Blogotional

Mark Daniels reminds us that we are all priests. He then goes on to proclaim three attributes of priesthood:

• A priest, first of all has a purpose.
• A second thing that makes a priest a priest is sympathy.
• A third thing that makes a priest a priest is call.

Mark is right on all accounts, but I prefer to look at it in much bolder terms. A priest is an agent of the Almighty, and traditionally for a specific purpose - to offer sacrifice. Says the Bible Dictionary:

The Heb. kohen, Gr. hierus, Lat. sacerdos, always denote one who offers sacrifices.

The priestly office which Christ has given to us all is a sacrificial office.

So what do we sacrifice? Why ourselves, of course. What we are to do is to lay ourselves at Christ's feet and allow Him to use us in whatever way He sees fit.

Have you ever thought about what it takes for the Creator and Sustainer of the universe to do all that has to be done? He chooses to use us as His tools in that effort. Whether it be to help another enter into His presence, or to maintain the gardens in front of the palace, it is a priestly office becasue we sacrifice ourselves to His will.

Consider Romans 12:1:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.

In this passage, Paul calls us to a priestly act, and points out that such is an act of worship.

We are indeed a "royal priesthood," and such is s bold thing to be a part of. Making sacrifices is not for the timid.

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(ed note: The writing of this piece pre-dates Michael Spencer's horrible cancer diagnosis. In retrospect, it is easy to see it coming on the piece that underlies what is below. Please keep Michael in your prayers and if you have some spare change, hit his Paypal button.)

iMonk wrote on how tired he was in ministry complete with a discussion of spiritual warfare, and he used the poster at left here to illustrate. I am annoyed. Not because Spencer should not be tired or upset, but because we all should be.

Spiritual warfare is quite different than the earthly analog. We are all in the army and we all should be fighting equally as hard for the victory.

Not all of us are infantry with a rifle, but we are all soldiers. When we give and they go, well, we are denying our role as soldiers. God has called us to more.

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A while back, Justin Taylor quoted a Paul Miller book on prayer and quiet:

The quest for a contemplative life can actually be self-absorbed, focused on my quiet and me. If we love people and have the power to help, then we are going to be busy. Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart. In the midst of outer busyness we can develop an inner quiet. Because we are less hectic on the inside, we have a greater capacity to love . . . and thus to be busy, which in turn drives us even more into a life of prayer. By spending time with our Father in prayer, we integrate our lives with his, with what he is doing in us. Our lives become more coherent. They feel calmer, more ordered, even in the midst of confusion and pressure.

As I read that I was very much attracted to the idea of being selfish about our "quiet time." Regular readers will know that the idea hits on two themes I discuss here over and over - selflessness, and the idea of church/spiritual practice becoming expressions of selfishness. But when I reread the quote a few more times; another impression hit me.

I found myself wondering about the difference between meditation and prayer. This quote discusses prayer more as a time of meditation than a time of conversation. Consider the quote, "we integrate our lives with his, with what he is doing in us." What if God is talking to us about something He is doing in someone else's life? What if He wants to tell us purely about Himself?

I talk constantly here about how God has to make a difference in our lives, but focusing too much on that is, like everything else done to excess, a form of idolatry. Even if I seek to allow God to make me better, constant monitoring, constant focus on what progress God has made in my life, is as self-involved as any other pursuit.

I think this. more than most things, speaks to the need for the beautiful and the sacred space in our lives. I know that personally, nothing can "pull me out of myself" more than scenery, or a painting, or a building that just, by virtue of its overwhelming beauty has "GOD MADE THIS" written all over it.

We are tyrants over ourselves, God is a benevolent and merciful King that can take us and make us what we were meant to be. All we need do is let Him.

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SO BAD, THEY'RE GOOD

Man makes life and is tortured by his creation. Have we heard this theme before? Go ahead, think Mary Shelley. Is it coming to you? Yep - Frankenstein. But in this case, it's a metal man - Ultron - one of the Avengers ultimate baddies. Robot creation of Dr. Hank Pym (Ant Man, Giant Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, the list goes on), sentient robot Ultron has pestered the Avengers virtually since their inception, and tortured the psychic of Pym until he has undergone multiple personality disorder and any number of other psychological maladies. The robot who would be king has even tried to steal Pym's wife, Janet Van Dyne (The Wasp) to make his own (Jacosta) who, Bride of Frankenstein style turned her back on Ultron and allied with the Avengers.

In point of fact, Ultron is responsible for making two Avengers, not only Jacosta, but one of the Avengers most pivotal characters (an a personal fav of yours truly) The Vision. In many ways Ultron "made" the Avengers - whether its banding together to help their friend Pym through another psychological crisis or to fight Ultron as he, once again, tries to take over the world (where's Pinkie and The Brain when you need them?) it seems like just about the time we are done with the intrepid and seminal band of heroes, Ultron steps in and pulls them together again.

There is only one problem with the metal man - he talks way too much. Not all the pics of hi and that permanently open yap of his. When he recently invaded Tony Stark and his bio-armor and revealed himself as the female you see int he top left corner, and could close his mouth, I thought "Finally, he'll shut the ^#$% up." No such luck, this guy just can't get over himself and his need to yap, yap, yap.

Maybe next time he is captured, they'll rip out his vocal circuits, he'll grow them back, but two pages of quiet would be welcome bliss.

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Matt Anderson wrote a post recently in criticism of an essay that appeared in Christianity Today about the problems in evangelicalism. The piece is an extended metaphor about where the church stands - at the foot of the Cross or in the glories of Pentecost. Says Anderson:

Galli’s essay is undoubtedly evangelical in its orientation. But I worry about his choice to locate the church at Golgotha, looking up to Jesus on the cross. While perhaps only symbolic, our formulation of the vertical will significantly alter the resources we have to bring to bear on the horizontal. And how we structure these issues matters, a point Galli clearly agrees with and uses against those who are advocating spiritual formation. But the Church does not look up at Christ on the cross, but rather looks up to the ascended Christ. By positioning the Church at Pentecost rather than Golgotha, we preserve and maintain the Church’s distinctly pneumetological character, a distinction that it might be said is particular to evangelicalism and our emphasis on the contemporary working of God through conversion.

In my never to be humble opinion, both men have a good point. We do indeed "look up at the ascended Christ," but we must remember that the early church did so while still feeling the sting of the crucifixion.

Too often we stand in the glory of Pentecost without the requisite humility of the Cross. In point of fact, if we do not take the entire journey with Christ, cross to grave to resurrection then to be followed by the indwelling on the Spirit, our claims of victory are hollow.

There could be no Pentecost if there was not a crucifixion. Too often we rush to the former and ignore the later.

I attended university as the hand-held calculator came into vogue. My first 4-function cost well over $100. I took most of undergrad school on a slide rule because I could not afford a scientific calculator. There is a feel, an intuition, to higher mathematics that one can develop only when one has lived in the in the boredom and mechanics of arithmetic. There is an understanding of the "guts" of math that is missing in those who only know the buttons of a device when it comes to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. When one can handle numbers as easily as one breaths, something that comes only with doing lots and lots of arithmetic, then the manipulation of algebraic equations, really just doing arithmetic in the abstract, practically happens in your head without effort.

Absent the arithmetic background, steeped only in the calculator, algebra and beyond becomes complex, difficult, and often done wrong.

So it is with Pentecost - it is the calculator. When we rush to its use, we first grossly underestimate its power and usefulness, but we also tend to misuse it.

The Cross and Pentecost are a package deal. The church stands at Pentecost, but the Cross casts an immense shadow over the crowd.

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Classic,classic stuff

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MMI recently linked to a post on "small group landmines. They list five of them:

• They become a gossip group.
• They become a one-man show.
• They become a place to complain about the church.
• They become a place for crazy people to take over.
• They become an end in themselves.

As my title to this post implies, I think I have been in a small group somewhere that embodies each of those problems. I just want to make a couple of comments, one about small groups generally and one about that last "landmine."

Small groups are often just a way to try and make that which is inherently not intimate, appear intimate. In the end, one of the very important things about being Christians is to grow intimate with Jesus Christ. That means, I believe, that we must learn how to be intimate with each other so we can learn how to be intimate with Jesus. And since churches these day tend to be more about "the show" (excuse me "Worship") than anything else, intimacy is not high on the list of things happening in the church. So, staffs throw small groups into the mix as a way to create the appearance of intimacy in the church, but not having to be bothered with it themselves.

Now, no pastor can be intimate with the entire congregation, except in a church too small to actually support a pastor's salary. However, if pastors are not modeling, in a way apparent to the entire congregation, intimacy in their own lives forget it - small groups will never work.

Frankly, it is the appendage nature of most small group ministries that results in the problems listed here. If they are not tended and shaped and worked at very hard, they become precisely the problems these "landmines" illustrate.

And the last "landmine" is the strongest indicator of that. People want intimacy at the deepest levels, and they want to discover levels they did not know they had - levels only intimacy with Christ can reveal. That is why they tend to become ends unto themselves.

Churches need to learn intimacy in so many ways or small groups will continue to "go wrong."

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Out of Ur is wondering about you ministry "age." I'm not a big fan of quizzes, nobody can be boxed in that readily. That said, I did like what they had to say about the results:

The church needs all three types of leaders, and they need each other. We need the church to remain doctrinally pure, and we should desire more people to become followers of Christ. However, as I continue to work with younger leaders, I am convinced that if the church is going to thrive in this emerging culture, then we who are more traditional and pragmatic need to willingly and gradually hand over the leadership of the church to the younger generation. But the Younger must also be willing to listen to the wisdom of those who have preceded them.

The church often ends up lurching because we do not do a good job of training leaders and then letting them loose. Several factors at play here.

The segregation of youth from the general congregation is both a good and a bad thing. Kids want to do things us old folks don't, but they have to be a part of the whole church, they are often treated as a "church" within the church. As leaders emerge in this mini-youth-church, they think they should be able to step into leadership in the adult church. If they viewed their small leadership in the larger context, they'd learn they still need to learn.

Which leads to the second issue, most young people want serious leadership when they are way too young - I know I did. Frankly, I think it is natural, but because they are not a part of the broader church, they decide to go somewhere else to be leaders. We lose a lot that way.

But under this scenario, they come back in a revolutionary fashion instead of a transitional one, in part because the old folks keep wanting to hold the reins.

The bottom line problem is the desire to lead, to accumulate power as opposed to the desire to serve. Most young people want to lead to use it as a platform to explain why they are the way they are. Most old people want to lead to preserve what they have built. Both are wrong, we lead to serve the led.

That's the essential lesson of leadership that only age, and then only sometimes, can teach us.

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