The last time I published an entry from Heidi’s diary I told you that I didn’t know who she was, I only knew that she was a pastor’s daughter serving as a volunteer on a medical mission to Haiti. Since then I have learned that her name is Heidi Ennenbach, and that she is a registered nurse from Columbia, Missouri. I will post the final entry from her diary here, and include some additional information below, for those who want to know more. Heidi has been an inspiration to me, and a regular reminder of those who are still suffering in Haiti.
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February 1
I have learned that there are many reading these emails. I had no idea the impact they would make. I wanted to share these things with my family because I am not good at giving details. I feel compelled to finish this “diary” even though now I am home safe. Today I got to worship with my congregation and I couldn’t stop crying. The images and stories from my experience in Haiti will forever be with me. I was thinking of my patients and their families as I looked around the rows of chairs at church today. Each person with family and friends surrounding them. Then my minister spoke to me. I felt like he picked me out of the crowd. I will tell you why before this email is finished.
I left off Late Friday night. Friday was so so busy. I didn’t understand busy until Saturday came. We were down to 7 nurses. 7 of us to care for 300 people (not including their exhausted and starving family members/friends). We were busting at the seams with patients. The mayor granted us another school in the area as well as the community nutrition center. We moved all the pediatric patients to one location and set up rooms in the schools with the most acutely ill patients in the nearest room and the other patients that were doing better (I use that term so loosely) were in the rooms further away from the supply center. Saturday was like the worst episode of M.A.S.H. you could imagine. Black Hawk helicopters at a steady pace, the sirens of the amublances, and the chaos of hundreds of people scattering to get out of the way. As we got more victims from Port-Au-Prince I wondered when this will slow down and when they will have all the patients placed.
I was busy in the recovery area and ICU. There were so many patients needing help I enlisted the help of the anesthesiologists. I asked them to recover their surgery patients in the operating rooms because there were no beds left. I had 3-4 patients lying on beds and there were no monitors to make sure they were breathing/oxegenating ok after their surgeries. In the meantime I was medicating patients for pain and trying to get them the antibiotics they needed. We were again out of supplies and I was calling for help on the hand held radio for someone to bring gloves, alcohol, and syringes. Everyone was so busy that I had to leave the patients unattended to run to the hospital and go through 100 boxes to find the supplies I needed. Fortunately when I returned everyone was ok. I was giving blood to two patients who had the lowest blood counts I have ever seen. Some with a hemoglobin of 2. In the midst of all that I went to the ICU to get some medication. At that time I saw a 6 year old boy and he was going down hill quickly. I helped the other nurse as she intubated the patient. He was in bad shape with a blood sugar over 400. He was not breathing well enough on his own and we needed to get him on a chopper quickly in order to get him to the ship. (The ship is called the COMFORT; it is a floating ICU). We heard a chopper coming in and radioed down to the doctor on the landing strip to see if the helicopter would take him to the ship. They agreed but said we had to be on the chopper in 2 minutes. We were yelling commands at anyone who could help us. We ran with him on the stretcher to the ambulance. We had no oxygen because the only oxygen tanks we had were huge and probably weighed 200-300 pounds. We rushed to the helicopter to find that they had no oxygen. I knew that this child was going to die without oxygen for 45 minutes (the time it takes to fly to the ship). There was heated discussion, all of us so angry. We knew how to save him but we didn’t have a ventilator. We knew he needed oxygen but didn’t have it available. We knew that if he lived to get on the ship he would have a chance. It didn’t matter what we knew. It didn’t matter that we had the skills. We didn’t have the materials. When we put him back on the ambulance he arrested. We were driving on a road with 3 foot pot holes doing chest compressions in the back of an ambulance. Trying to keep our balance. I was holding all his IV fluids, I stumbled and fell on the nurse doing chest compressions. It was total chaos and I couldn’t hold back my tears. I quickly had to regain composure: he needed us. We rushed him back to the ICU and someone found his father. He had a sketchy cardiac rhythm, he barely had a pulse, the Haitian anesthesiologist I told you about was there and he was telling the boy’s father that he was not going to make it. The father said “this is up to God.” He prayed fervently, loudly, he put his hands on this baby’s chest and prayed that God would put breath back in him. He prayed loudly in the boy’s ear to breathe and be alive. Two of the man’s friends were laying hands on this little body and praying. I held the boys hand as they continued with chest compressions. I knew the boy was not going to make it. After his prayer we stopped compressions. I was sobbing, the other nurse was sobbing, the doctor was sobbing, and the 3 Haitian men began to sing a song….and I recognized it. I began to sing with them but in English. They were singing “Burdens are lifted at Calvary.” I sang and sobbed all at the same time. I imagined the face of my son Will. I put myself in the shoes of this father. Helpless, traumatized, and experiencing such loss. He lifted this up to God, he was smiling, he said “God’s will has been done.” I hugged him….I hugged him for me. I needed to feel that comfort.
I shouldn’t have left the hospital but I did. I walked the street by myself for about 40 minutes. The flood gates of emotions were opened. I couldn’t stop crying and asking God why this had happened. I didn’t know why it was me that he chose to send. I felt so helpless. I wanted to save this baby that had his whole life ahead of him. He had a mom and dad that were alive. I just couldn’t understand it. I in no way felt better but I was able to compose myself and returned to taking care of the patients. I finished working around midnight that night. I was so exhausted emotionally and physically. My body hurt, I was dehydrated and had a horrible migraine. I needed to sleep for just a few hours.
Friday at some point (I can’t remember what time). I got word that a very wealthy business man had agreed to get in his jet and fly to Haiti to pick us up. I was so relieved to know that we had a guaranteed ride home. I was so thrilled and so looking forward to a break and to be home with my family but in minutes that joy turned to extreme sorrow and guilt. How could I leave these people here? I know that other groups will be coming and that someone will pick up where I left off but I knew these people now and I knew their story. I went to bed that night and for the first time did not fall asleep when my head hit the pillow. I replayed all the horrible graphic pictures in my head and I saw their faces. I wanted to load them all up and take them home with me. I could get them medical care at home. I could get them specialists. I could feed them. And then I remembered what another nurse said to me earlier in the week. If we were not here they would be dead. Even though I did so little and the job was not done, they were alive.
I told you that today my minister Mark Butrum spoke to me. It’s amazing how God gives you situations in your life that drive home His word. It cements scripture in your own heart. The sermon today was on service in a series of sermons called “Thrive” being as close to God as you want to be. Two passages today spoke to me and I will share them with you. Even though I felt like I did so little, I did what I could. Colossians 3:23 “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord not men.” You may feel pulled to do something to help these people but have no medical training. Maybe you have a jet that you could fly a team to Haiti? Maybe you are connected with a company that makes supplies? Maybe you have money to send to the hospital? Maybe you can pray? “Whatever it is that you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord not men.” If you feel compelled to help I will be sending a website to you. This organization gives 98.9% of all donations straight to the hospital, I have seen it with my own eyes. They are providing free medical care and they are emptying their shelves of medicines every day. When I secure this site I will send it to you in hopes that you will make a donation. This effort will be in motion for many months to come. They are making accommodations to provide care to 1,000 people!
“If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit if any tenderness and compassion then make my joy complete by being like-minded having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:1-11
-Heidi
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The organization Heidi mentioned in her diary (above) is the Crudem Foundation (www.Crudem.org). She says, ”Please feel confident that your donation is being used carefully and it is reaching these people. Also I am looking for volunteers as we are planning more trips to Haiti. You must be a registered nurse with a current license. You must have 5 years experience in the acute care setting. ICU experience is preferred. If interested please email me at heidi_ennenbach@hotmail.com
Someone forwarded an email recently that made me think again about how we read the Bible. It began like this:
On her radio show, Dr. Laura Schlesinger (a popular conservative radio talk show host in the USA) said that homosexuality is an abomination according to the Bible (Leviticus 18:22), and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, penned by James M. Kauffman, Ed.D.
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination… end of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them.
1. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this? Are there ‘degrees’ of abomination?
2. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?
3. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do youthink would be a fair price for her?
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord – Lev. 1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
There are more examples, but I think the writer has made his tongue-in-cheek point, which is that since many of the Old Testament laws no longer apply, it is ludicrous to insist that this one—concerning homosexuality—does. But here’s my point: I believe it is just as wrong to reject the parts of the Bible you don’t agree with as it is to quote only the few verses that agree with you, and there are people on each side of this argument who do both. I believe there is a better way, and that is to ask of every part of the Bible (even the difficult ones): “What is God trying to say to us through these words?”
With that in mind we might look at Leviticus 18:22 differently. Instead of saying, “That settles it: homosexuality is a sin,” or saying, “That just goes to show that the Bible is old-fashioned and outdated,” we might learn to ask, ”What is God trying to say to us through a law like this? How do these words reveal themselves as God’s Word?”
That’s when the conversation gets interesting, or, more hopefully, that’s when it becomes a conversation instead of an argument. Instead of simply stating, “It is an abomination for a man to lie with a man as with a woman,” we begin to ask, “Why is it an abomination? What does God find abominable? Is it the act itself, or is it the idea that sex is meant for procreation and homosexual activity is not procreative? Was this sort of thing common in that time and place? Was it common in other cultures? Was God trying to create a culture that was different from the culture of Israel’s neighbors? Was that the point?”
Do you see what I mean? In asking such questions of Scripture we begin to take it seriously, we begin to listen carefully to what God was saying then and there (exegesis) and consider how it might apply here and now (hermeneutics).
When I led a Bible study on Old Testament Law for the young adults at my last church I asked them to think of it as “people-making literature,” and challenged them to imagine what kind of people would be made by following those laws. They were surprised to learn how many of the laws were about caring for neighbors, and strangers, and donkeys (yes, donkeys*), and began to see that following these laws could result in a nation of remarkably compassionate people. They wondered if that was what God meant when he said to Israel, “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2). They wondered if holiness was God’s word for compassion (as Jesus implies in Luke 6:36).
As you can see, we had some interesting conversations about Old Testament Law, far more interesting than standing on opposite sides of the room shouting at each other about homosexuality (although our study could have easily gone that way; there were people on both sides of that issue). Instead we tried to look for the underlying principles beneath the surface of all those laws. We tried to listen for God’s Word as it came to us through those words. Again and again we asked the question:
“What is God trying to say to us?”
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*Exodus 23:5 is a good example: “When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free.”
A few days ago I posted a diary entry from a pastor’s daughter named Heidi who is volunteering as a nurse in Haiti. I don’t know Heidi—I don’t even know her last name—the diary entries are being forwarded by a friend who knows her father. But these entries give me a feel for the situation there that I haven’t been able to get from watching the news or reading the papers. The last paragraph, especially, is something you probably won’t find in the public media.
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January 28
Since I worked until after 4 a.m. today another nurse said he would cover icu for me for awhile while i tried to sleep. It’s hard to sleep. I wake up thinking of everything that has to be done. The way it is now there are so many medications that have to be given and there are not enough nurses to get that done. I spent some time with the translator today. They have transformed a high school into the “Emergency Room” There are about 15 rooms. Inside each room there are anywhere from 6 to 12 patients each. Men and women share the rooms. Some are even sharing beds so they have a place to sleep. Since I started a little later this morning I volunteered to work E.R. I rounded to each room with the translator asking patients what they needed, who had pain, who had questions. The biggest concern was that they are hungry. We were able to get rice and beans and some oatmeal for the ones who were hungry. Here in Haiti it is normal to only eat one meal a day. I’m sure there is some variety but it always appears to me to be the same. Some sort of mixture of rice and beans and spices. We did our best to get everyone fed. I took the late shift tonight. I spent time in each room medicating people for pain and also administering IV antibiotics that no one had a chance to give today. We are seeing more and more infection and sepsis. There are not enough of us to give 300 patients antibiotics three times per day. We are doing the very best we can. I also spent time with the haitian nurses today along with the translator. I talked with them about their practice and in a positive way tried to teach them about some of the errors they are making with medication administration. For them it is a challenge because a lot of times they do not have the supplies necessary to administer meds the best way.
We received great news today that the US army will be setting up a mobile 300 bed hospital. This is huge. There are still patients coming in on helicopters. I watched them bring an older woman (I would guess her to be 70) on a stretcher. She got my attention because she was lying on her stomach on the stretcher. When we uncovered her we saw that her entire back, bottom, and upper legs were missing skin. I was able to get ahold of her chart and saw that her mattress caught on fire and she was not able to get up. She was trying to care for them for almost 2 weeks before getting the help she needs. I heard from another doctor that a plastic surgeon should be arriving sometime next week (if flights can be arranged.) There is another girl here who had cinder blocks fall on her face. Her face is so badly fractured and she has not eaten for days. Today doctors put a tube in her belly that goes straight to the stomach. We received a donation of baby formula and we are using that to give her nutrition. She will also see the plastic surgeon to see if her jaw can be reattached so that she will be able to eat at some point.
The earthquake may be over but these people will be suffering for a long time to come. They need therapy, prosthetics, and time to adjust to these major changes. I have heard they are trying to arrange for a group of physical therapists to come soon to teach these people how to ambulate without limbs.
I will leave you with this positive image. Tonight around ten it got pretty quiet at the ER. I was still rounding and checking on patients. The sound became louder and louder as each room joined in. The people were singing songs of praise to God. I just stopped and listened. It lightened my load. Through all this suffering and pain and confusion and chaos…they are praising our God. WOW! It brought me to tears and reminded me that when I feel down about my situation/circumstances I have to remember that I am chosen and am victorious!!!
I was out at Lakewood Manor this afternoon, preaching a sermon called “Will We Meet on That Beautiful Shore?” It was a sermon inspired by a conversation I once had with a man who had been told that he wouldn’t know his deceased wife in heaven, and the “proof” he was given was a passage from Luke 20 where the Sadducees (who don’t believe in the resurrection) come to Jesus with a hypothetical question:
“There were seven brothers,” the Sadducees began. “The first married a woman and died, childless; and then the second, and likewise the third married her; and so in the same way all seven died childless and finally the woman died, too. In the resurrection of the dead, therefore, whose wife will she be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said, ”The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage” (Luke 20:29-35). And that’s what somebody had told this man: that he wouldn’t be married in heaven, that he might as well just get over that idea. He told me about it through tears. It was this idea—the idea that he would someday be reunited with his wife—that had kept him going. Now what was he supposed to do?
I sat with that man in his car for a long time, looking at that passage, and then I said, “Look, it doesn’t say that you won’t be married in heaven. It just says that in the resurrection people don’t get married, see? ‘They neither marry (present tense) nor are given in marriage.’ It’s another way of saying there are no weddings in Heaven.”
That seemed to help him. But I made the mistake of reading on to find out why there aren’t any weddings in heaven and the reason Jesus gives is because there won’t be any death there, as if the only reason to get married were to make babies, to replenish the population, and thus ensure the survival of the species. “I don’t know if that’s why you got married,” I said, “but when I got married the survival of the species was not really the first thing on my mind.” I had love on my mind, as I think most of us do these days. But if you read closely you will find that’s not really the biblical view of marriage. Marriage, in the Bible, seems to be little more than the creation of a stable social structure in which children can be born and reared.
So, when we talk about marriage in America these days we had better be careful not to embrace too quickly the biblical model of marriage in the same way we want to be careful not to embrace “biblical family values.” When people begin to talk to me about those values I say, “Which biblical family did you have in mind? Cain and Abel? Lot and his daughters? Jacob and Esau? David and Absalom?” Those biblical families had some terribly twisted values. And when it comes to marriage it’s true that if marriage is all about making babies then, yes, it has to be marriage between “a man and a woman.” We are human beings, after all; we reproduce sexually. But it wouldn’t necessarily have to be marriage between “one man and one woman.” Not in the Bible anyway. If making babies is the point then the more wives you have the more effective your efforts, right? Look at Jacob: he produced twelve sons and at least one daughter through his two wives and their two maidservants. Solomon—who set some kind of record—had 300 wives and 700 concubines (he practiced nation-building the old fashioned way!).
The problem comes for the Sadducees when they try to imagine one wife with seven husbands rather than the other way around. If wives were considered property, which they were, whose property would she be? The seven would be fighting over her in the resurrection, making the whole notion seem ridiculous. That’s just what the Sadducees wanted to do, they wanted to make the whole notion of resurrection seem ridiculous, but Jesus sees things another way. They don’t marry there, he says, neither are they given in marriage, because there isn’t any death there. Remember that child’s letter to God that says, “Dear God: Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones why don’t you just keep the ones you got now?” In the resurrection that’s just what God does—he keeps the ones he’s got. And so there isn’t any need for a social structure in which children can be born and reared just so the species can be preserved. And there isn’t any need to have children so you can secure your social status or achieve some small measure of immortality. And I’m going to bet my bottom dollar that those women who are considered worthy of the resurrection are not going to be treated as anyone’s property ever again. Things are different there, thank God.
And resurrection is real. Jesus proves it to the Sadducees be referring to a story from Exodus, one of the few books in the Bible they accepted as authoritative. It was that story from Exodus 3, the one about the burning bush, where God identifies himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He doesn’t say he was their God. He says he is, right now. For he is not the God of the dead, but of the living. “You want to know if there’s a resurrection?” Jesus asks. “Take that!”
It’s a good answer. At least it works for them. In the very next verse the Scribes who were listening burst into applause. And after that no one dared ask him any more questions. But I’ve got one: I accept the fact of the resurrection but what about reunion? Will we meet on that beautiful shore? Will that man who wept in his car that day be reunited with his wife? And in what way? Will they have a little cottage right there beside some golden street in heaven where they can sit on the front porch in their rocking chairs as they hold hands and watch the sun set over the crystal sea? And if so what about the second wife that same man later married? Where will she sit? And whose hand will she hold?
As far as reunion goes—I’m sure of it. Not only from this passage in which Jesus speaks of the eternal family reunion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but also in that passage from John 14 where he tells the disciples that he is going to prepare a place for them so that where he is there they may be also. If that’s not reunion I don’t know what is! And as far as the kind of relationship we might enjoy in that place? Is it possible that the most loving and intimate relationships we have known in this life are but a foretaste of the relationships we will enjoy in the life to come?
I can imagine that man seeing his first wife in heaven and embracing her with tears in his eyes, telling her how much he missed her and how glad he is to see her again. I can imagine that all the best memories of the life they lived together would be fresh and new for him there. But I can also imagine him introducing her to his second wife without any fear that she would be jealous or angry. All that small and fearful, greedy and grasping, love would be gone, replaced by the kind of love God has for us—abundant as the ocean and just as full of grace. Maybe the two of them would go strolling off hand in hand—those two wives—the first one saying to the other, “Boy, have I got some stories to tell you!” while he watched them walk away, shaking his head with wonder.
Who knows? Only God. The best we can do is speculate. But we can know this much at least, thanks to Jesus: that resurrection is real, that reunion is real, and that in that resurrection reunion things will be really . . . heavenly.
A friend forwarded this e-mail from a pastor’s daughter who is working in Haiti with a medical mission team from Missouri. Her description of what she has seen since her arrival is graphic; reader discretion is advised. But this first-person account brings home the reality of the Haitian earthquake in a way nothing else I have read or seen has. As I wrote to my friend in reply: “It drove me to my knees.”
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You just would not believe the things i have seen. people everywhere with missing limbs. 2 babies died today. one man died with a pulmonary embolism (blood clot) bc they ran out of heparin. our team brought heparin. they are sick and lying on stretchers and bleeding. one nurse broke down today and said that last tuesday they were just cutting people limbs off that were crushed and they had nowhere to dispose of the body parts so they stacked them in front of the hospital for days. when the smell became too much someone took care of them. these people are young. younger than me. i havent seen an old person yet. avg life expectancy is 51. i feel so horrible. they don’t have what they need and we are watching them die. the nurses in haiti are terrible. they don’t know how to care for their patients. i have worked since we arrived at 2 with a short break to eat at 8. i went back to check on my icu patient’s and the nurse that was caring for them was fast asleep. i am learning pediatrics quickly. so many babies that are sick. some patients don’t have food to eat. the hospital cannot feed them so if family does not bring food they simply do not eat. i dont even want to eat. the smells and sights have been overwhelming. it is so primitive and i am having to be creative with supplies. today i made a tourniqet with a rubber glove as i pinned a whaling 9 year old down. they shaved skin from her thigh to graft skin to the lower section of her leg. she left the or with no iv access. i had to get a line in her to medicate her. her parents were no where to be found. i wanted to talk to her to calm her but i can’t understand the language. even those fluent in french say it is no help. the creole and slang is way too different. i finally took a shower. it was a slow drip and cold, but it was water. i have sweat all day. the hospital is a humid and hot building. i think my comfort at this point is so menial. pray for us and that more supplies will arrive. we are in desperate need of medicines. pray that i can be quick on my feet. pray that my headache will go away and that the nausea will stop.
i love you all. i will try to keep in touch. the internet is patchy here.
Back in the days when the Southern Baptist Convention controversy was raging I was told that it was a “battle for the Bible.” There were rumors that “liberal” seminary professors were ripping pages right out of the Bible, and otherwise dismissing or ignoring the parts they didn’t care for.
I was a student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in those days, a school that was once described to me as “a bastion of liberalism,” but I never saw a professor rip a page from the Bible. In fact, my experience was just the opposite. I had never met people who treated the Bible with such reverence, who helped us dig down into its truth as if it really mattered, as if it really could change the world. Their prayers before each class were humble and holy, thanking God for the high privilege of studying his Word.
But that’s not what Southern Baptists were hearing. In their imaginations, at least, they were hearing the sound of pages being ripped from the Bible. And so they came to those annual conventions (by the busloads!) and voted for the conservative candidate for president, who appointed the Committee on Committees, who made sure that the “conservative resurgence” spread to every part of the Southern Baptist Convention. By 1990 their work was completed—the “Battle for the Bible” had been won.
You might assume, then, that the boards and agencies of the Southern Baptist Convention would be especially careful to honor the clear teaching of Scripture, and to ensure that their policies are consistent with what the Bible says. But not long ago I learned that one of the guidelines for hiring at the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention has to do with “glossolalia.”
Glossolalia is a good Greek word. Literally, it means “tongue speaking,” or “speaking in tongues.” It comes from the 2nd chapter of Acts, where the believers who were gathered on the Day of Pentecost began to speak “with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (vs. 4, KJV). But it wasn’t only on the Day of Pentecost that believers spoke in other tongues. Apparently it was a regular feature in the worship of the early church. Paul said, “I would like every one of you to speak in tongues” (1 Cor. 14:5), and names glossolalia as one of the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:10. But look at what the North American Mission Board says about it:
“Glossolalia: No person who actively participates in or promotes glossolalia shall be employed by NAMB in an exempt staff position. This includes having a private prayer language. A representative of NAMB shall counsel any exempt staff member who becomes involved in glossolalia. Continued participation will result in termination” (from the “Employment Guidelines” page of the North American Mission Board web site).
I’m not trying to pick a fight with the North American Mission Board, and Paul himself would warn that speaking in tongues can lead to trouble in the church (as he explains in 1 Corinthians 14), but he ends his teaching on the subject by saying, “Do not forbid speaking in tongues” (1 Cor. 14:39), and that’s exactly what the North American Mission Board has done. I take offense because I’ve spent some time with Pentecostals—dear brothers and sisters in Christ who cherish the spiritual gift of “tongues.” For them it is an edifying personal prayer language, a way of talking to God without words getting in the way. And as a boy in West Virginia I was deeply impressed by the fact that God would shower this gift on people who had almost nothing else in the world (cf. Matt. 11:25). It made me think of him as a God who was surprisingly generous and kind, even if he did show it in a rather strange way.
So it irks me to think that some of the same people who launched the “Battle for the Bible” and denounced those “liberal seminary professors” could so easily dismiss the troublesome parts of Scripture—rip them right out of the Bible, really. It makes me wonder what they might do with the truly troublesome parts, like the ones about loving your enemies.
I don’t usually preach “how to” sermons, but I did on Sunday and several people have asked that I post my suggestions here. And so, with acknowledgments to Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart (whose book How to Read the Bible for All Its Worthis one of the most helpful in my personal library), here they are:
Start with a good translation of the Bible. My personal preference is the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), which strives to be as inclusive as possible while maintaining a faithfulness to the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic languages. The HarperCollins Study Bible has almost as many notes as it has text, providing ready answers to most of my questions. Fee and Stuart recommend Today’s New International Version (TNIV).
Get ready to read. Sit at a desk or table where you can spread out a little, where you can open the Bible and also take notes. Make sure you have adequate lighting and reading glasses if you need them (I seem to need them more and more). If you are working on the passage I recommended for next Sunday (Luke 4:14-30), take some time to read the introduction to Luke in your study Bible. Find out who Luke was, and when he wrote, and what he was trying to accomplish. Find out how a Gospel is different from other kinds of literature in the Bible (history, poetry, prophecy, epistles, etc.) and think about why it makes a difference.
Say a prayer for illumination. If it was the Holy Spirit who inspired the biblical authors to write (and it was), it will be the Holy Spirit who helps us understand what they wrote. Ask the Spirit to open your mind, heart, and soul to the truth of God’s word, and to teach you through the words of the text. The meaning of a passage is often found not in the words themselves, but in that space between the words and the reader where the Spirit does its work.
Read the text. Read it several times, slowly. Let it sink in. Make sure you don’t add anything that isn’t there or subtract anything that is. I talked to someone recently who said he was amazed at how Jesus just “disappeared” at the end of this reading from Luke 4. “Disappeared?” I asked. “Yeah! He just–poof!–disappeared!” Fortunately I had my Bible with me, and when we looked at the text it said that Jesus “passed through the midst of them and went on his way” (Luke 4:30). That’s not really the same thing as “disappearing,” is it?
Write down your questions. If you are reading for understanding (and not just inspiration) you will have questions: What was that synagogue in Nazareth like? Did they have other scrolls, or just the scroll of Isaiah? Why did Jesus sit down to teach? Where was his mother when all this happened? Why did the people try to throw him off a cliff? Write down all the questions you have. Don’t hold back. The Bible can take it (smile).
Look up the answers. This is when you consult a good Bible dictionary or a commentary. Not before you’ve written down your questions—after. Otherwise you will read answers to questions you have never asked, and yawn your way through the commentaries. If you are looking for answers to your own questions, however, it can be like going on a treasure hunt: exciting. I keep the Mercer Dictionary of the Bibleon my shelves and try to keep a commentary on each book of the Bible written by the foremost scholar on that book. Bible dictionaries and commentaries are always available in your church library, and many of them are excellent.
This is a different way to read the Bible than the devotional reading I do during my “quiet time.” This is serious study. But if you read the Bible this way from time to time I think you will find it richly rewarding, and maybe, like those people in yesterday’s Old Testament reading, you will go your way “to eat and drink…and make great rejoicing,” because you have understood the words of the Bible (Neh. 8:12).
Today’s sermon was all about the Bible: what it is, how to read it, and why it matters. It began like this:
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What is the Bible? When people ask me for a definition I usually say the Bible is “the word of God for the people of God,” and that it is “authoritative in all matters of faith and practice.” Sometimes people want to argue with me at that point. They want to say the Bible is inerrant rather than authoritative. They think of inerrant as a stronger word. But I remember that deacon at my first church who would point to the Bible on his coffee table and tell me he believed it was literally true from cover to cover, and yet I couldn’t see much evidence in his life that he had ever read it. He would tell me sometimes, “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” and I would ask, “Where is that in the Bible?” He would tell me sometimes, “There ain’t nothing free,” and I would say, “What about grace?” It’s not hard to make claims for the inerrancy of God’s word. Anybody can do that. What’s hard is reading the Bible, listening for God’s word, and then letting it have authority over you, so that if it tells you to stop doing something—like hating your enemies—you’d better stop, and if it tells you to start doing something—like loving them—you’d better start. You tell me: which of those two ways of thinking about the Bible is more likely to change your life? And tell me this: isn’t changing your life the point?
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As I was shaking hands after worship someone asked, “So, are you saying the Bible isn’t inerrant?” “I’m not saying that at all,” I countered. “I just find you can make a lot of claims about Scripture without ever reading it, without ever letting it change your life. I don’t think that’s what God had in mind.” That seemed to satisfy him. He nodded thoughtfully and moved on.
In the sermon I described the Bible as a ladder extending from earth to heaven, and said that the question to ask of such a ladder is not whether it is inerrant or authoritative, but whether its rails are straight enough, it’s rungs sturdy enough, to get us where we’re going. In other words, is the Bible a reliable way to get to God? The church’s answer through the centuries has been an unqualified yes. Time after time God’s people have climbed this ladder and gotten a fresh glimpse of his glory.
At the conclusion of the service I recalled hearing someone say that Baptists like to get together and argue about who believes the Bible more, and I’ve been to those kinds of meetings. Some of them got pretty ugly. But I can’t imagine it pleases God to see us arguing with each other about the ladder. I think what would please him is watching us climb the ladder, word by word, rung by rung, until we peek over the edge of heaven…
Because I knew I was going to be out of town all week, I finished the sermon well before last Tuesday’s earthquake in Haiti. But at 5:00 on Sunday morning I was up having coffee, adding these paragraphs at the end:
This morning I’m thinking about the people of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. For so long now it seems that the only abundance they have known is an abundance of trouble. After Tuesday’s earthquake a journalist said, “I was here during the 2008 hurricanes that left thousands dead and thousands and thousands homeless, and that felt like the Apocalypse. But that pales in comparison to this.” In the aftermath of this horrific tragedy the Rev. Pat Robertson has suggested that the Haitians are cursed because of a pact their ancestors supposedly made with the Devil two centuries ago. “Ever since,” he said, “they have been cursed by one thing after the other.” Although he didn’t go so far as to say that this earthquake was God’s wrath poured out on the people of Haiti what else could they infer? Robertson subscribes to a kind of Old Testament theology that makes every act an act of God, good or bad. If San Francisco fell into the ocean this afternoon, he would be on television tomorrow, telling us why. But I hope the people of Haiti will won’t look at things the way he does. I hope they can understand as we do that bad things happen to good people, sometimes to the best people we know, and for no apparent reason. When Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus said, “It wasn’t this man or his parents. It was so the works of God could be seen” (John 9:3).
I hope that’s what happens in Haiti. I hope those people can understand that earthquakes happen not because God is angry, but because the living earth is still shifting and moving. I hope they will see this one for the natural disaster that it is, but see in our response to this disaster the “works of God.” As rescue workers come from this country and others, as relief flows into the ruined city of Port-au-Prince, as it comes with an abundance unlike anything the Haitians have ever witnessed may they see it as a sign—not a sign of God’s judgment, but of God’s grace. May they sense that the door between heaven and earth has been opened just a crack, and may they see light seeping in around the edges.
Well, here’s one more thing you should probably know about the new pastor of Richmond’s First Baptist Church. I would have mentioned it sooner, but I only just found out myself.
I went to get my new Virginia driver’s license several weeks ago, but didn’t notice until after I left the Department of Motor Vehicles that right there on the front of the card, just under the word sex, was a small capital “F.” That’s right: Female. I laughed about it and thought I would ignore it until a few weeks later when I was going through airport security. The security officer looked at my driver’s license, looked at me, and then looked back down at the license. She didn’t say it, but I could almost hear her thinking, “She looks like a man but it says here she’s a woman.” It happened again on my next trip and since the airport is not a place you want to arouse the suspicions of security officers I decided to get it fixed next time I went to the DMV. That turned out to be today.
I recently bought the car I’ve been leasing for the last three years and needed to get it registered. So, I went to the DMV with a sheaf of documents in my hand, got my number (B148), and sat down to wait. When they called me up a little later I showed my papers to the man behind the counter and explained my situation. “I want to register my car and get some Virginia license plates,” I said, eagerly. I had been looking over the options while I waited and was excited about the possibility of getting one of those “vanity plates,” although I didn’t know what I would put on it if I did. I need not have worried. After looking over my papers the man behind the counter (who had some very interesting tattoos) said I was missing the crucial document and that I would have to come back when I had it.
“Well, while I’m here,” I said, “can I ask you about this?” And then I showed him my driver’s license. “It says I’m an ‘F,’” I said, “but I am not now nor have I ever been an ‘F.’”
“Hmmm,” he said, looking at the card and then looking up at me. “Hold on a second.”
And then he went to talk to his supervisor. When he came back a minute later he gave back my license and apologized. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but you’re going to have to come back with your passport or birth certificate…something that identifies you as a male.”
I looked at him in disbelief.
“You’d be surprised at some of the people we get in here,” he said, smiling.
I took my driver’s license and left the building slowly, still shaking my head over what had just happened. In the end I wrote it off as just another encounter with the DMV. I’ll get my documentation together; I’ll go back on another day; I may even get one of those vanity license plates. But I’m glad I didn’t get it today. If I had it would have read:
I’ve put it off as long as I can, but with the election just a few hours away I guess I should take a stab at the question every Christian has been asking from the beginning: How would Jesus vote?The answer is, of course…
I don’t know.
I have a hunch he would side with the widows and the orphans, as his Father always has (a lot of us vote the way our daddies do). His vote would probably favor the tax collectors and sinners (which is both bad news and good news for us).But it’s possible he would skip Election Day altogether (which seems downright un-American).
I keep thinking about how his disciples wanted him to be a political leader with political solutions.They kept hoping that he was the long-awaited Messiah—the one who would drive out the Romans, sit on the throne of his ancestor David, and restore the nation of Israel to its former glory.When he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday the crowd went wild.They must have expected Jesus to go to the governor’s palace, throw Pontius Pilate into the street, and declare the independence of Israel.Instead he went to the temple, turned over the tables of the moneychangers, and said, “My Father’s house is supposed to be a house of prayer but you’ve turned it into a den of robbers!”
Do you see what I mean?We want Jesus to care about this election just as much as we do.We want him to think it’s the most important thing in the world.We lean in close, asking him who we should vote for, but he seems to have a different agenda. Instead of talking about the United States of America he’s likely to start in on one of those silly parables about the Kingdom of God.
I hate it when he does that.
Doesn’t he know that we Christians are waiting for our leader to tell us how to vote?Doesn’t he know that if we vote for the wrong person it could mean political disaster?Or does he know what we often forget in the heat of an election, that some things are proximate while other things are ultimate?
I’m going to vote on Tuesday. I’ve read the newspapers and watched the debates. I’ve read the Bible and said my prayers. I feel prepared to make an informed choice. But when I get to the voting booth I’m going to close the curtain and vote my conscience and then move on to other, more important, things.
Some of you may be eager to hear how the second round of Holy Conversations came out. Let me give a brief summary and then we can move on to other, less important, things (like my next trip to the DMV).
We had another overflow crowd in the Dining Hall at Richmond’s First Baptist Church last night. I started by thanking everyone for following the ground rules I had laid out the week before, and then asked them 1) to tell me how they felt about the idea of changing our membership requirements to include Christians from other denominations who had not been immersed, and 2) to try to do it in two minutes or less. You could almost feel the tension in the air. It was one of those moments when everyone sensed that things could either go very well, or very very badly.
I tried to set an example, saying that I felt we should change our membership requirements, and that I felt that way because I knew too many sincere Christians who were hurt because they were being denied full membership in the church. The next speaker said he didn’t feel we should change our requirements because believer’s baptism by immersion was the New Testament model, and that’s what we should follow. With minor modifications to those two essential arguments (and occasional rhetorical flourishes), the rest of the evening’s speakers followed suit.
Someone noted that if the Greek word baptizo had been translated (“immersed”) rather than transliterated (“baptize”), we might not be having this conversation. Someone else noted that we welcome Christians of other denominations to take communion with us, but not to be on our church rolls. One person said that the answer to the question “I’m not Baptist, may I join your church?” should be “Yes, if you want to be Baptist.” Another implied that we are living in a post-denominational era, and we need to get over ourselves.
The remarkable thing, to me, was that the arguments didn’t get louder and louder, no one offered to punch anyone else in the eye, and we finished the evening with a sense that we had talked about a divisive issue without being divided. It was what I had been praying for–a truly holy conversation.
From here our feelings (which were carefully recorded on a flip chart) will go to the deacons, who will pray over this issue for a month or more, discuss it, and decide whether or not it needs to go on to the church for a final vote. If that happens we will vote as a congregation and live with the outcome. I will live with the outcome, even if it’s not the outcome I was hoping for. To me that’s just part of what it means to be Baptist, and it may be an even more important part than how much water we use when we baptize.
If you’d like to weigh in on this topic, please click on the word “comments” below and tell me how you feel. And if you are a member (or think you might want to be), I will be glad to pass your feelings on to our deacons.
Those of you who read the post “Gender Confusion” know that the new driver’s license I got at the Department of Motor Vehicles identified me as a “female.” Although I didn’t file a formal complaint, you can imagine my delight at receiving this comment on that post:
Pastor Jim, please allow me to apologize on behalf of DMV for your recent unfavorable encounter with us. As a state agency, DMV literally comes in contact with more customers than any other agency in the Commonwealth. We make every effort to comply with the hundreds of laws that the legislators (people representatives) pass annually and at the same time provide our customer with the very best service we can.
We are directly and indirectly involved in millions of transactions; and out of those millions we are proud to say that our error rate is extremely low. But, we do make mistakes.
Our mission is to promote security, safety and service and our vision is to provide PEAK (People Ethics Accuracy Knowledge) service— everyone, every time.
Again, I am very sorry that you were the beneficiary of less than the high standard of service we strive to provide each and every one of our customers.
If I can assist in any way, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Gerald Slade, Deputy Director, Field Operations
Well, thank you, Mr. Slade! If I have ever uttered an unkind word about the Department of Motor Vehicles I take it back. And oh, by the way, about that vanity license plate…do you make one that says:
The story was buried on page A15 in Sunday’s Washington Post, but of all the stories I read before my afternoon nap it was the one that haunted my dreams. The opening sentence summed it up like a coroner’s report: “MOGADISHU, Somalia, Nov. 1 — A 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped was stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery.”
A thirteen-year-old girl. Stoned. To death.
The story continued: “Dozens of men stoned Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow to death Monday in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismaayo, Amnesty International reported.”
By dozens of men. In a stadium. Packed with 1,000 spectators.
“The Islamist militia in charge of Kismaayo had accused her of adultery after she reported that three men had raped her, the rights group said. Initial local news reports said that Duhulow was 23, but her father told Amnesty International that she was 13. Some of the Somali journalists who first reported the killing later told the human rights group that they had reported she was 23 based on her physical appearance.”
The fact that a 13-year-old girl was stoned to death is horrifying in and of itself, but the circumstanes make it more horrifying still. Chief among these, for me, is the image of a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators, watching as dozens of men stone to death a 13-year-old girl wrongfully accused of adultery. Wasn’t there anyone among those thousand who stood up and shouted “NO!”? Can a thousand people sit and watch quietly while an act of murderous injustice is performed?
I keep saying that at Richmond’s First Baptist Church we’re trying to “bring heaven to earth,” and I keep encouraging people to look around for anything that doesn’t look like heaven and go to work there. But so much of the time what I see around First Baptist looks heavenly. I can almost convince myself that our work here is done. But if I walk around the neighborhood for a while I can see that we’re not done yet. And if I drive into some other, poorer parts of the city I can see that heaven’s a long way away. And when I read an article like this one I see that there are some parts of the world where heaven is so far from earth people must wonder if it will ever come. I think of that little girl’s father, sobbing into his pillow over his daughter’s senseless death, and I think I know why Jesus had to die on the cross—because evil like this won’t be overcome with a few minutes’ tidying-up:
I got up at 5:00 this morning to participate in democracy.
I started the coffee, got dressed, and then took an umbrella and a travel mug over to the Albert H. Hill Middle School on Patterson Avenue where I found nearly twenty people already waiting in line. By the time the doors opened at six the line stretched out to the sidewalk and down the street, with people clumped together under big umbrellas in the light drizzle that was falling.
The school itself was something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, and even though some of the people who were lined up with me didn’t look very Rockwellian, the volunteers did, especially the woman who offered to demonstrate the voting machine. I took her up on the offer just because she seemed so eager to show off her skills, and then had to console her when the machine didn’t work (not a good omen).
The person who took my name was a member of First Baptist Church, although he said he wasn’t supposed to acknowledge that he knew me. A good volunteer wouldn’t want to show any favoritism to his friends and neighbors, not at the polling place. But then, when I moved on through the line, there was another First Baptist member waiting to show me to my voting machine. They were everywhere! He, too, downplayed our acquaintance and only pointed (with authority) to machine number five.
This machine was working, and I quickly got down to the serious business of voting. I liked the way the boxes lit up when I touched them, and that big, flashing yellow box at the end that said, “Cast your vote!” I double-checked, just to make sure the machine and I agreed on who I was voting for, and then I touched the big, yellow box.
And that was it.
Someone handed me an “I voted” sticker. I stuck it on the front of my shirt and walked out the back door into the rain. When I looked toward the street I saw that the line had only gotten longer, and now stretched all the way down to the corner. A bunch of Americans, standing in the rain, waiting to vote. Doesn’t that do something for you?
My daughter Catherine turns eighteen next month, and so she just missed voting in this election. When she saw the sticker on the front of my shirt at breakfast she confessed that she was jealous. She wished she had gotten to vote. That’s the feeling I picked up from the crowd at Starbucks later when I went by to get my free “I voted” cup of coffee—that voting was a privilege, and that we had been privileged to participate in something that will go down in history. I saw it in the way we recognized each other’s stickers, the way we nodded and smiled knowingly. I’m not sure what it did for them, but I’m sure what it did for me.
Hear or download this post (mp3 file – 2:40): We Were There
Regardless of who you voted for in the election, and regardless of how you feel about the outcome, history was made in the United States yesterday. Forty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., an African American man was elected president.
In his gracious concession speech Senator John McCain said:
“A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt’s invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African American to the presidency of the United States.”
And although there had been boos from the crowd at his earlier mention of Senator Barack Obama, the crowd applauded when McCain said: “Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth.” When I watched the news this morning I saw reports from around the world, and listened to people who were amazed by what had happened here, as if they had watched the first landing on the moon. Their voices were filled with wonder, their eyes shining with admiration, as they marveled at a country where truly anything seems possible.
It’s hard not to feel disappointed when your candidate loses; it’s hard not to feel smug when your candidate wins; but what I heard on election night was an appeal from both candidates to put our partisanship behind us and move forward together, to remember that we are not a nation of red states and blue states, but the United States of America. Senator McCain said it well in his closing remarks: “I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.”
I hope we will do that. I hope we will leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited. And if they ask us someday what it was like to be around when all this happened we can tell them:
The first session of our discussion on the mission and pupose of the local church last Wednesday night began with a question about who’s in charge. Who gets to make the big decisions at First Baptist Church? Is it the pastor? (I was kind of hoping the answer would be yes, but it wasn’t).
No, it’s the congregation.
The cherished Baptist principle of local church autonomy, exercised through a congregational form of government, means that we get to determine our own mission and ministry, but that doesn’t mean we get to do whatever we want. We are the body of Christ, as Paul might say, and individually members of it, but Christ is still the head, and in the same way your own head gets to determine what you will do and where you will go Christ gets to determine the mission and purpose of the local church. So instead of doing whatever we want, we try to do whatever he wants.
But what does he want? On Wednesday night I asked each table to take one of the four Gospels–Mathew, Mark, Luke, or John–and search through it for the clear commands of Christ. After twenty minutes of diligent searching I asked each table to report, and by the end of those reports we had written twenty five clear commands of Christ on the flip chart. Yes, he wants us to go into all the world and make disciples. Yes, he wants us to love God and love our neighbors. But he also wants us to wash one another’s feet, love our enemies, and abide in him.
And that was just the beginning.
When our staff did this exercise a few months ago we talked about all those clear commands of Christ and eventually determined that when you put them all together you get a picture of what “life in the Kingdom” looks like. In the Kingdom people make disciples of every nation. In the Kingdom people love God and love their neighbors. In the Kingdom people wash one another’s feet, love their enemies, and abide in Christ. And so the first answer to the question “What’s a Body to Do?” is to live the Kingdom life.
Next Wednesday night we’ll try to find the second answer. If you think you already know what it is, please click on the word “comments” below and tell me. I’d love to have your input.
David is our media minister. He’s the one who produces the television program we broadcast on Channel 8 here in Richmond each Sunday morning at 11:00. David often finds me after the 8:30 service and tells me how things looked from the control room and what might need to change before 11:00, but this Sunday I found him. I wanted to ask him if the shirt I was wearing, the one with the blue and white stripes, had caused any problems for the camera. Sometimes those small patterns do cause a problem. The camera can’t decide which stripe to adjust for, the dark or the light, and you end up with a swirling pattern on the screen that is exactly what it looks like when a camera is trying to make up its mind.
David said the shirt was fine but he wondered if I could stretch the sermon another five minutes or so. Seems the 8:30 service had come in significantly under an hour and even with the baptism at the 11:00 service David wasn’t sure we would have enough “length” for the television broadcast. So, I went back to my study to see if there was anything I could do.
There was one place in the sermon where I was talking about old-fashioned revival-meeting evangelists and thought I could probably add a few light touches. I could describe the evangelist for one thing (slicked-back hair, skinny tie knotted around his neck, sweat beading on his forehead and spit flying from his mouth), and then I could share a few of those stories those evangelists always seem to tell (like the one about the young man who is almost persauded to follow Jesus–almost–but then leaves the church without making a decision and gets hit by a train on the way home).
What I was aiming for was a caricature of the revival-meeting evangelist, someone whose features and manners were so exaggerated that you just had to laugh. But nobody did. They didn’t laugh at the story of the young man who got hit by a train, or the old man who dropped dead of a heart attack, or the young couple who had a head-on collision with a cattle truck (a cattle truck, for cryin’ out loud!). I couldn’t understand it. These were hilarious stories, side-splitting stories about sudden death, and yet everyone sat there in thoughtful silence, contemplating the brevity of life, and how quickly it can all come to an end.
That will teach me, I suppose, that what strikes me as funny in that hectic time between the 8:30 and 11:00 services is not necessarily so. That’s why I try to build into the sermon-writing process ample time for reflection and reconsideration, because what seems perfect in one hour may not seem perfect in the next. On the other hand if I’m too careful about the process I might hamper the work of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes you have to let go of the reins and enjoy the ride.
Maybe that’s what happened this morning. Maybe the Spirit took over. Because eleven people came forward at the end of the service today, and some of them may have been thinking that they had better not wait until next week. They had listened to the sermon. They had heard the preacher say you need to make up your mind about Jesus and you need to do it soon. Life is short, after all, and uncertain…
I’ve spent the last few days at the annual meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, held this year in beautiful, downtown Roanoke. It was a great meeting, with challenging, prophetic messages from Tony Campolo and David Coffey, and soul-stirring music from Kate Campbell (Wow. That girl can bend her voice like a guitar string!).
I hurried home in order to lead the second session of “What’s a Body to Do?” a three-week series on the mission and purpose of the local church. Last week we searched the Gospels for the clear commands of Christ, thinking that if Jesus really is Lord (and he is), then his body–the church–should do what he wants us to do.
This week we started with the Ten Commandments.
It’s my contention that those commandments were meant not only to keep God’s people from killing each other and committing adultery, but to create the kind of community where you didn’t have to worry that someone might kill you, or steal from you, or bear false witness against you, or covet your possessions. I think God wanted to create the kind of community where nobody had to lock their doors, or guard their things, or be afraid.
And then Jesus took things to the next level.
“You have heard that it was said by men of old, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but I say unto you don’t even be angry with your brother. You have heard that it was said, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ but I say to you don’t even cast the lustful look.” As we talked about some of the clear commands of Christ we had identified the week before someone mentioned the one about loving one another as Christ has loved us. “That’s it,” I said. “Jesus wants to take us from a community where people don’t kill each other to one where they lay down their lives for each other”; in other words from the Covenant Community to the Kingdom of Heaven. He did it by issuing clear commands, by calling and training disciples, and by telling parables of the kingdom.
And then I talked about my favorite Walter Brueggemann quote, the one that says: “The central task of ministry is the formation of a community with an alternative, liberated imagination that has the courage and freedom to act in a different vision and a different perception of reality.” I think that’s what Jesus was trying to do. He called some disciples and formed a community. He told some parables that liberated their imaginations. And finally he gave them the kind of clear commands that would move them to courageous action.
The Lord’s Prayer seems to sum it up. In that prayer Jesus teaches his disciples to pray that God’s kingdom would come and God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is not just wishful thinking; it’s a call to action. It’s the kind of prayer a soldier would pray before going on to the battlefield, the kind of prayer a missionary would pray before going on to the mission field. You can tell by the next part of the prayer. Jesus teaches his disciples to pray for daily bread, because this is a big job, and they’ll need their strength.And then he teaches them to pray for forgiveness, because those sins will weigh you down on the mission field, and also to forgive others, because grudges are too heavy to carry.He teaches them to pray for deliverance from temptation, from anything or anyone that would distract them from this important task.And then, right at the end, just in case they begin to succeed and try to take credit for it, he reminds them that the kingdom, the power, and the glory all belong to God.
Yesterday, between the 8:30 and 11:00 worship services, I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the church and knocked on the door of the Lambs Sunday school class. “May I come in?” I asked. I hadn’t made an appointment, and I hadn’t been invited, but I thought if anyone would let the pastor drop in unannounced it would be the Lambs.
I was right.
This is a class for developmentally delayed adults, and when I went in on Sunday I found four students and three helpers working at a table in the middle of the room. Three of these students are brothers, born into the same family. And while the doctors would tell you that it’s rare to have a developmentally delayed child they would also tell you it’s impossible to have three. But there they were on Sunday—the Haymans brothers: Joe, Chris, and Bruce. They seemed glad to see me. Thrilled, actually. I can’t remember when I’ve had a more enthusiastic welcome.
I sat down next to Bruce and tried to help him find “Joshua” in a word search. The class was studying leaders and they had talked about the transfer of leadership from Moses to Joshua. Bruce was looking for the letter “J” on the page and marking it carefully each time he found one. With a little help he was able to see how some of those J’s connected to O-S-H-U and A. As I looked around the table I could see that all of the students were being helped by patient and gentle volunteers.
While we were working Chris told me it was his birthday, and when I congratulated him and asked him how old he was he held up five fingers. Chris is a good bit older than that, but he seemed as excited about his birthday as any five-year-old. He went over to the table against the wall to show me the birthday cake someone had brought, and when I left a little while later he was still staring at it like you might stare at your true love, his elbows propped up on the table, his face in his hands.
Later that day I drove out to Midlothian to visit with Bruce and Debbie Leary, and to meet Jeffrey, someone I’d been hearing about for weeks. Jeffrey has special needs of his own. The doctors said he wouldn’t live to be 20 but here he is, nearly twice that, thanks to the round-the-clock care, the obvious affection, and the loud, smacking kisses of his loving family. Jeffrey seemed to recognize me right away from seeing me on television and insisted that I “talk” while I was there, which I did, just enough to satisfy him that I was the same person he had been hearing on Sunday mornings. Later the Learys told me Jeffrey’s whole story, and while it was clear that caring for him wasn’t always easy, it was also clear that caring for him was one of the greatest joys of their lives.
Before I left, Bruce gave me a framed drawing of Jesus holding a lamb in his arms. He said it was his favorite picture of Jesus, and I could see why. There was our Lord and Savior, burying his face in the soft wool of a helpless lamb, holding it close, as if nothing were more precious to him. And I thought about those “lambs” I had met that day—Joe and Bruce and Chris and Jeffrey—and how precious they are to Jesus, too.
I hadn’t really planned to visit that Sunday school class yesterday, on the same day I was visiting the Learys. I don’t know what moved me to do it. But if I had to guess I would guess it was Jesus, the Good Shepherd, leading me to look in on some of his lambs.
I’ve been talking about the mission and purpose of the local church lately and saying that at its simplest it seems to be a matter of “bringing heaven to earth.” I get some blank looks when I say that. People have heard other things. So, it was reassuring to hear someone saying the same things I’ve been talking about as I read the testimony of a California pastor named Denny Bellesi in a book called “The Kingdom Assignment.”
“Like many of you, I was raised in the church and grew up believing the Christian faith was only about getting to heaven,” Bellesi writes. “As an active child, I had no interest in death and dying, let alone heaven. I pictured clouds, harps, angels, that kind of thing, and believed it held no relevance whatsover to my life.
“No surprise that church attendance was not a priority for me back then. it was boring and irrelevant. As a young teenager, I remember waking up early on Sunday morning and doing all I could to keep my sister quiet and the television sound turned down low. I even tried setting all the clocks back in hope my parents would oversleep and forget about the whole thing.
“Heaven could wait, as far as I was concerned. There were many more important things to do. It wasn’t until my high school years that Jesus Christ had any real impact on my life. Even then, heaven wasn’t the driving motivation. Heaven was just the frosting on the cake.
“What captivated me was the everyday practicality of trying to live like Jesus.
“I began noticing how often the Kingdom was mentioned in the Gospels. How people related and worked and played and loved one another in the Kingdom. And eventually I began to realize that the kingdom Jesus was referring to wasn’t some faraway heavenly place.
“It was right here, right now.
“Suddenly, everything became clear. Being a Christian wasn’t about getting to heaven, although that was a benefit. It was about becoming part of the Kingdom among us, the one that is far too easy to miss unless we’re looking. I understood for the first time that the Kingdom of God wasn’t a place in the clouds or a dot on a map, but a reality that begins deep within us as we give our lives over to Jesus” (The Kingdom Assignment, Denny and Leesa Bellesi, Zondervan, 2001).
What if heaven could be more than “pie in the sky, by and by,” as the old preachers used to say. What if it could be ”something sound, on the ground, while we’re still around”? Wouldn’t you do anything you could to bring heaven to earth? And what’s keeping you?
I don’t even know her last name. I only know that when I sat down at a table in Community Missions on Wednesday morning she was there, stirring sugar into a styrofoam cup full of creamy coffee. I watched her take the first sip and saw her face relax into a smile.
“That’s good, isn’t it?” I said. “I love that first sip of coffee.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “It warms me all the way down.” There was a moment’s pause while she took another sip and then she said, “Except my feet.”
“Your feet?” I asked.
“I can’t feel my feet,” she said.
My thermometer read 24 degrees when I got up on Wednesday morning. It had warmed up a little since then, but not much, and Cathy (bless her heart) had been standing outside with the others, waiting till we opened our doors, till she could come in and get a cup of hot coffee and a pastry.
Oh, and one other thing: a shower.
“My feet will be all right when that warm water hits them,” she said, “but right now I can’t feel them. It was cold last night.” And then she took another sip of her coffee and left me to wonder: When was the last time I had stood outside in the cold till my feet went numb, and when had I ever been as grateful for a cup of coffee, or a hot shower?
I don’t want to take those things for granted as I approach Thanksgiving this year, and this year, especially, I want to be thankful for a church that provides hot showers for the homeless.
Yesterday’s sermon from Matthew 25 hinted at the idea that Christ is in every hungry, thirsty, shivering, lonely, sick, or imprisoned person we encounter. It reminded me of a paragraph from Kathleen Norris’s book Dakota that has brought a smile to my face over and over again through the years. Let me share it with you here:
Visits to monasteries are as old as monasteries themselves. We think of monks as being remote from the world, but Saint Benedict, writing in the sixth century, notes that a monastery is never without guests, and admonishes monks to “receive all guests as Christ.” Monks have been quick to recognize that such hospitality, while undoubtedly a blessing, can also create burdens for them. A story said to originate in a Russian Orthodox monastery has an older monk telling a younger one: “I have finally learned to accept people as they are. Whatever they are in the world, a prostitute, a prime minister, it is all the same to me. But sometimes I see a stranger coming up the road and I say, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, is it you again?’”
If you say it with just the right inflection, it sums up everything we often feel when we are confronted with the needs of the world. But if you say it often enough it will also remind you of who is watching and why it matters that we respond with compassion.
I remember Donald because he used to run across the playground with his arms rotating like the blades of a windmill, because he once tried to flush his leg down the toilet, because he regularly chased little girls around Miss Cherry’s first grade classroom. I remember Donald because of something that happened in 1965.
Every time Miss Cherry left the classroom she would leave with strict instructions for us to behave while she was gone, and she would ask Leonard to write down the names of those who didn’t.Leonard was an owlish boy with horn-rimmed glasses and fat, pink hearing aids behind each ear. He was the teacher’s pet, but he was also Donald’s reluctant accomplice; Leonard feared him more than he feared her.
As soon as Miss Cherry was safely out the door, Donald would leap to his feet and point to Leonard: “Go!” he would yell, and Leonard would dutifully push his chair over to the door where he served as a lookout, standing on the chair and squinting out the square glass window, strategically positioned at adult eye-level. When Leonard was in place Donald would pick out his victim, point to a timid girl in pigtails and shout, “I’m a gonna get you!” She would scream and run around the room, obligingly, while Donald windmilled along behind her, huffing and puffing. Eventually Leonard would call from the window, “Here she comes!” and Donald would skid to a stop in front of the class, catch his breath, and say, “Now y’all be quiet, chaldren!” and then sit down quickly.
When Miss Cherry walked in seconds later things would be quiet—too quiet. She would glare suspiciously at Donald and he would grin back, red-faced, innocent until proven guilty.
But on the Monday after Thanksgiving Miss Cherry put up a huge cardboard Santa on the door of her classroom, and the next time she left the room Leonard pushed his chair over, climbed up on it, and found to his surprise that the view from the window was completely blocked. Donald was on his second lap around the room when Leonard got his attention, pointed to the window, and held out his hands, palms up. What could Donald do? With a look of utter bewilderment on his face he wandered back to his chair and sat down, waiting glumly for Miss Cherry’s return.
She came into her silent classroom a full five minutes later, unable to resist one brief, triumphant smile flashed in Donald’s direction.
She was wiser than we knew.
I remember that incident each year at the beginning of Advent because this is that season of the year in which the church emphasizes constant readiness for the coming of Christ. I am reminded, again and again in these days, that behind all the cardboard Santas of the secular Christmas season stands the One with his hand on the doorknob, ready to make an entrance. So I watch.
Editor’s Note: I shared this story as part of the sermon at last night’s Thanksgiving service. Several people have suggested that I post it here so others could enjoy it. So, here it is, with every good wish for a happy Thanksgiving. –Jim
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I lived in Wise County, Virginia, from 1961 to 1966.I was just a kid at the time.My dad was a Presbyterian minister, the pastor of Gladeville Presbyterian Church in Wise.But then he accepted a call to a special ministry among the poor in Boone County, West Virginia—one of the poorest counties in the country—and took what amounted to a vow of poverty to do it.I don’t remember him ever asking my permission.If he had I probably would have said no.But that’s how I ended up in Boone County, West Virginia and that’s where this story takes place.
My family was living in Bloomingrose, one of the most inappropriately named towns in America.There was nothing about it that suggested a rose in bloom.I was enrolled at Comfort Elementary School a few miles down the river—one of the most inappropriately named schools in America.There was nothing about it to suggest comfort.I was in the fourth grade, trying to adapt to the culture of a new school.Very quickly I learned that one of the worst things anybody could say about you was to say that you were “a Dotson.”
The Dotson clan lived a couple of miles up Joe’s Creek from where the elementary school stood.Howard Dotson, the patriarch, was one generation removed from living under a rock cliff.With a lot of hard work and perseverance he had been able to move into a tumbledown shack near the creek where he and his wife Susan had brought five or six children into the world.All of these children shared the same characteristic:a head full of stiff, blonde hair that stuck out in every direction.Howard Junior, Ricky, Stoney, Vicky, Dorothy (there might have been one or two more), all had this same, wild hair.I don’t think it would have stayed down if they had tried to comb it, but I’m not sure they ever had.
Dorothy was in my class at school.I used to glance at her in the next row over, clutching a pencil in her grubby fist and trying to write in her notebook.I saw that her knuckles were skinned up, probably from hitting boys, and probably the boys she hit deserved it.Because the worst thing you could say to anybody at Comfort Elementary School is to say that they liked Dorothy.You would hear it on the playground from time to time: some boy pointing at another boy and jeering, “You like Dor-thy!”To which the only appropriate response was categorical denial, and maybe a punch in the nose.
So you can imagine how excited I was when my dad told us that we were going to be having Thanksgiving dinner at the Dotson’s house.It seems the ladies at the Methodist church had given them a huge turkey and they wanted to share it with us.I tried to talk Dad out of it, tried to explain to him that if I went to Dorothy Dotson’s house for Thanksgiving I could never show my face at Comfort Elementary School again.But Dad said we had to go, that it would be rude not to, and although I didn’t say so I was thinking being rude to the Dotsons wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.Going to their house for Thanksgiving might be.
But we went anyway.We pulled into that wide spot by the road where they parked and then went down the creek bank, across a rickety, homemade bridge, and up the other side into their front yard, which was mostly dirt.They had a wide front porch on their house, with a ratty-looking sofa and a recliner on it.A washing machine.Off to one side of the house were three old cars in various states of repair.One of them had a tripod over it where Junior was pulling out a bad engine.Another had a small tree growing up through the place where the engine used to be.There were black, plastic garbage bags full of trash in the back yard, some that had been ripped open by dogs.I took a deep breath before going inside.
But inside the house smelled wonderful.Susan was putting the finishing touches on the turkey and I saw that she had borrowed some chairs to put around the table.When we all sat down we were shoulder to shoulder and my shoulder was right next to…Dorothy’s.She had dressed up for the occasion, put on a pale blue dress and some shockingly red lipstick.It looked like she had even tried to comb her hair down, although without much success.It was her mother who put her there beside me, thinking that since we were in the same class we would have a lot to talk about.We didn’t.I dug into my dinner and tried to finish as quickly as possible so I could excuse myself and go outside.
We had turkey, canned green beans, slices of white bread, and RC Cola.That was it.And when I was finished I pushed my chair back and asked if I could be excused.That’s when Dorothy asked me if I wanted to play horseshoes and, because I couldn’t think of a good reason not to, I said yes.She put on a coat and some rubber boots and we went out to the front yard where they had a horseshoe pit.She looked kind of funny, wearing that old coat over her pale blue dress, with those shocking red lips and that wild blonde hair, but when it came to pitching horseshoes she was all business.She beat me three games in a row and then I think she let me win one out of pity.We played most of the rest of the afternoon and even talked a little bit.
On the way home I sat in the back seat of the station wagon, reflecting on the experience.At some point I caught my dad looking at me in the rearview mirror.He had that look on his face, you know?The one that says, “See?That wasn’t so bad.”It really wasn’t, but it left me wondering what I would say if anyone at Comfort Elementary School ever accused me of liking Dorothy.In a way I did like her.She wasn’t so bad…
On this day after Thanksgiving, I’m reading a book called Quitting Church by Julia Duin, Religion Editor for the Washington Times. Here’s what the book jacket says:
Recent studes show that churches across the country are seeing once-faithful members disappear from their midst. Why are so many Christians remaining committed to the faith yet dissatisfied with and disconnected from the established church?
Religion reporter Julia Duin has collected the research and added insights from her own interviews with disillusioned followers and visits to numerous churches. She reveals and explores a number of crucial factors underlying this shift, including irrelevant teaching, the neglect of singles, the marginalization of women, and a lack of authentic spiritual power. She also delves into trends such as house churches and postmodern or emergent congregations. Her careful analysis and thoughtful reflection will help church leaders examine how they can better serve those in their congregations and communities who are struggling to find a spiritual home.
So, here’s the question I’ve been asking friends, colleagues, and church members for the past few weeks: Fifty years from now, will we still be getting up on Sunday mornings, knotting our neckties, getting into our cars, and driving to some central location to sit in a pew, say our prayers, sing some hymns, and hear a sermon, or will church either a) evolve into something else or b) disappear altogether?
I’d be interested to hear your responses, especially if you think church will evolve into something else. What will it evolve into, and how can we anticipate that and get there ahead of the curve? You can either vote by clicking one of the boxes on the poll below, or share your thoughts by clicking on the word “comments” just beneath that.
I know because I just went to Starbucks where all the baristas were wearing red aprons and where five cents of every purchase went to help people around the world living with HIV/AIDS.
I was a little embarrassed that it took Starbucks to remind me.For years in Washington I participated in the annual AIDS Walk.Our church would put together a team of walkers, and together raise as much money as we could to help the Whitman-Walker Clinic.We would all walk together, enjoying the camaraderie and the feeling that we were doing something to help.One year I raised over a thousand dollars and earned a snazzy fleece vest.Another year I ran the course early because I had to catch a flight later that morning.But the year I remember best is the one where they asked me to write down the name of the person I was walking for.
I can’t mention his name here, but he was a member of one of my churches who had contracted HIV through a blood transfusion years earlier.He was a happily married man—a father and grandfather—and the thought of dying of AIDS terrified him.He didn’t want anyone else to know about it, but he talked to me confidentially and—very confidentially—we made some tentative plans for his funeral.
That was back in the day when AIDS almost always led to death.These days things are better.Being HIV Positive is not necessarily a death sentence.Thanks to fund-raising efforts like the AIDS Walk and what Starbucks is doing today, people can live with AIDS almost indefinitely.It’s not cheap, but it can be done, and because it can my former church member can rest a little easier.
Of course we haven’t solved the problem.AIDS continues to ravage the continent of Africa, where there are millions of deaths each year and millions of children who have been orphaned.I remember the Sunday in DC when I visited with an articulate young man from Nigeria who eventually admitted that he was one of those people—an AIDS orphan.He showed me the statistics and they were heartbreaking.A million orphans in his country alone, with millions of others across the continent.
So, I’m embarrassed that it took a trip to Starbucks to remind me that today is World AIDS Day.I should have known that when I woke up this morning.It should have gone off in my head like an alarm clock, accompanied by the picture of that young man’s face, and my friend and former church member, and all those people who live in the shadow of this devastating disease.
I noticed a sudden spike in the traffic on my blog site yesterday, and it wasn’t because of the funny Advent story about Donald, or the sobering reminder of the AIDS pandemic, it was because people were reading the post called “Fifty Years from Now, Will We Still Be Doing This?” (or maybe they just wanted to push the button on the nifty polling device).
I’ve been surprised by the results of that poll. When I last checked, 41 percent of respondents thought we would still be doing church the same way fifty years from now; 39 percent thought the church would be bigger and stronger than ever; while only 20 percent thought the church would have evolved into something else by then, perhaps a collection of house churches. The results suggest that the people reading my blog are either a) stubbornly optimistic or, b) woefully uninformed (smile). There is a third option, of course, and that is that my readers are believers who know that “nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).
That’s true. But let’s take a look at the facts:
According to a survey sponsored by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago religious attendance in America fell from 41 percent in 1971 to 31 percent in 2002. In 2005, instead of asking people “Do you attend church regularly?” sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler asked them, “Did you attend church last Sunday?” and got numbers closer to 22 percent of the total population. You don’t even have to know the facts to know that churchgoing in America has changed significantly in the last fifty years. How will it change in the next fifty?
While the movement Jesus started will never die, the institutional church seems to be in trouble. I remember hearing Biship William H. Willimon report, years ago, that the United Methodist Church was losing 2,000 members each day. Even strong, evangelical denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention, once thought to be immune to such decline, have shown a recent downturn in membership. Those churches that are thriving, mostly megachurches, tend to achieve their success through agressive church growth strategies that often minimize the demands of the gospel.
First Baptist, Richmond, has been able to maintain its vitality largely through its television ministry, which reaches an estimated 20,000 people each week. While other downtown churches are struggling, our sanctuary remains comfortably full on Sunday, and the visitors and new members who come to us often say they first saw us “on TV.” Still, the people who actually come into our building each week represent less than a third of our total membership. And of those estimated 20,000 people who watch our services now we need to ask how many will be watching ten years from now? Or thirty? Or fifty?
I’m still reading Julia Duin’s book (Quitting Church), and I’m still asking people what they think the future holds. I’m finding that many of them, instead of being depressed by the statistics, are excited about how the church might change. One of those people is my friend and colleague Amy Butler, pastor of Washington, DC’s, Calvary Baptist Church. If you’d like to read her thoughts, click here. If you’d like to join the conversation, click on the word “comments” below and let me know what you’re thinking. And if you’d rather just click the button on one of those nifty polling devices, try this one:
Lately I’ve been thinking about how the church will have to change to reach a world that seems less and less interested in churchgoing. That’s part of my job as a pastor, to look down the road a few years, especially if I’m sitting in the driver’s seat: I don’t want to steer the church in the wrong direction. But I also don’t want to miss the party that’s going on in the back seat.
Last Sunday, for example.
For years Richmond’s First Baptist Church has been celebrating the First Sunday of Advent with an evening service called “The Hanging of the Green” (notice that it’s not “Hanging of the Greens.” That what we used to call it, apparently, but the Green family was offended and threatened to leave the church if we tried to hang even one of them. So we started calling it “Hanging of the Green” instead). I hadn’t been to this service before, not here, and wondered about these cryptic emails that started showing up in my inbox with references to the “H.O.G.”
But on Sunday evening everybody seemed to know what to expect. The church was packed, with children, youth, parents, and grandparents filling up the sanctuary and spilling over the balcony. We opened the sanctuary doors and someone rang the big bell in the courtyard as a call to Advent. Candi Brown welcomed us to worship and Becky Payne played a beautiful organ prelude.
It was sometime during the singing of “O Come, All Ye Faithful” that things started to come undone. The youth were hanging fresh pine garland and wreaths around the balcony railing when one of the wreaths slipped off its hook and crashed onto three or four hymn singers below. No one was injured, and they were all good natured about it, but it was the first of several mishaps that night.
Someone stepped on the power cord that supplied the huge, bass speaker the deaf choir depends on to feel the beat of the song they were supposed to sign (that’s not a typo: the deaf choir doesn’t sing, it signs). As a result they weren’t sure when to start signing, or when to stop signing, and simply had to do their very best to follow the uncertain lead of their leader, who was feeling the loss of that big, bass speaker. I think they were all a little embarrassed, but the congregation gave them an enthusiastic ovation, putting their hands in the air and waving wildly to signify loud applause.
And then Matthew Brown stepped to the pulpit to tell us he was not Rick Whittington. Rick and his family were supposed to light the Advent candle but they were not feeling well and therefore not able to come to church even though their names were in the bulletin. Matthew gladly offered to fill in but somehow the word didn’t get to his family, so as he stood there he invited them to come forward and join him at the wreath, only…no one came. He asked again, and again, and finally he said, “Are any of you here?” That’s when his four-year-old son Jonathan stepped into the aisle and said, “Daddy, I’m right here!” in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.
And we all laughed out loud. Why wouldn’t we? Wreaths were falling, equipment was malfunctioning, and whole families were failing to report for candle duty, but the First Baptist family let out a belly laugh that let everyone know it was OK—OK to be human, OK to make a few mistakes, OK not to be perfect—we were all God’s children in that moment and it was all perfectly OK with Him.
Later I heard someone describe the service as a “comedy of errors,” and in a way it was, but in another way it was a celebration of humanity in all its awkward, adorable imperfection. I sat there for the rest of the service with a smile on my face, shaking my head and thinking,
I wasn’t able to attend last month’s deacons’ meeting, but I gave the deacons an assignment anyway.
The meeting was on November 11, just a couple of weeks after our “Holy Conversations” on baptism and church membership. Some of the deacons wanted to discuss the issue at that meeting, but I asked them to hold their thoughts and instead spend a month praying over it. I printed up a slip of paper they could tape to their bathroom mirrors, where they would see it every day and be reminded to pray. This is what it said:
“While we will continue to make disciples the way we always have—baptizing believers by immersion—is it possible God is leading us to change our membership requirements, to open the door of the church a little wider in order to welcome Christians from other denominations who have been discipled in different ways?”
So, when the deacons meet this Tuesday night, I will be interested to learn what they have heard from God in the last thirty days.
We still won’t be discussing the issue. We will probably save that until January when the new deacons have rotated on and the old deacons have rotated off. At that meeting we will try to make a decision about whether or not to bring this issue to the church for a vote. In the meantime I would be interested to know what you think. Please take a moment to answer the question below, and encourage your friends and fellow church members to do the same. You can send them a link to this website or just call them or text them and say, “Take the poll on JimsBlog!’
And when you’ve finished voting, please pray that our careful consideration of this issue—rather than dividing us—would serve to bring us closer to Christ and to each other.
I can still remember the First Sunday of Advent, 1996.
One of our church families came forward and gathered around the wreath to light the first candle of the season.A litany was read from the pulpit, and then the oldest son (who must have been about twelve at the time) struck one of those big, wooden kitchen matches and lit the candle of Hope.Afterwards, he held the match up to his lips and blew it out, blowing out the flame of the candle at the same time.The congregation gasped.There was an awkward pause before he realized his mistake and corrected it by striking another match and lighting the candle again, and then blowing out the match—and the candle—again.This time, the congregation laughed out loud.What else could we do?
We Baptists aren’t all that good at liturgy.On the First Sunday of Advent, 2006, at First Baptist, Washington (“a church of Baptist tradition and ecumenical perspective”), I handed a brass taper to a new member who comes from the Anglican church and asked him if he knew how to handle one of those things.A taper, as you probably already know, is the proper name for one of those fancy candle-lighting thingamajigs.“Oh, yes,” he said with a smile.And then I asked if he would be interested in serving as a “candle consultant” (remembering the near-disaster of All Saints’ Sunday a few weeks before when we had tried to light candles for all those we had loved and lost and nearly lost a few more in the process).
Baptists are not all that good at liturgy, but one of the reasons First Baptist, DC, tried to cultivate an “ecumenical perspective” is that there is much to be learned from the larger household of our faith.
This matter of observing the seasons of the Christian year, for example, holds the promise of making every worship experience richer.At First Baptist, Richmond, we wait with breathless anticipation for the coming of Christ in Advent; we walk with him, trembling, toward the cross in the season of Lent; we crash cymbals and sound horns in celebration of his resurrection at Easter.Along with those broad themes are the colors and sounds and smells of the seasons.Advent begins in darkness, with the flame of Hope sputtering on its charred wick.We sing our hymns in minor keys.We drape the church in purple.But as the other candles are lit in the weeks that follow—peace, and joy, and love—the sense of expectancy is heightened, and when the Christ candle is lit on Christmas Eve, the mood shifts suddenly and dramatically.The church is filled with light.Deep purple is replaced by brilliant white and gold.The minor key modulates into the major and suddenly it is nothing but joy to the world, the Lord is come!
I mean, I’m finished with that book I’ve been reading, the one called Quitting Church by Washington Times Religion Editor Julia Duin.
The subtitle of the book is “Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do about It,” and yet I came to the end of the book without feeling that either question had been answered. That the faithful are fleeing seems clear: religious attendance in America fell from 41 percent in 1971 to 31 percent in 2002. More recent studies suggest that only 22 percent of Americans go to church regularly (p. 11). Why people are leaving is less clear.
Duin’s chapter titles and subtitles give some clues:
1. The Flood Outward: why so many good people are leaving 2. The Irrelevant Church: give them a reason to be here 3. Searching for Community: what we really wish church could be
4. Emergence and Resurgence: adjusting to the twenty-first century
5. The Loneliest Number: why singles over thirty-five are saying good-bye 6. Not So Solid Teaching: why Christians cannot exit the obstetrics ward 7. Is the Pastor the Problem? Or is the whole system broken? 8. The Other Sex: why many women are fed up 9. Bewildered Charismatics: looking for the spirit in a parched land 10. Bringing Them Back: if they want to come
Julia Duin strikes me as a smart, conservative, single mom, who became a Christian during the “Jesus Movement” of the 70’s. Some of her complaints about church seem deeply personal. For example: the church hasn’t helped her find a life partner (chapter 5); she’s tired of getting “baby food” instead of solid biblical teaching (chapter 6); she’s encountered some egotistical, out-of-touch pastors along the way (chapter 7); she is one of those women whose gifts are overlooked by conservative churches (chapter 8); she’s a charismatic who’s had trouble finding a church like the ones she remembers from her days in the Jesus movement (chapter 9). Some of her other complaints, however, are true for everyone, particularly her insistence that the church must deal with the questions people are actually asking (chapter 2); that the church must help those who are starving for life-giving, life-changing community (chapter 3); and that the church must adjust to life in the 21st century (chapter 4).
Duin’s last chapter includes this provocative paragraph: “In the local church, everything depends on the pastor, who must want to reach the more mature Christian and be willing to make the necessary changes to attract this group. I’ve not seen many churches like this, that concentrate on discipleship and leave the bottle-feeding to the megachurches, but I’m willing to bet such a church would do well in this era of dumbed-down, purpose-driven, seeker-friendly Christianity. But the pastor must be willing to tackle the hard questions or this experiment will fail” (p. 178).
While she may be right about most of that, I would say that it doesn’t only depend on the pastor, but also on a church that is willing to ask the hard questions, risk authentic community, and change with the times. I have a feeling Richmond’s First Baptist is one of those kind of churches, or will be. As a member of our staff said last week, “But Jim, people are not quitting this church. They’re coming, they’re joining, they’re giving, they’re serving.”
Yes, thank God. They are. And for their sakes and ours may we never stop asking the hard questions or trying to find the answers…together.
I joined Facebook at the suggestion of our media minister, David Powers, who assured me that this social-networking web site would be an excellent way to stay in touch with our membership. He was right about that. On Facebook I have become “friends” with most of the youth of Richmond’s First Baptist Church, and a number of other people like myself who are probably too old to understand what the youth are talking about (I’ve suggested that we start our own social-networking site called “Pruneface,” but so far no one has taken me up on the idea ). Still, we have swapped photos, traded compliments, and had a few good laughs. It really is a “friendly” place on the Internet, and you can add to your network of friends by sending a “friend request” to someone else.
So, I thought I would ask Jesus to be my friend.
I typed his name in the “Friend Finder” box and sent my request. Within seconds I had a long list of responses. The first was a guy named Jesus Edgardo Garcia Briales (no surprise there, really), but next on the list was “theLord andSaviour JesusChrist.”
I was surprised to see that Jesus and I shared only one mutual friend (good for you, Meredith), but even more surprised to see that “theLord andSaviour JesusChrist” had only 11 Facebook friends total. How sad! So I sent him a friend request right away. Facebook told me that “theLord” would have to confirm that we were friends before adding me to his list (which was a little embarrassing), but while I was waiting a box popped up with pictures of some of my other Facebook friends and this suggestion: ”Select friends of yours who know theLord.” Well! Nearly all my friends know theLord. They might be offended if a box popped up on their computer screen announcing: “theLord wants to be your friend.”
On the other hand, they might be honored. I know I would. I sent my friend request to theLord nearly six hours ago and I still haven’t gotten a confirmation.
Come on, Jesus. Don’t leave me hanging. It’s nearly 7:30 on a Friday night…
Yesterday was my daughter Ellie’s 21st birthday. Hard to believe she’s been in the world that long! In honor of the occasion I dug up a story that I wrote about her when she was four years old, when we went to visit her grandparents in the mountains of Western North Carolina. It goes like this:
It had been a rough night.
We were staying at my parents’ house near Asheville and the girls were having trouble sleeping in unfamiliar beds. It took a long time to get Ellie down and when I got to my room I found Catherine, my youngest daughter, snuggled up beside Christy with her head on my pillow. I tried for several hours to sleep on the six-inch strip of mattress she had left to me, but finally staggered back to Ellie’s room and crawled in beside her.
At 5:30 the next morning she called my name.
“Daddy?”
“Umph?”
“I think I hear snow falling.”
And slowly i came to, and more slowly still I found myself glad again for children, for their innocence and imagination. Only a child would lie awake listening for a sound that can’t be heard—snowfall, or the hooves of reindeer on the roof. Think how much more sleep we would get, and how much more life we would miss, if it weren’t for them! I reached for Ellie’s hand, and together we lay in the darkness, straining our ears for the imperceptible sound of falling snow.
It was much later in the day that I thought how much Christmas is just like that. In all the noise of this season those of us who believe hold hands and strain to hear the sound of Incarnation. Above the roar of jingle bells, office Christmas parties, and the unwrapping of gifts we listen for the imperceptible hush of God breathing through human nostrils.
From the impressive pulpit of my former church in DC I once announced: “I have no interest in institutional self-preservation!”
Because it wasn’t only the pulpit that was impressive: the sanctuary in which it stood was breathtaking, with tall stone columns rising to a vaulted ceiling some sixty feet above and everywhere, all around, gorgeous stained-glass windows letting in rays of sun-drenched, color-saturated light. When the sanctuary was completed in 1955 the membership of the church was nearly 3,000. When I came to the church in the Summer of 2000 the membership was down to 750, with about half that number still living in the area and about half that number making it to worship each Sunday. When I came they talked about how wonderful it would be to fill that 1,000-seat sanctuary again and I agreed. It would be wonderful. What I didn’t realize at the time is that it was, in some ways, necessary. We needed to get people into the pews, and dollars into the offering plates, so we could afford to heat and cool and clean and secure that magnificent building.
It was some time after that realization that I stood in the pulpit and said, “I have no interest in institutional self-preservation.”
What I meant was this: that Jesus didn’t call me to heat and cool and clean and secure magnificent buildings. He called me to preach the gospel, and to move his people to fulfill his mission. As a result, I didn’t always have as much appreciation for the institution as I might have.
Since then I’ve come to believe that while the institution is not our mission, there is an institutional way to fulfill that mission. Having a building, and a budget, and a full-time staff makes some things possible that would be nearly impossible otherwise. Worship is one of those things, but it’s only one: Sunday school classes, showers for the homeless, divorce recovery workshops, volunteer mission trips, ministry to the deaf, marriage enrichment retreats, programs for children and youth, all of these can be ways of “bringing heaven to earth,” but in every case it is people who are the focus and not the institution itself.
I tried to illustrate this for someone only yesterday. I held up one hand and moved the other one toward it, as if it were the mission of Christ moving toward the church. It got at far as my raised palm but no farther. ”You see?” I said. “It’s not enough for the mission to come to the church; it has to go through the church.” When that happens—when the mission of Christ swooshes through the building and touches the world—I think you can stop worrying how you will fill the pews or the plates; a church like that will thrive.
Click on this link for First Baptist Church and watch the “swoosh” that moves across the picture at the top of the screen. Then click on the words “spiritual growth” in the green bar and select “Kingdom pictures.” I think as you look at those photos you will begin to get a good idea of all the ways First Baptist is working to fulfill the mission of Christ.
The Fourth Sunday of Advent was a full day at Richmond’s First Baptist Church. It started for me at the early service (which is not “dress rehearsal” for the 11:00 service, as some have implied, but a wonderfully intimate worship experience, precious to many, especially in a big church like this one). Imagine my surprise and delight when the choir sang a Mendelssohn piece, at full volume, before nine o’clock in the morning (not every choir can pull that off!). That was followed by a few quiet moments in my study, enjoying the coffee, pastry, cheese, and fruit Dot Smith lays out for me on a silver tray each Sunday (please don’t be jealous; she considers it a ministry, and I’m sure my preaching has improved as a result). And then there was a knock at the door—Joyce Chrisman, my secretary—asking me if I was on my way to the Pusey House to visit the Traveler’s Class.
“Um, am I supposed to be?”
Apparently I was. I gulped the last of my coffee and hurried out the door, across the street, and into the Pusey House with seconds to spare. I was intoduced to the class and as we talked about the curriculum they had been using I began to share some of my own thoughts on Bible study, which led into a discussion of the lectionary, and eventually a summary of my views on the mission and purpose of the church. When I finally looked at my watch I saw that I was late for my 10:30 appointment in the sanctuary, meeting the families and the babies who would be dedicated at the 11:00 service.
They were precious, those babies—two healthy boys named Andrew and Jake whom I presented to the congregation and prayed over. And although it was only my second dedication at First Baptist Church I managed not to drop anyone (whew!). I also managed to get through the sermon on live television before we cut to commercial, which is no small feat. You may not know this but when we’re broadcasting live I’m never entirely sure how much time I will have to preach. I know when I need to be finished but I don’t know when I will get to start. So I have to stretch or shrink the sermon to fit the available space. At the early service I had plenty of time, but because of the baby dedication I had to shave about five minutes off the sermon at the second service. For those of you who were paying attention that’s why there was no prayer at the end of the sermon on Sunday, and why the invitation was cut down to something like, “Please-stand-as-we-sing-Hymn-77-and-respond-as-you-feel-led.” But I did it. I finished before the red light went off, and I could almost hear the sigh of relief from the control room.
But that’s not really what I want to talk about.
You may remember that I went to the International Friendship Luncheon a few months ago and had a wonderful time, and you may remember that I mentioned a tiny girl from Bangladesh named Dighi who likes to be called “Doctor Pinky.” Well, we had another friendship luncheon on Sunday, and Dighi was at this one, too. When we started to sing Christmas carols I invited her to sit with me in one of the big wingback chairs there at the Pusey House. She did, and did her best to sing along with every carol even though she was holding her song sheet upside down (well, she’s two-and-a-half!). But when the luncheon was over and it was time to go Dighi came over to give me a hug. How could I resist? She’s about two feet tall with glossy black curls and beautiful brown eyes. I bent down from the chair I was sitting in and she reached up to put her arms around my neck. It was sweet. She started to walk away but then turned around and came back. I thought she was coming in for another hug, but instead she puckered up and kissed me right on the lips.
Well!
I think I was still blushing when I went to a meeting of the Permanent Planning Team at 3:00, which finished up just a little before the youth Christmas pageant at 6:00. The youth did a magnificent job, acting and singing their way through ‘It’s a Wonderful Birth” (Todd Ritter’s creative adaptation of the holiday classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life”), but by the time I went home from the reception I realized I had been at First Baptist for more than twelve hours. It was a full day, as I said: a day when I was thrilled by worship, touched by a pageant, and smooched by an angel.
I was a little nervous about the Christmas Eve service.
For weeks people had been asking me if we were going to do “candle aerobics,” and when I asked them what that meant they talked about the end of the service, where everyone is holding a lit candle. They said that Dr. Flamming used to raise his candle and lower it during the singing of “Silent Night,” and everyone joined in. It was especially meaningful, they said, when he raised it on that first verse, on the words “all is bright,” because the room really did become brighter as all those flames were lifted high. “Candle Aerobics” was a tongue-in-cheek way of talking about something that had become a firm First Baptist tradition and they were wondering if I was going to continue it as the new pastor.
I was certainly willing. When I went to my last church they told me that during the annual Candlelight Carol Service I was supposed to walk down the aisle reading the Christmas story from Luke’s Gospel (King James Version) accompanied by two small children holding candles, that this is the way it had “always” been done and also the way I should do it. I didn’t argue. For eight Christmases in a row I walked that aisle, reading that story, even when one very small child almost set the Bible on fire with her candle.
The problem for me wasn’t in doing “candle aerobics,” but in doing it correctly. I asked Allen Cumbia if he could show me the video of a Christmas Eve service. He had to go back to 2003 before he found one that had been videotaped, and then, as I sat there in the control room with him, he fast-forwarded to the end of the service, where the candles were being lit. The room got darker, the candlelight brighter, and eventually everyone began to sing “Silent Night.” Sure enough, right at the end of that first line, on the words “all is bright,” every candle in the room was lifted up. It was beautiful. But as they were lifted again on the next verse, and again on the verse after that, I saw where the nickname “candle aerobics” had come from. As the camera panned the congregation I thought I saw a few people smirking, as if a beautiful tradition had become some kind of joke, and that’s when I made my decision.
At the end of the Christmas Eve service, 2008, the new pastor of Richmond’s First Baptist Church held his candle perfectly still all through the singing of “Silent Night,” right up until the last line of the last verse when he raised it in order to pronounce the benediction from John 1:1-5: “In the beginning was the Word,” he said, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God and all things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and this life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never been able to conquer it.”
I don’t know how it felt to everyone else, but to see those candles held high as I talked about the unconquerable light of Christ? Well, it felt just right to me. I’m sure that when I’ve been doing it twenty years some people will smirk about it, calling it the “Statue of Liberty Benediction,” but I’m also sure that it won’t bother me at that point.
I’ll let the new pastor come up with a tradition of her own.
In the last three months I’ve made 231 Facebook friends, written 43 blog entries, preached 28 times, told a half dozen holiday stories, and sung (once) at a ladies’ tea. It’s been a whirlwind of activity, and although I enjoy that kind of thing—breezing from one big event to the next—I am also enjoying this little bit of calm after the storm.
People kept asking me last week, “Are you ready for Christmas?” and I kept saying, “Almost.” I meant that I had almost finished shopping for gifts and almost finished preparing the manger of my heart, but until I finished preaching the Christmas Eve service there was always one more thing to get ready for. So, when it was over, and I was walking back home with my family after midnight, with the air strangely warm and a light breeze stirring the dead leaves on Monument Avenue, I felt my whole body relax into the holiday. There wasn’t one more thing I had to do except fall asleep that night and wake up on Christmas morning.
So, even though I’ve had to preach twice since then, I am holding onto that holiday feeling. In fact this morning, instead of going into the office, I’m going to take my family up to DC for a couple of days, to knock around some of our old haunts and eat at some of our favorite restaurants. I’m going to get some of that deep rest my body needs in order to go back to a job I love. But, don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll come back with some interesting stories to tell, and ready to post blog entry number 44.
I’m not much on New Year’s resolutions, really. It seems that we always make the same ones: to eat less and exercise more, and usually only because we’ve overindulged during the holidays. But here’s a New Year’s resolution of a different sort, one I picked up several years ago from a Methodist colleague:
On the first Sunday of each new year, John Wesley (the founder of Methodism) would regularly urge his congregations to “wholly give themselves up to God, and to renew at every point their covenant that the Lord should be their God.” And then he would lead them in the covenant printed below. Take a minute to look it over and see if you can say—and mean—these words. And then imagine how the rest of 2009 would unfold for you if you could keep this covenant.
____________________________
PART I:CONFESSION OF SIN
Let us humbly confess our sins to God:
O God, you have shown us the way of life
through your Son, Jesus Christ.
We confess with shame our slowness to learn of him,
our failure to follow him,
and our reluctance to bear the cross.
Have mercy on us, Lord, and forgive us.
We confess the poverty of our worship,
our neglect of fellowship and the means of grace,
Our hesitating witness for Christ,
our evasion of responsibilities in your service,
Our imperfect stewardship of your gifts.
Have mercy on us, Lord, and forgive us.
Let each of us in silence make confession to God.
SILENCE
Have mercy on us, Lord, and forgive us.
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
In your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Now the message that we have heard from God’s Son
and announce is this:
God is light, and there is no darkness at all in him.
If we live in the light—just as he is in the light—
then we have fellowship with one another,
And the blood of Jesus, his Son,
purifies us from every sin.
If we say that we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us.
But if we confess our sins to God,
he will keep his promise and do what is right;
He will forgive us all our wrongdoing.
Amen.Thanks be to God.
Let us pray:
Father, you have appointed our Lord Jesus Christ
As Mediator of a new covenant;
Give us grace to draw near with fullness of faith
And join ourselves in a perpetual covenant with you,
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.Amen.
PART II:THE COVENANT
In the old covenant, God chose Israel
to be a special people and to obey the law.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, by his death and resurrection,
Has made a new covenant with all who trust in him.
We stand within this covenant and we bear his name.
On the one side, God promises in this covenant
to give us new life in Christ.
On the other side, we are pledged to live
not for ourselves but for God.
Today, therefore, we meet to renew the covenant
which binds us to God.
The people stand.
Friends, let us claim the covenant
God has made with his people,
And accept the yoke of Christ.
To accept the yoke of Christ means that we allow Christ
to guide all that we do and are,
and that Christ himself is our only reward.
Christ has many services to be done;
Some are easy, others are difficult;
Some make others applaud us,
others bring only reproach;
Some we desire to do because of our own interests;
others seem unnatural.
Sometimes we please Christ and meet our own needs,
At other times we cannot please Christ
unless we deny ourselves.
Yet Christ strengthens us and gives us the power
to do all these things.
Therefore let us make this covenant of God our own.
Let us give ourselves completely to God,
Trusting in his promises and relying on his grace.
I give myself completely to you, God.
Assign me to my place in your creation.
Let me suffer for you.
Give me the work you would have me do.
Give me many tasks
Or have me step aside while you call others.
Put me forward or humble me.
Give me riches or let me live in poverty.
I freely give all that I am and all that I have to you.
It’s true. I probably should have done a better job of getting the church ready for the celebration of Epiphany on Sunday, January 4. But with all the hoopla surrounding our celebration of Christmas and the subsequent hurrah of New Year’s, there wasn’t a lot of time to explain. Some people showed up on Sunday morning thinking that it was going to be just another day in worship, albeit the first one of the new year. So when I started preaching about the celebration of Epiphany they looked puzzled, like people who hadn’t gotten their invitations in the mail.
They seemed a little less puzzled by the end of the sermon, but for the benefit of those people and any of you who may be new to the Christian calendar, let me tell you everything I’ve learned about Epiphany in the 22 years that I’ve been a pastor. And since I’m doing this from memory, and not in any particular order, feel free to click on the word “comments” at the bottom of this post to let me know where I got it wrong.
Epiphany comes from the Greek word epiphainein, which means, literally, “to shine upon.” It is sometimes translated as “manifestation,” and celebrates the revelation of God in human form in the person of Jesus Christ.
Typically, Epiphany is associated with the visit of the wise men recorded in Matthew 2:1-2, who followed a star until they found it “shining upon” the house where the baby Jesus was (although, by the time they got there from ancient Persia, Jesus would have been a toddler. It’s a long trip!).
Epiphany is always associated with light. Some Orthodox Christians refer to it as “the Feast of Lights.” Feel free to bring your sunglasses to church next year.
Epiphany falls on January 6 every year, just the way Christmas falls on December 25 every year, but sometimes we celebrate it in church on the Sunday closest to January 6 (like we did this time).
The twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany comprise the “season” of Christmas, and it is perfectly acceptable to celebrate the birth of Jesus, sing carols, and even exchange gifts throughout the season (think of the money you could save if you bought Christmas gifts after December 25).
Some people drag their Christmas trees out of the house on the evening of January 5th, build a big bonfire in the village square, and have a “Twelfth Night” celebration. I don’t know who those people are, but it sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
And now for some other interesting celebrations of Epiphany, gleaned from my research:
In some countries, Epiphany is celebrated with more vigor than Christmas. For example, Ireland celebrates Epiphany or Little Christmas by giving wives and mothers a day off from their jobs on the 6th of January. This is particularly popular in Cork, where women often leave the home for the day, while husbands take a turn at caring for the children and doing the housework.
In many Latin American households, children leave out their shoes with bits of hay for the camels ridden by the kings. They often receive gifts on Epiphany, or the Day of the Kings, and it is thought that the gifts are better if one leaves hay for the Kings’ mounts.
The French often celebrate Epiphany by eating King’s cake or gâteau des Rois. Often a bean or a small toy is placed in the cake. The person who gets the slice with the hidden item is said to enjoy good luck for the year.
Eastern Orthodox Churches find Epiphany particularly relevant as the revelation of Christ. A church celebration may include the blessing of the waters. The nearest body of water is visited, prayed over, and a crucifix is thrown into the water. If weather conditions permit, swimmers may try to retrieve the cross.
Epiphany is also associated with the appearance of Christ to St. Paul. In this way, epiphany is used in the sense of one having a revelation from the Greek root. Christ’s appearance to Paul radically altered Paul’s life and turned him into a notably avid Christian who worked very hard to convert his brethren.
Some Christians find that Epiphany is the last vestige of the non-commercialized holiday. They prefer to enjoy a Christian celebration that is truly based in religion, and not in retail stores. Many choose to celebrate Epiphany with a special gathering of family that does not include gifts, to separate serving “God and Mammon.” Christ explains in his teaching that serving wealth, Mammon, means one cannot devote oneself to God. Thus a day spent reflecting on Christ with little influence on money is a good one to many Christians, and marks Epiphany as special.
There you go, that’s all I know and a good bit more. Hope your Tuesday is a good one, and that your celebration of Epiphany includes eating cake, taking the day off, diving for a crucifix, or putting hay in someone’s shoes (preferably not your own). And beyond all that, some time for reflecting on the miracle of God’s manifestation in a baby boy named Jesus.
Blessed Epiphany!
p.s. Chaplain Travis Moger, a fellow Baptist, has posted some wonderful thoughts about Epiphany on his blog. Click here to read.
You wouldn’t believe how many people wished me a “Blessed Epiphany” on January 6! Thank you readers, friends, and members of First Baptist for being such good sports. I got a request for my shoes from someone who wanted to put hay in them, several suggestions for family Epiphany celebrations, and one comment from a woman who said she was going to celebrate Epiphany “Irish style” by handing the baby off to her husband and enjoying a day of leisure.
Hope that worked out…
Anyway, I wanted to point out that Epiphany is a day, not a season. Unlike Christmas, which goes on for 12 full days, Epiphany comes and goes on one day—January 6. The “Sundays after Epiphany” (as they are known) are part of “Ordinary Time” on the Christian calendar. But in that ordinary time between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, the Gospel lessons typically focus on Jesus’ public ministry, so that as we “hear” him teach and preach, as we “watch” him heal the sick and raise the dead, it becomes clearer and clearer to us who he really is. It’s as if someone is dialing up the dimmer switch on the wall, so that what began with a flicker of starlight over Bethlehem ends with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, bathed in light so dazzling that the disciples have to shield their eyes.
That’s what I hope will happen in the sermon series I begin on Sunday—”The Seven First Words of Christ”: that as I focus on the beginnings of Jesus’ public ministry in the first chapter of Mark we will begin to see more and more clearly who he is, the dimmer switch will be dialed up, the light will get brighter and brighter, until, in the end, we will have to shield our eyes.
This Sunday, as part of my sermon series on the seven first words of Christ, I’m going to take a long, hard look at that moment in the Gospels when Jesus comes to be baptized.
Why did he do that?
John can’t understand it. What he’s offering is a “baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” In other words, you come confessing your sins, he washes them away, you go home dripping wet but feeling clean in a way you never have before. Word spreads and soon everybody is coming to be baptized, even Jesus.
Which raises a question.
We Christians believe that Jesus was sinless. We get this idea from passages like 1 Peter 2:22 (“He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth”), 1 John 3:5 (“…and in him was no sin”), and Hebrews 4:15 (“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin”). So we might wonder why a sinless Jesus would come for a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins—he had nothing to repent from, and no sins to “remiss”!
John says to him, in essence, “Look, I need to be baptized by you. I’m the sinner here! Why are you coming to me?” And Jesus answers with that enigmatic saying: “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
What does that mean, exactly? I’d like to know, and I’d like to know before this Sunday when I preach on Jesus’ baptism. I have an idea, but if you have one I wish you would share it with me, and preferably before Saturday night! Just click on the word “comments” below and tell me why Jesus was baptized. The winner might be (could be, may be) mentioned in Sunday’s sermon.
Winners in the “Why Was Jesus Baptized?” contest were Linda Moore, Paul Burkwall, Robert Gray, and J.T. Moger, who were each mentioned in today’s sermon. There were many more good comments than I could use. Thank you to everyone who weighed in!
If you want to hear the sermon, either so you will have the definitive answer to why Jesus was baptized (wink) or just to hear your name mentioned aloud, you can click on this link:
Sunday before last I preached on the theme of Epiphany, but for all that talk about dazzling light and the manifestation of God in Jesus Christ I found myself feeling pretty low after the 8:30 service.
I wasn’t sure the sermon had “connected” with that 8:30 crowd. Epiphany was a new idea for many of them, and I was afraid it may have seemed too formal, too liturgical, too…”Catholic.” Not only that, but because the day before had been hectic I didn’t feel as prepared as I would have liked. I was tied to my notes, looking down at the pulpit as often as I looked out at the people. I came back to my study full of self-doubt, feeling insecure, wondering if I should scrap the sermon and try something else at 11:00.
It’s true: even preachers get the blues.
But the longer I sat in my study fretting over it the worse it got, and finally I got up and stepped out into the hallway, not sure where I was going but knowing I needed to go somewhere.
I ended up in the children’s Sunday school suite, and when I peeked in one of the windows I saw a group of children sitting around a table with their teachers. Without even knocking I opened the door and slipped inside.
“Would you like a hug?” one of the teachers asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Would you like a hug? We’ve got some children here who love to hug.”
“Sure,” I said (how did she know?) and as soon as I said it tiny Abigail Corey jumped out of her chair and came toward me at a dead run. I squatted down and braced myself for the impact, but even so she almost bowled me over. And then her twin brother Kevin, not to be outdone, jumped out of his chair and ran to hug me, too.
I was off to a good start.
My next stop was the Dolphins class where I found a group of children sitting in a circle singing “Old McDonald Had a Farm” under the direction of their teachers, Robert and Linda Toney. Each child was wearing an animal hand puppet and making the appropriate animal sound when his or her turn came. I pulled up a kid-sized chair and joined in, with a “Moo-Moo here, and a Moo-Moo there…” While we were singing Robert slipped me a pig hand puppet, so that when we got around to my side of the circle I was able to sing “Oink-Oink here, Oink-Oink there” and make the pig’s ears wiggle at the same time, which got at least one laugh. Linda asked the children, “And who made the animals?” and they all shouted, “God did!” (good answer).
But in the silence that followed little Mubanga Mwende, who was sitting beside me, looked up at me and said something that sounded very much like “I miss you!” But it couldn’t have been that, could it? I had only met Mubanga once before, nearly two months earlier, at an International Friendship Luncheon. But then he said it again, this time more insistently: “I miss you!” So I said, “I miss you too, Mubanga!”
And that seemed to satisfy him.
It satisfied me. I walked back to my office having been hugged by the Corey twins, missed by Mubanga, and honored with the role of the pig in the Old McDonald musical extravaganza. I was a different person than the one who had walked out of there just twenty minutes earlier, and when I went out to lead worship at eleven o’clock there was a confident bounce in my stride.
Later that afternoon I told that story and shared the moral with my daughter Catherine. “When you’re feeling insecure and full of self-doubt,” I said, “you have to take those spotlights that are focused on you and turn them outward, toward others.” I didn’t think to say it then but I probably should have told her to try to focus those spotlights on children, who—like God—often surprise us with love we wouldn’t have asked for and couldn’t have earned.
At the moment I’m sitting in the William P. Hobby Airport, sipping a tall coffee and savoring the last few bites of a cheese Danish.I’ve come to Houston to lead a preaching workshop at Christ Church Cathedral for some Episcopal priests-in-training, and since no one is picking me up I have a few minutes to spare.
It’s still early.I got up at four this morning to get to the airport by five. Two flights later here I am in Houston.I saw the sun rise gloriously between Richmond and Atlanta and now it’s at full strength, coming in through these big windows and filling the place with God’s own light.
My seatmate on the last flight was having allergy problems and she wanted to talk about them.We finally got around to questions like, “Where are you going and why?”I told her I was on my way to Houston to lead a preaching workshop.“What about you?” I asked.She seemed to blush before telling me that she was an exotic dancer on her way to a national competition.“And now this!” she complained, pointing at her puffy eyes.But as we talked she told me that she had grown up in a Christian family, that her father, in fact, was a pastor.She looked down and said, “My parents aren’t too happy about some of the choices I’ve made.”
She talked about trying to live by their rules for years and years, and how finally she decided she just couldn’t do it anymore.“Now I live by my own rules,” she said, lifting her chin.That’s when I heard myself saying, “You know, Jesus said there were only two rules that really matter: loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and loving your neighbor just as much as you love yourself.He said all the law and the prophets were wrapped up in those two, which makes me think that if we could do them we would have nothing to be ashamed of, not even when we stood before God.”
Since she seemed to be listening I added, “When I’m trying to make moral decisions I sometimes ask myself, ‘Will this get in the way of my love for God?Will this drive a wedge between me and my neighbor?’”
She looked thoughtful.
“Your dancing,” I asked:“Does it get in the way of your love for God?Does it drive a wedge between you and your neighbor?”“No,” she said.“Not at all.”But then she admitted that it had strained her relationship with her parents.“It doesn’t keep me from loving them but it seems to make it harder for them to love me.”And then she breathed a heavy sigh and fell silent.Finally she looked over and said, “Thanks.”
“Thanks?” I asked.
“Yeah, thanks,” she said.“That helped.”
I don’t know how it helped, but as I sit here sipping coffee I’m thinking how remarkable it is that a Baptist preacher and an exotic dancer had a conversation about Jesus at 32,000 feet.
I went to the daily eucharist at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston last Thursday, January 15. It was Martin Luther King’s birthday, which the Episcopal Church observes as a feast day.
The Rev. Rhoda Montgomery was the preacher that day, and while she apologized for the informality of her remarks she said something that will stick with me for a long time. She said that there is a marker in front of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the motel where Martin Luther King was shot, that is inscribed with words from the Book of Genesis. “You might expect something like an excerpt from his ‘I have a dream’ speech,” she said. “You might expect the words that are on his tombstone: ‘Free at last.’ But what is written on that marker is a verse from the story of Joseph in Genesis, where his brothers say, ‘Behold, here cometh the Dreamer. Let us slay him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams’ (Genesis 37:19-20).”
I’m grateful for Martin Luther King and what he stood for. I will find a quiet moment in this day to say thank you. But today I find myself even more grateful for the fact that dreams are hard to kill, that more than forty years after Martin Luther King was struck down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel his dream is alive. It reminds me of another dreamer who was struck down in his prime, one who used to pray that God’s kingdom would come and God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Just before 11:00 this morning Mary Hiteman, Director of the Weekday Early Education ministry at First Baptist Church, asked me if I had “two minutes.”
“Sure,” I said.
She led me down the hall to one of the children’s classrooms, and introduced me to a two-year-old girl who was wearing a T-shirt with Barack Obama’s picture on the front.
“Who’s that?” Mary asked, pointing at the shirt.
“Obama!” said the girl.
I had squatted down to her level to say hello and told her, “I like your shirt.”
“I’m glad you do!” said one of the teachers, making it obvious that Mr. Obama had not been her first choice for president.
“Well,” I said, “this is one of those days when we come together as a country, regardless of who we voted for. On November 4th you vote your conscience—and I’m glad you did—but on January 20th we support our president.”
As I watched coverage of the inauguration later I marveled at how well we seemed to be doing that. This orderly transfer of power, almost unique among the nations of the world, was carried off with a generosity that made me proud to be an American. Mr. Bush was extraordinarily gracious in handing over the reins of leadership, and Mr. Obama was equally gracious about receiving them. There were no overtly partisan remarks; very few boos from the crowd. On the whole we seemed to understand that there were larger issues at stake, and that if we were going to prosper as a nation it would take all of us working together.
So, three cheers for Mr. Obama and three cheers for Mr. Bush and all the cheers in the world for the way power was passed from one president to another on this day. Just before Bush boarded the helicopter that would carry him away to his new civilian life he and Obama not only shook hands, they hugged.
In just a little while I’ll be doing the funeral of Nancy LeSac, a faithful and courageous church member who died on Monday morning after a long struggle with brain cancer.Her story reminded me of Joyce Maye, a member of my church in Wingate, North Carolina, who died after a very similar struggle.I found the text of the message I delivered at her funeral and wanted to share an excerpt here as a reminder that even—and perhaps especially—in tragic circumstances, the gospel is good news.
The writer of that great poem we call the Song of Solomon says that “love is strong as death” (8:6), and I almost believe that he is right.Love is strong!It can haul you out of the pit.It can put you on your feet again.It can set your heart soaring.It’s strong!But so is death.It can cut your legs out from under you.It can smash you to the ground.It can snuff your life out like a flame.When we think of how love makes us feel, and how the death of a loved one makes us feel, I think we can agree that Solomon understood something that is common to human experience.Love is strong as death and death is strong as love.Exactly as strong.The more love we have for someone the more it hurts when we lose them.The less love we have the less it hurts.
In Joyce’s case this harmless piece of poetry becomes a terrifying equation.She was so easy to love that many of us—most of you here—developed a love for her that was unusually strong.As a consequence, the fact of her death has hit us with such force that we don’t know if we will be able to stand up against it.
When I heard the news I was at Travis Family Restaurant, having lunch with my friend Jim Eastin.A waitress came to tell me I had a telephone call and Christy, in a broken voice, broke the news to me.I came back to the table and sat down hard, feeling the color drain from my face as I did so.Jim tried to resume our conversation but suddenly stopped, reached out to touch my arm, and said, “Are you all right?”“I don’t know,” I said, finally.“I don’t know.”
For the rest of that day that’s how it was for me.Love and death had collided at full speed, and the wreckage was everywhere.I went to be with the family but I don’t know how much help I was.After the initial hugs and condolences I simply sat at the kitchen counter, sighing and shaking my head.
If all we could depend on was our own love in time of death we might never know if we were going to be all right.Love and death are equally matched; it could go either way.But at the foundation of our faith is the truth that God has added to our love his own.“God loved us so much,” The Bible says, “that he gave his only son, so that anyone who believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).In other words the force of God’s love, in combination with ours, is too much for death.What once looked like an even match becomes suddenly, miraculously, one-sided, and death doesn’t stand a chance.“O death, where is your victory?” Paul says.“O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55).And as death lies dying at our feet he shouts, “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Cor. 15:57).
What all this means is that Joyce was right when she said to me, more than two years ago, “I believe I’m going to be all right.”By virtue of the strong love and amazing grace of God she is all right this morning.Strong as death is it will never be strong enough to snuff out the light that was and is…
After two “Holy Conversations” in October I promised that I would take this issue to our deacons and let them determine whether or not it needed to go on to the congregation for a vote. Since I was out of town for the Deacons’ meeting in November, I asked them not to discuss the issue, but to spend a month praying over it, asking the question: “While we will continue to make disciples as we always have, baptizing believers by immersion, is it possible God is leading us to change our membership requirements, to open the door of the church a little wider in order to welcome Christians from other denominations who have been discipled in other ways?” They did pray over it, and in December several of them stood and shared what they had heard from God. The minutes recorded that “several [deacons] noted that, after much prayer, their hearts had been softened regrding this issue.”
At the January meeting we discussed our membership requirements and decided it would be a good thing for all of our deacons—some 200 of them—to get in on the discussion. So we are looking for a good time and place to do that. I would guess that after we’ve had time to talk about it we would also want to give the congregation further opportunity for education and discussion. I don’t want anyone to feel that their concerns have gone unheard or that their questions have gone unanswered.
That’s where we are at this point. If you have questions or comments please feel free to click on the word “comments” below and weigh in. I want to hear from you.
Please excuse my silence over the past few days. My weekend was packed and now I’m on my second day of an off-site staff retreat where we are discussing what it means to be “missional.”
If you have time, you can read the short article we’ve been looking at (click here) and help us answer the question: What’s the difference between saying “The church has a mission” and “The mission has a church”?
I don’t know how it is for you, but I am often harder on myself than on anyone else. I can counsel with others and no matter what they have done I can usually nod my head sympathetically and show some understanding. But not with myself. Where I would forgive the shortcomings of others I often scold myself, wag my finger, and say, “How could you?!” I tend to hold on to sins that God has forgiven long ago, sifting through them from time to time to remind myself just how wretched I really am.
And that’s where this picture comes in handy.
This is a picture of me when I was two years old. I find that when I look at it I feel tender toward this little boy and far more forgiving than I might be otherwise. I begin to understand that my inability to forgive myself can be crippling, in the same way Jesus understood that we cannot love our neighbors as ourselves if we cannot love ourselves. It’s not that I use this picture to excuse my behavior, not that I look the other way and let “Little Jimmy” do whatever he wants. It’s just that I begin to confront his behavior with love instead of anger, like someone who could be redeemed rather than someone who should be condemned.
I have a feeling that God is able to see what is most lovable about us even in our worst moments. I have a feeling that’s what keeps him from blasting us straight to hell on most days, and instead keeps him opening his arms to receive all his prodigal sons and daughters.
Tom Harpur is a journalist, TV host, and Canada’s best-known author on the topics of religion and spirituality. He is an Anglican priest and Rhodes scholar who studied philosophy and theology at Oxford. He has written a statement of faith—a “creed” as he calls it—that goes like this:
We believe, and put our trust in God, Creator and Sustainer of all things, from the farthest-flung galaxies to the most microscopic forms of life; God is above and around and within every one of us, and yet so far beyond us in transcendence that our minds cannot fathom the mystery and our only response is wonder and worship. And we believe God sent Jesus, anointing him in the power of the Spirit, to declare by word and deed the gospel of personal and social liberation from the power of fear and all injustice and oppression. Though he was cruelly and unjustly murdered, God raised him from death and God’s seal is set forever on Jesus’ message and ministry. In him we know that God is love, and that forgiveness and acceptance are ours always. In him we are called to realize God’s kingdom in our own lives and in the lives of others. In him we are called to join with God in making all things new. We believe God has granted to us and to all humanity the same Spirit that was in Jesus, creating community and empowering us to be like him. We believe in a dimension of existence yet to come. We seek to build God’s kingdom here, but we also look beyond to a day when wars will end and God’s New Jerusalem will be revealed. We believe. God help our unbelief.
There are things in this creed I would say differently, and some things I wouldn’t say at all, and other things that need to be said, but that is precisely Harpur’s point. He says, “This ‘creed’ makes no claim whatever to be perfect. No creed will be. But it shows the direction in which I believe we could move. I challenge readers to take the time to create a creed for themselves. Discuss it and improve upon it with others. Simplify!” (The Emerging Christian Way, p. 64).
Suppose you did that? Suppose you tried to write down in a single paragraph what you believe. You might not call it a creed (Baptists have “no creed but the Bible”), but you could work on a statement of belief as a theological exercise, as a way of nailing down in a few sentences what is most essential to your faith. If it turns out well, and if you are willing to share, you could post it here by clicking on the word “comments” below.
It was sometime during my run on Thursday that I wondered if it was worth it.
I’ve signed up for the Monument Avenue 10K, along with about 30,000 other crazies. We’re planning to run 6.2 miles on Saturday, March 28, and First Baptist Church is fielding a team called “Team First.” I’ve encouraged the staff to run or walk in this race as a way of setting an example before the whole church, and if I’m asking the staff to set an example for the church I feel obliged to set an example for the staff.
So, there I was on Thursday, my day off, bundled up against the sub-freezing temperatures and trudging west on Monument Avenue. My lungs were cold, my eyes were watering, and I had a stitch in my right side that produced an awkward, limping gait. I was hoping to run four miles, but with three miles to go I wanted very much to stop, turn around, and walk back home.
Slowly.
This is new for me. I was a distance runner in college and used to knock out five miles before breakfast and then practice with the team in the afternoon. If you had asked me to run four miles in the cold back then I would have done it in swim trunks and flip-flops. I don’t want to think that I’m getting older—none of us do—but apparently I am. All the more reason to give some thought to staying fit.
I used to talk to college students about “Total Fitness.” I would tell them that human beings have four essential aspects—body, mind, soul, and spirit—and that it’s important to keep all of them in shape.
Body: That one seems obvious enough, doesn’t it? Even if you don’t run ten miles a day you can eat right and exercise. There are plenty of books and articles that give good, sensible advice on those subjects. On my refrigerator at home I used to have a note that said “Eat less; move more.” It really can be that simple.
Mind: For those college students it wasn’t a problem: their minds were getting a regular workout. For those of us who are no longer in school it can be too easy to let our minds get soft, to watch something lighthearted on television instead of sitting down with a good book, joining a discussion group, or taking a class.
Soul: Have you exercised your soul lately? Have you spent time in prayer, done some devotional reading, journaled, or immersed yourself in Scripture? Have you been to worship, sung the great hymns of the faith, opened your soul to a sermon, listened to a glorious anthem? All of these are ways of keeping your soul fit but of course these are not the only ways.
Spirit: I like to distinguish this one from the soul, although the two are closely related. I like to think that you exercise your spirit by doing the things you love, by spending time with friends, by going to an art museum, by canoeing down a quiet river, by turning the music up loud and dancing. Ask yourself, “What do I love to do?” and then do that. It will probably take some effort. The best things in life usually do.
I would be glad for you to add to this list or tell me some of the things you like to do to keep your body, mind, soul, and spirit in shape. Just click on the word “comments” below to share your suggestions.
And just so you’ll know, I did finish that four mile run on Thursday, and when I practice with “Team First” at 1:30 this Sunday afternoon…
In each of the churches I have served there has been a “legendary” pastor.
In New Castle, Kentucky, it was Bill Hull. People would talk to me about how things had been back in “Bill Hull days,” when they had 300 people in Sunday school (a lot for that little church) and had to put folding chairs in the aisles to accommodate the crowds on Sunday morning. I was a seminary student at the time, doing all I could to build up the membership of that church, but we didn’t have anything like 300 people in Sunday school. The numbers were usually under 100. I knew Bill Hull. I admired him. But every time someone mentioned his name I cringed at the comparison. They didn’t say it out loud but they must have been thinking: “Bill Hull used to pack them in. What’s wrong with you?”
At my next church it was Dewey Hobbs. People used to tell me how things had been back when he was pastor, how they built the new educational wing to accommodate all the people who were coming to Sunday school and how, on Sunday mornings, they used to put folding chairs in the aisles (what is it with these folding chairs?). I got to know Dewey Hobbs while I was there and liked him a lot. I could see why people remembered him so fondly. And yet there was some part of me that was relieved to move on from that place, knowing I wouldn’t have to hear his name every day.
I had been at First Baptist, DC, about ten minutes when someone asked me if I had heard of one of their former pastors, Dr. Ed Pruden. Yes, I had, but over the next seven-and-a-half years I heard a lot more. Dr. Pruden was pastor when the church built its magnificent new sanctuary. He was pastor when Harry Truman used to come to worship. His portrait hung in the church parlor and the pulpit from which I preached Sunday after Sunday was called the “Pruden Pulpit.”
There is no doubt that each of these men were gifted and able pastors, but only at my third church did I realize that each of these men had served during the 1950’s, a time when going to church was—for so many people—the “Sunday morning thing to do.” When someone asked Dr. Pruden how he was able to grow such a large church he replied, “In those days it was a matter of opening the door and getting out of the way.”
It’s not that way any more.
The churchgoing boom coincided almost exactly with the Baby Boom (1946-1964). Couples wanted their babies to grow up in the church just as they had. They came by the hundreds, by the thousands, and soon churches were scrambling to find enough nursery space, and then enough Sunday school space for all those babies, all those children! And because all their parents were coming to church too they needed bigger sanctuaries. They built them, and for a little while at least those sanctuaries were full, or nearly.
Sometimes when I am driving through the rural South I will see three church buildings along the highway. One is the original sanctuary, built sometime in the 1920’s; next to it is a much larger sanctuary, built sometime in the 1950’s; and next to that is an educational building, built sometime in the 1970’s. When you look at the three of them in a row like that you can see how the Baby Boom moved through the church like an ostrich egg through a boa constrictor. I would guess that the Sunday morning crowd these days could easily fit inside that original sanctuary building. I would also guess that those people are telling the current pastor how good things were back in the 1950’s.
My guess is that it isn’t the pastors who are the problem, usually. My sense is that pastors these days are working harder and smarter than ever before. But the culture has changed in ways we are only beginning to understand, and the forces that once pushed people into the church are now pulling them out. “I can’t come this Sunday; my son has a soccer game.” “I can’t come next Sunday; we’re going to the beach.” “I can’t come at all; I have to work on Sunday.”
So we sigh, and shake our heads, and look back to the good old days, when churchgoing was the Sunday morning thing to do. And there are some in our congregations who still hold on to the hope that if we could just find the right pastor, if we could find another Bill Hull, or Dewey Hobbs, or Ed Pruden…
I rounded up David Powers, our media minister, and Allen Cumbia, his right hand man, and the three of us jumped in David’s car with two cameras and a microphone and drove down to the corner of First and Broad. I wanted to do some “man on the street interviews” with people who live in the heart of the city.
I started by asking them if they knew the Lord’s Prayer, especially that part that says, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Everybody knew that prayer. I said, “It sounds to as if Jesus was asking his disciples to pray that God’s kingdom would come to earth—right here where we are—and not just stay up there in heaven.” They agreed that it did sound like that. I added, “And maybe he even wanted them to help him do that, to bring heaven to earth. What do you think?” They thought that maybe he did. And then I asked, “If the people of Richmond’s First Baptist Church wanted to help Jesus bring heaven to earth what could they do right here in your neighborhood to make things a little more heavenly?”
Many of them laughed out loud when I said that. They looked around that street corner and shook their heads as if heaven were a million miles away from First and Broad. But some of them were more practical. “You could do something for the homeless,” they said, and one of them added, ”I don’t think there will be any homeless people in heaven.” Others suggested doing something about all the abandoned, boarded-up buildings in that part of town, or helping people find work in these difficult times.
Some people had trouble understanding the question and David suggested that I ask, “What would you do for Richmond if you were God?” That’s what I asked Roslyn, who stood there wearing a loud clash of colors and a big, big smile. “I know you!” she said. “I come to your church for showers” (First Baptist offers hot showers, clean clothes, and a generous helping of Christ’s love to our homeless neighbors four times a week). Roslyn told me it was her birthday and right there in front of the cameras I sang the Happy Birthday song. She seemed pleased. “Now,” I said, “if you were God, what would you do for Richmond?”
“Buy me some lunch,” she said, with that same big, big smile.
You probably know how this story turned out. David, Allen, and I agreed that if God would buy Roslyn some lunch then maybe we should chip in and do the same. We did. And when Roslyn got her lunch she was so grateful she gave me a kiss on the cheek—a big, red, smeary, lipstick kiss that I would have had trouble explaining to my wife. But for a little while on Tuesday, in the warmth of Roslyn’s smile and the kindness of that meal,
Heaven came to earth.
See the man-on-the-street interviews by clicking here. Hear me sing Happy Birthday to Roslyn by clicking here.
Today I’m driving to Summerville, South Carolina (no relation), to visit my mom and dad (every relation). I’m going mostly because Mom had some minor surgery last week—nothing serious, but it does give me a good excuse to go see them.
When Dad turned seventy a few years ago I gave him a book called, “Seventy Things I Remember about My Dad, in Honor of His Seventieth Birthday.” It was so well received that when Mom turned seventy, two years later, I wrote one for her, too.
I wanted to share some of those memories here as a way of introducing you to my parents, so that while I’m driving down Interstate 95 today you can get to know the people who gave me my life, my faith, and so much more.If it’s true that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” I’m glad I fell from this one.
MY DAD: James Somerville, b. 1931
1.The classic memory is this one: One winter morning all five of us boys were gathered in front of the little gas heater in that drafty farmhouse up on the hill in West Virginia.We stood there shivering, and complaining that, at ten degrees Fahrenheit, it was too cold to walk the mile to school. Dad came in from milking the cow, and when he heard our complaints he didn’t say a word. He just set down the bucket, took off his coat, took off his gloves, took off his hat, his boots, his socks, his coveralls, his T-shirt, his boxers, everything—and out the back door he went, naked as a jaybird. We watched from the window in disbelief as Dad leaped around in the foot-deep snow, got down and rolled in it, made snowballs and threw them at the window. And then he came in and toweled off, got dressed, and got on with his chores. Well, what could you say after such an exhibition? We got dressed and went to school.
2.I remember watching Dad split kindling on some of our family camping trips.I was amazed by the way he could prop up a piece of firewood, swing the axe over his head, and come down in one clean blow after another, splitting off beautiful, polished pieces of kindling that looked like they had just come from the factory.
3.Dad used to push back from the table after we had enjoyed an especially good supper and he was feeling relaxed and happy.He would get this twinkle in his eye and then ask, “Who are we going to make cry tonight?” which was his way of challenging us to a game of Monopoly.We loved Monopoly, and when Dad issued the challenge we would jump up to clear the table, get the board, make popcorn or peanut butter fudge (part of the tradition), and on the best nights we would put on crumpled fedoras and old neckties so that we looked like big city gamblers.Usually, it was Dad who made us cry.He knew the game of Monopoly backwards and forwards, had memorized all the pieces and prices, and had a way of making the dice do just what he wanted (“Seven come eleven, baby needs a new pair of shoes!”).But there was always the possibility that one of us might win, and occasionally we did, and that’s what kept us coming back.
4.Dad taught me how to shave, of course.I watched him for years, taking mental notes on how to puff out my cheeks and upper lip for a smoother shave.When he watched me the first time he saw how much shaving cream I squirted into my palm and let out a gasp.“That’s way too much, son!” he said.I’ve been a frugal shaver ever since.
5.People have asked me what it was like to be a “preacher’s kid” and I have told them it wasn’t like that at all.For one thing, Dad didn’t have a regular church most of the time I was growing up.He was more like a home missionary, doing all he could to help the poor in West Virginia.But also Dad wasn’t “pious” in the sense that we ever felt guilty about having fun.Dad had fun, and we had fun with him.And anybody who can roll naked in the snow, wear a mop on his head to make his children laugh, or wrestle with five boys at the same time is not your typical preacher anyway.No wonder that I was not a typical preacher’s kid.
MY MOM: Mary Rice Whiting Somerville, b. 1933
1.Might as well get it out of the way: I remember that Mom used to wake us up in the morning by playing “America’s Favorite Marches” on the stereo, loud enough to wake the dead and almost loud enough to wake her five sleeping sons on a school day. To this day I have a fear of marching bands: “Sousaphobia” they call it, as in John Philip Sousa. But then again . . . sometimes she would come upstairs and sit on the edge of my bed and stroke my head gently while she eased me into the morning. “Honey? It’s a new day. The sun is coming up over the top of the mountain. The chickens are out scratching up their breakfast in the back yard. The bacon is frying in the cast iron skillet . . .” All in a very soothing voice that made waking up almost a pleasure. Ahh. That was sweet.
2.I remember the wonderful Bible stories she used to tell us when we were boys, especially at our second house in Wise, Virginia. We dragged our mattresses out into that central room upstairs and Eddie, Scotty, and I listened as Mom made the Bible come alive.It was there, I recall, that I first heard the story of Jael from the Book of Judges, how she crept up on the sleeping Sisera and hammered a tent peg into his temple.It was a gory story, but we were boys, and the gorier it was, the better we liked it.Much of my love for the Bible—and for storytelling—comes from the way my mother told those stories.
3.She once made my brother, Scott, an “airplane” birthday cake—just cut the shape out of a sheet cake, frosted it with gray frosting, and wrote “SWS” across the wingspan for Scott Whiting Somerville.I liked it so much I told her I wanted a rocket cake for my birthday, a month later.I think my mother stayed up most of the night before trying to make a cake that would stand up on cardboard tail fins covered in tin foil.When I saw it I was amazed.I had thought she would make one lying down, like Scott’s, and probably told her so.I may have forgotten to say, “Wow!Thanks for being the most amazing mom in the world!”
4.Mom used to write numbers on the ivory keys of her Steinway grand piano with a pencil so we could get our fingering correct as we worked through the John Thompson piano book, “Teaching Little Fingers to Play.”That’s not something most people would do to a Steinway, but it was just one more way my mother taught us that people were more important than things.
5.I can’t remember how many times someone would huff and puff up our hill there in West Virginia looking for Dad, wanting some kind of help.Mom always seemed to have coffee to offer and some time to sit and listen.In my thinking this was how she helped Dad with his ministry.While he was out doing “Matthew 25” kind of work (feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc.), she was at home doing “Matthew 28” kind of work (making disciples and teaching them all that Jesus had commanded).Whether or not she thinks of it that way, one of the disciples she made—this one—does.
I used to teach a fifth and sixth grade Sunday school class where we used the church constitution and bylaws as our curriculum. Just what a fifth or sixth grader is hungry for, right? But there was a lot in that little booklet, including the church covenant, articles of faith, and a statement of purpose. When I taught that last item I would say “SO FEW people know the purpose of the church,” and then I would tick off those five letters on the five fingers of my right hand: “S.O.F.E.W: Service, Outreach, Fellowship, Education, and Worship.”
In my study of dozens of church mission statements and purpose statements since then I have discovered that these five things make up the essential purpose of every Christian church. Although they say it in lots of different ways, every authentic church seems to be occupied with service, outreach, fellowship, education, and worship. I think that’s because we all look to the same New Testament, and to the same Lord, for cues as to what the church should do.
For example: Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor just as much as you love yourself (Mk. 12:30-31). From that “Great Commandment” we derive the purposes of worship (loving God) and service (loving others). Jesus also told his disciples to go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that he commanded (Mt. 28:19-20). From that “Great Commission” we derive the purposes of outreach (making disciples) and education (teaching them to obey all that Christ commanded). Finally, Jesus told his disciples to love one another as he loved them (Jn. 13:34). From that “New Commandment,” the only commandment Jesus ever gave, we derive the purpose of fellowship.
As the writer of John’s Gospel concludes, “Now Jesus did a lot of other things that aren’t written here” (Jn. 20:30), and he said a lot of other things that haven’t found expression in any church’s purpose statement, but these things have, these five things, and it’s a shame that “SO FEW people know the purpose of the church.”
In my last post, I told you that SO FEW people know the purpose of the church, but now that you are one of those people I have a question: if the essential purpose of every Christian church is service, outreach, fellowship, education, and worship, then why do we not organize ourselves that way? Why do we not have—in large churches, especially—a minister of service, a minister of outreach, a minister of fellowship, a minister of education, and a minister of worship? If these are the essential minstries of the church then shouldn’t we be doing them, and wouldn’t it help to have someone in each of these areas who could recruit, train, and motivate our members toward that end?
It seems obvious, but I don’t find many churches that are staffed that way. Instead I find churches with youth ministers, children’s ministers, ministers to young adults, median adults, senior adults, etc. In other words, churches seem to organize around specific populations within the congregation, and I think there’s a reason for that.
I think that when the baby boom moved through the church it overwhelmed the leadership. Pastors who had been perfectly capable of caring for small congregations were suddenly trying to care for all these children and all their parents. As each population reached “critical mass” the church called another associate: one for children, one for youth, one for “college and career,” etc. At a time when the culture was pushing people through the front doors of the church it was all the church could do to keep up with the growth and provide for the needs of those people. The emphasis was, necessarily, on things like fellowship, education, and worship—all things that happen inside the building—because that’s where the people were.
But what do you do when the culture is pulling people out the back doors of the church? Do you panic? Do you change your worship style to make it more compatible with the culture? Do you ask your staff to come up with more exciting programs to reverse the tides of change? Do you go to church growth conferences hoping to fill those emptying pews? Or do you take a deep breath, relax, and return to the essentials, to those things the church of Jesus Christ has been doing from the very beginning: service, outreach, fellowship, education, and worship?
I think you do, and I think you will find when you do that two of those five things have their focus outside the walls of the church: service and outreach. If we live in a time when more people are outside the church than inside, then isn’t it wonderful that Jesus anticipated such a time and told his followers to go (out) into the world and make disciples of every nation, to go (out) into the neighborhood and love our neighbors as we love ourselves? And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could take him at his word, and do what he asked us to do?
I think it would, and I think that if we did it faithfully we wouldn’t have to worry about how many people are inside and how many people are outside the building. We would minister to both in the same way he would. We would throw ourselves into the joyful work of service, outreach, fellowship, education, and worship. And to be more effective we might even organize ourselves for that purpose—the essential purpose of every Christian church.
As a follow up to my Ash Wednesday sermon about overcoming our fear of death by denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and following Jesus (“volunteering to die” as Dietrich Bonhoeffer would put it), let me offer this wonderful poem by M. Truman Cooper, first shared with me by my dear friend Judy Skeen. It’s called “See Paris First,” and it’s about knowing what it is you fear and facing up to it–approaching it squarely and head on–so that you don’t have to spend the rest of your life being afraid. The poem itself is simple and spare. It may take more than one reading to appreciate it, but I assure you…it’s worth it.
Suppose what you fear
could be trapped
and held in Paris.
Then you would have the courage
to go everywhere in the world.
All the directions of the compass
open to you,
except the degrees east or west
of true north
that lead to Paris.
Still, you wouldn’t dare
to put your toes smack dab
on the city limit line.
And you’re not really willing to stand on a mountainside
miles away
and watch the Paris lights
come up at night.
And just to be on the safe side, you decide to stay completely
out of France.
But then danger
seems too close
even to those boundaries,
and you feel the timid part of you
covering the whole globe again.
You need the kind of friend
who learns your secret and says,
“See Paris first.”
Last week, during the Lenten Luncheon series at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, I told the story of how my family left Alabama. Some of you have asked that I post it here. This version is a little longer, with a few more details. I hope it will inspire your thinking on race relations and make you wonder how your own experience has shaped your views on that issue. Enjoy.
——————————
I was born on March 14, 1959, in Selma, Alabama (for those of you who are still doing the math I am hanging on to my forties by my fingernails).My mother tells me I was the most difficult of all her babies to deliver, and that while she was waiting for me to make up my mind about being born she walked the hallways of that hospital saying the 23rd Psalm over and over: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”My father was the new pastor of the Presbyterian church in Hayneville, Alabama, 35 miles away, and recently he told me the story of his own labor, there, and of his eventual delivery.
He said that when he was considering a call to that church he asked the committee chairman what the civil rights situation was in Hayneville.Since the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954, resistance to integration had been strong in the South, and sometimes violent.The chairman said, “Well, you’re a good old South Carolina boy, aren’t you?You know what it’s like.”And it’s true.My father had grown up in South Carolina.He probably knew exactly what it was like.But he came anyway.He hadn’t been there very long when a member of the church invited him to say the opening prayer at the next meeting of the White Citizens’ Council.“What is the White Citizens’ Council for, exactly?” my father asked.“Could I look over a copy of the Constitution and Bylaws before I give you my answer?”And the man looked at my dad as if he were crazy, or maybe a communist, and said, “Well you know what it’s for: it’s to keep niggers in their place!”
Although I don’t think the Constitution and Bylaws read that way, that is what the White Citizens’ Council was for.According to one of my better sources the WCC was an Americanwhite supremacist organization which flourished between the mid-fifties and the mid-seventies.With about 15,000 members, mostly in the South, the group was well known for its opposition to racial integration in the South.Headed by Gordon Lee Baum, a St. Louisattorney, its issues involved the so-called “protection” of “European-American” heritage from those of other ethnicities.[1]If my dad had only had Wikipedia he would have known all that.But in answer to the man’s reply Dad said he didn’t think that was his role in the community.He said he thought his role was to share the gospel with anyone who would receive it, black or white, and to make no distinction between the two.“And that,” my father said, “was when he looked at me as if he really did have a rattlesnake loose in his house.”
It was not long after I was born that the leaders of Dad’s church sat down with him to discuss the policies of racial integration being promoted by the denomination.According to some Presbyterians, at least, black people ought to be welcome in the church just like white people.The elders of the church in Hayneville talked about that for a long time and finally decided that black people—“negroes” as they called them in polite company—were welcome to visit the church but not welcome to join it.And then they looked at my dad to see what he thought.He must have been about thirty years old at the time, a young man, sitting in that room with all his elders, trying to be respectful.But finally he said, “This church doesn’t belong to us.It belongs to Jesus Christ.And I don’t think he would keep anyone from joining because of their skin color.”And the man who had chaired the search committee looked at my dad and said, “Son, I don’t know what kind of religion they taught you in seminary, but we’ve only got one kind of religion here, and it’s that good old Southern religion.”
Soon word began to get around that the new pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Hayneville was a “nigger lovin’” preacher.Church attendance began to fall off.Women would stare at my mother in the grocery store.And then one morning while she was fixing breakfast she noticed a string of cars passing by the house, slowing down at the front yard and then speeding up again.One of our neighbors called to ask if we were all right and Mom said, “Yes, why wouldn’t we be?”“Didn’t you know?” said the woman.“Why, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in front of your house last night!”
Mom hung up the phone and got my father out of bed.He put on his bathrobe and slippers and walked across the front lawn to a patch of burned grass.My mother watched him poke a pile of ashes with the toe of one slipper and when he came back in she said, “Well?”And he answered, almost disappointed: “Sure was a little one.”But after that the threats began to get more serious until my father finally decided he needed to get his family out of there.So, he loaded up his wife and three little boys in a 1953 Ford Fairlane, strapped a dog house on top with our dog “Lady” and her five puppies inside, nailed a piece of plywood over the opening, and then, under cover of darkness, pulled out of the parsonage driveway and headed up the road toward Southwestern Virginia, where he would try to continue his ministry under happier, friendlier circumstances.
Things were happier there, and friendlier, too.But even though I was just a toddler when we left Alabama those stories, and my father’s courageous example, have shaped my views on race relations ever since.How about you?Who shaped your views on this issue?
Somewhere in Richmond recently I saw a van advertising “The Bible Answer Man” along with a telephone number that I quickly entered and stored in my cell phone. That’s useful information: you never know when you’re going to need a biblical answer to a difficult question. As I was scrolling lazily through the numbers on my cell phone yesterday afternoon I saw that one, which I had entered as “Bible Ans,” and decided to give him a call.
I needed an answer.
On Friday of last week I had stopped by the home of a church member who was upset about the idea of changing our membership requirements to include Christians from other denominations who have not received believer’s baptism by immersion. I wanted to listen carefully, to hear what it was in all this discussion that was troubling him. He said that what it came down to, finally, was obedience to Scripture, that if the Bible says we should baptize believers by immersion then that’s what we should do, and if anybody wants to be part of a Baptist church they should get in the water, not because it’s some man-made membership requirement, but because it’s what the Bible teaches!
He said all this without anger, but he said it with conviction, with so much conviction that I drove away from his house determined to look into the matter further. Would a change in our membership requirements really be a departure from Scripture? If I had suggested that we stop making disciples or that we start baptizing babies that would be one thing, but church membership would be another, and I wasn’t sure the Bible said anything about that. So I called the number I had stored in my phone and someone picked up right away.
“Is this the Bible Answer Man?” I asked.
“Sure is,” he said, with a friendly drawl. “How can I help you?”
“I’m wondering about baptism,” I said. “Can you tell me what the Bible says about it?”
“Well, baptism comes from a Greek verb that means ‘to immerse.’ It means to bury you under the water and raise you up to new life.”
“That’s what we believe at my church,” I said (I didn’t tell him which church). “But what about people who haven’t been baptized that way? Can they still be considered real Christians?”
“Of course they can,” he said with a snort. “Baptism doesn’t save you! What matters is what’s in your heart, you know? Do you love Jesus? Have you been born again? That kind of thing.”
“I’m just asking because at my church we’re trying to decide whether Christians from other denominations can be members without being re-baptized. Does the Bible say anything about church membership?”
He had a lot to say about that, mostly about how, in the Book of Revelation Jesus speaks to the church (singular) in Pergamum, Thyatira, Laodicea, etc. “It’s not the churches,” he said. “It’s just the church. Like when Paul writes the letter to the Romans he addresses it to ‘the church in Rome.’ All those people there and only one church! That’s why, when people ask me what church I belong to, I tell them I belong to ‘The Church in Richmond.’”
“But you could go even further than that, couldn’t you?” I asked. “I mean, Jesus only has one church doesn’t he?”
“That’s true,” the Bible Answer Man agreed.
“And don’t you think he knows who belongs to his church and who doesn’t?”
“Yep.”
“It’s been a pleasure talking to you,” I said.
“Same here,” said the Bible Answer Man. “Call me again sometime!”
Maybe I will the next time I’m looking for answers from the Bible, or even the next time I just need something to blog about. Either way, I’m keeping his number on speed dial.
When I was teaching fifth and sixth graders in Sunday school I would tell them, “SO FEW people know the purpose of the church,” and then I would tick off those five letters on the five fingers of my right hand: “S.O.F.E.W: Service, Outreach, Fellowship, Education, and Worship.” It was a way to help them remember the five essential ministries of every Christian church, and it worked, but while that acronym makes it easy to remember the purpose of the church, those five words might not be the most descriptive. Education, for example, sounds like something you do only with your head while discipleship or apprenticeship could involve the whole person.
So let’s have a “name that ministry area” contest! I’ll list the five clear commands of Christ that inspire these ministries, and you try to come up with a good name for each one. Ready? Let’s begin:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” (Mk. 12:30). This is the area we sometimes call “worship.” Can you come up with a better name?
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk. 12:31). We sometimes call this “service.” Other options?
“Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn. 13:34). This is the only command Jesus ever gave—to love one another. Is “fellowship” the best word for this?
“Go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (Mt. 28:19). We sometimes call this “outreach.” Is there a more accessible word?
“And teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you” (Mt. 28:20). “Education” seems reasonable, but doesn’t discipleship involve the heart and hands as well as the head? What’s a better word?
Jot down a suggestion in each category and then click on the word “comments” below. You can enter your suggestions in the following format:
Loving
Helping
Caring
Sharing
Training
(Hmmm. Those are not bad! Maybe I’ll win the contest!)
Entries will be judged by the leadership staff at our regular meeting on Tuesday, March 31. Winners will be announced no later than Easter Sunday, April 12. So, get out that pencil and scratch pad and get busy. We need your help!
My brother Billy is 32, single, and a wonderful musician (and that’s only the beginning). About two years ago someone spotted this graffito on the wall of the women’s restroom at one of the places where he had played. Apparently this woman didn’t know what to do except pour her heart out in a public place with a Magic Marker. What would you do? And, more importantly, what should Billy do with information like that?
Bonus: If you’d like to hear some of Billy’s music make sure your speakers are on and thenclickHERE.
Double Bonus: Here is some more (and more recent) music from Billy. Click HEREand then check out tracks 3, 6, and 10, which Billy wrote. He sings on those tracks and a handful of others on this very fine CD.
Usually, when I go to the fitness center in the morning, I step onto the elliptical trainer, plug in my earphones, and tune the television monitor to CNN to catch up on the latest news, but this morning it seemed to be one commercial after another until finally, frustrated, I turned off the monitor, unplugged the earphones, and closed my eyes.
It was surprisingly quiet, and surprisingly peaceful. I could hear some music in the background but mostly I could hear the rhythmic hum of the elliptical trainer as I worked those poles and foot pedals. Without the distraction of the television monitor, my thoughts began to drift toward prayer, and eventually toward the Lord’s Prayer. I prayed it the way we say it in staff meeting:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
In Richmond, as it is in heaven…
As I thought about the Kingdom of heaven coming to Richmond, Virginia, I also thought about how, in staff meeting, we sometimes talk about the way that kingdom will come—through the ministries of service, outreach, fellowship, education, and worship derived from the clear commands of Christ. And then I began to think about those commands, and tried to put them in the form of a prayer. It came out something like this:
I want to love you with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, Lord.
I want to love my neighbors just as much as I love myself,
even the ones who are hard to love.
I want to love my Christian brothers and sisters in the same way you love me.
And wherever I go today, I want to make disciples,
inviting others to follow in your footsteps,
and sharing with them all that I have learned along the way.
Help me do that, Lord. Help me do all of that,
For it’s in your name that I pray.
Amen.
It probably wasn’t as good as that when I prayed it, but it wasn’t bad, and even as I said the “Amen” I thought of it as a kind of missional prayer, a prayer for disciples who are on mission. Of course, that’s what the Lord’s prayer is, too, and I wouldn’t presume to improve on that one. But I think I might still pray this one from time to time as a way of staying focused on those things the Lord commanded, and as a way of reminding myself I can’t do any of those things without his help.
It’s amazing what can happen when you turn off the TV. Today I amazed myself by bursting into spontaneous prayer—at the fitness center!—accompanied by the rhythmic hum of the elliptical trainer.
When I first met Daniel he told me his name meant “God is my judge.” We were down in the Community Missions suite, and he was waiting for his turn in the showers. “That’s a good name,” I said. “That means no one else can judge you, right?” “Right!” he said. I tried to remember that when I saw him crossing Monument Avenue a few days later, wearing a black-and-white polka dot dress. He had a big grin on his face at the time, carrying a laundry basket full of clothes as if he were on his way to the laundromat and had nothing else to wear but the neighbor lady’s dress. Maybe that’s exactly what was going on. It doesn’t matter: God is his judge.
Daniel is the one who showed up at church on the day I preached about being wheat in a world full of weeds (from Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43). After worship he stood on the front steps of the sanctuary, and as people came out the door he admonished each of them to “Be wheat!” in a loud voice, with a big smile—his thick hair brushed straight back from his forehead and sticking out behind as if he were leaning into a strong wind.
I learned over the next few weeks that he was recovering from some fairly serious brain surgery, and suffered from frequent excruciating headaches. He would talk to me about it sometimes, wincing with the pain. I felt sorry for him, but didn’t know what to do. And then I didn’t see him at all for a while, and assumed that he had drifted on to some other place.
He showed up on Wednesday for the first time in six months, and told me had been in prison for a while. That part hadn’t been so good, but the prison doctor had been able to help him get some relief from the headaches, and that was wonderful. “Prison was my salvation,” he said, meaning salvation from that frequent pain. He seemed touched that I remembered his name, and today I got this email from Brenda Andrews, Assistant Minister of Community Missions:
Hey Jim, when the times downstairs are rough (like they were on Wednesday!) the blessed events far outweigh the bad. Within all the “controlled chaos,” as we call it, a sweet calm voice asked for a broom and dust pan. “I want to clean up outside for you,” he said with a smile. Not only did he clean outside the Park Avenue door, but he went up and down Park Avenue with his broom, dust pan, and one of our huge trash cans, sweeping and picking up trash. He brought me to sweet tears. He was working for the Kingdom of God, giving back what he could with grace and peace. He is the gentleman you met when you first came here who had recently had brain surgery.
And this is what I wrote back:
That was Daniel! That’s a good story, Brenda. And when I tell people at church to “Look around for anything that doesn’t look like heaven and go to work there, bringing heaven to earth,” that’s just what he was doing! Hmm. Sounds like a blog entry…
I know God is Daniel’s judge, which means it’s not my job, but if it were I think I would say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”
I had lunch with the Imam on Monday. That’s not his given name, but it’s what the others at the table—two members of his congregation—were calling him. They sat on either side of him, nodding respectfully in his direction whenever they mentioned that “the Imam” had said this or that, or that we might want to ask “the Imam.” I was having lunch with him at the invitation of one of our newer members, who is interested in interfaith dialogue and who thought a get-acquainted meeting with his pastor and the local imam might be a good idea. I thought it would too, and only partly because we were having lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant with an all-you-can-eat buffet.
The Imam himself—Ammar Amonette—looked nothing like I had imagined: fair-haired and fair-skinned with a rambling beard that reminded me of something I might have seen among the Pennsylvania Dutch. It turns out he is of French Huguenot ancestry, and has lived in several of these United States including South Carolina where, as a boy, he developed a southern accent so strong his northern relatives couldn’t understand him. These days his accent is hard to place, but perhaps only because as a U.S. Army brat he has lived “literally, all over the world,” and as a student of Islam was in Mecca for twelve years.
I was impressed by his understanding of Christianity, right down to the various Baptist denominations. I was impressed by his familiarity with technology (not only the cell phone he pulled out to reply to a text message, but his You Tube videos I discovered when I got back to the office). And I was impressed by his ability to listen thoughtfully to someone from another faith tradition without criticizing or condemning. As the meal wound down toward the dessert course it seemed that we were having true interfaith dialogue.
I shared the story of the time I had asked a Muslim woman from the Gambia, “What do you love about your religion?” Her name was Badjie. She was the assigned caregiver for one of my elderly members in DC. We had talked many times in the past, but I had never asked her about being Muslim. “So, Badjie, what do you love about your religion?” I asked, and she said, “I love the emphasis on forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness?” I asked, wondering if I had heard her correctly. Forgiveness was not the word that came to mind when I thought of Islam.
“Oh, yes!” she said. “Forgiveness is very important to Muslims.”
“To Christians too!” I said, and for the next thirty minutes or so that was what we talked about: the way forgiveness is emphasized by our respective faith traditions. When it was time to go I turned to my parishioner, Jeannette, and offered to say a prayer with her and then I turned to Badjie and asked if she would like to join us. She said yes and we all joined hands. Just before I closed my eyes to pray I looked down and saw Jeannette’s pale, frail hand in mine, mine in Badjie’s, and Badjie’s strong, dark hand in Jeannette’s. I don’t think you could have found three more different people on the planet, but there we were, all of us children of God, holding each other’s hands and bowing our heads to offer up a prayer.
I will never forget that moment.
That’s the promise of interfaith dialogue, and that’s why I agreed to have lunch with the Imam on Monday. I had this hope that if we talked long enough and listened long enough we might come to that place where, in spite of profound differences in the way we understand God, we would recognize each other as his children.
I was at Starbucks this afternoon, reading through a stack of correspondence, studying for Wednesday night’s sermon from Mark 12:1-12, and savoring the first few pages of Phyllis Tickle’s new book, The Great Emergence, when I looked up and saw a pair of shoes that inspired poety. Here’s the result:
There is a girl
with her purple tennis shoes propped up
on the window sill at Starbucks,
jiggling her heels up and down
as she reads a thick textbook and nibbles
a slice of iced lemon pound cake.
It occurs to me that she
picked out those purple shoes;
That she looked through her closet and decided
that for this day—
this first gloomy,
then rainy,
now (surprisingly!) sunny Springtime day—
those shoes the color of purple irises
would be perfect.
Everyone seemed to enjoy the story about the ambulance in last Sunday’s sermon, and so I thought I would post it here. For those of you who are a little more spiritual and want to know what (on God’s green earth) a story about an ambulance has to do with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the click of a mouse will bring you the sermon in full audio or video.
Here’s the story:
When I was a junior in college, I started my own fraternity.I called it Omicron Zeta, and when you wrote the initials side by side they made a big “O-Z.”To anyone who didn’t know they were Greek letters, they just looked like the word “OZ,” as in “The Wizard of.”So, because it had been my idea, I got to be the Wizard.Other fraternity names, which were handed out in short order, were the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and Toto.My fraternity brothers and I were going to have jerseys made up with the names on the back.Someone had the idea of having, as our pledge pin, a three-and-a-half pound bowling pin.Our pledges would have to carry it around with them during the day, set it up on the corner of their desks while they were in class, and try hard not to knock it over.That’s about as far as we had gotten with rules and regulations when I found the ambulance at a flea market.
There was this big flea market that used to be held every Saturday at the edge of town, and when I went out there that next Saturday I saw this big, ugly ambulance with a sign that read, “$500 Firm.”It didn’t look like an ambulance, really.It looked like a hearse.It was long and dark with tail fins, and enough room in the back for a full-sized casket.I asked the owner about it and he said it wasn’t a hearse, it was an ambulance, and he proved it by showing me the lockers inside that were meant for medical supplies.“You see,” he said, “you wouldn’t need medical supplies in a hearse.”He made a good point.He also showed me the place on the top where the flashing red light used to be, and swore that the ambulance used to be white before it had been painted from stem to stern In a kind of dull, gray primer.“Best of all,” he said, “it’s a Cadillac.”And it was.I admired the Cadillac emblem on the front grill and took a look at the powerful engine beneath the hood.
I had this vision of this old ambulance, with a fresh coat of glossy white paint and the Omicron Zeta insignia stenciled on both sides in gold letters.We would call it the “Ozmobile,” and all of us would pile into it together to drive down to Lexington for pizza at Joe Bologna’s.It would be great.“Does it run?” I asked.“Oh, yeah,” he answered.“It runs good.”“Could I give it a try?” I asked, and he looked around warily.“Maybe not right now,” he said.“But if you come back this afternoon, with the money, we could take it out for a spin.”“Well,” I answered, “I don’t have the money right now, but I think I could get it.”“Why don’t you do that,” he said, grinning.“I’ll hold it for you.”And so, I hurried back toward the campus, to talk to my fraternity brothers and see if, among the five of us, we could come up with a hundred dollars apiece.Somewhere along the way, I made the mistake of telling my girlfriend.
“You’re buying a what?” she asked.
“An ambulance!” I said.“This cool, old ambulance that looks like a hearse.It’s only five hundred dollars, and, best of all, it’s a Cadillac.”
“You’re buying a what?” she asked, again.
“A Cadillac,” I said.“I’m buying a beautiful old Cadillac ambulance for my fraternity.We’re going to call it the Ozmobile.”
There was a long silence before she spoke again.
“You have to understand something, Jim,” she said.“When I think of you, I think of you as my future husband.And when you do something like this, it worries me.I wonder what kind of husband you’re going to be, somebody who buys old broken-down, hearse-looking ambulances at the drop of a hat.I mean, that’s not very responsible, is it?”
And I looked at her for a long moment, stunned.What kind of girl had I fallen in love with, a girl who couldn’t rejoice in the good fortune of a man who had found an old, broken down, hearse-looking ambulance (at a really good price!) that could be used to transport his rowdy fraternity brothers from one cheap pizza place to another?It just didn’t make sense at all.I said to her, “Look, you may think of me as your future husband and I may be your future husband (though it’s not looking likely), but right now I’m a junior in college.We’re supposed to be irresponsible!”But you know what?I didn’t buy that ambulance, and it wasn’t only because I couldn’t get the money together, it was because of her.It was because she wanted me to be someone other than who I was, and I—because I thought she was so pretty, because she looked so good on my arm, because I enjoyed carrying her picture around in my wallet so much—I gave in.In some ways I have been ashamed ever since because I don’t think it was what Jesus would have done.
The word passion, in its oldest form, means “suffering.”When we talk about “the Passion” (with a capital “P”), we mean the suffering of Jesus in those final days of Holy Week.But when we talk about passion in the lower case we are talking about whatever it is that you are willing to suffer for.So, you look at the fingers of the fifteen-year-old boy who is learning to play the guitar. They are cracked and bleeding. Some of them have Band-Aids on them.He’s really not very good.But he picks up his guitar anyway, and struggles through another painful chord progression, and when you ask him why he just looks at you as if it were a stupid question, shrugs his shoulders and says:
“It’s my passion.”
Or you look at the feet of the ballet dancer, red and callused, jammed into toe shoes so many times they look like the feet of a 90-year-old woman—hopelessly bent and crippled.You ask her why she keeps it up.Why doesn’t she just stop and give those tired feet a rest?She smiles to herself as she ties the laces and then looks up with a one-sentence answer:
“It’s my passion.”
Or the artist who has been up all night dribbling paint onto a huge canvas under floodlights, stepping back to see the way the paint swirls and flows, stroking it with his brushes, scraping it with a palette knife, pushing it into the shapes and places he can only see in his mind.At four o’clock in the morning—his back aching, his eyes bloodshot—he stops to make a fresh pot of coffee.Why do you do it? you ask.What’s so important about this?And he smiles over the rim of his coffee cup.
“It’s my passion.”
Your passion is whatever you are willing to suffer for.It could be your music, your dance, your art, or it could be something else.Buddha said “life is suffering”; it is the first of the Four Noble Truths.And if it’s true that life is suffering then it must also be true that life is worth suffering for.We do it all the time, don’t we?Your doctor says to you, “We’ve found blockage in four of your coronary arteries.We’re going to put you to sleep, stop your heart, open your chest, do a quadruple bypass, and then stitch you up and start your heart again, OK?”And what do you say?“OK.”People regularly endure the suffering of surgery and recovery in order to have a little more life.Because even with all the suffering that is in it life is the best thing we have ever known.It’s where we have found the love of family and friends, the beauty of a spring morning, the pleasure of a fine meal.We love life.We cling to it fiercely, with both hands.
Still, someone wiser than me has said, “Most people are not looking for something to live for so much as they are looking for something worth dying for.”And most of the time it’s not a thing at all.When I ask people if there is any cause, any movement, they would lay down their lives for they have to stop and think.But when I ask them if there is any person they would lay their lives down for, they answer yes right away.
This is where passion meets that word it is so often associated with:Love.It’s love that we suffer for.Whether it’s our love of people or love of life or love of what we do, it is love that is worth suffering for.Nothing else even comes close.And the extent to which we are willing to suffer for love says something about the breadth and height and depth of the love we feel.How much do you love me?Only as much as you are willing to suffer for me.
Jesus once said to his disciples that there is no greater love than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends.And then, within twenty-four hours of saying it, he was there on the cross doing it.When we see him hanging there we want to ask why.“Why are you doing this?Why are you putting yourself through it?Why don’t you let God get you down from there?”And even in his agony he is able to say, “Why?Why am I doing this?”
Easter Sunday was a glorious day in more ways than one. Not only did we gather for worship and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus at First Baptist Church, but God himself was in a celebratory mood, festooning the city of Richmond with sunshine and soft, swirling breezes in honor of his Son. Or so it seemed as I strolled along Monument Avenue with family and friends that afternoon, soaking up the joyful ambience of an event called “Easter on Parade.”
“When does the parade actually start?” I heard someone ask.
“Um, this is it. YOU are it.”
And so we were: a great throng of happy people—friends walking arm in arm, parents pushing strollers, children in Osh-Kosh overalls, and dogs EVERYWHERE, many of them in costume. I loved the three Greyhounds wearing tiny hats; the Dalmatian whose black spots had been supplemented with pink, green, blue, and yellow ones; and the Yorkshire Terrier who looked up at me over the frames of her very stylish sunglasses.
I couldn’t stop smiling. Christ had risen and everywhere I looked people seemed to be grateful for the gifts of warmth and sunshine, friends and family, children eating ice cream cones and dogs wearing funny hats. But then I came to that corner where the street preacher was plying his trade.
He stood on a stepladder, holding a microphone and shouting words of judgment at the crowd. “Are you perfect? Do you think you’re perfect? Well, you’d better be, because if you’re not there will be hell to pay!” I could see people cringing, complaining, and moving away from the sound of his voice. I cringed and moved away, although I felt a little guilty about it. Shouldn’t I be supportive of someone who would stand in the midst of that secular crowd and try to preach the gospel? Shouldn’t I admire this young man for his courage, and at least give him a collegial thumbs-up?
Maybe I should have, but I didn’t. I winced and walked on by, my perfect afternoon tainted by that encounter.
I don’t think I would have minded so much if he were preaching the gospel, if anything he were saying sounded like good news, but all I could hear for as long as I could hear him were words of judgment and condemnation. If I were strolling down Monument Avenue and knew nothing about God I might assume that the Maker of All Things was really mad at me, and wanted to roast me in the flames of hell forever. Where is the good news in that? The street preacher did mention Jesus occasionally, but only in the context of “bleeding and dying on the cross” to save me from my sins. Again, if I knew nothing about God, I might gather that the Maker of All Things was really mad at me, but took his anger out on his Son instead, nailing him to a cross where he bled and died. “Yikes!” I would think. “This is one angry Maker! And if I get saved I get to spend eternity with Him? With someone who would send people to hell and nail his son to a cross? No thanks!”
I said to a colleague later, “People like that make our job harder,” and he agreed, because reaching people who don’t know much about God and don’t want to have anything to do with Him is a little bit like coaxing wild deer to eat out of your hand. You have to stand very still, and hold out that handful of grain in the least threatening manner possible. Any sudden movement, any noise at all, will cause the deer to turn and bolt. You have to earn their trust, and you do it by approaching them gently, offering them something good, and meaning no harm.
Here I was, walking among my fellow Richmonders on Monument Avenue, within sight of First Baptist Church. I was speaking to people, smiling at people, trying to open myself up in every possible way to friendly conversation that might, in time, turn to important things. But then the street preacher showed up, shouting judgment at the top of his voice, and it was like watching a herd of deer turn and bolt.
What will those people think the next time God comes up in conversation, or the next time someone invites them to church? How long will it take to undo the damage done on one sunny afternoon by a street preacher?
Wendell Berry–well-known poet, philospher, and prophet—was a member of the church I served in New Castle, Kentucky. I’ve read a number of his novels and essays, but this poem has always been one of my favorites. If you’re not a fan of poety (some people aren’t), you can skip down to the last line which—during this Easter season—presents itself as a bold challenge to the followers of the risen Lord.
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Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
Those of you who have been following the discussion of baptism and church membership at First Baptist will want to know that the question of whether or not Christians who have been discipled in other traditions must be immersed in order to become full members of Richmond’s First Baptist Church is being referred to a team of 12 deacons who will study it over the summer and bring a recommendation back to the deacons in the fall. At this point those deacons have not been named, but Deacon Chair Lee Stephenson is busy making those appointments.
Most of the big decisions that have come before the congregation in recent years have come in just this way. For example, the question about whether or not we should ordain women as ministers (we agreed that we could and should), and the question about how to allocate our mission offerings (through the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, at the giver’s discretion). A group of deacons studied those issues, brought recommendations back to the board, and from there they went to the congregation for a final vote. It only makes sense that this question, too, should follow that pattern.
Those of you who have been holding your breath should probably let it out and pray for patience as we seek resolution to this issue in God’s good time. As I have told the deacons from the beginning, I am not in a hurry, but I am determined that we carefully and prayerfully consider this question. As it has been important to ask ourselves at other times in the church’s history, “Who can be a member here?” (like when those two Nigerian students wanted to join in 1965), it seems important to ask it now.
The leadership staff and I will be out of the office for the better part of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week as we hammer out the final details of an organizational structure that should keep the church focused on fulfilling the mission of Christ. Lynn Turner will be heading up the Ministry of Christian Community; Ralph Starling will be leading the Ministry of Christian Invitation; Steve Booth will be in charge of the Ministry of Christian Formation; Phil Mitchell the Ministry of Christian Worship; Steve Blanchard will lead the Ministry of Christian Compassion; leaving Billy Burford in charge of Support and David Powers in charge of Communication.
All of this is being done in an effort to “help Jesus bring heaven to earth,” by following his clear commands (i.e. “Love God with everything in you, love your neighbor as yourself, love one another as I have loved you, and make disciples by baptizing them and teaching them what I’ve taught you”). We’ll be talking about what it means to be a missional church this Wednesday night at 6:15 in the church dining hall, and unveling the new staff structure on Sunday morning at 9:45 in the sanctuary. If you can’t be there in person, you can participate in either or both of those events through our world wide webcast, simply by going to our web site (www.fbcrichmond.org) and clicking on the link.
Please remember the staff as we work together and pray together over the next few days. We have been entrusted us with an enormous responsibility, and we don’t want to let God or First Baptist, Richmond, down.
I did a memorial service this afternoon for Mark Boschen, one of our new members who died quite suddenly and unexpectedly. He was 61 years old.
One of his favorite scriptures was John 14:1-3, in which Jesus says to his disciples, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. In my father’s house are many dwelling places. If it were not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” I told the congregation that when I was a boy, growing up in West Virginia, people usually quoted that passage from the King James Version, the one that says, “In my father’s house are many mansions.” Since many of these people were poor, they relished the idea that even though they were living in shacks, they would one day be living in mansions. I didn’t know until I went to seminary that the Greek word translated as “mansions” in the King James Version is really monai, which means something more like “dwelling places,” or even “rooms.” When I translate it these days I like to say, “In my father’s house there is plenty of room.”
I told the story about the time I was pushing my daughter Ellie on the swing in the back yard when she was two or three years old. I was quieter than usual and she noticed. When she asked me about it I said, “Well, I’m just a little sad about Mr. Brent.” Mr Brent was a member of my church there in New Castle, Kentucky. He had died that same day, and I was still absorbing the blow. He had been good to Ellie, too, and she got quiet as she thought about him not being around anymore.
“Where did Mr. Brent go?” she asked. “To God’s house,” I answered. “Where is that?” she asked. “In heaven,” I answered, and then I told her a little more. “God has this house, you see, with a big front porch and steps coming down to the front yard, where there are oak trees growing and acorns everywhere on the ground if the squirrels don’t get to them. There are old men sitting in rockers on the front porch whittling and telling stories. Inside the house there are children running up and down the steps, and in the kitchen women are cooking, talking, and laughing, and there’s always a fresh pot of coffee for anyone who comes looking. It’s a wonderful place, God’s house, and every once in a while God himself comes through to get a cup of coffee, or bounce some babies on his knee, or sit on the front porch with the men. Those are the best times of all.”
Ellie was quiet for a while and then she asked, “Are there toys there?” “Oh, yes!” I promised. “There are lots of toys.”
She was quiet again and then said, “I want to go.”
And my heart broke open, to think of my precious little girl gone from me, even to a wonderful place like that, even to God’s house.
As I told that story I could see that for the Boschen family it didn’t have to be a little girl to break your heart. It could be a 61-year-old man. It could be anyone. And even the idea that the one you love is going to God’s house doesn’t keep your heart from breaking. But what if you didn’t have that much? What if you thought that when your loved ones died they were simply lost and gone forever? What then? Is there anything that could console you?
“Don’t let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus said. “You believe in God; believe also in me. In my father’s house there is plenty of room. If it were not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
That’s good news, and comforting news too, for Mr. Brent, for the Boschen family, and for the fathers of little girls everywhere, who need to know that someone is watching out for us, and making room for us—plenty of room—so that where he is we can be. All of us. Together. Forever.
Yesterday, during the Sunday School hour at Richmond’s First Baptist Church, we unveiled our new “Missional” church structure. I made some opening remarks and then members of the staff shared their vision for the various ministry areas. In closing we showed the “Missionswoosh” animation, which sums up this new approach as effectively as anything I’ve seen.
Printed below is the (draft) text of my opening remarks, which should give you an overview of the presentation. If you have time to watch the video you should be able to find it and other resources on the “Missional” page of our website.
These are exciting days at First Baptist Church. I was touched when Dr. Jim Flamming, my predecessor, stopped by my office after the presentation to give me two thumbs up. “That was wonderful!” he said. “Well, you started it,” I replied. It may have been more accurate to say that God started it, Jim Flamming moved it in the right direction, and now we’re trying to keep it moving.
With God’s help, we will.
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Unveiling the Missional Church Structure Sunday, May 3, 2009
Let me see if I can sum up our Wednesday night session on being a Missional church in 25 words or less: “Being Missional means understanding that God has work for us to do, that instead of getting saved and sitting on a pew until Jesus comes back, we have been called to work with Jesus until God’s Kingdom comes and God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.” Well, OK. That’s 50 words, but still not bad for a Baptist preacher.
If that’s true, that God has work for us to do, then the question becomes how will we do it, how will we help Jesus bring heaven to earth? I think Jesus has already given us that answer. He told his disciples that the most important thing in the world was to love God with everything in them and love their neighbors as themselves. He told them to love one another as he had loved them. And finally he told them to go and make disciples by baptizing and teaching.
Believe it or not these things are part of our existing mission statement, right there on your bulletin. We talk about “joyful worship” which is another way of talking about loving God with everything in us. We talk about “caring fellowship,” which is another way of saying we intend to love one another. We talk about “spiritual nurture,” which could be interpreted as learning to obey everything Jesus commanded. We talk about “faithful service,” which might be understood as a way of loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. We talk about “compassionate outreach,” which refers to that Great Commission mandate to make disciples of every nation.
We’ve known for years that we were supposed to do these things but we have never organized ourselves around those things. We have tended to organize ourselves more around people groups than purpose. While there is nothing inherently wrong with that it does give us an inward, rather than an outward, focus. I’d like to think that we could be a little more purpose-driven as a church, and that we would structure our staff in a way that would help us bring heaven to earth. So, here’s what I have in mind:
I’m planning to keep my job as senior pastor (I hope that’s OK with you), but I’m asking Lynn Turner to serve as my senior associate. I want her to take on the Ministry of Christian Community, which is all about loving one another as Christ has loved us. I can’t think of anyone better equipped to do that job.
Next in line are the ministries that will help us embrace the Great Commandment and fulfill the Great Commission. I call these the ministries of Christian Invitation, Formation, Worship, and Compassion. I want Ralph Starling to head up the invitation team, Steve Booth to lead the formation team (which will include young adult, youth, and children’s ministries), Phil Mitchell to head up the worship team, and Steve Blanchard to lead the compassion team.
Last, but certainly not least, are the ministries of support and communication, teams headed up by Billy Burford and David Powers, respectively. These are among the largest of our teams, because they include things like custodial services, security, food service, maintenance, accounting, our television ministry, our website, and all of our publications.
Let me emphasize that this new structure is experimental. We’re going to try it and see if it works. It’s a little bit like driving the church bus to the mission site, looking at the work that needs to be done and saying, “OK, Lynn you take this group with you, Steve you take this group over there, Ralph see what you can get done with this bunch, et cetera.” If we need to make some adjustments in the middle of the day we will, but for now two things are clear: God has work for us to do and we’ve got the best staff in the world to help us do it.
I’m going to let them come, one at a time, and tell you about their ministry areas. My hope is that you will be taking good notes and thinking about where you would like to pitch in as we help Jesus bring heaven to earth.
One of the ways I’m trying to help people understand this whole “missional church” concept is by talking about the mission trip our youth took to Slovakia last summer.
When we finally got off the plane in Poland, exhausted from an overnight flight, we got on two big, beautiful tour buses and made our way to Ruzomberok, Slovakia, some four hours away. Most of us slept along the way, and when we got to our hotel in Ruzomberok we were able to stay awake just long enough to eat some dinner before trudging upstairs, brushing our teeth, and falling into bed.
We slept with the windows open, breathing fresh, mountain air, and most of us woke up feeling deliciously rested and wonderfully alive. We had a big breakfast in the dining room where there was plenty of food and plenty of hot coffee. By eight o’clock we were ready to go to the job site—an orphange in town that had acquired a house next door and needed someone to clean it out and fix it up. We had our morning devotions, said a prayer, and then got onto the buses, rolled into town, and pulled up in front of the orphanage. Every person on the bus had been assigned to a work crew, and each crew had a leader. Within minutes of our arrival the demolition crew was demolishing an old barn, the painting crew was painting an old fence, the grounds crew was pulling weeds from an overgrown flower bed, and the fencing crew was sizing up the job of building a new fence.
We worked all morning, right up until lunch, and then we went back to work that afternoon. For the better part of four days these youth and their adult chaperones worked as if their lives depended on getting that house into good shape for those orphans.
I couldn’t have been any prouder.
That experience serves as a useful metaphor for understanding the missional church, because instead of thinking of church as that place where we come to worship and study and enjoy Christian fellowship we begin to think of church as those people who roll up their sleeves and take part in God’s mission to the world. There will be times when we simply need rest (as we did after our long journey). There will be times when we need nourishment, both physical and spiritual (as we did the next morning). There will be times when we need to organize ourselves around the tasks at hand (as we did before getting off the bus). And there will be times when we need to put our hands to the work, and make a real difference in the world (as we did at that orphanage).
In and around all that activity are those rich opportunities for fellowship—for getting to know each other and coming to love each other. On that trip we laughed, we cried, we sang, we danced, and by the end of the trip we had not only done good work and worshiped the living God, but forged unbreakable bonds with one another.
Now, that’s what the church ought to be, and it ought to be true that it doesn’t only happen on once-in-a-lifetime mission trips. It ought to be part of our everyday experience as the church of Jesus Christ. So, maybe we could begin to understand that we are on a mission trip, right now. The bus that we have been riding has brought us to Richmond, Virginia. And having rested, and eaten, and said our prayers, it’s time to get off the bus, and get to work.
Who’s with me?
Bonus Feature! See video of the Slovakia mission trip by clicking HERE.
Facebook friend Andy Berry passed along this blog post from Jonathan Dodson which I found to be simple, practical, and useful in understanding the “missional” church concept. As Alan Hirsch has said, “Many churches have mission statements or talk about the importance of mission, but where truly missional churches differ is in their posture toward the world.” Here are some suggestions on forming transforming relationships with our neighbors “out there.”
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Eat with Non-Christians
We all eat three meals a day. Why not make a habit of sharing one of those meals with a non-Christian or with a family of non-Christians? Go to lunch with a co-worker, not by yourself. Invite the neighbors over for family dinner. If it’s too much work to cook a big dinner, just order pizza and put the focus on conversation. When you go out for a meal, invite a non-Christian friend. Or take your family to family-style restaurants where you can sit at the table with strangers and strike up conversations. Have cookouts and invite Christians and non-Christians. Flee the Christian subculture.
Walk, Don’t Drive
If you live in a walkable area, make a practice of getting out and walking around your neighborhood, apartment complex, or campus. Instead of driving to the mailbox or convenience store, walk to get mail or groceries. Be deliberate in your walk. Say hello to people you don’t know. Strike up conversations. Attract attention by walking the dog, carrying along a 6-pack to share, bringing the kids. Make friends. Get out of your house! Last night I spent an hour outside gardening with my family. We had good conversations with about four of our neighbors. Take interest in your neighbors. Ask questions. Engage. Pray as you go. Save some gas, the planet, and some people.
Be a Regular
Instead of hopping all over the city for gas, groceries, haircuts, eating out, and coffee, go to the same places at the same times. Get to know the staff. Smile. Ask questions. Be a regular. I have friends at coffee shops all over the city. My friends at Starbucks donate a ton of leftover pastries to our church 2-3 times a week. We use them for church gatherings and occasionally give them to the homeless. Build relationships. Be a regular.
Hobby with Non-Christians
Pick a hobby that you can share. Get out and do something you enjoy with others. Try city league sports or local rowing and cycling teams. Share your hobby by teaching lessons, such as sewing, piano, knitting, or tennis lessons. Be prayerful. Be intentional. Be winsome. Have fun. Be yourself.
Talk to Your Co-workers.
How hard is that? Take your breaks with intentionality. Go out with your team or task force after work. Show interest in your co-workers. Pick four and pray for them. Form moms’ groups in your neighborhood and don’t make them exclusively non-Christian. Schedule play dates with the neighbors’ kids. Work on mission.
Volunteer with Non-Profits.
Find a non-profit in your part of the city and take a Saturday a month to serve your city. Bring your neighbors, your friends, or your small group. Spend time with your church serving your city. Once a month. You can do it!
Participate in City Events
Instead of playing XBox, watching TV, or surfing the net, participate in city events. Go to fundraisers, festivals, cleanups, summer shows, and concerts. Participate missionally. Strike up conversation. Study the culture. Reflect on what you see and hear. Pray for the city. Love the city. Participate with the city.
Serve Your Neighbors.
Help a neighbor by weeding, mowing, building a cabinet, or fixing a car. Stop by the neighborhood association or apartment office and ask if there is anything you can do to help improve things. Ask your local Police and Fire Stations if there is anything you can do to help them. Get creative. Just serve!
On Saturday, my daughter Ellie graduated from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. It was everything a Charleston graduation should be: a warm, spring morning with plenty of sunshine, but also with delicious breezes swirling around proud family and friends as we sat in rented chairs beneath a shady canopy of live oak trees. The faculty processed in their regalia, and the graduating seniors came out by the hundreds, with the women in white dresses, holding roses, and the men in white dinner jackets and black bow ties.
Very elegant.
It was while I was sitting there, listening to the commencement speaker and waiting for my daughter to walk across the stage, that I remembered her first day of school, some 16 years ago. I wrote that experience up in a column for the church newsletter that was later re-printed in the local newspaper. I’d like to post it here as well, and dedicate it with excusable pride to that little girl who has grown up to be such a remarkable young woman: Eleanor Gray Somerville.
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Monday was my daughter Ellie’s first day of school.
Because we don’t live very far from Wingate Elementary we decided to walk. I put on my coat and tie for work and she put on her almost empty book bag and picked up her nap mat.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Ready!” she said, probably with more confidence than she felt.
We said goodbye to Christy and Catherine who waved to us from the window as we crossed North Main Street and headed down Elm. We had lots to talk about and before we knew it we were there, standing in front of the big double doors of her school. I think we both took a deep breath before going in.
We found Ellie’s name on a list with all the other kindergarteners in Mrs. Deese’s class. She pointed it out—small, block letters that read: SOMERVILLE, ELEANOR G. “That’s me,” she said in a whisper.
We made our way to Room 20A through a sea of boys and girls in Room 20, all of them wearing book bags and clutching nap mats to their chest, all of them looking around wide-eyed at their new classroom, some of them holding tightly to the leg of a parent. In Ellie’s room Mrs. Pierce was collecting lunch money and notes from the children as they arrived while Mrs. Deese bent down and said hello to each one. I led Ellie to an empty chair.
“What’s your name?” I asked the girl next to her.
“Mmmfgh.”
“What?”
“Mimmzff.”
“I still didn’t hear you.”
“MEGAN!” she bellowed.
“Oh, Ellie, this is Megan. Megan, this is Ellie.”
And then, with introductions completed, there was nothing to do but leave. I put my hand on Ellie’s shoulder. “Are you going to be all right?” She nodded slowly. “Okay,” I said, helplessly. “Have a good day.” And then I turned and walked away, resisting the temptation to look back.
I know what I would have seen.
My daughter, sitting in a plastic chair with her back to me. That slender frame. Those small shoulders. That delicate neck. My daughter, separated from me now not only by distance, but also by independence. My daughter, on her own and doing fine.
Parents of kindergarteners have this fear, you see, that their children won’t be able to make it without them. That’s why they hover, and ask questions, and hesitate to leave. But there is another, greater fear, and that is the fear that their children will be able to make it without them, in fact, that they will get along just fine.
As I stepped across Bivens Street and back onto Elm I realized that from now on there will be in the heart of this earthly father the question that must always be in the heart of the Heavenly Father:
Here’s another great poem by Wendell Berry. I smiled when I read it because, for nearly five years in Kentucky, I was pastor to his mother, Virginia Berry. She was everything he says she was here and then some. But I also smiled because it reminded me so much of my own mother, who forgave me more wrongs than I care to remember, and who—like Wendell’s mother—has long since forgotten them. So, here’s to you, Virginia, and Mary Rice, and all mothers everywhere.
God bless you every one.
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To My Mother by Wendell Berry
I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.
So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,
prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,
and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it
already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,
where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.
When I got back from my daughter’s college graduation last Sunday night I found a message in my inbox hinting that “something” had happened during the 11:00 worship service at Richmond’s First Baptist Church that day, but it wasn’t until the next morning that I found out what it was. Joyce, my secretary, told me that one of our homeless neighbors had come down the aisle in the middle of the service demanding to know why “Amazing Grace” and “It Is Well with My Soul” weren’t in our hymnbook. He said that he was “a miracle of God,” and wanted to share his testimony.
As I heard the story at staff meeting on Tuesday I learned that Bob Palmer, who was standing at the pulpit when the man came forward, told him very graciously that if he would just have a seat someone would be glad to help him out after the service. Ralph Starling stepped forward to intervene, but was greeted by a threatening gesture that forced him to consider another approach. Eventually an off-duty Henrico police officer, who was visiting the church, escorted the man out of the building, but by that time the spirit of worship had been badly broken. Phil Mitchell stepped to the pulpit afterward and prayed that our scattered thoughts might return to the Lord, and at the close of the service Ralph Starling suggested that in our prayers that week we might offer a prayer for this man, who certainly needed it.
As the story unfolded I realized that the man who had disrupted the service was Daniel, one of our regulars at community missions and someone who has been featured on this blog. He is still recovering from surgery to remove a life-threatening brain tumor, and most of the time he is gentle and thoughtful and kind. Knowing him as I do I could almost see him standing there with his hymnbook, wanting to share his testimony and sing a hymn. And church is a good place for that kind of thing, isn’t it? If I had been there I might have let him do it.
But, then again, maybe not.
He wasn’t entirely sober at the time. He was loud and belligerent. He frightened a good many people in the congregation who didn’t know him, and who worried that he might have a gun. We can thank God for church members and staff who remained calm in that moment. We can thank God that there was an off-duty police officer to escort him out of the building. And we can thank God for those who brought us back into His presence through prayer and reminded us to pray for this man.
Daniel stopped by the church yesterday between services to apologize. I could tell he had practiced his speech. He said, “I am truly and humbly and sincerely sorry for what happened last Sunday. ” I accepted his apology and then asked him what had happened. I wanted to hear his side of the story. He said, ”I just wanted to sing that hymn, but I couldn’t find it in the book.” And so we took a hymbook out of one of the pew racks and looked for “Amazing Grace” and “It Is Well with My Soul.” As you might guess, they were both in there. He seemed comforted by that, and thanked me for showing him. I asked him if he had been drinking and he confessed that he had: “Just a little to stop the shakes.” “Well, I’ll need to ask you to leave then,” I said. He nodded and said, “I know.” I showed him to the door and he apologized once more before stepping out into the rain.
The staff is working to put together a security plan that will help our congregation feel safe in the sanctuary because things might have turned out differently than they did and it might have been someone other than Daniel. We don’t want anyone to be afraid to come to church. I am reminded that the word sanctuary means, literally, “a safe place.” But I’m grateful that this Sunday it turned out to be a safe place for Daniel, a place where he could confess his sin and ask for forgiveness. He made a mistake and he knew it. He promised it wouldn’t happen again. He was so full of genuine remorse that I felt myself moved with pity and heard myself saying, “I love you, Daniel.” Tears welled up in his eyes and he said, “I love you, too.”
And then I kicked him out.
Love has a tough side, and I’m sure Daniel knows that, but as he walked down the sidewalk in the rain I could almost hear him humming the tune he had come to church to sing: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”
The Festival of Homiletics was so full of good preaching, teaching, singing, and praying that I can’t even begin to sum it up here. If the word festival is related in any way to the word feast (and I think it is), it was that—a feast that left me feeling deliciously full.
One of the things preachers do at these conferences is to tell their best jokes, and the best joke I heard last week was this one:
A pastor once finished his sermon only to be greeted by a woman who gushed, “Oh, Pastor! That was superfluous! That was the most superfluous sermon I’ve ever heard!” “Well, thank you,” the pastor said, with an ironic smile. “I’m thinking of having it published posthumously.” “Oh, yes!” the woman replied. “Yes, yes! The sooner the better!”
So, here’s one that sounds like it should be a joke:
I went for a run on Memorial Day with my friend Wallace Adams-Riley, Rector of the historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church here in the City of Richmond. We made our way around a five-mile loop that ended on Monument Avenue. While we were cooling down, I saw someone jogging toward us in sweat pants and a white T-shirt. When he got closer I saw that it was Ammar Ammonette—the imam I had lunch with a few months ago. I stopped him in mid-jog and introduced him to Wallace, and for a few minutes we stood there talking on the sidewalk: the pastor, the priest, and the imam. He said he lived on the other side of the river but liked to run here, where the sidewalks were a little wider and people seemed to be more accustomed to pedestrian traffic. We didn’t talk long; I didn’t want to interrupt his run; but we did say that we should get together for lunch again sometime, and then he smiled, shook our hands, and went his way.
Nobody who drove by while we were talking would have guessed who we were. It’s not everyday you see a pastor, a priest, and an imam talking together, but it’s even less often you see them out jogging together.
Last Saturday my daughter Catherine graduated from high school (the appropriately named St. Catherine’s school for girls here in Richmond, where instead of the traditional cap and gown graduates wear full-length white dresses and carry bouquets of daisies). We teased her about being the first in the family, and in some ways it’s true. I went to college after my junior year in high school; my wife Christy finished high school a year early; my daughter Ellie finished a semester early. None of us completed our senior year or went to the senior prom. Catherine did. So, when Ellie went to pick up a cake for dinner on the night of Catherine’s graduation she asked the baker to write on the cake, “Congratulations, Catherine: First in the Family!”
All the celebration of the day brought to mind a quiet, family celebration when Catherine turned 13. We called it her “coming-of-age” ceremony. I’d like to publish part of it here in tribute to that thirteen-year-old who has become such a beautiful eighteen-year-old, and the first in our family to finish high school.
I love you, Catherine.
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A Litany for Catherine’s Coming-of-Age December 18, 2003
Jim: Catherine, today you are a teenager.
No longer a child, not yet a woman, you have entered that unique, in-between, stage in which you will some days want to climb up in your mother’s lap and have a good cry and other days want to go to Kenya, zip around in a Land Rover, and shoot pictures of stampeding elephants. That steady tug-of-war between childhood and adulthood is necessary: it makes you strong, and someday it will make you strong enough to leave the home of your childhood and start a home of your own.
But not yet.
Now is the time to explore your new freedoms and wrestle with your new responsibilities. It will be good work, but it will be hard work. As your family we commit ourselves to loving you and supporting you in this challenging time of transition.
Ellie: Catherine, I will do my best to be a good big sister to you, teaching you what I have learned along the road you are getting ready to travel. Your experience will not be exactly the same as my experience, but if I can help to smooth out some of the rough spots, know that I will.
Jim: Catherine, as your father I will feel the pain as I watch you grow up and away from your childhood. I will miss the little girl you were. But I will also rejoice in your new accomplishments, and your new maturity. I will tell my friends proudly, and with some amazement, that I am the father of not one but two teenaged daughters.
Christy: Catherine, the heart of your mother aches with the loss of her little girl—the one whose wispy blonde hair and bib overalls were so cute. Sometimes I hardly recognize the tall, beautiful woman you are becoming. But even as I lose that baby girl I look forward to sharing womanly secrets with you and someday being a best friend to you as my mother is to me.
Catherine: I accept the gifts of your love and support. I will cherish them now and depend on them in the years ahead.
Jim: Catherine, in the Jewish tradition, when a girl reaches adolescence she becomes responsible for her own soul. As a baptized believer you have already accepted that responsibility: you have made Jesus your Lord and pledged to follow him in faithful discipleship. But as you turn thirteen the responsibility for your life of faith, for your moral choices, will be yours more than ever before. I pledge to let go the reigns of my own responsibility for your “religion” more and more and to let you explore the boundaries of your faith with joyful abandon. I also charge you to take full responsibility for your spiritual life: whether you continue to live as a committed follower of Jesus Christ will be up to you now, and not your mother or me.
Catherine: I accept responsibility for my soul with fear and trembling. I accept responsibility for my soul with joy and gratitude.
Jim: Then let us celebrate Catherine’s coming-of-age, and let us seal this moment with a solemn, apple juice toast:
Ellie: (raising her glass): To Catherine, may you enter this exhilarating, exasperating “in-between time” with courage and with grace.
Christy (raising her glass): To Catherine, may you become to me not only a dear daughter, but also a loving sister, and a laughing friend.
Jim (raising his glass): To Catherine, may you continue to make me proud by the way you travel the road between childhood and adulthood.
Catherine (raising her glass): And to all of you, for all you have been, and all you will be, to me.
That’s what I’ve been telling people these days when they ask me to explain the concept of the ”missional church”: I say, “If you’ve ever been on a mission trip then you know. It’s like that. It’s like all of us at First Baptist Church are on a mission trip right now, right here. The bus has just come to a stop at our mission site on the corner of Monument and Boulevard and it’s time to get off the bus.”
It came to mind a few weeks ago when I was sitting in the sanctuary, listening to our children sing at their end-of-the-year program. They did a beautiful job; I was feeling a good bit of pastoral pride; and then it hit me: if we were on a mission trip, would we be doing this? If we had loaded those kids up on a bus and driven to Arkansas, would they have stood at the front of the bus and sung for us? No. They would have sung at a nursing home or a hospital. They would have worked all week at a trailer park, teaching other children to sing the same songs. In other words their singing would have been shared with the world in some way, and not only with their proud pastor, parents, and grandparents at First Baptist Church.
According to missional activist Alan Hirsch, it is this awareness of the world around us, and this understanding that we are on a mission—God’s mission—that makes a church “missional.” When we really “get it,” it begins to affect everything we do, and some of us really are beginning to get it.
I had a talk yesterday with someone who wondered if we could find some land to plant a garden and then donate the food to a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter. As we talked we thought about the refugees from Nepal who have been coming to our Wednesday night dinners. Could they tend the garden, use the food, sell the surplus at the 17th Street Market? Suddenly, instead of only talking about taking up an offering and sending missionaries to Nepal, we were talking about how we could be missionaries to the Nepalese right here in Richmond.
Or what about one of our members who is talking with other churches in the city to see if each church could provide an apartment for someone who has a job but not a home: the “working homeless”? He’s doing it because when I asked him to help Jesus bring heaven to earth by looking around for anything that didn’t look like heaven and then rolling up his sleeves and going to work there, that’s where he went—to the homeless. He seems to understand that we are on a mission trip, and the First Baptist bus has rolled to a stop, and it’s time to get off the bus.
As we remember and celebrate the Day of Pentecost, please pray that God’s Holy Spirit would fall on us as it fell on those first believers, and that like them we would find that we cannot keep the good news about Jesus to ourselves, that we have to live it, and breathe it, and tell it, and share it in every way imaginable with the world around us.
Maybe we can learn to sing God’s song in other places, and not only in the church sanctuary.
I’m back from a week’s vacation, sitting at my kitchen table at six o’clock on Saturday morning, sipping hot coffee from a ceramic mug and thinking about the Trinity.
That’s right: the Trinity.
Tomorrow is Trinity Sunday, the day when we turn our thoughts in worship toward the mystery of one God in three persons, but today is the Saturday before, when I am thinking about the young man who will sit in a pew tomorrow wondering what any of this has to do with him.
It’s a wonder he’s there at all. He probably wouldn’t be if he hadn’t promised his parents he would come. I can almost picture him, trying to look interested as I talk about this, the most abstract of all theological concepts. I used to do the same thing in algebra class, when my teacher wrote x + y = z on the board and then turned around beaming as if he had just shared the secret of life. I can see me up there in the pulpit tomorrow, with that same look on my face as I explain to this young man that Father + Son + Spirit = Trinity. And I can see him, glancing toward his parents and rolling his eyes as he struggles to stay awake.
Somehow, between now and then, I have to find a way to express this mystery so that it touches this young man’s life, so that even if he spends most of Saturday night drinking himself into a state of oblivion he will walk out of church on Sunday morning humming “Holy, Holy, Holy.” And that’s where the Trinity begins to touch my life, because I know that’s a bigger job than I can do by myself. I will need the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit as I work, and if tomorrow’s sermon makes any difference at all in this young man’s life it will only be because of that kind of collaborative effort. I don’t know about him, but I can’t make it without help. Life is too hard. This job is too big. I need the Trinity.
And maybe a second cup of coffee.
___________________________
*The title of this post is an allusion to this poem by the great 17th century poet (and Anglican priest) John Donne, with apologies.
Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
The choir of Richmond’s First Baptist Church knocked me out of my pew last night. Their spring concert—”The Kingdom”—was an answer to the Lord’s Prayer, because last night God’s kingdom came, God’s will was done, on earth as it is in heaven (or maybe it just seemed that way to me, having been knocked out of my pew by the beauty and power of music).
I was asked to interpret the theme of the concert at two different points in the concert, and so I wrote something called “The Kingdom in Two Short Acts,” with Jesus as Act I and the Church as Act II. Let me share Act I with you today and if there is any interest in Act II I’ll publish it at a later date.
All my best to you,
Jim
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The Kingdom: Act I
The first words out of Jesus’ mouth in the first Gospel ever written are these: “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news!” (Mark 1:15). The good news was that God’s Kingdom had come near, and immediately people wanted to know more. What is God’s Kingdom? When is it coming? Where is it now? And for much of the remainder of Mark’s Gospel, and most of Matthew’s and Luke’s, Jesus tries to explain.
The Kingdom is like a sower who went out to sow some seed. It’s like the shepherd who went out to look for his lost sheep. It’s like the treasure you stumble upon in the field, or the precious pearl you find at the flea market. It’s like the king who throws a party for outcasts, or the dad who kills the fatted calf for his no-good son. It’s that place where Samaritans pay your hospital bills and sinners go home from the temple justified. It’s where those who worked an hour get the same as those who worked all day and where the beggar at the rich man’s gate ends up in the bosom of Abraham. It is, finally, that place where the last are first, the least are great, and the lost are found forever.
So, everyone wanted to know: where is this kingdom? And the answer was almost too simple: the kingdom is wherever God is king. It could be a country, or a city, or a church like this one, or the house where you live. The kingdom could be in your own heart if God could be king there. And this seemed to be Jesus’ plan—that the kingdom would come one heart at a time, as one person after another stepped down from the throne and let God sit there instead. When his disciples asked him to teach them to pray he said, “Pray for this: pray that God’s kingdom would come, that God’s will would be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Because wherever God’s will is done God’s kingdom has come on earth.
Frederick Buechner says that “Insofar as here and there, and now and then, God’s kingly will is being done in various odd ways among us even at this moment, the Kingdom has come already. Insofar as all the odd ways we do God’s will at this moment are at best half-baked and halfhearted, the Kingdom is still a long way off—a hell of a long way off, to be more precise and theological.
“As a poet, Jesus is maybe at his best in describing the feeling you get when you glimpse the thing itself—the kingship of the King official at last and all the world his coronation. It’s like finding a million dollars in a field, he says, or a jewel worth a king’s ransom. It’s like finding something you hated to lose and thought you would never find again—an old keepsake, a stray sheep, a missing child. When the Kingdom really comes, it’s as if the thing you lost and thought you’d never find again is yourself” (from Wishful Thinking).
Here’s the second “Act” of the piece I wrote for Sunday night’s heavenly choir concert, “The Kingdom.” I called Act I “Jesus,” and called this Act “the Church.” Faithful readers of this blog will recognize the poem by Ann Weems, which was published in a previous post.
Thanks for reading,
Jim
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I believe Jesus believed that God’s kingdom really could come on earth as it is in heaven. That’s what he told his disciples to pray for, that’s what he told them to work for. He spent those years training them, in part, so that when he finished his work on earth they could take over. As he was leaving them he said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
And that’s just what happened. On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit fell upon those believers and sent them out into the city of Jerusalem, out into all of Judea and Samaria, out to the ends of the earth. Everywhere they went they preached the good news about Jesus, and his message of a Kingdom where the lost are found, the last are first, and the least are great. It was a reversal of most of what people had heard, most of their lives. Some of them received it with joy, while others did not. “These people are turning the world upside down!” the authorities grumbled, where somewhere Jesus must have smiled, because turning the world upside down is what the Kingdom is all about. “Every valley will be exalted,” Isaiah said, “and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.”
Sometimes it happens, and if it’s going to happen anywhere it should happen here, in the church. We, of all people, should be the ones to set an example for the world by letting God have his way with us, by throwing ourselves like a wood chip on the water of his will, and getting carried away by the current. When that happens the kingdom comes, in church as it is in heaven, and it looks a lot like this poem by Ann Weems:
The Church of Jesus Christ
The church of Jesus Christ is where a child brings a balloon… is where old women come to dance . . . is where young men see visions and old men dream dreams. The church of Jesus Christ is where lepers come to be touched . . . is where the blind see and the deaf hear . . . is where the lame run and the dying live. The church of Jesus Christ is where daisies bloom out of barren land . . . is where children lead and wise men follow . . . is where mountains are moved and walls come tumbling down. The church of Jesus Christ is where loaves of bread are stacked in the sanctuary to feed the hungry . . . is where coats are taken off and put on the backs of the naked . . . is where shackles are discarded and kings and shepherds sit down to life together. The church of Jesus Christ is where barefoot children
run giggling in procession . . . is where the minister is ministered unto . . . is where the anthem is the laughter of the congregation and the offering plates are full of people. The church of Jesus Christ is where people go when they skin their knees
or their hearts . . . is where frogs become princes and Cinderella dances beyond midnight . . . is where judges don’t judge and each child of God is beautiful and precious. The church of Jesus Christ is where the sea divides for the exiles . . . is where the ark floats and the lamb lies down with the lion . . . is where people can disagree and hold hands at the same time. The church of Jesus Christ is where night is day . . . is where trumpets and drums and tambourines declare God’s goodness . . . is where lost lambs are found. The church of Jesus Christ is where people write thank-you notes to God . . . is where work is a holiday . . . is where seeds are scattered and miracles grown. The church of Jesus Christ is where home is . . . is where heaven is . . . is where a picnic is communion and people break bread together on their knees. The church of Jesus Christ is where we live responsively to God’s coming . . . even on Monday morning the world will hear . . . an abundance of alleluias!
—Ann Weems
Note: After reading the poem I said, “I might add that the church of Jesus Christ is where people bring bags of rice and cans of tuna to feed their hungry neighbors.” And then, as we sang a hymn, people came forward and stacked those items on the communion table until it overflowed, and then stacked them on the chancel steps all around, hundreds of pounds of rice and tuna for the refugees from Nepal we have been ministering to, many of whom were at the concert that night. If I could have put a caption under that picture it would have read: “This is what life in the Kingdom looks like.”
I just got back from the Rotary Club, where I enjoyed a delicious breakfast and spoke to some fifty members of the West Henrico chapter. As I prepared my speech I tried to think about what a Baptist preacher could say to a group of business people that wouldn’t sound too “preachy.” I ended up talking about a favorite subject of mine, and that is the way the church has responded to the changes in culture over the last forty to fifty years.
I told the Rotarians how, in each church I served, there had been a “legendary” pastor, the one everybody still talked about. In my first church it had been Bill Hull, in my second church Dewey Hobbs, in my third church Ed Pruden, and here in Richmond, of course, it had been Ted Adams. What didn’t occur to me early on in my ministry is that each of those pastors had served those churches during the 1950’s, which was a unique time in history. The war was over, soldiers and sailors were coming home, marrying their high school sweethearts, settling down, having children, and bringing them to church. I believe the churchgoing “boom” precisely paralleled the Baby Boom (1946-1964).
So, I talked to the Rotarians about that, about how the culture at one time had pushed people through the front door of the church and how now the culture seemed to be dragging them out. I talked about how the church had responded with a sort of widespread panic as it watched its pews and offering plates emptying out, and how the church growth movement has been a desperate bid to get those people (and their dollars) back. ”It’s not only churches,” I acknowledged. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it has been difficult to attract new members to the Rotary Club. ‘Service Above Self’ (their motto) isn’t all that popular these days.”
After breakfast a number of people came forward to tell me that it was true: membership in their club was in decline. Several others told me stories about their churches—Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian—and the way they had been struggling to keep the lights on and the doors open. I had tried to leave all of them with good news. I said that in times like these its important to return to our roots, to remember who we are and why we’re here. I told them that at Richmond’s First Baptist Church we are turning our attention toward the clear commands of Christ, who is Lord of the church, and trying to get serious about what he asked his followers to do. Maybe the Rotarians, likewise, will look to their founding principles and get serious about those. Maybe they already have.
On the way back from breakfast I remembered a song by David Wilcox that has always made me think about the church:
Summer lasted a generation
A generation – and then the winter wind
The bounty harvest that seemed so endless
It seemed so endless until it gave what it could give
Prosperity will have its seasons
Even when it’s here, it’s going by
And when it’s gone we pretend we know the reasons
And all the roots grow deeper when it’s dry.
This is my prayer for the church of Jesus Christ in this dry season: that its roots will grow deeper, and that instead of worrying so much about how to fill pews and offering plates, we will drive our roots down into the deep places, and discover the living water that quenches our deepest thirst, and becomes in us a spring of water gushing up to everlasting life (John 4:14).
It sounds a little corny, doesn’t it? (or a little wheaty, or a little barley, depending on what kind of seeds you use), but at the end of my sermon on the parable of the mustard seed recently I suggested that the seed of the Kingdom might be love. The more I’ve thought about it the more true it seems. When we say loving words, when we do loving deeds, we sow the seeds of the Kingdom. If we could learn to love this city, love the people we meet, love the planet we live on, then the Kingdom would come, on earth as it is in heaven.
If a kingdom can be defined as that place where a king rules, then the Kingdom of God is that place where God rules, and since God is love (1 John 4:8), the Kingdom is that place where love rules. Right?
I was thinking those thoughts on the Monday after I preached that sermon, while I ran down Monument Avenue to Monroe Park and headed back on Main Street. Somewhere along the way I saw that someone had chalked the word LOVE on the sidewalk, using multicolored sidewalk chalk. The letters were big and bold, and I could almost imagine that the person who did it had heard my sermon the day before, had taken me seriously, and decided that one of the ways to sow the seeds of the Kingdom in this city was to write the word LOVE on the sidewalk where people walking along with their heads down would see it.
I saw it, and it made me smile, to think that someone was out there sowing the seeds of the Kingdom. Maybe you’re out there doing it too, in your own way, and maybe soon enough the world will begin to see the fruits of your labor:
I’ve been meeting with a group of seniors at Richmond’s First Baptist Church to talk about all the change that has taken place in the church in the last fifty years. I got the idea from a book called “Who Stole My Church?” by Gordon MacDonald, loaned to me by Lynn Turner on the recommendation of David Powers.
The subtitle of the book is “What to do When the Church You Love Tries to Enter the 21st Century.” It’s written in narrative form by a loving pastor who makes some changes in his church that do not sit well with the seniors. Instead of telling them to find another church he calls them together to hear their concerns, and through regular meetings over the course of the next few weeks they share their frustrations, work through the issues, and reach a rather remarkable consensus.
You’ll have to read the book.
There has been some change at First Baptist Church since my arrival, and that’s to be expected. Pastors are change agents, and if they are doing their jobs some things will change. There has been some resistance to that change, and that’s to be expected, too. It’s not that people resist change: people resist loss. With every change there is some loss, and with every loss there is some grief.* So what sometimes sounds like a bunch of grumpy old people saying, “We don’t like all this change!” might really be a group of God’s beloved saints saying, “We’ve lost so much!”
That’s why I called together some of our seniors at First Baptist: to see if we could put our finger on the source of loss and grief, to name the changes that have occurred in the church not only in the last few months, but in the last fifty years. The people I called didn’t seem particularly grief-stricken. In fact, they are some of our most active and involved members. But I thought they might be able to help me grasp some things I wouldn’t otherwise understand.
At our first meeting I brought a copy of “The Open Door,” that big, beautiful book that tells the story of Richmond’s First Baptist Church. I opened it up to Part Two: 1955-2005, and began to turn the pages. Whenever I came to a picture I would hold up the book and say, “Do you remember that?” and most of the people around the table would nod, often talking about the people in the picture or sharing their memories of the event.
Most of their memories were fond ones of happy times and good friends. Some of their memories were painful (there was that terribly divisive business meeting in 1965, when the church was trying to decide if two Nigerian students could be welcomed as members). Some of their memories were sad ones, as they remembered those they had loved and lost.
And then there were the white suits.
Early on in that section of the history there is a picture of Dr. Ted Adams (pastor from 1936-1968) and two of his associates dressed in matching white suits. I asked for an explanation and someone said, “Oh, Dr. Adams always switched to a white suit in the summertime.” “Really?” I asked, trying hard to believe it, but everyone around the table nodded matter-of-factly. “Lots of people used to wear white in the summer,” someone explained. “You know, because of the heat.”
Because of the heat. The heat not only outside but inside the building. And suddenly I could picture the people of First Baptist Church sitting in that big, stuffy sanctuary, wearing white cotton and linen and hoping a breeze would waft in through the open windows. That’s probably not how it was in 1955, but there must have been a time when it was like that and traditions (the white suit tradition, for example) die hard.
You may have heard the story about the woman who used to cut the end off the roast before putting it in the oven and when someone asked why she said, “I don’t know. That’s just the way my mother always did it.” When they asked her mother she said, “I don’t know. That’s just the way my mother always did it.” When they asked her mother (who was, fortunately, still living) she said, “Because my pan was too small!”
So, when I got together with that wonderful group of seniors the next week we made a list of all those things we used to do in church but don’t do now, and the first thing on the list was “white suits.” “Why don’t we wear white suits in the summer anymore?” I asked, and was pleased to hear someone answer, immediately, “Because we have air conditioning!”
There are a lot of things like that in the church: things we don’t do anymore because of advances in technology, changes in culture, etc. But not everything has to change. As we talked about those white suits someone remarked, “You know, they really were cooler,” and then someone else said, “I think I still have my white suit,” and then someone else said, “I not only have mine, I think I’ll wear it to church next Sunday!”
Who knows? Maybe it will catch on. Maybe it will start a retro trend and everyone will begin to wear white suits to church in the summer, so that when the new pastor of First Baptist Church is looking at our history fifty years from now she will ask, “Why did everyone wear white suits in the Summer of 2009?” I hope someone will be around who can explain: “Because they were cool.”
Just like that group of seniors I’ve been meeting with.
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*The idea that people resist loss rather than change comes from Leadership on the Line, by Martin Linsky and Ronald A. Heifetz. I learned that every loss involves some grief from John Claypool in a seminar at the College of Preachers in 1995.
Al Astle is in his nineties now, but in his day he was a terrific percussionist, and even now he can produce rhythms and sounds from a vibraphone that will astound a sophisticated audience.
He is a member of Richmond’s First Baptist Church, and recently volunteered to help out in our Community Missions program. When I go down there on Wednesday mornings I ususally find him sitting behind a table with Ralph Anderson, checking and storing the belongings of our homeless neighbors while they get showers.
Al pulled me aside after dinner on Wednesday night and even before he spoke I could tell he was troubled. He asked me if I had seen the expectant mother at Community Missions, the young woman who looks to be about halfway through her pregnancy, and who sits there with the rest of the homeless waiting her turn in the showers. I said I had. Al wondered if she were receiving adequate prenatal care and I said that I didn’t know but we could ask. I assured him that medical services are available to people like this woman; it would only be a matter of making sure that she gets them. And then he asked me if I had seen that young woman who comes in with her five-year-old daughter. I told him I had. He shook his head and swallowed hard. A master of expressing his deepest emotions without saying a word, his face told me everything: his heart was breaking for these young women, and for their children.
I don’t know if Al has always felt for the homeless in this way, but that’s what can happen when you take a heart that has been touched by the love of God and put it in the presence of human suffering: it breaks. And if it’s a heart that has truly been touched by the love of God it does more than that: it acts.
I was impressed when Al Astle volunteered for Community Missions in his nineties, a time when he might have said, “Let the young people do it.” I was even more impressed on Wednesday night, when I saw that he is letting his heart be broken by the needs of the world, and for some of the people Jesus loves most, the ones he called “the least of these, my brothers and sisters” (Matt. 25:40).
I’ve been overwhelmed by the response to Sunday’s sermon from Mark 5:21-43, the passage where Jesus heals the woman with the hemorrhage and raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead. It seems that everyone has prayed for someone who was sick or dying, and while some of them tell stories of miraculous healings—like the ones in Sunday’s Gospel reading—most of them do not.
And there’s the problem.
They want to know what it takes to get results from their prayers, the right kind of results. How can they pray in a way that guarantees healing? When their prayers don’t work they tend to assume:
a. They didn’t have enough faith.
b. They didn’t pray the right prayer.
c. They didn’t say enough prayers.
d. They didn’t have the right people praying.
There is biblical support for each of those assumptions, but behind them all is the idea that if we could just learn how to do it correctly our prayers for healing would be answered.
It reminds me of that commercial I saw years ago where a man is trying to get a vending machine to accept his wrinkled dollar bill. He puts it in and the machine spits it out. He puts it in again and it spits it out again, over and over, until right at the end of the commercial when the machine finally accepts the bill and he says, “YES!” and pumps his fists in the air. And then, if I’m remembering correctly, he pushes a button only to find that his brand of soda is sold out.
That’s the way it is with some of us, isn’t it? We bow our heads and clasp our hands and offer up prayers like wrinkled dollar bills, hoping that one of these days God will accept them, but worrying at the same time that if and when he does the answer we are looking for may be sold out.
Is that really how it is? Is that really how God works? Like a vending machine in the sky from which we can get the answers to all our prayers if we can only figure out the secret?
I’d like to think God is more than that, and prayer more than a way to get what we want. I concluded Sunday’s sermon by saying that these healing stories in the Gospels are reminders that God loves the world, and that he loved it so much he sent his only son, who ladled out God’ s healing power on any who had need. If God really does love us like that then we don’t have to “trick” him into hearing and answering our prayers. And if God really is God then there is no way we can force him to do what we want. Instead we can talk to him like a child might talk to loving parent, telling him exactly what we need or want and trusting him with the answer.
For example, when I used to ask my dad to buy me a Coke he usually said no. If I asked him why he might say that he didn’t have the money or it wasn’t good for me, or he might just repeat his answer: “No!” But once a year, when we went on vacation, he would stop for gas and reach down into his pocket to bring out a fistful of quarters. He would give one to each of his sons, and we would go over to the Coke machine, drop a quarter into the slot, pull out a frosty bottle and pop open the top. Ahhhh. Did my father love me? Of course he did. He showed it any number of ways. And I came to trust his love so completely that even when he said no I could accept his answer.
Last Sunday night, after preaching that sermon, I had occasion to pray for someone who was very sick. Sitting there beside his hospital bed I found myself saying, “Dear Heavenly Father, I know you love this child of yours. I know you have loved him all his life. I ask you to do for him whatever is most loving, and I trust you with the answer to this prayer.”
It’s not easy, leaving things in God’s hands, but there are no better, stronger, or surer hands than those.
I went to a workshop in Houston last week called “Being Missional in Your Church Context: Meeting the Real Needs of Your Neighbors.”
Houston? In July? Really?
Yes, really.
When it was time to introduce myself I told the group I was from Richmond, Virginia, and that when I walk to church on Sunday mornings I sometimes pass people sitting on their front porches, reading the New York Times and sipping lattes.* “I’m sure they have needs,” I said, “I’m just not sure how to identify them” (I mean, really, do you want to interrupt someone’s newspaper reading to say, “Hey, got any needs?”).
The workshop leaders didn’t get around to that question right away, but they did say some good things which I jotted down in my notes. Here’s just a sampling:
Dick Hamm mentioned that people over 65 tend to experience God through the institution of the church, and that the object—for them—is to get people to join. People under 65 tend to experience God outside the institution. For them mission is about relationship, and mission work is usually short-term and hands-on.
Gary Nelson said that in Canada, where he lives, a lot of people were going to church in the fifties. The decline started in the sixties, and now only 12 to 16 percent of the population attends church with any regularity. He talked about this as the “come-to” model (some would call it the attractional model) and asked what happens when people don’t come to church? How do you engage?
He talked about “institutionalism” in the church, and said that it uses up a lot of energy and resources. “How do we free people up from the institution so they can engage in mission?” he asked, and followed it with some thoughts about governance. He said church committees were created in the 40’s and 50’s** and that since then millions of church members have served on committees. He asked how much of our members’ time is taken up with church governance, and joked that in some places “it takes a village” to govern a church. If we could spend less time governing the institution, could we spend more time engaged in mission?
Finally, George Bullard addressed the question about how to identify the needs of our neighbors: “Talk to bartenders,” he said, “bankers, real-estate agents, social workers, counselors at the neighborhood school. Talk to anybody who spends time with your neighbors, listening to their questions and concerns.”
So, I may need to walk down to Starbucks this afternoon and talk to one of the baristas there about my neighbors. “Who are these people? What are their needs?” And while I’m there, gathering information, I may just have to order a latte.
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*for the uninitiated, a latte (pronounced lah-TAY) is a kind of a tall, frothy coffee beverage made with espresso and steamed milk. It’s delicious.
**I’m taking his word for it, but it makes me wonder to what extent the church in America mirrored the nation’s efforts to win World War II. Wasn’t it all about new departments and agencies and strategies in those days? Did we think our success in war could translate into success in mission? Did it?
Just a post-it note to tell you about an experience I had last week:
I was flying home from Houston on the Fourth of July. I changed planes in Atlanta and as we left the runway it was just getting dark. The plane banked hard to the left and then headed toward Richmond and as we climbed into the night sky I looked out the window.
There, erupting from a hundred back yards below, were little showers of sparks—people shooting off firecrackers, bottle rockets, Roman candles, and a few bigger bursts from high-priced pyrotechnics. In the distance I saw what looked like the grand finale of a small-town fireworks display, but everywhere, everywhere, people were celebrating the Fourth of July.
It was wonderful to see it from that perspective. It wasn’t the breathtaking display the rest of my family was seeing at Dogwood Dell in Richmond, but it was a reminder that this freedom we celebrate belongs to every back yard, and everybody, even the little boy waving the sparkler wildly, dangerously, as his sister shrieks and runs away.
Here’s a fascinating article by Mercer University professor David Gushee on Jesus and the Kingdom of God. It’s not an easy read. Please don’t try it before having coffee in the morning. But if you are up to it, I would love to hear your feedback.
Here’s the way Gushee describes the Kingdom:
The Bible proclaims that God is the sovereign king — of creation, of Israel, of the world. But his kingship has been rejected by sinful humanity, bringing dire consequences not just in individual life but in every sector of human experience. The Old Testament promises that God will one day act to reclaim his kingship and renew the world.
Jesus came proclaiming the good news that the kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom was central to his entire ministry — affecting not just his preaching, but everything he did. For Jesus, the kingdom is the reclaiming of God’s world in its entirety. The kingdom happens when God’s will is done “on Earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus came to embody God’s reign and to create a community that would make as its mission the continued embodiment of God’s reign until Christ returns.
To read the entire article from the Associated Baptist Press, click HERE.
To comment, just click on the word “comment” below.
I told the congregation on Sunday that I would be going to South Carolina for a few days this week on a “Fifth Commandment Mission Trip.” I could see the blank looks on some faces and so I reminded them that the fifth commandment is the one that says, “You shall honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land” (Exodus 20:12). A Fifth Commandment Mission Trip is one in which you honor your father and mother by driving to their home in South Carolina with your toolbox and work gloves and doing whatever needs to be done around their house.
I don’t know yet what needs to be done. I don’t know if I will be able to do it. But I hope that my very presence with my aging, ailing parents will honor them. I will probably offer to cut the grass and trim up around the place if that hasn’t been done. I’m sure there will be some small repairs I can make and some painting I can do. I’ll probably make a trip to the grocery store, bring back something really yummy, and offer to cook it. I’ll get Mom to play the piano and we’ll sing a few old hymns. I’ll sit by Dad’s bedside and tell him about my work. At night I will lie down on clean sheets in the guest room, exhausted and grateful for this time with my parents.
Before you click on the “comment” link to say, “Oh, Jim! What a sweet thing to do!” remember that this is a Fifth Commandment mission trip: it’s completely self-centered. I’m honoring my father and mother so that my days may be long in the land, so that when I’m 108 my children will have to pack up their toolboxes and work gloves…
When people ask me what I do I tell them I’m a pastor, and when they ask what kind of pastor I tell them Baptist.
“What kind of Baptist?” they ask.
“Just Baptist,” I answer.
And that’s when the conversation gets interesting.
“Not Southern Baptist?” they ask. “No.” “Not American Baptist?” “No.” “Not Cooperative Baptist?” “No.” “Not Alliance of Baptists?” “No.” “Not National Baptist?” “No.” “Not Primitive Baptist?” “No.” And when they run out of all the options they can think of they ask, “What are you then?”
“Baptist,” I say. “Just Baptist.”
I sometimes tell newcomers to Baptist life that there is “a Christian way to be human and a Baptist way to be Christian.”* That’s what I’m talking about: the Baptist way of being Christian. It goes back four hundred years to that time when a group of Christians left the Church of England to start a church grounded in the New Testament scriptures and committed to the principle of freedom. They felt that believers should be free to make up their own minds about Jesus, and free to read and interpret the Bible for themselves. They felt that the local church should be free to determine its own mission and ministry, and that it should be free from any control by the state. Those four freedoms are essential to the Baptist way of being Christian.
Our grounding in the New Testament scriptures has led to an emphasis on missions and evangelism through the years. Baptists really are an apostolic people (from the Greek word for “sent”), meaning they understand themselves to be sent by Jesus to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that he commanded (Matthew 28:19-20). That commitment led Baptists in this country to organize for effectiveness, and in 1814 the Triennial Baptist Convention was formed (so named because it met once every three years). The purpose was to elicit, combine, and direct funds for the support of the Baptist missionary enterprise, mostly overseas. In 1845 the Triennial Baptist Convention split into two parts—the Northern Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention—primarily over the issue of slavery.
When I became a Baptist in 1981 I did it by joining a church that was affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. If you had asked me then what kind of Baptist I was I probably would have said Southern Baptist, and I would have said it with pride. The Southern Baptist Convention was the largest Protestant denomination in the world, sending thousands of missionaries into dozens of countries, including this one. But by the time I went to my first annual meeting in 1987 the Convention was embroiled in conflict. People were talking about the “Battle for the Bible,” and at that meeting affirmed an earlier resolution stating that women could not serve as pastors in Southern Baptist Churches because the first woman, Eve, had committed the first sin.
That’s when I first began to reconsider my relationship to the Southern Baptist Convention. I hadn’t been in seminary very long but even I knew that while Eve ate the forbidden fruit Adam also ate it, and apparently he didn’t even need to be talked into it. Excluding women from pastoral leadership simply because Eve was the first to sin didn’t seem like a good enough reason even if it was in the Bible, and I began to suspect that there were other reasons behind this resolution, reasons that had more to do with the question of “Who will control the world’s largest Protestant denomination?” than with the question of “How can we faithfully live out the teachings of Scripture?”
By the time I graduated from seminary in 1991 that first question had been answered. The Southern Baptist Convention was controlled by those who called themselves “conservatives” and whom others called “fundamentalists.” Baptist agencies and institutions had been taken over; Baptist journalists and seminary presidents had been fired; local congregations had been divided by conflict. There may have been those who were celebrating the victory but all I could see was the ravages of war.
So when I came to Wingate Baptist Church in North Carolina I came determined to leave denominational conflict behind, focusing my energies instead on loving and serving the Lord and that little congregation. It wasn’t hard; those people were easy to love. And it was during that time, when people asked me what kind of Baptist I was, that I began to say, “A Wingate Baptist,” meaning the kind of Baptist I found in that wonderful church: Christians who were committed to the historic Baptist principle of freedom and to the New Testament emphasis on missions and evangelism. It’s hard not to love people like that.
I’ve been at Richmond’s First Baptist Church long enough now to feel that way about this place and these people, too, and maybe next time someone asks me what kind of Baptist I am I’ll say that: ”I’m a First Baptist Richmond kind of Baptist.” Those who know the church will have some idea of what I mean, and those who don’t know the church may just be curious enough…
…to come and find out for themselves.**
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A related article on former president Jimmy Carter’s decision to leave the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000 can be found HERE.
*I attribute this quote to Dr. Randall Lolley, former president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC.
**Interestingly, Richmond’s First Baptist Church was founded in 1780, sixty-five years before the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention. I’m guessing that I’m not the first pastor of this church to identify himself as “just Baptist.”
As a follow up to the post below about what kind of Baptist I am:
I went on a mission trip to Russia several years ago with a group of Baptists from Washington, DC. We were visiting some of the churches in Moscow to discuss potential partnerships and one of the pastors scored tickets to the Bolshoi theatre for an opera called “The Czar’s Bride.” They were really good tickets. We ended up in box seats just one box away from where the czar himself used to sit.
As we were settling into our seats and taking in the opulence of that majestic theatre I noticed a man wearing the purple shirt and the clerical collar of a bishop. I asked him about it and he said he was a Luthern bishop from Seattle. “What about you? he asked. “We’re all Baptists from Washington, DC,” I answered. “What kind of Baptists?” he asked, and I sighed. I’m sure he meant well but I hear that question so often, and often it is from people who want to pigeonhole in me in some way, who want to make up their minds about me on the basis of some religious stereotype. So I took a quick look around at that impressive place, and all of us sitting there, waiting for the opera to begin. And I said:
A few months ago I preached a sermon that started like this:
Somewhere in my collection of childhood memories there is a hardware store, the old-fashioned kind, with wooden floors and lots of interesting things on the shelves, and that smell that can only be described as an old-fashioned hardware store smell: a blend of rubber boots and baby chicks, metal buckles and leather straps, fresh lumber, finishing nails, and one other smell I can’t quite put my finger on. Maybe the something else is the smell of seed corn in galvanized metal buckets near the front door, because that is always a part of this memory. When I was a boy I would go to the hardware store with my dad, and in the springtime, while he was paying for whatever it was he had come looking for, I would squat down and thrust my hand into one of those buckets of corn, feeling the smooth, cool seeds giving way and then closing around my small, warm hand.
It was a sermon from John 12, where Jesus says “unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit.” The hardware store illustration was only a way to get onto the subject of seeds, but for at least one couple in the congregation that day it was more than that.
John and Mary Adams are some of our newer members, even though they have lived in the area since 1968. Their son, Dan, owns the Ashland Feed Store, which was established in 1918 and hasn’t changed much since. They invited me to come to Ashland for a visit and yesterday, during the lunch hour, I did.
When I stepped inside the building I found it to be almost exactly as I had described the old-fashioned hardware store in my sermon: those same wooden floors, that same blend of smells. Sure enough, right there near the front door was a chicken coop with a dozen baby chicks inside. John took one out and put it in my hands where I could feel its soft, downy feathers and remember the Easter chick I had bought at the hardware store when I was a boy. We moved on into the store where I saw a black and white cat was stretched out on a feed sack, napping. Against the wall were bins of vegetable seeds that could be scooped out, weighed on an ancient scale, and dumped into brown paper bags—celery seeds, cucumber, and squash.
John and Mary kept steering me toward the back of the store and when we got there I saw why. There on the wooden floor was a galvanized metal bucket full of seed corn. “Do you want to stick your hand down in it?” John asked. I did. I rolled up my sleeve and reached down into the bucket, feeling the smooth, cool seeds giving way and then closing around my hand. “Does that take you back in time?” John asked.
“I’m six years old again,” I said.
That was a nice gift, wasn’t it? A little trip back in time? And lunch at the Smokey Pig afterward was a nice gift, too.
I’m not saying all our new members have to take the pastor back in time and then take him to lunch, but it was a treat to spend that time with John and Mary, to get to know a little bit about the town they call home, and to appreciate the fact that somebody out there was listening to the sermon. And if you’ve never been to the Ashland Feed Store I would recommend a visit. Even if it doesn’t take you back in time it will be an experience.
The latest issue of LeadershipJournal has a fascinating article on ministry to twentysomethings. It tells the story of “Axis,” the young adult ministry of Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago, one of the nation’s first true megachurches. Axis started in 2001 with 2,000 young adults gathering on Sunday nights for alternative music and relevant teaching, but by 2006 attendance was down to 400.
What happened?
When John Peacock tried to reorganize Axis in the Fall of 2006 he recognized that twentysomethings would no longer show up just because the church offered a combination of cool music and relevant teaching. “Media-savvy young adults could download all the great teaching and music they wanted for their iPods. Nothing seemed to impress them,” he said (p. 27).
And so Peacock decided he would equip twentysomethings to serve as missionaries in their own zip codes. He launched missional community hubs, where a core group of four to six young adults move into an apartment complex or condominium unit. Meeting three times per month there, the missional community hubs focus on prayer, Scripture and community. Keeping with Willow Creek’s mission, the small-group gatherings remain accessible to unbelivers.
And they’ve been successful.
“The model must be relational,” Peacock said. “If it is based on the big event with one person teaching, I just don’t think it’s going to work. We’ve learned to break these things down into smaller communities where people actually know each other. We didn’t come up with it, but our mantra is, ‘People belong before they believe before they behave.’ Many people in this generation are already coming in with distrust toward God and the church. The more relational environments we have, the more trust can be built and people will be more open to exploring Christianity” (p. 28).
A commitment to relationship rather than events also explains Peacock’s drive to partner Axis members with mentors. There are currently more than 30 people over the age of 50 attending Axis gatherings and actively mentoring younger believers.*
This is interesting input in the ongoing conversation about how we will be doing church fifty years from now. It sounds as if the younger generations, at least, are looking for something a little more substantive than cool music.
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*Information gathered from “The X Factor” by Collin Hansen in the Summer 2009 issue of Leadership Journal.
I had lunch yesterday with someone who had all the answers.
I asked him the question someone had asked me recently, about the tension between science—which claims the earth is billions of years old—and the Bible—which suggests it is much, much younger than that.
“Well, there are two kinds of revelation, right?” he asked. “General revelation and special revelation. General revelation is how God reveals himself through nature and special revelation is how he reveals himself through scripture.”
I nodded. I still remembered this lecture from my days in seminary.
“In both cases it is God who is revealing himself,” he said, “and so if there is an apparent contradiction, it is a result of our misunderstanding, since God cannot contradict himself.”
And then he took a sip of iced tea.
“So,” I said, “if the scientists tell me a fossil is billions of years old and the Bible tells me probably not then either the scientists have misunderstood how old the fossil is or I have misunderstood what the Bible says, right?”
“Right.”
“So any apparent contradiction is a result of human error?”
“Exactly.”
Well, that made sense. It made sense to me especially since I know how capable of error I am. If I were a scientist I would almost certainly misread the data, estimating the age of that jar of pickles in the back of the fridge at something between 10,000 and 100,000 years old. And I don’t claim 100% accuracy when interpreting the Bible, either.
But that’s why I keep reading it.
I came away from lunch yesterday thinking that while, on one hand, it must be nice to have all the answers, on the other hand it’s nice to have all the questions, because the questions are what keep me digging around in Scripture, and having fascinating conversations over coffee, and saying “Wow!” when I look up at the night sky.
When I see this quality in other people I sometimes describe it as “intellectual curiosity,” which doesn’t mean that everyone who asks questions is an intellectual, but that they have curious minds; they want to know why things are the way they are and how they got to be that way. They might spend a week digging for artifacts in Ethiopia one summer and visit the Houston space center the next. They tend to read a lot of books, and seek out new experiences, and ask a lot of questions. Once they find an answer, of course, they come to the end of that particular quest, and if they should ever find all the answers then the journey of intellectual discovery would be over.
And how disappointing that would be.
It’s my questions that keep sending me to the pages of Scripture, digging down into the deep places, finding things I never dreamed of, and the good news is that I never come to the end of that particular journey. God keeps speaking in new ways through those ancient words. Sometimes I will drag something into the pulpit I haven’t even identified yet, but I’m so excited about the discovery I can’t wait. I will ask my congregation, ”Have you ever seen anything like this? Does anyone know what this is?”
I’m sure it’s not supposed to be like that. I’m sure I’m supposed to have all the answers instead of all the questions. But I like the questions.
I went to Starbucks this week to study for Sunday’s sermon and took my Greek New Testament with me. When I put it down on the counter to pay for my coffee the guy at the register said, “Why are you studying Greek?”
“Because I’m a pastor,” I said. “I’m a Christian pastor. We tend to preach from the New Testament and the New Testament was originally written in Greek.”
“And Aramaic,” he said, knowledgeably.
“Um, yeah…I guess. But this is a Greek New Testament so it’s mostly just…Greek.”
He told me that he had studied Latin in school–five years! You’ve got to watch these Starbucks baristas. You never know what kind of skills or knowledge they might bring to the job. And being around all that coffee seems to stimulate their thinking: some of my liveliest conversations have occurred right there at the point of sale, as I hand over my card and wait for a receipt. There we were, talking about the Greek and Latin languages as he pushed my coffee cup toward me.
“By the way, Christ is risen,” he said, as I turned to go. It was Christian “code” language, a secret way of saying, “I’m a believer, too.” It dates back to the first century where it was almost certainly whispered in Greek—“christos anesti!” I stopped in my tracks and turned back to take him in, this young, bearded barista who had just revealed himself as my brother in Christ. He was grinning, and for a moment I was tempted to say something smart like, “By the way?” But before those words could come out of my mouth those other words came, the traditional response to the traditional Easter greeting. I raised my coffee cup, smiled, and said:
Ellie with some of her new friends at Frederiksted Baptist Church (photo by Meredith Booth)
Editor’s Note: I asked my daughter Ellie to write up an account of her recent mission trip to St. Croix with a group from First Baptist Richmond. Their assignment was to lead a sports camp for children on the island, in partnership with Frederiksted Baptist Church. As you will read, their experience with the church in worship was as meaningful as any other part of the trip. Please understand that the views of this guest blogger do not necessarily represent the views of the management…they just make the management proud. —Jim Somerville
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A few weeks ago a group of 11 from First Baptist Church met in the Robinson Street parking lot around 4 am. At that time, without even a drop of coffee in our systems, there was no way we could imagine what the journey we were about to embark on would bring. We didn’t know that we would experience some of the most genuine love on God’s earth, or that the hugs we would give to children might change their lives forever, and some of us had no idea that the Caribbean is really as clear and beautiful as it looks in pictures.
At 6 that morning, our group left for St. Croix in the U.S Virgin Islands—a beautiful paradise—where we were set to lead a children’s camp at Fredriksted Baptist Church. Pastor John Gilbert and a team of young men from the church graciously came to pick us up from the airport in their church vans and dropped us off at the “Cottages by the Sea’” about 50 feet from the Caribbean. After having some time to settle in that evening, we called it an early night to prepare for church the next morning.
“Prepare” might actually be the wrong word to use. Pastor John had asked us to have some songs and maybe testimonies ready for church that morning, “just in case,” but we had no idea what we were in for. Going to church that morning was our first real experience of “Cruzan time” (pronounced CROO-zhun) or “island time” that Pastor John had told us so much about. This laid-back philosophy seems to apply to so much more on the island than just their sense of time. It’s the idea of worry-free living. If you think about it, most of the things we worry about in American society stem from the stresses we associate with time: deadlines, tardiness, waiting, missed appointments, etc. If you aren’t fretting about those things, you are much less overwhelmed by everything else in life.
Meeting the people of Fredriksted Baptist Church opened our eyes to the way life could be if you really left those stresses behind. For example, I don’t know if anyone from our mission group could say that they have ever met a more loving and welcoming group of people. Those of you who were at First Baptist a few weeks ago hopefully got a taste of this love and appreciation of God through the “Cruzan-style” passing of the peace led by members of our mission group. We encouraged the congregation to “get out of their seats, out of their pews, and out of their comfort zones” to hug their brothers and sisters in Christ, and tell them that they loved them. But this was only one of the ways we really saw God’s presence in the St. Croix worship service. No one in the congregation seemed to be worried about what others might think about the way they worshipped God. Everyone was fully present in their worship experience and no one seemed to be thinking about what anyone else was doing.There were times in the service when Pastor John or another member of the congregation would call on someone to come up and sing, choose a song, play the piano, or share a testimony. No one was stressed about the fact that they hadn’t prepared anything. They just humbly came forward and shared what was on their heart—and because it wasn’t prepared in the way that we might think necessary it was truly genuine. It didn’t feel rehearsed or even fake. These people were up there giving God all they had.
We got to experience this first hand when Pastor John reminded the church as they were leaving the service to come back that evening to hear members of First Baptist’s mission team shared their testimonies. “Some of them know about this, some of them don’t,” he said. None of us knew about it. But instead of being worried about it, as typical Americans would, we took inspiration from the members of Fredricksted Baptist and used our recently adopted Cruzan attitudes to say “I mean… it’s whatever!”
The worry did start to sink in a little that evening as we settled into our pews, Pastor John introduced our group, and we realized that we were the service that evening. But, with Meredith Booth courageously leading the way, we—one by one—began to get out of our seats, out of our pews, and out of our comfort zones to share our testimonies with total strangers. Except they weren’t total strangers: that morning through our worship experience together, they had become our families. And when we started to speak it wasn’t stressful, because it was real. It didn’t have to be rehearsed because we were speaking from our hearts, and we found strength knowing that God was right there with us.
Hearing the “Amens” coming from the congregation helped us as well. It felt like God was speaking through these people, saying “Right on,” or “You got this,” and hearing one affirmation after another was like a wave of his presence sweeping through the room. Every time someone shouted “Amen!” it was clear that they were having a connection with God, or with what we were saying in that moment, and that was an incredible feeling. Every now and then we even heard the jingle of a tambourine coming from the back of the sanctuary—just another way someone found to share the love of God that was overflowing from within.
We left church that evening feeling full to the brim with God’s love and that was only our second night – we hadn’t even started the mission work yet! Of course we knew that coming back to First Baptist would be a little bit of an adjustment after this experience. But, instead of just accepting that, we decided to share a little bit of our experience with the church the Sunday we came back and did the best we could through the passing of the peace. We did this in the hope that some of the joy we had experienced through worshiping “Cruzan-style” would be transferred to the congregation of First Baptist.
For those of you who did participate in the passing of the peace that Sunday, I hope you were blessed. But my hope is that everyone can take something from the many ways that the members of Fredriksted Baptist experience God. Don’t worry about what other people are thinking of the way you worship. If you feel the presence of God when you shake a tambourine—go for it. If you hear his voice when you dance in the aisle—go for it. If you feel like sharing your testimony—go for it. If you really connect with something in the scripture or something you hear in church—shout out an “Amen.” And for those of you who are hating me right now for encouraging this because you think that it might cause the worship service to run too long and keep you from beating the Methodists to lunch (wink)—time to get on Cruzan time. Be actively present in your worship of God—this Sunday, every Sunday, every day, every minute—and you will reap the many rewards.
Shall we gather at the river,
where bright angel feet have trod,
with its crystal tide forever
flowing by the throne of God?
It’s not exactly a baptismal hymn, but it’s the one that has been coming to mind in the past few weeks as the staff of Richmond’s First Baptist Church planned and promoted a “river baptism.” We spent some time worrying about where we would do it, and some more time worrying about what the weather would be like, but in the end we found the perfect place and the weather was the kind that inspires baptism–so hot that people who had never considered full immersion were beginning to see the advantages.
Bill and Beverley Hundley let us use their front lawn, which slopes down to the James River beautifully. It’s a grassy, park-like place, with mature trees and plenty of shade on a hot day. We were glad about that. The temperature when I arrived at 4:00 was right at 99, and some people were already sitting in the shade fanning themselves with straw hats. But that didn’t stop others from coming. By 5:00, when it was time to begin, there must have been 200 people there, with nearly two dozen of us dressed in white robes, ready to get into the water.
I welcomed the crowd, Fred and Julie James sang “Amazing Grace,” I offered a prayer, and then One Accord sang “Down to the River to Pray” as Buzz Ingalls made his way to the water. Buzz was stricken with polio as a child, and while many of his friends were making professions of faith and being baptized Buzz was at home, battling his disease. As a result he wasn’t baptized then, but when he came down the aisle last year he told me that he very much wanted to be baptized now. We had to think about how to do that. He couldn’t get into the baptistry at the church, not with those crutches. But when we began to talk about a river baptism Buzz thought he might be able to manage that. So, while One Accord sang, he came, making his way slowly, carefully, to the river.
But once he got in the water everything changed. He was buoyant in body and soul. And when it came time to profess his faith he said, “Jesus is Lord!” in a voice loud enough to be heard on the riverbank. I dipped him down under the water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and he came up grateful in a way I have rarely witnessed, having waited for that moment for decades.
I baptized several children after that, and then had the privilege of baptizing Reinaldo Vega—a member of the church maintenance staff— just after his son Anthony had been immersed. Reid and Millie Flinn—husband and wife—came into the water together and stood there side by side as I talked about their desire to make a fresh commitment to Christ. Some who had been baptized and confirmed in other denominations were glad to profess their faith in this peculiarly Baptist way. Some who had been previously immersed wanted to seize this opportunity to renew old promises. By the time we were finished 21 people had been dipped down under the water, and after each one the crowd on the riverbank applauded.
There was no formal benediction or organ postlude; just the sounds of people shifting their lawn chairs and opening picnic baskets as they settled into a time of fellowship that lasted for the next two hours, with members of the First Baptist family eating, talking, and laughing as the sun sank lower in the sky and filtered through the leaves on the trees, turning everything gold and green. Near the end children were swimming in the river and romping on the lawn as their parents carried on conversation with each other, as old friends shared stories they had been waiting a long time to tell No one seemed to be in a hurry to leave. We didn’t want the evening to be over. And so the last voices heard on the lawn were voices promising that we would do it again next year, that First Baptist Church’s “river baptism” would become an annual event.
Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
the beautiful, the beautiful river;
gather with the saints at the river
that flows by the throne of God.
I’m on a staff mission trip this week, right here in the City of Richmond.
We had first talked about going to New Orleans, to assist in the endless, ongoing recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina, but then—because of the economy—we talked about going somewhere a little closer and more affordable, like West Virginia. Finally we decided to stay right here in Richmond, believing there is plenty of mission work to be done in our own city.
We were right about that.
This “mission trip” ties in perfectly with one of our regular rituals. You may not know this, but at the close of each staff meeting we stand around the table, join hands, and say the Lord’s Prayer. But when we get to that part that says, “on earth, as it is in heaven,” we say, “in Richmond, as it is in heaven.” It’s what I’ve been saying to the staff from the beginning, that I believe Jesus was trying to establish God’s kingdom on earth and that he called some disciples to help him do that. When they asked him to teach them to pray he said, “Pray that God’s kingdom would come, that God’s will would be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” And so I see it as our role—as a church and as a staff—to help Jesus bring heaven to earth. That’s why we pray at the end of our staff meetings, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, in Richmond, as it is in heaven.”
This week we are putting hands to our prayers.
Associate Pastor Steve Blanchard has organized the week so that we spend some time working at the church, some time working in the neighborhood, some time working in the poorer parts of the city, and some time working with refugees from the other side of the world. It really is a “Jerusalem-Judea-Samaria-and-to-the-ends-of-the-earth” kind of experience. So far it has involved a good bit of cleaning, painting, and heavy lifting, but it has also involved opportunities for the staff to work together in ways we rarely do.
I’ve moved furniture with Ron Maxwell, one of our custodians; swept floors with Reinaldo Vega, who maintains our facilities; and run an errand with Vanessa Carter, one of our cooks. The errand with Vanessa was especially enjoyable, not only because she is so much fun to be around, but because we were returning a piece of furniture that she and Doris (our other cook) had picked up by mistake. They were cleaning out a storage unit, and got so carried away with the project they loaded a set of shelves from the unit next door. It turns out those shelves belonged to a sculptor who was working in that unit, and who was none too happy when he found out someone had “stolen” his shelves. So I offered to go along with Vanessa to take back the shelves and offer an apology.
How often do I get to ride around Richmond in a pickup truck with Vanessa? Not often. She drove, and if you had seen the two of us you would have wondered what we were up to, with her driving and me talking (as usual) and gesturing with both hands as the shelves bounced around in the back of the truck. We returned the shelves with apologies and had a chance to talk to the sculptor about his work—beautiful pieces made of plaster in various stages of completion, some of them drying on (you guessed it) shelves. By the time we left he was laughing heartily and wishing us well and I got the feeling that even in that mission of apology, a little heaven had come to earth.
I’m glad we stayed in Richmond this week. Even though we will miss out on some of the camaraderie that comes from riding hundreds of miles in a church van, eating bologna-and-cheese sandwiches, and sleeping on the floor in a church basement, we will focus our attention on the city God has given us as our year-round mission field, and by the end of the week we will have a better understanding of what it will take to be an answer to the Lord’s Prayer.
The staff of Richmond’s First Baptist Church has been on an in-town mission trip this week, doing our part to see that God’s kingdom comes and God’s will is done “in Richmond as it is in Heaven.” One of the ways we have approached that mission is by loving our neighbors as we love ourselves (Matt. 22:39), and that’s why on Thursday most of the staff spent most of the day scrubbing down the walls and floors of Fox Elementary School right here in the Fan. I had a previous commitment that day and wasn’t able to participate, but the staff let me know (over and over again) that I had missed the hardest work day of the week. It didn’t go without notice, however. The two custodians at Fox Elementary were extremely grateful, and acknowledged that there was no way they would have been ready for opening day without the help of First Baptist Church. I hope that story will get around, and secure our reputation as “a good neighbor in a great neighborhood.”
I was back on Friday. That’s when we went out to Colonial Apartments to visit with the refugees. Jenny Minor (financial secretary) and I went together to visit a refugee from Nepal named Som and his sister Tulasa. Som was an English teacher in Nepal and carried the conversation effortlessly, telling us about his adjustment to the American way of life. It hasn’t been easy. He spends nearly two hours each day riding the bus to his job at a fast food restaurant where he works five hours and then turns around to come home. His sister Tulasa has not been able to find a job (even though she’s really good with children), and so the few dollars he earns are all they have in a household that also includes his mother. She came in near the end of our visit and sat silently in a chair in the corner. Tulasa sat on the daybed in the living room throughout our visit, smiling shyly and getting up only once to offer us sliced apples and glasses of soda. Som is worried that if she doesn’t find a job soon they will lose their apartment. Still, he is hopeful. “I have big dreams,” he said, smiling as if he were letting us in on a secret. “I want to be a filmmaker some day.”
Before leaving I asked for permission to say a prayer. I explained that Jenny and I were Christians, that we believed in God and believed that God had power to do things we couldn’t do. “Do you mind,” I said, “if we ask God to help you and your family?” No, Som said. He didn’t mind at all. And so I said a prayer that included every member of the family, asking God to bless them with life and health and work, and when I finished they all seemed grateful.
Jesus told his followers to go into all the world and make disciples (Matt. 28:19). It’s one of the ways we are trying to bring heaven to earth at Richmond’s First Baptist Church. But how wonderful it is when the world comes to us, when we can sit in an apartment less than five miles from Monument and the Boulevard and make friends with people from Nepal, when we can offer prayers for them and ask God to bless them in every way.
I missed the work day on Thursday and I’m sorry about that. I would have loved to help out at Fox Elementary School. But on Friday at Colonial Apartments I was doing some Great Commission work, and that’s why, for me,
I’m sure there are churches where that’s not a controversial subject, where the pastor simply tells women they have to submit and they all nod their heads dutifully. But Richmond’s First Baptist Church is not like that. If you put us all on one pew you would find the full spectrum of theological views represented, from very conservative to not very conservative at all. To preach on something like submission is to risk half the church getting up and walking out.
But it’s in the Bible, and I’m a biblical preacher. I wouldn’t want to ignore something like submission just because it’s controversial. In fact I find that those kinds of subjects force me to study harder, to dig deeper, and when I did that with this subject I turned up some interesting results.
In the New International Version (the one in the pew racks at First Baptist Church), Ephesians 5:22 says, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” That seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? And a lot of preachers preach it just that way. But when I’m dealing with a controversial subject I want to get as close to the source as possible, and so I looked this one up in the Greek New Testament. There Ephesians 5:22 says, “Wives to their husbands as to the Lord.” The word submit isn’t even in that verse, it’s in the verse above—Ephesians 5:21—which says, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
And here’s where it gets interesting:
In my Greek New Testament there is an English subtitle just before verse 21 that says, “Wives and Husbands.” If the Greek were translated into English it would look like this:
Wives and Husbands 21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ
In the New International Version that same subtitle comes just before verse 22, like this:
Wives and Husbands 22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
In the NIV that verse about submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ comes above the subtitle, as if it were unrelated to a discussion of husbands and wives. So, if I were only reading the NIV I might assume that the teaching on mutual submission belonged to the previous passage, that Christians in general should submit to one another out of reverence for Christ but when it comes to husbands and wives, wives should submit to their husbands. I think a lot of people have made that assumption, and I can’t blame them for it.
But I can blame whoever decided that the subtitle—”Wives and Husbands”—should go below verse 21 instead of above it. Look it up for yourself. It’s not in the original manuscript. It’s supposed to be a helpful way of identifying the subject matter that follows. But whoever put that subtitle in the Greek New Testament thought it should go before verse 21 and whoever put it in the NIV thought it should go after it, and it makes a difference—an enormous difference—in how you understand the passage. In one version you end up thinking that husbands and wives should submit to one another while in another version you end up thinking that only wives have to submit.
So I wonder: was it a group of men who made that decision? Was the placement of that subtitle related in any way to the idea of “keeping women in their place”? Where would the subtitle have gone if it had been a group of women making the decision? And how much difference does it make who gets to decide?
That’s the first sentence in David Kinnaman’s book Unchristian: what a new generation really thinks about Christianity…and why it matters (Baker Books, 2007).
Kinnaman is the president of the Barna Research Group, and he bases that conclusion on interviews conducted with thousands of young people across the country. He notes that their responses are not only neutral, but in many cases negative. Their complaints against Christianity—and the Christians and churches that have shaped their views—is that it is:
1. Hypocritical. Outsiders consider us hypocritical—saying one thing and doing another—and they are skeptical of our morally superior attitudes. They say Christians pretend to be something unreal, conveying a polished image that is not accurate. Christians think the church is only a place for virtuous and morally pure people.
2. Too focused on getting converts. Outsiders wonder if we genuinely care about them. They feel like targets rather than people. They question our motives when we try to help them “get saved,” despite the fact that many of them have already “tried” Jesus and experienced church before.
3. Antihomosexual. Outsiders say that Christians are bigoted and show disdain for gays and lesbians. They say Christians are fixated on curing homosexuals and on leveraging political solutions against them.
4. Sheltered. Christians are thought of as old-fashioned, boring, and out of touch with reality. Outsiders say we do not respond to reality in appropriately complex ways, preferring simplistic solutions and answers. We are not willing to deal with the grit and grime of people’s lives.
5. Too political. Another common perception of Christians is that we are overly motivated by a political agenda, that we promote and represent politically conservative interests and issues. Conservative Christians are often thought of as right-wingers.
6. Judgmental. Outsiders think of Christians as quick to judge others. They say we are not honest about our attitudes and perspectives about other people. They doubt that we really love people as we say we do.
Kinnaman looks at each of these perceptions in depth over the next six chapters of his book, before concluding with a chapter on how we might make the move from unchristian to Christian: that is, how we might become more authentically Christian in order to change the perceptions of young people who think we are too political, hypocritical, sheltered, judgmental, conversion-happy, and antihomosexual.
I haven’t finished the book yet, but the chapter on hypocrisy—just as an example—makes some good points. Kinnaman says that, based on his research, there is shockingly little difference between the behavior of born-again Christians and everybody else. And yet when you ask these Christians what their priorities are they say, “doing the right thing, being good, not sinning.” I’m sure there are shining examples of virtue among us, but when we say that our priorities are doing the right thing, being good, and not sinning, and then do the wrong thing, behave badly, and sin freely—that’s hypocrisy.
In what other ways might those young people be right about Christianity…and what will we do to change their perceptions?
For those of you who would like to continue the discussion started by my last post, or want to know more about the ideas presented in the book Unchristian, there is a website hosted by authors David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. Type in your e-mail address and you can download summaries of their research on how young Americans perceive Christianity, a conversation with Chuck Colson on the dangers of a faith based on conversion alone, and a group discussion in which three pastors talk about homosexuality and the church. Check it out at:
It’s been another good day at Richmond’s First Baptist Church. I finished my sermon series from Ephesians called “Reading Other People’s Mail.” Between services I visited one of the children’s Sunday school classes and told the story of Mary and Martha. I went to lunch with the Bible Explorer’s class, a group of about forty active senior adults. And then this evening I preached through all of Luke 15 at a retirement center on the South Side of Richmond. I’m just settling into my big, comfortable chair now, thinking about what to do with the rest of the evening.
On the table beside my chair is that book called “Unchristian,” which I keep delving into when I have a minute to spare. It’s fascinating, and it’s teaching me so much about what the younger generation thinks of Christianity. I reported briefly on the chapter about hypocrisy in one of my recent posts, but since then I’ve read the chapters called “Get Saved!” “Antihomosexual,” and “Sheltered.” I’m sure you can imagine what those are about. Young people these days think that Christians are not so much interested in them as human beings, but only as “targets” for conversion. Ninety percent of them think that Christians are “antihomosexual,” and this in a peer group that is enormously accepting of diversity. Most of them think that Christians are boring, unintelligent, old-fashioned, and out of touch with reality, so why would anyone want to be Christian?
Now, you and I know those things are not true, but how do we convince young people that they are not true? In each chapter of the book David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons begin with the existing perception of Christians, but then follow it with a “new” perception—what they would like for young people to think about us. Here they are:
HYPOCRITICAL
Perception: Christians say one thing, but live something entirely different.
New Perception: Christians are transparent about their flaws and act first, talk second.
GET SAVED!
Perception: Christians are insincere and concerned only with converting others.
New Perception: Christians cultivate relationships and environments where others can be deeply transformed by God.
ANTIHOMOSEXUAL
Perception: Christians show contempt for gays and lesbians.
New Perception: Christians show compassion and love to all people, regardless of their lifestyle.
SHELTERED
Perception: Christians are boring, unintelligent, old-fashioned, and out of touch with reality.
New Perception: Christians are engaged, informed, and offer sophisticated responses to the issues people face.
TOO POLITICAL Perception: Christians are primarily motivated by a political agenda and promote right-wing politics.
New Perception: Christians are characterized by respecting people, thinking biblically, and finding solutions to complex issues.
JUDGMENTAL Perception: Christians are prideful and quick to find fault with others.
New Perception: Christians show grace by finding the good in others and seeing their potential to be Christ followers.
Please note that these perceptions are based on thousands of interviews with young Americans and that the “New Perceptions” offered here are proposed by the authors, who would almost certainly describe themselves as conservative evangelicals. These are not wild-eyed liberals who want to do away with traditional Christianity, but concerned Christians who understand that we are about to lose a whole generation. How do we win them over? We talk to them, we listen to them, we care about them, and over time—by the grace of God—they begin to think of us differently.
Here’s an interview with Gabe Lyons, co-author of “Unchristian: what a new generation really thinks about Christianity…and why it matters.” I hope it will leave you wondering how you can love your neighbors in the new generation toward a life-giving, life-changing experience of Jesus.
Here’s an interesting article on how some of the megachurches have tried to tailor worship for twentysomethings, and what they have learned as a result. It’s another glimpse into the thinking, belief, and behavior of these young adults who are so precious to God but often uninterested in “going to church.”
I referenced this article in an earlier post (“When Cool Music Isn’t Enough“) but the online edition wasn’t yet available. Now it is.
I’m almost finished with the book Unchristian (some of you will be glad), but I wanted to share a quote from the chapter called “Too Political.” According to co-authors David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons 75% of young adults outside the faith think that Christians are “overly motivated by a political agenda, that we pomote and represent politically conservative interests and issues, [and that] Conservative Christians are often thought of as right-wingers” (p. 30). Again, this may not be true of you or your church, but it’s the way 75% of young adults outside the faith perceive us.
Do perceptions matter? You bet they do. And so, at the close of each chapter in the book, Kinnaman and Lyons have asked some well-known Christians to offer suggestions for how we might change the perceptions of young adults. I was shocked by what Jim Wallis had to say:
Christians should be involved in politics. The question isn’t “should we engage?” but “how?” The conservative religious movement in America today has been corrupted. Evangelicalism has been hijacked and usurped by partisan political forces. Conservative religion is now being driven and dictated by secular, right-wing political forces. So basically the conservative religious movement—or at least parts of it, the politicized part of it—has sold its soul to partisan politics (p. 179).
These are strong words, something Wallis (founder and executive director of Sojourners/Call to Renewal) has never shied away from. But I have found myself thinking about them over the last 24 hours and wondering if he is right. Did some political strategist do the math and realize that if he could get all the Christians in America to vote for his candidate he would win? And then did he sit around wondering which issue would have the most potential for bringing Christians over to his side? And then did he start telling us that his candidate was against abortion, which made us sympathetic (because, really, what Christian is going to be for abortion?). And have politicians been using Christians to win elections ever since, by finding out what we are for or against and convincing us that their candidates are for or against the same things? Wallis goes on to say:
Many young evangelicals see that this is just Republican politics masquerading as conservative religion. When they observe this, they don’t like it. And they are concerned that it could happen on the Left too—exactly what happened on the Right—the politiczing and corrupting of religion for the sake of political power. That’s not what they want.
The young people I meet don’t want to go Left or Right. They reject these narrow political orthodoxies. They’re not happy with Christianity being either a list of things you shouldn’t do, or just about being nice. They want to go deeper. Young evangelicals really want their faith and lives to count for something. They want their faith to somehow connect with changing the world…
“They want to go deeper,” Wallis says, which is what I would want for them and what I think Jesus would want, too. When he taught his disciples to pray that God’s kingdom would come and God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven he invited his disciples to join him in changing the world from what it was to what God had always dreamed it could be. He is still inviting his disciples to do that. How tragic would it be to confuse that vision of heaven on earth with only what can be achieved through the political processes of a fallen society?
I’m still reading Unchristian: what a new generation really thinks about Christianity…and why it matters. It’s not that I’m such a slow reader; it’s that I have other things to do. Today, for instance, I have to write a sermon about Jesus taking on the scribes and Pharisees over the issue of ritual handwashing (Mark 7:1-23), a topic not completely unrelated to the way many outsiders view the religious traditions of Christians.
Anyway, I thought I would give you a brief excerpt from Unchristian to keep the conversation going, because it’s a good one, and the comments I have received have been both thoughtful and provocative. I hope you will add to the conversation by clicking the word comments at the bottom of this post and telling me what you think.
In the chapter on Christians being “too judgmental” David Kinnaman writes: “Have you ever heard the Christian mantra, ‘Hate the sin, but love the sinner’? It is not a direct quote from the Bible, but it reflects the ideal most Christ followers embrace. They would like to extend grace and love toward others (the sinner), while firmly rejecting those attitudes and behaviors that contradict God’s standards (the sin). The problem is outsiders don’t think we are honest with ourselves. One of our interviews was with Jeff, a twenty-five-year-old agnostic from Oklahoma. He actually mentioned the catchphrase in the conversation: ‘Christians talk about hating sin and loving sinners, but the way they go about things, they might as well call it what it is. They hate the sin and the sinner.’”
Kinnaman goes on to say, “If our primary fixation is on the sin, it is virtually impossible to demonstrate love to an individual. Think of it: many outsiders, the broken people who need Jesus most, picture Christians as haters.”
Ouch.
What do you think? Is Kinnaman right? Do people outside the faith really think of us that way?
I’m reading the last few pages of Unchristian and looking for the author’s conclusions. OK, so we know that the younger generations have a negative perception of Christians, that they think we are hypocritical, judgmental, antihomosexual, too sheltered, too political, and too focused on making converts. What do we do about that? How do we change their perceptions?
Author David Kinnaman writes: “To shift our reputation, Christ followers must learn to respond to people in the way that Jesus did. In other words, to reverse the problem of unChristian faith we have to see people, addressing their needs and their criticism, just as Jesus did. We have to be defined by our service and sacrifice, by lives that exude humility and grace” (p. 206). Kinnaman sums up with four suggestions for changing a new generation’s perception of us: 1) respond with the right perspective, 2) connect with people, 3) be creative, and 4) serve people. “We have to respond to people in the way that Jesus did,” he says, and concludes by asking, “”What image of Jesus do people get from your life?”
Gabe Lyons, who commissioned the research contained in the book, writes: ”It comes down to this: we must become Christlike again. No strategy, tactics, or clever marketing campaign could ever clear away the smokescreen that surrounds Christianity in today’s culture. The perception of outsiders will change only when Christians strive to represent the heart of God in every relationship and situation. This kind of Christian will attract instead of repel. He is provoked to engage instead of offended by a decadent culture. She lives with the tension of remaining pure without being isolated from this broken world. When outsiders begin to have fresh experiences and interactions with this new kind of Christian perceptions will change, one person at a time. When they have catalogued enough experiences with this kind of Christian to outweigh the negative ones, the reputation will change. In due time the name Christian will come to represent something refreshing and positive. One new friendship, a compassionate hug, a kind word, a positive outlook, or a well-meaning affirmation will go a long way in seeing Christ’s reputation revitalized throughout our culture” (pp. 224-226).
What about you? What do you think it will take to make the move from Unchristian to Christian? And how soon can we start?
At the end of my last post I asked you what it would take to make the move from Unchristian to Christian, which is just what the authors of the book asked some well-known Christian leaders. Instead of having a reputation for being hypocritical, antihomosexual, judgmental, sheltered, too political, and too focused on making converts these leaders dreamed that in thirty years Christians might have a reputation for being loving, bold, gracious, authentic, courageous, admired, engaged, countercultural, focused on justice and—most importantly—focused on Jesus. One of my favorite responses was this one from Leroy Barber, President of Mission Year:
The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven: just a little of it leavens the entire loaf.
What if the church, over the next thirty years, truly lives the life that Jesus as taught us to live? What if we love our enemies, pray for those who hate us, and offer our coat when our hat has been taken? Are we ready to truly sacrifice and watch the world move toward the kingdom of God?
The kingdom of heaven is like a man who loses a pearl in a field and purchases the whole field to find it.
If Jesus is as valuable as we say he is, then what will we give up for him to remain alive in us? Can we, the church, spend the next thirty years valuing Jesus Christ and whatever he asks of us above all else? Can we even imagine what the world would become?
If the church will choose now to live this way, we can confidently look forward to seeing our culture influenced and changed. My hope is that when I am seventy-two, I will have seen the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our God. I imagine a world lacking divorce, sexual promiscuity, and poverty, and overflowing with peace, mercy, and justice.
Isaiah prophesies that the old wasted cities will be restored. He says that we shall be called repairers of the breach, the restorers of the streets.
And then there was this bold vision from Brian McLaren, a founding member of emergentvillage.com:
In thirty years research could tell us that when people think “Christian” they think things like this:
Christians are the ones who love people, whoever they are—gay or straight, Jew or Muslim, religious or atheist, capitalist or not, conservative or liberal.
Christians are the ones who have done more than anyone in the world to stop the HIV/AIDS crisis.
Christians are the people who gravitate toward the poor and who show compassion through generous action and seek justice so that the systemic causes of poverty are overcome. They call the rich to generosity, and they call on rich nations to work for the common good.
Christians are people who believe that art and creativity are important, so they consistently produce the most striking, original, and enriching art.
Christians are willing to give their lives for the cause of peace. They oppose violence in all its forms. They will lay down their lives to protect the vulnerable from the violent.
Christians care for the environment. They don’t see is as raw materials for economic gain, but they see it as the precious handiwork of their Creator.
Christians have personal integrity. They keep their marriage vows and are aware of how destructive misused sexuality can be. Yet they are compassionate toward people who make sexual mistakes, and they never consider themselves superior.
Christians build harmony among races. You always know that you’ll be respected when you’re around a Christians.
It may be that neither of these visions is your vision for the future of Christianity, but isn’t it important to have one? A huge, hopeful, vision of what Christians can do, what the church can be, and how the world can change as a result of our efforts over the next thirty years? That’s what keeps me going. It’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. A vision of how the world might be transformed by the followers of Jesus, and how through our feeble and fallible efforts we might really help him bring heaven to earth.
One of my Facebook friends asked a question yesterday. He said, “Somebody help me here. Didn’t Reagan and H.W. Bush make speeches at the outset of school years? Why the uproar over Obama doing the same thing?”
The first few responses were positive. People said things like, “Good question” or, “Yes, that’s true” or, “I don’t know what the uproar is about.” But very quickly a fight broke out on Facebook, with some people affirming the President’s right to speak to children in our country’s public schools while others made comparisons to George Orwell’s “1984″ and the educational policies of Adolf Hitler and Chairman Mao. 26 comments later my friend wrote, “I think I’m going to wait a while before I ask another political question.”
It seems to be that way these days, that you can’t ask a political question without starting a political fight, and the fights that break out seem to break out along party lines. It’s as if we’ve chosen up sides, put on our red and blue uniforms, and gone to war with each other. It’s a civil war, but there is nothing civil about it.
The rhetorical attacks against our current president have been especially vicious, but long before Barack Obama people were ridiculing the person and policies of George W. Bush. When did we get like this? And how? Who told us it was OK to disrespect the office of the president of the United States?
Talk radio, that’s who.
I don’t listen to talk radio as a rule, but the few times I’ve tuned in I have been shocked by the vitriol ( vit-ri-ol, noun: something highly caustic or severe in effect, as criticism) that pours out of my speakers. And every attack leads to a counterattack, so that even without touching the dial on my radio the volume and intensity of the debate goes up, whether there is someone actually there in the studio or the talk show host is only reacting to what he has read and heard from “the other side.” I feel my blood pressure going up when I listen to talk radio, my grip tightening on the steering wheel, and I wonder how it would affect me if I listened all the time.*
What if we treated our brains like we treated our stomachs, and tried to put only good things in there? What if we did “touch that dial,” and tuned in to a classical music station or listened to a good book on tape (maybe even the Good Book)? It’s there, in the Good Book, that you find Paul saying, “Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8).
I wonder how our public discourse might change if we did that.
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*Incidentally, my dad had a fender-bender a few years ago, and when I asked him how it happened he confessed, sheepishly, that he had been listening to talk radio at the time.
My friend Rod Coates put me on to this interesting post by the Internet Monk called “Jesus, Faith, and a Universe of Fear.” It’s a fascinating look at how the media plays into our fears, even the fears of Christians, who are commanded over and over again to “Be not afraid.”
Yesterday I went down to the basement level at First Baptist Church to greet the homeless men and women who come for hot showers, clean clothes, and the generous love of Jesus they receive from our faithful volunteers.
After I had offered a word of welcome and a prayer a man came up to me holding one of those little devotional guides that we keep on the tables. He showed me something he had read that fit in nicely with my prayer and then we began to talk.
This man was bearded, dirty, smelly, and swarthy from being in the sun all summer, but his eyes were bright and intelligent and as we talked he told me that he and his wife were looking for work, and hoping to get on their feet. “She’s got a place in one of the shelters,” he said, while he was sleeping wherever he could, most recently under a bridge. He told me that they were both hard workers and that he used to work with the rodeo. “Oh really,” I asked, “what did you do?” “I was a bull fighter,” he said, grinning. “You know…a rodeo clown. I did that for 15 years.”
And that’s when it happened. That’s when this man began to change right before my eyes. No longer was he a homeless drifter; he was a former rodeo clown. And then he began to tell me about the church he had belonged to in North Carolina, and what a wonderful church it was, and how he worked with the homeless when he was a member there. “That was before I got laid off,” he said, quietly, and then told me about his work as a heavy equipment operator for a construction company. Everything had been going great until the recession hit. He and his wife had been living in a three bedroom house with an in-ground pool. He was driving a Ford Explorer. “Now look at me,” he said, embarrassed. “My wife’s in a shelter and I’m sleeping under a bridge. But if I could just get cleaned up—get a shower and a shave, some clean clothes—I might be able to find a job, and when I do I’d love to come help you out with this homeless ministry.” He swallowed hard and added, “God’s been awful good to me.”
I could hardly believe the transformation: where moments before this smelly, bearded, wreck of a human being had stood before me now I saw a brother in Christ, down on his luck but working hard to get back on his feet again. I imagined him clean-shaven, well-dressed, and smelling like Old Spice cologne.
But here’s the problem: it took me several minutes to see him like that, to hear the story of what he had been and to imagine what he could be again. But God saw it in him from the beginning. In fact, in God’s eyes, he was never a homeless drifter, but only always a precious child.
Dear God: help me see people as you see them, as if the transformation had already taken place, and they were—already—what you had always dreamed they could be.
Some of my recent posts have generated concerns that I’m getting “too political” on this blog, that my criticism of talk radio is an attack on the political views of those who listen to talk radio. Not so. As I said in a subsequent comment, “the vitriol doesn’t only come from one side. You can balance the ranting and raving of talk radio with some of the smug, holier-than-thou comments that come from the liberal elite.” My concern here is not with politics, but with the level and tone of our public discourse. We don’t seem to be able to talk to each other these days without yelling at each other.
And so I was pleased to see this good example, forwarded by a reader. Chuck Colson was asked by a young mother shortly before the start of the new school year how she could help her children understand that she does not support the President’s policies. I’ll let you read the question and Chuck’s answer for yourself, but please notice how he turns down the intensity of the question, how he moves from generalities to specifics, and how he helps this woman voice her real concerns without disrespecting the office of the president. While Colson’s own views are conservative and Christian, I think he sets an example here the whole country could learn from.
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My question relates to parenting Christian children who attend public schools. Specifically, I want to know how to help my children understand that I do not support the current President’s policies and values, as many of them are not biblical. I am furthermore concerned about his September 8th address to a captive public school audience. What kind of conversation do I have with them if they are in attendance at school the day that so much solitary focus is given to the President’s agenda? —Jennifer Pixley
From Chuck Colson:
Good question, Jennifer. I have two words for you: honesty and respect. First, you need to be honest with your kids about your opinions of some of the President’s policies. But I would recommend that you don’t paint with broad strokes. Be specific. Tell them which policies you disagree with, and why.
For example, you may want to tell them why you don’t support the president’s policies on abortion, because we know that every child—even in the womb—is precious to God and created in His image.
But respect is also important. You may wisely criticize the policy, but it does no good to disparage the man who is the elected leader of our country. In fact, encourage your kids to pray for the President (as I do every day)—that he would be filled with God’s wisdom. It’s the right thing to do, and it will show your children that even though you disagree with (perhaps many of) his policies, as a good citizen, you respect the office of the President.
By the way, if the President talks to the students about the importance of education—as the White House says he will—it could be very positive. But whatever he says, use this as a teaching opportunity to discuss the President’s speech with your kids. Tell them the things you approve of or things that you don’t approve of. You need to be very balanced with them.
I was going through the serving line at a church luncheon a few months ago when I found myself standing beside one of our bright, capable high school students (there are so many!). Since I’m not with the youth that often she seized the opportunity to let me know what was on her mind. “I’ve been thinking about getting baptized again,” she said. “Really?” I answered. “I’d love to talk to you about that.” And so, when we had filled our plates, we sat down together.
She told me she had been so young when she was baptized the first time that she didn’t really know what she was doing. Now that she was older and understood more she thought maybe she should get re-baptized. “What do you think?” she asked, glancing at me sideways while she buttered a roll.
I told her the truth.
I told her there are very few of us who really know what we are doing when we get baptized, but we do it anyway, holding onto our fragile faith in Jesus even as we hold our noses to be dipped down under the water. We come up dripping wet, gasping for the first breath of our new life in Christ and at first it feels wonderful: we’ve been washed clean, we’ve gotten a fresh start, and the church welcomes us with open arms. But it usually isn’t long after that that we discover we are still capable of sin, and that we sin with embarrassing frequency. We wonder what we should do. Get back in the baptistery? Get those post-baptismal sins washed away, too?
No.
I like to tell young people that becoming a Christian means making a commitment to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus. That’s hard. That’s really hard. We will surely stumble along that path. But when we do there are others in the church who can pick us up, brush us off, and help us get back on our feet again. And we will occasionally wander off the path and lose our way, but when we do there are brothers and sisters who will call our names and help us get back on track again.
Sometimes along this spiritual journey we have experiences that are so deep and meaningful we want to mark them in some way, we want to let everyone know that something profound has happened. Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of ways to do that in the church. We begin to think of the last time we did something like that and our thoughts naturally turn to baptism.
I told this young woman that my baptism at age 14 was the beginning of my spiritual journey, but not the end of it. When I was 20 years old I had a kind of “prodigal son” experience. I had dropped out of college for a semester and was working on a pig farm in West Virginia (really!). I was raking leaves in the farmer’s front yard one day when I realized how long it had been since I felt close to God and how the only time in my life that I had been truly happy was when I was doing what I thought God wanted me to do. Right then and there, with tears in my eyes, I asked the heavenly Father to let me come home again.
And then, when I was 25, I wrestled with the call to ministry. I prayed about it for months—hard!—before I finally felt a sense of peace wash over me. That was another holy moment. And then when I was 27 I was ordained as the new pastor of a little church in Kentucky. Those people came down the aisle and laid their hands on my head, blessing me and promising to pray for me as their pastor. The tears streamed down my cheeks. I had that same sense of God’s powerful presence when I was called to my church in North Carolina, and then Washington, and then here in Richmond.
I told this girl about those significant moments along the path of my spiritual journey and told her that at each of those places I had stacked up a pile of stones—not literally, but figuratively—so that when I looked back I could see those piles every few hundred yards along the path leading all the way back to the day of my baptism—reminders that in each of those moments God had been with me in a powerful way.
Maybe we need to have a way to do that in church. Maybe when God has been working in our lives we could come down the aisle and stack up a pile of stones right there in front of everybody, to let them know we have reached another milestone in our spiritual journey. If we had an option like that I doubt that this girl would have even thought about getting baptized again. Because getting back in the baptistery would have been like starting all over again, wouldn’t it? And who wants to do that when you’ve come so far?
Here’s a story from Sunday’s sermon that everyone seemed to enjoy. It’s based on that passage in Mark 9 where Jesus takes a little child into his arms and tells his disciples, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me” (vs. 37).
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At one of my churches some of us used to go to a nearby trailer park on Saturday afternoons to work with the children there. On one particular Saturday afternoon, a little girl came dragging her baby brother along with her.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Doo-Doo,” she answered.
“Doo-Doo?!”
“Uh-Huh.”
So, Doo-Doo it was. He was really too young to be there. We usually worked with children four and older. But his sister held him on her lap and for a while he did fine. But then he began to get tired, and then he began to cry, until the tears spilled down his fat brown cheeks and his nose began to run. It went on for a long time until finally, exhausted by all that crying, he fell asleep right there in the middle of the floor. I begged the children not to wake him but to their delight they found that they couldn’t wake him, no matter how hard they tried. They were poking him, prodding him, clapping their hands in front of his face and shouting, “Doo-Doo!” I began to feel sorry for him, and asked someone else to take over while I took him home.
He lived just a few trailers away. And as I walked with him in my arms I looked down at his face. That peaceful expression, at last. Those tightly curled eyelashes. The salty tear-tracks on his cheeks. The dried mucus under his nose. Away from all those other children I could focus my attention on this one child, and as I did I began to imagine the life that was ahead of him: probably he was just one more child in a trailer that was already too full. And probably he would go off to school when he was old enough, without any preparation, without anyone having ever read Dr. Seuss to him. And probably he would try, for a while, until he failed so often he stopped trying. And then he would stumble through a troubled adolescence and into an even more troubled young adulthood. And if the statistics proved true in his case there was a good chance that he would never live to see his twenty-fifth birthday.
As I held him in my arms I seemed to see his whole life stretched out before me, his whole, short, sad life. And my heart went out to that child, and I almost cried myself. I came to the trailer where he lived and knocked on the door. I waited until a tired and bored-looking young woman yanked it open. “Is this your baby?” I asked, holding him out. “Yeah,” she said, as if it wore her out to admit it. “He fell asleep,” I said. And then I put him into her arms and watched as she jerked him inside and shoved the door closed with her hip. For a full minute I stood there, wondering what I could do. And then I turned and said with a sigh, “God, please take care of Doo-Doo.”
He was just a little kid. And in the eyes of the world he will probably never amount to anything. He won’t be a soccer star, or the pastor of a prominent church, or the president of the United States (I mean, really, can you imagine the bumper stickers?). Yet in that moment—in that crazy, upside-down, Kingdom of God moment—I saw him the way Jesus saw him.
I was invited to a retreat at Richmond Hill recently where area pastors were going to be talking about bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to Richmond, Virginia. Well, how could I resist? That’s what I’ve been talking about since I got to Richmond!
So we gathered for worship in that beautiful old chapel, and then had a delicious meal in the refectory, and then moved on into a meeting room that looks out over the city, a place where people have been praying for Richmond since 1866 and still do. Pastoral Director Ben Campbell got us started with prayer and then invited each of us to share our vision for ministry.
There were about twelve of us around the table, from Baptist, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Christian, and Pentecostal churches. We took our time, talking about the work we do and the neighborhoods in which we do it. But as we talked it became clear that our primary concern was for the churches we have been called to serve, about how to make them bigger, stronger, happier, healthier. When we finally got back around to Ben he said, simply, “I love the city more than I love the churches.”
I suppose I should have expected that. Ben is not the pastor of a local church; he’s the director of a spiritual community that has as its mission praying for the city of Richmond. But something about the way he said it made me realize that we pastors have a tendency to focus on what is happening within the walls of the church rather than what is happening in the neighborhood, the city, the nation, or the world. We could easily end up with glittering edifices perched on top of garbage dumps.
But not Ben.
I pictured Ben driving around Richmond jotting down notes about the people and things his community needs to pray for: sanitation workers, educational institutions, police officers, and prisoners. He has lifted his sights above the concerns of a single church to take in the concerns of the whole city.
But here’s the thing: God’s sights are even higher. Not only does he love and care for Richmond, he loves and cares for the world. That’s his mission, and he’s looking for churches that will help him do that. So, at Richmond’s First Baptist Church we’ve been asking not, “Does the church have a mission?” but “Does the mission have a church?” In other words, does God’s mission have a church? Will First Baptist, Richmond, help him love the world?
Well, we want to, of course. We want to do whatever God asks. But it will require lifting our sights a little higher. Instead of seeing only the beautiful buildings and grounds of First Baptist Church we will have to start seeing the whole city, even the parts that aren’t so beautiful. And then we’ll have to lift our sights even higher, to see the world God loves and to think about how we might share his love with that world. That’s not easy for us, or for anyone. It goes against the grain of our human nature. But it does seem to be essential to the divine nature, and part of what Jesus was trying to teach his disciples.
In him the love of God dropped into the world like a stone into a pond, and began to ripple outward. As we follow his example may that same love ripple outward from the church to the neighborhood to the city to the state to the nation and, finally, fully,
I went down to the basement level of First Baptist Church on Wednesday to greet the people who come for our shower ministry. I try to do this every week, partly because I love the people and partly because it keeps my ministry “real.” Instead of visiting only with the sweet-smelling and freshly scrubbed Christians of First Baptist Church I get to spend some time visiting with people who are down on their luck and out on the streets.
It was one of those people who was telling me on Wednesday that the bodies in which we live are only the temporary accommodation of our souls. ”Your body is like a house,” he said, “and the real you lives inside it. Or maybe it’s more like a spacesuit…or an earthsuit! Yeah, that’s it!” he said, slapping the table. He seemed pleased at having coined a new word.
We talked about life inside the earthsuit for a while and as we did I couldn’t help thinking about his. It looked like he had been wearing it for seventy years or more (or maybe he had only been wearing it for sixty hard years). He had a long, white beard and dark glasses that made it impossible for me to see his eyes. I’ve heard that eyes are the “window of the soul,” and I had a feeling that if he would take off those dark glasses I could catch a glimpse of the real him inside the suit. But he kept the glasses on and kept on talking about his earthsuit.
When I saw him last week he was wearing a yarmulke. I asked him about that and he told me it came from the gift shop at the Messianic Jewish synagogue just down the street. He said the Hebrew letters on it spell out “Jesus is the Messiah.” “I wouldn’t wear it if it didn’t say that,” he told me. “And I wouldn’t wear a Muslim prayer cap. I’m a Christian. But I like to wear that yarmulke,” he said, lowering his voice, ”because I have a little bald spot on top.”
“You don’t have a bald spot,” I said, grinning. “Your earthsuit does!” And somehow that made it easier, to think that it wasn’t really him who was getting older and balder, but only his “earthsuit” wearing out like everything else we own eventually does. I wished him well, said goodbye, and then walked away with the slight limp I’d had since running the day before.
I went to hear the Richmond Symphony perform Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana this afternoon. It was incredible. I had heard it before at the Kennedy Center in Washington but this was even better. I had to pinch myself to believe it was happening right here in Richmond, at the newly restored and absolutely breathtaking Carpenter Theatre. Fortunata Imperatrix Mundi (“Fortune, the Empress of the World”) has been one of my favorites for years, but I think it was performed this afternoon with as much gusto as I’ve ever heard. I’m attaching this You Tube clip of the opening section, “O, Fortuna,” to give you a taste of it. Turn up the volume!
It happened at both services on Sunday. I gave an invitation, stepped down from the pulpit for the hymn, and sang all four verses of “Let Your Heart Be Broken” while waiting to see if anyone would come forward to join the church or give their heart to Jesus.
Nobody came.
That’s not unusual in my experience. In fact, before coming to Richmond’s First Baptist Church it was far more unusual when someone did come down the aisle. Those were smaller congregations, with fewer prospects, but even so, on those Sundays when nobody came down the aisle, someone would invariably try to comfort me afterward. “I felt so sorry for you standing down there all by yourself,” they would say. “Especially after such a good sermon!”
That connection between a good sermon and someone coming down the aisle dates back to the “revivalism” that originated on the American frontier. James F. White claims that it was evangelist Charles G. Finney (1792-1895) who domesticated some of the forms of frontier worship and developed a pattern that soon came to dominate American Protestant Worship. He writes:
Characteristically, its normal Sunday service had three parts: a song service or praise service sometimes caricatured as “preliminaries,” a sermon, and a harvest of new converts…. The 1905 Methodist Hymnal suggested an order of worship that ended with an invitation “to come to Christ or to unite with the church.” Those so persuaded were to come forward during the singing of a final hymn. It is basically the order of worship still used in thousands of United Methodist churches in the South. Sunday after Sunday, Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, and many other denominations make this three-part form their basic order of worship. It reflects revivalism’s basic technique of warming up, calling to conversion, and reaping the results in calling those converted to come forward for baptism.
Effectively merchandised today by radio and television, the basic structure has not changed much except to become still more polished. Recent attempts to move the sermon back to a place earlier in the service are often resisted because the expectation is still strong that the sermon should lead to immediate results. Among Disciples and Churches of Christ, the sermon often comes after the Lord’s Supper so it can produce obvious fruit. Americans respect success, and here is a form of worship that has proven itself thoroughly successful in reaching the unchurched who happen to be present or have turned on the radio or television (Protestant Worship, pp. 177-178).
Understood in this way, the service has as its goal not worshiping God but making converts, and it is structured toward that end: the singing of emotional hymns to soften hearts, the “sales pitch” of the revivalistic preacher, and the hymn of invitation (usually “Just As I Am”). If nobody comes down the aisle after the first few verses of the hymn the preacher might ask the organist to pause while he makes a second appeal. If nobody comes after that he might try again after a few more verses. This is why “Just As I Am” is the perfect invitational hymn: it has lots of verses (I’ve heard as many as seventeen), and each one ends with the words, “O Lamb of God, I come! I come!”
If people think that’s what the worship service is for, then you can see why they would feel sorry for me if nobody came down the aisle, especially if it was a good sermon. They would be thinking: “The preacher made an excellent sales pitch, but couldn’t seem to close the deal. What a pity. What a shame!”
So, I have a question for all those preachers who get left standing at the altar from time to time, and for all those people who sit in the pews shaking their heads and feeling sorry for them:
I’ve been doing a storytelling series on Wednesday nights called, “In the Beginning: Seminal Stories from the Book of Genesis.” I’m always surprised by the number of people who show up for these Bible stories at Richmond’s First Baptist Church. Maybe they just love the Bible that much, or maybe everybody loves a good story. These are good ones: the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah and the Ark.
When I finished the story of Cain and Abel last week I asked if there were any questions. Bernard Peatross raised his hand and asked where all these descendants of Adam got their wives from, especially Cain. You can understand why he might ask. If Adam and Eve were the only people on earth, and they had these two sons named Cain and Abel, and Cain killed Abel out of jealousy and was banished by God, then how do you explain the next part of the story, which says, “Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch” (Genesis 4:17).
Wife!? What wife? Where did he get a wife?
That’s what Bernard wanted to know, and he may have had an ulterior motive. Bernard is a sweet, elderly man who has learned how to roll napkins into beautiful paper roses that he douses with perfume and gives away to women. “Where did Cain get his wife?” he asked, as if he had more than an academic interest in the question. I joked that maybe Cain had gotten her from a mail-order catalogue, but Bernard was too quick for me. He shot back with, “Or from e-Harmony.com!”
Good one.
But after the session I talked with Danny Taylor, who wanted a real answer. He said someone had told him that Cain had married his sister, thereby committing incest. He was concerned about this. How could it be in the Bible? I hadn’t remembered that Cain had a sister, actually, but there it was in chapter 5, verse 4: “He [Adam] had other sons and daughters.” “Did Cain marry one of those daughters?” Danny asked. “Was that incest?” I pointed out that the Bible doesn’t tell us that Cain married his sister; it just says that he knew his wife and she conceived and bore Enoch. I told Danny we have to pay close attention to the what the Bible says, but sometimes we have to pay even closer attention to what it doesn’t say.
I followed up on this in my opening comments last night. I said, “We want to know where Cain got his wife. We’re curious about that. We’d like an answer. But the Bible seems to have no interest in that question. It just says, ‘Cain knew his wife.’ So, what do we do? We start looking around in the Bible for answers. We discover that Adam had other sons and daughters. We put two and two together. Cain must have married his sister! And before we know it we have assumed that Cain committed not only murder but incest.”
Wait.
I think we need to realize that if we have a problem with where Cain got his wife it only means that we have a problem. The Bible doesn’t. We bring to it our modern, Western questions and this ancient text just shrugs its shoulders. We insist on answers and it remains silent. But it’s not the Bible’s problem: it’s ours. And maybe we should say it just that way—that we have a problem with the question of where Cain got his wife but the Bible does not. That’s not a question it has any interest in answering.
“So,” I said, in conclusion, “you can do what I do. When you have questions like this you can jot them down on your ‘List of things to ask God when I get to heaven.’ You can write: ‘Where did Cain get his wife?’ And then you can stick that list in your pocket and hope that when you get to heaven…
I’m in Washington, DC, this morning, staying at the College of Preachers as part of a 24-hour personal retreat. “The College,” as they call it, is an experience in itself: stone arches and polished woodwork and leaded glass windows looking out over a lush green courtyard called “The Garth.” I came here for the first time in the Winter of 1994, for a week-long preaching workshop with Barbara Brown Taylor, who had just been named one of the twelve most effective preachers in the English-speaking world. We gathered in the common room for the first session and I knew I was in for a treat. The room was paneled in dark wood with ceiling beams, a Persian rug, and (on that bitterly cold day) a cheerful fire crackling in the huge stone fireplace.
I didn’t even know what Barbara Brown Taylor looked like. For the first ten minutes I assumed she was the boisterous African-American woman welcoming us to the College. But eventually that woman turned and introduced us to our workshop leader, the “skinny white woman” sitting next to her. Barbara (as she asked us to call her) wasn’t as loud as our host, but when she started to speak I couldn’t stop listening, leaning in close to savor every word. It became clear to me within a few minutes that she was someone who loved language, and beauty, and truth, and God—not necessarily in that order.
I’ve listened to her lecture a dozen times since then. I’ve read her books and heard her preach. Just yesterday I described to someone what her preaching is like. “It’s like she’s a first grade teacher,” I said, “taking her class on a field trip through a meadow. When they come to a stream she tells everybody to take off their shoes and roll up their pants legs, and then she wades out into the clear, shallow water and starts turning over stones as her class gathers around. ‘Look at that!’ she says, as a crayfish goes scooting backward from beneath a stone, and the children say, “Ohhhhh!”. But it’s not stones she’s turning over: it’s Scripture. And it’s not first-graders on a field trip: it’s people in the pews. But listening to her preach is no less an adventure, and there is no less joy of discovery.”
When she writes about preaching Barbara says she likes to bring something into the pulpit “even when it’s still covered with twigs and mud” and she’s not quite sure what it is yet. I love that idea, that you could find something in the Bible so fresh and new you couldn’t wait to tell people about it. It’s what I strive for in my own preaching. I’d rather be an archaeologist, digging around in this ancient text and making fresh discoveries than a museum curator, showing off the treasures of an earlier civilization for the thousandth time. I may lack the certainty of the curator, but I’d like to think that I make up for it in enthusiasm. I’d like to think that someone out there in the pews would believe there are still fresh discoveries to be made in the Bible, and would open its pages like an archaeologist sinking a spade into the ground.
Thanks, Barbara, for helping me think about the Bible like that, and for always making me want to be a better preacher.
I went to the fair with my daughter Ellie this year. I’d love to tell you all about it, but she did such a good job on her own blog site, I’ll let her tell you herself. Click HEREfor Ellie’s experience of a perfect fair on a perfect day, including her video coverage of the incredible pig race!
And when you get a chance rent the classic film from 1945, “State Fair.” We watched it together last night and enjoyed it thoroughly. I can’t believe people used to get that dressed up to stroll the midway! Or, that a whole crowd of people would suddenly break into song at the prompting of the band leader. Those were the days, weren’t they?
I’m at the beach on an overcast day, reading Philip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 1995). In the introductory chapter Yancey writes about the Jesus he knew as a child in Sunday school, the Jesus he knew in Bible college as a young man, and the Jesus he came to know through books, films, articles, and his own careful reading of the Gospels. I was thrilled to see how his understanding of Jesus evolved over time, because too many Christians seem to carry around in their heads the Jesus they knew in Sunday school—”someone kind and reassuring with no sharp edges at all,” as Yancey writes, a comforting kind of “Mister Rogers” character. It’s hard for me to imagine that any serious reading of the Gospels could produce such an image of Jesus. Yancey writes:
The more I studied Jesus, the more difficult it became to pigeonhole him. He said little about the Roman occupation, the main topic of conversation among his countrymen, and yet he took up a whip to drive petty profiteers from the Jewish temple. He urged obedience to the Mosaic law while acquiring a reputation as a lawbreaker. He could be stabbed by sympathy for a stranger, yet turn on his best friend with the flinty rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan!” He had uncompromising views on rich men and loose women, yet both types enjoyed his company.
One day miracles seemed to flow out of Jesus; the next day his power was blocked by people’s lack of faith. One day he talked in detail of the Second Coming; another he knew neither the day nor the hour. He fled from arrest at one point and marched inexorably toward it at another. He spoke eloquently about peacemeaking, then told his disciples to procure swords. His extravagant claims about himself kept him at the center of controversy, but when he did something truly miraculous he tended to hush it up. As Walter Wink has said, if Jesus had never lived, we would not have been able to invent him.
Two words one could never think of applying to the Jesus of the Gospels: boring and predictable. How is it, then, that the church has tamed such a character—has, in Dorothy Sayers’ words, “very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies”? (p. 23).
That’s not the Jesus I know; I hope it’s not the One you know either.
It’s my daughter Catherine’s fall break, and the rest of the family is using it as an excuse to spend a long weekend at the beach. It’s a little cool here, but the breezes blowing in off the water are the kind that make you close your eyes and inhale deeply, and then let it all out in a rush of relaxation. It was in that frame of mind, and with a fresh mug of hot coffee, that I logged onto the First Baptist website on Sunday morning for the live webcast of our 8:30 worship service.
I was impressed by the quality of the feed: full screen video and sound that came in loud and clear through my earbuds (thank you David Powers and the rest of the Communication Team!). I heard Ralph Starling welcome us to worship, Eunice Kim play the prelude, Millie Flinn read the Bible. I heard the Men’s Chorus sing, watched Bob Higgins dedicate the offering, listened to the choir sing the anthem. And then I heard Lynn Turner preach, and even though I wasn’t there in the room I felt the full impact of her sermon. At one point I laughed out loud. At another point I felt a lump rise in my throat.
All of this was happening in the sanctuary of Richmond’s First Baptist Church while I was more than a hundred miles away, participating in worship through an open laptop computer, with earbuds in my ears. And I was doing it while sitting at the kitchen table, in my jammies, with a cup of hot coffee. I can see how some people might decide to worship that way all the time. It beats getting up and getting dressed, doesn’t it? Looking for a parking place and sitting on an uncomfortable pew? Plus, no one passes an offering plate when you’re sitting at home alone. But there is something missing, and that something is the human touch.
I never read it, but I remember a book called Megatrends by John Naisbitt, published some thirty years ago. One of the chapters was “High Tech/High Touch” which I understood to mean that as our society becomes more and more high tech, we will crave the human touch more than ever. All those hours sitting in a cubicle at work, entering data on a Microsoft spreadsheet; all those hours in an empty apartment, watching what you TIVO’d the week before; all those hours playing “Farmville” on Facebook, while you wait for status updates from your Facebook Friends. I can see how that kind of life would make you so lonely you would rush into the arms of the church on Sunday morning, and how important it would be that—when you got there—someone offered you the love of Jesus, a bone-breaking hug, and a cup of hot coffee (a reminder to all of us to give in the same way we would like to receive).
So, as good as this time at the beach with my family has been, I’m looking forward to being back at church next Sunday. Worshiping by webcast is a wonderful option, but it’s no substitute for the real thing.
In the many conversations we’ve had at First Baptist Church about welcoming members from other denominations the primary objection is this: that infant baptism is not bibical and we don’t want to welcome anyone as a full member who hasn’t been baptized in the biblical way. I agree that baptizing believers by immersion is the biblical way. You read about it again and again in the book of Acts and Paul refers to it repeatedly in his letters. My fresh insight is not about how we baptize but who we baptize. Think about it:
In the Bible the candidate for baptism is, typically:
An adult
Who has grown up Jewish or Gentile
Hearing the good news about Jesus for the first time
Responding in faith
Repenting of his or her sins
Entering the new life in Christ
Through the waters of baptism
How different is that from the candidate I often immerse:
A child
Dedicated to God as an infant
Having heard about Jesus all her life
Now professing her faith publicly
And joining the other members of the church by
Taking the next step in her Christian journey
Through the waters of baptism.
That’s beautiful, but it is not—in the strictest sense of the word—biblical.
The biblical pattern is just what you would expect at a time in history when very few people had heard about Jesus, when the word about him was getting out for the first time through the preaching of the apostles. The New Testament tells the story of first-generation Christianity, but it does not tell us the story of the generations that followed. It doesn’t tell us, for example, what happened when Lydia—the first convert on European soil—brought her children and grandchildren to church. We have to look to church history for the answers to those kinds of questions and what church history tells us is that within the first few generations of Christianity people were baptizing babies. Why? Because they didn’t want them to be left out of this wonderful new life they had discovered.
We don’t want our babies to be left out of it either, but we try to follow the biblical pattern as closely as possible by waiting to baptize until they can choose Jesus for themselves. Until then we bring them to church to be dedicated, we nurture them in the Christian faith, we teach them everything we know about Jesus and then we hold our breath, waiting for them to say, ”I’m ready.” It’s as close to the biblical pattern as we can come, but it is not the biblical pattern.
It’s the difference between making disciples and raising them.
A great poem, shared with me by my friend Roberta Damon:
What, finally, shall we say
In the last moment
When we will be confronted
By the Unimaginable,
The One
Who could not be measured
or contained
In space or time
Who was Love
Unlimited?
What shall we answer
When the question is asked
About our undeeds
Committed
In his name—
In the name of him
For whose sake we promised
To have courage
To abandon everything?
Shall we say
That we didn’t know—
That we couldn’t hear the clatter
Of hearts breaking—
Millions of them—
In lonely rooms, in alleys
and prisons
And in bars?
Shall we explain
That we thought it mattered
That buildings were constructed
And maintained
In his honor—
That we were occupied
With the arrangements
Of hymns and prayers
And the proper, responsible way
Of doing things?
Shall we tell him
That we had to take care
Of the orderly definition
of dogmas
So that there was no time
To listen to the
sobbing
Of the little ones
Huddled in corners
Or the silent despair
Of those already beyond
sobbing?
Or, shall we say this, too:
That we were afraid—
That we were keeping busy
with all this
To avoid confrontation
Wih the reality of his
meaning
Which would lead us to
repentance—-
That it was fear that
kept us
Hiding in church pews
And in important boards
and committees
When he went by?
—Ursula Solek
Bonus: Take a look at these picturesand the accompanying story by Ryan Phillips, grandson of Irma Lee Hardie, one of our regular volunteers in Community Missions.
In my last post I talked about the difference between making disciple and raising disciples.
When it comes to making disciples, no group of Christians has been more committed than Baptists. We take the Great Commission seriously, heeding Jesus’ call to “go into all the world and make disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19-20). When I talk to people of other denominations about what it means to be Baptist I say that one of the things that sets us apart is our historic emphasis on missions and evangelism. We see it as our duty to share the good news about Jesus with the whole world. But it occurs to me that in both missions and evangelism we are bringing the Gospel to adults, primarily, just as those first apostles did. In that sense we are being truly biblical, following the pattern of the Book of Acts by going to those places and people who have yet to hear about Christ and boldly sharing our faith. When those people respond to the invitation to become disciples we baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Nothing could be more biblical.
But again, the Bible doesn’t tells us what happened when those new Christians began to bring their children and grandchildren to church. We’ve had to “invent” that part of our tradition. Early on in the history of the church people began baptizing babies, because they didn’t want them to be left out of this wonderful new life they had discovered. For centuries that was the norm in the undivided Church of Jesus Christ. But during the years of the Protestant Reformation people began to read the Bible for themselves and the people who came to be called “Baptists” noticed that there was no mention of infant baptism in the Bible. Partly out of reverence for Scripture, and partly as an act of protest against the state-controlled church, they stopped bringing their babies for baptism, waiting instead until their children were old enough to make up their own minds about Jesus and profess their faith for themselves. Only then would they baptize them, initially by pouring water over their heads but eventually by immersion, plunging them under the water just as the Greek word baptizo suggests.
That’s been “the Baptist way” ever since.
But we don’t ignore our children in those early years. We don’t wait until they reach the age of accountability and then start telling them about Jesus. On the contrary, we bring them to church as soon as possible after they are born (Elmer West jokes that his mother brought him to church a good while before he was born). We dedicate them in a beautiful ceremony which acknowledges the truth that even before they have done one thing right or wrong God loves these children and wants them to be his. We bring them to the church nursery, where dedicated Christians hold them and rock them and sing to them and change their diapers. We teach them about Jesus in Sunday school and Vacation Bible School; we do everything we can to raise them in “the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Eventually they come to that place where they are ready to make up their own minds about Jesus and when they do we celebrate. We baptize them publicly and rejoice right along with the angels in heaven.
What strikes me is the similarity between that approach and the approach of almost every other Christian denomination. In the Presbyterian church of my childhood, for example, I was baptized as an infant. Yes, some water was sprinkled on my head in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, but essentially it was a way of acknowledging that even before I had done one thing right or wrong God loved me and wanted me for his own. I grew up in that grace, shining my sturdy Buster Brown shoes on Sunday morning and clipping on my bow tie for church; studying the tiny pink paperback catechism I had been given so I could answer questions like, “What is the chief end of man?” (Answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever); and learning to recite the Apostle’s Creed, which begins “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord…” If I had stayed in that church long enough I would have eventually attended confirmation classes, where the pastor would talk to me about what it means to be a Christian and belong to a church. Finally, at the age of 12 or 13, I would have stood before the congregation and professed my faith, saying out loud so everyone could hear me, “Jesus is Lord!”
When you look at these two ways side by side—the Baptist way and the Presbyterian way—you see that in each we do something in infancy to acknowledge God’s grace and we do something at a later point to acknowledge the child’s faith. In between the two we do everything we can to help the child grow up Christian, because it’s not only Baptists who want their children to become mature believers some day: it’s Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, Pentecostals, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians as well.
When I look back through the difficult questions in that little catechism and the dense theology of the Apostle’s Creed I think somebody was trying hard to make a thoughtful Christian out of me, and so if it sometimes seems that I think too much about these things you can do what I always do:
If you’ve read my last two posts you know that I’ve had a fresh insight about baptism and church membership. In the first post I commented on the difference between the child who comes down the aisle in a present-day Baptist church and the adult who would have been a candidate for baptism in the first century. In those days people were hearing about Jesus for the first time. They responded in faith, repented of their sins, and entered the waters of baptism. That “New Testament pattern” is just what you would expect under such circumstances, and it is still the pattern we follow when people are hearing about Jesus for the first time.
But the child who comes down the aisle in a Baptist church has likely heard about Jesus all her life. She was probably dedicated in the church, rocked by caring Christians in the nursery, taught to love the Bible in Sunday school. When she finally makes up her mind about Jesus and comes down the aisle we celebrate right along with the angels in heaven, and as soon as we can we baptize her in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. I call that “raising” a disciple, and in my second post I pointed out the striking similarities between the way we do it and the way people of other denominations do it.
But here’s the thing:
In our sincere desire to follow the “New Testament pattern”—to be thoroughly biblical in our approach to baptism—we Baptists have sometimes treated disciples who were raised in other denominations as if they were not disciples at all. When they present themselves for membership we try to make disciples out of them by asking them to enter the waters of baptism just like those first century converts. But they are not converts, they are Christians, and although I have searched the Scriptures I cannot find a single place where a Christian is baptized. If that’s true then our current practice at Richmond’s First Baptist Church is a departure from the “New Testament pattern,” in which the only appropriate candidate for baptism is a new convert to Christianity.
We need to think about these things, and we need to consider the implications carefully. To insist that Christians of other denominations be baptized before they can become members of our church is to treat them as if they were new converts; it is to empty their previous Christian experience of any legitimacy. Not only that, but it empties “believer’s baptism by immersion” of its meaning; it turns this powerful symbol of dying and rising with Christ into little more than the fulfillment of a membership requirement.
I heard such a story just recently. A couple from another denomination told me they had visited a Baptist church in the area for several months, but when they inquired about membership the pastor told them they would have to be immersed. “But we’re Christians!” they insisted. “We’ve been Christians for a long time.” “Oh, I’m sure you are,” he said. “I have no doubt about that. But it’s a requirement for membership in this church.” They were indignant, and on the verge of taking their membership to another church when he offered this option. “What if we wait till everyone else goes home on Sunday and I baptize the two of you privately? That way, if anyone asks if you’ve been immersed, you can say yes!”
“And so we were dunked,” they said, chuckling at the memory. And so the life-giving, life-changing symbol of baptism was reduced to the fulfillment of a membership requirement, in an empty church on a Sunday afternoon, with no celebration, no singing of hymns, and no angels rejoicing in heaven—only a preacher in rubber chest waders dutifully doing what his church required as two long-time Christians allowed themselves to be “dunked.”
Whatever else that may be, it is not the “New Testament pattern.”
I’ve been writing about baptism and church membership until my head hurts. I need a break and you probably do, too. So I thought I’d share my favorite joke, which I heard years ago on Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion.”I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I have, although a joke (like a sermon) is always better heard then read.
—————————————–
These two men are walking through the woods one day and they come across a big hole in the ground. Now this hole is huge, like some sort of endless pit. So the one man says to the other, “I wonder how deep this hole is?”
He then proceeds to pick up a rock and toss it in the humongous hole. They listen… nothing. The other man then grabs a large stick and throws it in…. Nothing.
At this point the two men are really intrigued over this large hole. So they look around a little for something bigger to throw in, and they come across a railroad tie. They both grab an end, walk it over to the hole, and throw it in.
The men are looking down the hole when all of a sudden they hear this noise in the woods. They look over and see this goat running all over the place. It’s zigging and zagging between trees and going all over the place. Then it runs right up and dives into the hole.
Now the two men are thinking, what was that? They had no idea what that goat was doing. So they decide to just keep walking.
A little ways down they run into a farmer, and the farmer asks them if they’d seen his goat. The two men tell him that they saw a goat come running out of the woods and jump into this huge hole. But the farmer says, “No, that wouldn’t have been my goat.”
Next month I’m going to Guadalupe Mountains National Park in West Texas to do some hiking with long time backpacking partners Chuck Treadwell and Joe Perez. Chuck and I have been hiking together for thirty years, spending one week a year in some of the most beautiful places in America. Joe is a mutual friend from college who has joined the party only in the last six or seven years, but he’s a natural addition. And while Chuck is actually my brother-in-law, we often drop the “in-law” part. You don’t do that much hiking together without developing deep and lasting bonds.
So, on this day off I’m getting my backpack out of storage and dreaming of the mountains. I’m thinking about being in the desert with my brothers-in-boots and looking up at a night sky studded with stars.
I’m in Oklahoma City with about fifty other Baptist pastors, talking about how to do missions in a changing world. One of them told us an interesting story about something that happened to him a few years ago.
He said he got a visit from a young woman who was engaged to be married to a member of his church. “Is it true,” she asked, “that before I can be married here I have to join First Baptist Church?”
“Um, well, yes, that is our policy.”
“I can’t join this church,” she said. “I’m a member of the Christian Missionary Alliance church. We take missions seriously.”
“Well, so do we,” he said, proudly. “We’re Baptists!”
“Humph,” she said. “How many Baptists are there?”
“Um, I think there are about…”
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “Sixteen million. Sixteen million Baptists! And how many missionaries do you have?” she asked.
“Maybe you could tell me,” he said, settling back into his chair.
“Five thousand,” she said. “That’s pitiful! If there were sixteen million people in my denomination we’d have 100,000 missionaries!”
She was just getting warmed up.
“How many people in this church?” she asked.
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,” he said.
“Six thousand, five hundred,” she said, crossing her arms. “And how many missionaries do you have?”
“Um…none?”
“That’s right!” she said, triumphantly. “None. I can’t join this church. Y’all don’t take missions seriously.”
“And so,” he said, finishing the story, “she joined as a watchcare member.”
Baptists don’t usually get taken to school like that when it comes to missions. We’ve been sending missionaries to the ends of the earth for decades! But maybe the girl from the Christian Missionary Alliance had a point.
Part of what it means to be missional is understanding that the church is not here only to send missionaries: the church is here to be sent. In the tenth chapter of Matthew Jesus sends his disciples to tell people that the Kingdom has come near—to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, and cast out demons. In other words, to do the very things Jesus was doing. In the twentieth chaper of John he breathes on his disciples, tells them to receive the Holy Spirit, and then says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” To be a disciple of Jesus, then, is to be sent. It’s not just the career missionaries; it’s all of us.
So, if that girl from the Missionary Alliance Church were to ask me how many of our members are missionaries I’d want to tell her this:
I went to Oklahoma City last week mostly because of the guest list. The invitation seemed deliberately vague: a group of some fifty Baptist ministers and missionaries were going to be talking about how to do missions in the 21st century. There were some hints about “finding new ways” that suggested the old ways were no longer working. I didn’t know what to make of that. But as I looked down the guest list I began to think that a couple of days talking with those people would be worth the trip.
So I went.
I hoped that we would spend some time talking about the missional church and the idea that missions is no longer only “over there” somewhere, but also “right here,” where we are. Instead we spent most of our time talking about how to send missionaries to other parts of the world. I began to get the feeling from this mostly West-of-the-Mississippi delegation that they had been disenfranchised by the Southern Baptist Convention and disappointed by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, but still felt compelled by Christ to carry the Gospel to the world. How would they do that?
One large church is already sending missionaries on its own. An independent non-profit is sending missionaries to the world’s unreached people groups. A number of the churches are doing groundbreaking community missions right where they are. The consensus that emerged was that there ought to be some way to make all this information and all these resources available to any Great Commission Christian. And in the 21st century context in which we live, we started talking about a website.
Did you get that? Not a denomination, not a convention: a website. We decided that what we didn’t need was a top-down organization telling local churches what to do. We’re Baptists, after all, who believe that local churches are autonomous—free to determine their own mission and ministry. But we also believe those churches can do more together than they can alone, and if there were some way to collaborate online, well, who knows what might happen?
We talked about a site with the social networking genius of Facebook and the open-source, information-sharing genius of Wikipedia, so that churches interested in working in a particular area could network with each other, share stories and ideas, maybe even travel together. There might be a whole category called “Housing the Homeless,” or “Sharing Your Faith Across Cultures,” or “Mosquito Nets for Africa.” Suppose you end up in a chat room talking about how to help refugees from Nepal when they come to your town, or uploading video from a river baptism in Bolivia?
I don’t know what will happen next, but I do know I came home buzzing with ideas and thinking about how we might apply some of these same strategies to our work here at First Baptist Church. At the very least, then, what happened in Oklahoma City is that I got excited about missions—again.
In these difficult economic times I’m trying hard not to say, “I have to go to work.” I’m trying to say, “I get to go to work.” And on a day like this one I’m especially grateful that I get to go to work in a place that looks like this. I took this picture from the sidewalk in front of 2709 Monument Avenue ten minutes ago. And now?
It did this morning at community missions, down on the basement level of our building. I try to go down there every Wednesday morning to greet our homeless neighbors and make them feel welcome. I usually share a thought and say a prayer. I don’t always know what my “thought” is going to be until it’s time to speak, but this morning everything came together.
I was watching people come in from outside, shaking the rain off their caps and jackets. I knew that it wouldn’t be long before they start to come in shivering from the cold. So when Brenda Andrews announced (confidently) that I was going to share a good word I began to tell them about David.
For four weeks now on Tuesday nights I have been telling the story of King David out at Westminster Canterbury, the elegant retirement community on Westbrook Road. This week I was talking about the end of David’s life and how, when he was an old man, he just couldn’t stay warm. “He would go to bed at night and shiver beneath his blankets,” I said. “His bones would ache with the cold, his knees would knock together, and no matter how many covers they piled on top of him he couldn’t get warm.”
I could see people nodding their heads; they’d had nights like that, except they hadn’t had a bed to sleep in and not nearly so many covers.
“You may have read in the Book of Ecclesiastes,” I said: “‘Two can stay warm under the same blanket, but how can one stay warm alone?’” (Ecc. 4:11).
I’m not sure they had read it, but I could see that it made sense to everyone in the room. “Yes, two can stay warm under the same blanket!” Some of them smiled at memories they would have been embarrassed to share.
“So David’s advisors suggested that they find the prettiest girl in Israel and let her try to keep David warm at night. This idea pleased the king (Oh, did it?), and so they held a national beauty contest, going through every village from Dan to Beersheba looking for the prettiest girl in the land. They finally settled on Abishag the Shunnamite, and from that night on (although the Bible makes it clear that she had no “relations” with him), Abishag slept in David’s bed and kept him warm.”
I don’t think most of the people at community missions had heard that story before, though it’s right there in 1 Kings, chapter 1. They smiled at the image of the old king finally warm at night, and some of them must have wondered how they would stay warm when the winter winds begin to blow.
“The thing I love about David,” I said, “is that he was so human, so real. He had been a great warrior—a giant killer!—but he got to be an old man who couldn’t stay warm at night. He loved God and wanted to please him but he also made some terrible mistakes along the way and had to beg for God’s forgiveness. Still, he was remembered as the greatest king who ever lived in Israel, and his story gives me hope.”
“If God can use someone like David, he can use all of us, can’t he?”
I mentioned in worship last Sunday that a $6 mosquito net will keep an average of two children in Africa from dying of malaria. That means that $3 could save the life of a single child. The question is: is it worth it?
T. Thomas, who has served as a foreign missionary with both the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, is now heading up a non-profit called “His Nets.” I heard T. speak in Oklahoma City last week, and he talked about asking a group of women in Ghana how many of them had lost a child to malaria.
Every hand went up.
“Now think about the church you serve,” he said. “If you asked your congregation how many of them had lost a child to malaria, how many hands would go up?”
None.
That story, and that question, have haunted me in the past week. Instead of spending dollars I’ve been counting lives. Coffee on Tuesday was $1.85, or a little more than half a life. Lunch today was a little more than $7, or just over two lives. The fleece cap I bought this afternoon to keep my head warm while I’m backpacking in the Guadalupe Mountains? Nearly seven lives.
I know there are thousands of good causes to give money to, and I’m not trying to get you to take up this one. I’m just telling you how it has affected me. I’m probably going to put a jar on my kitchen table and start collecting loose coins and bills, giving up a cup of coffee or two during the week (ouch!), or skipping lunch from time to time and using that time to pray for Africa.
I have two daughters. Thank God, they are healthy and strong. But what if they’d been born in Africa and I couldn’t afford a mosquito net? And what if somebody in this country didn’t think it was worth $6 to send one?
God help us.
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Click HEREto download a free brochure from “His Nets”
Matt Jeffreys is the pastor of Ridgeline Community Church in Temecula, California. He’s a young guy—hip, smart, and passionate about his ministry. I was having lunch with him at this meeting in Oklahoma City last week and he was telling me the story of what happened to him at the Sonic drive-in that just opened up in Temecula.
“My wife and I were kind of excited about the new Sonic,” he said, “because we used to go all the time when we lived in Texas. So, I pull up in one of the spaces, place my order, and while I’m waiting for my food to come I start tapping my foot to the music they’re playing over the speaker system. I don’t know what the song is, but I like it, and so I take out my iPhone, hit “Shazam” (an application that “listens” to music and identifies both the song and the artist), and it tells me what the song is. And then it (the iPhone) asks me if I want to download the song from iTunes (another Apple innovation that lets you buy music online for 99 cents a song). ‘Why not?’ I thought. And so I clicked ‘yes’ and the song began to download but it was taking, like, forever!”
And that’s when he noticed that the song had downloaded in less than a minute. It’s not like he was doing anything else. He was waiting for his food to come. But he had grown impatient with his technology for not being faster than it was.
Matt thinks (and I agree) that this is a symptom of the time in which we live, when anything less than instant gratification seems like too long to wait. When I asked his permission to tell this story he added these examples:
“Just this last week I found myself clicking my garage door remote over and over as I was getting closer to my actual driveway, trying to get the door to go up the very second the signal would reach. And I started pushing it well before I knew it would open. I guess I do that regularly, I’ve just never noticed until I started tracking the symptoms of ‘hurry sickness’ in my own life. It’s not enough that my garage door will open automatically, I want it to open FASTER. Pathetic.
“Also this last week, while going through the drive-through at Chick-fil-A in Temecula, I caught myself driving up to the window from the place where you order while the girl who was taking my order was still talking! She was just saying ‘have a great day & pull-up…’ but I was already on my way. I didn’t want to spend an extra 1-2 seconds while she finished talking. Again, pathetic!”
He concludes by saying:
“It’s definitely a different day in human history. Everything is so fast and easy, yet we’re more exhausted & frazzled than ever.”
Matt is being too hard on himself. He’s just part of a culture that’s been pushing us faster and faster, promising us more and more, and yet, as he says, we often end up “exhausted and frazzled.”
So what does Matt do? Every once in a while he asks his staff to turn over their iPhones and for 24 hours they all “fast” from the instant gratification of modern technology. They take things slowly, as they come, and try to rediscover the rhythms of life before the Internet, before the computer, and even before the 1950’s era Sonic Drive-In. They try to follow the stern command of Psalm 46:10:
I started early—on Monday afternoon—sitting in Starbucks with a tall coffee, reading over the text I had chosen from Revelation 21 and taking copious notes. By the time I got to my lectionary study group on Tuesday morning I was overflowing with ideas. I looked at the commentaries on Tuesday afternoon and talked with my worship planning team about how all this might come together. I was excited. I followed up with further study on Wednesday and then did what I usually do on Thursday, my day off, which is to let all those ideas simmer on the back burner of my brain, hoping that late in the afternoon an “Aha!” will come to me—an interesting way to preach that particular text.
That didn’t really happen for me on Thursday, and I ran out of time to draft an outline on Friday, which is something I usually try to do. So, on Saturday morning I sat down with my laptop at the kitchen table and began to write. By five o’clock that evening I had written nearly eight pages, double-spaced, which is more than enough for a sermon. But when I sat down in front of the fireplace later to edit what I had written (and give out candy to the occasional trick-or-treater) I didn’t like it at all. It looked like three different ideas that didn’t really hold together as one sermon. I began to strike out whole sentences, and then paragraphs, and by 10:30 last night I was down to only the introduction of the sermon, which I liked better than anything else I had written.
So, I did what I usually do in a situation like that. I went to bed and asked the Holy Spirit to come whisper in my ear during the night and tell me how to salvage the sermon. When I woke up at five I had some ideas about how to do that. I started jotting down fresh outlines and trying the words out loud while the clock kept ticking toward time to go. Because I had set the clock back the night before I had an extra hour, but it still wasn’t enough. I showered and dressed and hurried out the door into the rain with some radically revised pages in my hand and very little idea what would actually come out of my mouth when I began to preach.
I’m not writing this so that those of you who heard the sermon will console me with your comments. I just wanted you to know what it’s like to be the preacher on those weeks when things don’t come together in the way you had hoped. After a day like today I’m always grateful that I got through, and that when I opened my mouth some words came out (I hope they were good and even more than that I hope they were God’s), and I’m grateful that the people of God are usually willing to give the preacher another chance next week. It makes me all the more eager to get an early start.
So, as darkness falls over the city of Richmond on this Sunday evening, I’m thinking ahead to next Sunday’s sermon, and already starting to take notes…
I laughed out loud over one of the comments on my last post. After reading about how I had struggled for days and hours to come up with a sermon I still wasn’t satisfied with JP commented: “Is this an introduction for your class called ‘Anyone Can Preach’ beginning this Wednesday?”
Good one, JP. Please notice the class is not called “Anyone Can Preach Well.”
Anyway, I was looking over what I didn’t preach last Sunday, the pages and paragraphs I cut from the sermon. I had been thinking I might re-tell the entire biblical story in just a few minutes—gallop from Genesis to the last few pages of Revelation and then slow the tempo down so we could appreciate together how God brings his story to an end. I wanted to set it up as if the congregation were sitting in a theatre, watching all this happen on the stage in front of them. I wrote a couple of pages along those lines but they just didn’t seem to “fit” into the sermon I was trying to preach. So, rather than relegate them to the “sermon notes” file, where they will never see the light of day, I thought I would share them here.
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God’s Story: the Broadway Version
Aristotle once said that every good story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Well, Revelation is the end of God’s story. It began with creation, as the curtain opened on total darkness and the voice of God commanded, “Let there be light!” Suddenly the lights blazed and there was God himself, calling all things into being: moving his finger in a sweeping arc across the sky to create the firmament; piling up heaps of earth and letting the waters run between them; calling forth vegetation until the earth was covered in green; putting the sun, moon, and stars in their proper places; conjuring up fish and fowl of every kind so that dolphins leaped from the waters and osprey swooped low; and then calling forth living creatures of every kind, cattle and sheep and creeping things; and finally making humankind in his own image and giving them dominion over all the earth.
Which may have been a mistake.
Because, in the middle of the story, humans have their way. Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit; Cain kills his brother Abel; people become increasingly wicked; God decides to destroy them. He sends a flood to wipe out all life on earth with the exception of righteous Noah. God starts over again with Noah’s family but it isn’t long before the earth is as corrupt as before, with people trying to build towers to heaven and knock God off his throne. So, instead of thinking everyone will love him and serve him God chooses one man: Abraham. Maybe his family among all the families of the earth will be faithful. But you know how it goes: there’s Abraham, Isaac, and rascally Jacob; there’s Joseph down in Egypt and Moses setting the people free; there’s wandering in the wilderness and promises to obey, but in the end God’s people go chasing after every other god in the land and God has no choice but to send them into exile. They stay in Babylon for a long time and when they come back to Israel they are humbled. They hardly dare to lift their voice to God and God doesn’t lift his voice to them. For four hundred years there is silence in the land, and then the voice of a prophet—John the Baptist—crying, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near!”
And so it had.
Jesus, the son of God, came walking the earth like an ordinary human being. He healed the sick, cleansed the lepers, raised the dead, and cast out demons. He promised eternal life to anyone who would believe in him, and for all his troubles they nailed him to a cross. He died and was buried, but God raised him from the dead, set him on a throne in heaven, and gave him the name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. But that’s not how it went. Some people confessed Christ as Lord; most people did not. Through the years his church has struggled to survive and when it has succeeded things have usually gotten worse rather than better. Church fights, church splits, protestant reformations and countless denominations, and now here we are, at the beginning of the 21st century when it seems that Christianity is in decline and most people don’t come to church anymore. Good Lord, what’s going to become of us? Is this the end of the story?
Well, no, probably not.
Aristotle said that every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. God’s story had a definite beginning but the middle isn’t so definite. We don’t know if we are near the beginning of the middle, or in the middle of the middle, or near the end of the middle. For all we know we might be seconds away from the end, and maybe we are. Someone may be standing at the side of the stage even now, getting ready to pull the rope that closes the curtain. People sometimes ask me if I think we are living in the last days and when I ask them why they say, “Because things can’t get much worse than they are, can they?” I don’t know. It seems that in every age people have thought things were as bad as they could get. Those Christians the book of Revelation was written for didn’t know how it could get any worse. They were shaking in their shoes, grieving the loss of those who had been killed, and terrified that they might be next. Out of that chaos and horror these words come sounding forth:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:1-4, NRSV).
Now that’s good news, no matter how the sermon turns out.
We had the privilege of hearing Leena Lavanya last night at Richmond’s First Baptist Church. Leena is from Narasaraopet, Andhra Pradesh, India, where she works with lepers, AIDS orphans, prostitutes, and others who rank among the poorest of the poor. She has been called “the Baptist Mother Teresa” and is this year’s winner of the Baptist World Alliance’s prestigious Denton and Janice Lotz Human Rights Award.
Leena was raised by Christian grandparents (her grandfather was a seminary professor and one-time vice-presisdent of the Baptist World Alliance). When she was in her early twenties she won a scholarship to attend the Baptist Youth World Conference in Harare, Zimbabwe, where she was challenged by noted speaker Tony Campolo to dedicate her life to Christian service. “He talked about that hymn ‘I Surrender All,’” she said. “But he told us, ‘We don’t surrender all. We surrender a dollar, a pound, a rupee.’” In that moment Leena decided that she would surrender herself completely to Christ.
And then she began to tell us what happens when you do that.
It started when she found herself seated beside a prostitute on a bus. She struck up a conversation with the woman and eventually told her, “You should give up your prostitution. You should start a new life.” “Fine!” the woman answered. “If you will feed the eight people in my family I will start a new life.” And so Leena and her grandparents gave up breakfast for three months, saved the money, and bought this woman a sewing machine. Then they spent six months teaching her how to use it. Now the woman owns her own small business.
Leena talked about finding a boy crying by the side of the road. His family had learned that he was HIV positive and put him out of the house. “They had a nice barn,” Leena said. “Their animals were well-kept. But they put their son out of the house!” She had to do something. And so she found a place for this boy to live, and then discovered that there were others like him. Now there are twenty boys living in an orphanage run by her ministry, Serve Trust.
One of the most touching stories she told last night was about her work with “leprous people.” She said these people lie under trees outside the towns and villages. No one will touch them; no one will take care of them. But she had surrendered all to Jesus, and Jesus ministered to lepers. And so, approaching them hesitantly, she began to talk to these people. She began to feel compassion for them. Before long she was caring for them, even dressing their sores. “Why are you doing this?” one man asked her. “Because of Jesus,” she answered, cheerfully. “Who is Jesus?” he asked, and she began to tell him. When she finished he told her through tears that he wanted this Jesus in his life.
But he also wanted to be baptized, and since Leena is not a pastor she asked the pastor of the local church to baptize the man. The pastor came and had a look at him, but eventually shook his head and walked away. The man was very sick, almost at the point of death. How would they get him into the baptistery? So, Leena began to tell him that it wasn’t absolutely necessary to be baptized. Look at the thief on the cross! Jesus said, “This day you will be with me in Paradise.” But the man still wanted to be baptized. He pleaded with her. Finally, Leena said, “I dragged him over to a water spigot, turned it on, and as the water poured over his head I said, ‘I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!”
He died a month later.
She went on and on like that last night, telling one story after another about seeing human need, feeling the pain of others, and doing something about it. Her organization, Serve Trust Ministries, operates a home for the aged, a home for lepers, homes for HIV/AIDS-infected children and adults, and an HIV/AIDS counseling center. She has been instrumental in starting more than 40 Baptist churches in the villages surrounding her hometown of Narasaraopet. And yet she retains the bubbling enthusiasm of the young woman who went to a Baptist Youth Conference in Zimbabwe nearly twenty years ago. When she finished speaking last night I stepped to the podium and said:
“Now I think we know the difference between surrendering some and surrendering all.”
I’m still learning details of yesterday’s Fort Hood massacre, and haven’t processed enough to be able to comment on it at this point, but it brought to mind this essay written by David Von Drehle shortly after the shootings at Virginia Tech. David is an editor-at-large for Time magazine and a close personal friend. Few people are able to put thoughts and feelings into words as well as he.
We won’t know, for some time now, what prompted Major Malik Nadal Hasan to open fire on his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, but David’s thoughts on what has motivated other shooters is worth reading. As we remember the victims and their families, may we continue to pray for peace in the world, and in the troubled souls of those who aim to kill.
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It’s All About Him by David Von Drehle, Thursday, April 19, 2007
My reporter’s odyssey has taken me from the chill dawn outside the Florida prison in which serial killer Ted Bundy met his end, to the charred façade of a Bronx nightclub where Julio Gonzalez incinerated 87 people, to a muddy Colorado hillside overlooking the Columbine High School library, in which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold wrought their mayhem. Along the way, I’ve come to believe that we’re looking for why in all the wrong places.
I’ve lost interest in the cracks, chips, holes and broken places in the lives of men like Cho Seung-Hui, the mass murderer of Virginia Tech. The pain, grievances and self-pity of mass killers are only symptoms of the real explanation. Those who do these things share one common trait. They are raging narcissists. “I died–like Jesus Christ,” Cho said in a video sent to NBC.
Psychologists from South Africa to Chicago have begun to recognize that extreme self-centeredness is the forest in these stories, and all the other things– guns, games, lyrics, pornography–are just trees. To list the traits of the narcissist is enough to prove the point: grandiosity, numbness to the needs and pain of others, emotional isolation, resentment and envy.
In interviews with Ted Bundy taped a quarter-century ago, journalists Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth captured the essence of homicidal narcissism. Through hour after tedious hour, a man who killed 30 or more young women and girls preened for his audience. He spoke of himself as an actor, of life as a series of roles and of other people as props and scenery. His desires were simple: “control” and “mastery.” He took whatever he wanted, from shoplifted tube socks to human lives, because nothing mattered beyond his desires. Bundy said he was always surprised that anyone noticed his victims had vanished. “I mean, there are so many people,” he explained. The only death he regretted was his own.
Criminologists distinguish between serial killers like Bundy, whose crimes occur one at a time and who try hard to avoid capture, and mass killers like Cho. But the central role of narcissism plainly connects them. Only a narcissist could decide that his alienation should be underlined in the blood of strangers. The flamboyant nature of these crimes is like a neon sign pointing to the truth. Charles Whitman playing God in his Texas clock tower, James Huberty spraying lead in a California restaurant, Harris and Klebold in their theatrical trench coats–they’re all stars in the cinema of their self-absorbed minds.
Freud explained narcissism as a failure to grow up. All infants are narcissists, he pointed out, but as we grow, we ought to learn that other people have lives independent of our own. It’s not their job to please us, applaud for us or even notice us–let alone die because we’re unhappy.
A generation ago, the social critic Christopher Lasch diagnosed narcissism as the signal disorder of contemporary American culture. The cult of celebrity, the marketing of instant gratification, skepticism toward moral codes and the politics of victimhood were signs of a society regressing toward the infant stage. You don’t have to buy Freud’s explanation or Lasch’s indictment, however, to see an immediate danger in the way we examine the lives of mass killers. Earnestly and honestly, detectives and journalists dig up apparent clues and weave them into a sort of explanation. In the days after Columbine, for example, Harris and Klebold emerged as alienated misfits in the jock culture of their suburban high school. We learned about their morbid taste in music and their violent video games. Largely missing, though, was the proper frame around the picture: the extreme narcissism that licensed these boys, in their minds, to murder their teachers and classmates.
Something similar is now going on with Cho, whose florid writings and videos were an almanac of gripes. “I’m so lonely,” he moped to a teacher, failing to mention that he often refused to answer even when people said hello. Of course he was lonely.
In Holocaust studies, there is a school of thought that says to explain is to forgive. I won’t go that far. But we must stop explaining killers on their terms. Minus the clear context of narcissism, the biographical details of these men can begin to look like a plausible chain of cause and effect–especially to other narcissists. And they don’t need any more encouragement.
There’s a telling moment in Michael Moore’s film Bowling for Columbine, in which singer Marilyn Manson dismisses the idea that listening to his lyrics contributed to the disintegration of Harris and Klebold. What the Columbine killers needed, Manson suggests, was for someone to listen to them. This is the narcissist’s view of narcissism: everything would be fine if only he received more attention.
The real problem can be found in the killer’s mirror.
It’s 7:30 on a Saturday morning. The front page of the newspaper is still scratching its head over the bloody massacre at Fort Hood on Thursday, wondering what would motivate a man to open fire on his fellow soldiers. Just below that on the page is the shocking news that U.S. unemployment is above 10 percent for the first time since 1983 (Yikes!). But there’s good news, too: the Jefferson Hotel has managed to hold on to its five diamond rating, Thomas Dale High School beat Meadowbrook 35-34 (which is good news if you’re from Thomas Dale; not so good if you’re from Meadowbrook), and today is going to be a gorgeous, sunny day with a high of 59 degrees.
So, what should we do with a day like today?
We could begin by praying for those who have suffered the loss of loved ones in the Fort Hood shooting, and for those who have lost jobs in the recession. I’m going to follow that up with a hot breakfast (most important meal of the day) and then get on with sermon writing, which is my usual all-day-Saturday occupation. This week I’m well ahead of schedule, thanks in part to the difficulty I had getting the sermon together last week. I’ve been working overtime this week, and although the sermon is not ready to preach yet, it’s close, which opens up the possibilities for the rest of the day.
I’d love to get in a run if I could, although I’ll have to bundle up. It’s cold out there! And then, at 10:00, I’m hoping to stop by the Community Outreach Center at 2944 W. Marshall Street (just a few blocks from the church) to help out with the Refugee Outreach Work Day. Have you met these refugees from Nepal? They’re precious, and even the children press their palms together in greeting and say, “Namaste.” I’ll have to be finished in time to get a shower, get dressed, and go to a cookout hosted by one of our church families, and then I’ll need to leave early to get back to church in time for the Dennis Swanberg concert at 7:00.
It looks like it’s going to be a busy day. So, what am I doing still sitting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and blogging? I need to get up and get on with it! If you’re in the area I’d love to see you at the Refugee Outreach Work Day, and if you can’t make that maybe I’ll see you in church tomorrow, either in person or through the lens of the camera as you participate in our live webcast, at 8:30 or 11:00.
And whatever you choose to do with this day:
May the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you,
and be gracious unto you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you,
and give you peace.
Just after worship today I will head to the airport to catch a flight to Dallas, Texas. I’ll be away for a week, backpacking in Guadalupe Mountains National Park with my friends Chuck Treadwell and Joe Perez. Here’s a picture from another trip—Mount Rainier in the summer of 2005—just to give you an idea of why I do it. Yes, I’m grizzled and footsore in this picture, but I’m sipping hot tea on the Wonderland Trail, with Mount Rainier looming over my left shoulder.
I’m back from my backpacking trip to Guadalupe Mountains National Park and will be blogging again soon. I just wanted to post this picture of Joe, Chuck, and Jim on top of Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas. Hey, don’t laugh! It’s 8,751 feet high, more than a mile-and-a-half, and a good 2,000 feet higher than any mountain east of the Mississippi. On the day we climbed it the wind was whipping around the summit and the chill factor made us glad we had brought warm clothing, but what a trip!
On Thursday of last week, my friend Joe Perez and I were hiking up Bear Canyon in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. It’s a beautiful hike, but the trail ascends almost vertically for 2,500 feet. On the way up I caught myself singing that old spiritual, “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder.” It’s got the perfect rhythm for a hike like that—slow and plodding—and the line about “every round goes higher, higher” is not only descriptive, it’s encouraging.
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,
Soldiers of the cross.
Every round goes higher, higher,
Every round goes higher, higher,
Every round goes higher, higher,
Soldiers of the cross.
I sang that much without any trouble, but then realized I didn’t know the next verse. It was something about “Sinner do you _____ my Jesus,” but was it “love my Jesus” or “know my Jesus”? I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter, so I began to sing, “Sinner do you know my Jesus,” and then I followed it with, “If you know him why not trust him,” and then, “If you trust him why not serve him.” I found out later that those aren’t the real lyrics, but as I sang them I thought about how the Christian faith progresses from one level to the next. You don’t begin by serving Jesus, you begin by hearing something about him. If you hear enough you might get to know him, and if you get to know him you might begin to trust him.
The Christian life goes on and on like that if we are faithful about it; every round goes higher, higher. If we keep on climbing Jacob’s Ladder one day we will get to the top of it, and the view, like my view from the top of Hunter Peak that day, will be breathtaking.
On Tuesday night I preached at the annual meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia. This is a gathering of a thousand or so “messengers” who come from Baptist churches across the Commonwealth to do the business of the Association and to enjoy times of worship and fellowship. It was a huge honor to be asked to preach and I tried to take it seriously. I worked on the sermon for weeks, wrote out a full manuscript, and rehearsed it until I was fairly sure the words were coming out of me and not just off the page. I polished my shoes, put on a suit, knotted my tie, and shoved a silk handkerchief into my breast pocket. I was ready, or at least I thought I was.
I climbed the steps and walked across the stage to the pulpit, opened my Bible, arranged my notes, and then looked out at the crowd. But I couldn’t see the crowd. I could only see the bright lights shining in my eyes. And that’s when I remembered why I don’t like preaching at events like this.
I started in anyway, preaching the sermon as I had rehearsed it, but I couldn’t tell if the congregation was “getting it” or not. I couldn’t see their faces. Every once in a while I would hear a ripple of laughter move across the darkened room and once I heard a loud “Amen!” off to my right, but as I struggled through the sermon I realized how much I usually depend on congregational feedback.
That raised eyebrow in the third pew lets me know that whatever I just said was a little surprising; those crossed arms off to my right may be a sign that things are getting too personal; that warm smile up in the balcony is a clue that whatever I’m saying is going down well; and that look of confusion to my left is a clue that I might need to say that last line again—slowly. I “read” those faces, I depend on that feedback, and when I don’t get it the act of communication becomes uncomfortably one-sided.
It’s a good reminder that preaching—at its simplest—is one person sharing good news with others. There’s an intimacy about it that is hindered by bright lights and a big stage. Some of the best preaching I’ve done has been one-on-one, or in a group of five or six people, or in a tiny country church. The worst preaching I’ve ever done—in my opinion—was when I read a sermon off the teleprompter in a television studio in Chicago. Preaching ceases to be preaching in such circumstances and becomes something else:
Performance.
I’m glad I had the opportunity to deliver a sermon at the BGAV. As I said, it was a huge honor. But I’m looking forward to being back in my regular pulpit this Sunday, talking to people I love about something I love to talk about.
Maybe it’s because I’m a lectionary preacher, but when I start to work on a sermon I start not with an idea or a theme, but with the Bible. That’s what I did when I was getting ready to preach at the annual meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia recently. The theme was “A time for extravagance” but the text was Luke 7:36-38, so instead of pulling from the files my sermon on John 12:1-8 (which was all about extravagance) I started fresh with the text from Luke 7.
I’m glad I did. I learned things I would have never learned if I had simply preached that other sermon. But one of the things I learned is that this story from Luke 7 is different from all the other stories in the Gospels about women anointing Jesus. That story from John 12:1-8 for example is a story about Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, anointing Jesus’ feet with a pound of pure nard—a very precious perfume. There’s a similar story in Mark 14:3-9 about a woman who comes to the home of Simon the leper, breaks open an alabaster jar of nard, and pours it on Jesus’ head (not his feet). Matthew uses this same story in 26:6-13 with very little elaboration on Mark’s version. Again it is an unnamed woman who pours “costly ointment” on Jesus’ head.
The stories in John, Mark, and Matthew are all stories about women anointing Jesus with costly perfume or ointment as a way of preparing his body for burial. The story in Luke 7, however, is about a sinful woman who comes to Jesus while he is eating at the home of Simon the Pharisee (not the leper). She bathes his feet with her tears, wipes them with her hair, covers them with kisses, and massages them with ointment. It is a scene of shocking intimacy. There is no mention of expensive perfume, no reference to preparing Jesus’ body for burial. This woman does what she does to express her gratitude for the forgiveness she has received from Jesus. It is a completely different story, about a completely different woman.
But you wouldn’t have known that if you had been at the BGAV meeting. Almost everyone who stepped to the pulpit to preach or offer an interpretation on the theme talked about this woman who poured expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet. They tossed the details of these four stories together as if they were one, talking about how this woman named Mary, who was a sinner (probably a prostitute), poured out ointment or perfume or something expensive on Jesus’ feet (or maybe it was his head) and the fragrance filled the room.
Did it? And does it matter?
I think it does. While the stories from Matthew, Mark, and John might be lumped together under a single heading—”A woman anoints Jesus with expensive perfume in preparation for his burial”—the story from Luke needs a different heading altogether, something like—”A sinful woman pours out her gratitude for the gift of forgiveness.” The point of this story is different from the others. The characters in the story are different. The details don’t match up. To treat it as if it were the same story as those others is to twist its meaning into a shape Luke would not recognize—it is to do violence to the text.
You can tell I feel strongly about this. Maybe it’s because I’ve heard too much “biblical preaching” that isn’t biblical at all. It doesn’t begin or end with the Bible. It is simply some preacher cloaking his thoughts and opinions in bibical language or using one verse of the Bible as a springboard into a sermon that never touches on that verse again. Maybe the next time you listen to a sermon you could ask yourself some questions: “Is it faithful to the text?” ”Does it communicate what the biblical writer was trying to say?” ”How much of it is simply the preacher’s own opinion?” And if you’re writing a sermon, of course, take the responsibility seriously. Take the Bible seriously.
In his sermon on November 15 Phil Mitchell, our Minister of Christian Worship, said: “We have added the response, ‘Thanks be to God’ after Scripture readings [at First Baptist Church]. Why, Baptists don’t do that, do they? Some do, and for goodness sake why not? What if as we say, ‘Thanks be to God,’ we remind ourselves that this really is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God for that!”
Since then I’ve heard a little grumbling.
Yes, we thank God for giving us his Word. We’re grateful that we can read it in public worship and private devotions. But when we say it like that—”The Word of God for the people of God, thanks be to God”—it sounds awfully…Episcopalian.
We’re Baptists, not Episcopalians, but when it comes to worship we might want to ask what that really means (and what it doesn’t mean):
It doesn’t mean that we aren’t liturgical. Every Baptist church, even the most informal ones, follow some kind of liturgy (by which I mean the order of worship). The invitation, for example, goes after the sermon and before the closing hymn. Everybody knows that!
It doesn’t mean that we can’t sing hymns. One of my seminary professors used to say, “Some theology has to be sung.” Many of the great, old hymns of the faith strive to do that—express good theology through beautiful music—so that you leave church humming something like, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity,” or “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.”
It doesn’t mean that we can’t use written prayers. Baptists don’t want to read their prayers out of a book; they want them to come from the heart. But the best prayers often come from the heart when we are alone with God. A prayer written down in such moments and shared in public worship can be deeply meaningful, and may be preferable to all those “ums” and “ahs” that often plague extemporaneous prayer.
It doesn’t mean that we can’t read Scripture in worship. Episcopalians and a number of other churches read a good bit of Scripture in worship. They follow the lectionary, a plan for reading through most of the Bible in public worship over a three year period. It seems like a good way to get Scripture into the lives of people who may not take the time to read it on their own and as “people of the Book” we Baptists should welcome any plan that does that.
It doesn’t mean that we can’t celebrate the high, holy days. Christmas is one of them. Easter is another. We’ve been celebrating those for years because they were important events in the life of Jesus: his birth and his resurrection. Adding to our calendar other significant events in the life of Christ like Good Friday, Palm Sunday, and maybe even the Baptism of Jesus can make worship more meaningful, not less.
But here’s what it does mean to be Baptist and to have a Baptist way of worship, at least in my experience:
It means that we celebrate spontaneity. We like to believe that the Spirit can move us to do and say things that aren’t printed in the order of worship, and it is part of our cherished Baptist freedom to seize such moments.
It means that we take preaching seriously. The sermon is typically the highlight of the service, and the other elements of worship—hymns, prayers, and offerings—build toward a time of reverent listening for the Word of God.
It means that we enjoy spirited singing. We love those hymns and Gospel songs that are familiar and singable, the ones that really let us sing with all our heart. We don’t much care for the slow, plodding ones.
It means that we value “warmth.” We like to be in a place where people call each other by name, where there’s a lot of hugging and handshaking, and where both laughter and tears are accepted.
It means that our worship is heartfelt. We don’t put a lot of stock in ritual or performance. If you’re going to say something we want it to come from your heart. If you’re going to do something we want you to do it for the Lord.
I’m sure that others could add to this list and I hope they will (it would be interesting to compile readers’ comments on Baptist worship). But what I’m curious about is the combination of this list and the one above. Is there a way to have both warmth and dignity, to draw from the best and most meaningful practices of the last two thousand years and still mix up a uniquely Baptist blend of warmhearted worship? I don’t want us to become Episcopalian (no offense to my Episcopal friends); I want us to be Baptist. But I’d like to think we could be Baptists whose worship is as rich, and deep, and meaningful as possible. I’d like us to remember that even more important than the way we worship is the One we worship.
This is the time of year I usually begin to get forwarded e-mail messages from people who want to keep Christ in Christmas, or, as the subject line typically screams, “LET’S KEEP CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Sometimes these people are angry. They’re tired of hearing people say “Happy Holidays,” instead of “Merry Christmas.” They don’t like those signs that announce “X-mas Trees for Sale.” They want somebody to do something about it, and often they want me to do something about it. That’s why they forward those e-mails.
I found some excellent suggestions in an article by Mary Fairchild, who writes:
“The number one way to keep Jesus Christ in your Christmas celebrations is to have him present in your daily life. If you’re not sure what it means to become a believer in Christ, check out this article on “How to Become a Christian.” If you’ve already accepted Jesus as your Savior and made him the center of your life, keeping Christ in Christmas is more about the way you live your life than the things you say—such as “Merry Christmas” versus “Happy Holidays” (click HEREto read the rest of the article, which includes a number of simple, practical suggestions like reading the Christmas story from Luke 2 with your family; planning a project of “good will”; going Christmas caroling in a nursing home; or writing a letter to a missionary).
Ms. Fairchild hints that any attempt to force Christ into someone else’s Christmas celebration will be unsuccessful, but “where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”
What if Christians celebrated Christmas in such a winsome and faithful way that souls all around them began opening up to “the dear Christ”? What if you and I tried to do that?
Mary Fairchild’s suggestions are good ones. Maybe you have others you could add to the list by clicking “comments” below.
I’ve had some requests for the meditation I shared at the Hanging of the Green service on Sunday night. Here it is, and if I say so myself it probably reads better than it “preaches.”
There was a time in my life when all I wanted to be was a photographer for National Geographic magazine. Maybe everybody has that dream at some time. But I took it further than most: I traveled from Charleston, West Virginia, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, on a Greyhound bus when I was nineteen years old and spent a month studying photography with my great aunt Caroline. I learned a lot. I learned that the word photography means “to write with light.” I spent a month trying to do that, trying to coax the light into the lens of my camera and onto the film in such a way that my great aunt would say, “You got it. That’s it!” She did say that—once—but by the time I took the bus back to West Virginia I had pretty well given up on my dream. That month in New Mexico did make a lasting impression on me, however: I fell in love with the light. I began to see it everywhere, all the time, began to see how it fell on the landscape, how it changed from early morning to the middle of the day, how precious it was in those last moments before twilight. In fact, this afternoon I spent an hour driving my brother Billy around Richmond and everywhere we went I pointed out the beautiful light, and the way it was falling on the buildings or reflecting off the water.
In a book called, Why Religion Matters, Huston Smith spends a whole chapter talking about light. He begins by saying that light is a universal metaphor for God. And then, borrowing the language of quantum physics, he talks about the way light transcends time and space, the way it shares the properties of energy and matter, the way it can make something out of nothing through the process of photosynthesis. He doesn’t say that light is God but he comes close, so close that I began to think about the similarities, about the way light is everywhere in the universe, how just a little bit of it can drive back a world of darkness, how it warms, and cheers, and brightens.
I read that book in the days just after September 11, 2001, when I was living and working in Washington, DC, and it was a huge help to me. Those were days when I didn’t get on the Metro in the morning without thinking that something terrible could happen, and as I rode the escalator up from the Dupont Circle station I would pray, “Lord, if this is my day to die let me do it with courage and strength.” Everybody seemed shaky in those days. We all needed to be reassured. And so here I was, reading a chapter in Huston Smith’s book in which he was talking about how much light and God had in common, and on that day, as I came up the escalator praying my little prayer, I looked up and saw the light just falling all over the buildings on 19th Street. It was that beautiful, golden, early morning sunlight. It was dazzling, and fairly dripping down the sides of the buildings, puddling in the streets. I don’t know that I had ever seen it so perfect and pure. I found myself thinking, “God is here, right here, pouring out his blessing on the city.”
Huston Smith may stop just short of saying light is God, but 2000 years ago the author of 1 John said God is light. Do you remember that? “God is light,” he said, “and in him is no darkness at all.” It may have been the same author who said, “the true light that enlightens every person was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, and yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him, but to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the power to become the children of God” (John 1).
Not long ago I read a blog post by a Canadian named James Loney who lives in Baghdad. He talked about the violence in the city, about bombs exploding so close to his house he could feel the sound in his chest, about friends who witnessed the aftermath of a bombing, who saw the blood-sprayed wall, and body parts, and people carrying away the victims. But somewhere in the middle of that horrifying report he wrote this:
I have fallen in love with the light in Baghdad. How can I catch, hold, describe it in words, except to say there is just something about it. In the mornings, when I go onto the roof of our apartment building to hang my laundry or greet the day, the light rushes about me, kisses me everywhere. It is fine and simple and gracious, cheerful and embracing and flowing, a pouring swimming breathing medley of lemons and yellow roses and honey. More than this I cannot say: you must come see for yourself.
I think about that light falling on the bombed-out city of Baghdad, about the writer of 1 John, maybe looking out through the bars of his prison cell as he writes, “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” I think about the golden, late-afternoon sunshine that washed over Richmond today and I fall in love with the light all over again. I think of God, embracing the city with these radiant beams, blessing it before moving on to the west to bless the cities of Chicago, and Dallas, Los Angeles, and yes, in due time, the city of Baghdad, where little children feel the morning sunlight fall across their faces, kissing their beautiful brown cheeks, waking them up with a strange and wonderful sense of hopefulness that today will be a better day.
This article by Dan Kimball is a perfect illustration of what it means to be a “missional” church, buildings and all. Enjoy!
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If you had asked me eight years ago what I thought about church buildings, I would have said, “Who needs a building? The early church didn’t have buildings, and we don’t need them either!” But I was wrong.
My anti-building phase was a reaction to having seen so much money spent on church facilities, often for non-essential, luxury items. I was also reacting to a philosophy of ministry that treated church buildings like Disneyland; a place consumers gather for entertainment. But these abuses had caused me to unfairly dismiss the potential blessing of buildings as well.
Consider the building occupied by Compassion International in Colorado Springs. It has a well-groomed lawn with sprinkler system, an attractive sign, and an expansive parking lot. It’s a nice facility. But it’s more than just a building—it is the headquarters and training center for a ministry that brings physical and spiritual nourishment to more than one million children in 25 countries. The Compassion building is used for a missional purpose, not simply as a place for Christians to gather and consume religious services.
When we planted our church in 2004, we needed a place to meet. We found a very traditional church building that had a sizable “fellowship hall” originally used only for donuts and coffee on Sundays. Wanting to use the building differently, we converted the fellowship hall into a public coffee lounge featuring music and art from the outside community. The Abbey, as it’s now called, is open seven days a week and offers free internet access.
Just yesterday I was in The Abbey and saw about 20 people, not part of our congregation, studying and hanging out. (During finals week I counted 90 students packed into the place.) While there I talked to a brand new Christian who has been coming to our gatherings. He found out about our church from a Buddhist friend. His friend loves coming to The Abbey and recommended our church because he trusted us.
We’ve also used our building to serve our community in times of crisis. When wildfires forced nearby residents to flee their homes, our building became an overnight refuge for those without a place to stay.
These missional opportunities would not be possible without a building.
What about the sanctuary? When we first got the building, one person said the sanctuary “looked like a funeral parlor.” We sought to remake the worship space to express our congregation’s values of community, worship, and service.
First, we removed the pews. Looking at the back of peoples’ heads simply didn’t communicate our values of community and participation.
We also invited local artists to create images during our worship gatherings. These were then displayed in the space.
The only cross in the building was very small, so we brought in a huge iron cross as the visual focus of our worship space. This clearly communicated that Christ was at the center of our mission.
We lowered the large wooden pulpit in order to facilitate more relational teaching, and we added a prayer shawl over the podium to reinforce our frequent talks about the importance of prayer in changing lives.
Little by little the space that had been powerfully missional in the 1930s and ’40s was transformed to reflect missional values of the 21st century. In 20 years I’m sure the way these values are expressed will have changed again, and I hope the design of the sanctuary and fellowship hall will change accordingly.
What’s important is that our mission drives our aesthetics and our use of space.
Today I am incredibly thankful we have a building. It allows us meet in larger groups for worship, and it allows for training classes that equip people for mission. We also use our space all week and welcome the public into it.
So, I have recanted from my earlier belief that buildings drain resources and create consumer Christians. I was wrong. Now I see them as missionary centers to impact lives for the gospel.
Dan Kimball is the pastor of Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, California. This article originally appeared in the online version of Leadership Journal.
Last Sunday I preached on the subject of peace, but got at it by talking about its opposite, about conflict. I suggested that peace can only come when we are reconciled to those who have hurt us (or to those we have hurt).
As I was closing out the early worship service on Sunday I reminded the congregation of that place in Matthew’s Gospel where it says, “So, when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister and then come and offer your gift” (Matt. 5:23-24). I told them that I used to think that verse said, “if you remember that you have something against your brother or sister,” but it doesn’t: it says, “if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you.”
When that was explained to me in seminary I spent some time trying to think about who might have something against me, and eventually I thought of that girl I had broken up with because she wouldn’t let me buy an old ambulance. She probably had something against me. And so I sat down and wrote her a long letter, apologizing for all the times I had done her wrong (and believe me—there were plenty). I got her address through a mutual friend and mailed the letter hoping I would get back a letter full of forgiveness a few days later. It never came. Still, I was glad I had written to her, and hoped she could accept my apology.
But here I was on Sunday telling the congregation they should apologize to those people who might have something against them when it occurred to me that some of them might have something against me! Since I came to Richmond’s First Baptist Church people have been so good to me, so generous, that I’m almost sure someone has given me something I never said thank you for: a jar or watermelon rind pickles, perhaps; a tin of homemade cookies; a beautiful card. I’ve been so overwhelmed by the sheer number of people in this church that it’s been difficult to remember names and impossible to thank every one who been kind to me or my family.
So, here it is: first, a sincere apology to each of you who has been waiting for me to say thank you, and second, a heartfelt “thank you!” to each of you for your gracious gifts. Most of all, for the gift of your love, which makes even the sweetest watermelon rind pickles a little sweeter.
At Richmond’s First Baptist Church we tithe by giving at least 10% of our total budget to missions. The only question, then, is which missions to support?
It used to be so easy.
We were Southern Baptists, and we gave our money through the Cooperative Program to support ”our” missionaries at home and abroad. But in 1979 a movement began which was described by some as a “conservative resurgence” within the denomination but by others as ”the fundamentalist takeover” of the SBC. By 1990 moderate Baptists had given up the fight, and in 1991 constituted the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which they described as “a new way of being Baptist.” CBF began to send its own missionaries, and churches that had never had to ask the question before now wondered: “Which missionaries do we support?” The split between moderates and conservatives in the SBC had divided not only the denomination, but also its churches.
Richmond’s First Baptist Church refused to be divided.
Instead it created giving options for its members. Those who remained loyal to the Southern Baptist Convention and its missionaries could simply check the SBC box on their pledge cards or offering envelopes and rest assured that their missions dollars would go that way. Those who were excited about the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and a new way of being Baptist could check the CBF box and know that their mission dollars were going to support that new venture. Those who didn’t have strong feelings one way or another, or who wanted to support both mission causes, could give through the “First Baptist Plan,” knowing their mission dollars would be divided among the SBC and the CBF.
It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it did allow people with different denominational loyalties and leanings to stay in the same church. The tent was big enough for everyone.
At the deacons’ meeting on Tuesday night we discussed some proposed changes in our giving plans and things got a little uncomfortable. There was some pushing and shoving going on inside the big tent as everybody tried to make sure there was room enough for them and their views. When it was my turn to offer some closing thoughts I said (although I hadn’t really planned on making a speech), “I am privileged to be the pastor of a church where some members don’t want to give one thin dime to the SBC, and where other members don’t want to give one thin dime to the CBF, and where still other members don’t know what those letters mean and don’t really care. It’s important that we provide them with some choices, so that those who want to support the SBC can do it, and those who want to support the CBF can do it, and those who don’t have a preference can put their money in the offering plate knowing that their mission dollars will be well spent. I do believe this: that missionaries on both sides of this divide are waking up each morning thinking about how they can share the Gospel with people who need to hear it. I’ve met those missionaries. I’ve talked with them. I know where their hearts are. I don’t think any of us have to worry about our mission dollars being misspent.”
Who knows? We may need to lengthen the ropes a little more, make the tent a little bigger, to include missionaries and mission causes we have never considered before, and to include people of every persuasion who are passionate about being and sharing the good news of Jesus.
Even if they check the “wrong” box on their offering envelopes.
In one of my recent posts I talked about “Life in the Big Tent,” and mentioned that in the tent we call Richmond’s First Baptist Church there has been some pushing and shoving over the subject of where we send our mission dollars.
Pushing and shoving? Really?!
Well, no, of course not. That would never happen at First Baptist Church. I was using those words metaphorically. But at our last deacons’ meeting the Deacon Advisory Council* proposed changes to our shared giving plan that led to some spirited discussion. Let me be specific:
The current plan—”the First Baptist Partnership Plan”—divides mission dollars between the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, but the division is hardly equal: the SBC receives more than three times as much as the CBF. The proposed plan—”the Shared Partnership Plan”—divides mission dollars equally between the CBF and the SBC, and it eliminates giving to the North American Mission Board of the SBC altogether.
Those are big changes, and you can see how our members who are supportive of the Southern Baptist Convention might wonder if they are being pushed out of the tent, but I don’t think that’s what’s happening at all: I think what’s happening is that we are gaining a better understanding of who we are.
I wasn’t here at the time but several years ago some of our members formed an “Identity Passion Team” to address that very issue: Who are we? What is our purpose? Who are our people? What are our shared values and beliefs? What has been our journey? What other Baptist groups do we relate to? The members of that team drafted an identity statement that was adoped by an overwhelming majority of the church. What we learned is that out tent has always been big, that while we might have all considered ourselves Southern Baptists at one time, there were a lot of different views among us. In fact, if you had put us all on one pew you would have seen the full spectrum of theological diversity, from extremely conservative on one end to not very conservative at all on the other. It didn’t matter so much when we gathered to worship the Lord (whom we all loved), or when we talked about missions (which we all supported). It only began to matter when the pushing and shoving broke out in our denominational tent and people began to ask us which “side” we were on.
As I mentioned in my last post, we refused to be divided. We created giving options that allowed us to support the mission causes we felt the most affinity for without giving up the worship and fellowship that made us family. We’ve maintained that tradition for years. But this latest revision of our giving plans is an acknowledgment of something that has probably been true all along but “discovered” only recently: we are diverse, and if we are going to honor that diversity we cannot show favoritism. The proposed “shared” plan divides our mission dollars equally between the SBC and the CBF.
The proposal to eliminate our giving to the North American Mission Board of the SBC is also a matter of identity. For many, many years we have recognized the gifts and calling of women–and not only men–in ministry. Women have been ordained as deacons at First Baptist for decades. We have an ordained woman on our ministry staff. We know what a blessing these women have been and we maintain our historic Baptist freedom to ordain whomever we perceive as gifted—male or female—for ministry. The North American Mission Board, however, is not a local church. It does not share that same freedom. And because it hopes to reflect the views of the Baptist majority it does not employ women who have been ordained (unless they are willing to rescind their ordination).
While individuals in our church are free to check the SBC box on their commitment cards or giving envelopes and direct some of their mission dollars to the North American Mission Board, the majority of our deacons perceive a philosophical difference with NAMB. They hesitate to include in our shared giving plan an organization that will not hire an ordained woman. Of course it isn’t up to the Deacons, ultimately; it’s up to the church (just last night we hosted an open discussion at which some members requested that we not exclude NAMB altogether, since it is part of the same organization through which we “support missionaries,” and that we distribute our missionary support proportionally, with the SBC getting a larger share simply because it has more personnel on the field. Each of those requests seemed reasonable and the spirit of the discussion was cordial throughout).
Copies of the proposed giving plan have been available for perusal for the past few weeks, with a vote scheduled for the quarterly business meeting on January 13, 2010. If things go as they usually do there won’t be any pushing and shoving at that meeting, either. There will be a presentation, some discussion, and then every member present will vote his or her conscience. At the end of the meeting we will all understand a little better…
…who we are.
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*The Deacon Advisory Council is comprised of the five most recent deacon chairs and vice-chairs at First Baptist Church.
My friend Drexel Rayford got a whole sermon out of this YouTube clip from that classic film, “A Christmas Story.” The sermon was about how anxiety can kill the joy of Christmas. I haven’t heard it yet, but the last scene in this clip—where the sole of Santa’s black boot comes slowly toward Ralphie’s hopeful face—is an excellent illustration of joy-killing anxiety. What do you think? Is there a sermon in there?
It’s a little after six a.m. on my day off. I don’t know why I’m up, but here I am, sitting at the kitchen table and sipping some freshly brewed Caffe Verona as I contemplate the day ahead.
I’m remembering that before I ever started blogging I used to do something called “Jim’s Online Journal,” and I used to do it on my day off. Typically, I would go for a mid-morning run, and then while I was cooling off afterward I would sit at the computer and highlight the previous week, writing about significant events, discoveries, and breakthroughs. When I was finished I would send it to twenty or thirty friends and family members by e-mail. Some of them read it and some of them didn’t, but it did me good either way to reflect on the events of the previous week.
I remember hearing Tony Campolo talk about a survey conducted among people ninety years old and older who were asked: “If you had your life to live over again, what would you do differently?” There were lots of answers, but the majority of them fell into three categories: 1) I would risk more, 2) I would reflect more, and 3) I would do more things that would live on beyond my death. The online journal was a way for me to “reflect more,” to think about my life instead of just living it from day to day.
In some ways it was a continuation of the journaling habit I started in seminary: at the suggestion of one of my professors I began a prayer journal that I kept up more or less faithfully until just a few years ago. I filled up a dozen or more notebooks and composition books with my prayers for the day which often, of course, included the details of my life, the struggles I was facing, the thoughts I was having. I miss that, and I’m not sure how I fell out of the habit except that life can get busy and we often neglect the things that are most important in favor of the things that are most urgent. Maybe 2010 will be a good year to get back into that good habit.
Anyway, I’m almost to the bottom of my coffee cup and starting to think about cooking some oatmeal, but let me leave you with a brief excerpt from “Jim’s Online Journal.” And like those people I used to send it to, you are free to read it or move on to other, more important things. Like breakfast.
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Monday, July 6, 1998
In the last few weeks I have been to the mountains with my friend Jim Eastin, entered and finished a triathlon in Charlotte, been to the beach with my own dear family, been to Houston with a bunch of Baptists, and been to work day after day after day. Even though summers are easier around Wingate, this is one summer where things have been only slightly easier. I find my tongue hanging out at the end of a hot day, and find myself wondering when the relief will finally come.
I thought I would have a break last week with a day off on Thursday and a long holiday weekend. I found out on Wednesday that we would be closing on our construction loan today (Monday). So the next day I got up early, borrowed a chain saw, went to the lot and began to cut trees, clearing a space for our new home. I worked all day, until I was cross-eyed with fatigue, but I wasn’t finished. I went back the next day and worked until dark. Still not finished. Saturday at 2:00 p.m. I dragged the last limb to the brush pile and drove home, sweat-soaked and bone-weary. Even though the rest of this project will involve considerable time and energy, I hope it’s not this kind of time and energy. I went to the office this morning in a starched shirt and silk tie feeling as though the vacation had come at last.
And one more thing. That same Saturday that I came home so hot and tired we had a cookout at the house for the kids from the trailer park–two more hours of sweating in the sunshine. One of them, a new kid named Jason, confided in me that his only real problem was his dad. “He’s been in prison since before I was born,” Jason said, matter-of-factly. “He’s going to get out this summer. We talked on the phone. We talked about building a log cabin together. But last week he called me and told he was just going to disappear.” And once again, my heart breaks for one of these kids. But that’s not all. “My mom lied to me,” he says later. “She told me my grandmother died of a heart attack, and the death certificate did say something about her heart, but I found out her husband shot her a couple of years before I was born.”
“How old was your mother?”
“Twelve.”
“So, when you were born she was . . .”
“Fourteen.”
“Fourteen.”
“Yep. She was pregnant once before that, when she was ten, but she miscarried.”
This from a boy who says he has only one problem.
Whenever I hear these stories my own story seems hardly worth mentioning. So what if I spent three days working with a chain saw? So what if I’m building a house, going to the beach, entering a triathlon? All these things seem irrelevant beyond description in comparison with this one life, this eleven-year-old life that has been so hammered by hardship you wonder where that lopsided grin, that wayward lock of hair, came from. How did they survive? And what can I do to make sure they don’t get lost in the weeks and months ahead?
Pray for Jason, friends, and pray for Jim. Don’t let me get so caught up in my own life that I fail to catch those who are falling.
I recently posted an entry from “Jim’s Online Journal,” which I used to share with a few close friends and family members in the days before blogging became so popular (by the way, I love the quote someone shared with me recently about blogging: “Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.” True!). But here’s another excerpt from that old journal that still seems fresh. I hope you will enjoy it.
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Thursday, July 30, 1998
Spirituality professor Glenn Hinson says that “the appropriate response to God is this”: and then he lets his mouth fall open with an audible “plop” and stands in front of his class for a full sixty seconds while his students first laugh and then begin to squirm uncomfortably before such a sustained expression of awe.
Today, two full days after my return from a backpacking trip to Montana’s awe-inspiring Bob Marshall Wilderness, my jaws are still sore from rounding all those bends in the trail and having my mouth fall open again and again. What a place! What breathtaking beauty! In the same way I felt helpless to cram all that glory into a snapshot as I took pictures, I feel helpless to describe the experience in words, but here are a few black and white, monotone memories of a technicolor, surround-sound trip:
Day 2: Trudging up endless switchbacks and through a dense pine forest to emerge, at last, by the edge of an alpine lake, its clear blue-green waters overshadowed by a craggy peak, flanked with snow, towering 3,000 feet above the surface of the lake.
Day 3: Leaving my backpack behind and climbing some of the smaller peaks around Koessler Lake. Scrambling up a near-vertical face and thrusting my arms into the air in a gesture of triumph at the peak. Looking over the North edge of that peak at a sheer cliff wall dropping 2,000 feet into Lick Lake. Climbing down and entering a broad, flat alpine meadow, dotted with red, blue, yellow, and white wildflowers, bursting into a baritone rendition of “The Sound of Music.” Leaning back into the shade of a huge boulder, eating beef jerky and sipping mountain spring water, feeling my soul nourished.
Day 5: Swimming in the cool, clear water of a secluded mountain lake. Sitting on a warm, flat rock in the sunshine to dry off afterward. Listening to the sound of water falling in fat drops from my elbows and fingertips and hearing absolutely nothing else. Silence. Silence. Ahhhh!
There is, of course, much more to tell, but let me leave you with the image of my eyes fixed on Montana, my mouth hanging open in awe. To quote William Willimon: “God is large, and prickly, and . . . large.”
In Sunday’s sermon I told the story of Bamma Donohue, my first crush, and talked about the way love can transform everything. It went something like this:
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When I was seven years old my family moved from Virginia to West Virginia, and I hated it. We had driven away from Wise in our old station wagon, under the cover of darkness. It was raining, and I remember watching the raindrops slide down the car windows just like the tears sliding down my cheeks. I didn’t want to leave the only home I had ever known and I didn’t want to leave my best friend, Bobby Thompson, behind. But I did, and ended up at Pettus Elementary School in West Virginia where the Ferrell twins—Denny and Lenny—kept insisting that West Virginia was the best Virginia, to which I could only reply: “No, it’s not.” Our teacher, Miss Govay, made us sing this dumb song about those “West Virginia hills/how majestic and how grand/with their summits bathed in glory/like our Prince Emmanuel’s land” (yeah, right). But after that painful year was over we moved a few miles up the river to Seth, West Virginia, and on the day after Labor Day I took my seat in Mrs. Bowen’s fourth grade classroom and was just unpacking my pencil box when Bamma Donohue walked in.
When I saw her I felt something inside me I had never felt before. I couldn’t explain it, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She sat one row over and two seats ahead of me, which was the perfect place for me to notice her without her noticing me. I stole glances at her straight brown hair, her slender neck, her unbelievably long eyelashes (like Bambi’s mother!). The only word I could attach to the feeling I was having was love: I was in love with this girl. I carried it around inside me quietly, stoically, never letting on and hoping she couldn’t hear my heart thumping when we ended up in the lunch line together. But on Valentine’s Day I was in the classroom early. It was only me, Mike Gordon, and some girl near the back of the class unpacking her book bag, when Bamma walked in. She had all her Valentines in tiny white envelopes, but after she had dropped them into the big box at the front of the room she walked back to where Mike Gordon was sitting and put one down on his desk—a different one, a special one. He said, “I don’t want that old thing!” And Bamma said, “Fine!” She snatched it up, clutched it to her chest, and then walked over and slapped it down on my desk.
It was a homemade valentine: red construction paper with a sticker of two birds sitting close together on a limb, musical notes floating over their heads, and these words written in Bamma’s own hand: “We could make beautiful music together.” I didn’t care that it was a second-hand valentine. I picked it up off the desk gratefully, looked up at her with my lower lip trembling, and held that valentine to my heart. I took it home that afternoon and propped it up on my dresser so that it would be the first thing I saw in the morning and the last thing I saw at night, and when my brothers and I accidentally burned the house down a couple of years later it was that valentine I ran back to my room to rescue.
But that’s another story.
Near the end of that fourth-grade year I was standing in line at the door, getting ready to go out and get on the bus for home, when I heard the girls in front of me giggling and whispering that Bamma Donohue was going to sit beside Jimmy Somerville on the bus. I must have blushed, but I didn’t say a word; I just waited to see what would happen. When I got on the bus I sat near the aisle, saving a seat, and when Bamma got on the bus she was blushing furiously and giggling almost uncontrollably. But when she got to where I was sitting she stopped and said, “Scoot over!” I did. And she sat beside me. And for the five minutes we were on the bus together she blushed and giggled and we both endured the taunts of the other children, chanting in unison something about Jimmy and Bamma sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, which, of course, I could only imagine, but did imagine all the way to my stop.
I said goodbye and she let me slide out, and I got off the bus, walked across the bridge in a kind of a daze, and then started off on the dirt path that led across the field and up to my house. As I walked I lifted up mine eyes unto the hills and behold, they were very beautiful. I felt my soul strangely stirred, and heard the sound of music swelling around me, and I began to sing out loud a song about “those West Virginia hills/how majestic and how grand/with their summits bathed in glory/like our Prince Emmanuel’s land.”
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I ended the sermon (since it was a sermon and not just a story of a schoolboy crush) by saying, ”It wasn’t the last, but it was certainly one of the most memorable lessons I ever had in how love can change things, how it can transform what is bleak and miserable into something bright and beautiful, and of course that’s what we celebrate at Christmas and in nearly every Christmas carol: the way God’s love transformed the world from something cold and lonely to something lovely and altogether lovable.”
May it be true for you this season, no matter what grade you’re in.
Here’s another excerpt from an old journal (1998), with some advice I hope you won’t have to use during this holiday season. If memory serves, the advice was inspired by a Glenn Hinson article on “Praying the Imprecatory Psalms”: the ones that ask God to smite our enemies and “break the teeth in their mouths” (Ps. 58:6). Ouch!
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On Tuesday I talked with an 83-year-old woman whose children have decided she can no longer live by herself. I think they are right, but that doesn’t make it any easier for her. She came to my study to confess that she couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t stop feeling angry. “I know I shouldn’t feel this way,” she mumbled.
“We can’t choose how we feel,” I said. “Choosing is a head thing. Feeling is a heart thing. The best we can do is identify our feelings. Right now you’re angry, and that’s OK. You have reason to be angry. Your life is changing without your permission.”
“Still . . . ” she said, meekly, “I shouldn’t feel this way.”
So I wrote a prescription. I took a slip of paper out of my desk drawer and wrote: “It’s OK to be angry,” and then I handed it to her. She looked at it, puzzled, and said, “But I always thought it was a sin to be angry.” “No,” I said, emphatically. “Paul says in Ephesians 4:26, ‘Be angry (there’s plenty to be angry about), and yet do not sin,’ that is, do not let your anger lead you to hurt or hate someone. It’s one thing to throw a can of green beans across the kitchen in anger, it’s another thing to throw a can of green beans across the kitchen at your daughter” (the one who is asking her to move).
She smiled then. She could see the difference. I pushed it a little further: “Go on home and be mad for awhile if you need to. Rip up a newspaper. Spit on the floor. Go in your closet and cuss.”
They didn’t teach us this in seminary. And it may not be the best counsel I’ve ever given. But I couldn’t help feeling that this woman would never get to the point of acceptance if she didn’t first get through her anger, and you don’t get through it by repressing it or denying it (like pressure cookers we all need to let off some steam from time to time or we’ll blow—the trick is to let it off harmlessly, without scalding anyone in the process).
My dear, 83-year-old, friend sat for awhile thinking about what I had said, and then rose and shook my hand. When she left my study she was smiling, looking forward (I think) to spending some time in her closet.
On Sunday I preached on that often-neglected passage from Luke 2 about the time the boy Jesus was left behind at the temple in Jerusalem. It reminded me of the time my dad left my brother Scott behind at the library in Charleston, West Virginia—a 45-minute drive from our house. But Scott didn’t seem to mind. He loved books, and the library was his favorite place in the world. If he had run away from home in those days we would have known just where to find him.
So I asked the congregation at the end of the sermon: “If you turned up missing in the next 24 hours, where would people begin to look for you? And when they found you, and you asked them, “Where else would I be?” where would you be? And is there any chance you would be here, in church, thinking the things of God? And if not, then why not? What has become more important to you than that?
It sounds kind of pushy when I see it in print, but in context it was mostly about what we love most in the world, followed by the question: if God is not at the top of that list then why not? What has taken his place? So I ended the sermon with the litany of renewal from John Wesley’s covenant service, in which he urged his congregations at the beginning of each new year to “wholly give themselves up to God, and to renew at every point their covenant that the Lord should be their God.” The litany can be found in its entirety in my post from this time last year (“Those Methodists Mean Business!”), but I want to reprint the closing paragraph here. Let me challenge you in the way I challenged the congregation on Sunday: if you can say “Amen” to these words then say it, and if you can’t then don’t. But if you can say it, say it with all your heart, and let this new year be one in which you live out the terms of this covenant.
I give myself completely to you, God. Assign me to my place in your creation. Let me suffer for you. Give me the work you would have me do. Give me many tasks Or have me step aside while you call others. Put me forward or humble me. Give me riches or let me live in poverty. I freely give all that I am and all that I have to you. And now, holy God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You are mine and I am yours. So be it. May this covenant made on earth continue for all eternity.
Here’s a story submitted by Richie Hilbert, a member of Richmond’s First Baptist Church and one of the most reliable sources of cheerful spiritual energy on the planet. When she told me about something that had happened in our homeless ministry a few days ago I said, “I love it. I want you to write it up. You can be my guest blogger.” And so she did. And so she is…
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By all appearances it was to be a normal Monday morning at Community Missions, First Baptist Church. Joy, fellowship, and service always define the interaction between guests, staff, and volunteers; January 4, however, we had an encounter with One who is always in attendance, but especially evident on this day – the Holy Spirit.
It began with what I will call an experiment. Monday morning Community Missions has traditionally started with a short devotional by Phyllis McIntyre, followed by a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in unison. This morning we asked if one of our guests would like to offer the closing prayer. There were 3 who volunteered; one approached the front of the room. As he began praying I could feel the emotions welling up inside of me, and I wasn’t alone. This was a homeless man praying on a 25 degree morning. He lifted us all up with thanks to God for the many blessings granted us and for walking side by side with us every minute of every day. He prayed with gratitude that the Lord loves us that much.
It was glorious.
There was more in store for us! As it happened, this was also the first day Susan Stratton joined Community Missions to pray individually with any guest who desired such a personal experience. Two men did. As her prayer with the first drew to a close, Susan thought, “This precious soul might be interested to learn that my life is not perfect, that in fact I have cancer and am in a battle of my own.” She inquired whether he would pray for her, and was subsequently prayed over in such a meaningful way that she was moved to tears. How perceptive of Susan to ask; how beautiful of our guest to pray.
A little while later, the second guest came to Susan for prayer support. She offered up his petitions, following which he asked, touched by her words, “Do you see the gleam in my eye now?” This guest received his clothes, food, etc., but before leaving the building found Susan again. I looked over my shoulder to see this tall, portly man enveloping Susan’s petite little frame in an immense bear hug, uttering with a big smile on his face, “Thank you so much.”
The Holy Spirit was hovering that morning, and it was a blessing to be a witness to it. Heaven came to earth on January 4th, 2010, and earth was the better for it.
I preached three times at the bicentennial celebration of Wingate Baptist Church in North Carolina, a church I served from 1991-2000.
I went from there to a sermon-planning retreat in South Carolina, where five other Baptist pastors and I planned our preaching for an entire year.
I went from there to an Episcopal camp and conference center near Houston, Texas, to lead a preaching workshop for a group of newly ordained priests.
I came back to Richmond in time to preach (twice) on Sunday, dedicate three children, and run with the 10K training team.
I can sum up the events of the week in a few bullet points, but it would take much longer to describe how it felt to step to the pulpit in the sanctuary of Wingate Baptist Church last Saturday night and look out over the beautiful, beaming faces of people I loved and served for nine years. I told them it reminded me of a dream I’d had about heaven once, and it did—almost exactly. Or to describe what it was like to share ideas with five of my closest colleagues as we sat around the living room of a lake house in Greenwood, South Carolina, bundled up in fleece pullovers, taking notes and jabbing our pens in the air for emphasis as the sun went down on a January day. It would take too long to describe that moment when the nervous young Episcopal priest stood in front of our group and told the story of how she learned what ministry was about during a summer on the pediatric intensive care wing of a hospital, as the rest of us swallowed at the lumps in our throats and wiped our eyes. And it would take even longer to describe what it was like to come home to Richmond, finally, and preach to a sanctuary full of people who feel—more and more these days—like family, to catch those winks and nods, those smiles and knowing looks, that can only come after you’ve spent some time together.
It was wonderful.
I will say this: it seems that every time I come back to Richmond from somewhere else I feel a little more at home here, as if you needed to say “I’m home!” out loud a few dozen times in a new place before you really felt it. I’m feeling it, and it feels good, and except for the quick trip I’m taking to Orlando on Wednesday and the drive up to New York at the end of the month to take some things to my daughter,
The last time I published an entry from Heidi’s diary I told you that I didn’t know who she was, I only knew that she was a pastor’s daughter serving as a volunteer on a medical mission to Haiti. Since then I have learned that her name is Heidi Ennenbach, and that she is a registered nurse from Columbia, Missouri. I will post the final entry from her diary here, and include some additional information below, for those who want to know more. Heidi has been an inspiration to me, and a regular reminder of those who are still suffering in Haiti. 
I’ve spent the last few days at the annual meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, held this year in beautiful, downtown 
I can still remember the First Sunday of Advent, 1996.
I mean, I’m finished with that book I’ve been reading, the one called Quitting Church by Washington Times Religion Editor Julia Duin. 
Here’s one for the record:
Yesterday was my daughter Ellie’s 21st birthday. Hard to believe she’s been in the world that long! In honor of the occasion I dug up a story that I wrote about her when she was four years old, when we went to visit her grandparents in the mountains of Western North Carolina. It goes like this:
From the impressive pulpit of my former church in DC I once announced: “I have no interest in institutional self-preservation!”
The Fourth Sunday of Advent was a full day at Richmond’s First Baptist Church. It started for me at the early service (which is not “dress rehearsal” for the 11:00 service, as some have implied, but a wonderfully intimate worship experience, precious to many, especially in a big church like this one). Imagine my surprise and delight when the choir sang a Mendelssohn piece, at full volume, before nine o’clock in the morning (not every choir can pull that off!). That was followed by a few quiet moments in my study, enjoying the coffee, pastry, cheese, and fruit Dot Smith lays out for me on a silver tray each Sunday (please don’t be jealous; she considers it a ministry, and I’m sure my preaching has improved as a result). And then there was a knock at the door—Joyce Chrisman, my secretary—asking me if I was on my way to the Pusey House to visit the Traveler’s Class. 
I was a little nervous about the Christmas Eve service.
You wouldn’t believe how many people wished me a “Blessed Epiphany” on January 6! Thank you readers, friends, and members of First Baptist for being such good sports. I got a request for my shoes from someone who wanted to put hay in them, several suggestions for family Epiphany celebrations, and one comment from a woman who said she was going to celebrate Epiphany “Irish style” by handing the baby off to her husband and enjoying a day of leisure. 
This Sunday, as part of my sermon series on the seven first words of Christ, I’m going to take a long, hard look at that moment in the Gospels when Jesus comes to be baptized. 
Sunday before last I preached on the theme of Epiphany, but for all that talk about dazzling light and the manifestation of God in Jesus Christ I found myself feeling pretty low after the 8:30 service.
It’s true.
I went to the daily eucharist at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston last Thursday, January 15. It was Martin Luther King’s birthday, which the Episcopal Church observes as a feast day.
Just before 11:00 this morning Mary Hiteman, Director of the Weekday Early Education ministry at First Baptist Church, asked me if I had “two minutes.” 
In just a little while I’ll be doing the funeral of Nancy LeSac, a faithful and courageous church member who died on Monday morning after a long struggle with brain cancer.
People have been asking me where we stand on the issue of baptism and church membership at Richmond’s First Baptist Church, a subject of frequent discussion on this blog (see “
I don’t know how it is for you, but I am often harder on myself than on anyone else. I can counsel with others and no matter what they have done I can usually nod my head sympathetically and show some understanding. But not with myself. Where I would forgive the shortcomings of others I often scold myself, wag my finger, and say, “How could you?!” I tend to hold on to sins that God has forgiven long ago, sifting through them from time to time to remind myself just how wretched I really am.
Tom Harpur is a journalist, TV host, and Canada’s best-known author on the topics of religion and spirituality. He is an Anglican priest and Rhodes scholar who studied philosophy and theology at Oxford. He has written a statement of faith—a “creed” as he calls it—that goes like this:
It was sometime during my run on Thursday that I wondered if it was worth it.
In each of the churches I have served there has been a “legendary” pastor.
I used to teach a fifth and sixth grade Sunday school class where we used the church constitution and bylaws as our curriculum. Just what a fifth or sixth grader is hungry for, right? But there was a lot in that little booklet, including the church covenant, articles of faith, and a statement of purpose. When I taught that last item I would say “SO FEW people know the purpose of the church,” and then I would tick off those five letters on the five fingers of my right hand: “S.O.F.E.W: Service, Outreach, Fellowship, Education, and Worship.”
In my last post, I told you that SO FEW people know the purpose of the church, but now that you are one of those people I have a question: if the essential purpose of every Christian church is service, outreach, fellowship, education, and worship, then why do we not organize ourselves that way? Why do we not have—in large churches, especially—a minister of service, a minister of outreach, a minister of fellowship, a minister of education, and a minister of worship? If these are the essential minstries of the church then shouldn’t we be doing them, and wouldn’t it help to have someone in each of these areas who could recruit, train, and motivate our members toward that end?
As a follow up to my Ash Wednesday sermon about overcoming our fear of death by denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and following Jesus (“volunteering to die” as Dietrich Bonhoeffer would put it), let me offer this wonderful poem by M. Truman Cooper, first shared with me by my dear friend Judy Skeen. It’s called “See Paris First,” and it’s about knowing what it is you fear and facing up to it–approaching it squarely and head on–so that you don’t have to spend the rest of your life being afraid. The poem itself is simple and spare. It may take more than one reading to appreciate it, but I assure you…it’s worth it.
Last week, during the Lenten Luncheon series at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, I told the story of how my family left Alabama. Some of you have asked that I post it here. This version is a little longer, with a few more details. I hope it will inspire your thinking on race relations and make you wonder how your own experience has shaped your views on that issue. Enjoy.
Somewhere in Richmond recently I saw a van advertising “The Bible Answer Man” along with a telephone number that I quickly entered and stored in my cell phone. That’s useful information: you never know when you’re going to need a biblical answer to a difficult question. As I was scrolling lazily through the numbers on my cell phone yesterday afternoon I saw that one, which I had entered as “Bible Ans,” and decided to give him a call.
When I was teaching fifth and sixth graders in Sunday school I would tell them, “SO FEW people know the purpose of the church,” and then I would tick off those five letters on the five fingers of my right hand: “S.O.F.E.W: Service, Outreach, Fellowship, Education, and Worship.” It was a way to help them remember the five essential ministries of every Christian church, and it worked, but while that acronym makes it easy to remember the purpose of the church, those five words might not be the most descriptive. Education, for example, sounds like something you do only with your head while discipleship or apprenticeship could involve the whole person. 
My brother Billy is 32, single, and a wonderful musician (and that’s only the beginning). About two years ago someone spotted this graffito on the wall of the women’s restroom at one of the places where he had played. Apparently this woman didn’t know what to do except pour her heart out in a public place with a Magic Marker. What would you do? And, more importantly, what should Billy do with information like that?
Usually, when I go to the fitness center in the morning, I step onto the elliptical trainer, plug in my earphones, and tune the television monitor to CNN to catch up on the latest news, but this morning it seemed to be one commercial after another until finally, frustrated, I turned off the monitor, unplugged the earphones, and closed my eyes.
When I first met Daniel he told me his name meant “God is my judge.” We were down in the Community Missions suite, and he was waiting for his turn in the showers. “That’s a good name,” I said. “That means no one else can judge you, right?” “Right!” he said. I tried to remember that when I saw him crossing Monument Avenue a few days later, wearing a black-and-white polka dot dress. He had a big grin on his face at the time, carrying a laundry basket full of clothes as if he were on his way to the laundromat and had nothing else to wear but the neighbor lady’s dress. Maybe that’s exactly what was going on. It doesn’t matter: God is his judge.
I had lunch with the Imam on Monday. That’s not his given name, but it’s what the others at the table—two members of his congregation—were calling him. They sat on either side of him, nodding respectfully in his direction whenever they mentioned that “the Imam” had said this or that, or that we might want to ask “the Imam.” I was having lunch with him at the invitation of one of our newer members, who is interested in interfaith dialogue and who thought a get-acquainted meeting with his pastor and the local imam might be a good idea. I thought it would too, and only partly because we were having lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant with an all-you-can-eat buffet.
I was at Starbucks this afternoon, reading through a stack of correspondence, studying for Wednesday night’s sermon from Mark 12:1-12, and savoring the first few pages of Phyllis Tickle’s new book, The Great Emergence, when I looked up and saw a pair of shoes that inspired poety. Here’s the result:
The word passion, in its oldest form, means “suffering.”
Easter Sunday was a glorious day in more ways than one. Not only did we gather for worship and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus at First Baptist Church, but God himself was in a celebratory mood, festooning the city of Richmond with sunshine and soft, swirling breezes in honor of his Son. Or so it seemed as I strolled along Monument Avenue with family and friends that afternoon, soaking up the joyful ambience of an event called “Easter on Parade.”
Wendell Berry–well-known poet, philospher, and prophet—was a member of the church I served in New Castle, Kentucky. I’ve read a number of his novels and essays, but this poem has always been one of my favorites. If you’re not a fan of poety (some people aren’t), you can skip down to the last line which—during this Easter season—presents itself as a bold challenge to the followers of the risen Lord.
Those of you who have been following the discussion of baptism and church membership at First Baptist will want to know that the question of whether or not Christians who have been discipled in other traditions must be immersed in order to become full members of Richmond’s First Baptist Church is being referred to a team of 12 deacons who will study it over the summer and bring a recommendation back to the deacons in the fall. At this point those deacons have not been named, but Deacon Chair Lee Stephenson is busy making those appointments.
Staff retreat, that is. 
I did a memorial service this afternoon for Mark Boschen, one of our new members who died quite suddenly and unexpectedly. He was 61 years old.
Yesterday, during the Sunday School hour at Richmond’s First Baptist Church, we unveiled our new “Missional” church structure. I made some opening remarks and then members of the staff shared their vision for the various ministry areas. In closing we showed the “
One of the ways I’m trying to help people understand this whole “missional church” concept is by talking about the mission trip our youth took to Slovakia last summer.
Facebook friend Andy Berry passed along this blog post from 
On Saturday, my daughter Ellie graduated from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. It was everything a Charleston graduation should be: a warm, spring morning with plenty of sunshine, but also with delicious breezes swirling around proud family and friends as we sat in rented chairs beneath a shady canopy of live oak trees. The faculty processed in their regalia, and the graduating seniors came out by the hundreds, with the women in white dresses, holding roses, and the men in white dinner jackets and black bow ties. 
Here’s another great poem by Wendell Berry. I smiled when I read it because, for nearly five years in Kentucky, I was pastor to his mother, Virginia Berry. She was everything he says she was here and then some. But I also smiled because it reminded me so much of my own mother, who forgave me more wrongs than I care to remember, and who—like Wendell’s mother—has long since forgotten them. So, here’s to you, Virginia, and Mary Rice, and all mothers everywhere. 
When I got back from my daughter’s college graduation last Sunday night I found a message in my inbox hinting that “something” had happened during the 11:00 worship service at Richmond’s First Baptist Church that day, but it wasn’t until the next morning that I found out what it was. Joyce, my secretary, told me that one of our homeless neighbors had come down the aisle in the middle of the service demanding to know why “Amazing Grace” and “It Is Well with My Soul” weren’t in our hymnbook. He said that he was “a miracle of God,” and wanted to share his testimony.
The 
So, here’s one that sounds like it should be a joke:
Last Saturday my daughter Catherine graduated from high school (the appropriately named St. Catherine’s school for girls here in Richmond, where instead of the traditional cap and gown graduates wear full-length white dresses and carry bouquets of daisies). We teased her about being the first in the family, and in some ways it’s true. I went to college after my junior year in high school; my wife Christy finished high school a year early; my daughter Ellie finished a semester early. None of us completed our senior year or went to the senior prom. Catherine did. So, when Ellie went to pick up a cake for dinner on the night of Catherine’s graduation she asked the baker to write on the cake, “Congratulations, Catherine: First in the Family!”
That’s what I’ve been telling people these days when they ask me to explain the concept of the ”missional church”: I say, “If you’ve ever been on a mission trip then you know. It’s like that. It’s like all of us at First Baptist Church are on a mission trip right now, right here. The bus has just come to a stop at our mission site on the corner of Monument and Boulevard and it’s time to get off the bus.”
I’m back from a week’s vacation, sitting at my kitchen table at six o’clock on Saturday morning, sipping hot coffee from a ceramic mug and thinking about the Trinity.
The choir of Richmond’s First Baptist Church knocked me out of my pew last night. Their spring concert—”The Kingdom”—was an answer to the Lord’s Prayer, because last night God’s kingdom came, God’s will was done, on earth as it is in heaven (or maybe it just seemed that way to me, having been knocked out of my pew by the beauty and power of music).
Here’s the second “Act” of the piece I wrote for Sunday night’s heavenly choir concert, “The Kingdom.” I called Act I “Jesus,” and called this Act “the Church.” Faithful readers of this blog will recognize the poem by 
I just got back from the Rotary Club, where I enjoyed a delicious breakfast and spoke to some fifty members of the West Henrico chapter. As I prepared my speech I tried to think about what a Baptist preacher could say to a group of business people that wouldn’t sound too “preachy.” I ended up talking about a favorite subject of mine, and that is the way the church has responded to the changes in culture over the last forty to fifty years.
It sounds a little corny, doesn’t it? (or a little wheaty, or a little barley, depending on what kind of seeds you use), but at the end of my 
I’ve been meeting with a group of seniors at Richmond’s First Baptist Church to talk about all the change that has taken place in the church in the last fifty years. I got the idea from a book called 
Al Astle is in his nineties now, but in his day he was a terrific percussionist, and even now he can produce rhythms and sounds from a vibraphone that will astound a sophisticated audience. 
I’ve been overwhelmed by the response to Sunday’s sermon from Mark 5:21-43, the passage where Jesus heals the woman with the hemorrhage and raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead. It seems that everyone has prayed for someone who was sick or dying, and while some of them tell stories of miraculous healings—like the ones in Sunday’s Gospel reading—most of them do not.
I went to a workshop in Houston last week called “Being Missional in Your Church Context: Meeting the Real Needs of Your Neighbors.”
Just a post-it note to tell you about an experience I had last week:
Here’s a fascinating article by Mercer University professor David Gushee on Jesus and the Kingdom of God. It’s not an easy read. Please don’t try it before having coffee in the morning. But if you are up to it, I would love to hear your feedback. 
I told the congregation on Sunday that I would be going to South Carolina for a few days this week on a “Fifth Commandment Mission Trip.” I could see the blank looks on some faces and so I reminded them that the fifth commandment is the one that says, “You shall honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land” (Exodus 20:12). A Fifth Commandment Mission Trip is one in which you honor your father and mother by driving to their home in South Carolina with your toolbox and work gloves and doing whatever needs to be done around their house. 
As a follow up to the post below about what kind of Baptist I am:
A few months ago I preached 
The latest issue of Leadership Journal has a fascinating article on ministry to twentysomethings. It tells the story of “Axis,” the young adult ministry of Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago, one of the nation’s first true megachurches. Axis started in 2001 with 2,000 young adults gathering on Sunday nights for alternative music and relevant teaching, but by 2006 attendance was down to 400. 
I had lunch yesterday with someone who had all the answers.
I went to Starbucks this week to study for Sunday’s sermon and took my Greek New Testament with me. When I put it down on the counter to pay for my coffee the guy at the register said, “Why are you studying Greek?”
Shall we gather at the river,
I’m on a staff mission trip this week, right here in the City of Richmond. 
The staff of Richmond’s First Baptist Church has been on an in-town mission trip this week, doing our part to see that God’s kingdom comes and God’s will is done “in Richmond as it is in Heaven.” One of the ways we have approached that mission is by loving our neighbors as we love ourselves (Matt. 22:39), and that’s why on Thursday most of the staff spent most of the day scrubbing down the walls and floors of Fox Elementary School right here in the Fan. I had a previous commitment that day and wasn’t able to participate, but the staff let me know (over and over again) that I had missed the hardest work day of the week. It didn’t go without notice, however. The two custodians at Fox Elementary were extremely grateful, and acknowledged that there was no way they would have been ready for opening day without the help of First Baptist Church. I hope that story will get around, and secure our reputation as “a good neighbor in a great neighborhood.” 
Yesterday I preached on submission.
“Christianity has an image problem.”
It’s been another good day at Richmond’s First Baptist Church. I finished my sermon series from Ephesians called “Reading Other People’s Mail.” Between services I visited one of the children’s Sunday school classes and told the story of Mary and Martha. I went to lunch with the Bible Explorer’s class, a group of about forty active senior adults. And then this evening I preached through all of Luke 15 at a retirement center on the South Side of Richmond. I’m just settling into my big, comfortable chair now, thinking about what to do with the rest of the evening.
I’m almost finished with the book Unchristian (some of you will be glad), but I wanted to share a quote from the chapter called “Too Political.” According to co-authors David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons 75% of young adults outside the faith think that Christians are “overly motivated by a political agenda, that we pomote and represent politically conservative interests and issues, [and that] Conservative Christians are often thought of as right-wingers” (p. 30). Again, this may not be true of you or your church, but it’s the way 75% of young adults outside the faith perceive us. 
I’m still reading ![HuggingKidsSmall[4]](http://jimsomerville.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/huggingkidssmall4.jpg?w=240&h=158 "HuggingKidsSmall[4]")
I’m reading the last few pages of Unchristian and looking for the author’s conclusions. OK, so we know that the younger generations have a negative perception of Christians, that they think we are hypocritical, judgmental, antihomosexual, too sheltered, too political, and too focused on making converts. What do we do about that? How do we change their perceptions?
At the end of my last post I asked you what it would take to make the move from Unchristian to Christian, which is just what the authors of 
One of my Facebook friends asked a question yesterday. He said, “Somebody help me here. Didn’t Reagan and H.W. Bush make speeches at the outset of school years? Why the uproar over Obama doing the same thing?” 
Yesterday I went down to the basement level at First Baptist Church to greet the homeless men and women who come for hot showers, clean clothes, and the generous love of Jesus they receive from our faithful volunteers.
Some of my recent posts have generated concerns that I’m getting “too political” on this blog, that my criticism of talk radio is an attack on the political views of those who listen to talk radio. Not so. As I said in a subsequent comment, “the vitriol doesn’t only come from one side. You can balance the ranting and raving of talk radio with some of the smug, holier-than-thou comments that come from the liberal elite.” My concern here is not with politics, but with the level and tone of our public discourse. We don’t seem to be able to talk to each other these days without yelling at each other. 
I was going through the serving line at a church luncheon a few months ago when I found myself standing beside one of our bright, capable high school students (there are so many!). Since I’m not with the youth that often she seized the opportunity to let me know what was on her mind. “I’ve been thinking about getting baptized again,” she said. “Really?” I answered. “I’d love to talk to you about that.” And so, when we had filled our plates, we sat down together. 
Here’s a story from Sunday’s sermon that everyone seemed to enjoy. It’s based on that passage in Mark 9 where Jesus takes a little child into his arms and tells his disciples, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me” (vs. 37). 
I was invited to a retreat at 
I went down to the basement level of First Baptist Church on Wednesday to greet the people who come for our shower ministry. I try to do this every week, partly because I love the people and partly because it keeps my ministry “real.” Instead of visiting only with the sweet-smelling and freshly scrubbed Christians of First Baptist Church I get to spend some time visiting with people who are down on their luck and out on the streets. 
It happened at both services on Sunday. I gave an invitation, stepped down from the pulpit for the hymn, and sang all four verses of “Let Your Heart Be Broken” while waiting to see if anyone would come forward to join the church or give their heart to Jesus.
I’ve been doing a storytelling series on Wednesday nights called, “
I’m in Washington, DC, this morning, staying at the College of Preachers as part of a 24-hour personal retreat. “The College,” as they call it, is an experience in itself: stone arches and polished woodwork and leaded glass windows looking out over a lush green courtyard called “The Garth.” I came here for the first time in the Winter of 1994, for a week-long preaching workshop with 
I went to the fair with my daughter Ellie this year. I’d love to tell you all about it, but she did such a good job on her own blog site, I’ll let her tell you herself. Click 
I’m at the beach on an overcast day, reading Philip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 1995). In the introductory chapter Yancey writes about the Jesus he knew as a child in Sunday school, the Jesus he knew in Bible college as a young man, and the Jesus he came to know through books, films, articles, and his own careful reading of the Gospels. I was thrilled to see how his understanding of Jesus evolved over time, because too many Christians seem to carry around in their heads the Jesus they knew in Sunday school—”someone kind and reassuring with no sharp edges at all,” as Yancey writes, a comforting kind of “Mister Rogers” character. It’s hard for me to imagine that any serious reading of the Gospels could produce such an image of Jesus. Yancey writes:
I think I’ve had a fresh insight on the whole “
A great poem, shared with me by my friend Roberta Damon:
In 
If you’ve read my last two posts you know that I’ve had a fresh insight about baptism and church membership. In the
I’ve been writing about baptism and church membership until my head hurts. I need a break and you probably do, too. So I thought I’d share my favorite joke, which I heard years ago on Garrison Keillor’s “
Next month I’m going to 
I’m in Oklahoma City with about fifty other Baptist pastors, talking about how to do missions in a changing world. One of them told us an interesting story about something that happened to him a few years ago.
I went to Oklahoma City last week mostly because of the guest list. The invitation seemed deliberately vague: a group of some fifty Baptist ministers and missionaries were going to be talking about how to do missions in the 21st century. There were some hints about “finding new ways” that suggested the old ways were no longer working. I didn’t know what to make of that. But as I looked down the guest list I began to think that a couple of days talking with those people would be worth the trip.
Sometimes everything just comes together.
I mentioned in worship last Sunday that a $6 mosquito net will keep an average of two children in Africa from dying of malaria. That means that $3 could save the life of a single child. The question is: is it worth it?
Matt Jeffreys is the pastor of 
I thought I had Sunday’s sermon all wrapped up. 
I laughed out loud over one of the comments on my 
I’m still learning details of yesterday’s 
Good morning, Campers!
Just after worship today I will head to the airport to catch a flight to Dallas, Texas. I’ll be away for a week, backpacking in Guadalupe Mountains National Park with my friends Chuck Treadwell and Joe Perez. Here’s a picture from another trip—Mount Rainier in the summer of 2005—just to give you an idea of why I do it. Yes, I’m grizzled and footsore in this picture, but I’m sipping hot tea on the Wonderland Trail, with Mount Rainier looming over my left shoulder. 
On Thursday of last week, my friend Joe Perez and I were hiking up Bear Canyon in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. It’s a beautiful hike, but the trail ascends almost vertically for 2,500 feet. On the way up I caught myself singing that old spiritual, “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder.” It’s got the perfect rhythm for a hike like that—slow and plodding—and the line about “every round goes higher, higher” is not only descriptive, it’s encouraging. 
And the Winners Are…
January 11, 2009 by Jim Somerville
Winners in the “Why Was Jesus Baptized?” contest were Linda Moore, Paul Burkwall, Robert Gray, and J.T. Moger, who were each mentioned in today’s sermon. There were many more good comments than I could use. Thank you to everyone who weighed in!
If you want to hear the sermon, either so you will have the definitive answer to why Jesus was baptized (wink) or just to hear your name mentioned aloud, you can click on this link:
http://www.fbcrichmond.org/sermons/index.htm
Thanks again for reading, thinking, and writing.
Jim
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