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On October 17, 2016 By In Culture, Politics

Misadventures in American Evangelical Discipleship

politics

Guest post by Scott Cress:

The current campaign season has been brutal thus far. The American people have been treated to vitriolic personal attacks, countless conspiracy theories, and two major party candidates with questionable track records. Every word has been parsed by media, and every issue has been intensified by endless social media pontificating. The only people in the country who have anything to smile about right now are political science grad students, waking to a world of endless dissertation topics.

In the coming days, church leaders have some hard work to do as well. Challenges facing us include healing the wounds in sharply divided churches and finding new ways of engaging the public square. The last few days have, however, brought to my mind one issue above all others: the current state of American evangelical discipleship.

We have watched once admired leaders engage in hypocritical power-grabbing, willing to tarnish their legacy just so evangelicals have some foothold in the White House. Maybe more frightening than this, many sincere brothers and sisters have demonstrated an anemic moral reasoning which allows them to ignore language and actions clearly condemned by Scripture. “SCOTUS is all that matters right now,” they say. “And have you seen the other person?” they add with a touch of moral indignation. These latest remarks are one more stream feeding a growing river of American evangelical resistance to criticism (think of the recent conversations involving race) and fear of appearing “liberal” on almost any issue.

Of course, I write these words as a minister of the gospel who is himself flawed. Even as I read social media comments and mourn our present condition, I am reminded of my own persistent oversights and shortcomings. I mourn over the continual ways in which my behaviors, attitudes, and thoughts are out of step with the way of Jesus. I think of the state of my own discipleship, and I question my fitness to lead the church in these challenging days.

To be certain, discipleship has been occurring in our churches. Yet the current models have been found wanting. In particular the typical pathway of American evangelical discipleship has included the following elements:

  • A basic knowledge that we are somehow forgiven by God through Jesus
  • Short Scripture readings chosen for “comfort” and “encouragement”
  • A near obsessive focus on marriage and parenting
  • Constant reminders that God is with us in our struggles
  • A working knowledge of the “Christian position” on a few social issues
  • A variety of teachings on “hearing” God’s voice

The end results have been people who know God’s forgiveness but are shaky on God’s commands. A people who love God’s encouragement but don’t quite know what to do with God’s warnings. A people who want to succeed in life (with money or marriage) but still somehow follow a guy who was crucified. A people who have tried to live the Christian life in largely individualistic terms on a diet of disconnected verses. Hence, the focus on “hearing” God’s voice – not on hearing God’s Word in Scripture proclaimed to God’s people.

Many of us have been aware of the problem of malnourished disciples for too long. Answers have been proposed. Some have suggested that we ditch the judgment and focus on inclusivity. Others have found the answer in a life of miracles and immediate divine revelation. Another group has turned to renewed Christian intellectualism to supply our needs. In many instances, the answers to the problem have proven as troublesome as the problem itself.

In these difficult days, what are church leaders concerned with the ongoing growth of God’s people to do? There are simply no curriculums or social scientific studies which will solve our problem. In fact, the answers seem to this observer to be remarkably unremarkable. As November comes and goes, I am re-committing myself to three tasks.

  1. Immerse God’s people in the reading of Scripture. – God’s people need God’s Word. It needs to be read individually, memorized, and, most critically, read and heard together in our congregations. We need more than disconnected thoughts. We need lengthy pericopes, whole chapters, Old and New Testament working together. God’s people need to wake with David. Commute to work in the company of the Exodus community. And worship God together in the words of the Psalter. Memorization is key. We need God’s Word to make its way down into our long-term memory so that it can be deployed in the course of day-to-day living. We need to memorize more than single verses but, instead, whole chapters and strings of verses addressing the same theme. We need to feast not only on a few biblical words but on whole patterns of biblical thought. And if we find that we are crunched for time, we need to be prepared to ditch the single-verse devotionals and the many books on Christian living. We can no longer afford to raise up people who know how to set boundaries but don’t know how God’s covenants develop throughout the Bible or the differences between Matthew and Mark. These resources are not bad; they are simply inadequate for our present need.
  2. Teach God’s people biblical theology. – Even as God’s Word is read, heard, and memorized, church leaders must recommit themselves to teaching the overarching narrative of Scripture. We must develop the relationships between different portions of the Bible. In our thematic studies, we must collect relevant material from a story which begins with creation, experiences the horrific consequences of the fall, tastes the glory of redemption, and culminates with the restoration of all things. Our people don’t need bits and pieces of Scripture to provide comfort in crisis. Our people need deep and sturdy understandings of biblical ideas, strong enough to sort through the bewildering landscape of modern life. Many of our heroes in the faith have led their people through verse-by-verse expository study. This approach has borne fruit, but I doubt that it currently addresses the needs of people without a significant biblical-theological framework. Every teaching time is an opportunity to reinforce the grand sweep of the narrative and to point to the redemptive work of Jesus. To be sure, not every sermon will be the same. We simply cannot miss the opportunity to teach the all-encompassing nature of the Scriptural portrait of reality.
  3. Provoke the moral imagination of God’s people. – God’s people don’t need their church leaders to feed them the answers to today’s difficult questions. The results of this approach are all around us. Approaching ethics top-down has led to imbalance in our witness to the world. For example, we are often capable of crying out against the abortion industry but incapable of addressing real and persistent racism in our communities. We compromise on some issues and justify the compromise on the basis of another issue. This has also given birth to a subtle yet insidious legalism which leaves us suspecting the salvation of anyone who speaks out of step with us on our prized ethical (and often political) issues. How can we forge a better way? We start by following the path of the first task above. God’s people – and the leaders of that people – need to be exposed to the wide range of imperative content in the Bible. The Bible has much to say about the distortion of God’s will in all areas of life – including the economic, the political, the personal, and the sexual. We need all of this material. Moreover, application in our sermons and teaching times should be designed to suggest the multitude of ways in which the Bible gets under our skin and opens up new pathways for our present walk. Don’t tell people what to do. Show them the possibilities of a life lived under God’s rule. Church history has a crucial role to play at this point. Studying the history of the Holy Spirit at work in the church shows us how the Bible has formed and shaped our mothers and fathers in the faith. What did the Bible mean for the early modern city of Geneva? How did the African slave community appropriate the story of the Exodus? How have Christians from other eras persevered in strange political environments? I would advise congregations to consider using Sunday school time or small group meetings to engage in these types of historical study. It might even help to hire a historian-in-residence, equipped to bring case studies before the eyes and minds of God’s saints.

Much more could be said and needs to be said concerning the future of American evangelical discipleship. These brief thoughts have not touched on the necessary subjects of prayer, sacraments, or evangelism. But one last thing must be mentioned. These goals are attainable. We do not need large congregations, big budgets, or advanced degrees to begin digging into the world of corporate Scripture reading and imaginative moral thinking. We do, of course, need willing hearts and ready hands; yet the possibilities lie no further than the Bible on our shelves and the people in our homes. Real ministry and real discipleship do not begin with professional musicians and bounce houses. Those things are great, but they are not the stuff of discipleship. So here’s to the future of American evangelical discipleship – far beyond the dark and troubling days of early November.

 

Scott Cress is Associate Pastor of Faith Presbyterian Church (EPC) in West Lafayette, IN. In addition to his pastoral work, he serves as a business chaplain and part-time lecturer with Purdue Polytechnic Institute. He is married to Shana, with whom he is raising up two little disciples of Jesus.

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On October 5, 2016 By In Culture

My Cell Phone Love Affair

14590352_10155294919678989_1255291463977345769_nResearchers have determined that we have a problem. Yet we cavalierly attempt to rationalize our ways acting as if everything is just fine. But it’s a subtle problem. It’s barely noticeable because our lives are wrapped up in it. I speak of that technological innovation known as the cell phone. For all its charm and effectiveness, it has left us desolate for attention and craving for more of it. Like a drug, it smiles upon us and gives us the image we want of ourselves.

When I first pointed this out some time ago, folks reacted in humorous opposition: “I had to check social media on my cell to read your critique of cell phone usage.” Of course, this is not a contradiction. I am articulating in opposition to the excessive use of cell phones, not the occasional “catch-up,” or pragmatic use thereof. I am no more contradicting myself than CNN does when it reports that according to researchers watching too much TV can cause long-term damage. The means is simply a popular avenue to communicate ideas, even if these ideas contradict the excessive use of the means.

Ultimately, this is about stewardship. You can use it wisely or not. I can quote Neil Postman on Facebook, though Postman would probably be unhappy about its overwhelming use in our day. The means does not negate the message. And the message is that too much of the means can be harmful for you. As Luther once observed, “The Abuse of something is not an argument against its proper use.” We need to understand that using something does not negate the reality that that something can be abused. (more…)

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On October 4, 2016 By In Family and Children, Music

Why Don’t Men Sing in Church?

Why are men not singing in Church? Various articles have attempted to answer that question recently. But before we can try to offer a rationale for such a spectacular question, we need to observe that some are entirely comfortable allowing this trend to continue. After all, music plays a minimal role in their worship expressions. Others find the issue of congregational singing irrelevant due to the trained praise bands that lead worship each Sunday. “Let the professionals lead.”

Certain environments encourage people to hear and feel the music rather than sing it. And some groups have placed such high priority on the preached word that the very idea of a singing congregation seems secondary, if not tertiary in the priority list.

But on to better things.

Fortunately, there are a vast amount of churches and leaders that still treasure congregational singing and long for a time when men return to the old-fashioned task of singing God’s melodies. The cruel reality is that we are far from the mark. In my many visits to evangelical churches over the years, the few men who opened their mouths, timidly read the words like a child attempting to spell out his phonics assignment.

Timid singers make for timid Christians. (more…)

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On July 7, 2016 By In Culture, Politics, Pro-Life

Reconciliation and Bearing God’s Image

Guest Post by Al Stout

At Providence Church in Pensacola, Fl,[1] we have a regular Vespers’ service on the first Wednesday of each month. We sing the majority of the service, we read three lessons from Scripture– an Old Covenant, New Covenant and Gospel passage–followed by a short homily. This week we read Genesis 1:26-31; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; and John 3:1-8 and I delivered the homily.

Reading the news of the day, there were a couple stories about men being shot and killed while being arrested or detained by police. I saw some of the responses to those shootings. I began to contemplate what it is that gives men and women, no matter their level of sin or righteousness, dignity. This is what I asked those who were at Vespers…

—–

What is it that gives man dignity? What moves the Church to advocate for the unborn child and the prisoner? What compels us to give honor to the most innocent and the guiltiest, that they should be treated with dignity?

In Genesis 1 God declares that we are created in the image of God. Man was created in goodness and while still pure commanded to take the image of God to the rest of creation. They were to reflect the image of the Creator to His creation that did not bear that image. This is part of the subduing of creation mandated by Holy Spirit. By carrying the authority of God by way of His image, we would participate in Creation, its management, and husbandry. Even without sin man took the image of God to the world.

The fall did not undo this. Man is still to take the image of God out to the world, but with the fall came a haze over our eyes. Blindness is a type of death[2]. We could no longer see properly; not just creation, but we could no longer see God himself in those He created. So, when Cain kills Abel and he is confronted with his sin, he cannot see the value of his brother, his inherent dignity. He slanders him by declaring to God that Abel is not worthy to be watched over, cared for, ministered to… “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen 4:8-9).

This cloudiness of eyesight can affect us as well. It is hard for us to see the image of God in an unborn child or in the man guilty of murder. If we forget that they are both image bearers we can trash them both. We can literally put the most innocent into the garbage, but we can also forget the prisoner; leaving him or her to physical assault and even rape. Turning such humiliation into a joke, we laugh with the world as fellow prisoners or guards strip men and women MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD of their dignity, or sounding support with glib comments like “Can’t do the time, don’t do the crime[3].”

When we forget that even the guilty bear the image of God, we can quickly find ourselves supporting or even participating in evil far greater than the crimes perpetrated by these guilty persons. (more…)

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On June 25, 2016 By In Culture, Family and Children, Worship

What do young people really need from church?

In the last two or three generations, so many new and different answers have been given to this question that you could be forgiven for failing to keep up.

What young people need from their church, the gurus tell us, is specialised youth ministry, and specialised youth workers, and contemporary music, and midweek sports clubs to keep kids out of trouble, and midweek social activities to keep teens off the streets, and accessible worship, and youth-centred sermons, and shorter sermons, and interactive sermons, and audio-visual sermons, and online resources, and social media engagement, and a thousand and one other things. If churches don’t provide these things, we are warned, young people will undoubtedly turn away from Christ, we will have failed the next generation, the church will wither and die, and it will all be our fault.

Well, I’m sceptical. It seems to me highly unlikely that any of these activities are essential for young people to keep following Christ, for at least two reasons: First, none of them have a particularly high profile in the Bible. Second, for around 2000 years, countless millions of Christian young people have managed to grow into well-adjusted Christian adults without any of them.

So whatever benefit there might be in some of them (and I’m a fan of some contemporary Christian worship music, for example), none of them can reasonably be regarded as essential.

So then, what do young people really need from church?

(more…)

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On June 20, 2016 By In Culture, Pro-Life

Your self-righteousness isn’t keeping you safe

The recent shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando has been labeled the deadliest mass shooting in US history. It’s reported that the gunman killed 49 people and injured at least 53. Most Christians have responded to this tragedy with love and compassion for the victims and their families. Numerous churches and pastors have denounced the violence and are standing in solidarity with the LGBT community.

But as usual, the craziest and most extreme of any group is the loudest. Two pastors have made headlines for their remarks on the Orlando shooting. One says,

“The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. I’m kind of upset that he [the shooter] didn’t finish the job!”

Another pastor says,

“I’m not sad about it; I’m not going to cry about it … the victims were going to die of AIDS and syphilis and whatever else; they were going to die early anyway … The bad news is that a lot of the homos in the bar are still alive.”

(more…)

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On June 18, 2016 By In Culture, Family and Children

Latin or Greek?

A friend asked a question recently on the subject of Christian education, along these lines: Why Greek rather than Latin? This isn’t the first time I’ve found myself tempted to talk about this subject; as it happens, I’ve had quite a few conversations about it over the years. And so perhaps now is as good a time as any to put a few thoughts in writing.

To begin with, a little background. Some Christian educators, particularly those in the so-called “Classical” tradition, regularly extol the virtues of learning Latin. The reasons are legion: it provides mental training; it helps with the grammar of (many) other languages, including English; it clarifies the etymology of many English words, thus broadening students’ English vocabulary; it opens the door to many great works of classical literature; and so on. I happily add my three-and-a-half cheers to the noisy, happy, Ciceronian throng. All these are, it seems to me, entirely worthy aspirations.

Yet we’ve chosen to teach our kids Greek instead. Why? Well, there are a few reasons. But first, two caveats.

First, I want to make it abundantly clear that this isn’t the sort of thing I want to get hot under the collar about. I think Latin is great. Seriously. Totally, wonderfully, utterly great. I’m not about to criticise anyone for teaching it to their kids. Frankly, if another family is already committed to giving their kids a thoroughly Christian upbringing, including the academic aspects of their training, then I’m 110% on their side. To start throwing brick-ends because they choose the language of Augustine rather than that of Athanasius seems to me rather like setting off across the Atlantic in a two-man rowboat, only to start complaining somewhere just west of the Scilly Isles that the other guy’s paddle is the wrong colour.

(more…)

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On June 10, 2016 By In Culture, Family and Children

Mutilating A Daughter

mosque graphhic

Illustration by Laurel Lynn Leake

About a month ago, This American Life ran a story that gave me the biggest lump in my throat and painful knots in my stomach. It was the story of a young woman who discovered she was the victim of female genital mutilation.

(more…)

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The Walls Children

On June 8, 2016 By In Books, Culture, Family and Children

The Glass Castle: How to “Skedaddle” Through Life

Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls

 

The Glass Castle is the compelling memoir of Jeannette Walls. Written in 2005, The Glass Castle follows the various exploits of a family’s drunken father and free-spirit mother. As of last month, Lionsgate began filming a Hollywood adaption of the book. The movie is anticipated for release in 2017 featuring Brie Larson (who also starred in the critically acclaimed “Room” in 2015), Naomi Watts, and Woody Harrelson. The book exposes the cultural challenges of the post-modern family and the vulnerabilities of a family outside of the Christian Church. The morality of “independence” is challenged as the memoir painfully connects “free spirit” parenting to neglected, abused, and resentful children. (more…)

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On April 15, 2016 By In Culture, Politics, Theology, Worship

The doxological foundations of a Christian social order

Introduction

In recent years, various writers have given some thought to the shape of a distinctively Christian social order: What would the world look like if large numbers of people turned to Christ and sought to live out their faith in every sphere of life?

This is an important question for at least two reasons. The first is of particular concern to me, as a Minister in London England: this issue has been almost entirely neglected in contemporary British evangelicalism. While God has blessed us richly in the last century or so with a rediscovery of the priority of biblical preaching, personal faith, evangelism, church planting and so on, we have not given enough thought to the ways in which the gospel should impact the wider structures of society – the life of nations, our educational systems, the media, the law, politics, medicine, the arts, and so on. It’s about time that we did.

Second, these questions about the nature of a Christian social order are not merely peripheral or academic. In the contrary, the answers we give to them will profoundly shape the kinds of decisions we make in many different areas of our lives. They will help us decide how we should educate our children, what kind of political change we ought to work and pray for, how we should vote (and what to expect from even the best candidates if they win), what strategies we should employ as we engage in public life, what kinds of attitudes we ought to have towards our vocations, and a whole range of other questions.

Indeed, almost every major decision (and a good many minor ones) we make in our lives as individuals, families, and churches presupposes some kind of answer to this question, since at its heart it is about the shape of history (past, present and future), and our interpretation of the past and our expectations for the future will necessarily shape our decisions in the present. Life is eschatology.

A neglected question

There is one important issue, however, which has been rather neglected (so far) as we have sought to reformulate our vision of a distinctively Christian social order. The question concerns the role of the church in bringing about the change we seek for. At a superficial level, it appears that the church’s role is far from neglected. Everyone affirms that the church must pray; everyone affirms that it is through the church’s evangelism and witness that people are draw to faith in Christ and begin to display the transformed lives that lie at the heart of the social change we desire; everyone affirms that the church has a vital role as a place of teaching, fellowship, encouragement, and so on; and most importantly of all everyone affirms that it is in response to the church’s prayers that God acts graciously in the world to bring about the social change that we long for. At their best, these affirmations have been self-consciously corporate in focus – that is to say, “the church” has meant not just “That collection of individual Christians who worship at St Ethelwine’s and then head off to pray and evangelise and so on in the hope that that Spirit of God would draw other men and women to faith,” but rather, “That congregation at St Ethelwine’s in response to whose corporate prayer, evangelism and community life the Spirit of God is at work to change the world.”

But this answer, it seems to me, stops short of explicating the full extent of the church’s place in this aspect of the Spirit’s work. In particular, it fails to address explicitly the vital importance of the church’s worship on the Lord’s Day as the first step in God’s plan to renew and re-create the world.

The worst effects of this are seen when Lord’s Day worship is replaced (almost) entirely with evangelistic activities, on the well-intentioned but ultimately misguided assumption that this is the best use of our precious time together if we want to see our communities transformed by the gospel. Of course evangelism is vitally important, but worship is vitally important too, and the two activities are not to be seen as a trade-off, as though doing one would detract from the effectiveness of the other. On the contrary, both are necessary (at different times, in different contexts), and it is in response to both of them (and also, as it happens, in response to the renewal of our relationships within the corporate life of the church) that God works to change the unbelieving world around us.

So what exactly is this missing element? How exactly is the church’s worship related to the Spirit’s work to renew and transform the world? The answer could be put like this: It is as the church gathers in the presence of God, lifted up in the Spirit into the heavenly places in Christ Jesus to worship before the Father, that God is at work both to renew and reorder the relationships between the members of the church and to transform the unbelieving world outside the church by drawing people to faith in Christ and bringing about the broader social change we long for.

To put it most simply, everything begins with worship. A Christian social order has doxological foundations.

(more…)

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