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In my journey in the post-evangelical wilderness, I found myself confused and bewildered.  I had left as a founding elder in what was rapidly becoming one of the largest churches in our city.    I was questioning myself, wondering if I was the one confused and everyone else all understood something that I just didn’t get.  I examined many traditions, and I found theological points with which I both agreed and disagreed.  With some traditions, I had many difficulties with how adherents implement beliefs, but I still considered the traditions Christian.

Then my journey became clearer as I was able to clarify in my mind the fastest growing and most unsettling of all movements.  I say movement, because being less than 50 years old it is not old enough to be a tradition.  I had difficulty finding a name for this movement, so I started referring to as “Unitarian Christian”.

If you search this phrase in most search engines, it will lead you to websites on Unitarian Universalism, but I consider this movement to be something very different.  The name comes from the tendency of its followers to abandon the traditional concept of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in favor of a Unitarian “Jesus” which merges some attributes of each member of the Trinity.

The movement is very diverse, but it shares some of these common attributes…

• Occasionally the cross may be mentioned as a means to salvation, but the death, burial, resurrection, and future return of Christ is largely ignored.

• Instead of historical discussions on sin and grace, this movement focuses on a Jesus who helps us be successful parents, money managers, and athletes.

• The members of this group do not follow traditional denominational boundaries and are coming from charismatic groups, non-denominational churches, Baptist churches, and even from some of the historical denominations.

• The “Christian” publishing industry has almost completely been taken over by this movement.  Publishing giants Zondervan and Thomas Nelson Publishing have been purchased by the Rupert Murdoch conglomerate and control most of the “Christian” publishing industry.  This follows a common tenant of this movement of merging American style capitalism with religion.

• In the extreme, this group teaches a prosperity gospel.  However, the more common teaching is a ‘prosperity lite’ that if you praise Jesus, be a good spouse, and manage your money well then Jesus will reward you with a good middle class lifestyle.

• As far as I can tell, I haven’t found a good name for this movement.  Some names I have seen are “Prosperity Gospel”, “Prosperity Lite”, and “Consumer Christianity”.  I have been calling it “Unitarian Christianity” because of its use of a singular “Jesus”.

• I have seen many reports that in much of the developing world, this movement has now become the dominant missionary force.  In fact, it’s merging of American style capitalism and prosperity gospel seems to be very attractive to the impoverished in much of the developing world.

For me, I had to get to the place where it wasn’t about styles of music or whether I could drink coffee and eat donuts at church.  Since this movement ignores orthodox beliefs in a Triune God as well as the death, burial, resurrection, and future return of Christ, I had to question my role and participation.  My journey is mostly of finding a place for me in the religious landscape that is remaining.

As Antonio Machado wrote, “The way is made by walking,” and I guess I’ve just kept walking through the wilderness long enough that eventually a path appeared. That path remains before me, its direction and character unknown. I am certain there will be twists and turns, unexpected conditions to navigate, places where the going gets hard and slow, and other spots where astonishing vistas may appear, inviting long contemplation and wonder.

I discovered that “I’m a Christian, and I practice my faith in the Lutheran tradition.”

That’s what I wrote on November 4 in a “Wilderness Update.” I followed with a series about how the Lutheran tradition has answered many of my concerns about the culture of revivalistic evangelicalism, in which I spent most of my ministry career.

• How the Lutheran Tradition Answers Many Post-Ev Concerns I
• How the Lutheran Tradition Answers Many Post-Ev Concerns II
• How the Lutheran Tradition Answers Many Post-Ev Concerns III
• How the Lutheran Tradition Answers Many Post-Ev Concerns IV
• Ten Reasons to Love Luther (Lutheran Tradition V)

I was happy to see that this series received some notice among the Lutherans themselves, as Gene Edward Veith blogged about the posts and invited discussion. Some Lutheran commenters were appalled that I chose to affiliate with the ELCA rather than one of the more conservative synods, and in fact, as on many blog comment threads, those with strong black and white views about such things dominated the conversation. You can read Veith’s perspectives and the comments here:

• Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk becomes a Lutheran
• More from Chaplain Mike on Lutheranism
• The Beam in Our Missouri Synod Eye
• Chaplain Mike on the Sacraments

I especially appreciated this supportive word from Dr. Veith:

“Don’t get me wrong:  I’m as supportive of the LCMS and as critical of liberal theology as anyone can be.  But to say that Chaplain Mike, in joining the ELCA, is just joining mainline liberal Protestantism is manifestly not true.  What he is finding in his congregation that he is responding to so gladly is not leftwing politics or feminism or gay marriages.  Rather, as he says, he is finding the centrality of Christ, Law & Gospel, vocation, worship, the sacraments, and the other things he is discussing in his three posts.”

And he’s exactly right. The path I’ve started down puts Christ in the center of everything. It also understands the central importance of worship focused on Word and Table. Lutheranism has a strong emphasis on pastoral theology and the role of the ordained minister, as well as a wonderful perspective on the vocations God has given every believer as a priest of God. Luther, of course, is best known for his emphasis on God’s grace in Christ received by faith, and Lutherans make helpful distinctions between Law and Gospel in the Scriptures. I have especially come to appreciate and embrace the sacramental perspective that is at the heart of Lutheran spirituality. The Theology of the Cross is perhaps the Lutheran emphasis most needed in today’s American church, which is often triumphalistic, shallow, and immature.

Finally, everyone needs heroes to admire and emulate, and Martin Luther has long been one of mine. But since exploring and embracing the Lutheran way, I have come to appreciate him even more. Utterly human and remarkably flawed, he put his hope and trust in Christ alone, restored the Gospel to a corrupt church, revitalized congregations and the pastoral ministry, gave dignity to ordinary Christians, their marriages, their music, and their daily lives, and courageously spoke truth to power when necessary.

I’m still a post-evangelical, and the culture of evangelicalism remains of great interest to me. Many of my brothers and sisters continue to practice their faith in revivalistic evangelical churches. I continue to appreciate the good things I gained from my time in non-denominational churches, even though my tenure there ultimately led me to the wilderness.

Now a path has appeared, and I have begun to walk on it.

A lot of our clinicians in home health care use GPS systems to help them find their way around. Many swear by them. I think GPS’s are great too, especially for those who work at night. But I have never wanted one. We get written directions, and usually they suffice. I can read a map. I have a decent sense of direction. But even when all those things fail, I have this old-fashioned notion (some call it a “guy thing”) that I should try to figure it out. That way, even if I make mistakes (which I inevitably do), it is better for me to make them and try the wrong routes, because in the process I will become more familiar with my surroundings and when I do find the right way it will be more ingrained in my mind. I’ll find it much easier to remember the way next time. The journey itself teaches the way.

Most of my spiritual journey as an adult has been on roads paved by American evangelicalism, through the evangelical countryside, towns and cities. I finally decided it was not where I should settle down. That decision should not lead anyone to infer that I didn’t have a lot of great experiences there, meet a lot of wonderful people, and learn many important lessons. It was most definitely not a wasted trip. There is a lot I’m thankful for.

So today, I want to pause for a few moments to reflect on some of those things I’m grateful for in my journey through that land.

The Prodigal Son Returns, Watanabe

1. Evangelicalism is where I found a personal faith.
Evangelicalism is strong on personal conversion, and I am one of the fish its nets caught. As Scot McKnight writes, “The irreducible minimum of evangelicalism is the gospel and the need to respond to the gospel and the work of God in the new birth.” Now, I’ll admit that I have come to interpret my teenage experience of “conversion” differently than this, nevertheless the fact remains: at that point in my life I was headed away from God on a path to destruction, and it was an evangelical message that stopped me in my tracks and turned me around.

My life has never been the same. It was from that point that I began to study the Bible, sing Christ’s praises, serve in the church, and take steps toward vocational ministry. It became personal for me. I owe the people in those evangelical churches who loved me as an insecure and unsettled young man a great debt for befriending me and pointing me to Christ.

The sermon that finally got my attention was from Genesis 3:9, where God calls out, “Adam, where are you?” The preacher said we should think about this: Why did God ask that question? Didn’t he know where Adam was already? Of course he did, but Adam didn’t know he where he was! It was God’s question that made him realize he was lost and hiding from God. Hearing those words to Adam, I thought the preacher was speaking directly to me. Personally. That’s when the wonder returned, when the child who used to sit wide-eyed in the sanctuary was reawakened. That was the very moment the prodigal “came to his senses” and arose.

Years later I spoke to a man who had been in a traditional mainline church — the same church I had attended a couple of years before my spiritual turn-around experience. This man had a similar experience in that congregation. God met him, turned him around, and set him on a path toward a life of ministry. It was not a revivalistic evangelical church like the Baptist church where God got my attention, but nevertheless it happened.

Maybe something like that would have taken place for me had I not gone to that Baptist church. I cannot say what God might have done, though I’m convinced he would have helped me find my way home and make the promise of my baptism real in my life. What I can say is that a group of young people in an evangelical church cared enough about one of their struggling peers to invite him to church, the youth choir and Bible study welcomed and befriended him, and the services of the church pointed him to Jesus as the One who would give grace, forgiveness, and a new start.

For this I give thanks.

2. Evangelicalism is where I learned to love the Bible and studying it.
From the outset of my life in evangelicalism, I was blessed with teachers who conveyed a deep love for the Bible. My first youth pastor emphasized studying books of the Bible. We became connected with a minister in New England who had a tape ministry, and we spent hours listening to his studies. The pastor who became my first mentor in ministry was an outstanding Bible teacher and we sat under his instruction every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and on Wednesday nights. I attended a Bible college that gave me invaluable tools for understanding the Scriptures and was instrumental in preparing me to begin a life of study and teaching. When I got to seminary several years later, it was my privilege to sit under some of the greatest evangelical professors in the world — Walter Kaiser, John Sailhamer, Grant Osborne, Scot McKnight, Walter Liefeld, Doug Moo, and D.A. Carson among them. John Stott visited our school each winter to preach and teach, and in chapel we were exposed to many of the finest evangelical pastors and teachers from other churches and institutions.

If I had a glaring “fault” as an evangelical pastor it was that I placed too much emphasis on learning the Bible and not enough on other aspects of spiritual formation and Christian living. I reckon that I turned more than a few sanctuaries into lecture halls, and many Bible studies into academic sessions rather than letting people wrestle with how God wanted to speak to their lives through Scripture. But I did so out of a good heart. My own life has been so enriched by serious study of the Bible that I want everyone I know to become as enthralled with probing its depths as I am.

Over the years I have come to appreciate the role of tradition and the Church in new ways, and have embraced the historic pattern of worship in which the Word is balanced by the Table and is heard in a variety of ways, not primarily through an analytical, expository teaching message. And as readers of this site know, I am not afraid to point out the limitations of the evangelical approach to Scripture. But I will always be grateful that I was part of a church culture that placed high value on learning, loving, and living the Bible. It has enriched my life and ministry immensely.

For this I give thanks.

3. Evangelicalism is where I found the music.
Jesus and music have always gone hand in glove in my life. I can still remember my first public solo, from the balcony of the Methodist church with the elementary school-age choir. I have loved the hymn “This Is My Father’s World” as long as I can remember — I’m sure I heard it first as a preschooler, snuggled up to my mother in the sanctuary. My spiritual awakening as a senior in high school came partly as a result of singing in the youth choir at our church. Soon after I walked the aisle, I had the opening solo in the church Easter program, in which dozens of people of all ages led our church in praising the living Christ.

Those were days when I strummed a guitar. When Jesus revitalized my life, I started singing and writing songs about him. It was the early days of the Jesus Music movement, and we delighted in simple, Scripture-based choruses. We formed a folk trio that sang for various events, including a memorable outdoor Easter sunrise service in downtown Baltimore, at which we opened for Rez Band. I met the one who became my wife as we made music together in college choir and gospel teams. In all our churches, Gail and I have served as musicians as well as pastors, teachers, and leaders in various ministries. In my life, the only thing I’ve spent more money on than music is books.

As a pastor and music minister, I have always longed that the church appreciate its entire music heritage. We had “blended” worship before anyone ever thought of the term. I sang a solo from “Messiah” in our mountain church of 100 congregants, and Gail played classical piano pieces for preludes and offertories. Then we sang gospel hymns together. We’ve led choirs that have sung music from classics to hymns to traditional anthems to country gospel to black gospel to African chants to Gaither. I used to write and sing children’s songs for AWANA programs and Vacation Bible Schools, and sometimes we sang them with the whole congregation. When we came back from mission trips, we brought back choruses from God’s family in other parts of the world and taught them. I have always loved hymns, and have especially appreciated the evangelical tradition of hymnody from Luther to Watts to Wesley to Fanny Crosby to Margaret Clarkson to Timothy Dudley Smith. Though there is much to lament in CCM, there is still some wheat among the chaff — serious artists such as Bob Bennett, Michael Card, Graham Kendrick, Stuart Townend, and the Gettys, for example. Above all, I love to listen to serious choral music. Where would I be without Bach? Without Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil? Without the delightful Christmas music of John Rutter?

One of the reasons the Lutheran way is so attractive to me is their love for music — right up there next to theology, according to Luther himself. But this impulse in me was nourished in evangelicalism. Jesus set me singing, and my brothers and sisters in evangelicalism have been right there, singing with me. We mourn the degradation of music in evangelicalism a lot here at Internet Monk, but one of the reasons I write such passionate complaints is that I have seen the other side and have tried throughout my ministry to help our congregations sing edifying music with deeper understanding and true feeling. For the most part, it has been a joyful sound of grace and truth.

For this I give thanks.

4. Evangelicalism gave me a heart for service and mission.
The impulse to serve is strong in evangelicalism. So strong, we here at IM sometimes criticize it as out-of-balance activism. Nevertheless, there is an energy and concern for others that moves evangelicals to do a lot of good in the world.

The missionary force that grew out of the Student Volunteer Movement and the rise of faith missions in the late 1800′s was formidable. In the 20th century, leadership given by InterVarsity and the Lausanne Movement, the establishment of parachurch ministries like Youth for Christ, Campus Crusade, and Navigators, Bible translation ministries like Wycliffe, and mercy ministries like World Vision have flourished. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is synonymous with mass evangelism efforts. The “culture war” efforts of the Christian Right were not something new in America; in many ways, culture warriors have merely replicated the kind of moral concern and political activism practiced by 19th century social movements for the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, and prohibition.

Many evangelicals go by the slogan that Christians are “saved to serve.” We once attended a church where every person who joined the church was introduced as someone who had stepped forward to “roll up his/her sleeves to help us win our community for Christ.” Another church I pastored was instrumental in founding and supporting a Crisis Pregnancy Center. I know a church that, at least at one point, was giving 60% of her income to missions.

We have friends all over the world because of their obedience to the Great Commission, and because of them I’ve had opportunities to serve in places I never dreamed of seeing. I have had opportunities to preach Christ in suburban churches, on inner city front porches and downtown missions, in the hills of Applachia, and to crowds of youth at camps in Brazil and at schools in India. I once sat in a small house in a central Indian village and talked about preparing for baptism to the first group of Christians that ancient village had ever known. Even in my youngest days as a minister, I was blessed to give words of encouragement to pastors in Haiti, some of whom had walked for three days to get to the conference, and who slept on hard wooden benches or on the ground when they got there just to hear the Word of God.

Some of our closest friends have made choices through the years that made my jaw drop. Damaris and her family went to Kyrgyzstan, of all places, and reached out to their neighbors with both spiritual and practical concern. Another friend received a degree in international business, and then was challenged by a missionary to consider what God might have in store for him. A few months later, he and his wife and four young children got off a plane and moved into a home in Shanghai. While his company paid the bill for a few years, they helped start a Christian school. This is the same couple who once served their neighbors in the infamous Cabrini-Green housing development in inner city Chicago. I once played music for morning devotions while a friend preached to a group of carnies in south Florida. This was made possible because a group of loving Christian folks in RV’s follows the carnival workers for months to all the county fairs and sets up ministry stations where they can come for a hot meal, medical and dental care, haircuts, and a clothing tent — and a word of Gospel encouragement. I met a lady once who started a ministry to unfortunate folks who are deaf, blind, and mute.

On a mission trip to Brazil once, I found myself weeping as I stood and surveyed the sanctuary of a small village church. This congregation lived in the poorest village in that part of Brazil. The members brought their offerings and put them in a big basket in the front of the sanctuary each Sunday, and little of it was money. It was usually food from their gardens or clothes their children had outgrown, all to be distributed to “the poor.” On the side wall, there was a bulletin board with at least a half a dozen pictures on it. These were the missionaries this church supported!

Some of the people I admire most are friends who are workers for India Youth for Christ. These lovely people, in the midst of growing economic opportunity and prosperity in that land, have signed up to live on about $100 a month to reach young people with the Gospel. Traveling to India over the years changed our lives. Few things have meant more to my formation as a human being and follower of Christ than developing friendships with fellow ministers in India and serving alongside them as we preached, sang, did medical work, and reached out in various ways to give Christ to others. One of those friends brought a tear to my eye when I met him a few years ago. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a small square of cloth that had been cut from a terrycloth towel. I had given it to him and a group of ministers many years before, after I had preached on John 13 and then we knelt and washed the feet of our Indian brothers. We wanted to let them know that we had come to serve them. I challenged them to carry that scrap of towel with them always, to remind them of Christ washing our feet and calling us to do the same for one another. Years later, my friend still carried it. He still remembered. I was humbled. I knew he had been faithful. Had I?

I am grateful for my evangelical heritage that stresses service in the name of Christ for a lost and hurting world. Frankly, on the congregational level at least, I don’t think there is another tradition that comes close to evangelicalism in encouraging people to serve, especially with regard to sharing the Gospel, planting churches, and pursuing distinctively Christian vocations. Of course, there are a myriad of problems associated with all this activity, and we here at IM are not shy about pointing those problems out. But don’t let that disguise the fact that I am forever grateful for those who have taught and exemplified for me the way of Christ, who came not to be served, but to serve.

For this I give thanks.

“I am a Christian, and I practice my faith in the Lutheran tradition.”

I am the first to admit that I have a long way to go in understanding all that this means, but in a few posts over the next couple of days I want to highlight distinctive Lutheran teachings that, in my view, answer many concerns about the revivalistic evangelicalism I have left behind.

Before I do, let me first reiterate in this first post what I mean when I say I’m a “post-evangelical,” and that I no longer see myself as being within the church system known broadly as “American evangelicalism.” We speak a lot around here about being in the “post-evangelical wilderness,” but perhaps some of you are new and are wondering what we mean by that.

The Cane Ridge Revival, 1801

When I speak of “American evangelicalism,” I am describing those churches, many of which are non-denominational, whose theology and practice has its roots in the revivalist awakenings of the 1800′s. Many pinpoint Charles Finney (1792-1875) as the “Father of Modern Revivalism.” Finney, a Presbyterian, introduced “new measures” into church meetings, emphasized conversion and spiritual enthusiasm, as well as social and missional activism. His emphasis on revival paved the way for the later mass revival preaching of D.L. Moody, Billy Sunday, and Billy Graham.

At this same period of time, in frontier areas like Kentucky and Tennessee, the Second Great Awakening was spreading like wildfire through “camp meetings” characterized by passionate evangelistic preaching and emotional calls for public acceptance of salvation. One significant new practice in these revivals was the “altar call,” during which sinners came forward to receive salvation (Finney had adopted a Methodist practice called “the anxious bench”).

The churches that were formed out of these awakenings developed a revivalistic style of “worship.” When they gathered, services were no longer patterned after the traditional liturgy of Word and Table, but instead followed a Preparation/Preaching/Invitation model. The “song service” was designed to warm the hearts of the people. The preaching was emotionally charged and intended to bring people to a crisis of decision. The invitation gave them the chance to make whatever spiritual decision the Lord was convicting them to make.

The Southern Baptist church tradition to which Michael Spencer belonged and in which I had a spiritual awakening as a teenager has been famously devoted to practicing church this way.

John MacArthur

When I went to Bible college, I was introduced to a variation of the revivalist tradition that emphasized doctrine and teaching rather than evangelism (Robert Webber writes about this as well.) This part of the tradition developed through the doctrinal battles between fundamentalists and modernists in the 19th and early 20th centuries, leading many conservatives to separate from mainline Protestantism into independent churches and splinter denominations. At the same time, the development of dispensational theology and the popular appeal of tools like the Scofield Study Bible led to an emphasis on Bible study. For a time, there was a significant split between “fundamentalism” and “evangelicalism,” as the latter sought to be less separatistic and more involved in mainline churches, academies of higher learning, and secular culture. The difference remains, but further developments we’ll address in a moment have lessened the distinctions. 

In the “Bible teaching” churches, the same revivalistic patterns characterized the “worship” service, but the emphasis was different. The churches held up before us as examples in those days were not the ones that had emotionally persuasive evangelists in the pulpit, but Bible teachers who could “rightly divide the Word of Truth.” Expository preaching and teaching was the job of the pastor and the purpose for gathering as a church was for the edification of the saints, not primarily the conversion of sinners. The latter was to be done through personal evangelism and special evangelistic meetings and programs. I recall when some of us used overhead projectors and put detailed inserts in the bulletin on which people could take notes and learn their Bibles through the teaching. John MacArthur has been a consistent example of this “pastor-teacher” approach.

Then, in the 1970′s, a movement that began to combine various revivalistic traditional emphases morphed into a powerful new force in American Christian culture — the church growth movement. Donald McGavran’s book Understanding Church Growth and the founding of The Fuller Theological Seminary School of World Mission are commonly viewed as foundational to this movement.

As I experienced and observed the development of the church growth philosophy, it combined (1) an emphasis on the Great Commission as the raison d’etre for the church’s existence in the world, (2) an emphasis on teaching — however, it was teaching that moved away from doctrine and toward practical emphases such as “equipping the saints” for service by helping them find and use their spiritual gifts, (3) a cultural emphasis on “relevance” that depended on sociological research to understand and reach one’s “target audience,” (4) a corporate model taken from the American entrepreneurial tradition of charismatic leadership, pragmatic decision-making, and a programmatic approach to reaching people and building churches that would grow numerically.

At the same time the church growth movement was gaining ground, parachurch organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ were going strong, the “charismatic movement” was growing and infiltrating a broad range of Christian groups, breaking down distinctions and leading to a more experiential and less doctrinaire approach to faith, and an American evangelical subculture was expanding exponentially through contemporary Christian music (CCM) and the Christian book and media market. In addition, Christians were becoming more involved in the public sphere and politics through the “Christian Right” and the “culture wars.”

The 1970′s proved to be pivotal. “Evangelicalism” came of age and became a vocal, visible force in American culture. What we have seen in the years since — the seeker movement, megachurches, the purpose-driven church movement, etc., as well as, I might add, various post-evangelical movements — has been primarily further development of and response to the many developments that brought evangelicalism new public visibility during that decade.

In broad terms, this is the American evangelicalism that I have known. This is also the evangelicalism that Michael Spencer wrote about in his famous articles, “The Coming Evangelical Collapse.”

In May 2010, after Michael’s sad passing, I wrote a series of posts called, “My Issues with Evangelicalism.” In those pieces, I identified three main areas of disillusionment with the culture of American evangelicalism: (1) Worship, (2) Pastoral Ministry, (3) Missional living.

Let me say, by way of concluding this overview, that I have been thrilled with what I have learned and experienced in the Lutheran tradition with regard to these three areas.

• The Word and Table liturgy of the Lutheran church, rooted in the historic tradition of the church rather than the revivalist movement, restores the priority of worship in the local congregation.

• Pastors are not CEO’s or program directors in the Lutheran church as they have become in much of evangelicalism. Rather, they represent Christ in distributing the means of grace through Word and Sacrament. Preaching is embedded in the liturgy so that worship does not revolve around the charisma of the preacher, but the Word Himself who meets us in the gathering of his people. Pastoral care and catechizing the congregation are essential components of his or her work.

• The doctrine of vocation is one of the gifts the Lutheran tradition has given to the larger Church. Luther, himself a monk, came to appreciate the priesthood of all believers and the integrity of every calling, “sacred” or “secular,” as a means of showing Christ’s love to the world.

This is just a start in showing how the Lutheran tradition has answered some of my concerns with the system of evangelicalism dominant in America today.

More to come.

One of the searches that has been ongoing throughout my ministerial career has involved denominational affiliation. For some reason, I have never been able to connect to a group and serve within that organization. My early Christian experience discouraged that, as I ministered in the non-denominational world. When I went to seminary at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, they were affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church of America, and one of the reasons I chose Trinity was because at that time I was attracted to the denomination and hoped to have them issue my credentials. To make a long story short, it never happened for a variety of reasons. We ended up moving to the Indianapolis area and becoming part of a non-denominational “community church” movement. I served in churches in that movement for thirteen years, and was ordained through my local congregation.

Even during those years, however, I had this nagging question. I longed to be part of a faith tradition that went deeper than the last church plant. I did a small bit of exploration, talked to a few people, but never seriously pursued anything during those years because we had a stable ministry and we were crazy busy raising kids and just doing life.

Then came my severance from local church ministry, my involvement in hospice chaplaincy, my acquaintance with Michael Spencer (who faced similar frustrations throughout his career), our decision to join a Lutheran church, and this ongoing trek through the post-evangelical wilderness.

We’re still there, but it may be time to make some decisions.

I am not going to talk about what those decisions might be at this point. But I do want to talk a little about some of the thinking that I have been doing in preparation for making choices.

Ever since I have become a member of an Evangelical Lutheran Church, I have had people ask how I could do that. In spite of some my free-thinking, contrarian ways, I have always been known as a fairly conservative person. I take the Bible seriously, and have always seen “learning, loving, and living the Bible” (a mission statement I developed for one of my churches) as central to who I am and what I’m called to do in life. Yet some people see that as incompatible with membership in a church or denomination like the ELCA. I guess they would see them as too “liberal” for a Bible-believing Christian. This came up again this week in the comments to our post on Scot McKnight’s book.

(Some of that is just plain misunderstanding, but some of it, I think, grows out of a failure to understand what I want to write about in this post.)

All of this has led me to do some thinking about how I view the Church, denominations, and local churches. Here is a summary of what I’m concluding:

I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. This confession from the Nicene Creed is my confession. There is only one Church. There are many expressions, but one Body of Christ, one Bride, one Holy Nation, one People of God. Wherever I serve and live out my vocation in life, it will be for the building up of God’s Church.

I believe there are streams of tradition within the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. There are pre-denominational streams of tradition. Broadly speaking, we can identify the eastern and western traditions. At the Council of Nicea, the preeminent eastern bishops were from Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. Rome led the west. Today we can speak generally of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as the primary representatives of those pre-denominational streams.

There are also the Reformation churches. Again, broadly speaking we list the Lutherans, the Reformed churches, and the Anabaptists. Protestant and evangelical churches down to the present day arose from this stream of tradition.

However, I must also mention that during the past 200 years there has been such an explosion of congregations and groups growing out of the Revivalist awakenings, especially in America, that they have become a legitimate third category of church tradition. This is what we broadly call “evangelicalism” here on Internet Monk. What is important to note is that they are only tangentially related to the “historic” churches — which is what I call the churches in the first two streams of tradition.

I believe that each tradition serves as a broad umbrella under which there is a spectrum of belief and practice. In a recent discussion, one of our commenters decried the fact that “Lutherans” are all seen by some as believing and practicing the same things. This is simply uninformed. There are many different kinds of Lutherans. The ELCA would be on what some would call the “liberal” end of the spectrum, but they are nevertheless Lutheran and Christian. There are more conservative churches — The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) — and churches at the far end of the conservative spectrum, for example, the Church of the Lutheran Confession, which broke off from the Wisconsin Synod (very conservative) because they viewed them as not conservative enough. I had one of their pastors as a patient once. He would not let me pray for him because he did not believe my ordination was legitimate. He only believed in having fellowship with those who believed exactly as his group did.

Here is a key thing to understand: ALL traditions contain a spectrum of belief and practice, nevertheless the individuals, groups, and churches along that spectrum within the tradition may be (should be, in my opinion) considered legitimate expressions of that tradition.

Don’t ever let someone tell you, “This is what Catholics believe,” and take that as a statement of what ALL Roman Catholics believe. Of course, there is a Catechism, and the current Pope is a conservative. But Hans Küng is also a Roman Catholic, and so is Garry Wills. The Roman Church is not monolithic! It is not divided into denominations, but it has a variety of orders that view and practice the faith differently. And though the official position of the church is pro-life, and it views homosexuality as a sin, there are RC groups like DignityUSA which represents LBGT Catholics, and Catholics for Choice, groups made up of legitimate Roman Catholic Christian believers. And I have found that doctrinal and moral emphases vary from parish to parish in Roman Catholicism every bit as much as they do from one Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, or evangelical church to another.

So then, I am starting to conclude this: What is most important is that one aligns with a tradition.

The reason I can feel comfortable in the ELCA is not necessarily because I think the ELCA is a perfect denomination, with all its theological and organizational “t’s” crossed and “i’s” dotted. Rather, I can feel comfortable there because it is a legitimate expression of the Lutheran tradition. The elements of that tradition that attracted me — Luther himself, justification by grace through faith, Word and Table worship, a love for the Bible, glorious music and hymnody, a strong emphasis on pastoral ministry, the theology of vocation for all believers — I can and do find all these things within an ELCA congregation.

Are there things I don’t like and don’t agree with? Yes. But I can’t see any of them binding my conscience or inhibiting my ministry, no matter where or at what level I might serve.

Some of you have asked, “Well, why don’t you consider joining a group like the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod?” I have a great deal of respect for them as another legitimate expression of the Lutheran tradition. However, if I were ever to make a decision to seek vocational ministry in the LCMS, there would be things that would bind my conscience and not allow me freedom to serve. For example, seven day-creationism is the official position of the LCMS. I think you know what I think about that. That is not equivalent to the homosexual issue in the ELCA, which is an issue of practice and left to the discretion of each local congregation. In the LCMS my ability to teach the Bible according to my beliefs would be constrained at the outset.

I think, on the other hand, that I could affiliate with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, understanding that it too is flawed and that there will be many aspects of the group with which I disagree. But I also believe that it is a legitimate expression of the Lutheran tradition and one in which I could serve freely, retaining freedom of conscience to teach the Scriptures and participate in the life of the church.

• • •

I think what I have decided is that I am a Lutheran. For the past couple of years, when people would ask me about my faith and church community, I would say something like, “I’m a Christian and right now I attend a Lutheran church. I’m not sure if that is where we will ultimately end up, but we like it for a variety of reasons, and it is an oasis in the wilderness for the time being.”

I think what I would say today is, “I’m a Christian, and I practice my faith in the Lutheran tradition.”

After much prayer and many discussions with my family, friends, and mentors, I have decided that it is time for me to transition out of my role as Lead Pastor of Courageous Church.  These three years have been the most meaningful, fulfilling, exciting years of my life and I wouldn’t trade them for the world.

I thank God that I am not stepping down in shame or scandal, but it is clear that God is calling Rai and I to take our family in a direction that is just significantly different than what most in the church are asking for.  Over the past 6 months I have taken Courageous Church down a difficult, counter-cultural road in an earnest attempt at building true disciples.  It’s been rough.  All but a few families are now yearning to go back to a traditional Sunday focused system and I am sure that I am not the person to lead you there.

I know this will cause many mixed emotions, but just know that I am making this decision out of a sincere desire to never lead you in a direction that I don’t actually believe in myself.

I did not know King before reading about this decision, but he has apparently made quite a name for himself. Calling himself a “techie-humanitarian,” his website notes that he has launched nearly a dozen different successful startups designed to help empower and show compassion to hurting people throughout Atlanta, as well as Haiti and other developing nations. He has won numerous awards and has been the subject of articles in many major periodicals and media outlets.

One of his entrepreneurial efforts resulted in a “successful” church plant known as Courageous Church.

Shaun King described Courageous Church as a “super cool Sunday worship-service-centered church with 700 people.”  The church was intentionally diverse, with a mixed race congregation, and it was viewed as one of the cutting edge churches in the city. In developing the plant, King followed the advice of church growth experts who counseled him to focus on making the Sunday morning service a special, dynamic “worship experience.” This, they told him, is what draws people and keeps the church exciting and growing. Looking back, Shaun King now says, “I sold my soul for church attendance in our first week and I could never quite get it back.”

When he realized it had all been a mistake, that everything revolved around the Sunday morning “show,” and that the church was not making disciples or looking anything like Jesus and the priorities of his ministry, he tried to change things. He tried to transform the congregation from their Sunday morning focused program into a community based in small groups that would meet monthly for large group celebrations. People responded well to his sermons about this. His leadership helped set up the structure.

Within three months, he lost 85% of his congregation.

And as of this month, he has stepped down from pastoral leadership in the congregation.

Hooray for Shaun King! He has proven himself perhaps the most courageous member of Courageous Church. He was willing to say, “The emperor has no clothes,” even when it cost him his ministry. He had enough insight to see that megachurch Christianity bears little resemblance to anything seen in the NT, that “church growth” principles may build American cultural Christianity but can be deadly for the way of Christ.

As he himself put it:

What I am saying is that church attendance, Sunday morning services, sermon-listening (or even sermon preaching), song-singing, hand-clapping, amen-saying and all the other things that “Christ-ians” have lifted up so high look so little like Christ himself that I am utterly convinced that we are completely off base with what discipleship means. Considering all of this, I think I have given up on church as I knew it. Big buildings. Huge crowds.  Few disciples. I’m not with it. It’s inefficient and just doesn’t feel right with my soul. This is not a rejection of big buildings or huge crowds, but an indictment on how few disciples are being made in the process of it all. A better way has to exist.

• Read the full post about Shaun King at “Stories from the Revolution.”
• Read about Shaun’s sermon series concerning changing the church’s focus.
• Read posts about his decision to leave and some lessons learned.
• Read about Shaun King and his work.

By Chaplain Mike

Note from CM: One of the questions I received for the “Ask Chaplain Mike” series was this: “If you were in the process of becoming a new pastor in an established church, what would your first priority be? How would you arrive at it?” The answer to that question is bigger than this post, but what I wrote here back in January shows the emphases that I would try to inculcate in a congregation from the start if I were called as minister among them. As we get toward the end of “Ecclesia Week,” I thought it might be worth a review and further discussion. As with all “Another Look” posts, I’ve done some editing.

• • •

Let me be honest.

Sometimes the designation “Post-Evangelical” can be unhelpful.

If we only focus on what has been left behind rather than looking forward to new possibilities, we will never find a way out of the wilderness.

I don’t want to be known as someone who just levels criticism. I won’t shy away from it when appropriate, but that can’t be the whole package. So, when I rant about:

• churches that have turned into Christian activity centers, offering everything from applique to Zumba dance classes,
• when preaching focuses on life principles or prosperity nonsense and it appears to be more about style than substance,
• when worship has been transformed into a religious stage production,
• when youth meetings resemble “Survivor” more than Sunday School,
• when discipleship comes packaged in programs and adult education is utterly devoid of serious Bible study, theological depth, and historical awareness,
• when pastors abandon pastoral care and the cure and formation of souls as their calling,
• when evangelicalism offers an alternative culture that is “of” the world but not “in” the world, and separated from real world of life, work, neighbors, and community,

then I also want to be able to offer an alternative program for the local church.

What I want to share today is humble and simple; more a blueprint than fleshed-out reality, more theory than practice at this point. Many of you will probably think it is fairly conservative. You are right. In general, I do not believe that innovation should be considered one of the marks of the church, except when serious reformation is necessary. And even then, the “innovations” usually involve restoring perspectives and practices from the past rather than creating new ones.

Guess that makes me a fuddy-duddy, huh?

At any rate, if you are willing to respond to this fuddy-duddy’s ideas, I would like for us to brainstorm about these matters and have a good old fashion bull session about our hopes and dreams for the church.

So, I’ll begin. I would love to see a church that organized its “program” (just a word for what we actually do) around four primary practices.

CELEBRATION
The gathering of believers for worship on the Lord’s Day should always be the central meeting of the church. It should be designed for believers, though any gathering of the church should be open, welcoming, and hospitable to anyone who comes. As a pastor, I have always enjoyed having all ages present for the entire service, though I don’t object if younger children have their own teaching time for which they are dismissed during the sermon. If children are present in the service, there should be some parts that are designed to be accessible to them, and parents should receive training and help to assist their children in learning what worship is and how to participate.

Since the purpose of worship is to reenact and celebrate the Gospel by which we have become God’s people, the service should be ordered around Word and Table. I’m not so concerned about style as I am that we include the elements that will renew believers in the Good News of God’s grace in Christ each week. Confessing our sins and receiving absolution, singing the praises of our creating, redeeming, and sustaining God, hearing the Scriptures read, professing our faith through the creeds, lifting our hearts together in prayer, hearing Christ proclaimed in the sermon, and meeting with Christ and receiving his benefits anew through the Lord’s Supper should, in my view, be what we do at each Sunday worship assembly. None of these elements should be sacrificed no matter what style of music or presentation is used.

Services should be as participatory as possible. Congregation members should sense that they are actively encountering and interacting with God and not just sitting there as an audience receiving a presentation from the “stage.” Representatives from all generations should be given opportunity to be participants. A warm, hospitable atmosphere should be cultivated by the pastor and worship leaders but it should never degenerate into chattiness or overfamiliarity. Those who speak, pray, or read Scripture should receive instruction on speaking clearly and reverently. Variety and creativity is good, but there is also something to be said for being formed by habitual practices.

FORMATION
Paul wrote in Colossians 1, “So, naturally, we proclaim Christ! We warn everyone we meet, and we teach everyone we can, all that we know about him, so that, if possible, we may bring every man up to his full maturity in Christ. This is what I am working at all the time, with all the strength that God gives me.” (Phillips)

God designed it so that babies would be born into families. The growth and development of human beings is meant to happen within a community of love, support, and mutual service in which all members, at different stages of life, are being nurtured into greater health and well being, becoming wiser and more loving. And so it is with spiritual growth. The church is the family in which those who are born from above grow to maturity in Christ.

I would suggest a few ways of practicing spiritual formation in the local church. First, I would encourage that the church follow the Church Year. The liturgical calendar provides a wonderful overall structure in which to live the church’s life. The repetition of the Gospel story week after week, year after year, can keep us focused on Jesus as the context for all we’re learning together.

Second, I think it would be wise to restore the practice of catechism teaching in our churches. This would represent a return to our Protestant heritage, for it was through parents catechizing their children and pastors using catechisms to instruct their congregations that the Reformation took hold on ground level. Using the traditional form of having people memorize, study, and pray the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer gives Christians a foundation in Law, Gospel, and spiritual practices that is rich enough for a lifetime of contemplation.

Third, pastors must recommit to their calling of pastoral visitation and spiritual counsel. Pastors must get out of the office and into people’s homes, workplaces, and public meeting places and have conversations with them about their lives, listening, supporting, encouraging, and continually pointing them to the cross and Christ’s provision for them. I recommend a renewal of the practice of confession. Pastors should become wise in the ways of spiritual friendship and learn, when appropriate, to help others find spiritual practices that will assist them in their growth in Christ. Like Paul in 1Thessalonians 2, we must be able to say to our people, we are “well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives.”

VOCATION
We have quoted Gene Edward Veith on this subject before: “This is the doctrine of vocation. God works through people, in their ordinary stations of life to which He has called them, to care for His creation. In this way, He cares for everyone–Christian and non-Christian–whom He has given life. Luther puts it even more strongly: Vocations are “masks of God.” On the surface, we see an ordinary human face–our mother, the doctor, the teacher, the waitress, our pastor–but, beneath the appearances, God is ministering to us through them. God is hidden in human vocations.”

The church must get back to encouraging this view of life. Over the past generation, the church has created a subculture that has separated itself from the world in unhealthy ways. The word “Christian” has become an adjective for a way of life that has developed into a ghetto. The sad thing is that it looks an awful lot like the world from which it separated, only slightly more sanitized. We have our own “brands” and by this we know that we are believers. In the process, we have become farther and farther removed from the life of our communities and more and more out of touch with our neighbors. Churches have contributed to this by becoming “Christian activity centers” that are open almost 24/7 to provide a family-friendly, full-service program for all ages. And so, we basically live in and around the temple, avoiding the dirt and grime of the outside world.

The first step to restoring the doctrine of vocation is to shut the church doors more often. Encourage people to get involved in their neighborhoods and school districts. If your town offers sports leagues, don’t build a “Christian” sports ministry and take all the believers off the municipal fields and courts. Encourage Christians who are musicians to participate in community bands, orchestras, and choruses. In our preaching and teaching, highlight and honor those who exemplify real-world Christianity. I’ve already mentioned the pastor’s duty to visit people in their homes and workplaces to learn about what they face day in and day out so that he can pray for them and encourage them in their callings. We must also challenge our young people to pursue “secular” callings with the same fervor as religious vocations.

MISSION
Though living out the doctrine of vocation is a major way believers show God’s love and truth to the world, there is also a place for intentional mission activity to spread the Gospel, help those in need, and show compassion to those who are hurting. A local church should organize some specific efforts to use the resources of God’s family to reach out to others and give them Jesus.

First of all, this can be done on the neighborhood level. I heard of a rather large church recently that decided to focus on its neighborhood. So the leaders sat down, drew a three-mile circle around the church on a map and said, “This is our mission field.” Last I heard, they are in the process of learning the needs within that circle, making contact with other churches in the neighborhood to see how they might partner in mission together, and determining how to go about working to confront the challenges that people there are facing. That’s a great approach! Identify your mission field, get to know your neighbors there, organize your resources along with those of other congregations in the area, and learn what you can do to show Christ’s love among them.

Second, let me say just a little more about this matter of cooperating with other churches. I think John Armstrong is on to something with his promotion of the concept called, “missional ecumenism.” For an example of how this is happening right now, check out this post about a group of churches in the Chicago suburbs who are working with one another to love their neighbors through the facilitation of an organization called, “Christ Together.” If we can learn to see our congregations as individual parts of “The Church in Our Town,” which I think reflects the situation in the apostolic church, then perhaps we can do more to overcome the spirit of competition among us and the redundancies that make our work inefficient and less effective. Perhaps we can come a little closer to seeing Jesus’ prayer in John 17 answered.

Third, I believe that churches should be forming “world-Christians,” believers who have God’s heart that the whole world know the name of Jesus. I’m for anything we can do to grow people who learn, pray, give, and go so that the Great Commission be fulfilled. That starts in our own neighborhoods, of course, but it cannot end there.

There you have it, my friends. This is a suggested “program” for the local church. I hope you’ll join the discussion and help us dream some dreams of what could be.

When my husband and I told Chaplain Mike, who’s an old friend, that we had begun going to the Catholic Church, Mike said, “Well, I’m glad you’ve found a place that feels like home.”  My husband immediately responded, “No, we’ve found a place that feels like church!”  Our parish gathers in silence and prayer, focuses on the Bible and the Eucharist, and conducts itself with joyful solemnity through the liturgy.

I like the liturgy of the Catholic Church.  Liturgy means “the work of the people.”  Liturgical worship is not the work of the leader; it is not a spectator sport, or a concert, or a pep rally.  Liturgy reminds us of our place in the scheme of things.  I am not in charge.  I am a servant and an heir to the faith that has been handed down to me.  The priest himself is the servant of the liturgy, not its boss.

So my family and I feel security in knowing that a new pastor is not going to change entirely what we had known as good.  There will be changes, but the essential things will remain the same.  We did not experience this security in the shifting world of evangelicalism.

I like the universality of the Catholic Church.  Universality doesn’t just mean that the mass will be the same anywhere on the planet, although that is true.  It also means that we joined the Church, not a church.  Our parish of several hundred people is the Catholic Church.  It’s not a part or fraction of it; it’s not a local franchise of it.  Each parish is fully the whole Church. The best analogy I can think of is that the Church is like the ocean.  Each community knows a particular bay or beach or bank, but the ocean is still the ocean in its entirety wherever we experience it.  Certain other understandings of church, the Baptist one, for example, suggest that congregations are more like discrete islands.  In some cases they are even different countries where people require visas and change of citizenship to move among them.

I like the incarnational theology of the Catholic Church.  I can’t say I fathom the depths of what happens in the Eucharist or in any of the sacraments, but they match what I know of God.  The astounding, central fact of God’s relationship with us is the Incarnation.  God became man.  He took on human flesh and dwelled with us.  He was fully human and fully divine.  Evidently matter can be imbued with divinity, not changing the substance of either the matter or the divinity.  As a Christian, I believe that that happened once, in the person of Jesus.  As a Catholic Christian, I also accept that that is God’s regular mode of revealing himself to us.  If Christ can be both matter and God, then through him so can bread and wine.  Water can be both water and new birth.  Oil can be both oil and blessing.

What a rich world incarnational theology opens up for us!  Matter reveals the Immaterial.  The beauty of creation around us, properly seen, is not a distraction or temptation – it is “charged with the grandeur of God,” as Hopkins put it.  When our desires are rightly ordered, we are not faced with “either/or” but always “both/and.”  God gives us both himself and his creation, his saving grace and his common grace.  Everything has meaning, and everything points us to God.

I like the balance of Catholic theology.  Some Christians hold that all the work – and therefore responsibility – of salvation rests with God alone.  I can’t entirely reconcile that view with the commands and exhortations of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels.  Others claim that man has the power to commend himself to God in his own strength.  I can’t reconcile that view with St. Paul’s epistles.  The best summary of the dual nature of our salvation is in Philippians 2:12 and 13:  “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purposes.” I trust the Catholic understanding of the ongoing nature of salvation and the necessity for both grace and work.

I don’t think that the Catholic Church is perfect, either in its parochial or universal aspects.  Not all of its doctrines commend themselves to my understanding, at this point at least, nor do all of its practices commend themselves to my taste or even my conscience.  And I wish that, in addition to the crucifix displayed in every church, there was also an icon of the Resurrection.

But it feels like Church.  It smells like Church.  It’s been Church for so long.

“This is what the Lord says:  Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”

• Jeremiah 6:16

Winding Road, Raymond Murray

By Chaplain Mike

From the start of my ministry three decades ago, there were aspects of being an evangelical pastor that I simply did not “get.”

I would hear other ministers speak and tell about what God was doing at their churches, learn about their approaches and their programs, listen to testimonies from folks in their congregations, and I would leave scratching my head. It seemed to me that many of them, certainly the ones with forceful personalities, had a way of convincing others that their agenda as pastors was the same thing as God’s agenda for Christians.

In my circles, very rarely did I hear the full-blown “God told me to do this” account that was more prevalent in charismatic or pentecostal churches. Still, that was the impression, even in our more theologically conservative groups. Whether it was defining a preaching series, implementing an element of worship that the pastor thought the church should practice, organizing an outreach program, expanding staff, building new facilities, using a certain method of teaching or training in the educational program or youth group, or designing the way the church should be overseen by its leaders, these ministers had a way of making it sound like these were directives from God himself. And the corollary to that, of course, was—if you are a truly dedicated, committed Christian, you will participate.

Over and over again, I watched as the pastor’s agenda became the church’s agenda, because the pastor was able to persuade people that it was God’s agenda.

I never felt comfortable with this. It always felt like a shell game to me. I came to believe that it is one of the key dynamics that has contributed to the “churchianity” which Michael Spencer lamented. Identifying a particular church program of the moment with the path of the Christian life, leads to “church-shaped” people; not necessarily “Jesus-shaped” people.

I guess that’s one reason I’m in the wilderness, and not a pastor in a local church today.

Catch the Wave (photo), Fanartsy JJ

This agenda identification is mostly an evangelical/fundamentalist/charismatic/pentecostal phenomenon, as far as I can tell. In my experience, the churches without longstanding traditions and practices have been most subject to this problem. I’m sure it shows up in one form or another in all religious traditions, for at root, it is simply a manifestation of our fallen human tendency toward pride and idolatry. We all like to think that we are doing God’s will, and it is deceptively easy to mistake what I want for what God wants, and then to foist that on you.

For example, back in the dark ages when I became a pastor, there was wide acceptance of a viewpoint on the evangelical side that divided the Protestant part of Christendom into two main camps, based on the church’s service schedule and emphasis. God forbid that a pastor should go against these expectations!

• “Liberal” churches met on Sunday morning only, listened to “sermonettes,” and didn’t seriously study the Bible. The people who attended those churches were not “separated” from the world and didn’t care about other people’s “souls.” Instead, they practiced a mushy “social gospel” that taught you to love your neighbor. They cared more about “tradition” than Scripture, and their practices represented the “vain repetitions” of religion.

• “Bible-believing” churches met on Sunday morning for worship, Sunday evening for Bible teaching or evangelistic services, and Wednesday evening for prayer. The people in these churches separated themselves from the world and were expected to engage outsiders primarily through personal evangelism in which they attempted to “win souls.” As Bible-believing people, they eschewed tradition and sought to be led by the Holy Spirit through the Word in what they did.

It is that last point that made the practical difference pertinent to my point today. I was solidly in the “Bible-believing” camp, and it was in our DNA to be looking always for God to be doing new things. It was new wine all the time, and therefore we were in the business of continually manufacturing new wineskins. The Book of Acts was our template. God was always on the move. And so we’d better never be caught standing still. If you were a committed Christian, you would be ready to act when the Spirit said, “Go!”

This led us, over succeeding years, to accept or at least consider, often without a great deal of discernment, every movement and fad that came along. From new forms of church music to new forms of meeting together to new ways of preaching, to new models of evangelism and church growth, we tried to identify and catch every new wave that came to shore. In the process we eagerly cast off the “old”—hymns and hymnals, Sunday School, pews, pulpits, organs, “churchy” architecture, implicit dress codes, anything that smacked of “legalism” or “religion.” Sunday worship was replaced by seeker services at one point. Solid pastoral theology was swallowed up by church growth methods. Separation from the world system was transformed into political advocacy. Culture war issues such as the “traditional family,” abortion, and gay rights crept into sermons that once focused solely on Biblical exposition. In recent days, a more splintered evangelicalism has factions promoting reformed theology, emerging forms of church practice, “missional” church approaches, activism in areas such as social justice and environmental concern, and so on, as the “next big thing” the Holy Spirit is doing in the church.

Neighbors, Williams

Time does not allow me to list all the various permutations that have come to pass in recent decades. My point is not so much to examine or analyze them, but rather to point out that each and every change has been promoted by pastors and evangelical leaders in such ways that Christians under their tutelage have been expected to sign on, “follow the Spirit,” and support the program. A ongoing culture of religious expectation has been created and recreated. Faithfulness, passion, commitment, dedication—whatever you want to call it—is measured by one’s loyal participation in whatever new thing is happening in evangelicalism. We’ve noted the recent repeated calls to “radical” Christianity as an example of this.

It is in this context and out of these experiences that I have written posts like yesterday’s “It’s OK…to Just Be a Christian.” A mature Christian learns to distinguish between what the Lord expects, what the church expects, what others expect, and what one expects of oneself. I have come to believe that many of the expectations I and others try to live up to are not God’s expectations, but come from other sources.

“What does the Lord require of you?” God asked the people through the prophet Micah. The answer is refreshingly simple, an “easy yoke” borne up by grace and practiced in faith: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8, NIV) Or, as Eugene Peterson paraphrases it in The Message: “Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously— take God seriously.”

The evangelical culture of religious expectation does not see this as sufficient, despite their protestations that they are “Bible-believing” people. I certainly did not, when I was an evangelical pastor. The list of requirements may vary from church to church and from stream to stream within the broad confines of evangelical faith, but I’ll wager that each one would be much longer and demanding than Micah’s.

I have come to see that the requirements and expectations church culture puts on Christians:

• Grow out of a misunderstanding of Scripture. Don’t use most of the Book of Acts as a template, for example, unless you are an apostle or sent on a mission. Acts generally describes the exciting first days of gospel reception and church starts. The epistles on the other hand, many of which speak to those same churches, don’t paint a picture of a church frantically trying to keep up with the Spirit, catching new waves of possibility, and constantly changing patterns of ministry and practice. Instead, you see the Apostles encouraging the first Christians to hold to the traditions and to live exemplary lives among their neighbors, loving them and one another, while faithfully believing and sharing the Good News of grace and salvation in Christ.

• 

  The Neighborhood, Krohn

  Grow out of a lack of theology of “real life.” Many have noted how evangelical church culture has morphed into a ghetto in which its adherents can become trapped. As Skye Jethani has written, it has become an “Epcot” world that allows us to mimic life in the real world without ever having to experience the real world. For many church folks, life revolves around the “temple”—the full service Christian activity center (church) and its supporting Christian institutions. This is where the Christian life is to be lived. Unfortunately (in the minds of some), people also have to work and do other things, but it is always a relief to come back “home” where the same language is spoken and one can live according to common expectations. While I believe “community” is important, I also think the faith of Christ is a vibrant faith, designed to be lived in the streets, shops, schools, workplaces, ball fields, and neighborhoods of our world, among neighbors who don’t believe or live like we do.Our “suburbanized” media-focused world has practically destroyed the life of real-world community our parents and grandparents knew. Christians should not contribute to this but show that we know how to live as true humans in neighborly relations with those around us in daily life.

• Grow out of lack of a mature theology of vocation.I’m going to say this as bluntly as I know how. Pastors and churches create mountains of pure “busy work” for people. A large percentage of the activity that takes place in church culture produces nothing, helps nothing, makes nothing better, teaches nothing, accomplishes nothing. It simply keeps people busy doing “Christian” things. This is not how God blesses the world through his people. We ought to be ashamed and repent in dust and ashes about all the time, energy, and resources we waste in Jesus’ name. The world will become a better place when Christians learn to take their places in all realms of vocational life, devote their time and energy to doing good, productive work in the world, and helping their neighbors by actually achieving something. And churches will contribute much more the more we encourage this. This will mean that pastors and evangelical leaders will have to step down from their thrones, forfeit their kingdoms, and lay down their lives so that they may serve their brethren rather than vice versa. Instead of expecting people to participate in our programs, we must learn how to contribute pastorally in their lives as individuals, family people, working people, playing people, and people who live among their neighbors and are members of communities.

With this in mind, I’ll say it again…

It’s OK to just be a Christian.

Links to Artwork:

• Raymond Murray
• Fanartsy JJ
• Cathy Krohn
• Sylvia Williams

By Chaplain Mike

“…his reply has been, “My grace is enough for you: for where there is weakness, my power is shown the more completely.” Therefore, I have cheerfully made up my mind to be proud of my weaknesses, because they mean a deeper experience of the power of Christ. I can even enjoy weaknesses, suffering, privations, persecutions and difficulties for Christ’s sake. For my very weakness makes me strong in him.

• 2Corinthians 12:9-10

For years, when I was a pastor, I avoided conferences. To me, they were the equivalent of motivational pep rallies combined with business seminars touting “cutting edge” success models. Plus, places to drop a lot of bucks on books. I told friends and leaders in my churches that I would be much more open to going to a conference of “regular pastors” — folks involved at street level in small to mid-size churches who weren’t there because they had the answers and solutions to all ministry questions and problems, but simply to share stories and ideas, to enjoy fellowship and pray for each other, to admit our weaknesses and to find hope in the God whose grace is sufficient.

That conference has been planned. It will be held April 14-16 in Lansdale, PA. I recommend it to you today. Here is a brief video about the “Epic Fail Pastors Conference,” with full information below.

Epic Fail Pastors Conference from Epic Fail Pastors Conference on Vimeo.

When: April 14th – 16th. Registration will start at 6 p.m. on Thursday, we will start at 7 p.m. We will be done at noon on the 16th.

Where: 3rd and Walnut Bar & Grill in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. Why? This site wasn’t originally a bar. It was a church. In fact, it was the first church established in the borough of Lansdale over 100 years ago. It failed. They shut its doors thirty years ago, it was then sold to the Elks Club and ten years ago, it was sold once again to a bar owner.

Cost: $79. This covers the cost of the conference. You are on your own for food and lodging.

ISN’T THIS A GREAT IDEA?