Postmodernism is a movement in the arts, architecture and literature.
Postmodernity (pronounced so it rhymes with maternity) is the perceived shift away from modernity and rationalism that has given birth to the apparent ‘contradictions’ of our current Western culture.
It drives me nuts when people in general (and Christians in specific, especially supposed philosophy experts) use these words interchangeably. Postmodernism was a very intentional development in the arts and literature.
My co-laborer and friend, Darin Shaw, has started posting a series of thoughts called “A Preacher on Preaching” highlighting some of his thoughts on sermon preparation and delivery. (You can catch some thoughts here and here.)
I thought I would do a sort of parallel series of posts from my perspective on the topic. Diversity is the key to unity, and as you will see by reading both our posts, although we have some similarities and shared practices, there are also some differences.
To start, let’s begin with some of the things I really don’t like about most of what is considered preaching in our culture.
Pet Peeve #1 – Sermonizing
First off, if you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know that I prefer the idea of a homily over a sermon. A homily is supposed to be a simple companion to the Scriptures while a sermon is often meant for the ecclesia militans (church militant) of the medieval Crusaders. Since I’m not a Crusader and I am not medieval, I prefer the ancient practice of homily.
What does that mean for sermon preparation? It means I read little or no commentary on the texts I share with our congregation. It is three times more likely that I will make some kind of pop culture than it is for me to quote commentators or ‘great preachers’ of any age. This sounds awful I suppose, but I really don’t care what they had to say.
Instead, I will read the entire book I will be speaking on, often several times and over several weeks. First, I read it just to read it. Then, I go over it and make notes in a spiral bound notebook. While doing that, I continually review the passages I have read previously. Then, I read it again, organizing and adding to my notes before putting together my schedule of teaching the book. While preaching through the book, I will often go back over the book again – sometimes every week – to make sure I am staying in line with the author’s intention and not getting distracted by my tangent thoughts.
Pet Peeve #2 – Scholarizing
Second, you should know that I don’t preach exegetically. For the most part, I don’t think the people in the chairs care whether I can parse Greek verbs (I can) or pronounce Hebrew names properly (I do). They want the eternal truth of God’s word applied to today, and that’s what I am called to do every Sunday. Why spend forty five minutes explaining the nuances most people couldn’t care less about? I do all that behind the scenes.
I do study exegetically. I apply knowledge of original languages in my reading of the text. I often read passages in the original languages, looking for nuances and turns of phrase that are lost in translation. It is not uncommon for me to puzzle over the use of a word or phrase and do a lot of cultural and historical research (not in commentaries but in [gasp!] secular sources).
Find a peculiar Greek word? Research it; learn it; check it out. I tend to jump to the Perseus Project’s vast archives and search for word usages whenever I can. But tell everyone everything I found? Nope. I might do five to ten hours of research on a word or idea, but when it comes out of my mouth on Sunday morning, it is rarely more than a 30-second side note.
Look, I grew up reading the New Testament in Greek. My dad was teaching me college level Greek classes in 5th grade (seriously, ask him). I took Hebrew in seminary. I love the original languages of the Bible. But I’ve got nothing to prove and nothing to gain really by showing off in the pulpit.
Pet Peeve #3 – Sublimating
How often do we major on minor texts? This Sunday, I took one of these texts head-on with Ephesians 5:22-6:9. So many preachers hit this text as if it is actually about marriage family, and employment; when in reality is about the church’s submission to Christ.
We sublimate when we downplay the actual and obvious themes of the greater context in favor of some minor agenda we need to justify. This is also called proof-texting although my own word for it is myopegesis.
Pet Peeve #4 – Spiritualizing
Most of the Bible is simply recorded life. Sure, the prophets have a lot of concepts that look forward to Christ and then beyond. Yes, the Revelation is difficult to interpret and understand. But that does not give us permission to read the ancient stories of the Old Testament and turn them all into morality plays. With the exception of Job (probably) and Song of Solomon (definitely), they’re NOT. The records of the Hebrew Scriptures are not meant to be reinterpreted to benefit whatever moralistic agenda a church has. They just are what they are and need to be cherished as that.
I’ve seen people butcher the story of Esther by judging her actions against modernist Christian codes of ethics. I’ve seen David used as justification for homosexuality. I’ve seen Moses reverse interpreted so much that I’m surprised any of the historical man exists after you strip away the veneer layers of interpretations.
Yeah, I have some strong opinions about some things.
I’m not the biggest fans of pulpits, Lady Ga-Ga or cigarette smoke. I rarely listen to music that does not involve a guitar, I don’t read the Twilight books because vampires don’t sparkle, and I think every law-abiding citizen in America should be free to carry a handgun on their hip. When I was younger, it was not uncommon for me to get into people’s faces over the version of the Bible they used, whether they liked Steve Green’s voice or not, and which football team they cheered for.
Opinions are very strong things. Often, we don’t have rational reasons for our opinions although sometimes we do. A lot of the time, opinions have more to do with the way we see the world – the lens we view things through – than they do with the inherently good or bad nature of the subject.
The word opinion comes from the Latin word opinari, which means to think or to deem. In other words, it is simply the way you think about a particular subject.
Everyone has a different thought path, the way the arrive at opinions and arguing about the opinion without exploring the path that we used to arrive at it is meaningless. And, as I already pointed out, sometimes we don’t even know our own thought path that brought us to an opinion.
Thankfully, the writer of Proverbs reminds us: “A man’s ways are in full view for YHWH, and he [God] examines all his paths.” [Proverbs 5:21, NIV] God sees our ways, even if we don’t. He knows our minds.
And here’s the thing, we DO NOT know his. The writer of Deuteronomy put these words into Moses’ mouth: “The secret things belong to YHWH our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow the words of his law.” [Deuteronomy 29:29, NIV]
God knows our ways and the source of our opinions. We do not know God’s ways, but often he provides us with his opinions [the revealed things] to follow. Now, we can either argue with him – which will be pointless because we cannot know his ways – or we can accept that his thought path far exceeds our own and his opinions are the right ones.
Filed under: Doesn't Fit in a Category, Personal, Theology, Things We Shouldn't Discuss
One of the big trends among my contemporaries is sermons and sermon series designed to shock people. They do topical series on things not normally discussed ‘in church’ – subjects like sex (in various forms) seem to come up a lot.
On the whole, I avoid doing series on things like this. My reasoning is pretty straightforward, my place as a pastor is a place of kingdom leadership. What I am called to call people to is something bigger than themselves. Teaching series that deal with shocking things are designed to either 1) make people feel guilty about their sin or 2) make people feel ok about things they weren’t sure about being sin.
The way I see it, neither of those things are the reason I was called into ministry. The calling of a senior pastor is to the teaching of the Word of God for the ‘building up’ of the Church of God. For me at least, these shock value sermons are not the best way to do this. Sure, you might get a crowd and people might even make professions of faith, but is that really what I am called to do?
Shock value sermons go back quite a way. 19th century revivalists did stuff like this all the time. It continued into the 20th and now the 21st centuries. I remember a story about J. Frank Norris, a baptist minister in the early 20th century. There was a car accident outside his church one weekend, and one of the drivers died. The man had been driving drunk, so Norris had the brain put in a jar and displayed it on his pulpit during a message.
Yeah – shock value is nothing new.
This is not a knock on those who do these kinds of series. I have good friends who do them, and I pray that their preaching connects people with Christ. It just isn’t me. I’m not interested in going out of my way to shock people. I would much rather simply preach Jesus Christ, and if he shocks people, so be it.
Recently I started reviewing for Waterbrook/Multnomah, in addition to my gig with Thomas Nelson. The first book I received to review is Primal, the third book by the pastor of National Community Church, Mark Batterson.
Primal is one of those books that been hyped in pastoral circles. Batterson’s previous two books – In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day and Wild Goose Chase – are sitting on the shelves of pretty much every pastor I know. Everyone was anticipating it.
With all that said, it does not live up to the hype. The central theme of Primal appears to be a call for some kind of new reformation in the church. That is what Mark Batterson says in the first couple of chapters, although the rest of the book seems only loosely connected to the theme.
I felt the Batterson’s prose was somewhat disjointed. He jumped from idea to idea but there was not a lot of internal flow. Personally, this reduced my ability to engage with his subject matter which I felt was worthwhile.
In short, the book does not live up to its hype or, to be honest, its potential. It could have been hyped a little less and edited much better.
In return for this review, Random House (Waterbrook/Multnomah) provided a free copy of this book. To purchase the book, you can click the image above or the link here.
Previously, we posted about Ten Commandments for Ministry Failure.
Today, we want to talk about ways to guarantee you never see God’s vision for the Church.
First, let’s unpack the term vision this way:
Vision is an image of the future you believe God sees for you. At it’s core, vision is getting in harmony with God’s imagination and seeing what he sees.
With that being said, here are ways to make sure you never see God’s vision.
- Don’t waste your time talking to God. Invest your time in everything but praying and listening to what God has to say.
- Become obsessed with maintaining the status quo. Make it your goal in ministry to just keep what is going.
- Get buried in the details. Spend 90% of your time doing the day to day so you never have any time to dream God’s dreams.
- Become passionate about anything but God’s glory. It does not matter whether it is good, bad or indifferent, if your focus in ministry is anything but the glory of God, it is in the wrong place.
- Use my, I, me and mine when referring to your church or ministry. If you own it, then the only vision that will be expressed is yours.
I’m far from the perfect pastor; but I do know that a few minutes in God’s presence brings all of my vain imaginations, and my empty imaginations are not good things. And the same is true for all of us, in all ministries.
As we approach the daunting task of merging Heritage Baptist Church and Grace Baptist Church, let’s be reminded that we are pursuing God’s vision and not our own.
So far, the vision that I am getting is not a grandiose one; and it does not make for a snappy vision statement. We need to be focused on uniting Christ’s church right now. His vision for us is one of unity and healing right now. And as that vision becomes a reality among us, I believe he will put another, grander vision before us.
I was driving through Manchester one afternoon when I saw this door and I had to stop and take a picture. Look at it closely. It says “Majestic Arms Hotel” but it says it in worn, poorly placed adhesive letters. The door is dinged and nicked, and the building itself is in pretty rough shape. But who wouldn’t want to stay at a place called “Majestic Arms”?
It got me thinking about a lot of things, including the hotel that Elwood Blues lived at in the film The Blues Brothers (although that was just an ADD moment).
How often do we meet things like this in life. It has a great name; it sounds fantastic; but the reality has nothing to do with the name. And then I started thinking about one of YHWH’s commandments to Israel. He was quite plain actually:
Do not take the name of YHWH, your God, in vain.
What did he mean? Contrary to popular parental advice, he did not mean that we are not supposed to use the Lord’s name as a swear word. It just does not mean that. YHWH was commanding his people to not slap his name over their way of life, not to synchronize being a “YHWHIST” with being whatever they felt like.
In other words, don’t slap the name of the one great God on the shabby practices of human religion and behavior.
This is what the owner of this hotel has done. The hotel was probably once pretty classy, but now it is just a run down piece of urban decay. It does not deserve the name. The name has become empty. And this is what happens in the lives of many people who take YHWH’s majestic name and slap it on their lives without really changing. The name means nothing. It is vain.
Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Your name transcends all things. Help me to remember that it is your name I bear in my life and actions. Help me to refurbish and renew my life according to your Word and to not simply be an empty shell with your name plastered on my decaying door.
Filed under: Church, Other Bloggers, Theology | Tags: brian mclaren, gospel, jesus, salvation, the nines
Yesterday, I watched Brian McLaren present his view of the Gospel as “Your kingdom come to earth.” Brian is one of my favorite heretics. His beliefs are heavily influenced by deconstructionist views of Scripture, and always appear to be foundationally sound at first. Unfortunately, his presentation often obscures his view of Scripture. His view of Jesus is very closely related to that of the Jesus Seminar, which views Jesus primarily as a good teacher while getting muddy on whether Jesus was who he claimed to be and whether the Scriptures are genuinely authoritative or not.
Taking Jesus’ words in Matthew 6 as his basis, McLaren essentially stated in his talk that people misunderstand the gospel when they make it about your eternal destiny. He believes that Jesus believed the Gospel was about bringing the Kingdom to earth – in every sense.
Certainly, the present tense of the gospel is neglected in much of the evangelical churches of the world. As I said in one of my recent messages, what God desires more than a big party at the end of the world, is a people who are connected to Him.
My disagreement with McLaren lies in his oversimplified reliance on Jesus’ words. I know, this sounds like blasphemy, but it is true. I think that McLaren has exalted Jesus’ words over Jesus’ life. He has essentially cut the apostles’ teachings entirely out of the gospel, reducing it to Jesus’ teachings. As I said, on the surface, his statements seem foundationally sound, but I have a question about the way McLaren quotes Jesus.
Was Jesus presenting a normative truth to us, or was he being catalytic?
Jesus’ words are not normative of the Gospel since the Gospel is about him. There can be no doubt that Paul and the other apostles believed the Good News was about Jesus. To reduce the Good News to a statement that is not about Jesus, even if it is said by Jesus, is to rob the Gospel of its core truth. Thus, Jesus’ statement is not normative.
If it is not normative, is it catalytic? A catalyst is a material introduced to a reaction to accelerate the reaction. The catalyst remains unchanged through the reaction but affects all other reagents.
Jesus entered the entire human dialogue as a catalyst. He transformed those around him, preparing them for the work ahead of them. Jesus entered the world and presented a teaching of the world that exists in him, but it does not predicate belief in him. In order to live in the “kingdom come” stage, we must first accept the gospel. Jesus’ words are the teachings of the result of people’s interaction with Him, and not the definition of what it means to interact with Him.
Let’s put it this way. Jesus’ life IS the gospel. His teachings are for those who follow the Gospel. The Gospel is not confined to what Jesus taught. Jesus’ teachings are the economy of the Kingdom, but He is the Door, the Way, the Life of the Kingdom. We can only approach his teachings through faith in His life, death and resurrection.
McLaren’s version of the gospel involves nothing supernatural and certainly nothing divine about Jesus. It says that Jesus came to teach, not to forgive and heal. It says that essentially Jesus’ work was not the redemption of mankind but the teaching of mankind. This simply does not line up with the teachings of the apostles.
It seems like lately church leaders have started to define success in interesting ways. Everything possible is used as a definition of success – from numbers to square footage to the latest technology. It is even defined by our style of dress. (Who hasn’t seen a trendy pastor wearing an outfit that says, ‘I could dress up, but instead I’m wearing this to show how cool I am’?) Even repentance and brokenness has become a trendy way to prove how successful you are in your ministry.
To say I am frustrated by all of this, especially when I buy into it, is an understatement. Maybe there is just something broken in my pastor motor, but none of that impresses me. I have watched pastors show off all the gimmicks in the world – and I guess I am just burnt out with all of it.
What I want to know is not how cool you are or how successful you are but what is at the core of your being. I don’t want to know about your church’s vision statement because to be frank, corporations with bigger payrolls and ad agencies can write vision statements too. I don’t care about your light and sound show or your cool series on sex. What I want to know is what fire burns inside your inner being – that part of you that you mask in other words to make it sound good.
Today, I failed again. I failed not because I sinned but because I looked at who I am and what I am doing and compared it to the real deep, unspoken core of what Jesus is doing or trying to do in me and I found myself wanting. It has nothing to do with comparing myself to the Scriptures but to the Living Jesus and His Spirit who is at work in me.
With everything going on in our lives and in our churches, it is so easy to be consumed by the outward expectations or challenges. It is even easy to be consumed with demonstrating your own humility and spirituality. (Just ask the Pharisees. Heck, ask the DISCIPLES!) We take what Jesus is fueling in us and we wrap our own expectations and dreams around it, transforming the raw power of the Living God into manageable, humanized thinking.
How do you measure success?
To me, success is not about anything external. External success means nothing (ask Ezekiel or Jeremiah). Aligning who you are with what Jesus has built into the core of your being – that is success. Everything else – every expectation, every pressure, every weakness – should be crushed down, bagged up and thrown into the incinerator.
I don’t consider myself a success because I fail to live out that core passion and vision. I try; but I fail. And unlike those who embrace this simplistic BE HAPPY religion that often passes for Christianity and the social clubs that pass for church, I have no illusions that I have succeeded in any meaning of the word.
Tomorrow morning, I hope I stand in front of the congregation as a failure – because when I stand there as a successful clergyman, I have failed at the only task that matters – honoring and glorifying Jesus.
Recently, I’ve encountered a few articles on the leaders of local churches. N.T. Wright put together a great article on why he is opposed to homosexuals being ordained to the ministry, and Jimmy Carter discussed leaving the Southern Baptist Convention over the issue of equality for women in ministry.
I encountered these articles more as a writer for www.examiner.com but they got the gears moving in conjunction with my own preparation to lead our church into revising our constitution and by-laws. We have recently completed a model of leadership that we believe is reflective of the biblical teachings of a a male-led (but not dominated) church government.
In our egalitarian society which seems so focused on redefining justice as “everyone gets the same thing and can do the same stuff”, how should the church be led? Who should lead it?
Let me first begin with the statement we ultimately created in our ruling documents for our local church:
We unashamedly declare ourselves to be followers of Jesus Christ, united under His authority and the authority of his original, chosen apostles who gave us the New Testament as a standard for faith and practice as a church. (“Articles of Faith and Practice”)
The congregation of members shall be the final temporal authority within the local church, under the eternal authority of Jesus Christ and the Word of God. This authority shall be normally exercised through the election of officers who govern and serve the church. (“Constitution”, Article IV, Section 1)
The leadership of the church shall be vested in the Elders who are responsible for governing the church, teaching the Word of God and tending the flock of God in this church. The elders shall be equal in authority buy specialized in function. All vocational pastors shall be elders, as outlined in the By-Laws of the church. (“Constitution”, Article IV, Section 2, Paragraph A)
Qualifications and Work of the Elders: Elders and nominees for Elder shall be qualified for the office as specified in the Bible. We believe the eldership is reserved for godly men. [1 Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:6-9; 1 Peter 5:1-4]. (“By-Laws of Heritage Baptist Church, Article II, Section 2)
You can read the entire section on church governance in our ruling documents here.
Briefly stated, we believe that the church is first and foremost God’s. God is the sovereign over all and determines the order of everything. Second, the church is Jesus’ body. He is our head, speaking to us through His Spirit. Third, Jesus established the Apostles who lead the church through the New Testament, which was given to them by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
In human terms, the church congregation listens to the Spirit’s direction (through Scripture and prayer) and chooses qualified elders to lead them. Among these elders, a single elder is chosen as the ‘senior pastor’ – the first among equals. The plurality and the choice of a single, vocational elder as the first among equals is vital for rule as a community.
We will be exploring this more in depth during our Sunday worship gathering. Make sure you check it out!
