Book Plans

It is with reservation I write today. I haven’t blogged here for some time and its on purpose in case you were curious. Over the course of the last several years I have been tossing around the idea of writing a book. I have stopped and I have started again numerous times. Of late, I have been stirred and shaken, its time to go for it. I had been sitting on it until I clearly saw where I wanted to go recently.

The last couple years in particular have been good in terms of writing on my blog here and elsewhere. My blogging has provided an avenue to share in so in ways that have been both helpful for me and hopefully beneficial and encouraging to those who have read. It is my intention to return to blogging, but I am currently unable as my time is needed elsewhere as I finish my book proposal and seek out an agent.

Hoping to have a good report soon.

Michael Spencer on “The Coming Evangelical Collapse”

I haven’t mentioned my affection for fellow blogger Michael Spencer (aka imonk) here on this blog to my knowledge, but I have elsewhere.  For those interested in the rise (and the eventual demise of evangelicalism many of us are predicting), the thoughts and observations Spencer makes are interesting—agree or disagree—he has some pointed and chilling things to say.

The following was posted in the March 10th 2009 edition of The Christian Science Monitor.

Oneida, Ky. – We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the “Protestant” 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I’m convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

Why is this going to happen?

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to “do good” is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.

6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.

7. The money will dry up.

What will be left?

•Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success – resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith.

•Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the “conversion” of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

•A small band will work hard to rescue the movement from its demise through theological renewal. This is an attractive, innovative, and tireless community with outstanding media, publishing, and leadership development. Nonetheless, I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches.

•The emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, becoming part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision.

•Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear.

•Charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity will become the majority report in evangelicalism. Can this community withstand heresy, relativism, and confusion? To do so, it must make a priority of biblical authority, responsible leadership, and a reemergence of orthodoxy.

•Evangelicalism needs a “rescue mission” from the world Christian community. It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity?

•Expect a fragmented response to the culture war. Some Evangelicals will work to create their own countercultures, rather than try to change the culture at large. Some will continue to see conservatism and Christianity through one lens and will engage the culture war much as before – a status quo the media will be all too happy to perpetuate. A significant number, however, may give up political engagement for a discipleship of deeper impact.

Is all of this a bad thing?

Evangelicalism doesn’t need a bailout. Much of it needs a funeral. But what about what remains?

Is it a good thing that denominations are going to become largely irrelevant? Only if the networks that replace them are able to marshal resources, training, and vision to the mission field and into the planting and equipping of churches.

Is it a good thing that many marginal believers will depart? Possibly, if churches begin and continue the work of renewing serious church membership. We must change the conversation from the maintenance of traditional churches to developing new and culturally appropriate ones.

The ascendency of Charismatic-Pentecostal-influenced worship around the world can be a major positive for the evangelical movement if reformation can reach those churches and if it is joined with the calling, training, and mentoring of leaders. If American churches come under more of the influence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Africa and Asia, this will be a good thing.

Will the evangelicalizing of Catholic and Orthodox communions be a good development? One can hope for greater unity and appreciation, but the history of these developments seems to be much more about a renewed vigor to “evangelize” Protestantism in the name of unity.

Will the coming collapse get Evangelicals past the pragmatism and shallowness that has brought about the loss of substance and power? Probably not. The purveyors of the evangelical circus will be in fine form, selling their wares as the promised solution to every church’s problems. I expect the landscape of megachurch vacuity to be around for a very long time.

Will it shake lose the prosperity Gospel from its parasitical place on the evangelical body of Christ? Evidence from similar periods is not encouraging. American Christians seldom seem to be able to separate their theology from an overall idea of personal affluence and success.

The loss of their political clout may impel many Evangelicals to reconsider the wisdom of trying to create a “godly society.” That doesn’t mean they’ll focus solely on saving souls, but the increasing concern will be how to keep secularism out of church, not stop it altogether. The integrity of the church as a countercultural movement with a message of “empire subversion” will increasingly replace a message of cultural and political entitlement.

Despite all of these challenges, it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, “Christianity loves a crumbling empire.”

We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.

We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.

I’m not a prophet. My view of evangelicalism is not authoritative or infallible. I am certainly wrong in some of these predictions. But is there anyone who is observing evangelicalism in these times who does not sense that the future of our movement holds many dangers and much potential?

• Michael Spencer is a writer and communicator living and working in a Christian community in Kentucky. He describes himself as “a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality.” This essay is adapted from a series on his blog, InternetMonk.com.

Good Theology

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

-The Nicene Creed

The State of Evangelical Christianity

           

If you are at all interested in what an insightful and intelligent theologian has to say — I’d heartily recommend this interview.  Dr. R.C. Sproul has been a hero of sorts of mine for over 15 years now.  He outlines here several of the current challenges facing us younger evangelicals. 

 

Simple Atonement

…The biblical gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us.

The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accept penalties which belong to man alone (John Stott, The Cross of Christ, page 159).

Atonement comes down to simple terms: God himself in the person of Jesus Christ hung and suffered in my place.  He took my sins upon himself.  And he died my death.  Essentially, he stood in the shoes I would have otherwise been required to wear.  Atonement simply means my redemption. 

4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons (Galatians 4:4-5, ESV).

I’m not sure why we have all the debate about the nature of atonement because it seems to me harder than the side of a barn to miss.

John Piper: The Gospel in Six Minutes

If the gospel message has been more powerfully proclaimed in six minutes — I haven’t heard it done. 

HT: reformation21.

Seeking the God Who Is

To the spiritual perplexity which exercised so many of the rarest souls of the nineteenth century, God appeared as a Being whom men desired to find but could not. But such a formula, though it truly represented one side of their situation, can never represent the whole of any human situation. For God is also a Being whom it ill suits any of us to find but from whom we cannot escape. Part of the reason why men cannot find God is that there is that in Him which they do not desire to find, so that the God whom they are seeking and cannot find is not the God who truly is. Perhaps we could not fail to find God, if it were really God whom we were seeking. And indeed the deepest reality of the situation is that contained in the discovery, which alone is likely at last to resolve our perplexity, that when we were so distressfully seeking that which was not really God, the true God had already found us, though at first we did not know that it was He by whom we had been found. There is a saying, ‘Be careful what you seek; you might find it.’ And some who have sought God only as a complacent ally of their own ambitions have found Him a consuming fire.   –John Baillie (1886-1960), Scottish theologian

Parking Lot Gospel

It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.  – II Samuel 11:1 

Lives aren’t built to change at Target on a Friday.  But sometimes they do.

I had meant it to be a routine trip to round out the week, and try to get a day’s jump on my wife’s birthday. She turned 32 on Sunday, wanted a camera, and I tracked it down at a Target six or seven miles from my house. I went in, without hesitation pulled out an oft-used piece of plastic from my pocket, and bought it. Expensive, but worth it.

Minutes later, I slipped my truck into reverse and angled out of a slim parking spot. That’s when I heard the grind of metal on metal, the crinkling of a bumper, the thud of my heart. I didn’t stop the vehicle right away, as if driving a bit would make the problem go away.   

It didn’t. 

Peaking out the window, I saw the damage and knew the remedy would be costly. I had scraped the side of a Mercedes SUV. One that had a “For Sale” sign in the back window. 

In the past 18 months, I’ve had my own cars run into when they were parked. I’ve spent probably $400 or $500 to fix them. My mind works like this: perhaps it was my turn to hit and run. The owner of this Benz can afford it. No one saw me.

I began creeping away from the scene. It didn’t surprise me that I could take my foot off the brake and let the truck quietly creep through the parking lot, graciously escaping the carnage, leaving the owner to deal with it.  Turning off my heart.

But something yanked my eyes back to the big crater in the side of that Mercedes. Something asked me if I would be able to look myself in the mirror that night when I washed my face, and brushed my teeth 20 feet from my son’s crib.

The answer was yes. I probably could. But I stopped the truck anyway and asked a more important question. What would Jesus have me do? Two words — “unto others” — invaded my thoughts and held my mind. Wouldn’t let me go. Wouldn’t loosen the grip. 

So, I parked the truck back in the slim parking spot, rummaged through the glove compartment for a business card. Found one and shut the door. Opened it again to find a pen.

“Hi. I unfortunately ran into your vehicle and damaged the rear. Please call me for insurance details. John”

18 words, probably would end up costing me $40 a word or so, I figured. And so I sat there, holding that card. My name, my identity dancing on the front of it. And then I slipped the truck in reverse again and began to drive away. Card still in my hand.

Eventually, I stuck the little piece of paper with my name and number on the front and the note on the back  under the windshield wiper and crawled home hoping the owner never called.

Typically, we aren’t aware at the moment our lives have hit some notable inflection point. Though we would like them to be, such points aren’t orchestrated in an auditorium or on retreat or when the stadium is full of spectators. Inflection points happen when the stands are empty, when we ebb through banal routines and are confronted with the unexpected.  Usually, in solitude. Usually, in a hurry. Usually, off guard. This is when we ride the tipping point of a needle, ascending or descending toward a changed life.

King David. He was supposed to be with other kings that spring day when he slept with a soldier’s wife. I don’t think he figured his indulgence would become such a fateful inflection point, but it did. 

I’ve always read II Kings 11:1 to be a warning. If you are supposed to be at war, and don’t go, you’re inviting an inflection point. And not really a welcome one. In an artful brush of foreshadowing, Samuel writes of a king who decided to stay home when kings typically went to war. When kings went to work. David stayed home. His life changed.

Hitting a parked SUV — as mindless as that activity is — pulled me into a somewhat cosmic schoolroom where the lesson had everything to do with purpose and meaning and cause and effect. Reaping and sowing and golden rules. An inflection point of another kind. 

When faced with the unto-others ethic, how would I respond? Simple, almost too basic for contemplation, this ethic slapped me in the face and almost defeated me. 

Ironically, I was wading through a season of disappointment at the more formal schoolroom I had been attending: church. I was leaving the building empty of late, wishing for home runs, but settling for walks or strikeouts, an occasional single. I had grown tired of seeing the deficiencies in my leaders that I saw in myself.  It seemed that Christ was attending the 9:30 service, and gone by the time I got to the 11:00 service, he was already at lunch.

And here was Jesus, in a parking lot. As if the rear bumper of a silver Benz were all the pew I needed. 

What amazes me most is that I drove home praying that God would bless me for my obedience. I prayed that he would repay me somehow. I thought of the new house or new kitchen my wife and I had dreamed of. Thought of the lost income we had suffered when Kimberly decided to stay home full time with Jack. Thought of golf clubs and beach front. And expected God to pick a category in which he could repay me.

As if living the life of obedience was a transaction. 

The fact of the matter is the note I left ended up costing me $500. The lady who I hit, and her husband, did little to assure me that they were adequately appreciative. I probably won’t be renewing my subscription to The New Yorker this year, we’ll scale back the kitchen project, probably skip a month of retirement savings, and who knows what else. My wife took back a pair of shoes. 

God has yet to pay me back.

A couple nights later, it hit me. This is the hard part of the Gospel. The part where I could have driven away, no one would have known. Plenty of people would have done it. The part where I could have considered myriad financial constraints on my life, and concluded the responsible thing to do was bolt.

But this was God asking me, in a quite unique and mysterious way, to contribute to his kingdom. It seems quite obvious to plop such contributions in a red Salvation Army bucket, or send it in for a capital campaign needed for a new church building or ship it off to an orphanage in India. I’ve given money to buy poor kids backpacks full of school supplies. I’ve paid my way to the mission field. Gave a pair of khakis to a fellow Bible college student who needed pants.

Repairing the Mercedes was a new form of offering, hard to digest and abrasive. What if I told you I gave my tithe to some rich guy who shops at Target? What if I told you I shared the Gospel in a parking lot, when nobody was around?

It’s been particularly easy in my life to perform the Gospel when there are crowds. To slip money in the big dish that floats down the row on Sunday morning, or pray in front of my small group. I’ve found it easy to make changes to my exterior character as my infant son grew into a formative child.

But the stands were empty that day at Target.

What do I mean by stands being empty? I mean no one is around. No one is cheering.

I experienced this when training for marathons. The best part of running a marathon is the actual running of the marathon. People are cheering at every corner, as hundreds or maybe thousands of others match your steps pace for pace. There are volunteers giving water, and the finish line is filled with adoring spectators who wish they could accomplish what you did.

But marathons really happen during the 16, 18, and 20 mile training runs. 

I’ve run too many of these. They are lonely endeavors.

My Bleeding Obsession With Perfection

‘But’ — people say to me — ‘if you consider that apart from fulfillment of the Christian teaching there is no reasonable life, and if you love that reasonable life, why do you not fulfill the commands?’ I reply that I am a horrible creature and deserve blame and contempt for not fulfilling them… Blame me, and not the path I tread and show to those who ask me where in my opinion the road lies! If I know the road home and go along it drunk, staggering from side to side — does that make the road along which I go a wrong one?  –Leo Tolstoy

For a large portion of my Christian experience I lived day in and day out with this ever preset fear hanging over my head.  It finally became a weight I just couldn’t bear anymore. 

Years ago I read about the overly revered Ghandi saying that he didn’t mind Jesus so much, it was his followers who he had the problem with (what he said was this — I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ).  I think I better understand his point now (I don’t believe what he stated was meant to be as inspiring as it was to be a knock) — and on many occasions I have echoed his sentiments (even if I was looking at myself in the mirror when I have agreed).  Maybe he was on to something, while at the same time he could have expected too much. 

We do hear a lot of rumblings about how much like the heathen we Christians are.  How we go to church on Sunday and by Tuesday we are singing off the devil’s song sheet.  Then again, we get made out to be Hitler because we believe what the bible says about the sanctity of life.  Or, ask Rick Warren what it’s like to raise awareness on such a huge scale in regards to the global AIDS epidemic and do something about it and then be ostracized because you actually believe God meant what he said when he said that marriage (Matt. 19:4-6) was to be between one man and one woman (for the record, I’m no huge fan of Ricks but I do consider him a brother and admire his labors of love for the Kingdom). 

It really can be confusing.  If we do good and have an ounce of pride we are holy rollers and if we do bad we are hypocrites.  I fall into both traps.   

The problem I have with guys like Ghandi and his proteges is three-fold:

1. Jesus isn’t the only one with an issue when it comes to his followers getting into trouble from time to time and making some kind of mess while attempting to live the life of a true disciple. 

2. Hard as we try, we aren’t little Jesuses.  We haven’t been removed from our bodies of sin — yet. 

3. Every group, even Jesus-followers — includes a few pretenders.  

I have always been afraid that my life was going to be such that people would reject Jesus on account of me (due to my numerous failures as a believer, in particular).  And because of my inability to live the perfect Christian life I thought I was supposed to live, I was ultimately going to be responsible for hordes of people going to hell.  Not because I didn’t tell others about Jesus, but because I wasn’t all that good of a Christian (I have since changed my goal from being a good Christian to something altogether different by the way). 

Even when I was a good upstanding youth pastor not even involved in a hint of scandal or abuse, I had this curse.  Besides the occasional sheep beating/tongue lashing that I’d rather forget about in which I’d lay a major guilt trip on my teenage parishioners who weren’t living up to my demands at the moment — I was what you’d call ‘above reproach’.  However, as straight of a line as I walked, I knew in my heart of hearts I didn’t cut the mustard. 

Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven may be a lame slogan — it can even serve as a cop out — but it can be pretty good theology if in the right context.

For more, check out “Imperfect Christians” on The Mind’s Eye. 

What do you think?

Cross Theology

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.   -The Apostle Paul, Galatians 6:14, ESV       

The cross emphatically says that I am entirely whole, I am unconditionally loved, I am unequivocally forgiven, and I am unashamedly righteous. 

As a card carrying Protestant and proponent of a biblical and reformed theology—I easily relate to the notion that I am a sinner saved by grace, so, I get the total depravity part (after all, it is the first leg under the five legged stool called Calvinism).

However, it would be the aforementioned I struggle with.  I don’t feel very whole, or forgiven, or loved, or righteous.  I much more readily feel like a sinner, so it is not uncommon for me to revert back to my being just that I suppose.  Call me holy or call me a saint and I am liable to call you crazy.  And so, when I consider the Cross I immediately see my need for it—what I don’t see so quickly, are it’s far reaching and irreversible accomplishments that impact me and change all of what I have defined myself by.

Within the theology of the Cross resides the confidence that I am God’s own.  It is by virtue of the Cross I am not my own; I have been bought with a steep payment.

The Cross changes everything—and on a personal note, the Cross changes me.