Like A Skateboard

There was a skateboard that appeared in Mike's office a week or so ago. What I have noticed is that people just want to stand on it. They'll come in. Start talking. See the skateboard. Then they will stand on it. I've found myself doing it many times.

I thought of sitting that skateboard in the lobby on a Sunday before church and seeing how many people would just get on it before the worship gathering. Due to safety concerns, I didn't do it, but I bet kid after kid would come in and just get on the skateboard until their parents told them not to. Some adults would too.   

There is something appealing about a skateboard. You just want to get on it. In a similar vein, we, those who claim to follow Jesus, need to be living in such a way that others will want to join in on what we are doing.

I grew up in a Christian family but gave up following Jesus for a period of time in high school. I didn't like church. I didn't like God, although I would have said that I didn't believe He existed. And I started pursuing the ways of the world while finding lots of trouble. I went to college ready to party. I was roommates with my high school partying buddy. And then, at college, I got into the wrong crowd, a bunch of Christians. One of the people would just go around town and clean the restrooms of businesses for free to show them love. These friends would organize a car wash to clean other students’ cars without any donations being accepted. They would hand out hot chocolates on cold days to students walking to and from class for free. It was strange. These people were crazy.

But instead of just complaining about the world, they were working to make the world better.

In a way, they were like a skateboard that I just found irresistible. They believed in Jesus and worked to bring His will here on earth as it is in heaven. Instead of being a church that was obsessed with having the right appearance; they were a group of people focused on having the right thoughts and actions. They didn't just believe in some teachings to get to heaven. They believed and worked to help heaven break through here to earth, even in the darkest places.

That's the way that we are to be when it comes to following Jesus. Yet that isn't the impression the world gets from us. They don't think of love when they think of Christians; they think of judgmentalism. They don't think of grace; instead, they think of hate. They don't think of people who make the world a better place; they think of people who just resist change.

It's these bad, yet often deserved stereotypes that we have to live with when we claim to be followers of Jesus. Yet we must, like my friends were in college, work to change this if we are going to actually follow Jesus' command to make disciples. 

We may have turned what should be a life-changing relationship into a personal blankie that we snuggle with; one that is all about making us feel good. Instead of "Going", we expect people to come to church rather than love them where they are. Instead of "making disciples", we expect to be spiritually fed without giving back. Instead of "baptizing", we water down the message of the gospel and do not encourage complete life change. Instead of "teaching", we expect a specialist to do that. And in making these mistakes, the world is going to hell around us, literally and figuratively.

Our life together as brothers and sisters in a church should be an example to the world of the way relationships are to be. We can’t change the whole world, but we can be a light in the darkness. We can be the salt of the earth. We do that, not by becoming the world, but by being different in the world in how our relationships with one another are filled with love.

Jesus taught,"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35 ESV).

Notice that Jesus didn’t say, they will know you are Christians by your belief statement. Nor did he say that they would know you are a Christian by the church you attend. It’s not something about you individually. People will know we are a Christian because we, fellow disciples of Jesus, have a love for one another that surpasses the love that people have for one another at the bar, at a place of work, at college, at school, or anywhere else. 

Our relationships with one another are to be a shining example to the world of what life in Jesus is supposed to be like. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

What is your reaction to Jesus? Is it to love one another? Is it to take seriously his teaching to go, make disciples, baptize them, and teach them?

We all need to surrender more and more of our lives to Jesus. So do that. Go. Make disciples. Baptize them. And teach them. You, as a follower of Jesus, are uniquely positioned and gifted to do just that. The Holy Spirit is here with you to strengthen and encourage you to do that. You are uniquely positioned in the life you have to be Jesus where you are at. Don't let the life Jesus made you for pass you by any more. We were all made for so much more. 

Make A Difference - Andy Stanley, Mark Driscoll, and President Obama

President Obama was inaugurated last week, and some Christians took to Twitter to once again remind the world that Christians can be arrogant jerks.

For example, Mark Driscoll, at 8:17 AM on January 21, 2013, tweeted, "Praying for our president, who today will place his hands on a Bible he does not believe to take an oath to a God he likely does not know."

While Andy Stanley, one of my favorite preachers, shows why he deserves that title. Stanley had the privilege to preach a sermon at St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington D.C. This was inauguration Sunday and President Obama and his staff were in the congregation.

Stanley decided to preach from the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. When Jesus came to earth, He was God in the flesh. The most powerful person in any room. And He washed feet. He spent time with the undesirables. He came to serve rather than be served.

Stanley said to the congregation filled with Obama, his cabinet, and other churchgoers, "So what do you do when it dawns on you that you're the most powerful person in the room? You're the most powerful person, in this case, in the world?" Then he shared with them what Jesus did. Jesus "laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him" (John 13:4-5 ESV). Jesus, God in the flesh, humbled Himself, went around the room, and washed his followers' feet. The followers had just been arguing about which one of them would be the greatest. And Jesus showed them what the Greatest should do. Serve. Not be served.

Now that's some powerful stuff. Some real powerful stuff when spoken to the powers that be in this world. Stanley ended his sermon with these words, " Mr. President, you have a very big room. It's as big as the nation. It's as big as our world. And my prayer for you is that you continue to leverage this stewardship of power for the sake of our nation and the world."

Back to my initial thought. What approach do you think had a chance to influence the President? Driscoll who attacked him on Twitter? Or Andy Stanley who proclaimed the tough teachings of the Gospel with him? The sad thing about the whole situation is that Christianity gets another self-inflicted and deserved black eye. But we're not all that way. Look at Andy Stanley. Who I propose was actually acting like Jesus would in the situation.

You may be thinking that a pastor shouldn't associate with a person like Obama. And if that is your view, then you don't understand the Jesus that pastors are professing. Jesus wasn't scared of associating with those who held opposing views. He didn't hole himself up in a monastery and expect believers to come to Him. Him was out among the people, teaching and preaching a way of life that would change lives if adopted. A way of life that we would all be better off to follow today.

So when we're faced with the option to quickly lash out against someone on Facebook or on Twitter, we should think again. It won't do any good. It will actually make us look foolish and hurt whatever cause we are fighting for. Instead we should spend time investing in the person who has wronged us. We should forgive them. Now, it won't always change them. That's not why we do it. Investment in another doesn't mean magic. Everyone is given the ability to choose. But investment in another is always the better option when contrasted with tearing them down. We invest in them because we have the example of a leader who humbled Himself and washed His followers feet.

This isn't to say that there isn't a time to confront someone about a destructive problem in their life. But the place for that confrontation is not in the public arena. It's in private, within the context of an already existing relationship. We must always keep in mind a teaching that Stanley professes, " Make a difference. Don't be satisfied with making a point."

Jesus taught, "Go and sin no more." But He was with a sinner after He had earned her love when He taught that. May we do the same.

Into The Wild - Happiness Is Only Real When Shared

Into the Wild is the true story of Christopher McCandless, an Emory Univeristy graduate who became fed up with society, traveled the country without any money, and made a trip to Alaska. If you plan on reading the book or watching the movie, please note that this article has spoilers.

Throughout the movie, I struggled with the idea of whether it is wise to go out and discover the "truth" in the wilderness all alone. The idea of isolation has been glorified as a concept in the American psyche ever since Thoreau and his experience at Walden Pond. Our culture is fascinated with the self-sufficent individual. My reaction to the individuality of our culture has been just the opposite. I long to share my life with people. I have always thought that God was experienced more in community than in a beautiful meadow alone. This movie made me question that. Would it be good for me to go and experience God all alone for forty days like Jesus did? Should I? As I sat on the couch watching this movie, a real wrestling match was taking place in my mind. Maybe in the end the healthy life is a combination of both isolation with God and a shared life with others.

At other times throughout the film, I envied Christopher and the community he experienced while traveling the nation without any money. Part of me wants that life. At times I have been ready to sell everything and hit the road. I want to share my life with others and have a good time just like he did. It seems like money, selfishness, and material goods get in the way of doing that. When I look around, it seems that the poor and their transparent selves seem to have better community than the rich and their acceptable facades. If I have to become poor to experience life more fully, then that is what I want to do. Then I struggled with the idea of my children. I do not want them to grow up poor. Deep in my core, there is apparently a clinging to the belief that money is essential to happiness or I would be fine with raising my children without much money and material possessions. This movie revealed that about me, and I just do not know what to do.

In the end, Christopher began to die. The movie makes it look like he was poisoned from eating poisonous seeds. Apparently, outdoor experts that know about the plants and the area he was in do not know if that is the real story. He might have just been dying of starvation and thought it was the result of the seeds. Whatever the reason, Christopher was dying alone in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. Before he died, the movie and his writings seem to show that he began to understand what life was all about. It took going into Alaska, living by himself for over 100 days, and dying to figure it out. May we be able to learn the real meaning of life in time to enjoy it.

He inscribed in his book, "Happiness is only real when shared." This is a complete reversal of his previous thought, "You're wrong if you think the joy of life comes from human relationships." It was only when he was faced with death that he made the decision to forgive his parents, throw away his made up name, and take back his real name. There in that "magic bus," Christopher learned to forgive. He heeded the words of the old man that wanted to adopt him: "When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God's light shines on you."

This movie made me long for community, to share my life with people and get to know them. Every day, I need to strive to be what I was destined for. I will try to listen to people who need to share their hurts, wishes, excitements, or any other thing. I will look for ways to help those around me. What a tremendous story. I am blessed to have watched it. I am sad that Christopher died.

When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once. My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come. A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:31-35 NIV).

Happiness is only real when shared. Let us share life.

Thriving as a New Resident in a Small Rural Town

Photo by and ©2008 Dustin M. Ramsey under 
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license. 

It is tough to connect and make friends with the towners when you move into a small town. Towners, like myself, have grown up here and been friends with one another since birth. We went to school with one another or went to school with a brother, sister, child, or parent of another towner. The connections that are shared go back years.

Unfortunately, many of these circles of friends are closed. They aren’t letting anyone new in. They will allow another superficial friendship but not an endearing one that will be there when you need it.

Towners and new residents are somewhat like Romeo and Juliet’s Montagues and Capulets with the new residents being the Capulets and the towners being the Montagues. They just don’t mingle well.

So what is a solution?

Church is a solution. I understand the purpose of Church is far greater than just making friends. But a church is not the Church unless the people in the church are friends. You may be wondering why the capital “C” and the lower case “c” in “Church” and “church.” Well, the lower case “c” stands for the local church. Local churches can be out of whack, misguided, and distracted. That’s why we have developed a vocabulary to distinguish a local church from the Church universal. The Church universal is the Church that God intended and consists of people who are totally surrendered to God who reside in all churches. Hopefully, the local church reflects the Church universal, but we all know that is not always the case. We will not reach perfection this side of the grave, but that does not mean that we should not strive for it.

Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” [John 13:34-35 (ESV)].

In the Church, people connect with one another in real, meaningful ways. A healthy church doesn’t care if you are well connected to people in the church or have lived in town forever; a healthy church cares whether you are connected to God through Jesus our Savior and King. That is the connection that matters. Whether you are a new resident to town or a long-time towner does not matter; all that matters is Jesus.

So if you’re struggling to connect with people as a new or even as a long-time resident in a small town, I encourage you to get involved in a church. But look for a church where the relationships within it reflect the love of Jesus.

Churches are not immune to acting like the Montagues and Capulets, Christians and non-Christians. Unfortunately, they are pretty prone to that dysfunctional fallacy. A healthy church is not one who views society as us versus them, Christians versus non-Christians. The paradigm in a healthy church is us loving them, Christians loving our neighbors, enemies and everyone around us. Christians are not better than anyone else. Neither are towners. The healthy church is to be known by its love, not by its elite status as being part of the “in crowd.” A healthy town should be the same.

May we all strive to be more loving to people we know and people we don’t, so that we can reflect the love of Jesus in this world.

Redeeming Easter - What's In A Name?

Easter has its origins as a pagan holiday of the Germanic goddess of fertility, Eostre. Notice the similarities in the names Eostre and Easter. The bunny and the eggs celebrated fertility and the season of rebirth that occurs during spring as life begins to flourish around us. Some Christians become upset “that paganism has infiltrated the contemporary ‘Christian’ churches” (from the tract The Pagan Origin of Easter by David Meyer). If anyone has a right to get upset it would be the pagans. Christians have stolen a perfectly depraved and reprobate holiday and have redeemed it.

Jesus is in the redemption business. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, redemption is “the restoration of man from the bondage of sin to the liberty of the children of God through the satisfactions and merits of Christ.” In normal terms, that just means that we have been made right with God through the death of Jesus on the cross so that we may live in freedom from sin.

As Christians, we should not be ashamed that Easter had pagan origins. We should celebrate that Easter, like us, has been redeemed. What once was pagan is now redeemed.

When I was in high school, I remember wearing a shirt that said “god is dead” on it, and I loved the song the shirt corresponded with. I was a pagan, and I was glad to sing along with Trent Reznor, "Your god is dead and no one cares. If there is a hell, I'll see you there."  But then the craziest thing happened. God reached down and touched my life through the loving actions of people who follow Him. Not the kind of people who have the right belief statements, go to the “true” church, participate in the necessary rituals, and rely solely on those things. These were people that had been redeemed and were living their life for Jesus among the lost. They were full of love for a lost, pagan sinner like me.

All of the work of redemption has already been paid upon the cross nearly 2,000 years ago. All I had to do was surrender to Him, and I became free. I, who was formerly a pagan, was redeemed and is now used by God, as much as my faulty self can be used, to bring about God’s will here on earth. And this story repeats itself every day. Maybe it has in you, or maybe it needs to begin in you. That’s what Easter is about.

Historically, the fight over Easter culminated in 325 A.D. at the First Council of Nicaea. This council separated the celebration of Easter from its connection to the Jewish Passover. This separation is somewhat ironic because Jesus is our Passover lamb (John 1:28, 1 Corinthians 5:7, and 1 Peter 1:18-21) and the Lord’s Supper is a remembrance of the Passover meal that Jesus shared with his disciples (1 Corinthians 11:23-26 and Matthew 26:26-29). The change instituted by this council allowed Easter to always fall on a Sunday. Unfortunately, it also created one of the earliest significant divisions in the Church. A division that eventually culminated in the split of the eastern and western churches. A division that we still see manifested when people argue over Easter.

All too often Christians want to be known by our stances against things like Easter or some other immorality rather than being known for the thing that Jesus wants us to be known for. Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” [John 13:34-35 (ESV)]. Jesus said that people will know that we are His followers by the love we have for one another. And love, when linked to the power and sacrifice of Jesus, redeems.

We can choose whether we will just sit around and study the Bible, experience God, isolate ourselves from the world, and refuse to join Jesus in the world’s redemption. Many Christians have chosen that path because they view the world as inherently evil and without hope. Or we can be used by God as his redemption tool by loving one another and the people in the world around us. Our neighbors, our co-workers, and our family need to know Jesus’ love through our lives of love to them. My life and the lives of those also touched by Jesus through the love of his faithful followers are evidence that people willing to be in the world but not of the world are wonderful and blessed.

At this time of year, we can choose to get hung up on the name we use for this holiday, Easter or Resurrection Sunday, but we might forget its purpose amidst all the vitriol exchanged back and forth. With Easter, let’s not focus on bringing back the original meaning of the holiday. That would mean us dancing around Ishtar poles and participating in other pagan rituals.

The purpose of this holiday, regardless of its origin, is to celebrate the redemption that we have through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The new life that we see spring up all around us at this time of the year is a great reminder of the new life we can have in Jesus. From the death of last fall springs life. From our collective death in the fall of humanity, we can have a new life. It’s Easter. It’s a celebration of life. It’s the day of our Lord’s resurrection!

A Proposed Minimal Set of Essentials - A Discussion on Essentials (Part Three)

In the previous two posts, we have talked about essentials and division in the church.  In this post, I would like to propose four passages of Scripture that should be the cornerstone of what we believe is essential:  Love God, love our neighbors, love one another, accept people as brothers and sisters in Christ who show fruit and claim that Jesus is Lord.  That’s it.  Once we start broadening beyond that, we start alienating people and continually add to our essentials creating a list that will keep growing and never stop.

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.  And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.  “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”  And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”  [Matt 22:34-40 (ESV)].

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.  [John 13:34-35 (ESV)].

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. [Matt 7:15-20 (ESV)].

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit. [1 Cor 12:1-3 (ESV)].

So where does teaching come in?  When we say that we will accept people who show the fruit of the Spirit, what do we do with right doctrine?  When it comes to what Scripture teaches, we keep teaching what we believe is right, but if you are like me, you need to be humble in doing it.  Over the years, things that I once thought were solid as a rock have shifted and thinks I thought did not matter, have gained in importance.  Humility is the key when it comes to being a teacher.

Jesus said that He did not come to judge (John 12:47).  If Jesus did not come to judge and condemn in regards to eternal life, then we to avoid our natural tendency to judge others in that light.  Let us be studious of the Scriptures, sensitive to the Spirit, and full of love.

We don’t even have to agree with others on everything that we think are clear teachings of Scripture.  Riverside Christian Church has a list of core convictions.  One is that “We believe in a minimal set of essentials in order to foster unity and freedom in Christ.”  If we make every teaching that we believe Scripture teaches an essential, then we will soon be dividing amongst ourselves because there are not two of us that probably agree on everything.  Somewhere we must draw a line, and the best way to do that is with a minimal set of essentials.

More Tomorrow.

For further reading:
Being a Church Involved in the Community - A Discussion on Essentials (Part One)

Christ is not Divided - A Discussion on Essentials (Part Two)