I believe firmly that as you read Scripture more and more, a certain passage will speak powerfully to you personally. That it will mean something to you in a way that none of the other passages do.
As time goes by, that verse (or verses) may change. And that of course is okay because it speaks to you where you are at, or about where you have been and where you are going. What I'm wondering is what is your favorite Scripture? Or what verse of Scripture speaks to you more strongly than any other?
My favorite verse of Scripture comes from Galatians 2.20: "I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live by Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me."
Such a profound truth: Christ lives in me.
What is your favorite verse of Scripture?
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Thursday, September 27, 2012
I could have been a Luddite*
Warning: Hypocrisy alert!
Let's get the obvious charge of hypocrisy aside. Yes, I'm using a modern technology and the medium of a blog to pooh-pooh the evils of technology.
That being said...
It is no secret that I view smart phones quite critically. It has been my experience that smart phones, despite their name, usually cause the user to act like an idiot. I once had to slam the brakes of my car to avoid a teenage boy who stepped directly in front of me while texting (or playing a game, or watching a video, who knows and who really cares?). He never flinched--I don't think he knows I almost hit him. Then he tripped on the curb and then he...wait for it...walked into a tree.
Good thing his phone was smart.
If only such idiocy was limited to the youthful, we could chalk it up to youthful enthusiasm. Alas, I see people of all ages, grown adults and card carrying AARP members, mimic such idiotic actions of that young, teenage boy.
Aside from the general rise of stupidity that seems to be directly related to the use of smart phones, I do not care for them because of the disintegration of social interaction that I witness in the world around me. Sometimes I just want to scream, "Is the text or Facebook status update or e-mail you just received really more important than the conversation we were having face to face?"
I realize I'm in the minority, but sometimes I enjoy talking to someone without having them immediately go to wikipedia to look up the topic we are discussing and start reading it, thus effectively killing the conversation.
But I've never considered the ways in which smart phones can cause a disintegration of our relationship with God. Carl Trueman has just posted an excellent essay on just that topic. When I purchased my last phone I told the salesman, "I only want a phone that makes and receives phone calls." He kept trying to offer me complex little fake tricorders until finally my wife spoke up and said, "He isn't kidding. He doesn't want any of that stuff." I have since operated under the false belief that I was, apparently, the only person on the planet who felt that way. But I'm not, and that is refreshing.
Even more refreshing is his perspective on solitude. Consider what he has to say on the sound and fury--signifying NOTHING--of our age of smart phones:
"I suspect Christians can be among the worst offenders. I hope that no Christians were lining up for the latest Apple iPhone many hours before it was released. It is, after all, just a phone - just a phone! - and not a cure for cancer, AIDS, poverty or the lack of clean drinking water in many parts of the world. But I am confident that my hope on that score is a vain one. Many Christians are as deeply embedded in the sad culture of consumerism as anyone. And even those of us who are not, who have phones that look as if they predate VHS recorders, can still con ourselves that all of our activity, all of that sound and fury in our lives, signifies something worthwhile. Yet how often does it signify nothing but the fact that we strut about on the stages we have made for fear not simply of loneliness but even of solitude; for solitude is the place where we have no alternative but to reflect upon the most serious realities of our existence."
You can read the rest of his essay here
*I realize I'm misappropriating the term Luddite.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Tending My Garden
It has turned out to be a much more beautiful day than I anticipated so I took advantage of the weather and took my garden apart. Notice, I didn't say harvest my garden, but took it apart.
In early Spring I decided I wanted to try to garden. So I moved bricks and built a raised bed garden behind the manse. It was a very small garden, which was my intent, just a small garden where we could get some delicious fresh vegetables.
It didn't really work the way I anticipated.
I had great soil brought in from a local farmer's barn. He warned me, "Anything will grow in this stuff." I smiled, envisioning giant tomatoes. I planted my seeds. I watered...occasionally. I watched green shoots sprout up. I marveled at how many little bursts of life were breaking through the soil. I looked closely. They all looked remarkably like grass!
A week went by. I had been right: I had a nice raised, bricked-in patch of grass.
I set about tending it. I pulled the grass. I spent hours pulling grass. And weeds. Weeds had also started to grow. I know so little about gardening that I let the weeds grow to see what fruit they would bear, since those wise words well, are so wise, that we can know something by its fruit. As I weeded I reflected on many such spiritual truths that were evident. Jesus after all practiced his ministry in a predominantly agricultural society. Matthew 13 is a great example of this: there is a parable of the sower, a parable about weeds, even a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven being like a mustard seed.
What is truth, Pilate wondered, while Jesus stood silently before him. Jesus is the truth. When we come to know Jesus as Lord, we move our lives into him. And he simultaneously lives within us. Our new existence could be likened to a distorted Venn Diagram. Distorted, because there should be no realm of our life (circle) outside of Christ. When we start to live a life of truly abiding in Jesus then we can realize that God communicates his truth continually to us through creation.
In planting a garden we can learn about being rooted in Christ.
In tending the garden we can learn about the dangers those weeds in life pose to us.
And in taking apart a failed garden (repenting?) we can learn something too.
To disassemble my garden, I removed the bricks stacked 3 high and re-stacked them by the house. I was doing this so that the groundskeeper could mow over the garden. Utterly destroy it. There was nothing there to be harvested. As I re-stacked the bricks I realized that in my entire gardening endeavor I had spent more time building up the brick walls then actually tending to the garden. When I had built the walls, before I had planted a single seed, I stood back and admired my work. I thought it looked pretty good. I was focused entirely on outward appearance and neglected to do the real work of tending to what was planted underneath the soil.
I wonder how often in my walk with Christ I spend too much time cultivating an outward image without tending to the real work of those roots of faith buried in my heart? I wonder how many other believers spend too much time building up walls that look pretty without concentrating on creating ideal situations for the Spirit to produce fruit?
In early Spring I decided I wanted to try to garden. So I moved bricks and built a raised bed garden behind the manse. It was a very small garden, which was my intent, just a small garden where we could get some delicious fresh vegetables.
It didn't really work the way I anticipated.
I had great soil brought in from a local farmer's barn. He warned me, "Anything will grow in this stuff." I smiled, envisioning giant tomatoes. I planted my seeds. I watered...occasionally. I watched green shoots sprout up. I marveled at how many little bursts of life were breaking through the soil. I looked closely. They all looked remarkably like grass!
A week went by. I had been right: I had a nice raised, bricked-in patch of grass.
I set about tending it. I pulled the grass. I spent hours pulling grass. And weeds. Weeds had also started to grow. I know so little about gardening that I let the weeds grow to see what fruit they would bear, since those wise words well, are so wise, that we can know something by its fruit. As I weeded I reflected on many such spiritual truths that were evident. Jesus after all practiced his ministry in a predominantly agricultural society. Matthew 13 is a great example of this: there is a parable of the sower, a parable about weeds, even a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven being like a mustard seed.
What is truth, Pilate wondered, while Jesus stood silently before him. Jesus is the truth. When we come to know Jesus as Lord, we move our lives into him. And he simultaneously lives within us. Our new existence could be likened to a distorted Venn Diagram. Distorted, because there should be no realm of our life (circle) outside of Christ. When we start to live a life of truly abiding in Jesus then we can realize that God communicates his truth continually to us through creation.
In planting a garden we can learn about being rooted in Christ.
In tending the garden we can learn about the dangers those weeds in life pose to us.
And in taking apart a failed garden (repenting?) we can learn something too.
To disassemble my garden, I removed the bricks stacked 3 high and re-stacked them by the house. I was doing this so that the groundskeeper could mow over the garden. Utterly destroy it. There was nothing there to be harvested. As I re-stacked the bricks I realized that in my entire gardening endeavor I had spent more time building up the brick walls then actually tending to the garden. When I had built the walls, before I had planted a single seed, I stood back and admired my work. I thought it looked pretty good. I was focused entirely on outward appearance and neglected to do the real work of tending to what was planted underneath the soil.
I wonder how often in my walk with Christ I spend too much time cultivating an outward image without tending to the real work of those roots of faith buried in my heart? I wonder how many other believers spend too much time building up walls that look pretty without concentrating on creating ideal situations for the Spirit to produce fruit?
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Where have all the blog posts gone?
I want to apologize for the lack of posts lately. There are primarily two reasons why I haven't posted much on here. The first is my new daughter. Little babies take up a lot of free time. I realize this is nothing new for many readers, and something I was warned of but the reality is always unexpected, even when you are warned. I'm not complaining, I love it, but she takes up a lot of my free time. I say "free time" because I try to restrict writing blog posts to outside my "working hours." I don't think part of my calling is to write a blog and it seems there are better things I can do during my working hours than write an entry. The result is that when I do have some free time, I rarely feel like sitting down and typing up the sundry topics that bounces about inside my skull.
The other reason escapes me at the moment. But it was secondary anyways, and in our culture only the winner counts.
I do have a list of blog topics I'm keeping so there will be posts forthcoming. And soon! Until then...
The other reason escapes me at the moment. But it was secondary anyways, and in our culture only the winner counts.
I do have a list of blog topics I'm keeping so there will be posts forthcoming. And soon! Until then...
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Kerygma
Every Lord's Day I happen to administer the non-sacrament of preaching. (Calvinists will understand what I mean by that statement). If the content of my sermons happen to interest you--you can find them here:
http://www.millcreekworship.org/home/sermons/
Coincidentally, you can also find out other information about the life of the church where I currently serve God.
http://www.millcreekworship.org/home/sermons/
Coincidentally, you can also find out other information about the life of the church where I currently serve God.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Pastoral Theology: Practical Advice I Disregarded
Well it has been a year since I received the official call to the church I currently serve. More than a year. Hard to believe how fast time flies. The older I get, the more inclined I am to agree with C.S. Lewis' conclusions in The Weight of Glory about our relationship with time, our nostalgia for the past and our future glory.
Over at the blog Practical Shepharding, a first time pastor asked "What should my first year look like and how much change should come?"
His question was answered thusly: "Preach the Word. Love the people. Don't change anything."
Very similar to the advice I received repeatedly in seminary.
Class after class of seminary the professors provided this advice, "change nothing your first year." I heard it from outside sources as well, such as from colleagues in ministry. One professor said, "If you want to move the piano to the other side of the sanctuary move it one inch a month." "When change comes, make sure it is slow"was another common adage.
I pretty much threw all of that out the window in my first year. Not because I am bold but rather forgetful. I simply forgot that piece of advice. There is a reason when I was little my mother would lovingly call me "Forgetful Jones."
But hindsight is twenty-twenty and I have come to the conclusion that the advice "to change nothing" is stupid.
First of all, preaching the Word is doing something. And as Brian Croft notes in his post when the Word is preached change will take place. Secondly, loving is doing something as well. When you love them you'll build relationships. Finally, giving the instruction that pastors should wait at least a year before instituting change works on an assumption of time that is outside of the biblical witness.
"You fool!" Jesus said. "This very night your life is demanded of you!" No one knows the length of their life, all we know is that God is our source of life and length of days. To assume that God has called us to a church for a least a year is arrogant. To further then assume that for the first year the most important thing we can do is nothing is to castrate the calling that God has put on our hearts.
Perhaps we have forgotten that Christ will return and that it will be unexpected, like a thief in the night. The Apostles expected Christ to return within their lifetime, and they are sometimes ridiculed for getting this wrong. But that sense of urgency fueled their ministry. They traveled incessantly, preached boldly, established churches, fed congregations and defied civil authorities. The result? A church spread throughout the most powerful empire in the world uniting slaves with rich merchants, royal officials with uneducated fishermen, Jewish scholars with Greek philosophers. A church that claimed absolutes in defiance of the established pluralistic philosophy of the day.
They turned the world upside down.
Today our seminaries and established pastors encourage first call ministers to change nothing.
"Change nothing" is another way of saying "be a maintenance man." What are we maintaining? A sinking ship with four churches closing for every one church that opens its doors.
The solution? Change nothing during your first year because apparently, we have all the time in the world.
Over at the blog Practical Shepharding, a first time pastor asked "What should my first year look like and how much change should come?"
His question was answered thusly: "Preach the Word. Love the people. Don't change anything."
Very similar to the advice I received repeatedly in seminary.
Class after class of seminary the professors provided this advice, "change nothing your first year." I heard it from outside sources as well, such as from colleagues in ministry. One professor said, "If you want to move the piano to the other side of the sanctuary move it one inch a month." "When change comes, make sure it is slow"was another common adage.
I pretty much threw all of that out the window in my first year. Not because I am bold but rather forgetful. I simply forgot that piece of advice. There is a reason when I was little my mother would lovingly call me "Forgetful Jones."
But hindsight is twenty-twenty and I have come to the conclusion that the advice "to change nothing" is stupid.
First of all, preaching the Word is doing something. And as Brian Croft notes in his post when the Word is preached change will take place. Secondly, loving is doing something as well. When you love them you'll build relationships. Finally, giving the instruction that pastors should wait at least a year before instituting change works on an assumption of time that is outside of the biblical witness.
"You fool!" Jesus said. "This very night your life is demanded of you!" No one knows the length of their life, all we know is that God is our source of life and length of days. To assume that God has called us to a church for a least a year is arrogant. To further then assume that for the first year the most important thing we can do is nothing is to castrate the calling that God has put on our hearts.
Perhaps we have forgotten that Christ will return and that it will be unexpected, like a thief in the night. The Apostles expected Christ to return within their lifetime, and they are sometimes ridiculed for getting this wrong. But that sense of urgency fueled their ministry. They traveled incessantly, preached boldly, established churches, fed congregations and defied civil authorities. The result? A church spread throughout the most powerful empire in the world uniting slaves with rich merchants, royal officials with uneducated fishermen, Jewish scholars with Greek philosophers. A church that claimed absolutes in defiance of the established pluralistic philosophy of the day.
They turned the world upside down.
Today our seminaries and established pastors encourage first call ministers to change nothing.
"Change nothing" is another way of saying "be a maintenance man." What are we maintaining? A sinking ship with four churches closing for every one church that opens its doors.
The solution? Change nothing during your first year because apparently, we have all the time in the world.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Salt, Light and Honey Part II
Following the last post a natural question arises: who is to blame?
I would say the primary blame lies with pastors.
The pastor can't be everything in the church, but when it comes to denominational structures those who are ordained (so in some situations elders as well) serve as the gatekeepers. They interview and examine candidates to see if they truly are called and to see if they are theologically sound. Through General Assembly or General Synod (or whatever such gatherings are called in Episcopal governments) doctrine is upheld or altered, policies are set, and the future is planned.
All of these important decisions start at the local church and work their way up. Or they should. They should begin with the pastor and the pastor should begin with the Word of God and prayer. Their relationship with how they approach Scripture, how they understand it, and most importantly, how they preach it naturally follow. Is the gospel still proclaimed throughout American churches today?
In Helmut's criticism of Christians mistakenly thinking they are the honey of the world, and not the salt, he carries that criticism over into the pulpit. "So where there is no bitter reaction to the message, the true salt is lacking. It is a dubious sign if the world lives too peacefully with the church. It is not a good sign when people are all too admiring of their preacher, for then as a rule he has not been scattering salt from the pulpit...Enthusiasm and excessively unanimous agreement with a sermon usually indicates that it is suffering from a serious deficiency disease" (p. 29).
This has led me to reflect on my role as a pastor. Do my sermons bite, at least occasionally, the way salt bites at a wound? Or do I seek praise and affirmation that I am "doing a good job"? I once heard that a pastor should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Yet how many pastors truly seek to do just that: afflict those who have become too comfortable with the world by confronting them with the Word of God or comfort those aware of their depravity with the hope of the gospel?
A sermon should light a fire in the hearts of those who hear it. We should, like Jesus, explain to others what the Scriptures say concerning him so that they can, like Cleopas and his friend, feel their hearts burning within them as the Scriptures are opened before them (Luke 24.13-35).
If the word of God is not being proclaimed on Sunday from the pulpit, it is only naturally that we will end up with (or have already) a collection of Christians who believe they are the honey of the world.
I would say the primary blame lies with pastors.
The pastor can't be everything in the church, but when it comes to denominational structures those who are ordained (so in some situations elders as well) serve as the gatekeepers. They interview and examine candidates to see if they truly are called and to see if they are theologically sound. Through General Assembly or General Synod (or whatever such gatherings are called in Episcopal governments) doctrine is upheld or altered, policies are set, and the future is planned.
All of these important decisions start at the local church and work their way up. Or they should. They should begin with the pastor and the pastor should begin with the Word of God and prayer. Their relationship with how they approach Scripture, how they understand it, and most importantly, how they preach it naturally follow. Is the gospel still proclaimed throughout American churches today?
In Helmut's criticism of Christians mistakenly thinking they are the honey of the world, and not the salt, he carries that criticism over into the pulpit. "So where there is no bitter reaction to the message, the true salt is lacking. It is a dubious sign if the world lives too peacefully with the church. It is not a good sign when people are all too admiring of their preacher, for then as a rule he has not been scattering salt from the pulpit...Enthusiasm and excessively unanimous agreement with a sermon usually indicates that it is suffering from a serious deficiency disease" (p. 29).
This has led me to reflect on my role as a pastor. Do my sermons bite, at least occasionally, the way salt bites at a wound? Or do I seek praise and affirmation that I am "doing a good job"? I once heard that a pastor should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Yet how many pastors truly seek to do just that: afflict those who have become too comfortable with the world by confronting them with the Word of God or comfort those aware of their depravity with the hope of the gospel?
A sermon should light a fire in the hearts of those who hear it. We should, like Jesus, explain to others what the Scriptures say concerning him so that they can, like Cleopas and his friend, feel their hearts burning within them as the Scriptures are opened before them (Luke 24.13-35).
If the word of God is not being proclaimed on Sunday from the pulpit, it is only naturally that we will end up with (or have already) a collection of Christians who believe they are the honey of the world.
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