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I’ve read this article a couple of times since it came out on Saturday, 27 Dec 08.  It is provocative, and I believe it speaks to why mission must be particularly Christian to make a real difference at a societal level.  Of course, I believe he understates how much God actually is at work beyond mere Christian persuasion, but that goes with the territory.  The full article is available here. 

The article follows:

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa’s biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people’s mindset

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. Read More »

As I continue in congregational leadership, I have become convinced that there is much more that God wants to do than we ever allow him to do.  God really wants to heal the sick.  God really wants to cast out demons.  God really wants to change lives and bring people abundant life.  God really wants to pour out his Spirit - in the supernatural kinds of ways that we see in the New Testament and elsewhere.  God really wants to even raise the dead. 

And yet, we don’t pray anywhere near enough for this to take place.  Moreover, oftentimes, the prayers that we pray are weakened by the expectations of failure or, perhaps worse yet, survival rations of God’s Spirit.  Sadly, we often don’t expect God to respond.  Especially not immediately. 

What if the Church - and yes, our local congregation, too - were to pray 24-7 as a habit: not just in a few places, mind you, but as a habit for congregational life?  What if we were to expect the miraculous?  What if we were to expect God’s will to actually be done in our lives?  What if we were to invite the full giftedness of the Holy Spirit to come down upon us - to give us what we need for ministry, and to form God’s character in us? 

If?  Then: then we would see God transforming our communities organically through the work of the Spirit-filled church.  Then we would see the message of Christ connected to the lives of many people who otherwise would see this as just so much more talk.  Then we would see radical revival.  Are we ready for this?

Then let us pray: not just for the extravagant, but for the mundane.  Let us pray expecting that God will speak to us.  Let us pray, knowing that he hears us.  Let us pray, knowing that he desires to grant us Abundant Life.  Let us pray - knowing that God desires the church to grow as we do his work.  And let us do so together, as much as possible. 

God, move your Spirit upon us.  Cleanse us from our sins.  Heal our bodies, souls and minds.  Grant us emotional healing.  Provide for our needs.  We want to give you glory, honor and praise.  Pour out your Spirit and let your Kingdom come. 

Amen!

Today, I read a letter to the editor in the local paper written by someone in our congregation.  The article is here.  I responded in the comments section on the paper’s website. 

It seems that residents of Warren and the Mahoning Valley do not feel good about their/our community, on the whole.  With the rust-belt economics and issues of crime and social dysfunctions, it seems that few have a positive outlook on the area.  Survival and holding on to what little is left seems to be the name of the game for many people.  Hope seems to be in short supply.  Community-bashing seems to take the place of positive social action. 

Nevertheless, in her article, Ms. Fishel offers us a contrasting perspective that I welcome.  She seems to suggest that if we spend less time being mad or sad (or even scared) about how things are, and choose to take positive steps toward good leadership in government, education, family and business, then we may be able to turn things around.  She herself seems willing to be a part of the solution.  This is very commendable.  But I think there is a bit more.

God wants to bring his people abundant life - even here and now.  As we engage ourselves in following in his ways, we will find ourselves truly breaking out of being “part of the problem” and becoming “part of the solution.”  For until God directs our lives, we end up dealing with all the same issues and power structures the last group of well-meaning folks dealt with, until we get back to where we started.  Only lives transformed by the power of God have the potential to really make substantive changes in the core issues at work here. 

I would encourage members of our community to enagage in walking the neighborhoods and praying for them.  It gives a very different perspective than when we stay in our cars and off certain streets.  And people come to God through it.  As they do, we see neighborhoods become alive again.  Shall we begin?

I’ve just been listening to a lecture given by N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham (Episcopus Dunelm), on Jesus’ knowlege of his own identity.  Vocation has been on my heart of late; not only in the missiological necessities but in its relationship to our true identity. 

Wright manages to do something that I have rarely seen among true scholars - and even among many who merely bear the name “teacher” - including myself: he is able, through his deep scholarship and understanding, to lead us, not into an academic exstasy, but into true worship and discipleship.  Even amidst the fluency of many languages - Greek and Hebrew being the most obvious here - Wright leads us to a deep understanding of Jesus which inspires true relationship with God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rather than footnotes.

I have long held that Christian scholarship and education, rightly practiced, is a true vocation in and of itself.  As such, it can be, for the scholar/educator, an act of worship, a source of true joy, and a vector for others to be drawn up into worship.  Nevertheless, my experience has been that many scholars take so much pride in questions and deconstruction, in academic debates and frank scoffing that rarely has scholarship led me to worship.  The exceptions, of course, are many of my truly Christian professors from Seminary, and a few other scholars whom I have met in books.  In these cases even the footnotes were the adornment of the priestly uniform as we act as the kingdom of priests serving God for the world’s renewal.

As a teaching preacher, I must remember that this mature expression of scholarship need not work itself into a frenzy to bring out passion, but instead speaks so lovingly of the God whom it has come to know academically that, even where we differ or do not understand, we still resonate with to the glory of God. 

Ah, that one day I may become like that.

Today, I observed a subtle shift that has been going on in my outlook on preaching - what needs to be preached, what must be heard - has come to some fruition.  Today, I had the “not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom…” passage from Matthew 7:21 - 29.  While through the past I have heard and focused on the warning aspects of the passage, today, we focused on the reassurance and confidence aspects of it.

Yes, even in such a passage there is hope and good news.  That was the focus today.  Previously, I think we needed to hear the warning more.  Now, the encouragement. 

This is a very good sign that we are moving toward congregational health.  What do you think?

After a few conversations recently, I am again reminded of the nature of God’s call on our lives.  When God calls us, he does not “need” us.  His motivation is blessing.  He desires to bless us.  So he calls us.  The things to which he calls us are the vectors and the means by which he blesses us - even now.  When we run from God’s call, thinking he is asking too much, we run from God’s blessing.  God cannot bless us as much or as fully if we disobey rather than obey. 

This runs alongside the call-burnout issue.  We think we have to do so much - this activity, that activity… we end up so hyperactive, we don’t know what to do with space and silence except that all the stuff we’ve packed away comes to the surface.  So then we blame God about how tired we are (since he has called us) or what we’re going through (because it hurts) and then don’t want to listen to what happens in the silence and so run harder and further. 

And all God wanted was for us to do what he called us to do: no more, no less.  A long time ago I decided to follow God’s call - wherever that led.  I decided to let God do as much as he possibly could.  And it has led me to some very surprising places.  Not the least of which is Warren, Ohio.  It’s been a tough call, so far.  Crazier by far than anything I’d imagined.

But God’s blessing has been greater than anything I’d imagined, either.  And it isn’t over yet - not by any stretch.  This week, I’m preaching on Isaiah 49:8 - 16.  In that passage, God’s people feel overwhelmed, abandoned by God and unable to fulfill their calling.  Yet, even so, God chooses to bless them.  They’ve been failures as his covenant people.  Yet, he chooses to give them something greater than they had to begin with.  He even wants to bless the journey back from exile into the land of promise.  He’s not just blessing the land, he blesses the journey too.

No, we have not been forgotten.  We will not be forgotten.  But we must pursue the call to receive the blessing.  We must pursue the call of God and no other calls.  This is the Word of the Lord; Thanks be to God!

As our congregation has transitioned from a high-conflict situation coupled with a systems-wide change situation to a point of stability and growth, I have noticed a change in the use of my time. 

Initially, I was working hyperactively, firefighting (in a sense), working long hours, high stress, etc.  This was also a time of managing out-of-bounds conflict and strategizing the change in church systems that needed to happen to bring us to health. 

As the conflict moved to the back burner, the hours-per-week slowly came down into the “reasonable and customary” needed to really be sustainable life.  Nevertheless, I was still working on the systems stuff.

At the moment, we are working on developing new bylaws for the church which will ultimately change the way we govern ourselves and make our systems more Biblical and give us accountable flexability within visionary leadership.  As this transition occurs, we are working to come to leadership consensus as we begin to teach the concepts of such new governance to the congregation at large. 

Now, I believe we have come to a place of quiet re-grouping, a place that can be bathed in prayer - because now there is time to do that.  I think we will find a happy medium in this, such that we can now structure prayer into ministry from the beginning, rather than trying to use it to fight through things later.  I think this is a very positive transition, one which I feel will flow throughout the congregation and bring true healing and Kingdom transformation - and therefore, growth. 

Stay tuned as we continue this process, and please pray for us!

Tonight, our leadership team completed its first reading of the new proposed bylaws (constitution) for the church.  Needless to say, there were some concerns and discussion.  Nevertheless, it seems the primary concerns were twofold: first, that we were going to need to really work hard to deal with the new concepts of how we run things that have been presented by the proposal, and second, that those who really want to do the business of discipleship and not worry about the structures so much don’t get dragged in to the middle of some big discussion. 

We will look at this again soon.

Food for thought from TheHeresy.com.  (via tallgrassworship, via dyingchuch)

If the church were a business we would measure our profit and if we weren’t making enough we would change. If we were a hospital we would measure how many of the sick and injured become healthier. If we were a vocational training institute we would measure how many people get jobs and keep them in their area of training.

Now imagine a school that measured how much people enjoyed the classes, how great the day care was, how inspiring the teacher was, the levels of enrolment and the amount of funding they had but only passively cared about the success of their graduates in the workplace. That my friends describes most of the church in North America today.

We need to change what we measure and how we measure our success.

· Do people have a proper understanding of the gospel?
· Do they love the people that can offer them nothing in return?
· Are people willing to sacrifice for others?
· Are people becoming more like Christ in their values and behaviour?
· Do they have life and freedom?

If we considered these things, we would realize the state we are in and we would change. As long as we measure things based on our own personal satisfaction or by the markers of organizational success we will miss the point.

Full post here.

In our days of congregational conflict, we experienced the conflict in terms of the “customer satisfaction” paradigm.  The irony is that the dissatisfaction came from the fact that we had begun to measure the “success of graduates” sorts of things and found ourselves not only lacking, but almost utter failures.  From this distorted sense of purpose flowed our lack of success in the proclamation of the Gospel. 

Now, with the conflict largely resolved, we find ourselves having success in bringing the life of the Good News to bear in our lives and in the community around us.  Having focused on “success of graduates” has allowed us to find that “customer satisfaction” comes along for the ride - but only to a point.  Disciples, eventually, have to come to value discipline - which, of course, from time to time, involves correction.  As long as correction is considered part of a satisfying experience, it’s all good.  If not, well… then we’re back to where we were. 

Whatever comes, though, it is essential that we measure the right things.  And I have hope that as a culture of discipleship develops in our congregation, even discipline and correction will be welcome.

Tonight, our men’s group decided not to meet in one of our classrooms at the church, which has been our normal practice.  Instead, this evening, we went to the Dunkin Donuts shop around the corner, where one of our young men was working, and had our group there.  We read our Bibles and prayed, and didn’t disturb the other customers or employees.  But we began to see how the Good News of Jesus could carry beyond the walls of our church into our community.

Just one more small step in the right direction, eh?