I just put an extract from Dave Black Online on The Jesus Paradigm. (I have permission to do this.) Unfortunately, Dave’s blog doesn’t allow linking to a specific entry, so I’m linking to the extract. All I want to say here is “Amen!”
Tag: Christianity
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First Century Church – Wanting and Doing
My wife said some important things in her devotional yesterday, First Century Church Wanted. If I might summarize, many of us want what the early church had, but we don’t want to do what the early church did.
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If All Else Fails, Blame the Latest Technology
The Christian Post has a headline that reads Apologist Josh McDowell: Internet the Greatest Threat to Christians. Now if you read the article, you’ll realize the biggest problem here is headline writing rather than what Josh McDowell had to say. In the end he concludes that Christian parents need to be knowledgeable. I’d have a hard time arguing against that.
At the same time, I have to ask just why the availability of knowledge about atheism is such a serious threat to Christianity. In my view, we should be reading and discussing those arguments fairly early in our children’s lives.
Holding a position or belonging to a group because you don’t know any better is not a particularly valid choice. If the only way we can keep members is by limiting knowledge, then we deserve our fate.
McDowell is arguing for more knowledge. (For what it’s worth, I don’t really find his books very helpful in that regard, but that’s beside the point.) The problem is that I frequently hear Christians speak as though the best thing would be if we could restrict the availability of the knowledge.
That ship has already sailed, and it was a leaky one at that.
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Book: Thank God for Evolution
Dowd, Michael. Thank God for Evolution. New York: Plume, 2007. 380 pages + front and back matter. ISBN: 978-0-452-29534-6. (All numbers in parentheses are page numbers from this edition of the book.)
I was interested in this book from the moment I saw the title, not because I immediately expected to agree, but because it, along with its blurbs and description, takes a celebratory approach to evolution. My own position is that evolution is a fact and a valid theory, but it requires some theological work to deal with that. So a book that claims that evolution is not only compatible with Christianity, but something that Christians should thank God for, sounds pretty challenging to me.
The early pages of the book set some pretty high standards. In the “Author’s Promises” Dowd makes some very strong promises, claiming that he is bringing forth a new form of Christianity. For example, speaking to “devoutly committed Christians” he says that “. . . whether you consider yourself conservative, moderate, or liberal, my promise to you is that the sacred evolutionary perspective offered here will enrich your faith and inspire you in ways that believers in the past could only dream of” (xxvi). He also expects that his exposition will be enriching to atheists and freethinkers, amongst many others. That’s a tall order, and if you read the complete section of author’s promises, you’ll find the mission gets even more daunting.
I was reading this book along with my Sunday School class, and I tried to look at it in two ways. First, I wanted to see how much it challenged my thinking and made me reconsider things I already believe. Second, I wanted to see how well it fulfilled the author’s own stated mission.
So how does he go about his task? He divides his presentation into five sections:
- The Holy Trajectory of Evolution
- Reality is Speaking
- The Gospel According to Evolution
- Evolutionary Spirituality
- A “God-Glorifying” Future
The first section lays out the view of evolution that underlies the rest of the book. I would summarize this by saying it’s a very directed and goal-oriented view of evolution. The evolutionary process is not just natural laws being laws; it is a process that is leading the universe, and of course our world, to ever greater heights. The second section attempts to relate the concept of revelation with science, and deals, in a sense, with epistemology. The third section attempts to restate basic Christian doctrines in terms of evolutionary theory. The fourth expands this into a more general spirituality, including presenting some ideas of spiritual disciplines. In fact, the fourth section goes so far as to discuss speaking in tongues and relating it to this evolutionary spirituality. The fifth section, to be honest, started to feel rather redundant, but I’d summarize it by saying that it restates the evolution of the entire universe such that it is leading to the fulfillment of the dreams of an American 21st century liberal. Many of these dreams are not at all bad–the question that remains is whether evolution is inevitably pushing in that direction.
As usual, let me state the positives of this book. I’m afraid my reaction is not all that positive, so this is harder than usual. The author’s style is engaging, though I must temper that note by noting that it seems redundant from time to time. The section of spiritual disciplines and some on evolutionary psychology were interesting, though understandably a bit basic. I’m not sorry I read the book, but it doesn’t go onto any of my “you ought to read this” lists.
There are a some things this book is not. It is not an outline of evolutionary theory. There are some basic descriptions of evolutionary processes, but nothing that I find challenging, and I am not trained in any of the natural sciences. (I should note, however, that I’ve been reading books on creation and evolution since I was about 10 years old.) It is not a deep book of theology. While it runs through a number of theological concepts, the major contribution, in my view, was in redefining terms. It does not deal extensively with scripture. If you want to look at how to interpret scripture in the light of the principles expressed here, your guidance is limited to telling you not to take the Bible literally, and to look for revelation of God in the ongoing, evolutionary story of the universe around you.
Before I discuss the success of this book at attaining its stated goals, I want to write a note on accommodationism. Accommodationism is the view that science and religion can be accommodated and need not conflict. The problem with this is that it doesn’t define “religion” and “science.” My religion and mainstream science can be accommodated, but let’s say someone believes that the only way to faithfully read Genesis 1 & 2 is as historical narrative description the creation of the world, then that particular form of religion and mainstream science cannot be accommodated.
I might want to suggest that this view of Genesis 1 & 2 is less important or less essential, but it’s not my place to tell others what about their belief system is essential. I can suggest, but obviously the decision is theirs. I cannot claim to have accommodated their faith to science unless, in the process, I have respected what they regard as important.
Similarly one must define what one means by science. I see science as a way of studying the natural world. If something is supernatural, it can only be observed by science as (and if) it impacts the natural world in a measurable way. So I don’t understand science as the one and only way to know. Yet there are those who do. If one believes science is the one and only way to know, then accommodation with religion will again be impossible.
Thus accommodationism itself tends to become a scientific and religious position on its own, rather than a reconciliation of other positions. In accommodating science and religion, proponents often alter the components in ways that will not be acceptable to adherents of the supposedly accommodated views.
Note that I distinguish a form of political accommodationism, in which proponents of the teaching of evolutionary theory work together even though their positions on religious and philosophical issues may differ greatly. This is simply agreement on certain goals, something much different, in my view.
What Michael Dowd has done, in my opinion, is to create an accommodationist religious position, with some prejudice to both Christianity and evolution. It’s hard to say which takes the bigger beating, though I think Christianity in any orthodox form comes in for the worst treatment.
Evolutionary theory, it seems to me, loses as well, by being presented as a teleological process. It is a very optimistic view, which essentially holds that all the competition and death and suffering of biological evolution leads ultimately and (almost) inevitably to cooperation, enlightenment, peace, and joy. It’s not that I disagree with the kinds of goals that Dowd expresses. His hopes are very attractive. I actually wish I could believe they are as inevitable as he seems to think. I just don’t think it’s so.
Christianity comes in for redefinition. All the words are there, but they come into new meanings. You can claim that resurrection or eternal life means coming back as some sort of stardust (97-100), but that’s not what it means to most Christian believers, and I suspect you’re not going to find that many who want to exchange one view for the other. Similarly, the “realization” of various miracles (Appendix B, 357-370) is going to fall flat for most evangelical or orthodox Christians.
In fact, I would say that if you being this book as an orthodox or evangelical Christian, and substantially accept what it teaches, you will no longer be recognizable as a Christian, except in vocabulary. You’ll use some of the words that Christians use, but you will not mean the same thing. I try not to tell other people whether they can call themselves Christian; I believe God can deal with the labels issue. But these changes in vocabulary are so radical that they really no longer appear to relate to the same religion.
In a sidebar titled “Realizing ‘the Centrality of the Cross’” (210) there is a great illustration of what I’m saying. In describing the traditional Christian understanding of this phrase Dowd says that “. . . it is often taken to mean that only Christians who believe that God’s Son suffered and died on teh cross for their sins will ascend to a place somewhere outside the universe called heaven. Everyone else will be tortured forevere in hell. . . .” In its place, evolutionary Christianity would say that this refers to “vertical integrity,” or “getting complete with the past and being responsible for the future . . .” and “horizontal integrity,” “being in right relationship with my nested world.”
Now the vertical and horizontal components do form a sort of cross, but the only connection between those two views is in the vocabulary. Further, the orthodox position could be stated much better, and would subsume integrity, though in quite a different way. I do like the concepts of horizontal and vertical integrity, but they are not the essence of “the centrality of the cross.”
The main purpose for which I could recommend this book would be in order to understand this evolutionary Christianity movement. Many of the theological positions would be better studied from writers expressing theological positions such as process theology or panentheism. I rate the book three stars out of five.
I believe that both Kenneth Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God and Richard Colling’s Random Designer provide a better presentation of ways to reconcile Christianity with evolution.
Related articles
- Another accommodationist book on evolution (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)
- Evolution is not a threat to religion (tangenttalk.blogspot.com)
- Crevolution! (thecynicalchristian.blogspot.com)
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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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The Way That Seems Right
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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Dave Black Has a Question on Ministry
You can find the full context at The Jesus Paradigm (extracted from Dave Black Online). But here’s just the question itself:When will appeals for vocations to the ministry end? And when, in their place, will the church encourage all of its members to seek God’s will for the area of ministry in which they can most effectively be used by Him?
Good question. But before I look at it, it brings up an interesting phenomenon I’ve noted in the church. My wife was mentioning to me how every pastor she has ever talked to about testimonies in the church service (having someone other than the pastor talk a bit on Sunday morning) says it sounds like a good idea. (Hint: Read 1 Corinthians 14.) Yet nobody ever actually does it.
Similarly in youth ministry, I’ve encountered many, many people who think young people should be more involved in the church in general, including leading and speaking, but it rarely happens. I recall one church that agreed generally in a meeting that the young people should be made welcome in the service with the adults and allowed, even encouraged to speak. But it didn’t actually happen.
Thus back to the call to ministry. I can’t remember anyone I’ve talked to who doesn’t agree that every Christian is called to ministry, to service. There’s some disagreement as to the distinction of different calls, for example, is a call to full-time ministry substantially different from a call to teach Sunday School? But when it comes right down to it, much of the ministry is done by the professional staff.
I recall a conference at which my wife Jody and I were both speakers. The other speakers, three of them, were all ordained. We were teaching about prayer. During the last session, the local church pastor made a call for people to come forward for prayer, and invited the pastors to come forward and pray. Odd, isn’t it? Is prayer a function of the ordained clergy? It reminds me of a former bishop here who was speaking at our church. He remarked that he really loved to have people praying for him who weren’t paid to do it!
In the Methodist church we have a long, daunting process through which we put young people who are “called to ministry,” but we’re pretty random about anything else. When I first discussed how I could serve in the United Methodist Church, already equipped with an MA in Religion, the only thing the pastor could think of was to become a candidate to be a pastor. When I pointed out just how little my training or gifts had to do with pastoring a church, he had no idea what to do. I worked at it and found a place, but the church as a whole didn’t know what to do with me.
Then there’s the multi-page survey, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but cannot possibly be the only thing we use to get people involved. Some people won’t identify their own gifts. I wouldn’t have checked a box for children’s ministry, for example, yet I’ve been invited to teach the third grade class at my church twice so far this year, with good success. (If you know me, you’ll realize that all glory for that must go to God. It’s a miracle!)
I think there would be an incredible transformation of the church if we just began to do the things we all know we ought to.
So I have a different question: Why is it that we don’t do these things that we’ll all generally agree we should do?
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If THIS is the Purpose of Your Church then It IS Obsolete
Image via Wikipedia John Meunier cites comments by Mark Cuban, owner or the Mavericks, who says he doesn’t need the new media because he can reach their readers just as well himself. I would note in passing, though it’s not the topic of this blog, that I think Cuban is optimistic about his ability to reach people directly. I get my sports information via the internet, and I almost never do so through the team’s web site or official channels. But that’s something time will test.
Meunier’s application to the church is interesting, however, and matches with some things I’ve read recently and also heard in discussions at church, i.e. in the physical building we call church. The general idea is that because people can make connections now via social media, they need the church less. I have no doubt that for certain definitions of “church” and “need” this is true. People who attended church for the purpose of social or business networking no longer need the church as much in that particular way.
So if your church exists for the purpose of providing social networking, then your church indeed is obsolete, or is rapidly becoming obsolete. Even someone like me, past middle age, can contact my business associates, friends, and family via social media and text. In fact, I do almost all my business networking online. That doesn’t mean I don’t ever want to physically meet people. In fact, I like to meet them whenever possible. But I have had design work done by people I never physically met. I regularly publish authors I have never met. I sell to people I have never met in physical space.
The problem here is with the definition of church. We use “church” to refer to the building, to the congregation that meets there, to denominations, and to the church universal. Our physical building is diminishing in importance. Not becoming useless (or obsolete), mind you, but diminishing in its role. The local congregation, in the sense of those located in one physical place, is diminishing in importance, as we have it now. But there is no reason in all of this to suggest that the church, as the body of Christ in the world, is diminishing in importance. Unless, of course, we’ve made church equivalent to one of those other things.
Social media is regularly decried as a means of keeping people apart. But people are using it to get together. People complain about how the easy access to one another via cell phones, on Twitter, on Facebook, and in so many other ways diminishes more personal contact. But for me, and I know for many others, all of those are means of keeping in better touch with people I care about. In addition, they make it possible for me to find out about, and care about, people I might never have met otherwise.
The building was never the church in the first place, at least in the biblical sense. Yes, we use the word that way, and I’m not complaining about the way language changes. We just need to be aware of which definition of “church” we’re using. Social media means the building is less important, because it gives us other ways of connecting.
Now if your church, in the sense of local congregation, existed largely as a social network, it’s going to be obsolete as well. It just isn’t as efficient at social networking any more. If that was all your church was, there’s no reason to mourn its passing. But if your congregation was a gather of people filled with the Holy Spirit and empowered to do ministry (see 1 Corinthians 12-14 and don’t skip chapter 13), then three things may happen.
First, you can expand your congregation and connect it to other congregations more efficiently. There might be a congregation in some other part of the world that needs to connect to your gifts in order to serve where they are. You can connect with them via social media, and both be more effective.
Second, you can more efficiently get your congregation aware of, and working together on the things you are called to do. You can arrange rapid responses to disasters. You can discuss the Sunday School lesson on your Facebook wall. You can tweet about the church service if it excites you and thus reach people who couldn’t, or wouldn’t (and probably won’t) enter your building.
Third, remember all those buildings? As they became less useful as places for the membership to gather, you can convert them for use in other ministries, or if you find no new use for them, sell them, and use the money to accomplish the church’s mission. I personally think church campuses are the most underutilized class of real estate around. What good is that sanctuary to anyone during the week?
Speaking of which, and only slightly off topic, what is it with all these closed and locked gyms (or family life centers, or whatever you call them)? I’m guessing that if the church was willing to go to work you could have young people using those facilities for fun and learning. Many of them wouldn’t be church members? Their parents aren’t paying tithe to support the building? Good! Learn as a church to give in mission. There’s a risk in having kids off the street in your facility? They might tear it up? Good! It all belongs to Jesus anyhow, and he can handle it.
Related articles
- Social media helps places of worship deepen bonds of community (knoxnews.com)
- Mark Cuban as church thinker (johnmeunier.wordpress.com)
- Getting Young People in Church (maryharristodd.wordpress.com)
- 5 Ways Hiding Your Social Presence Hurts You (outspokenmedia.com)
- Social Media and It’s Positive Impact on Non-Profit Animal Shelters (comm563.wordpress.com)
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Christianity and Insanity
Image via Wikipedia A couple of days ago downtown I passed a church sign, and in the changeable portion of the sign it read: Revival! | Thursday Night | 7 pm.
Now that’s a common enough sign on churches these days. Many churches have a tradition of an annual revival. At the same time each year an outside speaker is scheduled, and there are revival services. This sequence of events is the annual “revival,” and one supposes that following these services, the church is “revived.”
Of course, also by tradition, when the scheduled time for next year’s revival comes around, the church will again be in need of revival. And so it goes.
This is a pattern in the church. We take a moment of special blessing from God, and we build a building, create a schedule, appoint a committee, and make it into a series of traditional activities we can place on the church calendar. And then we keep doing the same thing irrespective of results.
We’re like Peter on the mount of transfiguration. We see the vision, and then we want to put up a shelter and make the place of blessing a place to camp. Unfortunately, unlike Peter, we seem to miss the moment when Jesus tells us to move on.
If insanity is to be defined as doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results, then Christianity seems to have fallen into insanity.
It’s not that I’m opposed to organization, structure, or even tradition. But tradition is only of value when we learn from it, not when we repeat it blindly. If I read the Bible correctly, one of the strongest traditions is that we’re called to keep moving, not to set up camp.
The worship service can mark the grave of worship in the church. The revival meeting can mark the grave of spiritual growth and life. Somehow we need to learn to prayerfully and openly meet each new challenge rather than simply repeating the things we’ve done before.
Related articles
- The Church is Dead! (barefootpreachr.org)
