VillagePastor

WAITING ON BEIRUT

This morning I am supposed to be in Beirut, but this has all changed since conflict broke out, leading to the closure of the international airport. It’s a strange feeling. My schedule says I am in the Middle East, but I am still in the Northwest, still waiting to depart.

 

I had no idea what I was getting into when I first flew to Lebanon in 1995. My first impression from the air was a city deeply wounded. You could see it in the existing structures. The wounds are not so apparent in some parts now, but underneath some of the beautiful new architecture is a lot of deep hurt. I try to read the thoughts of men like Robert Fisk, read Time blogs, and opinions from columnists in places like Damascus, but who can understand this region? If you think about it, Lebanon is as complex as any place on earth. Carved out by France after WWI, using artificial lines, there are at least seventeen recognized identities, which help to explain a lot of the mess. Each has an official role in government thanks to a creative quota system. As Robin Wright notes in her new book, Dreams and Shadows (a great book on the Middle East), the formula for inclusion has ended up making Lebanon a battlefield. It doesn’t help that Lebanon has also inherited a huge, displaced Palestinian population, and sits on the border of Syria and Israel.

 

What has complicated things in the past week is the attempt by one of these identities, the Hezbollah, with its links to Syria and Iran, to flex its muscle in the Sunni neighborhoods of West Beirut, rendering the present government (what’s left of it) impotent. The fighting has spread outward, involving the Druze. Analysts see this Shia-Sunni-Druze conflict in Lebanon as part of a larger conflict between Iran/Syria on one side and the US/Israel on the other. And it may be. Thomas Friedman, in today’s NY Times, refers to all of this as “the new cold war”.

 

So why even have an interest in all of this? Why do I continue to go to Lebanon, and why am I committed to being part of a Near Eastern partnership, determined to bring Christian leaders and ministries together? In large part it is because many of us are convinced that an even greater conflict is going on, one that you will not read about in the New York Times or Lebanon Daily Star. It is a clash between two kingdoms. One kingdom is of that of this world—the other kingdom is of another realm. One kingdom is interested in posturing, intimidating, controlling, and ultimately destroying. The other kingdom is about bringing peace and forgiveness and reconciliation—and HOPE. One is essentially alienated towards Jesus. The other is committed to bringing honor to His name.

 

If Lebanon is the gateway to the Middle East, and if the ME is the most strategic region on earth, than it makes a lot of sense to pray and engage. And if the cause of Christ is to gain any traction in this region, it will come only as dwindling believers in the region are willing to set aside some of their own egos, their own posturing, their own rigidities and turf issues and join arms to work together—to be missional and advance the only kingdom that matters, the kingdom of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It will also come as we continue to pray and hold up the church.

One Small Step

I'm just returning from a summit of sorts in Dallas, where a number of ministry leaders from the Mideast met together. We came to discuss ways we can partner to impact regions like Lebanon and beyond for the cause of Christ. It is both impressive and encouraging to see the caliber of men and women God is bringing together.

We came to dream large and pray big and strategize powerfully—but we realized it all begins with small steps, little decisions to do the will of God. The good news is that in a region that seems so desperate and chaotic and easy to write off, there is this growing conviction that after years of praying and seeing little fruit, God is beginning to move throughout the place, from Algeria to Iran. Shiites and Sunnis and Druze are finding dead ends in their own faiths, and finding the grace and hope they have been looking for in Jesus. God is revealing Himself in amazing dreams to unbelievers, creating events that are giving the church the opportunity to show the compassion of Christ. Hence, it is imperative the church of Jesus is mobilized to minister to responsive hearts. 

 

Still, it seems pretty overwhelming. There are huge obstacles—threats of terror, instability, seething hatreds, desperate people, religions that give legitimacy to acts of great evil. But in these days, there are a couple of things that urge us forward. First is the knowledge that we serve a God who has put all things under His feet (I Cor 15). He has both conquered death and raised us to new life. We have been given His power to stand in this tension of the already and not yet, the Kingdom of God that is present, and yet future. And hence, there is something of God’s future reign that steps into the present when we call on Him. For this is the essence of prayer—prayer that cries out—Thy kingdom come! It is prayer that is unwilling to accept the world as it is. Prayer that is so formidable that there is an in-breaking of God’s future rule into the present, such that we who bear His name become “advance signs” of God’s eventual new world in the here and now. This is what is happening—and must happen in the Mideast.

 
The second thing that encourages our hearts are the stories of consummate risk-takers, those that have gone before us. In a book I just finished, Water from a Deep Well by Gerald Sittser (well worth spending a lot of time in), the author has a compelling chapter about risk-takers. One of my favorite stories is one told of David Brainard, a man who risked everything (“I want to wear out my life in his service”), and devoted his life to praying for the nations. Jonathan Edwards was to be his future father in law, but Brainard died before the marriage could take place. Nonetheless, Brainard lived on, for Edwards was so moved by this young man’s example, that he wrote a brief biography of his life. And these words moved across the ocean, setting in motion the modern missionary movement and inspiring the likes of William Carey. They moved a Jim Elliot to go out and risk his life and impact his world, facing obstacles every bit as big as ones today.

 

Still, is seems so overwhelming. But Sittser’s closing words help a lot—“They each lived the story, day after day, year after year, not knowing how it would all turn out. Their work progressed slowly and unpredictably and mysteriously. They made little decisions every day to do the will of God as they knew it; they took little risks—as well as a few big ones—that set them on a course leading to adventure, achievement, and influence; they chose to devote their time, talent and energy to God, refusing to put limits on what God would do with them.” It all begins with one small step.

 

 

LIVING WITHOUT DISTRACTION

Yesterday I was having lunch with a former pastor from our church, and we were having one of those great talks. He is a focused man. He has to be. He is living in one of the most difficult regions on earth (North Africa), learning to master French, all with the aim of reaching a very unreached people for Christ (living next to Libya, where by some accounts there are only 6 believers in the country!). But I couldn’t help but become distracted by a cell phone call at the table next to us, that began with one of those annoying, high volume rings (why is it people must turn their phones up, playing the most maddening music, as if to announce to the world, “I am receiving an incoming call”?). Such distractions are the curse of our age.

 

Which brings me to a great, great article I was reading this week out of the NY Times by David Brooks. He is such a good writer. Brooks was reflecting on what makes for great pitching—after all, it was opening day. And he shared some amazing insights by a sports psychologist by the name of Dorfman, who has studied great pitching. And it all goes back to this issue of distraction.

 

Dorfman makes the point that great athletes have this in common—focus, self-discipline, structure. They are not distracted. In his research, Dorfman has found that it takes 10,000 hours of undistracted practice to master any craft—three hours of practice every day for 10 years. It reminds me of a time I was hitting with a tennis pro in Chennai, India, and he was telling me about Pete Sampras’ routine.  Sampras used to come and compete in Chennai, and his regimen was to hit for four hours against two teams of two guys, who would rotate in and out every 15 minutes. After lunch, Sampras would work out with weights for another two hours, then back on the court to serve for another two. (And I thought my routine of playing 3-4 times a week was impressive).

 

Back to pitching, Dorfman says a pitcher who has mastered his craft must bring a relentlessly assertive mind-set to the mound. He must plan on attacking the strike zone early in the count. He will not throw around hitters. He invites contact. This is because a great pitcher thinks about three things, and only three things: pitch selection, pitch location, and the catcher’s glove. If he is thinking about anything else, he should step off the rubber. Everything else is extraneous. In fact, in a pitcher’s mind, the batter barely exists. Listen to how Dorfman describes the batter—“he is a vague, generic abstraction, that hovers out there in the land beyond the pitcher’s control. A pitcher shouldn’t judge himself by how the batter hits his pitches, but instead by whether he threw the pitch he wanted to throw.”

 

He once had a conversation with Greg Maddux after a game and asked how it went. Maddux’s reply, like his pitching, was concise and focused: “Fifty out of seventy-three”

He had thrown 73 pitches and executed 50. Nothing else was relevant.

 

If you’re like me, you’re starting to say to yourself—there’s a lot of life application here. In my world, as a preacher, I have to constantly tell myself when I am on “the mound”  that I should not judge myself by how the congregants respond to what I am saying, but instead by whether I have said what God has called me to say. Nothing else really matters. But easily, I (we?) get distracted by “the batters” in life, when our focus should stay in the strike zone. For us who are about something far greater than pitching stats—advancing God’s kingdom—should we not have even greater focus in what God has called us to? I wonder if the apostle Paul was in effect saying the same thing when he said to the Philippians, “I have not reached the goal, nor am I already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus…one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead…I pursue the prize” (Phil 3:12-14).

 

 

Surprised by N.T.Wright

Some post-thoughts from a pastor’s conference in San Diego. For several years, I have made this southward trek to get my soul refreshed, my brain re-energized. Generally, there is someone whose voice rises above the rest. Last year, it was Eugene Peterson. Unlike some, who seem to be more enamored with themselves and their stories, Peterson simply opened the Word of God and allowed its wisdom and power to speak for itself. It has been one of the disappointments of this conference that all too often presenters seem to have little apparent expectation God will speak through His Word

Not that I was completely disappointed. For the one who rose to the top this year was N.T. Wright, a bishop from England. I have been reading Wright for the past few years. His Simply Christian is one of my favorite books. Like Peterson, I feared that his presentation would not be up to his books. But like Peterson, he did not disappoint. His speaking was as engaging as his writing. There are few Christian thinkers I have met who expand my imagination like this man. Maybe none. Wright was amazing—and refreshing. He did not try to impress with an Anglican collar, nor come off as some rock star (as some, who I will leave nameless). With scribbled ideas on a piece of notebook paper (I took a peek at them while asking him a question), Wright opened with prayer and proceeded with his discourse. No engaging introduction, no wandering illustrations—just majestic truths coming out of obvious hours of meditation in Scripture. And the most amazing thing of all—he shared his messages with absolute humility. I never detected an intellectual arrogance, one so prevalent in others of his stature.

I tried to capture as many insights as I could. Here are some—

1-Wright reminded us to come to the biblical text with 1^st century eyes and 21^st century questions, rather than 19^th century eyes and 16^th century questions. Most do not want to do the hard work of exegesis (that pulls us into the 1^st century), while others are too out of touch with present culture to know the questions they must ask. Wright notes that there is a crisis in Western democracy. These are dangerous times—threats of terror, an ecological crisis that should have the attention of every believer, and a wave of books by Dawkins and others intent on attacking the credibility of Christianity. There must be cultural critique, but it must not be in the form of bashing, but rather be about Spirit led discernment. Reasoned discourse is what will win the battle. And Wright models this. It was clear in each of his talks that he has spent considerable time seeking to discern the flow of the biblical books, the world of the authors, while discerning the times in which we presently live. A good model for all of us.

2-Wright has done a lot of thinking on evil. Reflecting his recent book, Evil and the Justice of God, he reminded us that the Word is not so interested in explaining evil as telling us what God is doing about it. God began with a call to Abraham to undo what Adam did. Each subsequent act in Scripture simply builds upon the other. God is confronting it, judging it, and stopping evil from having its desired effect. When Jesus came, evil moved to its greatest intensity, aiming itself at the cross, where Jesus disarmed the powers of darkness. All of which tells us we don’t have to wait for the future to start experiencing our deliverance from evil.

Sitting with a Christian leader from Beirut two nights ago, and hearing of the unspeakable going on in Lebanon, I thought again about Wright’s words, as well as what Jesus has accomplished. While we cannot explain a lot of this mess, we do have this assurance that in Christ we have nothing to fear.

3-Much of what Wright addressed reflected his newest book, Surprised By Hope, which is one of those books that can truly transform your life. I found myself reading it between meetings, in the hotel room, on the plane. It is a complete rethinking of heaven, resurrection, and the mission of the church. We often get heaven wrong in our thinking. Death is not moving into some ethereal state, where our permanent address is in some heavenly sphere with streets paved with gold. Rather, we will eventually receive resurrected bodies to live on a future earth (this earth), one no longer suffering the present corruption of sin. In Christ, we have been saved for this world to come, as well as this present world. We are a new creation now living at the intersection of present and future, enlisted to become a window, a foretaste of God’s kingdom.

Rather than sing “This World is Not My Home”, we need to be singing, “This is My Father’s World”, one in which we are called to presently serve. The point here is this—what is to be true in the future must begin to become true in the present. Our future resurrection needs to begin to be lived out now, as a foretaste of the future. In other words, live flourishing lives, feeding our imaginations on I Corinthians 15, Eph 1, and Rom 8. Until we learn to imagine a world as Isaiah describes, we won’t know how to get there. So we need to embrace art and beauty, justice and reconciliation. To live as if this present world doesn’t matter—it will simply one day burn up—is not only bad eschatology. It is bad living.

House Versus Church Building

Hopefully, our church will soon begin construction on a needed new sanctuary. And though there are lots of good reasons (facilitating for future growth, opportunities to diversify ministries, etc), it raises serious questions for others. While some might question the wisdom, others question the very legitimacy. In his Pagan Christianity, Frank Viola writes a chapter entitled “The Church Building: Inheriting the Edifice Complex.” The chapter is devoted to making the case that church buildings should have no place in contemporary Christianity. After all, Christians did not erect special buildings for worship for the first 300 years. Thanks to Constantine, the church went from house churches to holy cathedrals, and in so doing, it followed the path of the pagans in constructing temples to honor God. As Viola laments, “the story of the church building is the sad saga of Christianity borrowing from heathen culture and radically transforming the face of our faith.”  Viola closes with the challenge that believers come to realize we are neither biblical nor spiritual by supporting church buildings.

If what he says is true, than we certainly should stop all building plans and even sell the property we are worshipping on. Is there any substance here?  There is, for sure, something to be said for not building a faith around a building. All too many Christians have become more excited about brick and mortar than word and prayer. And all too often, ministry ends up serving buildings rather than buildings serving ministry.

But Viola is missing some important things. First of all, is there any real difference between the brick and mortar of a living room and the brick and mortar of a separate building set apart to do worship?  Does it make sense to say that one is organic in one and institutional in the other?  Aren’t they both organic and institution, organism and organization?  It seems like he is setting up false dichotomies. Furthermore, to suggest that the home is the only legitimate place to meet for church misses the fact that the early church first met in the synagogue. It was persecution that necessitated meeting in a home—not God declaring that the house is the only legitimate place to worship.

But there is something else that needs to be said, and it gets to the heart of our faith. God has made us both spiritual and material. As part of created matter, God declared it all--the trees, the ground, the flesh, the brick and mortar--good. God has chosen to use things like baptism and the Lord’s Supper as physical, earthy reminders of salvation, of Jesus’ work on the Cross.

To my amazement, he uses my physical body as a means to do his work, glorify His name. Can He not—does He not—use other material means to declare his glory?  Like the bread and the cup, can a building not also represent an earthly form of a heavenly reality? Can it not exhibit art in a profound way—even as the “most mathematical of art forms”, as Sittser puts it in his wonderful book, Water from a Deep Well??  Having lived in Europe for seven years, I have seen enough Cathedrals to realize that they were some of the greatest settings for people to come and know and experience God. Like ships, they have carried believers to salvation—from the outer narthex to the nave and to the sanctuary. They have served to remind people we are on this journey from world to kingdom. Like any church building should, they have functioned as a stage where the drama of salvation plays out.

While we are not building Notre Dame (it’s actually a concrete tilt up), I hope it will serve as a stage where the drama continues. And maybe in time, used for the glory of God, serving the ministry, God’s kingdom will be advanced far more effectively because it stands.

On the surface, there is a spiritual ring to the notion that we are to be liquid versus solid, organic versus material, house rather than building. But Sittser gives the needed clarity in describing our sacramental faith: “This is no abstract, ambiguous, sentimental, ephemeral kind of spirituality. It is body and blood, water, bread, and wine.”  And could we not add, in some cases, concrete?

LIVING ON THE EDGE AND IN THE CENTER

I’ve mentioned Barbara Brown Taylor’s LeavingChurch. On these long, dark, rainy nights, I have been rewarding the end of a long day with a re-read of her chapters. There’s something discomforting by the very cover, a cage door opened, and a bird set free. One gets the impression the wear and tear of ministry, the “omnipresence” of church culture, the confines of the institutional church began to slowly cage her in. As she puts it, “My context was so tightly focused that even my junk mail was Christian.” 

I have this haunting feeling that a lot of us in the church get to this place—where we become so immersed in our work that our contact with creation shrinks to the distance between our front door and the driveway; our exchange with those outside the church becomes confined to a transaction with a cashier at Safeway. Taylor came to a place of “compassion fatigue,” leading to a move from the staff of a large urban church to a small rural church. But eventually, it led her all of the way into the wilderness. She found that in order to keep her faith she had to leave her role as a pastor, her “institutional power,” as she puts it, her role of standing up every week in special clothes and talking while people quietly listen.

In the wilderness, where the collar came off, she began to see how her ministry role had “cut into her soul.” Listen to the way she puts it: “I needed the soul’s wisdom to do my work. I needed its compassion. But I had too often failed to set it loose in its own pasture at night, where it could kick its heels and roll in the dirt. I had kept my soul so hitched to the plow that it stood between the traces even after the harness was off, oiled, and hung on the wall.” But now, the harness is off.

God, I love good writing. But some of the best writing also makes me squirm in my bed. Out from the demands and expectations of ministry, she found herself simply another of God’s beggars. Out away from the work, she discovered that God has both a center and an edge—and that each is necessary for the soul. That sometimes you have to step out, “where the lights from the sanctuary no longer pierce the darkness.”  Out unto the brink, the wilderness, where you discover needed things about yourself, needed things about the Spirit. Jesus occasionally lived out on the edge, where the Spirit wasn’t always so safe, thrusting Him into the wilderness to face His hunger, face the adversary, and experience the Father’s love.

Somehow this resonates with me, not because I am contemplating leaving ministry. I love ministry. I just want to be careful that the role does not so cut into my soul that my interior becomes defined by its ruts. That I don’t get so attached to the pastoral identity given me that I would not know how to make up one of my own. My grandfather was a pastor, and its role so defined him that I never saw him without a tie—ever. I don’t remember him as anything else but clergy.

I don’t want to close myself in the center, where it is safe, and get so caught up in ministry that I start speaking Christianize, so immersed I am scared of ever setting foot into the wilderness—and would not know what to do if God thrusts me there (which He has been known to do).

Yesterday I met with an old friend I had not seen in years. In the comforts of my seminary study, surrounded by books, we reminisced on our earlier times in the literal wilderness, surrounded by the wild. Hiking the Jefferson Wilderness in the summer, snow camping on a frozen TrilliumLakein the winter, biking trails that burned our lungs. But we’re not so inclined to go there anymore. I’m inclined to stay closer to the center. Taylor urges me to take care to live in both worlds, both literal and metaphoric.

 

LIVING JOYFULLY IN THE TENSION

Once a month our staff meets in a place called South Village, where we step outside of our weekly agenda and talk about the course of the future. We try to pay attention to trends, voices, books that we should be reading, readings that shake us. I like how Kafka once put it: “I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow on the skull, why bother reading it in the first place?” A book, as he puts it, “must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

Some recent reads fit that category, including Sittser’s Water from a Deep Well (guaranteed to deepen your soul); excerpts from Barna and Viola’s new book, Pagan Christianity (guaranteed to make some of you very angry); a reread of Taylor’s Leaving Church, a memoir of her ministry and decision to leave the pastorate for the academy (guaranteed to unsettle some in ministry); The Shack, a fictional piece of one confronting God through human tragedy (certain to blow one’s imagination when it comes to the person of God).

In our time yesterday, recent readings and re-readings encouraged me to rethink, along with our staff, just what we are trying to be as a church. I have used such words as “Emertional” in other blogs to talk about the place we have aimed the course of our church. That is, a course in which we find ourselves on neither side, be it emergent or institutional church. Honestly, in many books, I cannot find voices that describe who we are.

We certainly want nothing to do with institutional, if by the definition it means we are a church molded by an ancient Christendom, culturally respectable at any cost, suburban, mainstream, forming greater and greater rigidity (I really resent voices that put all of us in churches over ten years in the same category). Nor are we interested in trying to appear emergent or hip because we have chosen a particular sound or expression over another, ancient over present, etc. Frankly, we couldn’t if we wanted to.

Like others (how many I have no idea), we live in this tension—finding ourselves somewhere between the following--

      -liquid vs solid

      -informal vs formal

      -fluid vs institutional

      -community vs buildings

      -egalitarian vs hierarchical

      -dialogical vs monological

      -incarnational vs attractional

      -follower vs consumer

      -community vs audience

      -image vs word

      -younger vs older

      -post modern vs modern

Each, it seems to me, needs the other. Each must find a way to live with the other. The question we keep asking ourselves is this—is it possible? Can a younger generation of Jesus followers do ministry together with boomers and those older? Maybe the better question is—will they? Can we take the wineskins necessary for the fermenting wine (the necessary structures, policies, facilities, programs, staffing, etc through which Jesus works) and keep them from becoming hard and brittle? How do we take advantage of the things that make an institution, without becoming institutional? How do we keep pressing forward without ever arriving, knowing that atrophy begins at the highest point? Can we celebrate the past, while aiming the church towards its best years yet? Can we become larger, while at the same time growing smaller? Can we expand our facilities to do ministry, while stressing issues of community, justice, movement?

Exiles seems to be a pretty popular phrase to describe those outside of the existing church (Frost, Brueggemann, etc). I wonder if churches like ours are becoming the real exiles—that sometimes seem to feel a bit homeless in the larger landscape.

Virtual Church

Yesterday I sat with a parishioner who is aiming to complete his master’s degree on line. His questions revolved around the best distance education programs available, and whether he should transfer from one “online campus” to another. It is all part of living in an age that is going more and more virtual. I called this morning to discuss reward miles, virtually, for it took forever to speak with a live person. My kids (adult children I should clarify) are part of a generation that seem to spend less and less of their time with real people, and more and more of their time—and resources—in virtual worlds. They talk back and forth with characters on a screen as if they are real, almost more real than those flesh and blood persons who might be in the room. How amazing is it that more and more are logging into three dimensional virtual worlds created by its residents, customizing characters that give people second identities? That might even replace themselves!

But it is in the world of education and the church, where I have invested much of my life, that virtual reality is getting my attention. Technology has brought us to the day where more and more churches are expanding, not by mentoring future leaders to shepherd growing churches, but by setting up video venues to bring great preaching to someone in your neighborhood. It’s nothing really new. Since the advent of radio and TV, a certain amount of ministry has been virtual. But today, you begin to wonder how far into unreality we are willing to go. Maybe you have heard of Second Life, just one of several websites, where users control their avatars, who communicate with one another in a virtual church setting. The promo is that now people can be more connected than ever! But is this really true? 

I wonder what is being lost. Have we lost our understanding of who is man, and what he was created to be, how he was created to relate? Are we sacrificing true ecclesiology on the altar of technology? We discussed this today over faculty lunch. What is missing when a student chooses to do education via distance, versus engaging with a professor in the same room? What are we losing when a pastor is no longer flesh and blood, but an image on the screen? Some might say that in a church of 3000+, where technology enables people to see their pastor up front, on a screen, that it is no different. But is this true? It causes me to wonder how real am I to people in a church of 1700?

I’m aware of some of the gains. Convenience and financial costs make online education attractive. No need to uproot. In the case of church, virtual church has its economic advantages. More satellite campuses, more sites, more impact. Some see it as a solution for dying churches. Just enhance the technological capability, and you too can experience dynamic preaching. But do the advantages outweigh the costs? Are we creating entertainment venues, or houses of worship? Are we creating worship characterized by response to God’s revelation, or response to personalities? For an emerging generation, hungering for authenticity and community, is this really going the wrong direction?

When I reflect on my days as a student on a seminary campus, I remember one morning a professor asked me to stay after class. He was a pretty demanding teacher, and I feared I had screwed up somewhere in his course. When all of the students left, he asked me to come closer to his desk. Note I said—“closer”. In that moment, he asked how I was doing. I started to say okay, but he knew, and he asked again, “No I mean, how are you really doing?” He had discovered something few knew at the time, that a girl that I had fallen in love with had just broken off the engagement. I can’t really remember what he said that day—I just remember that that moment made a significant impact on my life—more than any e-mail I’ve ever received. And to this day, when this retired prof comes around campus, while I have long since forgotten a lot of the history he taught, I remember this, that being in that class room was far better than sitting in front of a screen. I would like to think that this is the way it should be in the church.

Just Say No

I’ve always enjoyed Barbara Brown Taylor’s writings. When God is Silent is one of my all time favorite little books. Recently, she wrote an article in Christian Century, “Getting to No”. It was her response to the book, Getting to Yes, Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, by Fisher. It is a leadership book that provides a proven strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements, where both parties say yes.

But it wasn’t so much her engagement with the book’s ideas, as with the book’s title. For yes is a word that defines much of our culture. Just about every day, someone wants me to say yes. Even as I write, a note on my screen says “Do you have the sermon title? Yes?” This time of year, there are tons of merchants hoping I will say yes. Last night at Best Buy, each aisle felt like running a gauntlet, each item shouting,  “Yes?’  “Yes?”  The latest Macy’s ad reaches out with its coupons and latest reductions and screams—“Just say yes!”  REI and Amazon and Nordstrom have all found their way into my daily e-mails, each calling out—“Say yes!”  Parishioners want me to read a particular book or listen to a tape by someone who will surely change my life. Just say yes. My kids seem to sometimes wear a sign that says—“Dad, just say yes”. Even my dog greets me each evening with eyes that seem to plead—“Just say yes.”   Say yes to a walk, to scratching my back, filling my dish, letting me lie on the couch. And worst of all are the constant pleas within my own soul—just say yes, and do this project. Keep up with all the other people that seem so amazing because they seem to be able to say yes to so much. Even this blog site is constantly nudging me to say yes.

I write all of this, for I am certain just about everyone reading this can identify. Yes hangs over us like a Portland fog. Every time we say no, a fear takes hold, suggesting that we missed a great opportunity, a great buy, a great moment. We wrestle with the fact we may have missed it, or disappointed someone, and we try to shake it off. And the only way out is to begin what Taylor refers to as the spiritual practice of saying no. This has been her solution. As she puts it, “When I was 20, my life was a cruise ship. There were all kinds of places I could go on it, with plenty of room and time for everything. Now I am closer to a small houseboat. The accommodations are still comfortable, but my horizons are limited. To bring anything new on board means getting rid of something else. Saying yes requires saying no.” Saying no in order to clear space for a few carefully planted trees to grow.

I too am at that point. I am starting to say no to Sunday ads—soon I may even say no to a Sunday paper. No, I don’t need an upgrade, I don’t need another pair. And this requires discipline—in a culture that says I do need these things. Taylor describes the discipline as one involving resistance; discernment-saying no to something worthwhile in order to fulfill a much greater priority; ego-evacuation-saying no is a great way of whittling me down to size, making time for me just to listen to God. Saying no to lesser gods is part of saying yes to God. Saying no to some things in order to celebrate Christmas.

Spending Time In The Society

For several years, I have lived between two worlds, one pastoral and the other educational. I am a pastor and a professor, and in the middle of this is a certain tension—a good tension, but still, a tension. I live it everyday, wanting to see the church think more deeply about its faith, as well as wanting to see the seminary be relevant to the church. This friction intensifies when I go to conferences—which tend to be methodological or academic, like the one I am at in San Diego. I am with a group of some 2500 scholars (ETS), where theologians present their papers, and listeners sit passively and attempt to look both interested and intelligent. Each time I come, I am challenged, stimulated, bored, incensed, and everything in between.

First, the challenge. It was my first time hearing John Piper. I love his passion!  With great intensity, he underscored the utter importance of holding to the righteousness we have in Christ—that comes not by effort but by position. Piper is absolutely right—our fears, doubts, addictions can do us in—but realizing we have this supernatural saving work of Jesus—that makes us right before God—enables us to live righteously. Too many believers are falling away because they do not take serious the work accomplished on the Cross! I continue to be amazed and saddened at those who have given their lives to Jesus, to ministry, and have fallen—and I think to myself, at the root of this, they have not taken the work of Christ, and hence their standing, authority, power in Him, seriously.

Second, there is always the bored part. Academicians can be some of the most mind-numbing, tedious people on earth. They would make CPA’s and computer geeks seem like “extreme sports” types. Here are some of the papers presented this year (my annual top five list): 

·   Substance Dualism and Individuals in the Mereological Hierarchy: A Response to Philip Clayton

·   Reconsidering the Maleness of Jesus

·   The Physical Substantiation of the Kalam Argument

·   Nietzche’s Use of Scripture to Impugn Jesus in ‘This Spoke Zarathustra’

·   Pink and Blue Sidewalks: An Evaluation of the Use of Rules to Guide Young Adults

I’m not making these up!  These are the papers that I’m sure will shape and change the world.

Finally, the incensed part. So I went to a paper on worship and theology, and since I have a passion for both, I was ready to engage, be stimulated, blessed. It began well (the first ten seconds), and quickly slid into a 30 minute rant against contemporary worship (referred to in the paper as DWW, “Disney World Worship”). It was hard to find theology—just a lot of narrow minded arrogance. I could go on, but I will get in trouble.

I still hold out that what the church needs so desperately is theology that speaks into the life of the believer, that leads to prayer and holiness. The ultimate end must be a transformed life (Paul said it well in I Tim 3:5—the goal of our instruction is live from a pure heart)  We have way too much superficial Christianity, the result of a non-thinking Christianity that misunderstands the great need for theology. But, as the trip reminds me, we also have too much scholastic faith, the sort that seems to both live and hide in an ivory tower of books and keyboards, and irrelevant themes.