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On November 27, 2018 By In Worship

Pastoral Blues on Monday Morning.

Early in my pastoral work I often wondered why I was on such spiritual high on Sunday and somewhat depressed on Monday morning. I still ponder that question today. I would and still wake up without much enthusiasm. It was a fairly distinct feeling than the previous Sunday morning. Sunday gives me a rush. Perhaps it is due to the spiritual component that comes with a high liturgical service where kneeling and standing and singing and confessing do not allow the body to remain passive, motionless. Preaching is also a unique sensation. To this day, when I walk up to the pulpit, my heart still races. I am ready to address my congregation as if it were my first time. In my case, it’s almost the 500th time and still, every Sunday feels fresh and that same insecurity coupled with boyish eagerness still strikes at about 9:50 AM each Lord’s Day.

Sundays are full days for ministers. After the service is over there are the enlivening conversations consisting of life updates, sermon-follow ups, general back and forth about casual day-to-day issues, setting appointments to meet during the week, eating, and sometimes serious counseling issues and more. Every pastor knows that after the service, there is much more energy to be poured. As I say, it’s enlivening, but emotionally draining. The afternoons continue to feed off morning worship. Hospitality and friendships continue. The joy of following up with visitors, the remaining melodies of hymns and psalms are hummed throughout, family responsibilities and the entire Sunday is consumed. And there was evening and there was morning, day one.

When Monday arrives, most pastors I talk to find themselves unhappy, bewildered by the newness of the week as if they’ve never been at this stage of the week before. Some take the day off. I refuse to do so. There is something powerful about beginning things early in the week. At least two pastors I spoke with said they had a hard time getting out of bed on Monday mornings. They are not lazy people. In fact, these guys get up quite early during the week, but Mondays they generally cannot. So what’s the cause? It can’t be a rare phenomenon because it’s too common among people in my field. In fact, it’s not common in other professions.

One obvious explanation is that Mondays are days where exhaustion appears most frequently. This makes sense. On Sunday, pastors uphold a high degree of alertness and awareness, emotional stability, and outward energy before, during and after church and when Monday comes as surely as the sun, all that is spent. Jared Wilson observes:

On Monday mornings I enter my office and find that, like Sisyphus, the stone I spent the week previous pushing up the hill lay at the bottom again, ready for another go. Monday morning I must pastor. But what kind of must?

Sometimes it’s a half-hearted must; a weak and overwhelmed must. But shepherding must go on.

Sundays are the culmination of lots of things: the delivery of a sermon worked, meditated and prayed over all week, the administration of the sacraments which is anticipated throughout the week, the face to face interaction with all your people at once. It’s completion embodied and enjoyed. In sum, Sundays are Sabbath rests; days of pastoral repose; for the pastor, Sunday is the “very good” of creation. It is easier to see God’s hands at work. Mondays are the beginning of a new construction project. New beginnings are daunting, overwhelming and mentally challenging. As Jared Wilson so appropriately summarizes the pastoral vision for Monday:

My first thoughts on Monday mornings are to my fatigue and all I must do, but I must push them into thoughts of Christ, all he is and all he has done. There lies the vision that compels my will.

Let Christ shepherd us when we are weak. Let him compel us to work for the kingdom as he takes our burdens and gives us rest.

 

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On September 24, 2018 By In Theology, Worship

The Environs of the Spirit

In Luke’s two-volumes, The Gospel of Luke and Acts, the Holy Spirit has a prominent place in the life of Jesus and his church. Whenever the Spirit shows up, our minds should race back to the first place we see him in Scripture: brooding in the darkness over the newly created, unformed and unfilled world. He is the Breath of God that carries the Word to tear apart and put everything back together in a new unified, fruitful relationship: light and darkness, waters above and waters below, seas and dry land, vegetation and ground, and man and woman. All of this is done with an eye on creating an environment for God and man to dwell together (Rev 21.3). (more…)

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On August 22, 2018 By In Worship

13 Thoughts on Reading the Bible

  1. We need to see our entrance into the Bible’s words as something of a heavenly excursion. The Bible is a window into the New Jerusalem; the place where faith turns into sight. Indeed it’s the wardrobe into a new world.
  2.  Coming to the Bible is formational. We are being formed into something, or better yet, into Someone. Entering into the Scriptural drama implies that we vow to dwell in that story together with God’s people. It is not a mechanical experience, but an experience of togetherness.
  3. The Bible is to be experienced like excellent wine. It has to be savored, explored, cherished slowly. The Spirit of God does not waste his breath, so every text is a revelation of that divine truth.
  4. Reading the Bible cannot be an exercise in proof-texting. Prooftexting atomizes the Bible and fails to see the redemptive flow of Scripture.
  5. God’s love is manifested in His sharing revelation with humanity. The Bible is the “perfect” which has come (I Cor. 13:10). Thus engaging the Scriptures is entering into a community of love.
  6. We often treat God’s Word as an encyclopedia. We seek data to fill up our tank of knowledge, but knowledge is an (ad)venture, the pursuit of self-giving love. As Dr. Esther Meek observes, “Knowledge is not information, but transformation.”
  7. Devotional pietists fail to see the necessity of singing the Bible. When we sing the Bible, it is treasured and memorized. It is the grammar stage of biblical literacy.
  8. We wish to saturate ourselves in the biblical story through various means available, and singing is an indispensable part of this process. To know the Bible is to sing the Bible.
  9. I have always been fascinated with the practice of corporate reading of the Scriptures. We should probably have people over our homes merely to read the Bible out loud. Our children and our families need to hear the Bible.
  10. It is always pitiful to visit evangelical churches where the Scriptures are only read–partially–during the sermon, while mainline churches continue the liturgical pattern of three readings per service, evangelicals who cherish sola scriptura shy away from it.
  11. The prophets were clear about this. Where there is no prophetic revelation the people perish, which is to say where the revelation is not treasured the people find alternative revelations to satisfy their desires for ultimacy.
  12. Reading, engaging, speaking the Bible is a way we express our union with Jesus since Jesus is communicated most clearly and objectively in God’s holy writ.
  13. Scriptural language is the language of faith, hope, and love. In the Scriptures we are renewed in our faith, we find hope in the work of Messiah, and we are engaged in the language of love with the great lover of our souls.

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On August 6, 2018 By In Worship

Discipling the Nations, Starting at Home

After his resurrection, Jesus gave the church the commission to disciple the nations (Mt 28.18-20). In fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, all the nations would be blessed through Abraham’s seed: Christ, head and body. When John sees a vision of the glorious church, the New Jerusalem, he sees kings bringing their glory into the city. The glory of kings is the realms of their dominions. Entire cultures will be brought in and made part of the city of God.

This glorious vision is overwhelming. The task seems daunting. We hear this grand narrative of “the world” and “nations” consciously arranging their cultures under the lordship of Christ, look at the task before us, and say, “How in the world do we get there from here?” We have trouble maintaining personal disciplines, ordering our own family life, and arranging local church life so that the church acts the way she is supposed to act. How are we expected to be changing the broader culture around us? The task, while glorious in its vision, seems hopeless. (more…)

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On July 30, 2018 By In Worship

The Church: God’s Glory

The first sanctuary for worship wasn’t much. It was beautiful, but it was simple: a garden filled with pristine, freshly created trees. The man and the woman were themselves also in their simplest state: naked and unashamed. The sanctuary and man were glorious but not as glorious as God intended them to be. In all of his dominion taking, man was to take the materials of the world around him and make the garden a more glorious place, which would eventually include man himself being glorified with clothing. The sanctuary and man within it was to move from this pristine state of glory into the greater glory of a developed world.

We can know that this was God’s intention by looking at the rest of the story of Scripture. As the story progresses, God moves his people from making stone altars (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) to building the Tabernacle (Moses) and eventually the Temple (Solomon). Man himself doesn’t return to a state of nakedness, but is clothed with garments of glory and beauty (Exod 28.2). All of these structures include the original garden sanctuary in some form, but they are all more developed. The place where God is meeting with man is becoming more glorious. (more…)

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On July 9, 2018 By In Theology, Worship

The Church: The Holy Of Holies City

At the end of Revelation, John sees a vision of the church, the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. She is a “holy city.” This holiness takes an architectural shape in this vision. John tells us that the city is a perfect cube; its width, height, and length are all the same. This cube-shaped image of holiness is not unusual. The Temple had a room that was cube-shaped: the Holiest Place or the Holy of Holies. Those measurements were distinct for this room. The Holy Place (the first room one entered in the Temple) was twice as long as it was wide. But the Holy of Holies was a perfect cube: 20 x 20 x 20 cubits (1Kg 6.20; Ezek 41.4). John’s vision is that the New Jerusalem, the church, is a “Holy of Holies city.” There are no more veils to hide us from God or God from us. No boundaries exist between the church and the throne of God. We, the city of God, live in the presence of God continually.

Understanding the architectural reference of the church being the Holy of Holies shapes the way we are to think about holiness. What is the Holy of Holies, and, consequently, what does that tell us about our own holiness? (more…)

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On June 4, 2018 By In Theology, Worship

Filled With All The Fullness Of God

One thing theologians like (especially Reformed theologians) is precision. Our theological statements must have fine points on them so that we are not accused of drifting into heterodoxy or heresy. There are several bloggers out there who will call you to task if you don’t say things just right or if you don’t say everything there is to say about everything every time you say anything.

Then there is Paul. When he prays for the church in Ephesus, he uses imprecise language when he states his desire for them. He wants them to be “filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph 3.19). What does that mean? (more…)

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On May 19, 2018 By In Scribblings, Theology, Wisdom, Worship

The Impracticality of Application

Guest post by Remy Wilkins
Remy is a teacher at Geneva Academy.
His first novel Strays is available from Canon Press

I have never heard anyone say that the Bible is impractical, but I have heard people, after an in depth exegesis of a passage, ask for the practical application. Offer a class on childrearing, marriage, finance and the church members flock to it; offer a course on Leviticus, the visions of Elijah, the importance of the periphrastic participle in the writings of St. John, and you get the weird guy and the retired couple. The church tacitly views great swaths of Scripture as tertial; what good does knowing the furniture of the temple have when the children are screaming, dinner needs fixing, and the job runneth overtime? Getting out in the tall grass of the Bible is fine if you’ve got the time, but who has the time? We need our Biblical tips and techniques in easy and digestible portions. At the heart of this complaint is the idea that the Word of God isn’t clear and that it requires esoteric skills and the free time of an eremitic monk in order to understand.

(more…)

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On May 11, 2018 By In Culture, Men, Theology, Worship

A Call for Masculine Grace

I was visiting an out of town church recently and the minister was preaching on Paul’s description of how we are called to freedom by God’s grace. While the sermon proclaimed the centrality of grace in the Christian life and how it makes us free, it was missing a key component. I would describe this component as masculine grace.

I will come back to what I mean by this term but first it is important to say that we are saved by grace; it is the gift of God. We don’t bring anything to the table. The only thing required for salvation is that you are a sinner. In this sense, the bar for entering salvation is as low as it can get.

But the temptation is to think that we will stay at this low entry point: every Christian will always be the same weakling sinner he was when he started and he will never move beyond this starting point. Now it is true that we never leave the foot of the cross until we are done with this life but it is important to understand that salvation has an impact on us here and now. Another way to say this is that if a person does not really change after the point of salvation then it would be legitimate to ask if the person has really experienced salvation. Which is to say, the gospel changes people. It really does. So how does grace change people?

The only way we can answer that question is by looking to the standard of God’s character and law. This is what I mean by masculine grace. Being the good Father that He is, God doesn’t leave us where He found us, dead in our sins, but He raises us up and matures us. A key way that He works this out in our lives is by showing us more and more what He is like. As challenging as it sounds, He is the standard of righteousness and holiness that we are shooting for in our own lives. This is God’s plan. He won’t settle for anything less and neither should we.

The danger then in speaking of grace is that we can make it sound like the bar is so low that we will always stay the messy creatures that we are. But we need to be careful with this kind of teaching on grace because it can actually become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We start out as wretched sinners and that is where we will always be. But that’s just not true. God’s work is efficacious and He really has brought us out of the darkness of sin. We really are the righteousness of God. (more…)

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On April 30, 2018 By In Worship

Living Sacrifices

Sacrifice has not ended. Certain types of sacrifices have ceased, but the way of sacrifice as the worship of the one, true, and living God has not ended. We are exhorted by command and example throughout the New Testament to offer ourselves and what we do to God as sacrifices to God. The fruit of our lips is a sacrifice of praise (Heb 13.15). Our good works and sharing with one another are sacrifices with which God is pleased (Heb 13.16). The gift the Philippian church sent to Paul was an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God (Phil 4.18). Our love for one another is to imitate Christ’s love for us, which was an offering and a sacrifice to God, a sweet-smelling aroma (Eph 5.2). The sacrifice of our lives gives off an odor to the world of life and death (2Cor 2.15-16). We are made a holy priesthood in order to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1Pet 2.5). Christian worship is sacrificial.

If we have a hang-up with understanding our worship in Christ as sacrifice, it is most likely because we think of sacrifice only in terms of atoning for sins. Since Christ has died, there is no other sacrifice for sin to be made. Therefore, sacrifice has ended. (more…)

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