I just came across an article about a male Gordon-Conwell student (the seminary I attended) who allegedly broke into a female student’s dorm room and setup a video camera with the intent of filming her.  You can read about it on the Boston Herald or the Salem News sites.  I feel badly for this young woman.  I can’t imagine the feeling of invasion of privacy and the lingering effects of this incident.  I also feel badly for the student that broke into her room.  He’s clearly a troubled person who is dealing with some difficult desires that led him to make a life-altering decision — very sad.

What I find interesting is the responses to this story in the comment section on these two newspapers’ sites.  There is a sense of derision and mocking aimed at this young man.  There is even a sense of delight in reveling in his downfall as a person seeking pastoral office.  To be honest, I’m not sure what to think.  I get why people feel this way.  They think judgmental evangelicals are just as sinful as everyone else, and therefore they should keep their mouths shut.  And, I agree that this guy shouldn’t be doing this or anything like it, but I’m not surprised it happened.  I also don’t think this makes pastors who talk about sin insincere or necessarily hypocritical.   As a clergy member myself, I’m aware of the standard to which I feel called, but I’m also aware of the fact that I don’t measure up.

I’ve never broken into another person’s room to film them (nor done anything illegal), but there are undeniable ways that I fall short of God’s standard.   If my qualification for ministry was based on my personal performance, I’d be out of a job.  If I had to master every sin before I talked about it, there’d be a lot of things I could never preach on.  I’m not God.  I’m not perfect.  I sin, sometimes boldly.  What am I to do?  What are clergy to do?

Most hide it.  They put forward a portrait of perfection, but as I mentioned in my last post hiding it makes things worse, because hiding it gives the sin more power.  It isolates people and prevents them from receiving grace.  What we, the church, need to do is come to terms with the fact that our clergy are just as sinful as the rest of the world.  Our desires are just as dark and perverse as everyone else’s.   We’re broken too.  My hope is only that our hearts are receptive enough to grace and that we’ve experienced a deep enough level of transformation that we are safe to lead and wise enough to put parameters in place that protect us from personal pitfalls.

We need to be honest about our clergy, and honest about God.  This is no surprise to God, and it’s no disqualifier for grace.  My hope is that churches can be honest about sin so that they are able to call people to repentance, and serious enough about grace to provide a place that’s safe enough for confession and repentance to happen.   Often times this culture starts in seminary.  Pastors try to replicate the culture they experienced in seminary in the churches they lead.  Gordon-Conwell was a place that was safe enough for me to confess and experience grace while I was there, but I wonder if it was for this student.   For the sake of our pastors and the future churches they lead, I hope he is the exception.  My prayers are with the GCTS community.

From Flickr

Secrets sabotage relationships like poison destroys the body.   When we keep secrets, we do damage to the relationships with the people we keep these secrets from.  Whatever we are hiding becomes less damaging than the fact that we are hiding something at all.  The secret ruins the relationship not the thing that is kept secret.

I think that’s why Paul said,

“Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.”

(2 Corinthians 4:2 NIV)

When we keep secrets, we don’t believe that we are loved as we are. We don’t believe we can be forgiven.  We don’t believe in grace.  We succumb to the belief that our weakness, our brokenness, our failures are too embarrassing.  We are too bad or too selfish or too shameful to be accepted by the person from whom we keep the secret.  In this passage, Paul was tempted to cover up his ministry failings to be more appealing to the Corinthians, but this would have minimized God’s grace and call in his life.  It would have meant that his success and not the gospel was the foundation of his identity and ministry.  When we keep secrets, it is a sign of sickness in our own self-understanding.

That’s why we renounce secrets with the antidote of confession. In order to confess we must believe in grace.  We must trust in forgiveness.  We must find our worth in God.  He accepts us, not because we are flawless, but because his love is unconditional.

Confession is never easy though.  It’s never easy to admit to our spouses that we were wrong.  It’s never comfortable to confess we were selfish.  It never feels good to shine the spotlight on our darkest moments.  And that’s why, I have to regularly remind myself of the insidious nature of secrets and the transformative power of confession.  The practice of confession is the pathway into grace.  It’s the place where secrets are destroyed and healing happens for my soul.

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What if God actually helped us?  What if, in our moment of pain, we could pray and our pain would go away?  What if, when we suffered, we could ask God for help and our suffering would actually cease?  That’d be nice.  It would be nice if knowing Christ meant saying goodbye to pain.   But since it doesn’t, I’m glad that Christ suffered.

As Jesus was nailed to a cross, God didn’t help him either.  He abandoned him.  And for some reason, that’s “Good News.”  Jurgen Moltmann attempts to explain why:

“suffering is overcome by suffering, and wounds are healed by wounds.  For the suffering in suffering is the lack of love, and the wounds in wounds are the abandonment, and the powerlessness in pain is unbelief.  And therefore the suffering of abandonment is overcome by the suffering of love, which is not afraid of what is sick and ugly, but accepts it and takes it to itself in order to heal it.  Through his own abandonment by God, the crucified Christ brings God to those who are abandoned by God.  Through his suffering he brings salvation to those who suffer.  Through his death he brings eternal life to those who are dying.  And therefore the tempted, rejected, suffering and dying Christ came to be the centre of the religion of the oppressed and the piety of the lost.”

Because Jesus’ bore the full weight of suffering that is the human condition, we can reinterpret our encounters with pain.  Rejection is a reality for the most godly among us.  Temptation is to be expected.  Pain cannot be avoided.  Christianity does not promise us freedom from the life we loathe.

But in all of these painful experiences, we find hope of God with us.  If God was revealing himself to us in the life of Jesus as he experienced suffering, then we have hope that God is right in the midst of these very same experiences with us.  For you and I, we too can become god-like not in our triumphalistic avoidance of suffering, but in our sympathy with the pitiful life of Christ.

If Christ’s life had been one devoid of suffering, then he would be of little help to me.  If he had gone from victory to victory, then I would only be left feeling like I was doing something wrong.  When I feel rejected by others, when I suffer under the weight of temptation, or I feel the pain of physical limitations, I would have felt distant from God and rejected by him in my suffering.  If Christ had not suffered, pain would put me outside the presence of God.

Thank goodness that’s not the story of Jesus.  Thank goodness the story of Christ is one of rejection and suffering.  Thank goodness that God is near to the broken-hearted of the world.

God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross.  He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.  Matt. 8:17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering .. Only the suffering God can help … That is a reversal of what the religious man expects from God.  Man is summoned to share in God’s sufferings at the hands of a godless world. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Only a suffering God can help.”  Considering the condition we find ourselves in, only a suffering God can help.  In the crucifixion of God in Christ, I find God in the pain of my own crucifixion experiences.  Thank God, Jesus suffered.  It is only by his suffering that I can find hope in the midst of my own.  I am accepted and loved by God despite feeling God-forsaken.

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Ruth Haley Barton says there is a dark side to leadership.  A church planting coach I recently heard, says that the biggest issue church planters and young leaders have to face is their past emotional baggage.  When leadership seems oppressive, difficult and emotionally taxing, what dark habits will emerge in your life?  What old emotional baggage will resurface in your life without warning?

I believe this happens.  I’ve seen it happen in my own life.  It’s a real problem, and Barton, in her book Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, says that the only solution is solitude and silence.  It is only when we stop and practice Sabbath and silence that we can deal with the dark side of our soul.  Quoting Parker Palmer, she reminds us that the soul is shy.  We are vulnerable and insecure human beings, and the chaos and demanding nature of leadership causes our souls to shrink back into hiding.  Only in silence will they emerge.

This is why, I believe rest is so important.  We are all leaders in some part of our lives, and we all need to rest. It’s one of our core values, and this Sunday at New City, we’ll be talking about the importance of Sabbath as a part of our weekly rhythm.  If we want to grow into the people God has made us to be, we must be people who rest.  I hope you’ll join us!

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Race car drivers control their cars.  Pilots are in control of their airplanes.  Athletes control their bodies.  Control is synonymous with excellence.  The better you become at flying a plane, driving a car, or contorting your body as you fly through the air for a lay-up the more “in control” you are.  You are a master over something once you can control it.  We long to be in control of whatever we are doing because we believe it guarantees success.

That’s why we want to be in control of our lives.  When we work hard and gain control over our lives, we believe we can control the results.  We can control how things will turn out.  We want to control our kids, because we want them to be successful.  We control our friends because we want them to enhance our lives.  And we want control in our careers because we want to be successful.   But when our kids rebel, our friends let us down, or we get passed over for the promotion that we deserved, we come face to face with the reality that we are not in control.

Interruptions and disappointments jar us awake to the fact that we are not in control.  This produces anxiety.  If we aren’t in control, how can we be sure things will work out!  We usually respond by trying to work hard to regain control.  We slow down, recalibrate, and do whatever we can to re-establish control over our lives.  If things are really crazy, we may stop spending time with people.  We may withdraw a little.  We may drop commitments we previously made.  ”Just until things get back under control,” we say.

Unfortunately, control is an illusion.  We will never get in control of life.  If we think we have, we are wrong.  If we pursue control, we do so in vain.  Control is elusive and the best response to the chaos of our life is to embrace it.  Accept that control is an illusion and welcome the humbling that comes from not being in control.

If we want to follow Jesus, this is a must.  You can’t be in control of your life and enjoy intimacy with God.  They are mutually exclusive.  Intimacy with God comes from reckless obedience to the ways of Jesus.  It means we live by faith.  It means we make decisions that put us in harms way.  It means we take risks, and risks by definition include the possibility of failure.  If we demand control, we cannot follow Jesus in faith.  Jesus said to Peter:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.””  (John 21:18 ESV)

Following Jesus means, like Peter, we go where Jesus wants us to go.  We no longer “dress ourself and walk wherever we want.”  We live out of control and by faith.  Following Jesus means we may have to go “where we do not want to go.”  This is not all bad though.  The good news is that God is with us.  If we are living out of control, then that means that we aren’t in charge.  God is.  And while our life may be a lot more scary — because it’s a bit reckless — it’s also way more fun.

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I’m not sure if this is just human nature or if it’s been indoctrinated into me by my culture: When things don’t go well, I’m tempted to think God hates me.  When a series of unfortunate events unfold, I feel like God is out to get me.  When I get lost, then get a speeding ticket, and then get chastised for being late, I’m having what my son would say is a no good, very bad day.  And, I can’t help feeling like God is out to get me.

One theologian, Jurgen Moltmann, sums up this experience of feeling cursed by God as a feeling of God-forsakenness.  When life seems to repeatedly turn out bad, we inevitably wonder where God is in all of our pain.  Whether it’s the torment of toddlers who refuse to listen to our requests, the rejection of a long-time girlfriend, or the extreme suffering that comes from poverty, it can be hard to fight the feeling of forsakenness.

But Moltmann says that it is in our God-forsakenness that we can meet with God.   If we can recognize that in Christ’s death on the cross, God incarnate was himself God-forsaken, then we can re-orient our vision of who God is and how he relates to us in our moments of God-forsakenness.  He says this is the very essence and identity of Christianity.  He writes:

Christian identity can be understood only as an act of identification with the crucified Christ, to the extent to which one has accepted the proclamation that in him God has identified himself with the godless and those abandoned by God, to whom one belongs oneself.  
The Crucified God, pg. 19

Christ was the ultimate God-forsaken person.  He was abandoned by God despite the perfect obedience of his life.  This means that God has intimately identified with you and me in our God-forsakeness, and we can choose to identify with Christ in his God-forsakenness in a sort of “double process of identification.”  Despite the occasional deep feeling of divine betrayal, God doesn’t hate us.  He loves us, and his presence is with us.  In our moments of feeling forsaken, we know that we have not been abandoned.  Rather, it is in these times that we share our most intimate connection to Christ.  When we embrace God-with-us in these dark times, we embrace Christ as the God-forsaken-one just as God embraces us.

Angry people are so unbecoming.  Wrathful people are even worse.  They come across as vindictive.  When these people unleash their latent anger, watch out.  You may or may not have been the one to upset them, but you better get out of their way once they’re mad.  They seem set on destruction — the destruction of other people through abusive words, attitudes, and maybe even physical violence.

Being full of wrath seems like a personality defect, and that’s why we imagine God, the perfect person, must be devoid of wrath.  I confess it’s sometimes hard for me, as a preacher, to acknowledge God’s wrath.  It’s not something people like to hear about.  But I think there is a personality trait that is much worse than wrath: apathy.

Apathy is the antithesis of wrath — it is summarized as the state of doing nothing, of not caring.  I think it’s particularly offensive because there is so much in this world that is so wrong.  Apathy is an external reflection of our internal indifference.  We don’t care that people suffer.  We don’t care that children starve.  We don’t care that drugs destroy dreams.  We don’t care that powerful people force pretty girls into prostitution.  Apathy in the face of such horrific injustice fills me with wrath.

The problem is, I’m also apathetic.  I don’t do nearly enough to fight against the injustices of the world.  Only God is perfectly just, and therefore only he can be justifiably filled with wrath.  But man am I glad he is.  I’m glad that child pornography pisses God off.  I’m glad that God gets angry when someone commits adultery and causes chaos to come to a marriage.  I’m glad that God is livid about the lifestyle of drug lords and pimps.  I’m glad God has wrath.  It’s a sign that he cares.  He cares about our world, and he wants the best for his beloved children.

I’m also glad for grace.  Grace is God’s saving act that transforms us from apathetic people into lovers of justice.  Grace, not wrath, is ultimately what transforms us into people who care.  Thank God for God’s wrath, but thank God even more for his grace.

“So some have doubted.  But then in turn there were some who sought to refute doubt with reasons.  As a matter of fact, the connection was actually this: first of all they tried to demonstrate the truth of Christianity with reasons or by advancing reasons in relations to Christianity.  And the reasons fostered doubt and doubt became the stronger.  The demonstration of Christianity really lies in imitation.  This was taken away.  Then the need for “reasons” was felt, but these reasons, or that there are reasons, are already a kind of doubt — and thus doubt arose and lived on reasons.  It was not observed that the more reasons one advances, the more one nourishes doubt and the stronger it becomes, that offering doubt reasons in order to kill it is just like offering the tasty food it likes best of all to a hungry monster one wishes to eliminate.  No, one must not offer reasons to doubt — at least not if one’s intention is to kill it — but one must do as Luther did, order it to shut its mouth, and to that end keep quiet and offer no reasons….those whose lives are marked by imitation have not doubted….because their lives were too strenuous, too much expended in daily sufferings to be able to sit in idleness keeping company with reasons and doubt, playing evens or odds.”

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, translated Hong and Hong, pg. 68

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Mark Batterson loves Jesus.  I’ve now read two of his books, Wild Goose Chase and Primal, and the portrait I get of him is a high energy (possibly over-caffeinated, he started a coffee shop) Jesus junky.  He comes across as an adventurer in pursuit of new ways to articulate God’s love. And the good news is, it’s pretty contagious.

I found myself constantly thinking up new ideas of how to share my faith, serve other people, or structure our church so as to more effectively share of the love of God in Christ.  Reading Primal doesn’t present ground-breaking new insights of interpretation, but it does provide a challenge to apathetic American Christians to take risks and do something wild for God.  Batterson challenges the reader to put aside the religiosity that consumes so much of the church and instead get back to the basics, the primal things, of following Christ.

I’ve discovered that when I’ve lost my way spiritually, the way forward is often backward…going back to that most primal place helps us find our way forward… pg. 8

My prayer is that this book will take you down two thousand stairs back to that primal place — the place where loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength is all that matters. (pg. 11)

Using the framework of our Primal call to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength, Batterson explores what that looks like for us today.  He does a good job of contextualizing each of these aspects of loving God into contemporary life.  He pushes hard on the core essence of the faith as rooted in this ancient commandment (the Great Commandment) to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, but he also emphasizes the need for creativity and relevance.

I have a conviction that gets me up early and keeps me up late: there are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet.  If we keep trying to meet new challenges with tired old ideas, I’m afraid we’ll fade into irrelevant oblivion.  What we need is the freedom to experiment.  We need to dream God-sized dreams and take God-sized risks.  We need to dare to be different. (pg. 114)

He dreams of the church becoming ancient by doing things in new ways.  This book is his rallying cry.  It’s a challenge to Christians everywhere to participate in the next reformation of re-articulation.  It’s his motivational message to get off our couches and do something new and exciting for God.

This book is an invitation to be part of something that is bigger than you, more important than you, and longer lasting than you.  It’s an invitation to be part of the next reformation.  It’s an invitation to be part of a primal movement that traces its origins all the way back to ancient catacombs where our spiritual ancestors were martyred because they loved God more than they loved life.

Instead of a reformation lead by one person though, Batterson hopes that the reformation of our age will come by thousands, even millions, of Christians becoming serious about loving God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength.  He believes that will be expressed by us living lives of compassion (heart), wonder (soul), curiosity (mind), and energy (strength).

This is a good book.  It’s a motivational book.  Batterson writes well, and he seems full of stories, analogies, and medical metaphors aimed at articulating the faith in contemporary language.  His creativity spurred new thoughts in me, and I believe it would do the same for others.  If you’re looking for a book to challenge and inspire you to live your faith more fully, you’ll find this to be a helpful and encouraging book.  If you want a book to stimulate new thoughts for a new year, this might be a great book to help you dream up some risky New Year’s resolutions!

Disclaimer: I received an advance copy of this book for free as a part of their blog tour launch of Primal.  Despite receiving this book for free, I’ve reviewed it honestly, and I’m happy to recommend it.

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In the next 10 days or so, we plan to close on our first house and have our first worship service as a church plant.  Both of these decisions have been big steps of faith for us.  Over the past 6 to 8 months, I’ve increasingly been making decisions that are rooted in my faith and belief in God and what God is doing in our lives.  Buying a house and planting a church both seemed like crazy ideas that could either turn out great or potentially turn into disasters!  Unfortunately, making decisions in faith doesn’t mean following God into guaranteed successes.

Living by faith means  risk and fear will remain when I step out into a new venture.  Walking by faith is something of a call to live recklessly, or as Hauerwas puts it, out of control.  We believe in God and so we make decisions based on who he is and what he promises.  We forsake our impulse to control the situation and guarantee a good outcome to every decision.

When I was in Africa, the founding missionaries of African Bible Colleges had a saying, Faith in Action equals God in motion.  So far that’s been confirmed.  God is showing up and things are coming together.  We increasingly are connecting with people who are excited about our church.  Our friend from New Jersey who is going to run our Children’s ministry has moved in with us.  We gained a great Children’s pastor and we are able to fulfill a part of our vision for our new house.  We have a great praise leader who has done a ton of work to help put together our worship service equipment — something I could never have done by myself.  Lots of people are stepping up to volunteer at our preview services.  And generally I sense the excitement level raising with those who have been showing up and participating in our church planting group.  It’s all been really fun to see.

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