Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Religion

All posts relating to religion, including those on the relationship of religion to other fields, such as science and politics

  • A United Methodist Pastor on Revitalizing Dead Churches

    Out of This World: an Assessment of Christian CommunityThere are many days when the United Methodist Church discourages me, and I wrote a post yesterday with that sort of feeling. But there are two things that regularly encourage me: Encountering vital small congregations, and meeting some of our young pastors.

    Via another young pastor, Geoffrey Lentz, who is doing wonderful things at First United Methodist Church and especially with our ICON service, I met one of these young pastors through my publishing work–be warned that I’m going to push his book in this post just a bit–Darren McClellan. His book is Out of This World: An Assessment of Christian Community, and in it he evaluates a church congregation through interviews, and then looks at some suggestions to improve the way in which we handle such things. It’s a slightly edited version of his Princeton Doctor of Ministry dissertation.

    It’s with our paid/team imprint EnerPower Press, because it was submitted as a simple dissertation printing. Had it been submitted for traditional publishing, I might well have decided not to take it due to the size of the potential audience. In terms of quality, the manuscript need have no apologies (nor the author).

    I’m not going to comment extensively on this, as it’s hardly my field, but in it, Darren starts with a view of discipleship derived from both Bonhoeffer and Wesley, and then allows the anonymous church members to express themselves on how this worked in their church. He then gives some specific ideas for reform in the church, and finally addresses suggestions to churches, to new pastors, to district superintendents, and to bishops. This may be a bit ambitious, but such directness is needed to prevent what Darren calls “vocational homicide.” That’s a strong term, no doubt, but my observation is that there are many people in the church who are guilty of that charge.

    For my United Methodist readers, and any others interested, I’m going to put this book on sale for direct purchase. I see that the Amazon.com price today is $18.99. I’m going to put it at $18 shipped via Energion Direct. I’ll leave the sale price up for two weeks. I have some on the shelf here ready to ship.

    At the same time, bloggers who are interested in reviewing it can e-mail to request a free review copy. The only requirement is that you do review it. There’s no requirement as to how you review it, but if you receive a free copy, I want to see your review. Oh, and the government wants you to note that you received a free copy.

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  • Dashboards, Discernment, and Responsible Leadership

    Logo of the United Methodist Church
    Image via Wikipedia

    Yes, that’s a big collection of topics, but I think they’re connected. John Meunier links to an excellent post by Dan Dick, which you should read before you read this one. The topic here is the conference dashboards in United Methodist annual conferences, such as this one for the North Alabama Conference.

    I do have substantial problems with the church dashboard, including a great deal of the way in which the statistics are presented. I also am concerned about numerical measures of success in the church. It’s quite possible to build up numbers and be missing the mission and ministry of the church, and the proclamation of the gospel message. Some people will leave a church that is aiming for full commitment and discipleship. At the same time, as Dan Dick pointed out, some people’s professed disdain for such numbers is the result of laziness. But all of this has been thoroughly discussed amongst the Methodist blogs.

    It seems to me, however, that the use of these numbers on conference dashboards is just a symptom of a certain retreat from personal responsibility. I don’t mean by this that our United Methodist bishops are off trying to avoid hard decisions. Rather, we are systematically trying to codify and quantify so much of human behavior and organizational policy that not only can avoid taking personal responsibility; they must.

    For example, in my district, the district superintendent has 53 churches for which he is responsible, and the conference as a whole has more that 600 pastors, for which our bishop is responsible. Each year, pastoral appointments are made by the bishop, with the advice of the cabinet and many people in the churches, for those 600 churches. I think the temptation is going to be very strong to put some kind of simplified set of numbers on performance. The more details you have to consider, the harder it is to make a choice.

    What I wonder is how often a bishop could get by with ignoring the numbers because, let’s say, one pastor is making better disciples, even if his numbers (for some reason) didn’t look as good. Could the popular pastor with the watered-down message be overlooked in favor of the pastor with the harder message of sacrifice and service? I recognize here that the pastor with the good numbers may be an effective disciple maker. I know some pastors in that category. The pastor with the bad numbers may be either lazy, or much more likely simply too beat up by parishioners, the system, and the unrealistic expectations we have for pastors that he is, in fact, performing badly.

    But can the leadership determine this with accuracy in all (or nearly all) cases? Would they be willing to send the less popular pastor to a larger church?

    It seems to me that collecting statistics is valuable, though I think someone well qualified in analyzing data should rework the conference display. I sense a few cases of deceptive use of numbers. Most importantly, the numbers are not related to the nature of the existing church body and the community in which it is located. All of that requires personal knowledge such as cannot be collected remotely.

    But what if such information was collected and available? Would our leadership be willing to act against popular pressure? I see this as a common problem in leadership, at least in the United States today. We have a problem making a decision and standing up for it. Of course, in employment situations, the decisive leader may well have to present statistics as evidence in court in order to justify a decision.

    That’s one reason for “zero tolerance” policies in so many cases. “Zero tolerance” means that people in leadership don’t have to make responsible, nuanced decisions. But “zero tolerance” is just the extreme case of avoiding responsibility. Putting it all on a set of numbers is another one. It’s a trend I don’t like, even though I recognize it as a response to the other extreme–a complete lack of accountability. (I have tremendous respect for Bishop Willimon, for example, whose dashboard I linked as an example. Yet I’m still not happy with it.)

    I ramble because I don’t know a solution, other than to say we need leaders to take responsibility, and we need to make sure we know who is responsible for what, so they can be accountable. I also think we need to bring leadership closer to the local church so that each person in leadership is responsible for a reasonable number of people and churches. That would allow individuals to seek out all those nuances that back up the numbers.

    I don’t know the solution, and since I am neither a pastor nor a church administrator, and have avoided most church committees, I am probably the wrong person to propose one. What I do believe is that, though structural changes can help, the answer doesn’t lie in precisely how the church is organized. There are congregational style churches that are just as dysfunctional as any Methodist church whose bishop sent the “wrong” pastor.

    What we do need is a change of our personal culture, from that of an organization that must maintain itself to one of gospel driven discipleship.

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  • On Praying for My Country

    Some time ago I was teaching a Sunday School class and the topic of prayer at public events came up. Now I would have a serious problem offering prayer at a public event. Though I support the idea of separation of church and state, my major objection is not based on the constitutional principle. After all, courts have allowed prayers in congress.

    My opposition is simply that I believe public prayer is prayer offered for a group. If it is just a ritual, or if it cannot reasonably be expected that the group joining in the prayer actually does join, then to me it is empty. I could sit out in my car and pray for a blessing on the activities of government, but I could not stand up in the group and offer a prayer as though God and the governmental meeting were on the same program.

    In my private prayers for the government, I pray largely that God will give wisdom to political leaders. I do not make the assumption that those political leaders and the political system under which I live are somehow more on God’s program than any other.

    I think that prayers at government events are not designed to invoke God’s favor, nor are they designed to seek God’s will. They are designed to give the impression that those who are doing the government’s business are, in fact, blessed, and are somehow blessed. It’s the whitewash on the sepulcher.

    In any case, to get back to the story, my explanation of my own view didn’t get through. One gentleman raised his hand and said, “I think you just don’t have the courage of your convictions.”

    “No,” I told him, “I don’t have the courage of your convictions.”

    In the discussion that followed, it became clear that he simply could not conceive of a reason for not offering a public prayer, other than that I was afraid of offending people in the audience. He (and many in the room) were so certain that this was an appropriate activity that they simply couldn’t see any reason not to. To them, America is God’s country, a Christian nation, and there’s no problem with Christian prayers.

    I was reminded of this when reading this post by Arthur Sido (HT: Dave Black Online via Christian-Archy.com). This is a topic that will shock many, many American Christians. Why not wear a “God Bless America” T-Shirt? It’s not something they’ve ever considered. The conviction that God is on our side runs very deep. Often it erupts in the claim that American policy carries out God’s will, either knowingly or unknowingly. That claim in turn can lead us to give up the church’s mission and ministry to the world.

    If we truly believe that the Gospel is “God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes” then we ought to act that way. But over and over again our solutions for economic problems, crime, moral issues, and even family relations is to get the government to solve it for us. I don’t doubt that the government needs to have its eye on such things, but how much of our effort as Christians needs to be used in that way?

    Would we not change more people and make more of a difference in our world by living and proclaiming (and I believe proclaiming without living is no proclamation at all) the good news accomplish more than all the political activism we can do as a church?

    I don’t know this, but I think most of us simply don’t believe that the Gospel will transform people’s lives. I don’t think we really believe the Gospel will work. I suspect that, throughout Christian history, our resort to the sword of the state results from a lack of faith.

    The separation I’m most concerned about is the separation where the church says, “We cannot compromise the gospel with the state’s structures of power. We need to stay away to maintain the integrity of the gospel.” The theological separation is more important than the constitutional.

     

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  • On Putting God Before Country

    When my wife and I decided to get married we also made another decision: God would be first in our married life. That means that for me, God comes before my wife, and for her God comes before me. Some people hear that as a sort of sacrifice. We have less because we give more to God first. But in practice we both would say that putting God first actually makes our love for one another greater.

    I think this is a characteristic of loving God. In 1 John 4:20 love for one’s brothers and sisters is inextricably linked to love for God. Matthew 25:31-46 explicitly tests love for God by our actions of love towards others. Love for God is intended to bring us closer to one another, not to separate us. Like many things in Christian orthodoxy, 1 + 1 = 1, i.e. 100% devotion to God results in 100% devotion to others, without either detracting from the other.

    Now perhaps you think I’m going to say next that 100% devotion to God will result in 100% devotion to my country, and thus make me the most devoted of patriots. And with the proper perspective, that is partly true. I would say that devotion to God makes me a better patriot.

    But my love for God also limits and guides my patriotism. I think it makes me a better citizen, but to some it may make my devotion questionable, and others may even see me as disloyal. Many Christians over the centuries have been seen as disloyal because they put God first, and because there were things they could not offer their country. My father planted trees in Canada because he refused to bear arms in World War II. Many people saw that as disloyal. Even though I don’t share my father’s view completely, I honor his devotion to God.

    You see, for many patriotism means supporting whatever one’s country chooses to do, and being willing to carry out orders, no matter what those orders are. If they are the policy of one’s country, the patriot carries them out.

    I believe a country, any country, is best served by those who offer their integrity, their best judgment, and their commitment to the morals and ethics they have chosen and accepted. That means that they must, in some cases, say no. They may sometimes be wrong, yes, but they always act with integrity.

    So at the same time as I honor those who have fought for freedom in this country and in others, I want to also honor those who have stood against the tide and chosen to act with integrity, even that action cost them their social standing, their livelihood, their reputations, and even their lives.

    There are many times we, as a nation, would have done much better by listening to them.

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  • Addicted to Arguing?

    Yes, that might be me! Peter Laarman at RD Magazine says many in American protestantism are addicted to arguing, and need to learn that arguments don’t win people over–contact with people and sharing of stories does it. He titles his piece Why Liberal Religious Arguments Fail, but while I’m well aware of many liberal examples, I think there are plenty on the conservative side of he spectrum as well.

    I must temper my support for his position by noting that I recall quite a number of my own positions that I changed due to listening to arguments against the position I held before. People differ from one another on this as well.

     

  • On Camping: Do Errors Result from Lack of Theological Education?

    Dr. W. Robert Godfrey, president of Westminster Seminary California, says that it does, according to the Christian Post. Dr. Godfrey, who was in the youth group taught by Camping at Alameda Christian Reformed Church, says that Camping reads the Bible like an engineer, lacks knowledge of the original languages, and doesn’t know how to read literature, especially ancient literature.

    I would have to disagree–with the conclusion, not the facts. Indeed Camping does not read Greek and Hebrew, lacks formal training and theology, and to some extent reads the Bible like an engineer. On the last point it seems to me that a competent engineer should be able to discern when he is not reading an engineering text, i.e., the pieces just don’t fit together as and engineer would expect them to. There’s something else going on that causes him to force the Bible to fit a certain mold.

    I’d suggest it’s a combination of a belief in inspiration–a high view of scripture, in fact–combined with a 20th century modernism in which scientific, mathematically precise knowledge is the best kind of knowledge there is. The Bible is the best book, so it must produce the best kind of knowledge. With that mindset carried to its extreme, the Bible must produce the kind of information Camping extracts from it. If it didn’t, it couldn’t be inspired, an unthinkable result.

    As I noted earlier with regard to time setting, though Camping carries this to extremes, other interpreters are guilty of similar errors, such as trying to force biblical texts to produce advanced scientific knowledge they were never intended to convey. Dissatisfied with the spiritual message of the Bible–challenging enough in itself!–they search for “better” knowledge.

    But are Camping’s errors the result of a lack of formal education? Certainly he makes calculations that seem nonsensical to those who read the Bible in its original languages with knowledge of its historical and literary context. So yes, there are errors that result from a lack of knowledge. But one can find plenty of errors committed by people with doctoral degrees as well. Different errors, yes, but still errors.

    I think the headline (both mine and the one at the Christian Post) does a disservice to what Dr. Godfrey said. He comments later in the article that Camping “refused to learn from Bible scholars” and adopted a “proud individualism.” I’d say that a refusal to learn from others, not just from Bible scholars, would be the most basic problem.

    There are plenty of sources from which one can get historical and literary information about the Bible. Doubtless such information was available to Camping. Yet he did not submit his work to testing and critique by others and listen to what they had to say.

    In the participatory study method (described in my book Learning and Living Scripture, co-authored with Geoffrey Lentz), the final step in Bible study is sharing. By sharing, Geoffrey and I do not mean going out and letting everyone know what brilliant insights you have gained from your study. Rather,

    You do this both to give others the benefit of what you have learned and to benefit from their comments and perhaps corrections.

    As you study and question, find something to share. Remember that sharing can be in the form of a question. For example, one might ask others how they understand a particular word, such as “incarnation,” “poverty,” or “atonement.” Take notes on their answers, and bring that information back to your study.

    Then ask yourself what your neighbors will hear when you make particular statements, such as “I must be bold for Jesus!” or “Jesus is the only way to receive atonement.” Do those statements mean something to them? Do they mean the same thing to them as they do to you?

    This is part of contemplatio, as you try to be and do the text. We often think of sharing primarily as telling someone things that we have learned. But if what you learned is that God loves prisoners, for example, you might find that the best way of sharing that lesson is to become active in prison ministry.

    Sharing demonstrates that you don’t believe the text is your private possession. It is God’s gift to the Christian community (p. 14, emphasis added).

    Whether you lack a high school diploma or have multiple PhDs, humility, and teachability, is your best protection from getting stuck in error(s).

     

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  • Repeating Adventist Mistakes

    William Miller
    Image via Wikipedia

    Harold Camping seems to be repeating the mistakes made by the early Adventist movement. While I disagree profoundly with Seventh-day Adventist eschatology, I don’t hold that history against the church. Good and interesting movements can result from mistakes, but only if you correct those mistakes.

    Now consider Camping. He predicted the rapture in 1994, and then decided his math was wrong. Those who know Adventist history will likely recall the 1843 “lesser disappointment.” After Jesus did not return in 1843, William Miller corrected the date and also made it more specific, narrowing it to a single day, October 22, 1844. That day is known in Adventist history as the Great Disappointment.

    Following that event, Adventists decided that, while they had the math right, what had happened was a change in heaven, as Jesus began the investigative judgment, which is still going on now.

    They also, however, acknowledged that they were wrong to try to set dates for the second coming. On this last note, Camping is not following in their footnotes. He appears set to repeat their mistakes, but not follow their example when they did right.

    I see that Spectrum’s Alexander Carpenter has noticed this similarity as well. Amongst the biblioblogs, I would note Peter Kirk and Joel Watts.

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  • Might It Be Significant

    …that a post I wrote Oct 31, 2008, titled The Advantages of Stoning False Prophets, is tied with one other as the most read post this week?

  • An End-Timely Dilemma

    A couple of months ago my company, Energion Publications, began distributing two previously published books by Edward W. H. Vick. As I normally do, I planned to publish my reflections on these books here. Time has been in short supply recently, and I haven’t gotten to them.

    The Adventists Dilemma

    But fortuitously, one of the books is The Adventists’ Dilemma, and relates to the end times, so what better day could I have to publish some notes on the book than May 21, 2011, the day on which Harold Camping says the rapture will occur. Now as I write this, it’s already past 6 pm in many places, and thus Camping’s prediction is, predictably, failing.

    As usual, this will be more my reflections on the topic of the book than a formal book review. In fact, it won’t resemble a formal book review at all. Since I now distribute the book in question, and thus have an interest in selling it, you should also not consider this unbiased. It is, however, a subject in which I have great interest.

    I grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which is also Dr. Vick’s background. There’s even a family connection. He replaced my uncle, Don F. Neufeld, as Greek teacher at Canadian Union College, now Canadian University College. Seventh-day Adventists have a very strong emphasis on eschatology. Indeed, the word “Adventist” in their name refers to their belief that Jesus will return soon.

    The church came out of the Millerite movement in the 1830s to 1840s, which resulted in two disappointments, the first in 1843, and then the second–the Great Disappointment–on October 22, 1844. Those who are predicting Camping’s response to his disappointment today might consider the Adventist response at the time. One of those responses became the investigative judgment doctrine in Seventh-day Adventism, which maintained that October 22, 1844 was an important prophetic date after all, but that the event which took place was in heaven and thus we couldn’t see it. The time was right, but the event was wrong. (For those interested, this all came about through interpretation of Daniel 8:14, badly out of context in my view.)

    But Adventists generally, and particularly Seventh-day Adventists, decided they had been wrong to set a date for the second coming, and so the dilemma I reference in the title is not based on setting dates. Rather, it has to do with the idea of proclaiming the “soon” coming of Jesus Christ. To quote from the book description of The Adventists’ Dilemma,

    If you use ‘soon’ in the ordinary sense, you can’t go on saying that the Advent is soon. If you say that the Advent is ‘soon’ in a qualified sense (meaning ‘in the unknown and indefinite future but not long into that future’) the claim is meaningless. So the claim that the Advent is soon is either false or meaningless.

    But, you may ask, doesn’t the Bible speak of the return of Jesus as “soon?” Doesn’t this same dilemma apply to the New Testament writers? Dr. Vick believes it does, they noticed, and they dealt with it. Since he spends three chapters on it, I’m only going to quote two snippets in summary:

    Jesus as a Jew spoke to his generation. Jesus’ message to that generation was, Your opportunity is here and now. It must now be seized. It will pass. Jesus’ words sponke again to the early church. Your opportunity is here and now. You must seize it. It will pass … (123-124).

    …Whatever the struggles ahead, the assurance of triumph, God’s triumph, makes the present full of meaning and full of hope (125).

    The one weakness I see in this book is simply that Dr. Vick takes a very long time dealing with the issue of the meaning of “soon” and many who are not Adventists as such will find the material on the movement’s history and on recent Seventh-day Adventist responses on eschatology to be excessive. On the other hand, for those interested in those topics, the weakness is a strength.

    I have shown little interest in Camping’s predictions, because they are so obviously wrong. But my question is whether we don’t both leave some Christians vulnerable to this sort of thing, and also provide an unnecessary opportunity for ridicule by failing to deal sensibly with eschatology. Some people will be concerned with end times whether we like it or not.

    I went from growing up in the SDA church where eschatology was king, we all could quote verses from Daniel and Revelation to support our beliefs about the end, and the soon coming of Jesus was a firm conviction, to the United Methodist Church, where very few people had a clue. Now you may justifiably point out that I regard the Adventist “clue” as wrong. The problem on the Methodist side was not incorrect eschatology, but rather an eschatological vacuum. One Methodist minister even told me about inviting an SDA minister to teach Revelation to his congregation because, he said, “they know so much about it.”

    But the issue here is not SDA or non-SDA, but rather just what your congregation will believe about eschatology in the absence of some good teaching. If you ignore Revelation, what will your congregation believe? In my experience, the answer is that those who care will follow someone on TV or in popular books, and that means the “left behind” eschatology.

    I remember the first time I was invited to teach a Methodist youth group. This was a seminar offered on a day off from school, and the young people were selected–the most interested. I was to teach them about Bible backgrounds and Bible translation. I completed my presentation and opened it up for questions. What did they ask? Was I pre-trib, mid-trib, or post-trib.

    Now most of their parents couldn’t have defined the terms, but these kids had heard them. They were quite surprised to find out I didn’t believe in either the rapture or the tribulation (in the sense of a seven year period of tribulation), and discussion died. I must not know much about Revelation!

    But I found the same thing with the adults. People either knew nothing of eschatology, or they had absorbed popular culture on the topic. To them, Revelation was the left behind series. They had no idea there was any other way to look at things.

    And there is where we mainliners have failed, I think. In the absence of sound discussion of the available scriptures and evidence, people will jump on just about anything that is confidently asserted and clearly proclaimed. While most Methodists are unlikely to go with a particular date, many are going to ride the “soon” bandwagon right off a cliff.

    There is a sense in which imminence trumps immanence. We lose the motivation to live our lives for Jesus based on the fact that he is present with us now, because we’re too concerned with when he’ll return and end everything. We sing “soon and very soon, we’re going to see the king” when we should be sing “now and truly now, we always see the king.”

    God’s ultimate triumph is our hope, but God’s presence now connects us to that hope and should motivate us to proclaim that presence and kingdom, the one that is with us while the earth continues.

    I’d like to suggest that we need to make sound eschatology a regular part of teaching and preaching. I don’t mean by this responses to predictions like Camping’s. Explaining how wrong other people are, even if they are indeed very wrong, still leaves a vacuum. What we need to do is proclaim the positive message of eschatological passages. While we’re doing that, let’s put the emphasis on the good news, which is not how many people will be left behind or how many will burn in hell, but rather how many people we, as the body of Christ can reach with God’s grace and help acting as Christ’s body.

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  • The Way That Seems Right

    Budapest Parliament.
    Image via Wikipedia

    (This post is written for the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival [Road].)

    The mission trip was off to a bad start. I had unwisely followed some “money saving” advice from a travel agent, which landed me in Atlanta with less than an hour to change planes, and the flights had been booked separately, so the airline had no obligation to make it work. Members of the team had come from various directions, and everyone but me–their leader–was off on the plane for Hungary while I worked the phones to rearrange my flights.

    A mere nine hours later I was on a plane for Paris and then Budapest, living out the saying about a leader catching up with the people who are supposed to be following him. There was a further glitch in the plans. We had a van arranged to pick up the team in Hungary, but it would be long gone by the time I got there. I was to pick up a rental car in Debrecen, which was close to our work area, because our team would be working at two separate locations. So we arranged for me to pick it up at the airport in Budapest. I would then spend the night and drive out to the camp east of Debrecen the next day.

    The travel agent was to arrange a hotel for me as well. I specified one thing–I wanted it to be in the southeastern part of the city which would be right on the road to Debrecen, and thus make it easier for me to find my way. Did I mention that I don’t like driving in unfamiliar places. I’m happy to ride the bus; driving is not a pleasure.

    Well, I landed in Budapest, tired and ready to go to that hotel. I had to call back to the states to get the details. So I took the name of the hotel and found the rental car counter where I asked for directions. It turned out the hotel was on the northern side of the city, fortunately still east of the river, but nowhere near the route to Debrecen. In addition it was a luxury hotel that cost about three times what I had wanted to pay. I got a marked map along with verbal directions. I was told it was easy to get to the hotel, and I took off.

    Now before anyone gets the wrong idea let me say that I love Hungary. The teams I was working with stayed in Hungary and served children from the Ukraine. Our hosts there were wonderful partners in ministry. In addition, the public transportation system is great (see “bus” above!) and the roads are well marked. The problems here have much more to do with me than with where I was.

    I was in a bit of doubt about a couple of turns, but then I got back on what appeared to be the right road. The way seemed right to me, right up until the moment I looked out the right window and down to the beautiful Danube. By the way, it’s a great scene, if you’re not fully focused on finding a bed.

    For two hours I drove around Budapest, both using the map and asking directions. Every time I stopped to ask for directions I was surrounded by people who tried to explain. But my Hungarian vocabulary was around a couple dozen words, fortunately including left, right, and straight, and very few of the folks I met spoke English. In the end, it seemed almost an accident when I ended up in front of the hotel.

    The next morning, somewhat rested, I carefully studied the map and planned my route out of the city. Do you want to guess how many wrong turns started the problem?

    Exactly one.

    I made one wrong turn that took me off the original route. Had I made that one turn correctly, I would have driven past the well-marked hotel entrance about ten minutes later. I was annoyed. I had already lost time on my mission, and I definitely saw no purpose in all that running around. I definitely wasn’t thankful, and I wasn’t rejoicing.

    The next Sunday in the camp near Debrecen I was asked to give the message to the campers at the church service. What would I say to all those kids?

    This text came to mind:

    There is a way which seems right to a man,
    but in the end it leads to death. — Proverbs 16:25 (WEB)

    So I told the story. The kids had a great time laughing at the American teacher lost in Budapest. But they seemed to get the message. I was sure of it when I got to the Ukraine and was again asked to speak to some children, this time in a little house church. Again, the children laughed, and again they got the message. When I got back to Debrecen, nearly two weeks after the initial sermon, several of the kids came up to me and repeated the text. I’m willing to bet that there is no other sermon I’ve ever preached has been remembered by that many people two weeks later.

    There’s a basic lesson in the text, of course. It’s easy to think you’re on the right road, but if you aren’t following the map, you can be headed to the other side of the river, so to speak.

    But for those in ministry, there’s another lesson. There is a way that seems right in preparing sermons. Beautiful quotes, flowing language, fine rhetoric, jokes to relax the audience, serious theology. These are the things that make you look and sound more important than those who listen to you.

    But sometimes, many times, in fact, it is your own experience that’s going to make the difference. It may involve getting laughed at, but where’s the problem in that?

    I have to add one other note. In the Ukraine, when I used the “lost” sermon, I was invited to speak to the adults as well. I spent a good deal of time on what I would say to the adults. I had a great lesson for them. Or so it seemed to me. (There is a way that seems right, no?) When both were done, I saw the head elder of the little congregation copying some stuff down from what I’d said.

    What was he copying? The illustrations on the blackboard for the children’s lesson. Nobody commented on my well-prepared sermon.

    There is a way which seems right to a man,
    but in the end it leads to death. — Proverbs 16:25 (WEB)

    Indeed!

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