the commercialized life. In fact, the commercialized life is really only viable as long as an agricultural life flourishes…

The question then becomes: Is the same true of the spiritual realities for the American Church? Is the commercialized model of church lacking something that agricultural models of churches still understand?

The Church Superstore

Let’s be honest about a perception in the modern American Church: We have started to believe that what happens in the highly populated areas is more valuable than what happens in the less populated areas.

Why is it that the voices, models, leadership styles, etc. that come out of churches in those areas garner greater attention?

Why do the pastors of those churches end up on conference stages at a higher rate?

Why do we glorify the numbers of those churches (when percentage wise they may not necessarily be reaching people at a higher rate but many times just have more numbers to count)?

But here’s a question in response to this trend:

What do we still have to learn from a Messiah who remained relatively obscure for 30 years and spent 3 years with a small number of committed disciples before He even accomplished His own purposes?

Small Town Jesus

Honestly this focus on numbers doesn’t surprise anyone, probably not even Jesus. I mean, he was born in Bethlehem and not Jerusalem… (Micah 5:2 – “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel, whose origins are in the distant past, will come from you on my behalf.”)

The problem isn’t inherently with large churches. It’s in value-based assumptions concerning small churches. Many great movements of God in America have started in smaller contexts (See You At The Pole). In fact, the Methodist Movement (during the Second Great Awakening), which transformed our country during the 1800’s, found much of its most rapid growth thru circuit riders who went into pioneer communities.

Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe we should be asking the leaders of small churches what ministry should look like and looking to the smaller contexts for answers about the Christian life. Maybe we’ve overlooked some of the most important lessons of what the Messiah is doing in the small villages because we are too busy looking for Him in Jerusalem…

So as we reflect on Lent and the events coming up as we get closer to Easter, let’s remember that most of Jesus’ own disciples deserted Him as He accomplished His mission – and certainly the crowds did.

Our desire to gather crowds, and our glorification of the models which do, must end at the cross. Our focus must be on the mission of multiplying disciples. And that sort of a movement usually starts with smaller groups of believers. There is no “trickle down” effect for spiritual awakening – actually, it’s usually the opposite as you track historic moves of God.

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Do We Look More American than Christian? Part 4

We typically stake our faith in God on His ability to move quickly. We don’t typically look for how He moves over longer periods of time.

Part 4: Missionaries to America

I once heard someone tell a story about a Messianic Jewish Rabbi and a Christian Pastor. The Rabbi asked the Pastor: “Do you believe in a fast God or a slow God?” The Pastor didn’t understand the question. The Rabbi went on to explain that for the Messianic Jewish people, God was always at work but just usually over a long period of time (references: Egyptian slaves for 400 years before being rescued, in exile for just as long before the Messiah came, etc.). The Pastor then responded: “Well, then I guess I do believe in a fast God.”

I think most Christians in America would echo that pastor’s sentiment.

We typically stake our faith in God on His ability to move quickly. We don’t typically look for how He moves over longer periods of time. And I would argue this has far more to do with our being Americans than it does being Christians.

We look more American than Christian when we act as if God only moves fast (and typically on our timetable).

America is not a Christian Nation

So why does this matter? Because it shapes everything about how we think about and plan to reach the “unreached people groups” in our very own country.

Why do we support foreign missionaries in long-term strategies to reach “unreached people groups” but not our own country’s missionaries? It is interesting that both our standards and expectations are so vastly different for people we call “foreign missionaries” and people we call “church planters.”

In one breath we tell someone sensing a call to new work: “Go reach the unreached!” And if they are a foreign missionary we give them all kinds of grace to learn those unreached people in their context, build relationships over time, and ultimately make disciples in such a way that it produces a local expression of the Church. But if you are a church planter in America, while you will be affirmed in your goal, you will not find as much affirmation in using the same process as your counterparts going into foreign mission fields.

Instead, the expectations will be very American: we want results that are fast, big, and quickly scalable. This is fascinating considering the work to reach unreached people is not any different no matter where you go in the world. But for some reason in America we somehow think reaching people should be inherently easier and quicker than anywhere else in the world. Do you find this mindset as fascinating as I do?

We look more American than we do Christian when we think God’s kingdom functions like customer acquisition in the business world.

Putting our Money where our Mission is…

We see this most easily in how and where we spend our money internally as existing local churches and how we distribute our financial support as sending organizations.

We can easily justify large expenses on the kids areas of church buildings that get used once a week (I mean I’m talking 10’s and 100’s of thousands of dollars), but can’t justify spending that money (or even a small percentage of it) on models of the church that would interact with those families daily? It’s odd to me that just because a ministry doesn’t fit the brick and mortar model the church has sanctified since the Roman Empire it somehow doesn’t justify as a significant venture worthy of financial backing.

Shouldn’t we be saddened that the models which follow most closely the call for us to be incarnate in our world are seemingly the least supported financially? Why can we more easily justify spending $100,000 on a sound system for our building but not $10,000 on a ministry that doesn’t look like the “big box” model of church? Why can we justify spending 10’s of thousands of dollars on foreign mission-cations that we will never get back but not that same money on microloans for people trying to make it in our communities (because we’re afraid they may not pay the loan back)?

I had a friend recently lament how much easier it is for many American churches to successfully launch building programs (where they will construct a facility and try to convince people to use it) than it is for them to financially support building the kingdom of God in the midst of their community.

We look more American than Christian when we will fund raise and invest significant amounts of money into buildings and technology but not in supporting missionaries to the very people groups we claim to want to reach in our own country.

You are a Missionary

We are called to be missionaries to our own unreached people right here in America (or at least to support people who feel called to be). So why don’t we act like that? Unfortunately, the answer is because we look far more like Americans than we do Christians.

Maybe during Lent God can remind us that His work in our country is no different than His work around the world. It takes time. It takes intentionality. And it takes prioritizing the mission and letting God take care of the results:

“I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow.” 1 Corinthians 3:6

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