May 13, 2007: Salvation Is Enough

Is salvation enough for you?

I mean, if God does nothing more for you than save your soul, will you love him for that? Will you worship him for that? Will you submit to his will and remain steadfast if he does nothing more for you than save your soul from hell and give you eternal life?

Here is why I ask. I get the impression from some sermons I've heard and Christian books I've read that our faith is sometimes "sold" as a solution to problems that go way beyond the fundamental horror of separation from God. Many sincere believers seem to have absorbed this padded teaching without realizing it. It is as though they have been taught to be discontent with mere salvation. They take that for granted, and feel they have a right to expect a lot of other things too - things that God never promised them.

Miraculous healing, for example. I just read a missionary's report about a Nigerian medicine man who abandoned Christianity because, as the missionary reported, "his primary interest was in spiritual power. And if there was no greater power among the Christians than he already possessed, then why join them?" Why indeed. Perhaps to get saved? Is salvation such a shabby, pale, pathetic thing that it cannot compare with the gold treasure of being able to stun people with miracle power? Coming to Christ pleases God and brings forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Isn't that good enough? (It wasn't enough for Simon the Sorcerer, who in Acts 8:9-20 likewise expressed a "primary interest in spiritual power." Peter told him to go to hell.)

What angered me, what had me ready to fling the missionary's book against the wall, was the fact that he sympathized with the medicine man! He agreed that Christianity was pretty pointless if it wasn't miraculously powerful. He wrote, "The Nigerians 'knew' that whatever power Christianity brought it wasn't adequate to deal with such things as tragedy, infertility, relational breakdowns, and troublesome weather. It didn't meet many of their deepest spiritual needs...Though we talked a great deal about spiritual things, the Nigerians understood most aspects of spirituality much better than we did." Oh no, no, no, no. Missionary, you're the one who has the gospel of Jesus Christ, you're the one who understands that the "aspect of
spirituality" that matters is our alienation from God and the reconciliation he has provided through his Son. As for the other four things you mentioned, you would have been wiser to say: "Tragedy? Expect it! The New Testament is the story of one tragedy after another befalling the people of God. Infertility? Some of you will be
childless. Relational breakdowns? Some of you will be evicted from your families for following Christ, others will find yourselves married to beasts who molest your children or give you AIDS. Troublesome weather? Jesus did calm a storm once, but St. Paul couldn't (Acts 27:14-27) - and though Agabus could predict a famine (Acts 11:28), he could not stop it, and neither can we. The rain falls at God's mercy. Whether it falls or not, whether you eat or starve, you must serve God and believe in his Son."

That is the kind of faith we're after - one that trusts God when the mountain of trouble doesn't go away. We must stay on message: Jesus Christ and him crucified, the hope of eternal salvation. Salvation even when it is accompanied by nothing is still a great gift - glorious, undeserved - and anything given us beyond that is grace upon grace. To expect more is dangerous; to demand more is folly. And to teach prospective believers that they will also have health or success or inner peace or better family relationships or a greater circle of influence is to tempt them to renounce Christ when it turns out that they don't get those things, and they conclude that Christianity "isn't all it's cracked up to be."

Be content with your salvation. Feeling you have a right to more than that is like saying, "Hmmph. 'Eternal undeserved bliss in presence of God.' Big deal. Is that all I get?"

May 6, 2007: A Little Self Pity Is OK

Ten years ago the movie GI Jane brought to popular attention the
short poem "Self Pity" by D H Lawrence. As I recall, Navy SEAL trainer
Viggo Mortensen quoted it to Demi Moore in an effort to get her to
toughen up:

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

The poem is an effective rebuke to whining as long as you don't think
too hard about it. I suppose it is true that no wild thing ever felt
sorry for itself, but that is because it never felt sorry for anything. A bird lacks self pity because it lacks pity in general. If we imitated the stoic bird we might face our trials heroically - but at the cost of being callously indifferent to the sufferings of others too.

The Christian attitude is more nuanced. I believe it is ok to bemoan
one's sad condition as long as that creates rather than uses up space
to pity others. Jesus felt sorry for himself on the eve of his
crucifixion. The Bible says that his sweat was like drops of blood on
the ground, that his soul was in agony, and that he pleaded with his
disciples to stay up with him. There was no stoic dismissal of pain,
no "I'm-tough-enough-for-this" rhetoric. Unlike the bird that drops
frozen dead without a peep of complaint, our Lord cried out, "Father!
Let this cup pass from me!"

But Christ's pity for himself assured his pity for us. "For we do not
have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -
yet was without sin." (Hebrews 4:15)

A couple weeks ago on the heels of bittersweet experience a wave of
self-pity washed over me, and I followed it up with a slap of
self-rebuke. "Who am I to feel bad about my circumstances tonight?" I
thought. I am not an AIDS-orphaned child in Africa. I do not come home to find that a drunk wife has abused my kids. My legs work, my
cupboard is full, I am not in pain. Shame on me for feeling sorry for
myself! D H Lawrence's frozen little bird would denounce me as a wimp!

Yes, but it would denounce everybody as a wimp.

My heroes are all people who have experienced pain, and didn't like
it, but who managed then to navigate between the pitiless rocks of
hard indifference and the soft shoals of whiny indulgence. Be like
them: tough, but not too tough. Shed your tears, and then, having
dried them, be kind to others.

April 29, 2007: Does God Speak Today?

A war of words erupted recently in Christianity Today concerning whether God still speaks to us. In an article titled "My Conversation with God," an anonymous professor of a Christian university wrote about "hearing" God tell him to write a book and donate its royalties to a needy seminary student. Pastor and theologian John Piper responded with "The Morning I Heard God's Voice," where he countered that we hear God every time we read the Bible.

Piper doesn't deny that God gave the professor a special communication. He writes, "What makes me sad about the article is not that it isn't true or didn't happen. What's sad is that it really does give the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening. All the while, the supremely glorious communication of the living God that personally and powerfully and transformingly explodes in the receptive heart through the Bible everyday is passed over in silence."

Well, Piper has a point that every-day communication from God in the Bible should not be "passed over in silence." God speaks through Scripture, a fact which renders inexcusable our neglect of it. As I conduct a baptism class for young people, one of the things I repeat to them is that they need to start reading the Bible on their own (if they haven't started already). Get the Bible in your bones, and you will know the voice of the Lord.

But in addition to that, could God still speak a word to us and not others, and, contra Piper, would it be a sad thing if we found that extra-biblical communication "surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening"?

My mother read the Bible countless times, and had it so well in mind that she could spout quips such as a sarcastic dismissal of the jogging fad ("The wicked flee when none pursueth") or a playful resistance to her husband's wake-up call ("A little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to rest"). But her knowledge of Scripture and constant dependence on it did not keep her from valuing one "surpassingly wonderful" occasion when God spoke a couple words directly to her.

She was 57. Her husband, my father, had passed away suddenly a couple years before. Having spent 33 years as a homemaker raising 5 children, mom suddenly had to brush up on her office skills, and she managed to find a job as a secretary at Continental Bank in downtown Chicago. Her health was marginal. She was exhausted, and it required more energy than she had to commute on the train and walk 4 blocks each way and work 8 hours. Once while trudging back to the train station on a bitterly cold winter evening she prayed, "Oh Lord, please, deliver me from this job."

And the Lord said to her, "Deliver yourself." She testified later that though the words were not audible, they might as well have been. The message was as clear, simple, stunning and forthright as could be. And she knew it was the Lord.

She put in her notice to quit that job - not knowing where she would find another. But she did find one right away: immediately the Lord provided low-pressure, easy employment nearby working as a maid and cook at the manse of a Catholic parish. That job was as much a Godsend as the message to quit the first one.

Mom was no charismatic. She had little patience for those imaginative and gullible souls who carry on dialogues in their head and label one of the voices "God." The way she put it was, "God speaks, but not in complete sentences." Of course, technically, "Deliver yourself" is a complete sentence, but her idea was that if God is going to say something to us that isn't in the Bible, it will probably be short and sweet and to the point. Something like, "Step to the side" a moment before a piano crashes down from above onto that very spot of the pavement where we had just been standing. I think mom was right.

April 15, 2007: Missionaries Are Nice

Time Magazine correspondent James Wilde was surprised to discover how much he liked missionaries. After spending time with them while doing field research for the December 27, 1982 cover story, "The New Missionary," he said, "their sense of fulfillment [was] contagious. I have never met a group I liked more."

Wilde's words came back to me when I had lunch recently with some missionaries at Wycliffe Bible Translators' West Chicago office. The graciousness of their interaction with me and with one another left me thinking, "I like these people." I get a similar feeling meeting with fellow pastors. I know that there are some pastors out there who are pompous frauds and showboating egotists, but somehow I have been spared their company. The ministers I have known have all been decent, kind, laughter-loving men.

I hope you get the chance to share fellowship with people who, however imperfect, at least have it in their hearts to serve God. Many of my friends have no choice but to work side-by-side with "the greedy, the immoral, the slanderers, the swindlers" (1 Corinthians 6:9-10) every day, and I know it wearies their souls. I was a guest preacher once at a church where a wealthy executive confided to me that all week long he had to swim with sharks, but that church was a refuge for him where he found people of good will. I could relate because years ago I had a similar experience working in a warehouse. At lunch and break time I'd have to listen to bored, foul-mouthed people talk about their efforts to score drug deals or sleep with their sister-in-law or get filthy drunk. I was happy to get out of there.

The entertainment industry would have you believe that there is joy to be found at the bar, the strip club, the casino, the frat party and Spring Break - but as for the company of grim-faced, pith-helmeted, machete-and-Bible-wielding fundamentalists, run away! Those hyper religious people have no idea how to have a good time. Consider the Eurhythmics' hit song, "Missionary Man":

Don't mess with a missionary man...He's got God on his side
He's got the saints and apostles backing up from behind
Black-eyed looks from those Bible books,
He's a man with a mission, got a serious mind...
The missionary man, he was following me; He said,
"Stop what you're doing, Get down upon your knees,
I've a message for you that you'd better believe, believe, believe..."

All in good fun, of course, but I think those lyrics prove that the Eurhythmics never actually met a missionary man. In reality, missionaries are the nicest people you'll ever meet, and you'd be hard-pressed to find more refreshing company. I agree with James Wilde that (with pastors running a close second!) I never met a group I liked more.

April 8, 2007: Think Of Others When You Hurt

I think that getting distressed people to think about others is good
counseling.

Years ago I read an account of a man who by God's grace was brought
back from suicidal depression. He mentioned that the person most
helpful to his recovery was a counselor who forced him to think
through the aftermath of the act he had planned. "How would you do
it?" the counselor asked. "With a gun." "Where?" "In my room." "What
time of day?" "I suppose around noon." "Who would be the first to
discover your body?" Pause. "My son." "Describe to me exactly what
your son would see and smell as he opened the door." And so on. In
brutal and sequential detail he was prompted to relate how his act
would affect other people. Now the issue was no longer "me and my
despair" but "others and their well-being."

When I related this story in Sunday School someone with experience in law enforcement confirmed that this is what negotiators do when trying to talk a jumper down from a ledge. They don't talk about the jumper and his predicament. They don't try to persuade him that life isn't so bad and that he really has things to live for after all. Instead they talk about the aftermath of the splat. What will it do to others? I suppose that even if the individual has no family to mourn him, you can still talk about the sound of crunching bone and all the blood on the sidewalk that will sicken and disturb bystanders, including kids. Please, for their sake, don't jump.

Something I think I have learned in talking to people with intractable
problems is that it helps to get them talking about other people. (I
say I think I have learned this helps because, in all honesty, I don't
know squat about counseling, and cannot claim to instruct those who
are skilled at it.) When I used to call a friend who had experienced
an unspeakable tragedy, I disciplined myself for months not to ask the
question, "How are you?" or "How are you doing?" I didn't ask because
I already knew. He was doing awful and was filled with unbearable
sorrow most of the time. So I asked about his wife and kids and
activities, and told him (in a way I hope did not come across as
self-absorbed) what was going on with me. He spoke of his grief, and I was thankful he was willing to do that - but thankful also that personal grief was not the only thing he talked about.

If we can help others by getting them to think about others, perhaps
we can use this method on ourselves to alleviate our gloom as well.
There is a scene in Tender Mercies (great film!) where Robert Duvall
finds himself in terrible grief over a sudden loss. He goes outside
and throws a football around with his young stepson, and that helps.

Singing Faithfulness To The Love Of Your Life (April 1, 2007)

My son Ben was surprised that I liked Ben Gibbard's I Will Follow You
Into The Dark, because the song clearly is sung from the perspective
of an atheist. But it is not the atheism that I like - it is the
promise of faithfulness till death. Gibbard sings to his own
accompaniment on an acoustic guitar:

Love of mine, some day you will die
But I'll be close behind
I'll follow you into the dark
No blinding light, or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark

If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

No afterlife, just a barren black nothingness for Gibbard and his
beloved - but at least he promises to be there when she leaves, and
that could be 60 years from now! Presumably he plans to be there for
the intervening years as well. That is good. Not enough Christians
understand the meaning of "till death do us part." If the song
reflects Gibbard's true intent, and, resisting the temptations of
musical stardom, he remains a faithful companion to one woman until
she dies in a nursing home, then, despite his atheism, he will have
done well.

It seems like poor Gibbard had a bad experience with religion when he
was young. He sings,

In Catholic school, as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue, as she told me
"Son, fear is the heart of love"
So I never went back

My experience in school was very different. As far as I know, I never
had a Christian teacher - abusive or kindly - but I did have an
English teacher who labored hard to turn me and my classmates into
existentialists. It was a wearisome campaign on the part of an
otherwise outstanding instructor, and my recollection of it has
inspired me just now to work out some alternate lyrics to Gibbard's
tune:


In public school, dismal as Pagan rule
I got my spirit bruised by a skeptic in black
He told me too, that I should read Camus
And learn life is meaningless
So I never went back

When limbo and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the lights on their "Go Away" signs
When Jesus stands beside you
As your soul departs
You'll still be joined unto my heart

Ok, it is not very good yet - this is still a work in progress! But it seems to me that, if an atheist can sing life-long commitment to his beloved in the context of existential gloom, surely we can do the same in the context of divine hope.

Despicable Elitism In The Name Of Christ (March 25, 2007)

In my message on Sunday I said how much I hated the strategy of
targeting socially influential people for conversion to Christ. Those
who reason this way say that if you save a popular person, he'll bring
along others too by the strength of his personality. After the sermon
somebody confirmed to me that that is in fact the strategy of a
well-known college parachurch organization.

It is a sinful strategy. Jesus did not work that way, nor did he
instruct his disciples to do so. And didn't St. James tell us that
favoring people of influence is evil?

My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a good seat for you," but say to the poor man, "you stand there" or "Sit on the floor by my feet," have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? James 2:1-4

Some years ago at my former church I received a letter from a
Bible-distribution ministry that said, "We are planning to extend our
work through the interest and cooperation of Christian business and
professional men of influence in your area. To this end we want to
invite a few dedicated Christian men from your congregation to a
dinner meeting - business and professional men who have been
spiritually born again (John 3:3)." The letter gave a list of
"acceptable" men who could be invited (like airline captains) and
unacceptable ones (like retail clerks) who would be excluded. I was
asked to provide contact information for the right kind of men - those
who were both Christian and who enjoyed worldly success.

Instead I severed our church's ties with this organization, asked to
be taken off their mailing list and sent them a letter of rebuke. I
wrote: "Our congregation has honorable men who work as welders,
mechanics, machinists and cable installers...The list of business and
professional people you have asked for would exclude individuals like
St. Paul, a tentmaker, St. Peter, a fisherman, and even our Lord, a
carpenter. Your deliberate restriction of invitations to a certain
class of people is alien to the Spirit of Christ. When Jesus went to a
Pharisee's house on a dinner invitation, even a poor sinner could show
up and give her offering. (Luke 7:36-38)."

Yes, I was ticked off, but righteously so. It seemed to me that an
organization so dedicated to distributing Bibles should have done a
better job of reading the Bible and applying its principles.

Look at the qualifications for church leadership in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, and you'll see nothing there about how much money a man makes. Look at the people that Jesus and his disciples ministered to, and you will find no regard at all for their social or economic status. In fact, when Jesus selected disciples, he paid no attention to their social or economic status!

The rule for outreach and ministry may be put this way: You qualify to hear the gospel if you are a sinner, and you qualify to lead disciples if you are mature in Christ. Other factors - popularity, influence, money - may matter to the world, but we are not allowed to let them matter to us.

Let The Dissatisfied Go (March 18, 2007)

Some years ago at my former church, an elderly couple, angry that I did not preach a Mother's Day sermon on the second Sunday of May, abruptly left the church. They signaled their displeasure not by expressing concerns to me or defending their actions, but simply by not showing up - and leaving undone their standard Sunday morning duties.

A few weeks later one of our board members asked me, "Have you gone to speak to [I'll call them] the Smiths?" I think I surprised her by saying "No," and letting the "No" hang there to indicate that I had no plans to see them either. I was aware that my predecessor in the pulpit had chased down a similarly malcontented couple back in the 1970s. Later he called it the worst mistake he ever made. He succeeded in getting them to return, but they thorned his side for another 20 years.

I believe it is an under-appreciated feature of Jesus' ministry that he simply let go those who were hostile or indifferent to him. In John 6:66-67, a large number of disciples turned away, and Jesus asked the 12 if they wanted to go too. In Mark 10:22 he let depart a good young man who loved riches too much. In Luke 9:57-62 he practically showed the door to a succession of individuals who placed conditions on their terms of discipleship.

And while much is made of the parable in Luke 15 where the Good Shepherd hunts down a lost sheep, it is important to remember that, in the context, "lost sheep" are the "tax collectors and sinners [who]were all gathering around to hear him " (verse 1) - not the Pharisees who were despising him, or the others scurrying away to avoid his condemnations of sin. In the parable that concludes that chapter (verses 11-31), the Compassionate Father never chases his prodigal son to a faraway land. He just lets him go - and remains ready and eager to receive him back.

I do not believe it is wise or biblical to coddle, cajole, woo, placate or pursue the disaffected. Our goal as a church is to assemble a body of believers who want to join together in common cause to serve and worship God. If some leave our fellowship to join another where their spiritual gifts can find better avenues of service - wonderful! Praise God! That is a bittersweet parting we can celebrate with gratitude. But if others stomp out angrily (or drift out lazily)because of personal pique, sin, loss of faith, contempt of God's command to worship - well, cold as this sounds - they are free to go. "If the unbeliever leaves, let him do so" (1 Corinthians 7:15). If the childish person sulks, let him stay in his room until he is ready to join the rest of us.

C. S. Lewis' wonderful fantasy novel The Great Divorce contains scenes where small, petulant souls are outraged to discover that, if they leave heaven, they won't be missed. This galls them. "How can my former loved ones be happy here without me? I'll show them!" they say. But their departure never diminishes the joys of Eternity. The faithful are able to go on praising God without missing a beat.

Wait Out Your Stupid Inclinations (March 11, 2007)

We are just now reaching the end of suicide season, and I'm glad to see it go. A friend of mine was thinking of taking his life last week. (He's better now.) Last February I conducted the funeral of a teenager who hanged himself. Yesterday the news reported that comedian Richard Jeni ended his life by shooting himself in the head. When such tragedies occur at this time of year I always think back to some
advice that the pastor of my church gave when I was about 10 years old. He said, "Pastors should never take their vacations in January, February or March. Those are the 'suicide months.' That is the time of the year when our emergency care will most likely be needed." He was right. Little did he know that there was a fourth grader listening to his sermon that day who would take to heart his words of wisdom, and who would still be incorporating them into his own pastoral policy more than 30 years later.

Be aware of your own mental and spiritual fluctuations. Sometimes the only thing you need to do to get through a bad spell is to wait it out. I'm all for counseling and therapy and medication and everything for those who need it, but I'm also convinced that the placebo of mere patience is, for some, the greatest drug of all. Do you feel bad? Just wait. It's still March. April will be better - it always is. Let reason govern passion, and hold on just a little longer.

The other day my son saw me reviewing some sermon notes, and I explained to him what I was doing. "I wrote this around 2 AM," I said, "and I need to make sure it's still ok." Sometimes what appears to be a compelling insight in the predawn hours is in fact unpreachable nonsense, but I can't really know that till I've had a good night's
sleep and can look at it with the fresh eyes of the day. Everything about us fluctuates (or, for some of us, careens wildly). Who among us has so steady a disposition that he cannot look back on some emotions he felt or words he spoke (or sermons he wrote!) and wonder, "What was I thinking?"

Maybe we weren't thinking too well because it was simply the wrong time of the day or month or year. Be patient, and wait out your down or irrational cycle. And please don't do anything stupid in January, February or March. Wait till April, when, if you're like a lot of people, you will probably be less stupid.

Terminal Narcissism (March 4, 2007)

I wonder if narcissists can get better.

The other day in correspondence with a friend I wrote, "There is a joy
that consists of nothing more than pleasing someone else, and I am
sorry for those who cannot feel it." I wonder if certain people can
learn to feel it, be made or taught or shamed into feeling it.

There is such a thing as acquired love. Certain things we just like or
dislike from the get-go: I like General Tso's chicken and icicles at
Starved Rock and a no-holds-barred abstract argument; you like fried
squid and the Auto Show and polite small talk. Neither of us made the
effort to delight in our separate pleasures - the joys of them came
ready-made. But have you never learned to like something that once
held no attraction? I know that I learned to like soccer only as an
adult. And though I did not like coffee when I began drinking it as a
child, by now it has become my elixir of the dawn.

Of course, no duty requires a person to like soccer or coffee - unless
perhaps he lives in Latin America or is raised by Swedes. But duty
does require us to learn the joy of selflessness. What I'm wondering
now is whether narcissists are as incapable of experiencing this
pleasure as autistics are of delighting in social play.

In the Chicago Tribune's "Ask Amy" column recently a husband complained about his wife: "[S]he says that she needs time away from us. She leaves for work at 6 a.m. and returns at 6 p.m. Then she takes two classes each week to further her education. On Fridays she has been stopping by a lounge for a couple of drinks...I pick the boys up after work, make supper; lunches, do homework with them...Now she tells me that she wants to go to a gym four times per week after work...".

Life has equipped me with certain sympathies. As I read the words of this frustrated "single dad," I felt as though all the blood was draining out of my body.

Amy suggested to the man that he and his wife get counseling, and I thought, "Oh Amy, Amy. Come on. Narcissists like this poor man's wife don't go to counseling. They just do what makes them happy, and since counseling won't do that for them, they won't go. Or if they go, they'll attend a session or two and say, 'That counselor is a jerk!'"

So what would I say to the man? Something like, "God be with you. You are married to a narcissist who stands a snowball's chance in hell of getting better. Be strong and courageous. Determine to be the best father you can be to your boys."

I cannot cure the narcissist in your life, but I can preach a word of exhortation to you who read these words. Teach yourself, if you lack it now, the joy of pleasing someone else. There is joy in it, trust me, real joy - a natural high for some, an acquired taste for others. If you are not a terminal narcissist, you will know exactly what I mean.

Vision Statement Mania (February 25, 2007)

Does a church need a vision statement?

The issue came up at our last business meeting, and so I thought it
good to write out a response to any who might regard my position on
the matter as disturbingly out of the mainstream.

I'll be blunt: ever since the early 90's when I first heard about vision statements, I have been baffled by the energy and zeal that churches have devoted to crafting them. In 15 years of studying for and serving in the ministry, I have yet to hear a coherent defense of them! But I know they are an article of faith for many. A fellow
student in seminary announced in class that he would not accept a call to a church that did not already have a statement. A district superintendent friend of mine told me that he spent 18 months in committee meetings crafting one for the church he pastored. In seminary I was told, to paraphrase Cowboy Woody in Toy Story, "If your church doesn't have one, get one!"

But I have always had a couple questions that have never been answered to my satisfaction. If vision statements are vital to the functioning of a church, why don't the writers of the New Testament ever instruct their congregations to create them? Saints Paul and Peter and James and John wrote many things to the churches, but they never pressured them to outline a statement of purpose. Maybe today it is wise policy to have such a statement - just as it is wise to have constitution - but then it should be clear that what is at stake here is prudent procedure rather than spiritual necessity.

My next question is, if church vision statements are a matter of good policy rather than biblical mandate, just when did they become so? The answer seems to be: very recently - here in North America in the 1980's, to be exact. That is when they came into vogue. Before that, somehow or other, churches got by without them. It seems to me that vision statement zealots necessarily believe that churches, for about 1,950 years, were rudderless, meandering and confused about their purpose. I deny this, of course. Chrysostom, Calvin, Edwards, Spurgeon, Lloyd-Jones and Ironside were men of clear purpose who led flourishing congregations without ever having bothered to craft a 100-words- or-less statement of mission for them.

I went online and googled "church vision statement" and got 122,000 hits. I read a few. A couple patterns emerge:

1) They are indeed recent. I'd love to see a vision statement from 1969, 1954, 1922, but apparently they don't exist. Again, nobody realized we needed them until yesterday, historically speaking.

2) They're dull. I'm not saying they're bad - nearly all of them are quite good, actually. I'm just saying that the eyes glaze over and the lids begin to droop after a very small sampling. What I'd love to see
is a statement that makes me say, "Now that's galvanizing" or "Oh no, I completely disagree with that!" Instead you get something like the statement below from Zion Christian Church. It's fine, nothing wrong it. I don't mind if you skim it though.

We seek to love God and worship him with all our hearts, to walk in integrity and godliness, to teach the Word of God with balance and
depth, to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ enthusiastically andlovingly with our city and out world, and to build a community of mature, joyful believers who will be empowered to fulfill their God-ordained purpose and ministry.

Fair enough. But isn't that true of every church? And just how many committee meetings did you need to come up with something (excuse me) so bloody obvious?

I'll tell you how a vision statement might intrigue me and prove valuable: if it is specific, geared to the purpose at hand, reflects the unique priorities of current leadership and expects to be revised when leadership changes. We can all agree on the basics - that we here to glorify God by proclaiming the Word and leading lives transformed by Christ etc etc. No need to re-invent that wheel. But the specifics
can get very interesting if we are explicit about them and hold members accountable to them.

The model that comes to mind is that of a basketball franchise or coach. Every basketball team has the same basic vision: to win games,win the championship, satisfy fans, etc. Boring. We already knew that. But different franchises and coaches have distinct, mutually exclusive approaches for how to be a winning team. For example:

Pat Riley: Must have a low post presence (Jabbar, Ewing, Mourning,
Shaq) or he does not coach the team.
(Old) Denver Nuggets: They'd score as many points as possible and try
to beat you 140-130.
Phoenix Suns: Run on every possession - even after a made basket.
Hank Iba: Tightly controlled, slow pattern offense like the old Soviet teams.
Chicago Bulls: Defensive intensity, team discipline, no felons.

Do you see what I mean? Every institution wants the same thing (basketball teams want to win games; churches want to glorify God), but they have different ways of trying to get there. Only the differences, the unique factors, strike me as worth the bother of articulating.

I doubt by now there is any question about the unique factors of my vision: my goal is that people of the church be hospitable to guests and meet together for prayer.

Sermons Should End Mercifully On Time (February 11, 2007)

How long should a sermon be?

A pastor friend of mine told me that he just preached a 40-minute sermon: that would put him in the Pentecostal range. I did some research and found that the average Protestant sermon is 31 minutes, with Pentecostals the longest-winded at 40 while Lutherans are the shortest at 20.

Maybe that is why three different times people have come up to me
after a message and said, "You sound like a Lutheran!" They weren't
able to pinpoint why, but it had something to do with my style (or
lack thereof). Maybe they were keying on the clock. I don't time my
sermons, but I know that they're seldom longer than 25 minutes.

That is more than twice as long as what Catholics are used to. I read
a fascinating interactive blog among Catholics and found that 10
minutes was pretty much the limit of what they could stand from their
priests. (It must be torture for them to visit an evangelical worship
service. They must wonder, "When is that preacher ever going to
stop?")

My parents said that the greatest preacher they knew, Harry Ironside of Moody, gave 20-minute messages. When I mentioned this to a homiletics professor in seminary, an old-timer who had heard Ironside, he said, "Poppycock!" (Literally, he actually said the word "Poppycock," and loudly.) He insisted that Ironside preached 35-40 minutes. He was probably right. I think the discrepancy is accounted for by the fact that Ironside was so good that, in my parents' minds, his messages flew by in about half their actual time.

My advice to any young preacher is that, if you're as gifted as Ironside, go ahead and push past the half hour mark, because there is no need for you to be constrained by the rules that govern us mortals. Just as star basketball players get to jack up 20 shots a game, so the Ironsides and Spurgeons and Wiersbes get to preach as long as they want. The rest of us had better know our limitations. Once in Colombia a guest preacher at the church I attended began his message with, "My sermons aren't any good, but they're short." He was right. He gave an adequate (but bland and forgettable) message for 12 minutes and then sat down. I thought, "You're my hero!" What blessed self-awareness, what kind consideration of a congregation's beleaguered attention span.

Then there was the preacher who filled in for me while I was on vacation at my former church. I talked to him beforehand and told him that the congregation was accustomed to sermons about 25 minutes in length. He thanked me, but then when he preached (I saw the video later), his first words were, "Your pastor told me that he preaches 25-minute sermons, but where I'm from we don't know how to preach messages that short." He then proceeded to bore the dung out of my poor congregation for most of the next hour.

You can read aloud Jesus' whole Sermon on the Mount in under 20 minutes. If we make our words count, we preachers shouldn't have to take much longer than that to get our message across.

Praise God For Heat (February 4, 2007)

Has your heater been working during this bitter cold snap? Give thanks to God.

Yesterday I got my ailing furnace replaced, and today for the first
time in a while my indoor temperature has crept into the 60s, and I
can walk around my duplex without having to wear layers of
sweatshirts. It feels nice! Thank God for heat.

In the Bible, cold is always bad. Jacob complained about cold working conditions to his boss Laban: "This was my situation: The heat consumed me in the daytime and the cold at night, and sleep fled from my eyes." (Genesis 31:40). Job saw cold as one of the sufferings of the oppressed: "Lacking clothes, they spend the night naked; they have nothing to cover themselves in the cold." (Job 24:7). James indicts people who say to the cold and hungry, "Keep warm and well fed!" but who don't give them a meal or a blanket (James 2:15-16).

Several Bible heroes (in addition to Jacob) suffered from the cold. 1
Kings 1:1: "When King David was old and well advanced in years, he
could not keep warm, even when they put covers over him." (1 Kings
1:1). Pity poor Paul: in 2 Corinthians 11:27 he wrote, "I have labored
and toiled and often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and
thirst,...I have been cold and naked" - and about 12 years later,
imprisoned in Rome, he was still cold! In 2 Timothy 4:13 he asked
Timothy to bring with him the coat he left at Troas.

Jesus probably shivered on the night before his crucifixion. In John
18:18 we read, "It was cold, and the servants and officials stood
around a fire they had made to keep warm." Stripped for a beating,
Jesus stood nowhere near that fire.

But I'm warm pretty much whenever I want to be. Just as I have only known hunger from dieting, so have I also only known cold as a temporary inconvenience. In this I am more privileged than the patriarchs, the apostles and the King of kings. Is it the same for you? Are any of your toes frostbitten? Do you read these words huddled
in a fetal position, desperately trying to retain your body's heat? If not, give thanks. It is by God's grace that your metabolism keeps you at a comfy 98.6 and your furnace heats the air around you to near 70. That is a stunning degree of luxury for a people as foolish as we are to live this close to the Arctic Circle. Be grateful for the glory of heat.