DownshoreDrift

How Long Until the Church Effectively Deals With Its Prejudice?

CNN is producing a great series on being "Black in America." Yesterday, they dealt with the issue of race in the church by confronting Why Many Americans Prefer Their Sundays Segregated (HT: Jim West). This is a fascinating article. Here are some excerpts:

• Only 5 percent of our nation's churches are considered racially integrated (at least 20% of a minority race attends)
• Many who want segregated churches are looking for a place of refuge where they don't have to experience racism on Sundays
• Fear of interracial dating may keep churches segregated
• Integrated churches could help heal racial divides in America

I have said a lot about this in the past and I plan to say a good deal more about it in the future. At any rate, I think that it is significant that a secular world looks at the church and takes notice that we are just as segregated as they are, if not more so. Clearly, the Bible teaches that racial distinctions are to fade away in Christ, yet they remain in His Church. How do you think this affects our witness and what can we do about it?

Obviously, repentance and heart change is necessary. Maybe we will start to consider that when we realize that our preferences, beyond just being incompatible with the Gospel, are also destroying our witness in America, the land of multiculturalism.

Danny DeVito Gives Advice on Honesty, Character, and Evangelism

Probably one of the best things I've ever heard on how to relate to people honestly was from the movie, The Big Kahuna (1999) starring Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito. I saw clips from the movie several years ago and they have stuck with me ever since. The movie takes place in a hotel room and involves three salesmen working in the Midwest. Spacey and DeVito are longtime friends and they have taken on a newcomer, "Bob." Bob is an idealistic Christian and he spends a good bit of his time trying to evangelize people. Spacey calls him on what he is doing and says that he lacks integrity for evangelizing on the job. After a blow-up between Spacey and Bob, DeVito confronts Bob about what honesty and character is.  It is insightful and really spoke to me about my motives in my interactions with people. Do I care for people because of who they are, or because of what I can get from them?

For my more sensitive readers, there is one inappropriate word in the clip spoken in context. Sorry to expose you to that, but I felt that the truth of what was said here far outweighed any offense that may be given.                                                                               

A few years ago, I travelled through Europe. I made a decision, thinking about what DeVito said, to not lay my hands on a conversation and try and steer it in a spiritual direction. I resolved to deal with people as people, not as evangelism projects. It was amazing. In spite of myself, I actually ended up getting into about 10 spiritual conversations with people. On several occasions, I ended up talking to people for hours about life and the conversation inevitably turned to God. I had determined to just be a human being, not a pastor or an evangelist. It was very freeing.

One time, I was hiking along the coast of Italy with a guy and he began comparing me to the guys that he had partied with the night before. He told me that I was much calmer and more peaceful than they were. Why? he asked. That was the perfect opportunity to tell him that my peace came from Christ. I actually decided not to. I just told him that I didn't feel the need to talk all the time - that I was pretty content as I was. I had nothing to prove. Instead of thinking that I had missed an opportunity, I trusted God to do with that conversation what he wanted. We ended up spending the entire day together and we talked a good deal about relationships, life, goals, and the future. He ended up asking me how I knew that my wife was the right one for me and I told him that I prayed and God told me. Intrigued, he asked me all about how I could receive guidance from God in issues like that and I was able to tell him what a relationship with God was like and how it worked. We talked a great deal about knowing God as he asked me question after question. Because I entered a relationship with this guy and saw him as a person instead of a project, God used the whole thing in the way that He wanted and far more came out of it than I ever could have created myself. I have continued to try and minister this way.

I've found it much harder to have relationships with people like this since I've been a pastor. There always seems to be this religious barrier up between me and those outside the church, like they think I'm going to assault them with Bibles or force them under the water against their will in some type of extreme baptism ritual. The fact that as soon as people find out I'm a pastor I see them visibly recoil has probably been the hardest part of being a pastor for me. It is not that I don't want to be rejected. It is that I hate the barriers that artificially seem to go up between me and other people. It takes a while to get them down as I have a lot of work to do to convince people that I am just a normal person desperately in need of God's grace and love just as they are.

When I think about it, DeVito was right on the character issue as well.  We don't really have character until we can admit that we've blown it and that we were wrong about things. It is the regret and the desire to change that puts us in touch with our weaknesses and hopefully, connects us with our true source of life and power, Jesus. IF we humble ourselves and look to Him. I think that so many of us as Christians feel like we have to maintain our own righteousness, so we can never admit a mistake or be real with people who are alienated from God. That makes us look pretty plastic because we aren't fooling anyone. Everyone can clearly see that we are not perfect. Why do we continue with the charade?

The times that God's life and power have flowed through me the most were times that I just cared about people and was myself. Religion always seems to get in the way. Religion teaches us to see people as projects to "win to Christ" or "reach" because religion is all about climbing the ladder to God. We have to show how we're further up the ladder than other people because our identity is based on where we are on the ladder. If we have our doctrine straight and we are in the club, so to speak, we feel better about ourselves, especially in relation to others. This kind of religion kills. But instead of falling into this trap, what if we got our identity from Christ and were free to just take an interest in people for who they were? What if we cared about people because they were made in God's image? All people have desires, dreams, hopes, and fears. They all have families, jobs, and most just want to live a good life and make some small difference in the world. I know that we are all born sinful, but our doctrine of original sin should not cause us to despise people to the point that we do not deal with them as the human beings that they are. Jesus was the holiest man that ever lived - He was God and Man. Yet, He caused prostitutes, tax collectors, and "sinners" to be at ease in His presence. How? I really believe that He treated people with respect and that love flowed through Him. He didn't have to rank Himself on the ladder in relation to others because He knew who His Father was and as a consequence, knew who He was as well. He brought the Kingdom of God with Him and people were drawn to the love and healing that He gave.

So, what I have found is that when I see people as people and not as commodities that I can use for my benefit, then I am much more likely to express the love of Christ to them in a way that speaks to their heart. Often, this happens more effectively when I do not have some grand plan, but rather, when I am just friends with people for the sake of being friends. God seems to move mightily through loving, respectful friendship. If you had to ask me, I never thought I'd get this kind of wisdom from Danny DeVito. He's not a very "religious" source, is he? Who knew? I guess that God teaches us in all kinds of ways if we would just be quiet long enough to listen.

He Has Made Me Glad

Yesterday, we celebrated Caelan's third birthday.  He is doing great!  He is strong and healthy and he is also alive. We praise God for that. When we had the cancer scare back in March, we knew that if the cancer had returned and God did not intervene, Caelan would have probably not made it to his third birthday - today. Scary. Sure, there was a chance he would make it, but a recurrence of his type of cancer is brutal and fast acting. But, God was gracious and He did intervene!  I brought Caelan up on stage on Sunday and praised God before our church.  It is important for me to remember what an awesome God we serve by recounting His gracious acts and praising Him continually.

I wanted to link to what is probably my favorite worship song right now, "He Has Made Me Glad," by Hillsongs (HT: Micah Fries). Our praise team does this song every once in a while and it always moves me deeply. I hope that it touches your heart and leads you to the God who is our shield, our strength, our portion and deliver, our shelter and strong tower - our very present help in time of need. The God who makes us glad.

Long time since I've posted a photo

I took this picture this past Spring on a trip to New Orleans, one of my favorite cities on earth.

Wilderness Leadership

The era of the “promised land” is over for the mainline church in America. Because we have not been faithful, we find ourselves again in the wilderness, or perhaps, in exile. In either case, the establishment is collapsing and with it, the predictability, security and comfort that has allowed us to be at ease in Zion for several generations. The model of the “king” is no longer appropriate for leadership in today’s church. We need leadership more akin to the “judges” of ancient Israel, who arose out of the community in crisis to lead by the consent of and in concert with the community. And those judges were selected not by caste or class, but by demonstrating the authenticity and therefore the authority that comes from having attended to the inward journey with God.

Edward A. White from "What Kind of Pastor Will Most Likely Empower Laity."

I think that the idea of the "Church in Exile" was intriguing to me in this quote. If we are really in exile, or the Wilderness in relation to our culture, then what does that mean for how we function? For leadership? For cultural engagement? Yes, it appears that Christendom has crumbled. What will replace it and how will we manage a post-Christian America? It is apparent that spiritual leadership in a post-Christian culture must be more focused on God and our walk with Him, than it is on success, results, power, and influence.

How Beautiful Is the Body of Christ

I pastor an amazing church. I have a lot of pastor friends that are miserable in their churches because of one problem or another. I am not one of those pastors - there is literally nowhere else that I would rather be. I was moved to tears yesterday - there was such an amazing sense of God's presence. It started in worship as our teachers for our new Sunday School classes shared about the classes that God was leading them to teach. Each person shared from their heart. One of our teachers was gone because he was preaching in another church, so I read his description. Parenting, living from an overflow of Christ, an exposition of Psalm 23 - those were some of the topics. Our young adults teacher is a young Brazilian man, who after sharing about his class shared about the sports camp that he and another man led on Saturday. With little notice, they taught the kids in the neighborhood soccer and football. A kid from the neighborhood came to Christ.

The worship was amazing. I looked around the church and saw hands and hearts lifted to the Lord. People sang passionately. Our praise team is full of young people that use their talents for the Lord. Our church never lacks for singers and musicians. As I looked across the sanctuary my heart warmed to see people in love with their Lord instead of just going through the motions.

Our youth had just returned from a mission trip in Houston, Texas where they ministered to homeless people for a week. Our youth minister got choked up as he talked about the selfless attitudes of the youth, their heart for service, and their love for people. Three youth and a parent shared about how God had met them and what a life changing experience it was. They are all saying that they want to continue doing compassion ministry here and we are talking about revamping our youth group to center it around ministering to those in need. They are leading our church in this.

We took Communion yesterday. I spoke briefly about how in Christ, we are to regard no one from a worldly point of view - we are not to look on outward appearances. All that are in Christ are new creations. At our church, we all come forward to take Communion. I said that is significant because it reminds us that we all approach the Lord's Table the same way. In humility and repentance, we all arise and partake of the elements that remind us that Christ's blood was shed and His body was broken to take away our sins and to give us new life. As our church arose to come to the Lord's Table, I looked at the lines of people - people that I GET to serve as pastor. I knew their hurts, their pain, their triumphs, and their victories. I was shaken as I viewed the Body of Christ. Our church is beginning to become more multicultural and in the lines for Communion were whites, blacks, hispanics, and Asians - all approaching the Lord's Table together. It was beautiful.

At the end of the service, we introduced three girls - two teenagers and a younger girl who had come to know the Lord. The younger girl came to Christ this week in a Back Yard Bible Club that some of our folks were doing in a neighborhood. She was the daughter of the one of the guys that led the sports camp on Saturday where the kid from the neighborhood came to Christ. His teenage daughter also became a Christian as well as her friend that had been staying with them this summer. After the service, our deacons told a man in our church whose wife is in a wheel chair that people, on their own, gave money to help them get a van that they needed to be able to get around. I heard about it after it was done. God is at work in a powerful way and I praise Him.

Last night, our LIFE Group came over to the house. Including children, we had over 30 people come over. We grilled out, talked, laughed, and had a great time. It was a huge party. About once every three months we have a big meal together and just hang out. Our group is made up of young families that are learning how to raise their kids and walk with the Lord. What is cool is that we are doing this together.

This was supposed to be a pretty ordinary weekend. To a lot of people, I guess it was. But, when the Body of Christ came together, God showed up and changed everything. I praise God that I get to serve a church that looks expectantly to the Lord to work in our lives. How beautiful is the Body of Christ!

The Righteousness of Christ

I write a lot about social justice issues, missions, and reforming culture. But, it is only possible for the Christian to engage in any of that because we have first and foremost been set free from our sin, death, Satan, and Hell by the blood of Jesus and His sacrifice and victory on the Cross and through His resurrection. Because "it is finished" we no longer need to make striving for our own righteousness before God our all consuming focus. We are free to serve God and others!  We can entrust ourselves to God and truly believe that we are righteous with the imputed righteousness of Christ! What a great salvation!

I first ran across Dr. Rod Rosenbladt a few years ago when a friend of mine passed me a little booklet called Christ Alone. It was gold. I happened to see a link to a Dr. Rosenbladt mp3 on The Gospel for those Broken By the Church. I have not listened to this yet, but a couple of excerpts are printed that I found helpful:

If the Ten Commandments were not impossible enough, the preaching of Christian behavior, of Christian ethics, of Christian living, can drive a Christian into despairing unbelief. Not happy unbelief. Tragic, despairing, sad unbelief. (It is not unlike the [unhappy] Christian equivalent of "Jack Mormons" - those who finally admit to themselves and others that they can't live up to the demands of this non-Christian cult's laws, and excuse themselves from the whole sheebang.) A diet of this stuff from pulpit, from curriculum, from a Christian reading list, can do a work on a Christian that is (at least over the long haul) "faith destroying."

He goes on:

Learning Service Under a Better Master

The Christian is a person who recognizes that our real problem is not in achieving freedom but in learning service under a better master. The Christian realizes that every relationship that excludes God becomes oppressive. Recognizing and realizing that, we urgently want to live under the mastery of God.

                                          Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction 

A God-Sized Vision For Our Communities and Our World

Jesus taught us to pray to God that His Kingdom would come and His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:9). Would He teach us to pray that if He did not have some intention of it being carried out?

God's Kingdom

What is God's Kingdom? I have been talking about this a lot lately because the Kingdom is the template through which Jesus wants us to understand His purposes for this world. He brought the Kingdom of God into our midst. The Kingdom is nothing less than the reign and rule of God. So, Jesus wants us to pray that His reign and rule would be established on earth as it is in heaven. Prayer here means that we are asking God for His supernatural intervention in the affairs of men. But, since God uses us to do His will, we can also assume that He wants us to be agents of His Kingdom so that we may cooperate with Him in the establishment of His reign and rule. His Kingdom is here and it is forcefully advancing. It is for us to lay hold of it forcefully (Matt. 11:12).

God's Will

What is God's will? It seems that there have been a thousand books written about how we can know God's will for our lives. Does God want me to marry this person? Does He want me to take this job? Does He want me to move to this city? These are valid questions and surely God guides us throughout out our lives, but I find it interesting that we continually pray to know God's personal will for our lives (which is valid), while forgetting to pray for God's will for our communities and our world. Are we only able to think of ourselves? What does God think about the broken homes in your community? What does He think about fatherlessness and poverty? Does Isaiah 1:17 have anything to say to us about our stance regarding fatherlessness?  Jeremiah 29:7 says something amazing to the Israelites in exile in Babylon: "Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."  But, weren't the people of God in exile in pagan Babylon? How could they pray for the prosperity of Babylon?  Because God told them to. They were to represent His reign and rule even in the midst of exile. Should we do any less?

On Earth As It Is In Heaven

If we want to know what God's will is, we need look no further than His character. As we get to know God better, we should be reflecting His character in our lives. If we are not displaying compassion for those in need, then we are not reflecting God's character. If we are not living holy lives, then His character is not shining through. God wants to supernaturally transform our lives, our families, our environment, and our communities so that every place that we go we are bringing His Kingdom - His reign and rule. When we see sin, depravity, and brokenness in our cities, how can we run away? How can we harbor dreams of escaping people in need and believe that we are dreaming God's dreams? Does God not love people? Did He not die for the broken, harrassed, and helpless? Is there racial division in heaven? Is there crime and poverty? Are there broken homes, abused people, and people struggling with all types of bondages? Until we begin to understand that we are Christ's ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:20), then much of the beauty of the Christian life will be withheld from us because we did not have the faith or awareness to step into God's plan for this world.  God actually wants us to pray that Heaven will break into earth through our influence, be it through our personal witness, our work, our creativity, our families, or our general impact on society.

Thy Kingdom Come

I don't want to rest until my life is aligned to bring God's Kingdom everywhere I go. Christians should be MORE involved in our communities, not less. We should move into neighborhoods that are struggling and reclaim them. We should rebuild our schools, our neighborhoods, and our workplaces. We should be about the task of rebuilding lives. Isn't this what Isaiah 61:4 says, "They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations." And, Isaiah 58:12 says, "Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings." That should not be a revolutionary thought, but the norm. Instead, we tend to run away when problems arise or we turn our attention inward to our own families or our churches, thinking that if we can fix ourselves, then everything else will take care of itself. God wants us to turn our hearts toward Him and toward others, I believe.

It Is Too Small a Thing . . .

Isaiah 49:6 says, "It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth." Paul and Barnabas repeat this in Acts 13:47 in proclaiming the Gospel to the Gentiles.  We must move past just a personal vision for happiness in our own lives, or just a vision for our families or even for our church. Our vision must extend as far as God's does - to our communities, our nation, and our world. If we would open our eyes and allow Him to pour His life through us, we would be amazed at how our capacity for life, creativity, and restoration will grow. God will use us to be the light of the world, as Jesus calls us in Matthew 5:14.

What does the world look like without light? Dark, indeed. Perhaps we will stop running and complaining when we begin to see that God wants to use His Church to address the problems in this world. May we plant our feet in our communities and develop a God-sized vision for our world. How can we practically do this, you ask?

I'll get into specifics on this in the next post. But, it is likely that you already know the answer to that question.  It has probably been staring you in the face for some time and you have either not seen it because you did not have eyes to see it, or you saw it and chose to look away and do nothing. Hint: Think about the very thing that you have been complaining about the most and then ask what God might have you do about it. There is a reason that it has been bothering you.  More later.

Apparently, the Only People Reading My Blog Right Now Are . . .

. . . people interested in Heath Ledger and the role of the Joker.  Not really, but it seems that way. That post I wrote in January is in Google's top ten when you type in just about anything that reads like, "Did playing the Joker role lead to Heath Ledger's Death?", or "How did the Joker role affect Heath Ledger?"  I have an invisible statcounter on my blog that gives me search engine type information and it is telling me that there are a lot of people who are wondering if Heath Legder got in touch with some type of evil that ended up leading him to his death. You cannot watch the role that he played as the Joker without thinking that it must have affected him. He spent hours and hours meditating on the evil of the Joker until it consumed him and destroyed him. It is not far from accurate to say, "You are what you think."

The Bible tells us to think on things above, not on things of this earth (Colossians 3:2). How much time do we spend worrying about things? How often do we wonder what is going to happen to us? How much do we think about material things, evil things, deadly things? Are we envious? Do we covet? Are we lustful? Are we unforgiving, or do we hold grudges? Are we full of pride? Hate? Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) turns everything upside-down and tells us that it is not enough to just be outwardly righteous - we must be inwardly righteous as well. What we thought about internally was just as important, if not more so, than what we did externally, because out of the heart flows all types of evil things. Romans 12:1-2 tells us that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Ephesians 4:22-24 tells us to put off the old self that is corrupting us, to be made new in the attitude of our minds, and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. We need to think on things above.

The only way that we can really change is through Jesus. We have to admit to Him that we cannot change on our own and we have to ask Him to change us. The other day, I saw a brief moment of a show on MTV called "From G's to Gents." It takes a bunch of 20 something guys who are hoodlums and it is trying to show them how to be gentlemen. If they make the transition from thug to gentelmen, they win $100,000. I thought that it was pretty interesting because they were dealing with guys that had no hope for change and they were trying to help them change and become better people. What caught my attention was the guy who was on the phone with someone from back home crying saying, "I can't change." He was hopeless. Even when $100,000 was on the line, he could not give up the thug-life. It had become who he was because he had spent a lifetime devoted to it. Interesting.

We are all in that boat, though. Whatever we think about is what we become. Because we are born sinful, we are prone to think about sinful things. The only way that true transformation can really happen is if we are born from above and are given a new heart and mind by God. Jesus has to save us. We must look to Him in faith and ask Him to change our lives. When we do this, He cleanses us and gives us a new start. Then, we continue to think about Him and His ways and our minds are changed. Instead of dwelling on the sin and selfishness that destroys us, we dwell on Christ, our source of righteousness. We start thinking about how we can bless people instead of use people. We think about others instead of ourselves. By the power of God that aids us in this, our lives change.

Heath Ledger spent his time dwelling on the dark side. He played an amazing role in an amazing movie, but he took it too far. He could not control it and it consumed him. But, lest we throw stones, how many of us are consumed by money, by greed, by selfishness, pride, anger, lust, anxiety, our appearance, our popularity, our security, or our place in life? How many of us get consumed by religion thinking that we can in some way merit the merit of Christ? We are consumed by a million different things and all of them lead to death apart from Jesus. He is our Source of Life. The sooner that we realize that, the sooner that we find the reason that we were created.