Empty Ecclesiastical Bathtubs - Sacraments

Part the third...

Sacraments:  Obviously we evangelicals have sacraments.  What I want to talk about here is a high view of the sacraments.  Most folks in my tradition speak of the sacraments in terms of what they symbolize and commemorate but there is little talk of them as actions with actual unique outcomes.

We talk a lot about what baptism says but not much about what it does.  We say it's "an outward symbol of an inward experience" and we say it's a testimony and a step of obedience but we seem to think it has very little immediate effect on us.  When asked how being baptized changed us most evangelicals would be somewhat stumped.  I went from not being baptized to being baptized?  I became eligible for membership?

We talk a lot about what communion remembers but precious little about what impact our partaking in it has on us beyond being reminded of the work of Christ on the cross.  Not that remembering the crucifixion isn't of great importance but in evangelical circles it seems that our understanding of "remembrance" through communion has little to set it apart from our remembrance though looking at a crucifix, or reading the crucifixion and resurrection accounts in the gospels... or watching The Passion of the Christ.  I think sometimes The Lord's Table has become for us little more than a ritual mnemonic device.

So what do I really believe about the sacraments? To be honest I'm not 100% sure these days but I have a growing, nagging suspicion or maybe more accurately a desire to believe that there is more to them then just symbolism and obedience.

I have long been a proponent of counting conversions by Baptism as opposed to hands, stands, cards, and alter calls.  I believe that Baptism is the true moment of "public declaration."  I like the idea that Baptism is the moment when we truly become part of the church, our "grafting in" so to speak.  Not just that it symbolizes that this has already happened but that it actually takes place at that moment.  I love the idea that baptism cleanses us form original sin and it's associated guilt although I can't see it clearly enough in scripture to embrace it. (Turns out I'm protestant after all.)

I have long been a proponent of the idea that we should celebrate the Lord's Supper with a greater regularity than is common in most evangelical churches.  I like weekly but I'm pretty sure four times a year misses the mark. I love the idea that in the communion elements He is present in an even greater way then He is in His omnipresence and even then He is "where two or three are gathered."  I love the idea that through communion we, somehow, feed on Christ and become more one with Him in a way that goes beyond simple remembrance.  What if our Rome-a-phobia has robbed us of something beautiful and powerful and meaningful and transformative?

I crave an understanding of the sacraments that sees them as more than just our oldest rituals and more even than Jesus-ordained rituals.  I struggle to believe that the same Jesus who used so many different word pictures came up with what boils down to a couple of simple object lessons and then asked us to repeat them.

I long to to see the sacraments as spiritual, mystical, uniquely beneficial, and effective not just affective. At the very least I want to fully explore the idea that the sacraments are - as Wesley himself taught - a means of grace.

Empty Ecclesiastical Bathtubs - Liturgy

This is part 2 in my ongoing series about areas where I think evangelical protestants, in the interest of correcting what we saw as errors in traditions like Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism, may have thrown out the proverbial baby with the bathwater.

Liturgy:  I have an Anglican friend who is always quick to point out that every church and late night talk show host has a liturgy.  The question is not 'do you have a liturgy' but 'what is it?' I come out of a revivalist tradition and so much of our traditional Sunday morning liturgy, we would say "order of service," is patterned after revival meetings - song service, preaching service, altar service.  Over the years that has been slightly tweaked to include the offering and announcements and, in certain dark corners where the devil holds sway, a ritualistic form of congregational abuse dubiously described as "special music."

So what I'm really talking about here is rich liturgy.  Liturgy that is beautiful and narrative and symbolic.  Liturgy that gives rhythm to a life of faith.  The kind of liturgy that allows us to lean hard on 2000 years of expressions of worship crafted by the church as led by the Spirit.  Liturgy that reminds us that the truth we live is ancient, timeless, and unchanging.  Not that we want to lose sight of its relevance today, but we also want to anchor it in the reality that what will get us through Monday has been getting Christians all over the world through their Mondays for millennia.

So what would this look like in the Wesleyan context?  I don't know.  If my training was painfully-weak on catechism it was downright non-existent on liturgy.  I learned the word.  That's about it. I do know that in my own ministry the weekly celebration of communion (more on that in a future post) and the consistent dismissal by pronouncement of a scriptural benediction have been helpful and meaningful.

But I suppose practically speaking if I as a Wesleyan were going to delve into implementing more of a liturgical dimension to the worship of a local church I would start with the liturgy that Wesley himself was shaped by and seemed to love - the liturgy of the Anglican Church as found in the Book of Common Prayer.  (There is a good introduction to Wesley and liturgy by John Drury HERE.)

Then I would work my way out from there creatively. I think sometimes we evangelicals think that liturgy is the opposite of creativity, but I have a growing suspicion that it is just the opposite, that liturgy is actually the pinnacle of creativity in worship.  Maybe good liturgy takes the meticulously creative care that is given to a great song lyric and extends it to every prayer, and reading, and celebration of sacrament?

Of course the common objection to liturgy is that it's dry and I have seen that be true many times.  I love hamburgers but when not cooked properly they are dry.  One way to keep hamburger from becoming dry is to use Hamburger Helper.  Another way is to learn how to actually cook.  Maybe it's time for evangelicals to lean less on the Hamburger Helper of shallow but passionate worship forms and instead learn how to cook up services with depth and passion, spirit and truth.

Misplaced Theological Babies and Empty Ecclesiastical Bath Tubs.

For several years now I have had a hard time describing myself as a protestant.  Not because my theology doesn't ultimately fit that classification but because I don't hold the beliefs that label me protestant as any sort of protest against the Roman Catholic Church.  It's probably also because protestant so often means Reformed and I'm probably closer to Catholic in many places than I am to Reformed.

I love my Catholic brothers and sisters and have benefited greatly form their influence.  I have had a similar but more limited experience with my orthodox Anglican brothers and sisters. 

I understand, and to a meaningful extent agree with, most of the stances the tradition I am a part of (evangelicalism generally, The Wesleyan Church specifically) has taken that are different from Catholicism (and to a lesser extent Anglicanism) but there are a few proverbial babies I fear we have thrown out with the metaphorical bathwater. I'd like to take a few moments to point those out in hopes that we might sometime reclaim them from... wherever you dump theological bathwater.  This metaphor has its limitations.  This will be a brief but multi-part series covering one topic per post.  Let's get it started. 

Catechesis: I think there is a huge place for intentional, systematic, theological instruction in the church.  I was taught a ton as a kid growing up in church but I was pretty much only taught the dots. It wasn't until bible college that anyone ever really started to hint that those dots could be connected, and frankly I'm not sure the school I went to did a particularly good job of actually helping me make those connections. 

The idea that as we raise our children together to know, love, serve, and follow Jesus we would take them through the core truths of the faith in some logical sequence and show them how all those truths interrelate and enrich each other seems so obvious as to almost sound silly when argued for.  In the parts of evangelicalism that I have lived in, the closest we get to this is an intentional set of principals or virtues taught with enough repetition to make them memorable, but that's a far cry from actual theology and instead has a tendency to create moralists rather than Christians.

The very same could be said of how we handle adults who are recent or prospective converts to the way of Jesus.  Here is a Bible.  Come to church.  Join a small group,  best of luck...  I hate how many times I have been guilty of this approach to theological foundation laying in people's lives.  I hate that I likely will be again because I lack the resources, internal or external, to do otherwise.  

I think a significant part of the effectiveness of Alpha is that there is some sort of intentional, sequential organizing principle to the material.  That said its time frame alone means it has significant limitations in terms of how comprehensive it can be.  Call it an effective evangelization tool and proof of concept for catechesis but not a replacement for it.

I think the soil in which the evangelical movement grew was one in which the converts came pre-catechized by their catholic or mainline church upbringings, and we just needed to energize that with some zeal and a sense of actual relationship with God and mission from God.  Those days are long gone.  If we are to truly make disciples of people who are biblically illiterate and theologically uninitiated then some form of the age old practice of catechesis will be essential.

I would love to see a great, clear, useful Catechism from a Wesleyan/Arminian perspective.  If you know of one please direct me too it.  

Pathway Church Vision Sunday 2015

For the handful of you who have asked if I will ever start posting a sermon podcast or who want to be up to date on our adventure here in Bangor or miss falling asleep to the dulcet tones of my voice.

The first chunk of the sermon is an announcement fest. The actual sermon starts at about 24 min.

In Defence of Meetings

There is a growing trend in organizational leadership circles to poo poo meetings.  People say things like "if you are meeting your not working" and there is a concerted push to get rid of as many meetings as possible.  

This may be valid in the business world (I wouldn't know) but I want to push back on that idea when it comes to local church ministry.  I want to defend meetings. Yes some meetings are unnecessary.  Yes some meetings are pointless and poorly run. And certainly many meetings are allowed to run too long. There is a craft to leading great meetings and all leaders should be working to develop those skills.  This is not a defence of mediocre meetings but it is an attempt to show why I think that meetings are absolutely pivotal to local church leadership.

Leadership In Community
I'm going to assume you are up to speed on the importance of community in the local church.  I believe that the theological imperative toward community extends to leadership as well. Leadership in community is not leadership by committee. In fact you can do leadership in community without ever having a vote and with one person ultimately making all the decisions. What leadership in community does call for is a group of spiritually mature, missionally engaged people who are in relationship with each other speaking into and discerning the direction of the church together. Leadership in community requires a group of people to get together to do that work. People getting together to work is a meeting.

Mushy Bottom Lines
In church world our mission is crystal clear but bottom line is mushy.  It doesn't show up on a profit and loss sheet and even those things that can be counted (conversions, baptisms, volunteerism, small group involvement, etc) need to be qualified and evaluated pastorally.  Our mission is Spirit empowered life transformation but what that looks like in each instance is as unique as the stories of the individuals God has allowed us to impact. Stories are best told face to face and in church world our best chance of getting a person's story clear is in a group as we each share what we have observed in that persons life. Cold statistics and utilitarian tracking programs can augment but never replace the pastoral telling of stories as a way to track how we are really doing as a church.  Those stories are best told in meetings.

Ministry Is People
For local church leaders it's closer to the truth to say "if you're not meeting you're not working." Of course there needs to be private time for sermon prep, program planning, prayer, and such but a significant amount of a church leaders time should be spent with other people wether it's in large meetings like weekend services, smaller meetings with specific ministry teams and classes, or one-on-one spiritual guidance, mentoring,  or pastoral care. Ministry is people. Yes Jesus often retreated to a quiet place to pray but an overwhelming majority of Jesus' time recorded in the gospels is spent in what could very fairly be defined as meetings. If you are going to minister to and with people you are going to need to be physically present in the same room with them much of the time. That's a meeting.

Leadership Is Lonely
Or at least it really can be. Here I'm talking specifically about meeting with the senior leaders (staff or elders) in your church. In a healthy church culture there is something life giving about getting into room with people who are (at least close to) as invested in the ministry you lead together as you are: something that reminds you that you are not alone,  that there are a bunch of people who get it, that there are some folks who have your back, and that while you may carry this ministry the most you certainly don't carry it alone.  Emails, texts, tweets, and even phone calls are ultimately just a bandaid. The true antidote to loneliness is being together.  Intentionally being together is a meeting.

My hope is that rather then jump on the 'meetings are bad' bandwagon church leaders will instead embrace the art of leading engaging, purposeful, productive meetings and see those meetings not as a precursor to or distraction from ministry but as a key part of ministry itself.

What To Do While You Wait

Ministry, has a certain cycle to it often described in the Bible as sowing and reaping or planting and harvesting. Times when you are doing the hard work to get it started, set it up, make the plan, recruit the team, raise the finances, establish the partnerships - planting. And then there is the season where it all comes together and you start reaping the benefits. You see the plan become a reality, the leaders step up, the new people get involved, the relationships deepen, the lives changed - harvest.  

But in ministry, like in agriculture, there is always a season in between planting and harvesting. A season when you do some occasional watering but mostly wha you do is wait and while planting and harvesting are a ton of work for many of us the words of Tom Petty ring true - the waiting in the hardest part. So what do you do while you wait?

Pray: I don't mean this tritely. Paul said "somebody plants it and somebody else waters it but it's God who makes it grow" (1 Cor 3:7 AJV). Pray that God would make it grow, that he would send along the people and circumstances needed to water it, that He would bring it to maturity. If God doesn't give the increase you didn't plant, you just buried seeds. Pray.

Rest: Planting was hard work. Harvesting is going to be busy. While you are waiting in between - rest. Get some extra sleep. Engage in some of those fun activities that are life giving for you. Spend a little extra time with your family. You might just be disciplined about working sane hours or maybe you need to take a full on vacation. Insert lesson about sabbath here. Seriously, it's ok. You are going to need all your tanks full for what's coming. Rest.

Invest: Both planting and harvesting can take a lot out of you. In between is a great time to put something back in. Take that class. Read that book. Engage that mentor. Develop that new habit or break that old one. Take up that hobby you have been meaning to get into. And by all means lean hard into growing in your relationship with God. Harvest isn't the time to be sharpening your sickle. While you are waiting you can be doing things that will make you a stronger, healthier, smarter, more skilled "farmer." Invest in you. Plant some stuff in you that you can harvest later.

If you have a driven temperament you can easily feel like the waiting is a curse but it's really a blessing. It's how God keeps your ego in check and makes it clear that it's ultimately Him who makes things grow and it's how keeps you from killing yourself by running flat out all the time but don't just wait out the waiting. Use that gift of time to pray, rest, and invest.  Come harvest time you will be glad you did.

Does God Have Free Will?

Here’s the theological thinking I’m doing this Monday morning…

Free will is a pretty important theological concept but almost any time I hear it discussed it is in terms of human free will.  Human free will is an especially important concept to questions of responsibility (If humans don’t have free will can they really be held responsible for their sin?)

and meaningfulness.  Those questions of meaningfulness run along these lines:

• If God created us to have to love him would that actually be love in any meaningful sense?
• Is obedience to God still meaningful without the option to disobey?
• If we had no choice in the living of a holy life in what ways would it still be meaningful?

I have heard these discussions about human free will many times but the only time I ever remember hearing God’s free will mentioned it by implication in the context of human free will being part of what it means to be created in the image of God. 

The other theological ideas I hear that have implications for God’s free will could easily be seen as arguments against it although I don’t think they are usually meant that way.  Statements like:

• It is impossible for God to lie.
• God cannot do anything that is inconsistent with His character.
• God will (the implication being must) always be faithful to His word.

These are all meant to be seen as wonderful and beautiful truths but lets apply the same logic to them that we do to human free will.  If God does not have the option to be unfaithful to us then is his faithfulness really meaningful?  If God’s only option is to be holy (as He is specifically described in scripture not just “other”) then is it meaningful that He is. 

And if there are things God can’t do then doesn't he cease to be God because this means some outside power is acting on Him.  After all - a God who “can’t” isn’t really God is He?  

Of course the answer to this is to say that those limitations of “can’t do” and “must be” flow from God’s own nature and therefore are not from an outside source and no threat to his Omnipotence but I’m not so sure of that.  

I have a ton of limitations.  Almost all of them flow from the essential nature of who I am as opposed to being imposed on me  by some outside power but that does not mean they are not limitations.  I can’t do whatever I want, I can only pick between options.  For example my free will does not allow be to fly but it does allow me to go for a walk.  But of course there is vast gulf between Omnipotence (I have the power to do absolutely whatever I want) and free will (I have the moral freedom to choose between the options available to me).

So I think that in order for God to be truly omnipotent He must have free will and in light of his omnipotence you could say that he has the only, truly, supremely free will.  This is what we see so beautifully active in the creation account.  God simply wills the world into existence.  

When we have the overactive view of God’s self-limitation that I think is super common in many christian circles it leads us to an impersonalized view of God.  God becomes a force or a set of conditions.  He becomes an equation, a machine.  

When we short sell God’s free will his love for us becomes like gravity. Yes He loves us and yes that is real and it has an effect on us but it ceases to be meaningful, it ceases to be special, it ceases to be beautiful. Gravity holds every one of us to this planet but none of us feel special because of it.  We do not wonder at the mystery of why gravity should choose to keep us from being flung out into space. We simply take it as a given and move on.

When we short sell God’s free will His holiness becomes like wetness to water.  We like water and water is wet, in fact we like water precisely because it is wet, but none of us feel inspired to become more damp because of our love for water.  None of us come to hate our rigid form and wish to be transformed into a more liquid state.  And none of us are ever truly amazed at the wetness of water.  Water is wet.  That’s just what it is.

When we short sell God’s free will his faithfulness becomes like a sunrise.  It is wonderful and beautiful but it is completely impersonal.  The sunrise does not come earlier simply because you can no longer handle the darkness.  The sun rise does not rise for you and it does not send it warmth for you it simply rises when it rises because rising is what it does.  We often speak poetically of the rising of the sun as faithful but if we are to be honest it’s really just predictable.  

What if God really and truly has free will.  What if tomorrow God could choose to stop forgiving you?  What if tomorrow God could simply cease to honour His word?  What if tomorrow God could cease to be loving and merciful and kind and just and instead be hateful and destructive and unjust and cruel?  What if we truly believed that the only thing between Him being the beautiful God we see revealed in Christ and the horrific God of our worst nightmares is His current, active, free will choice?  What if God is good first and foremost because he chooses to be?

What impact would it have on us if we saw God as truly, actively, and currently having and exercising free will? Some thoughts…

1. We would experience the fear of God.
2. We would be compelled to trust God as a person instead of predicting God as a force.
3. Our trust in God would become a more daily, conscious, and specific reality.
4. We would be moved to deeper and deeper levels of gratitude for who He has chosen to be to us and how He has chosen to act toward us.
5. We would see His character as astounding beauty not just abstract fact.
6. Our worship would simultaneously become both more intimate and more reverent.
7. We would be deeply amazed at His faithfulness to His people in general and to us specifically.
8. We would be more drawn to know and experience Him than to understand and explain Him.
9. It would change the way we think about forgiveness and repentance and break us of our reliance on cheap grace.
10. We would begin to see Holiness not as an abstract and involuntary attribute of God and therefore unattainable for us but as a issue of choice and voluntary character which God, is able to make reality in us so long as we align our free will with His.

What’s wrong with my thinking here?  What would you change?  What would you add?  I think there is something to this but it is still Monday morning…