Blogotional

But because of the many other factors in play, that good desire gets twisted and they find themselves a member of the complex. In those cases… what do we do? I agree with Matt’s recent call for more pastors to embrace downward mobility, but even when they do that, they end up in the spot light. Francis Chan decided that he needed to get out of the celebrity rockstar role, which just became another reason that people followed him and hung on his every word. So what do we do? It seems like a classic damned if you, damned if you don’t situation.

We can’t change the fact that the internet is the dominant communications medium today. And we can’t immediately change the thin ecclesiology that marks American evangelicalism, though that should definitely be a long-term project. So is the only way to solve the problem for all the rockstars to simply stop publishing books, stop speaking at conferences, put their sermons behind paywalls, refuse every interview request, and start pastoring small congregations of 200 people? Even if they did do that (and I’m not sure it’d be a good idea to do so anyway)… what’s to keep some other group of pastors from simply taking their place? I’d love to hear from readers on this one because I’m clearly long on questions and short on answers.

# posted by John Schroeder @ 3/14/2014 06:00:00 AM |

It is impossible that Christianity is not God's revelation of truth to man. Simply impossible. The math proves it beyond question. It doesn't take faith to believe that one plus one equals two, and it doesn't take faith to identify the religion which has mathematical certainty in its corner.

I live in Nebraska where I serve as a pastor. Imagine someone covering this entire state in silver dollars 6 feet deep. Then mark one coin and bury it anywhere across the state. Next, blindfold a man and have him choose one coin. The odds that he would choose the marked coin are the same odds of getting 8 prophecies all fulfilled in one man. God gave us about 300 fulfilled prophecies in the Person of Jesus Christ.

There is no way one man could have fulfilled all 8 of these prophecies unless God was making it happen. Who else controls history? Who else could give us such irrefutable proof for Christianity? The odds are one in one hundred quadrillion, or 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000.

This mathematical proof was calculated by Professor Peter Stoner. He was chairman of the mathematics and astronomy departments at Pasadena City College until 1953. He then went to Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, where he served as chairman of the science division.

# posted by John Schroeder @ 3/12/2014 06:00:00 AM |

Of course, even in these reflections, I’m thinking primarily about myself. "I"s and "me"s often come with the territory of over-introspection and cynicism.

But here’s a simple truth that does not allow for much analytical wiggle room: Worship is about God, not me.

C.S. Lewis describes in Surprised by Joy how, even as an atheist, his love for mythology primed him for worship because he felt an urgent adoration for something completely other than himself. Lewis felt he was “sent back to the false gods to acquire some capacity for worship” that would evolve to adoration of God ”being what He necessarily is than for any particular benefit He confers upon us.”

We are readers of texts and hearers of songs, and we are often critics. We have amassed so many experiences and biases that often color the songs we sing. Our Christian responsibility as receivers of the word and the Word is to not resign to a rhetorical wasteland of meaninglessness, however. It is to actively, creatively and faithfully "re-fill" the meanings of words like holiness, love, truth and grace as we sing. And that also means choosing to stop the analytical dissection. Criticism is a God-given ability; but we need to bring it full circle into greater adoration of Him.

One Sunday at church, a song's repeated line was "I surrender all.” It is a difficult but inspiring sentiment—a sentiment that basically makes me want to crawl under the pew for not meaning it every time I sing it.

But in refreshing transparency, the pastor admitted he didn't feel surrendered as he sang; he said he felt like he was singing, "Sorry, God, but I'm only surrendering some." Sure, Christians should surrender all. But honesty is the first step toward cultivating a desire to "surrender all" and internalizing the prescript more fully. And here is the authenticity we so long for.

# posted by John Schroeder @ 3/11/2014 06:00:00 AM |

I understand that evangelicals tend to see ritual as self-management and exertion—as “works.” If that’s all that ritual is, then we should be critical of it. But don’t think of ritual and disciplines as expressions of the self. Think of them as what Craig Dykstra calls “habitations of the Spirit.” Spiritual disciplines aren’t about showing that we’re trying to pursue God. These are gifts that the Spirit inhabits. They are rituals that God invites us into to live into the power of the Spirit. They are the way that you put on Christ.

We evangelicals tend to think of worship as only an expressive activity. Because of that, we’ve lost the downward, God-initiated, formative aspect of worship. Whereas if you recover the sense that God’s initiative is at work, then the rituals and the disciplines are invitations to live into God’s power, not ways for us to spiritually show off.

# posted by John Schroeder @ 3/10/2014 06:00:00 AM |