Waiting For Sunday

This is a dated topic, but I write it now because yesterday someone gave me the poster you see here from the Rocky Balboa media push for churches.  I’m grateful to the person who put it on my desk, and I plan to put it up.  But the campaign itself, to promote Rocky Balboa to churches, seems odd.

I saw the movie, and commented on it here.  It was good.  Of course, I felt like I had seen it before, since it was the same movie as as the previous ones.  But there wasn’t anything especially Christian about it, and the “good fight” Paul speaks of (quoted on the poster) certainly wasn’t a sixty-year-old man vs. the heavyweight champ.

Sylvester Stallone learned from Mel Gibson the value of connecting with pastors, although Stallone’s marketing push wasn’t nearly as far-reaching as Gibson’s, nor was it as successful.  (BTW, when is some Hollywood director going to invite ME to a pre-screening?)

NPR covered the church marketing strategy here, and Christianity Today Movies abetted the project to some degree too.

I have no problem with Bible-based discussions on movies.  I just see this as another warning to be careful.  It IS flattering to be noticed by Hollywood.  But it would be easy to be used.

P. S. - Just today, Christianity Today posted an article about movies and church marketing citing the dangers.

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I just finished reading Illusions of innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630-1875 by Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen (1988, University of Chicago Press). This is an excellent book that most of you won’t want to read (unless you’re really into history) because it is so technical. But it is valuable especially to those of us in the independent Christian churches who approach our faith with a “restorationist” mindset - meaning that our goal is to restore the pure faith and practices of New Testament times.

Here are some of the major points of the book:

1. Our vision of restoring primitive and purer times is by no means unique. On the contrary, few things were more common in the years following the American Revolution. The desire to reconnect with primordial purity drove the New England Puritans, primitive Baptists, and Mormons as well as Alexander Campbell and our Christian churches (which Hughes and Allen insist on calling “Christians”, using the quotation marks not to question our sincerity but to distinguish us from other Christian movements). In fact, this mindset drove Thomas Jefferson and the founders of our republic, so the intellectual soil of the early 1800s was fertile for producing primitive religious movements.
2. Restorationist movements tend to follow a predictable path from liberty to exclusivism to coercion. Most movements begin with an emphasis on free thought because they are formed in reaction to older movements which restrict freedom. Campbell, for example, began his movement in opposition to the “human creeds” of the established Presbyterian church of his youth, creeds which he found restrictive. It doesn’t take long, however, for such movements to arrive at the conclusion that they have reestablished the true way and that all others are in error - hence exclusivism. Then, when the movement gains strength in numbers, it usually resorts to coercion to enforce the “right thinking” it has rediscovered. Our Christian churches in many regions are certainly known for this attitude of “we’re the only true Christians”, though Campbell himself didn’t take this journey with his movement. In a real sense, our branch of the Christian churches was stolen out from under Campbell by others. Hughes and Allen show that this trajectory of thought can be seen in our nation’s foreign policy. Our birthright of freedom of conscience has often been translated into a doctrine of enforcing “freedom” on other nations by military power. More often than not, America’s stated desire to spread freedom serves as a cloak for other national interests.
3. The key to breaking free from our failures (if there is such a key) lies in being aware of our “illusions of innocence”. The last paragraph of the book begins with these words: “Awareness of our own failures and appreciation of the traditions of others will not likely occur, however, so long as the luxuriant growth of pretentions to innocence remains unpruned.”

I’m enough of a product of America and our Restoration Movement to find a lot of value in the truths which both rediscovered. But I have long been troubled about the exclusivism and coercion I have seen in both. Illusions of Innocence is valuable in that it gives a name to and a comprehensive description of these failings.

PS - I got my copy of Illusions used and at a good price from Amazon, but now I see that it lists for almost $45! I wish I hadn’t marked mine up!

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Shane Claiborne has an interesting article (part 1 of 3) today at Out of Ur, the blog for Christianity Today’s Leadership magazine. I’m currently reading Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. I like the book because, aside from a few sophomoric references, Claiborne defines “radical” in the correct sense of “getting back to the roots”. Hence the subtitle reference to being “an ordinary radical”; radical Christians aren’t defined by tattoos or body-piercing, but by living like Jesus, returning to the roots of Christian practice. Every Christian should be a radical in this sense, though most of us are not. Claiborne lives what he speaks. For years, he has lived in a different sort of Christian community in inner-city Philadelphia.

As for the article, the only weakness (I think) is that it seems to minimize hell as an eternal reality (though Claiborne doesn’t dismiss hell altogether), which is unnecessary to make his larger and vastly more important point: That millions of people are living in a hell on earth right now. Jesus did speak of an eternal hell, but there is no doubt that his life and ministry give us a powerful example of living among those in hell-on-earth and releasing God’s Spirit among them to set them free.

Claiborne (who is originally from Maryville, TN) is doing a great service for the church, and his book has really got me thinking about alternative ways of living in community WITH our community.

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Gordon McDonald has posted the best article I have read on the sad Ted Haggard situation. McDonald, who went through a similar experience in the 80s, writes with truth and compassion about Haggard, his family and his church. The thing that is missing, though, is any real idea about how things could have been different, how someone in Haggard’s shoes could have found someone to pull him back when this stuff was in the temptation stage - a very important point, I think.

Also, Arthur E. Farnsley has an unusual article on (and this is difficult to describe) Bible literalists who work flea markets instead of going to church, who don’t actually READ the Bible, and who aren’t part of the religious right! The article sheds light on how influential the evangelical subculture is to those who are part of it. Not only that, but I KNOW people like this, folks who are loosely associated with our church, who aren’t flea-marketers but have other concerns.

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HP is promoting a new slimming feature on their digital cameras. The before-after pictures are impressive, but when you watch the demo at HP’s site, you can see the distortion take place. CBS took flak in late August for slimming down Katie Couric in a publicity photo.

I learned of the HP camera feature at Church Marketing, er, Stinks, a site devoted to evaluating and improving the way we promote churches. This is a good, short article on how dumb advertising campaigns may generate buzz but they hurt more than they help.

BTW, HP has been in the tech and business news lately for an unethical and probably illegal leak probe conducted against journalists, employees and HP directors.

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For many centuries after Christ, Christian pilgrims in Europe found spiritual meaning in traveling to the Holy Land, especially to the birthplace of Christ. The rise and spread of Islam didn’t interfere with these peaceful pilgrimages. But as the year A.D. 1100 approached, things changed. Seljuk Turks, aggressive and warlike converts to Islam, seized Jerusalem from their fellow Muslims and began to take control of what had once been the eastern part of the Roman Empire. And reports reached Rome that Christian travelers to Israel were being harmed.

In this context, Pope Urban II launched what became one of the most shameful eras of Christian history – the crusades. When Urban launched the first of these “holy wars” he promised his soldiers spiritual rewards in heaven and also the temporal benefits of having more land. He said: “Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.” In this and the subsequent six crusades that followed, all regard for the principles of just war fell away in the name of this holy battle. Non-combatants and prisoners were tortured, raped, and their towns plundered. Jews and Christians often fell victim to the attacks by the “Christian soldiers” who sometimes cut open bodies in search of gold.

Perhaps the most awful fact about the crusades is that the name itself – “crusade” – refers to taking up the cross, after the example of Christ. What horrible blasphemy it was to use the cross as a weapon of hatred and murder.*

Now, if you were to read back through my three previous paragraphs, and you switched places between Christians and Muslims, I think you’d find an account that parallels today’s news. A holy war proclaimed by religious leaders, attacks against “infidels”, disregard for non-combatants, and promises of earthly and heavenly rewards for soldiers – it all sounds so familiar.

Here’s something else to notice: A large number of Muslims today (the majority, I think) cry out: “This isn’t Islam. My faith has been hijacked by people who know nothing about it, men who want only power. Jihad, holy war, properly refers to the war within, the war to overcome sin, not to this!”

Christians should be able to identify with this latter group. We correctly say that “crusade” or to take up one’s cross, properly refers to the process of denying self, lifting up Christ, and serving others. “The crusades weren’t Christianity,” we say. “They were a perversion of our faith, quests for riches and power.” We have tried to live down the crusades and forget them. Yet we cannot. They are part of our history. They illustrate the terrible sin we can commit when we allow our religion to draw us away from relationship with Christ. In my understanding, the crusades pointedly illustrate Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:21 – “Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

Is it fair that Christians are sometimes known only for their wars, murders, and lust for power? No. But it is understandable, given our history.

And what about us? Maybe your view of Islam is so colored by war that you can’t imagine something like Islamic Relief. IR is a charity that works to relive suffering caused by natural and man-made disasters around the world, and focuses on things like water and sanitation, orphan sponsorship, and economic development – much like World Vision, the Christian relief group to whom we recently donated more than $27,000 for water wells. Many millions in Islam find more to identify with in Islamic Relief than they find in the current popular definition of jihad.

Please do not think for a moment that I am saying that all faiths are the same, or that Islam is as valid a way to God as Christ. Our Savior claimed that no one would come to the Father except through him (John 14:6). Jesus Christ is the ONLY begotten Son of God, God’s way of reaching out to us. All other religious systems represent our futile attempt to reach Him. Christ also expressed a profound desire for every willing person to be saved, for he came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10).

This is why the Communion Meal is so important, so special to us. At no other time in worship do we confront the sacrifice so pointedly of the one who gave himself for us. Our sins are crimson stains. History bleeds with the scarlet sin of people of all races, nations, and religions. So does the heart of every person. At the foot of the cross, the ground is level and we are equals all.

May we never miss this opportunity to lift up Christ, and only Christ, so he can draw all people to himself.

*My source for historical information: Church History in Plain Language, by Bruce L. Shelley. Word Publishing, 1982 pp. 205-06

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Mike Zukowski sent me this link to a Philip Yancey story called “Postcard from Africa” in Christianity Today. In Africa, AIDS, death, poverty and strong Christianity live with one another. My persistent thought while reading this story: African Christians will certainly lead us in the Kingdom of Heaven.

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In response to my thirst for adventure that I described in my last blog post (which received wider-than-normal readership because it also ran in our church newsletter) I have had no shortage of suggestions from friends on how to kick-start the jaw-dropping life I desire. One guy suggested that I join him on an upcoming two-week backpacking trip. I think he was kidding, as I doubt he wants to carry me out of the woods after three days. But his long-lived passion for serious hiking is contagious.

A woman offered me the chance to join her in leading a group of middle/high school students on a whitewater rafting trip. I might actually try this one, though I fear it may remind me how much I like to sit inside where it is warm and dry and read. Another friend at church suggested that if I wanted adventure I could lead the soon-to-be-enjoyed congregational budget meeting. Um, no.
The suggestions, along with a great supportive email from another friend, reminded me that even when life is unsatisfying, it is great to have community, Christian friends who care what you think and respond to it.
I’m seeing it this weekend in our church’s grief over the death of A. L. Woody, a thirty-seven-year-old husband and father who died suddenly on Saturday evening after battling an aggressive cancer for all of this year. I can see in our church family that people not only want to help this family, we actually grieve with them.

Thanks for providing me with community. Thanks to those of you who have invited the Woodys into your life. Let’s keep our eyes open for those who still need to be welcomed in to the family.

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At the Willow Creek Leadership Summit, our group got to see a short video from World Vision depicting AIDS through one woman’s eyes. I found it moving. Now I invite all of you to watch it online. You’ll need a high-speed connection and about 15 minutes.

Our church is raising money for a water well in Zambia to bring health and life (and, indirectly, fight AIDS) in one village. This video, and the passion of our youth and leaders behind the project, motivated me to get involved.

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Last week at the conference I attended at the mega-mega church Willow Creek, I took a stroll around their massive campus. At one point I found myself walking across the back of their “old” sanctuary, worship center, whatever they call it, a room that has been replaced in the past few years by a much larger space (pictured at right, from my phone camera).A woman behind me, evidently a Willow member, said to her friend: “Oh, I haven’t been back in here for a long time. The young people use it now.” Then she added: “I miss this room. It’s so much warmer and more intimate than the new one.”

Folks, the old worship center must seat a couple thousand, and looks like nothing so much as a theater! Now you can see from my fuzzy photo that the new room is far from intimate. But what a lesson on perspective, on tinting the past with a golden hue.

I haven’t heard anyone complain about missing our old sanctuary, though who could deny it was WARM - 85-90 in the summer! But we all have to be careful about longing for the old days, for the way it used to be. We’re six months in to our new building, and the newness of change has worn off. Don’t let that fact gild the past.

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One of my reasons for skepticism about megachurches has been that I thought of it mostly as a white-suburban concept. Go somewhere where the population is exploding, start an excellent seeker service and you’ve got a pretty good chance of tapping into the same public preference that is creating larger and larger Wal-Marts, Home Depots and Best Buys.

Then at Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit, I heard James Meeks, megachurch pastor (who lead a church from a few hundred in 1985 to 20,000 today). His most memorable line: “I learned church growth principles and applied them, and the principles didn’t know I was black, so they worked for me.” It is Meeks’ church, Salem Baptist on the far South Side of Chicago, that boasts the largest worship center in Chicagoland, larger even than Willow’s new building.

Christianity Today did an excellent story on Meeks a few years ago, writing about him as the most effective megapastor you’ve never heard of. A remarkable fact is that Meeks is not only a pastor but the Illinois State Senator for the 15th District which includes some of the poorest places in the city. At first blush this seems unwise - “If God calls you to pastor, don’t stoop to be a king” and all that. But in a poor area, the justice and poverty issues that hamper people’s lives call for political measures as well as spiritual ones. Meeks convinced me that he is ministering in the Senate just as surely as he is from his pulpit.
Salem Baptist, like Willow, demonstrates the strength of a megachurch. In 1998, Meeks and his members united to “dry up” their community and close 26 liquor stores. In another effort, they visited all 800-plus street corners in their community and talked about the Lord to prostitutes, drug dealers and anyone they could find. They gave free Bibles to every home in their community - 33,000 in all, a monumental delivery task.

Now Meeks and Bill Hybels, lead pastor at Willow, have formed a genuine friendship which they both find joy in discussing. Several dozen leaders from the two congregations took a bus tour last year to visit many of the significant civil rights locations, and Meeks and Hybels meet the group in Selma to walk across the famous bridge there. As a result of this trip and other activities, members of these two churches actually KNOW one another as friends, and care about each other’s experiences.

I still don’t think that the megachurch is the only way, and of course it has its problems just as surely as the microchurch does. But with all the other blessings these two churches have given, add this: Meeks and Hybels have given us an example to follow.

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“The greatest use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.” James Truslow Adams. Last week at Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit, I heard Bill Hybels interview rock superstar Bono on his faith and his passionate work against poverty and AIDS in Africa. Bono is one of the world’s most famous people, even though my Dad thinks he used to be married to Cher and many folks under 20 don’t know him as well as I expected.

Bono said in the interview that celebrity is a ridiculous thing, an exact inversion of the Bible’s principles on value. But, he says, since he HAS celebrity, he chooses to spend it on Afirca. Celebrity gets him in to see the President, Senators, UN Leaders, and other wealthy and powerful individuals who can DO something. Celebrity also connects him to the masses of us who can each do a LITTLE something that can add up to MUCH.

Bono is directly involved in the One Campaign which, among other things, calls the U. S. to use one percent of its budget for basic health, water, food and education in the world’s poorest countries. I like this idea because I read in both Testaments of the Scriptures that God takes interest in nations as well as individuals and how they do justice.

Another group I’ve been impressed with is World Vision’s One-Life Revolution, a Christian-based organization that MHCC has worked with in the 30-Hour Famine. For the past 11 months, some of our youth have been raising money to dig a well for an African village to provide clean, life-giving drinking water to the people there. The last event in this effort will be a spaghetti and salad dinner here at MHCC on Sunday night, September 10 at 5p before evening activities. Come and donate!

More importantly, find your place in Africa, South America, Asia or other parts of the global south where poverty and disease is rampant, and then read Matthew 25:31f and see where Jesus is in such circumstances. Find your place to pray about daily and where YOU can get involved.

Many of you have enough money to know that it doesn’t satisfy. So start spending it (and your life) on something that will outlast it.

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I’m not a big fan of church message signs, but I can at least ignore them when their messages are cute, trite, sappy or irrelevant. This one makes me mad. Of course the problem isn’t with “Share your faith with others” but with “Keep your doubts to yourself”. This advice makes us look like anti-thinking, anti-rational simpletons to the world because it suggests that doubt is a powerful enemy to faith, and as such it should be ignored, denied, stuffed down deep until it disappears.

“Keep your doubts to yourself” also makes it impossible to authentically “share your faith with others”. After all, if I sometimes have doubts (and I do), and yet I still stake my life on my faith (and I do), I think that makes for a more compelling testimony about faith, which by definition isn’t a 100% certainty. On the other hand, if I feign certainty, I tend to come across as a blinded fanatic.

I recently read Daniel Taylor’s The Myth of Certainty, a great book that gave me more freedom to strongly affirm my faith even in times of doubt, or at least uncertainty. Taylor writes:

“…Job’s friends spoke many so-called truths to him which taken abstractly are theologically unimpeachable. Scripture recognizes, however, that the cool self-righteousness with which these truths were offered renders them useless to Job or anyone else. Christ, on the other hand, repeatedly modeled truth as relationship” (p. 129)

How do I know my wife loves me? I could pull out our marriage certificate and study it, and then keep my doubts to myself. But it is in the relationship that I find meaningful certainty.

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Dave Terpstra has an interesting post at Out of Ur about the contradictory way Christian react to movies. When the first Harry Potter movie came out, there was considerable debate about whether Christians should see a film featuring a wizard-boy hero. One local church here in Kingston put an anti-witchcraft Scripture on its sign that week. I have never heard of anyone protesting either Pirates of the Carribean movie on faith-based grounds. Yet Terpstra notes some commonalities:

The similarity in material between the two movies that should concern parents is amazing. First, both films focus on activities contrary to the teachings Scripture, piracy and witchcraft. Second, the hero of Pirates, like the hero of Potter, is practicing what is considered evil—not just battling against those who practice it. Third, there are dark forces involved in both. Harry Potter films are amuck with sorcery and the like. Pirates of the Caribbean films are full of curses and the undead. The list could go on.

More than this, the real star of the Pirates movies is Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, a conflicted hero if ever there was one. An important theme in both The Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest is that a person can be a pirate AND a good man. Few parents want their little ones following THAT example.

The answer isn’t protests, which Terpstra shows to be mostly knee-jerk, but discernment. I haven’t seen the Potter movies (will there be one called Welcome Back, Potter?) but I love Narnia and The Lord of the Rings (the books are better) which could be criticized in the same way that the Potter films are. And I really liked the first Pirates movie (the second suffers from bloating caused by sequel-itis) but if I had kids, I’d want to talk to them about the moral ambiguities of Jack Sparrow. CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow, that is.

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My previous post defined the “missional” church as one that understands it exists in a culture alien to the Kingdom of God. That’s easy to get a handle on when the church is new, but what about when it grows to include several thousand disciples who are growing in the knowledge of God’s Word? Our traditional answer is to keep feeding them and maybe get them involved in maintaining the institution of the church.

That leads to the second defining characteristic of the missional church: Every member is a missionary where they are, every single day. This isn’t a new idea in the evangelical church, but though we talk about it a lot, it’s rare to find a church that really puts it into practice.

One church that does is Watermark Community Church in Dallas. I’ve said before that Todd Wagner is the one preacher (besides me) that you ought to be listening to. You can catch all of his stuff online, but if you really want to hear about a church that puts the emphasis on the mission of every member, listen to this message called “A Steward’s Report”. (You can download it for free and put it on your music player or a CD.)

Watermark gave everybody who attended a service in December an envelope containing some cash. It sounds like most people received $5-10 but a few got larger amounts, up to $1,000. Each person also received the instruction that they were to use this money to make the name of Jesus “more famous” in whatever way God led them. “A Steward’s Report” is the follow-up message reporting on what people did with the money. The remarkable lesson of the message is that this is essentially what Christians face each day. God has distributed his gifts among us, and we are to use them to lift up Christ so He can draw all people to Himself.

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Someone recently asked me what I thought about “the missional church” (thanks to Jessica Friesen). “Missional” is a buzzword I have heard kicked around a little, but I had to do a little research to find out what it means. Believe me, it wasn’t easy. Like most buzzwords, many use it and few define it. But what I found out is valuable.

As I understand it, MHCC would become missional if we understood that we are now working in a culture that is foreign to Biblical Christianity, and we let that fact begin to shape everything we do. When the Pryors went to Papua New Guinea some thirty years ago, they understood that everything about the Gospel was foreign to the people around them. They even had to create a written form of the local language in order to give these people the Scriptures. The Pryors couldn’t assume (as we do) that the people had any previous knowledge of the Bible or its teachings on things like sin, salvation, atonement, sanctification, etc. Our situation isn’t as extreme, but increasingly this is the culture in which we live.

In contrast to the missional church is the evangelistic church, where teaching unbelievers about Christ is ONE of many church programs. An evangelistic church fits well in a community where many people are Christians, and where even the unbelievers have a basic understanding of the Gospel which they have (so far) rejected. When I was a kid, churches used to have evangelistic services where a preacher would come in from out-of-town and preach fire-and-brimstone messages. During the day, the visitor and the local preacher would visit the notorious sinners in town - often the hard-living husbands of church women, guys who had heard it all before - and try to convince them to come to the services and (hopefully) repent. Sometimes it worked.

But if the people we want to reach have almost no knowledge of God or His Word - if indeed they have accepted a very different world view - we have to approach the mission much differently. That’s when the church must become missional, considering itself an outpost of the Kingdom of God in a very foreign land.

More later…

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Have you ever heard of Vernon Grounds? Probably not, but you owe him more than you realize. Grounds, now 90, was the president of Denver Seminary, a pioneer in Christian counseling and education. He’s a beloved man of prayer, faith, and especially love. Grounds played a large part in healing the rifts of evangelical Christianity two generations ago.

Philip Yancey has a good article about Vernon Grounds at Christianity Today, but it’s too short. I’d like to read (or better, listen) to a couple hours of this man talking. David Osborn, who now serves on staff at Denver Seminary and is a regular prayer partner of Dr. Grounds (and who happens to be my father-in-law) says that Vernon Grounds has a photographic memory, that he essentially reads books not a word at a time but a page at a time, practically photographing the book and being able to recall years later on what page a given topic is found.

I met Vernon Grounds in 1987 (he was the Prayer Chairman of the Denver Billy Graham Crusade that summer). A friend took me to his office at Denver Seminary and introduced me to him. He was gracious and kind and showed me his library of 18,000 books. I wonder if he remembers me? With a mind like his, who knows?

Read Yancey’s article, based on a recent interview, and learn about this giant upon whose shoulders we all stand.

P. S. His comments about marital love and faith are needed in this passion-addicted age.

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On Sunday, May 14 (which is Mother’s Day) we will begin a two-week series at church called “Escape the Debt Trap” based on a book of that name by Dr. Kregg Hood.
Since MHCC just signed for a large loan on our new building, you might wonder about the consistency of talking about debt as a trap from which we need to escape. Well, consider:

1. Borrowing money isn’t a sin. In the Old Testament, God allowed his people to loan money to one another as long as they charged no interest, and He allowed them to loan to foreigners with interest (see Deuteronomy 23:19-20). I would guess that 90% of us borrowed money to buy our homes. You can bet that our church wouldn’t stand still for this if lending and borrowing were sins. Still, even reasonable borrowing limits us, for: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). Now that MHCC has creditors, paying them is a moral and legal obligation, and they have a right to review our books.This is more than a little relevant to our personal finances too, because we participate in a market that encourages debt. We’re told: “If it’s OK to borrow for your house, why not for a car, and a computer, and for carpet and clothes? Why not use your credit card for groceries, utility bills and gas? And if you can’t pay it off at the end of the month, just extend it out as long as you need to (and pay the interest).” That leads to my second point:

2. MHCC is a reflection of her people, and so our church’s financial situation reflects the finances of the people who attend here. What I mean is that MHCC’s need to borrow may reveal that many of her people are trapped in personal debt.I think you will enjoy reading Dr. Hood’s short book (which we began handing out on Sunday, April 30 ). If you are completely out of debt, or you have your debt under control, you’ll find this study to be a rewarding review, and maybe it will inspire you to mentor others. If you have a debt problem (moderate or serious), you will find real help in this practical, Biblical study.

As a follow-up to this study, we will offer in June a four-week class on Biblical Financial Principles, and we will make available some personal financial counseling to those who will commit to it.

Since this is such an important issue, be sure to invite your friends to this special study on May 14 and 21.

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When I attended the annual conference of Peacemaker Ministires in 2003, I was very impressed with the keynote speaker Mark Dever, a Washington D. C. pastor and founder of a ministry called 9 Marks. Basically 9 Marks is about teaching nine marks of a healthy, Biblically functioning church. I invite you to visit their site and look at mark number 6, a Biblical understanding of church membership. Do some reading there and see if you or your church (whether it’s MHCC or another) has the right understanding.

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“Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.“
William R. Inge

Out of Ur is carrying on a discussion right now about how megachurches are starting to spawn house churches. Megachurches usually succeed after all by getting people into small groups, and it appears that some believers like the small group so much that they’re deciding that they no longer need the mother church. Even Time has done a story on home churching, a fact which makes it a noteworthy trend.

It bothers me when people start touting house churches as a favorable replacement for the larger group. Undoubtly this is true partly because I’m employed by “organized religion” (though ours isn’t all THAT organized).

But it’s also because of this: The easiest way to do church would be to get with six or eight other like-minded people and just enjoy studying the Bible together. There wouldn’t be too much need to deal with people I don’t enjoy being around, and there wouldn’t be many older folks or needy people to take care of and there would be little need to practice the Scriptural command to forebear and forgive and work together for a purpose larger than our own growth.

It interests me that it’s George Barna who is driving this new interest in house churches with his book Revolution. His 1988 book Marketing the Church was the second bible of the megachurch movement, and his User-Friendly Churches from 1991 was important too. THIS is what brings to mind the quote at the start of this article.

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I’ve promoted before the excellent blog from Leadership magazine, Out of Ur. An excellent article there called Exit Stage Left: Why the Spiritually Mature are Leaving the Church caught my eye. At first I thought it would criticize the seeker sensitivity of the boomer mega churches, but it doesn’t. Instead it points out that all churches, big and small, old, new and postmodern seem to be able to take people only so far. The article makes some good points, but I wonder if being spiritually mature and leaving the church aren’t contradictions.

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Michael Medved wrote an interesting article for USA Today about the reaction (or lack ot it) of conservative Christians to Brokeback Mountain. While secular critics have tried to best each other in singing the movie’s praises, Christians have been relatively silent about it. No major evangelical organization has called for a boycott. Medved says that this isn’t apathy, but rather a sign that our movement has matured and Christians feel more secure in our place at the cultural table. After all, our movies are getting made too, and making big money (witness The Passion, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia). I think he’s right, and I’m sure it would have been a terrible strategy to picket theaters and try to shame movie-goers.

With the move to the new building in February, I’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing about the start of my ministry here, and if I think back to 1988 (my first year at MHCC) I remember another controversial movie to which we responded differently. The movie was The Last Temptation of Christ, and I hate to bring it up even eighteen years later because of all the emotion that surrounded it then. Many Christians felt that the movie defamed Christ. Director Martin Scorsese said that, on the contrary, it showed how wonderful Christ’s sacrifice really was by asking the big “what if”…what if Jesus had come down from the cross and lived a normal life?

I’m not interested in revisiting the debate over the movie, but I can’t help mentioning the difference in our response eighteen years later to Brokeback. Back in ’88 there was a lot of picketing of theaters, name-calling and calls for boycotts in response to Last Temptation. I thought at the time that Christians who took part in this merely helped publicize the movie and came off looking angry and mean.

I agree with Medved that our recent response to Brokeback has been better and more mature. The film hasn’t been ignored by Christian leaders and publications, but neither has it become a rallying point for cultural war. Medved implies that the film makers may actually be disappointed in this response.

Of course the other possibility is that we just don’t care anymore, that we’re not willing to take an unpopular stand. What do you think? (Click on the link below that counts comments if you want to reply).

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When I raised this topic awhile back, my interest was the implications for church and faith. If people create their own radio stations, carry all their entertainment with them, view their favorite TV shows on their own schedule, and even participate in reporting the news (see previous posts under “You Are In Control”), how does this change what they expect from the church? How does it change the way they relate to Christ Himself?

Discussion boards and forums are another way some of us want to be in control, or at least participate. I posted a link to a USA Today story about Jesus on our discussion board last night. At the bottom of that story (and most stories on most news sites) there is a link to discuss the story. I joined in and posted something about how Jesus is still alive and well in church, and got chewed on a little by an evangelistic atheist. By the time the story had been online for 48 hours, nearly 3,300 people had posted a comment reacting to it (or arguing with each other). People don’t just read the news anymore. They criticize and argue about it with a worldwide audience. The impulse to join in isn’t new, but the web gives us a forum much wider and more immediate than writing a letter to the editor.

At church, much of our commucation is still patterned after the old model. It’s often one-way communication from preacher to congregation; it’s delivered according to a set schedule - be there on Sunday at eleven, or forget it; and we (even me sometimes) aren’t all that anxious to have folks participate, offer comments, or criticize.

We’ve taken baby-steps toward changing this at MHCC - the discussion board, the ability to comment in this blog, teaching available online, Home Bible Fellowships which are participatory, etc. I sense that we need to do more, that in fact there needs to be a land-shift in some of our ideas. Any comments here would be appreciated.

On the other hand, I know that an essential part of the church is being together, taking Communion together, worshipping and being taught together. These things can’t happen by listening to a sermon on your Ipod.

And what about how all this applies to our relationship with Christ? Is it still possible to convince people who are used to being in control to relate to Him as Lord, the Ruler of all of life?

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Last June I was in a sorry state. The cars I use to drive around making hospital visits each had a radio and a non-working tape player (and no CD). I don’t listen to music that much, but I like to learn while I’m in the car (sermons, audio books, news, etc.) I looked into buying a CD player but balked at the expense. Then my wife got me an MP3 player for my birthday (”MP3″ is simply the name of a popular type of audio file), and I discovered that with a few inexpensive accessories (and an Internet connection) it was the answer I needed. The inexpensive accessories include a low-power transmitter and/or an adapter to enable me play it through my old car stereos, my 1980s home stereo, or whatever. Of course the little headphones and 12-hour battery life make it possible to listen everywhere else.

My little player is about the size of a pack of cards, but it holds more than 400 CDs or about 14 days worth of audio content. I have loaded it up with all my worthwhile CDs from home, and I occasionally buy a new song online (for 99 cents) and I am constantly adding podcasts - free content such as sermons from great preachers, feature stories from National Public Radio and Public Radio International, talk shows featuring technology, movies, NASCAR and other things of interest. (I delete the podcasts after I listen to them but the music stays put). With all of this, my player has about 3.7 days of content, and it looks like it may never be half-full.

Until recently, MP3 players were popular only among college kids and techies. Now they’re exploding. MHCC GLOW kids are getting them for Christmas and birthdays. I’ll know that they have truly penetrated the market the same way I knew the personal computer had arrived…when my Mom gets one. The cell phone saturated the market a few years ago and changed the century-old concept of calling someone at a specific location. Now the MP3 player is unhinging music and personal education from any particular place (and the latest players allow you to take TV shows and movies with you too). Now the reason I raise this topic of You Are In Control: Do you think this has any implications for the church?

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The 50 Most Influential Christians in America, according to The Church Report. Rumor has it that John Pryor finished 51st for the second straight year.

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