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Tulsa Is Alive!

Posted in Other, tagged , , on March 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The Tulsa Workshop is in its 36th year as a major event for churches of Christ.  Twenty years ago the attendance was probably near 10,000 and the Pavilion Center was almost full, both floor and upper tier seating.

Christians from the heartland are the main supporters of the Tulsa Workshop, from towns like Owassa and Skytook, Oklahoma, Texans from Mineola—many small towns and smaller churches—great down-home people! . The Workshop was always exciting, foot-stomping, not cerebral or sophisticated—and that served the large audiences for many years. But not so much anymore!

As with many large events, the Tulsa Workshop has declined over the past decade. Honestly, if Sherrylee had not been invited to teach a class, she and I probably would have just sent a staff member to represent LST—but I’m glad we came this year because the Workshop is different!

We do not come every year, but this year is really refreshing and gives me hope that the Tulsa Workshop can survive.  Here are a few things that I have noticed:

1.  Top-tier keynote speakers ,including some from the more progressive churches of Christ as well as solid, mainstream churches! No political choices; just those who could bring the word powerfully.

2.  Great young preachers giving keynotes, not just the established personalities of the fellowship or local Tulsa prominence! In fact, young preachers were paired with their mentors in a wonderfully biblical Paul-and-Timothy realization of older men teaching younger men.

3.  Challenging classes. The venue does not lend itself to many simultaneous classes, so the limited offerings is unfortunate, but the offered slate of classes is excellent.

4.  Contemporary worship. The organizers this year achieved great balance between modern praise music and older favorites. Balance is perhaps the wrong word because the vast majority of songs were modern.  Consistent use of good praise teams helped overcome difficult acoustics in the arena.

So, kudos to the organizers—rumor I heard was that it was the Memorial Drive church staff! Very well done—and it seems to be very well received! Here is the website for this year’s workshop so you can see for yourself what a good program it was www.tulsaworkshop.org .

Very few large events have survived: most of the Christian college lectureships still exist in some form, but virtually all except Pepperdine’s Bible Lectures have been greatly diminished.  The Tulsa Workshop is on a survival track if they can continue this refreshing  course.  I would make just a few small suggestions:

1.            Be innovative in creating an interactive environment! I’m not just talking about breakout groups, but find ways to create dialogue and interaction, perhaps with new technology. What if you polled the audience using their mobile phones and could show immediate response on the projection screen so that the speaker/facilitator could speak to the responses of that particular group?  Just a small idea!

2. Make an effort to get more ministries to exhibit. For my taste, the exhibitions were too heavy on the commercial. I’ve always loved the exhibit area of lectureships, but I’m looking as much for inspiration as I am another Bible or different religious T-shirt.  That’s just me.

3.            Don’t let the venue determine the nature of the workshop. Good job this year with the changes in buildings, but the difficulties with using the fairgrounds are pretty obvious.

By the way, did I tell you that the Oklahoma redbuds are beautiful! And Tulsa is a beautiful city. Why don’t we all meet next year at the Tulsa Workshop and be blessed together!

 

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Parenting Scripts: 5 Tips on Blending and The Best Advice We Ever Received!

Posted in Christian Culture, Other, tagged , , , on March 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Your parents spanked you when you needed it. Her parents thought spanking was child abuse. Your parents were strict about bed times. His parents let him stay up until he fell asleep on the floor!  Your parents never left the kids overnight with grandparents until they were at least three years old. He wants to leave the six-month old for one night with your parents.  What do you do?

Challenging? Challenging is hardly the right word because the parenting scripts that we inherit from our parents are so deeply embedded that we sometimes don’t even know they are there until suddenly, you say to yourself, “Oh my! Did that just come out of my mouth? I sounded just like my mother!”  Even more threatening though could be the reaction: “Oh no! He just sounded like his dad!”

Most couples are challenged quite early in their marriage to begin the task of working with their own parental scripts and figuring out what parts to keep, what parts to change, and what parts to discard.  Here are just a few simple observations from our own experience.

1.  Talk to each other—a lot—about how it was in your homes! My mother was strict with us but did not raise her voice. Sherry’s mom raised her voice to discipline the kids. So Sherry would raise her voice, and the kids would be fine—but it would drive me crazy!  Knowing that it was just part of her inherited script rather than “seriously irrational behavior” made it easier for me to understand and her to evaluate.

2. Don’t be afraid to defend your own script, but don’t fall into the trap of defending your parents! If you had wonderful parents, it is natural to want to imitate them—and rightly so. Just make sure that what worked for them is still appropriate thirty years later in a completely new family. And if your spouse feels the same way about a different script from his parents, keep the conversation about your children, not about your parents—or his parents!

3.  Don’t let your discussions become either YOUR way or MY way! Try to frame the result that you want as “what God wants US to do for our children.” The ownership of our own scripts can cause us to stubbornly, proudly, selfishly, insist on winning—even to the detriment of our children. It’s not about YOU. It’s about them!

4.  Remember the temporary nature of your decisions. Our kids, at least, went through ups and downs in their development that were mildly unpredictable.  Just about the time we would pat ourselves on the back for discovering the right parenting posture—because the kids were responding so well—they would change and our approach would seem all wrong now.

I know this is where many parents get frustrated. It’s like good parenting is always a moving target.  All the more reason to stay close to the kids, be around, listen to how they are today, and don’t hold on to previously effective parenting modes out of principle. Do so only if you both still feel they are appropriate with your children as they are today.

5.  Sometimes you adopt, sometimes you blend, and sometimes you concoct! We adopted Sherrylee’s grandparents’ admonition for our teenagers: “If it is not a sin, let them do it!” We blended most areas because our parents actually gave us similar scripts so it wasn’t too hard. But to deal with our children and what to do with them in cross-cultural situations, for instance, we had to create because we didn’t have any script from either set of parents for those situations.  Don’t get stuck in Either/Or thinking. Your kids are special enough to deserve your exploring creative options as well.

The Best Advice We Ever Received

Perhaps the best piece of advice that Sherrylee and I ever received was from an older missionary who told us that if the kids know that Mom really loves Dad and Dad really loves Mom, then the kids will turn out OK.  I know that’s a pretty simple script and won’t fit every single case, but in general, we believe it to be true, so my last piece of advice for blending your parenting scripts is

Love each other. Treat each other with respect, with honor preferring one another.

Does that sound familiar?

 

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Parenting Scripts: Your Kids Are His Kids!

Posted in Christian Culture, Other, tagged , , , , , , on March 22, 2011| 1 Comment »

I grew up with two sisters and two brothers. I was the oldest child, so I was old enough to inherit a script from my parents for raising both boys and girls.

The scripts we get from our parents are two-edged swords, cutting both ways: as young parents probably our first or most immediate tendencies are to simply replay that script and do exactly what our parents did. Wisdom in parenting may often be, however, seeing opportunities to improve that script, sometimes even completely re-writing it.

Then when we marry, we introduce another parenting script into the house. Blending those scripts is one of the first challenges new parents have—and an ongoing project as long as they are actively parenting children.

First , let’s talk about dealing with your parenting scripts from your own parents:

1.            If you had wonderful, loving parents, then you know that they would want you to be an even better parent than they were, so don’t feel guilty about improving the script. It is not in any way an attack or insult to your parents.

2.            Recognize that you are not raising your children in the same environment or context that your parents did, so the new situation may require new approaches. Recently our two second-grade grandchildren each needed to interview their Grandad for school, and one of the questions each of them asked was how is it different today than it was when I was in second grade.  I hardly knew where to begin. My parents didn’t have to deal with drugs in schools, sex on TV—we only had three channels!—internet access, even premier kids’ sport leagues and serious competition in the second grade!

3.            Your family configuration is probably different from your parents’, introducing a different dynamic than what you grew up with. My dad worked six days a week and was gone from 7 until evening every day except Thursday, when he got a half-day off. We only had one car and four kids under 8 years old. Does that sound like your family? It’s not like any of our children’s families, so they, of course, need to approach parenting differently.

4.            Your children are unique, and not like your parent’s children, so their parenting needs are different. Sherrylee and I are pretty convinced that kids come into the world with their own personalities and gifts given from God. The uniqueness of each child would argue for a uniquely appropriate parenting styles.  Our three children all required very different parenting approaches. One required structured discipline, one required lots of supportive encouragement, and the other required bribery!! (And I’m not saying which was which J!)

God has given YOU the spiritual gifts you need for the children He has given you! Be confident that even a bad script is something that God has allowed for a reason. You are a parent because He made you one. You are a parent because He wants you to raise those children.

Those kids you have in your house are HIS kids! And He has given them to you for His purposes. So have confidence that He has and will give you all the experience, all the history, all the scripts, and all the tools you need to be a parent just like He wants you to be.

Be strong and courageous—and don’t be afraid!

Next, we’ll talk about the challenge of blending parenting scripts.

 

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Purer In Heart, O God, Help Me To Be!

Posted in Christian Culture, Other, tagged , , , on March 18, 2011| 1 Comment »

I just watched a CNN video report about a website at the University of Chicago that provides hook-up opportunities for students, hook-ups being casual, no-strings-attached sexual experiences.  Two hundred students have signed up already because it’s “a lot of fun,” and a good way to “unwind.” Chastity is curable if detected early is one of the taglines on the site! (View the CNN report )

According to the Center for Disease Control report in 2009,  46% of high school students reported having sexual intercourse. Across the U.S., 5.9% of students reported having sexual intercourse before age 13. Furthermore, 13.8% of high school students reported having had at least four different partners–and females students reported greater sexual activity in the last three months before the survey was taken than males.

If you wait until your kids are teenagers to become concerned about purity and holiness, you are years too late!

Here are some suggestions for you who still have young children to consider!

1.  Mom and Dad must model purity and holiness consistently and not just in the area of sexuality. As I have said before, I think this means pure speech, pure jokes, pure media, pure computing, pure friendships, pure work ethics—just holy living! Hypocrisy—even perceived hypocrisy– will completely erase all of the good words you and all the Sunday school teachers in the Bible-belt might say to your child.

2. Be black-and-white about what is pure and holy! No matter who is doing it, sexual intercourse outside of marriage is wrong! Getting drunk is wrong. Vulgar (unholy) language is wrong! Looking at pornography is wrong! As adults, we recognize how to deal with borderline stuff, so we allow judgments and finer distinctions, but children need big, black-and-white boundaries until they know good from evil. Save your discussions of gray areas or exceptions until they are much older.

3.  Optional boundaries—actions that are not in violation of God’s law, but not good for children– may be better taught as “family rules,” not God’s rules. We did this with drinking alcohol. We decided with our first child to never keep alcohol at home or serve it at home. We did not want to send the message that it was a sin to drink alcohol because we did not believe that. The message we wanted to send was that children—especially teenagers—should not drink alcohol. 

You may have to make decisions about gambling, types of clothing, movie ratings, certain types of hangouts, even certain video games and maybe some verbal expressions. The danger of making something God’s rule without it really being concretely commanded by God is that as the children get older, they may come to a different opinion about biblical teachings and feel like you have either not been truthful or accurate with them.  In either case, young people are tempted then to lump all of “God’s rules” into one big pile and get rid of all of them.

4. Help them choose friends whose parents have similar values to yours. You should try to be very consistent about this as long as you can because your influence over friendships tends to diminish with each year of school.  This also means being aware of the people YOU choose to be friends with—and with which values they are raising their children.  Don’t sacrifice your kids to your own friendships.

By the way, this is where “family rules” can help you keep your kids from learning to be judgmental towards other parents or children who have different “family rules.” Just remember, family rules do not replace God’s rules; they are just training wheels until the child can ride the bike by herself.)

 

In the world we live in, even we Christians almost feel embarrassed to use words like purity and holiness. Chastity and modesty seem like words our grandparents might have used.

As you pray for wisdom to be a good parent, ask God to give you quiet strength to be pure and holy and to give your courage to use the words with your children—not in a preachy way. Maybe you could teach them the old but simple song Purer In Heart, O God

Purer in heart, O God, help me to be;

May I devote my life wholly to Thee;

Watch Thou my wayward feet, Guide me with counsel sweet;

Purer in heart, help me to be.

 

Purer in heart, O God, help me to be;

Teach me to do Thy will most lovingly;

Be Thou my Friend and Guide, Let me with Thee abide;

Purer in heart, help me to be.

 

Purer in heart, O God, help me to be;

That I Thy holy face one day may see;

Keep me from secret sin, reign Thou my soul within;

Purer in heart, help me to be.

(Words: Mrs. A.L Davison)

Don’t worry about the King James’ English. It will help your kids when they have to read Shakespeare in the 8th grade!

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When I Learned About Adultery!

Posted in Christian Culture, Other, tagged , , , on March 16, 2011| 2 Comments »

I went to a small Christian school from the sixth grade until I finished high school—and I loved it! Someday I’ll tell you all the reasons it was such a good experience for me, but today I want to tell you about what I learned about SIN.

The summer before my seventh grade year, the new choral director moved next door to us, along with his wife and two small boys. They quickly became friends with my parents, and by the time I got to high school and could be in chorus, he became a special mentor to me.

He was probably the most popular teacher at our school; he worked tirelessly on behalf of the Christian school doing fund raising events with the chorus, the band, and small ensembles—and he even served a short stint as principal of the school.  He was the regular song leader at one of the local congregations.

I graded papers for him, babysat their kids, learned to drive a standard shift on his little Renault and listened to his advice on everything with great admiration.

One night in early October of my senior year, his wife came running over to our house in tears. When she came in, Mom and Dad sent us out of the room so she could talk to them—but I knew immediately what had happened.  My chorus director had just admitted having an affair with one of my classmates.

I was aware that the girls in chorus—always more savvy than the guys at this age—talked about how my mentor always picked a girl Friday—wondering who would it be this year?  I knew that he was just a little flirty, sometimes putting his arm around some random girl, but I always thought it was not much different than many older men that I saw at church who were a little flirty and a little huggy!  In a fairly naïve way, I thought he probably shouldn’t do it, but it was always in public and nobody seemed to take offense, so it really didn’t tarnish my admiration or respect at all.

From the first day of school in September of my senior year, I knew something was different. He not only was flirty, but now he was giving this one girl in my class solos to sing—and her voice was just not that good. He was giving her special responsibilities—and she wasn’t that responsible. She was always the last one off the chorus bus after a program. And one day I walked into the chorus room at an hour when no class was scheduled, and he and she were there by themselves—which I thought was awkward—so awkward that the next time I walked into that room when it should have been empty, I made sure to make lots of noise turning the doorknob and coming in—just in case.

Don’t forget, this is 1964—when we still believed in heroes and before the sexual revolution captured every billboard, every television, every magazine, and every movie. I was 16 years old and not oblivious to sexual improprieties, but I had never seen adultery and didn’t really expect to.  Whether I was just youthfully ignorant or willingly ignorant, I was not really allowing myself to go there –just didn’t want to believe it might be what it was!

Yes, the truth came out. He broke down and told his wife when he thought the girl was pregnant. He was immediately fired. My classmate was dismissed from the school. I never saw her again. He moved away, but came to visit my parents some years later and seemed to have begun his life over again. I really don’t know.

My friend/mentor’s adultery affected me deeply. Mostly, I felt a deep sense of betrayal by someone I had trusted to be a good person, to be a model Christian man.  But I also learned some lessons about life and sin that have helped me in my own walk. Maybe they will help you too!

  • Nobody is so good that they can’t be tempted! As a young person, I felt like even the temptation to sin was a sin! So you not only avoided temptation, but you tried to believe that you were somehow above or immune to temptation.  Admitting to being tempted freed me up to “flee the devil” and to ask the Father to “lead me not into temptation.”  I was nearer to the truth that sets us free by knowing that I too could be—would be–tempted just like my teacher.
  • Heroes not only stumble, they fall! And so I learned people almost always disappoint us. This sounds really bitter, but, in fact, again the truth sets us free to put our confidence in the One who never fails us. Only Jesus never fails us. If our confidence is in the righteousness of our parents, our elders, our preacher, our spouse—even our children—it is misplaced because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Only God never lies; only God is steadfast. Only God will never fail you!
  • Not only did that experience begin to direct my trust and confidence to the right place, but it has helped me manage self-righteousness when others sin. Only by grace will I be saved;only by His power can I avoid sinning. My self-righteousness is pathetic! We all have just one hope: Jesus!

Since this first experience, I have seen too many people I know end up in adulterous and/or immoral relationships. You too?  I’m sorry for my mentor and my classmate, but I learned a lot from them.

Next time, I want to explore with you what we should be teaching our children so that they can avoid sexual sin. Then we’ll talk about what adult Christians can do to remain holy!

 

 

 

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March Madness a la Gkids Basketball!

Posted in Christian Culture, Other, tagged , , on March 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’ve always been a fan of All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum because of the simplicity of his insights. Part of what he says is that it is never too late to start learning what we should have learned in kindergarten!

This last Saturday, I spent part of the day going to two basketball games: Carter (6) played at 9:00 in a league tournament, and Kellan (8) played his final season game against a team that had not lost in two years—according to him!

Youth basketball has some different rules which help the kids not only enjoy playing more, but gives them a chance to learn parts of the game that they otherwise might be tempted to ignore or leap over for the sake of a quick win, but at the expense of developing proper techniques and skills.

I was just thinking this morning that we could all learn something from youth basketball’s adaptation of the these rules.

  1. Youth players must pass at least once before anyone on the team attempts a shot. I’m sure the intent is to keep one dominant player from “hotdogging,” that is, taking the ball from one end of the court to the other and not using the other team members. For us grownup players, however, it is a good reminder that team play is a better strategy. A player who won’t pass the ball thinks too highly of himself.
  2. No more than one defensive player is allowed to guard the opponent with the ball. There is no worse feeling than being outnumbered and surrounded by opponents! That threatening sense of impending loss that makes your stomach churn when called to account before a panel or when two or three scowling colleagues enter your office at the same time—our experiences are bad if cornered!  Few people survive being ganged up on without feeling the need to fight back—fairly or unfairly!
  3. Defensive players may not guard the offensive players as long as the ball is in the backcourt. For young players who don’t dribble well, who can’t run and dribble at the same time, they need a chance to get started before they face the opposition, so this rule awards them half the court without interference. Young people, young Christians, young marrieds, young students, young employees often need the same kind of gracious allowance. Give them a chance to learn to run and dribble at the same time.
  4. Referees are not required to blow the whistle on every foul or penalty. Especially in the six-year-old league, the boys sometimes run five or six steps with the ball before they dribble; they start and stop their dribble, they commit backcourt violations—just all kinds of rules are flagrantly broken—most to which the boys are quite oblivious!  The referees see the violations, but they do not call them every time; in fact, really only the most flagrant violations get the whistle.

This drives the parents crazy! The parents are screaming “double dribble,” three-second violation,” “illegal screen,” – I haven’t heard “goaltending” yet, but almost everything else. The referees who graciously overlook the violations of the kids have to put up with parents who did not learn anything in kindergarten, I’m afraid!!

 

So, I spent a couple of hours with the grandkids and learned to be gracious, to pass the ball and be a team player, but not to gang up on people and not to blow the whistle every time someone commits an offense.

Even granddads can be schooled!

By the way, Carter lost his game pretty badly, but afterwards he really didn’t even remember the score. Kellan’s team beat the previously undefeated team with a long shot in the last ten seconds of the game.

They both got trophies!

 

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Rob Bell versus Jonathan Edwards ?

Posted in Other, tagged , , , on March 1, 2011| 10 Comments »

An electrifying, unconventional pastor whom Time magazine calls “a singular rock star in the church world,” Rob Bell is the most vibrant, central religious leader of the millennial generation. Now, in Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, Bell addresses one of the most controversial issues of faith—the afterlife—arguing that a loving God would never sentence human souls to eternal suffering. With searing insight, Bell puts hell on trial, and his message is decidedly optimistic—eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts right now. And ultimately, Love Wins.

This product description, probably provided by Rob Bell’s publisher, has started a Tunisia reaction on Twitter and in the evangelical Christian world.

Until Bell’s book is out and his own remarks can be viewed in context, I’m not too interested in jumping into that fray.  What concerns me more is how many Christians seem to hold to principles of universalism or act according to such principles without any awareness of their own misunderstandings whatsoever.

If Rob Bell comes out definitively for universal salvation, then he is only another reflection of the times we live in. Rarely, if ever, does one hear any of the following words in Christian assemblies:  Hell, Satan, Devil, eternal punishment, the Lost.

Even in Bible-believing churches we have sugar-coated these words, preferring to speak of evil, separation, seekers, unchurched—if we reference such things at all.

I can understand a rationale for controlling the offensiveness of our public conversation, but is it possible that by removing these words from our common vocabulary that we have been naïvely, but dangerously covering up the horrible truths that those words represent.

You’ve probably heard of Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon called Sinners In the Hands of An Angry God. Look at the points he made:

  1. God may cast wicked men into hell at any given moment.
  2. The Wicked deserve to be cast into hell. Divine justice does not prevent God from destroying the Wicked at any moment.
  3. The Wicked, at this moment, suffer under God’s condemnation to Hell.
  4. The Wicked, on earth – at this very moment – suffer the torments of Hell. The Wicked must not think, simply because they are not physically in Hell, that God (in Whose hand the Wicked now reside) is not – at this very moment – as angry with them as He is with those miserable creatures He is now tormenting in hell, and who – at this very moment – do feel and bear the fierceness of His wrath.
  5. At any moment God shall permit him, Satan stands ready to fall upon the Wicked and seize them as his own.
  6. If it were not for God’s restraints, there are, in the souls of wicked men, hellish principles reigning which, presently, would kindle and flame out into hellfire.
  7. Simply because there are not visible means of death before them, at any given moment, the Wicked should not, therefore, feel secure.
  8. Simply because it is natural to care for oneself or to think that others may care for them, men should not think themselves safe from God’s wrath.
  9. All that wicked men may do to save themselves from Hell’s pains shall afford them nothing if they continue to reject Christ.
  10. God has never promised to save us from Hell, except for those contained in Christ through the covenant of Grace.—from  Wikipedia

I find myself shocked at the unmitigated declarations of these contentions! Not a word of mercy! Not a gracious note!  But after you get over the shock of reading such inflammatory rhetoric, ask yourself which of these ten principles is not true!

Probably either you agree in principle with all ten—or you are so reviled by them that you didn’t even finish reading the list. If you are a Christian and were reviled, then I have to pose these questions for you to think about?

1.            Do we now believe that people cannot be lost? We have spent a great deal of energy convincing a generation that grew up with hell-raising sermons that they can be saved by God’s grace. Have we, however, failed to preach the full gospel that also says, “ . . . and he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16).

2.            Do we still believe in guilt which is the God-given consequence of sin? Jesus did say, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains” (John 9:41).

3.            Do we truly believe that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus (John 14:6)?

4.            Do we believe that people are either slaves to sin or slaves to God (Romans 6) and that there is no other alternative?

5.            Do we really believe in sin? And do we believe that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23)?

Even as I write these things, I’m tempted to just hit Delete and not pursue this—it is particularly disturbing—even painful.  But perhaps it should be more disturbing to me that I do not shudder when reminded of the wrath of God or that I  feel no visceral relief that I have been saved from the wrath of God (Romans 5:9).

If we believe there is no sin, no guilt, no hell, then will we ever cry over Jerusalem as Jesus did? Will we go to our cross? Will we completely surrender?

We dare not anesthetize our theology nor our language, but especially not our hearts, against the evil of sin, nor the pain of guilt, nor the darkness of hell, lest we find ourselves in a place where we no longer fear the Lord!

 

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Do We Have the Right to Shop for Churches?

Posted in Other, tagged , , on February 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »

In exploring the very important question of Christian unity, I keep asking myself how Jesus really wants us to be ONE.  What does this Divine Desire for unity look like in our world?  And what keeps us from achieving this unity?

I fear that one answer to this last question might be that we live in such an individualistic, consumer-oriented society that the right to shop is considered God-given.  I know this from personal experience.

Sherrylee and I have left two churches and thought we might have to leave another. Two of these churches we had a hand in starting and were certainly part of the core group. In the third church we were very common members.

Church number three was a good, traditional church, full of wonderful people; Sherrylee and I were continually irritated, however, by what we thought was a bureaucratic though benevolent leadership and shallow preaching. We left peaceably when the opportunity presented itself to start the perfect church with a like-minded group of friends.

Church number two felt like the perfect church, just what we wanted church to be: close, intimate fellowship, challenging teaching where any question could be raised and seriously addressed, and communal worship that visibly flowed from heart to heart in songs and prayers that felt holy rather than enthusiastic.

In spite of many years in that community of believers, Sherrylee and I left that church because we had lost confidence in their commitment to core Christian beliefs that we held to be essential and because we ourselves had lost the confidence and trust of the church leaders in this tension.

We did not leave the first day we noticed these losses. No, for several years we tried to re-direct and lead the church along a different path, but when we felt we had lost our voice and even the goodwill of the community, we left.

This congregation continues to exist, and I want to be clear that my description of how we believed it was many years ago is not a statement of how the current community is or what they believe and practice.  Neither we nor they were as perfect as we wanted to be!

Church number one is really the one I want to focus on in this post because with this particular group of Christians, I learned lessons that continue to challenge my understanding of Christian unity.

In 1973, Sherrylee and I along with two other couples moved to Hannover, Germany, in order to plant a new church (to use a jargon that belongs to the current generation).  Planting a church is an extraordinary experience that challenges the essence of your faith. It draws on all of your experiences as a Christian as well as all you have learned, and it defies formulas and templates, so you are forced into arenas that you never knew existed.

(Wow! I just realized as I wrote that sentence how attractive that whole list is to me. Makes me want to do it again!)

Here are a few of the lessons I learned in Hannover about church unity

  • We really don’t have an inalienable right to choose with whom we worship. We had one older German couple that were “old German”—meaning that their norms for propriety were from their generation, not those of the younger people in our age group. They were constantly being offended, but they desperately needed the Lord! On many days they were an irritant in our small community of believers—but God had brought them there. We did not have the right to choose to divorce them or ignore them; our only choice was to love them, so we learned to love rather than leave—and became a little more like Jesus because of them.
  • What is “lively” to one person is “deadly” to another even within the same community. The first wave of what we today call praise music was big in the States in the 70s, especially among campus ministries. Since Sherrylee and I had been at Ole Miss prior to going to Germany, we were familiar and in tune with this new music. You can imagine our enthusiasm for translating and introducing it to our fresh, new community in Hannover. What could be livelier?? Except that it was not their music. As in any group, some people liked anything new and different, but others needed the continuity of familiar German hymns. There was no option about having a “worship war,” so we had to learn  not only to respect each other, but to worship together in unity of spirit—and the style became secondary to the love that required.
  • Those least like you may become those most like you. Hannover is in northern Germany which is historically protestant. Southern Germany is much more Roman Catholic. We began our mission in southern Germany, but expected when we moved to Hannover that receptivity would be greater in northern Germany among the protestants with which we had more in common.  We were completely wrong!

What we had yet to learn was that the modern German protestant is far removed from the theology of Luther. In fact, Protestantism in Germany only has vestiges of Christian faith remaining. Most pastors do not believe in the resurrection of the dead, do not believe in eternal life, and do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I’m sure there are some clergy who do—and certainly many of their members—but as a whole, we found the protestant church in Germany then to be post-Christian.

You can imagine our surprise as we discovered that we had much more in common with the Catholic church than with the Protestant.  We had been raised to understand Catholics as much farther removed from the presence of God than Protestants. But Catholics firmly believe in the Lordship of Jesus, in his death and resurrection, in eternal life, in the inspired Scriptures, in prayer, communion, baptism, and so much more that we share.

If unity is based at all on likemindedness, if unity is based at all on speaking the same thing, then we had much more unity with Roman Catholics than we had with German Protestants.  In fact, many of those who joined our little community of faith came from Catholic backgrounds and probably joined us, not as a repudiation of their past, but as their own attempt to draw even closer to God.

So, as you can probably tell, I really don’t believe that we have the inalienable right to casually shop!  At best, the opportunity to shop is a luxury of the rich who live among many, many stores!

I do believe that belonging to a community requires commitment and part of every real commitment is being able to trust that you will not abandon those to whom you have committed.

God hates divorce! I believe that He hates that which creates Disunity, that which destroys committed relationships—including church fellowship.

But I’m still working on what that means.  So I’m thankful for His grace and mercy that heals brokenness!

 

 

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When Do You Leave Your Church?

Posted in Other, tagged , on February 24, 2011| 3 Comments »

When is your church so corrupt, or powerless, or meaningless, or empty, or anything—that you can no longer stay? When must you break fellowship, disregard leadership, and abandon community? Or is there never an excusable time or situation?

I’m reading Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas right now and thoroughly enjoying it although occasionally the writing style is too colloquial for me. Occasionally I feel that his research is too apparent—or maybe I have just read too many freshmen research papers and have been “overexposed. ”

Right now I’m reading through the time in the 1930s when Bonhoeffer and his colleagues in the German Protestant church are being forced to choose between Hitler’s perversion of Christianity and what they know to be true faith. Some quite faithful pastors are very hesitant to leave their national church, while others—like Bonhoeffer—see early that there is no alternative but to leave.

Bonhoeffer’s situation is perhaps different from where we might find ourselves in that he must deal with a national organization, whereas, we most often think only of leaving congregations. And yet as I write those words,  I think of the growing number of members of churches of Christ who are leaving the heritage of their youth for everything from orthodoxy to Pentecostalism—but mostly just for what they perceive to be a lively fellowship versus a dying fellowship.

In several conversations recently, Sherrylee and I have posed the following question for ourselves: if we had been common members of the church in 1517 in Wittenberg, would we have left our church to follow Luther’s teachings? Or would we have stayed and tried to preserve the unity of believers—which Luther actually did as well until he was excommunicated by his church.

Does Jesus’ prayer for unity among his followers mean anything to us today? I know we all believe it does, but we have a terrible time defining that unity. Jesus described a united fellowship as built from all who “believe in me” (John 17:20), all who are “in us” (v.21), and all who have received His “glory” (v.22). These transcendent terms sound neither like the basis of fellowship nor like the points of contention that cause people to break fellowship today to me.

Luther’s breach was within the existing church until he was cast out as an outlaw. Even then he himself did not establish a new fellowship. The political and social environment of the time forced people to choose whether they would be Lutheran or Catholic—not God.

Bonhoeffer saw the German state church turned into an arm of a godless political machine. Jesus left the state church, so Bonhoeffer did as well. He followed Jesus—and so should we.

Has Jesus left your church? If so, you should leave too! Have you been excommunicated because of your testimony—officially or unofficially?  Then you have really no choice but to find a new community.

I truly wonder though if my personal preferences, my personal irritations, my personal opinions are any reason at all to leave my church?

I suspect that the part of Jesus’ prayer for unity that is mine to fulfill compels me/requires me to subordinate the petty rests of what are mine to the greater goal of the Greater Unity.

How do you participate in Jesus’ prayer for unity among His disciples?

 

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Sherrylee’s Birthday!

Posted in Other, tagged , , on February 21, 2011| 4 Comments »

Today is Sherrylee’s birthday. I won’t tell you which one, but she would!  All I will say is that she was barely 19 when we married which will be 40 years ago in April!

In the last three posts, I’ve spent a little time talking about people who I’ve learned from through recent experience, so surely you are expecting me to tell you about Sherrylee!

First of all, to answer the most frequent of all questions: she likes her unusual name and uses the full thing in any formal situation, whether written or orally. Now her family calls her Sherry, so that’s what I usually call her too, unless I’m introducing her to other people.  She’s fine with both, but I just thought I’d get that question out of the way!

I actually woke up this morning thinking about how to tell you what I’ve learned from Sherry. As in any marriage, most of what you learn is so intrinsic to your personalities that it is hard to separate out into simple categories, but the more I thought about it, the one thing that recurs most often in what I have learned from Sherry, the one word that seemed to be a part of every descriptive phrase that occurred to me, that word was PASSION.

I grew up in a family that was all about subduing emotions and keeping passion under control. If you got too loud or too rowdy or too opinionated or too enthusiastic, you might . . . . surface! Or somebody might misunderstand you, or you might upset someone, or you might do something that was out of bounds.  You might sin! In retrospect, I would say there was a good bit of fear of some kind that ruled all of our emotions and/or actions. I’m not talking about paranoia; I’m just talking about “self-control.”

Her fearlessness was part of what attracted me to Sherrylee!  I was a senior at Harding and she was a junior in high school the first time we met. I was five years older at a time in life when that could be pretty intimidating to some people—but not to Sherrylee. She was not intimidated in the least! She was not afraid.  I’ll never forget the day in Scranton, PA on Campaigns Northeast when she arrived a little late to the team devotional. I was sitting on the front row of the church building by myself. We had just barely begun to know that we liked each other, and she marched down to the front of the building in front of the whole group to sit with me—as if we belonged together! You could hear the gasps literally—but I loved it—and her!

Sherrylee has taught me how to be passionate about people! Just a couple of days ago, we were walking back to our hotel in New Orleans about 10:30 at night when we walked past this young man in a mardi gras costume who was obviously very drunk. He was cursing into his phone very loudly and trying to tell someone where to pick him up off the streets—without success.  We walked about 20 feet past him, when Sherrylee turned to me and said “We need to help that guy!” So we turned around and went back—which we do fairly often nowadays. I walked up and asked if we could help him—that’s the way I am. Sherrylee came right behind me, said, “Let me have your phone and I’ll tell them where you are.” She took his phone, talked to his mother, and gave her directions to pick up her son.  I love Sherry for being so sensitive and yet so bold about helping others. I’m trying to learn more from her.

Sherrylee has taught me to be passionate in marriage! No, this won’t be X-rated because I’m not talking any more about sex than I am about our daily life together.  I think I could have been the kind of husband that loved his wife, but neglected her in ministry. From Day One of our marriage, Sherry has fought that tendency in me. She has passionately pursued me; she passionately pursued ministry with me! And I know that much of her motivation for doing so was so that we did not lose the passionate love with which we began our marriage!  I love her for that!

Sherrylee has taught me to be more passionate about God! When we were first married, I may have had a slight edge on her since I had majored in Bible and had four years of studying the Bible with people and two years of campus ministry, BUT I knew when I married Sherrylee that she had a great mind, an unlimited intellectual curiosity, and a deep and passionate love of God.

She is the one now who reads the N.T. Wright tomes! She is the one who still raises the deepest questions at the dinner table.  In fact, it is a standing tradition among our grown children to bet on how long we will be at table before Mom raises a deep theological question that she has been thinking about!

Sherrylee has taught me about passionate people who love God. She often raises her hands in praise; she often tears up with passion during worship. She prays earnestly—and often. She claps—loudly—and with extra rhythms! She wants to be in the front of the church, in the middle of the worship, talking afterwards to as many people as possible!

I have had so much to learn! And still do. She still teaches me daily not to be afraid, to forget about myself, and to let my deeper feelings show.

Happy birthday, Sherrylee! You have filled my life—and the lives of many, many people–with passion that is clearly the reflection of God’s passionate love for you.

 

 

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