John March

Moving...virtually

2009-01-25T21:55:00.004-06:00

I've moved my blog to a self-hosted domain. I'm using WordPress. I can add more files this way (like sermons and photos). I can also have more control over the functionality and look and feel of the site. I like it a lot, and I hope you'll switch your RSS feeds. The site is:

www.pilgrimmarch.com

The feed is:

www.pilgrimmarch.com/feed/

I look forward to continuing the conversation over there!

John

Better Bibles, Better People?

2009-01-14T11:02:00.002-06:00

I just watched a couple of the promotional videos for the recently released ESV Study Bible. Everyone is raving about the book, and it looks to me like a lot of work has gone into this project. There are extensive notes, cross-references, maps, and other resources on almost every page. It is truly and impressive work of literature. I wonder if now, finally, Christians will understand the Bible enough to put what it says into practice? Will there be diagrams and maps to explain complicated and oft neglected sayings like:

"Love your neighbor"

"Pray for those who persecute you"

"Sell all your possessions and give to the poor"

"Whoever wants to become great among must become a servant"

These are the really hard parts of the Bible that Christians have struggled to apply to their lives for centuries. Hopefully the maps, cross-references, and other features will finally help us be better people. And all we have to do is buy another Bible! ;)

Undivided Eye Contact

2009-01-12T08:59:00.003-06:00

Ever since my wife and I saw the movie Baby Mama we've joked about the scene in which Steve Martin rewards Tina Fey's good work with 5 minutes of undivided eye contact. Sometimes when Mary or I need a break from the madness that is parenting our two children, we joke that we need 5 minutes of undivided eye contact. This morning was just such an occasion.

While Mary and I were staring into each others eyes (noticing wrinkles, bloodshot eyes, and other aging blemishes) we did our best to put our kids on hold. For Josiah our three year old, this was very frustrating. He had a question that demanded answering. He couldn't deal with the attention mommy and daddy were paying to each other and subsequently not paying to him. He needed our attention because he desperately needed us to answer a very important question: "Can seals fly?"

At first it was funny because of the absurdity of the question, but it soon became hilarious as we began to wonder how many times he would ask it as Mary and I stared into each others' pupils. We counted about 15 consecutive times until he paused and stated in exasperation, "It's not a very long question." It was at this point that I lost it. I broke eye contact and burst into laughter. Our attempt at 5 minutes of undivided eye contact ended somewhere around minute 2, but it had the desired effect of bringing levity and sanity to our child-rearing efforts, which had exhausted us by 8:30 this morning.

Confidence

2009-01-11T20:11:00.003-06:00

I spent the afternoon cheering on the Minnesota Golden Gophers basketball team to their lopsided victory over Penn St. It was awesome! Apart from a few minutes at the beginning, they dominated throughout the game. There was no point when the Gophers hit a cold spell. There was no point at which Penn St. really got back into it. The Gophers were on a roll.

Near the end of the game, I looked up at a stat scoreboard and saw that they were shooting 67%! That's 2 out of every 3 shots that were falling for them. They were truly getting every good bounce and roll. One player in particular was emblematic of this, Devron Bostick. He shot 7 for 8, 2 for 2 from three point range, and he was 3 for 3 from the line. He was on fire.

Anyone who has played basketball competitively recognizes this as common place. Sometimes shooters just get hot. They find their stroke and their confidence soars. When this happens, they can't miss. The hoop looks seven feet wide, and everything falls for them.

There is a striking parallel to the real world. When we have confidence, things tend to go better. When we feel sure of ourselves, we can often tackle bigger problems with greater grace. When we start a task believing that we will be able to finish it, we usually do.

I'm someone who doesn't default to this sort of confidence. I've developed a more critical and skeptical attitude. It's easier and it comes across as more intellectual to doubt something than to just will confident belief. But when it comes to my spiritual growth, like in basketball, I've found this sort of doubt can be self-defeating. If I don't believe I can make changes in my life and experience real personal transformation, it's likely that I won't. Peter addresses our source of confidence for growth in the following passage:

2 Peter 1:3-9 (Today's New International Version)

3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But if any of you do not have them, you are nearsighted and blind, and you have forgotten that you have been cleansed from your past sins.

"His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life..." I love that. We can have confidence that we can experience change and transformation. We can have confidence that our efforts at godliness are not in vain. We will experience growth and transformation. In the game of life, we can have confidence in our own potential for spiritual progress.

I'm not the first...

2009-01-06T11:38:00.005-06:00

I'm preparing for the annual Evangelical Covenant Church Midwinter conference. It's a conference for pastors. They can connect with each other and hopeful be refreshed by the speakers and workshops put on by our denomination. They also run their orientation courses during this time for pastors who didn't attend North Park Seminary, the denomination's seminary. Since I didn't attend North Park, I'm taking an orientation course this upcoming February called, The Theology of the ECC.

I have completed some of the required reading for the course, and I've been surprised by how much I've enjoyed it. They have us reading articles and sermons from pastors and scholars who served in the ECC over the last 150 years. What I've found surprising is how relevant the content is. I'm shocked to find 120-year-old sermons in which these pastors masterfully articulate issues that I assumed where new to our cultural milieu.

This highlighted the issue of what I'll call era-ism. It's a sort of prejudice against older eras that have gone before us--a form of bigotry that discriminates against those not found in our own generation or era. We (or at least I) at times have assumed that our technological advancements and wealth of historical resources guarantees we are constantly progressing in the ideological conversation. This means the books written this year on Jesus must be of greater erudition and therefore greater value to me than books written 100 years ago on Jesus. Or, so the reasoning would go.

But it's been refreshing to see that this is not the case. These devoted Christians writing many years ago have provided wonderfully relevant insights into my present day spiritual walk. I'm glad to have been challenged by something old. :)

Christmas Card 2008

2008-12-25T23:09:00.002-06:00

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Hate yourself, Hate others

2008-12-23T10:51:00.003-06:00

The false ascetic begins by being cruel to everybody because he is cruel to himself. But he ends by being cruel to everybody but himself. Merton, No Man is an Island, pg. 96

Merton highlights the importance of rooting the acts of spiritual disciplines in self-love not self-loathing. It's easy to allow our frustration with ourselves to drive us to work harder at self-improvement. But this only perpetuates a cycle of self-hatred which spreads to others-hatred. Spiritual disciplines that bring about the desired growth effect are those rooted in self-love. When we love the person God has made us to be and believe that we can achieve the dreams he has planted in our hearts, self-discipline finds the fuel it needs to succeed.

Great Preaching Articles

2008-12-20T11:02:00.005-06:00

I recently came across this series of articles by Lori Carrell. She is a professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin. These articles are the results of research done for a Lily-endowed Center for Excellence in Congregational Leadership. She did a survey of more than 10,000 sermon listeners and a number of pastors as well. I found these articles encouraging and helpful. If you're a preacher, I highly recommend them!

Sermons Most Likely to Succeed

The Perils of Power Point Preaching

Are You Wasting Your Sermon Prep Time?

Reaching the Choir

Why Your Preaching Matters More Than You Think

Advent Conspiracy Video

2008-12-18T16:41:00.001-06:00

This is a very well done video on Christmas and consumerism. Watch and see.

Worst Job in America: CEO

2008-11-19T20:42:00.006-06:00

Norm MacDonald, former SNL weekend Update man, used to joke about which job was the worst in America. Every year the results would come in and the worst job would be something like: Assistant Crack Whore. Everyone would laugh because it’s the superlative of worst-ness in the vocational world.

Joking aside, I believe this year’s 'the worst job in America' honor goes to the Chief Executive Officer. The populist hostility toward the CEO continues to mount in inverse proportion the downward spiraling Dow. Our economy is in shambles (and getting worse) and everyone is laying the blame at the feet of highly compensated CEOs. The fury over the following stories makes this clear:

AIG executives taking luxurious retreats

the most sought after contingency in the $700 Billion bailout plan being ‘no golden parachutes’ for CEOs

today the headline story on CNNs site ‘Auto CEOs flew private jets to seek bailout’

And as I listen to the numbers get recited on Larry King Live, I’ve gotta wonder what took us so long to get outraged? The GM CEO Rick Wagoner made $15.7 million last year. This was a year in which GM lost $39 billion dollars. The Ford CEO made $28 million in just four months on the job in 2007, a year in which Ford lost $12.7 billion. With all the families that are losing their jobs (or are poised to lose their jobs), one has to ask is this fair? Do these CEOs really add that much value to the company?

I think we are entering an era during which this will change. Ever since Reagan, America has increasingly subscribed to a trickle-down model of economics. I think we’ve reach some sort of tipping point and things are going to change. When everything was going well in the economic world, people didn't care. Americans had been largely able to pursue their American Dream so they didn't care what CEOs made. But now that 401Ks are in the dumps and hundreds of thousands of families are unemployed, these CEOs have to justify their exorbitant financial packages. They have to explain why they are being paid like gods, but are unable to control the economic future like a god.

The curtain has been pulled back and they look more like thieves than leaders. They are no longer cultural leaders (the ones asked to speak at conferences, the ones asked to lead church breakfasts, or the ones we hope our children would aspire to be). They are the morally abhorrent we curse at the dinner table. They are the despised of our culture. They are the object of unending media scrutiny and scorn. The CEO is the worst job in America, regardless of its compensation.

[Edit]
Maybe a form of leadership malpractice is the answer?
http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/kellerman/2008/11/leadership_malpractice.html

Our Next Step in the Journey

2008-10-23T09:36:00.004-06:00

Starting in early December, Mary and I will be transitioning into a new phase of our lives. I will begin a church planting residency at Emmanuel Covenant Church in Roseville, MN. After leaving Highrock Covenant Church in Boston, MA more than two years ago, we look forward to our time at Emmanuel with excitement.

We moved out to the Minneapolis area because of a possible church planting job with Wooddale church, a large mega-church in the western suburbs of Minneapolis. After things didn’t work out with Wooddale, I pursued church planting with another denomination. They were agreeable to move forward, but I didn’t feel ready to plant yet and I wasn’t sure the denomination was a good fit for me. I returned to the Evangelical Covenant denomination last January. After meeting with some of the staff of the denomination, it was determined that I should go through a church planters’ assessment last May (read about that here). Both Mary and I have been surprised by the love and support of the ECC. They seem to do church planting well, and I feel very much at home within the denomination.

Throughout the last four years, I’ve worked for Gordon-Conwell as a Web developer, first for Ockenga and then for the IT department. I’ve worked on a variety of their web applications, and I’ve helped design a number of their pages. It has been a positive work environment, and I’ve learned a lot about teamwork and leadership from watching my co-workers there. It has also been a fun place for me to work. Weird as this may sound, I like programming. There is a creative element of putting all that code together to accomplish a task that will make the end-user’s life just a little bit simpler and more efficient that gives me satisfaction. I will miss my job at Gordon-Conwell.

Working at Emmanuel is the next step in the journey for us, and I believe it’s a good one. I’ve met with the lead pastor there, and I’ve gotten a feel for their church culture. I think it’s a great fit for me, and I’m eager to be a part of the ministry of their church. They are a one year old church plant that seems to be healthy and thriving. The duration of the residency is six months. The goal is to get me back into vocational ministry, help better connect me to the Covenant church in Minneapolis, and provide a hands on church-planting learning environment. During the residency I will be gearing up for planting a church, so that upon the completion of the residency we can hit the ground running.

Thanks to everyone who has supported and prayed for us through this transition. I’m starting to recognize that we aren’t really transitioning from an uncertain place to a certain place, but that this is just the next step in our faith journey--certainty about the future is elusive. We know what the next six months look like, and for now that’s good enough for us!

Saving Our Jobs

2008-10-14T07:10:00.003-06:00

A common Christian misconception that I’ve been fighting to overcome in my life has to do with the importance of ordinary, secular work. Over that past few years I’ve been working as a web developer, and before that I’ve worked as a computer engineer, IT helpdesk technician, and a 7th grade teacher. I wanted to know if there is and was any intrinsic value to my work. I had been taught by the church, either explicitly or implicitly, that secular work--work done outside the realm of vocational ministry--is important only insofar as it provides the worker with income that can be donated to charity or given in support of the person who works for God as a missionary or pastor. This work was prioritized because it was the work that facilitated individuals’ spiritual salvation. It was the work that brought people to a place of accepting Jesus into their heart and therefore this work had enduring, eternal significance.

I knew this wasn’t quite right. I knew this left a lot of people in the lurch. The majority of the Christian population was then left with jobs that were only indirectly meaningful as they supported the work of others. Beyond that, the only purpose of their work was to act as a witness to God in the workplace. Those of us engaged in secular work could do little more than act as happy representatives of Christianity that would pique the interest of our co-workers, and hopefully provide an avenue where we could invite these people to church. Then in the presence of trained ministry professionals, our co-workers would hear a message describing a metaphysical transaction accomplished on the cross by Jesus Christ, which would allow them to be saved from their sins if they would acknowledge him as Lord and say a certain prayer. The goal of our work was to make money to give to support professional Christians and to invite our co-workers to come to church so they could meet these professional Christians. Beyond that, our work had little, if any, intrinsic worth.

In an intentional effort to correct this thinking and save my misguided thoughts about work, I read Darrell Cosden’s book: The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work. He articulates a theology of work by looking back to creation and forward to the resurrection. He suggests that our calling to work originates in God’s original plan for humans in creation (because it is only after the Fall that work became toilsome). From the beginning God planned for us to join with him in working. When we work, we become co-creators of culture and co-rulers over the earth with God. Looking forward, Cosden states that our work is not just for the here and now but it will endure into Heaven. He argues for a theological understanding of the resurrection that accounts for God’s promise to redeem all of creation. God won’t trash the earth and start over from scratch. God’s salvation of the earth includes the resurrection and transformation of not just humans but all of creation (Rev. 21-22, Rom. 8, 1 Cor. 15). This means that the programming work that I’ve done, along with the paper filing, technical testing, and management supervisory work that others have done will have an eternal impact on the life we live beyond the grave. Because God will redeem all of creation, our work, which is a part of creation, will be wrapped up in its redemption.

If God can raise and transform the dead...he can raise and transform all present and even past (decayed and gone) earthly realities.
Yet, rather than limiting our thinking to individual products of work, it may also help us to think about the cumulative nature and impact of our work on this earth and on the whole of humanity. Think about how different our world would be had someone not invented the wheel. God’s judgment about the “goodness” or otherwise of the wheel we invented does not apply only to the “original” wheel. It involves a judgment of all that has resulted from there being wheels--all that we have built upon, from, and with this invention.
Today we live with the results, good and bad, of what previous generations did through their work. Every product of work, and every way of working, in some way preserves and develops what has come before. Human beings stand on one another’s shoulders all the way back to Adam. Rather than thinking individualistically about the salvation of unrelated separate entities, it might help us to see our work interdependently as part of the “fabric of this world” (as Lee Hardy calls it) that God will preserve and transform into the fabric of the new earth.
Cosden, pg. 114-115

This being the case, our work clearly has important eternal significance, and furthermore it means we ought to be thoughtful about what sort of work we engage in. With the caveat that there is no perfect job, we should engage in work that is not explicitly damaging to creation--whether it be environmentally dangerous, hurtful to humans, or relationally destructive. For example, if our job was to sell crack on the street or required us to dump environmentally harmful chemicals into a river, as Christians, it wouldn’t do to justify this as a well paying job that can support the vocational ministry of many a minister. Our vocation would be eternally destructive and we should switch jobs immediately. Other jobs, like a technology job that produces software for a military contractor, may fall into more of a grey area. Our continued work at that company should be reflected on with other Christians around us so as to discern the appropriateness of our vocation.

In fact, Cosden suggests that we should all engage in regular Sabbath reflection on the value of our work. This reflection should gauge the appropriateness of our current occupation based on its impact on creation and on the gifting and skill sets we possess. He provides some questions to be answered personally as well as in the context of community to help us reflect on our current vocation.

1) Does or can, this or that occupation allow me to work as God’s apprentice according to his purpose for this creation?
2) Given the ambiguities and ambivalence in this specific work, does it (or how can it) in some measure promote and build harmonious relationships between God and humanity, between people, and between people and nature?
3) Does this work promote or contribute to the psychological wholeness and flourishing of people in themselves?
4) Is this work suited to who I am and am becoming with my gifts and talents?
5) Does (or how can) this work and its results allow me and others to flourish as God’s apprentices?
6) How can we together, with the help of God’s Spirit, minimize or even eliminate its hindering us from this purpose?
Cosden, 117-118

The goal of our Sabbath reflection is to arrive at a place of conviction about our jobs. We want to work in vocations that allow us to participate with God in his work in the world. Cosden calls this “work in the Spirit,” which he defines (with help from Miroslav Volf’s book, Work in the Spirit) as:

1) Work that preserves and maintains what is good in creation, both God-given and made by humanity.
2) Work that clears away, as much as possible, those things that seek to confound the purposes of God and threaten to destroy his kingdom.
3) Work that produces new things that promote personal, communal, cultural, and environmental harmony and well-being--all in a restored relationship with God in Jesus Christ.
Cosden, pg. 145-146

As you and I engage in work in the Spirit, we do more than just earn a paycheck or pass our time. We participate in producing products and culture that will last beyond our days. We engage in work within this created order in partnership with God. We join God in his mission of salvation and transformation of the entire world. We engage with God, who is said to be working even to this day (John 5:17), in accomplishing his purposes for this world. I found this a refreshing take on work that has the power to transform our attitude and save our jobs from the daily grind of the 9-5 work week.

Making Decisions

2008-10-13T09:19:00.004-06:00

Making big decisions has historically been a gut-wrenching experience for me. Instead of feeling liberated by the Christian truth that God promises to lead us, I feel burdened by it. The pressure of being certain about the will of God has weighed me down to the point of debilitation. The need to get it right and not make a bad choice has tended to destroy any joy that is supposed to be present in Christian freedom. Decisions have turned into those fork in the road moments where I'm consumed with the fear of taking the wrong path.

It is with this personal back-drop that I read the following quote. I find it an excellent articulation of our responsibility and freedom in making decisions in the real world.

It is now necessary to actually discern what the will of God may be, what might be right in the given situation, what may please God; for one must, of course, live and act concretely. Intellect, cognitive ability, and attentive perception of the context come into lively play here. All of this discerning will be encompassed and pervaded by the commandment. Prior experiences will raise encouraging or cautionary notes. Under no circumstances must one count on or wait for unmediated inspirations, lest all to easily one fall prey to self-deception. Given the matter at hand, an intensely sober attitude will govern the discerning. Possibilities and consequences will be considered carefully. In short, in order to discern what the will of God may be, the entire array of human abilities will be employed. But in all of this there will be no place for the torment of being confronted with insoluble conflicts, nor the arrogance of being able to master any conflict, nor also the enthusiastic expectation and claim of direct inspirations. here will be faith that, to those who humbly ask, God will surely make the divine will known. And then, after all such serious discernment there will also be freedom to make a real decision; in this freedom there will be confidence that it is not the human but the divine will that is accomplished through such discernment. The anxiety about wether one has done the right thing will turn neither into a desperate clinging to one's own good, nor into the certainty of knowing about good and evil. Instead, it will be overcome in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, who alone exercises gracious judgment; this will allow one's goodness to remain hidden the knowledge of grace of the judge until the proper time

Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 323-24

Religulous, point taken

2008-10-05T17:45:00.006-06:00

Bill Maher's new movie Religulous has just come out. I have seen him on a number of TV promotional spots like the Daily Show. He challenges the simplistic unscientific beliefs that so many religious people fervently hold to. He is shocked that people believe in a literal flood, a very real Satan figure, or the theology of atonement that is said to give meaning to Jesus' death on the cross. He frames the faith of these religious people as worse than pitiable. One line of reasoning he repeats throughout his interviews goes something like this: We live the 21st century and we should have moved beyond this as a society. Religion is a blight on society--look at all the wars that are to blame or the bigotry that's resulted from people holding misguided religious beliefs. He asserts that religion is ridiculous (hence the title) and even dangerous to society and we must move past it as a civilized country if we want to evolve. He has made it his crusade to embolden people to stand up for their agnostic beliefs and push for a more secular society.

I think he is onto something. The clips that he shows make clear that some religious people do hold ridiculous beliefs. For every religion out there, it isn't difficult to find some nut job who has distorted its meaning. There is the guy on the street corner who preaches condemnation and hell fire at people he doesn't even know. There is the co-worker who rigidly observes a set of Christian rules and judges everyone around him without an ounce of compassion, love, or forgiveness evident in any part of his life. There is the high school student who goes to youth group every Wednesday for prayer and praise, and then on Friday dives head first into the drunken debaucheries of the high school party scene. Christianity is a religion full of people who serve as bad examples, but that's the point. To say people are messed up is to engage in Christian theologizing.

One of the central doctrines of the Christian faith is the doctrine of sin. We were created blameless but we err. We were declared good but we execute evil. We were made to love but we're filled with hate. Every person on the face of the planet has felt the pangs of sin--trusts have been betrayed, confidences broken, and relationships destroyed because of sin. We all know sin like we know hunger because it's as much a part of our life as eating.

For Maher to point out the shortcomings of individual religious adherents is only to confirm the presence of sin in the world. There is no surprise that he can grab a random religious zealot on the street or a politician who has used religion to get elected and make their faith look stupid. He could have grabbed anyone. Everyone holds some set of beliefs that are crazy, and everyone lives an inconsistent lifestyle--in some people it's just more obvious.

Where Maher goes wrong is with his putative solution. He avers that we are smart enough to move past this. We are developed enough as a society that we ought to be able to move on to a more enlightened place. But I think this is terribly naive. I've seen no evidence that smarter, more cultured, or more educated people in any way behave better than those who are less educated. I could offer anecdotal evidence of the college students I've interacted with on the Harvard campus and the orphan children I worked with in Africa. I could suggest national or political examples of Nazi Germany or Watergate. I could offer corporate examples of Enron, Martha Stewart or most recently the sleazy practices that lead up to the mortgage crisis. Some of the smartest, most cultured people do things just as stupid and self-contradictory as the people Maher has interviewed.

And that's the Christian message: we are all messed up. Each and every single one of us is broken, hypocritical, judgmental, and selfish. We are sinners. We not only live at times embarrassingly inconsistent lives, but our sin often times seriously hurts other people. Lying isn't bad just because God arbitrarily says so; it's bad because relationships are built on the foundations of honesty. Raunchy anonymous sex isn't sinful because God is a prude. It's sinful because humans are vulnerable people who can best enjoy the riches of sex within the context of the covenant relationship of marriage. Sin afflicts us all, and it is in us all. We are all sinners. Being a Christian just means that we recognize our brokenness and are trying to move towards healing and salvation in the context of community.

History does not move forward without catastrophe, happiness is not guaranteed by the multiplication of physical comforts, social harmony is not easily created by more intelligence, and human nature is not as good or as harmless as had been supposed. We are thus living in a period in which either the optimism of yesterday has given way to despair, or in which some of the less sophisticated moderns try desperately to avoid the abyss of despair by holding to credos which all the facts have disproved.
Niebuhr, "Optimism, Pessimism, and Religious Faith," anthologized in Essential Reinhold Niebuhr, 9.

Animals: Another Other to Love (Or, Why I'm a Vegetarian)

2008-07-28T18:53:00.006-06:00

I'm a vegetarian. It's sort of a new thing for me. I've abstained from meat since the beginning of February. It's been surprisingly easy with the assortment of good vegetarian foods available, and my love affair with sweets. But a lot of people ask me why I'm a vegetarian, and so I thought I'd share a video that graphically portrays the essential reason behind it.

This is a video about a couple of guys who raised a baby lion, released it into the wild, and then sought it out a year later. Take a look:

For me, this video gives me a glimpse of how humans and animals have a potential to relate to one another. I believe that God's original plan for creation was devoid of death, and hence devoid of meat-eating. Animosity entered the animal-human relationship, and carnivores were born, but that wasn't they way it was supposed to be (Gen 1:29-30).

I believe that in the ultimate restoration of God's creation this human-animal relationship will be restored to something like we see in the video above. Humanity will have dominion over the animals just as God has dominion over us: we will graciously rule through sacrificial love and service. Instead of exploiting animals as meat-making-machines without feelings or lives of value, we will treasure them as important parts of God's creation.

Household pets can be good examples of proper human-animal relationships. Humans can rule over their pets in a loving affectionate way that demands sacrifice for the well-being of the pet. Pets are often considered parts of the family and the intimate tie that owners feel towards their cats and dogs is tangibly felt. Pet owners know that their pets have emotions--they feel anxiety, loyalty, hope, faith and love. I believe this is a reality for all animals, not just pets, and so I choose not to eat them.

My convictions are rooted in scripture, but I wouldn't assert that vegetarianism is mandatory for all Christians. There are plenty of examples of meat-eating in the Bible. However, there are also plenty of examples that point us to the high worth of animals in God's eyes. So for Christians who choose to eat meat, I think a serious look at our food-producing system is in order. We are detached from the birth, growth, and slaughter of the meat we (as a culture) eat. Some of us would be mortified to see the way the animals we eat are treated.

I'm still trying to figure all of this out. At first I didn't eat eggs, but now I'm eating eggs from free-range chickens. Maybe next week I'll change my mind again. This is an evolving experiment that is rooted in my desire to life a more gracious life. Being a vegetarian is a personal calling that helps me enter into a more holistic life of compassion. It is one way I can practice a heavenly lifestyle here on earth now.

For further reading:
A great book on vegetarianism for Christians: Webb, Stephen On God and Dogs

A Pastors journey into vegetarianism: http://gregboyd.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-im-vegetarian.html

Honestly

2008-06-13T08:14:00.004-06:00

There was a time in my life when I was terrified to open my mouth in the presence of Christians. I felt like everything I said was evaluated and judged, and people were constantly weighing my worth in the balances. If I said something that referred to a time in my life when I got in trouble or did something inappropriate I got dirty looks. If I asked questions about doctrine or God's nature my questions would be dismissed with platitudes and condescension. Church became a place I felt rejected and insecure instead of loved and safe.

I recently came across this quote and it reminds me how important it is for church leaders to create a culture where openness and questioning is acceptable--a place where people can be honest about what they think about God and what questions they have.

"There is very little time and occasion for openness in most of our gatherings because we fear it. We think it may lead to confrontation, anger, and divisiveness. We are not open because we fear what others will think of us and do to us. If we honestly compared the amount of time in church spent thinking about what others think or might think with the amount of time spent thinking about what God is thinking, we would probably be shocked. Those of us in congregational leadership need to think deeply about this." pg. 202 from Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

Earlier, Willard talks about how this flows out of our desire to appear good in the eyes of others--we don't want to reveal our doubts or be thought of as strange so we keep quiet and participate in a 'conspiracy of silence' that stifles honesty and vulnerability. We live not for God, but for the eyes of others, which he calls 'eyeservice'.

I believe this is what I experienced in the past. People felt like certainty and unwavering faith were the mark of spiritual maturity. Conversely doubt and questions were the sign of immaturity, which was naturally remedied through some bible study groups and a consistent devotional life. I haven't found that to be the case. In fact, with Soren Kierkegaard, I would argue that doubt isn't a sign of no faith but the sign of the presence of faith. You can't doubt if you don't believe.

I also believe church is supposed to be a place where we can be honest. One of the core Christian disciplines is confession. We confess our failures so that we can receive healing. If a church culture stifles honesty and vulnerability, we won't feel safe enough to confess our sins to one another. Consequently we won't experience the liberation that comes from being totally honest in the presence of another person, and then hearing that person repeat the phrase back to you, "As a representative of Christ, you are forgiven."

If you are in a place of leadership in the church, I encourage you to do all you can to contribute to creating a culture like this. Share vulnerably yourself. Accept others when they are honest. Welcome honest questioning and don't shun doubt. Often times this sort of culture-creating work can be hard. We have to be the first to open up and share, but I've found that people welcome the honesty and respond in kind.

The Irony of Iron Man

2008-06-02T15:31:00.002-06:00

I was in Boston a couple of weeks ago without Mary or my kids. I took advantage of my free time to see the movie Iron Man. Overall, this was probably my favorite superhero movie to date. Robert Downey Jr. was wonderful. He played the part well. He was funny and winsome.

What I found ironic about the movie was the role of violence. Robert Downey Jr. plays the part of a powerful CEO of a weapons manufacturing company. He is an ultra smart playboy who is responsible for designing some of the most revolutionary weapons on the planet (think the modern day equivalent of the atom bomb: his weapons are supposed to be game-changers in a war). Along the way, he has a change of heart. He sees the havoc his weapons produce in the hands of the wrong people, and he commits his life to righting that wrong. He sets out to develop a sort of super weapon (the Iron Man suit), so that he can annihilate any military cell that is using his weapons for 'evil'. In a sense, he wants to eradicate violence by being violent. He want to stop people from blowing things up by blowing those people up. He wants to stop the use of his super weapon by creating an even greater and more powerful super weapon.

All this reminded me of the pernicious property of evil. We all recognize evil in our lives. We all want to remove it from the world. But, we usually choose to do it in the wrong way. We usually choose to combat evil with more evil. We confront harsh words spoken to us with more harsh words. We scold our kids for hitting another kid in their class with a spanking. We respond to a friend's wrong doing with gossip and slander spreading the evil further afoot. We, like the Iron Man character, frequently respond to evil with more evil.

The message of Christianity is a call to respond in the opposite. The way Christians are called to respond to evil is not through violence or more evil but through suffering sacrifice. We are called to absorb evil. Instead of being a tuning fork that reverberates the effects of evil throughout the world, we are called to be a pillow that evil sinks into never to return.

Christ did this fully on the cross. The evil of the Roman Empire and the Pharisees sent him to his death. Their jealous, envy, hatred, malice, loathing, and more was the root of Jesus crucifixion. He was the subject of cruel and unusual punishment, injustice, and torture. He was sentenced to be executed because of the evil in men's hearts. And yet he did not respond with evil. He did not raise up an army of violence. He did not shout profanities or curses at his accusers. He absorbed the evil, and he showed us the true way to defeat it: forgiveness.

When we forgive our attacker, we neutralize the power of evil. When we lay down our right to retribution we arrest evil in its tracks. When we choose to love, to serve, to sacrifice, and to forgive we conquer the evil that confronts us. Jesus defeated evil in a radically new way, and now you and I are invited to follow in his footsteps. We are invited to live a similar life of forgiveness that absorbs evil as we encounter it.

"He was treated harshly and afflicted,
but he did not even open his mouth.
Like a lamb led to the slaughtering block,
like a sheep silent before her shearers,
he did not even open his mouth.
He was led away after an unjust trial –
but who even cared?
Indeed, he was cut off from the land of the living;
because of the rebellion of his own people he was wounded."
Isaiah 53:7-8

ECC Assessment

2008-05-31T15:48:00.004-06:00

Mary and I just returned from the Evangelical Covenant Church's church planter assessment. The assessment was held at a nearby Covenant church in Plymouth MN. It started at noon this past Wednesday, May 28, and finished up at noon today May 31st. There were 15 couples being assessed, and around 12 assessors. The assessors included regional church planting directors, church planters, and ECC pastors. The assessment was exhausting and exciting at the same time.

Throughout the week we were asked to do a number of things. I preached a short mini-sermon. I gave a call to ministry presentation. I fielded questions on my call to ministry, my interest in church planting and how I perceived my call to church planting. Mary and I were asked about our relationship and about how we minister together. We worked in teams on church planting case studies. We worked in teams on local church planting strategies. We gave presentations. We were interviewed. From early in the morning to late in the evening the days were filled with these activities and more. It was very, very tiring.

But it was also exciting. The ECC had a couple of career counselors/vocational psychologists that helped us review some of our personality and gift finder tests. They spent a good amount of time unpacking the ins and outs of Golden Personality Test, DISC, and StrengthFinders. These tests along with their interpretations provided some helpful insights into each of our personality types and our modes of operation when we interact with others. I also gained very helpful insights into some of my ministry strengths and areas of growth.

The result of the assessment was a recommendation for us to plant a church. As many of you know, Mary and I have been wrestling with a call to church planting for the last couple years, and we've felt like we have been wandering in a dark vocational wilderness for 3+ years as we've tried to discern our next steps. This process was an incredibly helpful clarifying event. It both encouraged us in our gifting and helped us gain clarity on our call to ministry. Their recommendation comes with considerable support. It is conditional on us spending some time in a Covenant church in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area honing some of my ministry skills as I prepare to set out and plant. This condition seems very wise, and it gives me even more confidence of their assessment of us.

Mary and I are feeling very, very loved and served by the ECC. The assessors labored all day observing us, and then much of the night deliberating and praying together over us. Their thoughtful assessment has been a means of God's grace. Right now we are feeling good. I'll post more in a couple days on Mary's and my personality types and strengths and what that all means.

Thanks to all who prayed for us and for those who have supported and cared for us through this process!

Heaven 3: Metaphors

2008-05-15T10:16:00.002-06:00

Talking about heaven is a little like talking about your unborn child. It's like talking about that vocation you want to be when you grow up. It's like talking about the job you want when you graduate from college. Talking about heaven is like talking about an unknown future, except it's unique in that the essence of the experience can't be paralleled by anything we have ever experienced before. While I was awaiting the birth of my daughter, I could have talked about her with reasonably accurate predictive detail. By looking at other infants or considering the type of child I was or my wife was, I could have set my expectations appropriately. But to talk of heaven is to speak about things for which we have very little direct parallel. So it's best for us to first confess that we cannot really speak of heaven. It goes beyond the limits of words.

But speak of heaven we must; and speak of heaven Jesus did. Literal description is rarely (if ever) used. The literary category most frequently employed by Jesus, the authors of Scripture, and many Christians throughout history has been that of metaphor. So let's consider a few biblical metaphors we find in the Bible that point us toward heavenly realities:

The Seed and the Plant
In 1 Cor. 15, Paul compares our earthly bodies with our heavenly ones. He uses the metaphor of a seed and a plant to describe the transformation that will occur.

15:37 And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare seed 23 – perhaps of wheat or something else. 15:38 But God gives it a body just as he planned, and to each of the seeds a body of its own.

Here Paul describes both the continuity and discontinuity between our bodies now and our bodies then. A wheat seed is at the same time radically different from the final wheat plant and essentially the same.

The King and the Kingdom
Heaven will include the dissolution of corrupt earthly rule. Jesus, the one who suffers and serves even the most wretched (think washes Judas' feet), is the coming King who will rule with wisdom and justice. This means the end of oppression and injustice.

Colonizing the Earth (from N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope)
In Phil. Paul writes to Christians living in Philippi, a Roman Colony. Augustus had settled his military veterans there after the battles of Philippi and Actium. The purpose of these soldiers and the purpose of colonization generally is to infuse the colonized culture with the values and customs of the colonizers. Paul uses this parallel to describe the role of the Christians in Philippi. As Wright says:

"So when Paul says, 'We are citizens of heaven,' he doesn't at all mean that when we're done with this life we'll be going off to live in heaven. What he means is that the savior, the Lord, Jesus the King...will come from heaven to earth, to change the present situation and state of his people." (pg. 100)

Heaven isn't a place we escape to, it's a culture, and even new reality, that overtakes earth. It's a utopian dream that cannot be achieved apart from the return of Christ and the resurrection.

New Birth
In Romans 8, Paul describes the whole of creation waiting and longing to be reborn. He uses the metaphor of labor to describe this longing for transformation:

"8:21 ... the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now. "

Like the seed and the plant metaphor, this metaphor maintains both continuity and discontinuity between the world as we know it now and the world to come. It also highlights the suffering and hardship creation endures as it awaits its new birth.

Marriage
The marriage of heaven and earth is described in Revelation 21-22. Heaven comes down to earth and they are joined together in wedlock. In this picture, heaven and earth aren't polar opposites. Earth isn't the material bad and heaven the unchanging good. Earth doesn't corrupt heaven, heaven transforms earth and they are united together.

Conclusion
In all these metaphors, it is clear that heaven is a place or culture that is coming to earth. Christians then are people who care deeply about the earth and about the well-being of its inhabitants. We look forward to the future not as people who want to escape earth, but as a people who long for earth to be all that it is meant to be. We are people who pray with Jesus, "May your kingdom come, may your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Capitalism makes for odd bedfellows

2008-05-12T08:25:00.001-06:00

Here's an article pointing out that a new Christian web dating service is owned by Penthouse!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/12/penthouse-expands-into-ch_n_101282.html

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Unibrow

2008-05-04T06:41:00.003-06:00

The other night Josiah was having some trouble falling asleep. I went in to tell him everything was okay and rub his back a little. While I was kneeling by his bed and talking with him he started touching and grabbing at different parts of my face. He finally settled on my eyebrow, and he started running his finger back and forth along it (I really just have one long eyebrow). Then he made an observation clearly born out of the world of a 2 year old who spends hours of every day playing with race cars (imitation cars from the movie Cars). He said "it's like a road," and he continued to race cars on the road on my face. I'm not sure I actually helped him fall asleep...

Young Reformers and Emergent on Certainty

2008-05-03T14:47:00.001-06:00

Tony Jones and Colin Hansen are having a blogging style dialog over at CT (here). At the end of the first post, Tony asks the question:

"Where we probably differ is not so much on theology, but on epistemology....I wonder, do you think that some people are just more inclined to look for sure answers, and others are more comfortable with ambiguity?"

I also was recently looking through a series of videos that went up on Piper's desringGod site (here) where he explains and expounds at length on the Calvinistic doctrines of TULIP. The first in this list is Total Depravity, and this reminded me of my seminary days and a cool seminary phrase, noetic effect of sin. Which according to Theopedia means:

"The noetic effects of sin are the ways that sin negatively affects and undermines the human mind and intellect...sin's noetic effects are most prominent in our knowledge of God (our "sense of divinity") and less prominent in other domains."

And I got to thinking, doesn't the 'emergent' epistemology as explained by Tony do better justice to the reformed concept of the noetic effect of sin? I mean doesn't having greater humility about our ability to know who God more accurately embody the concept of noetic effect of sin?

Heaven 2: Shadows?

2008-05-03T07:31:00.006-06:00

For those of us who have ever worked on a difficult project with other people, we know that often times the key to success is compromise. When making decisions about how to move from the project vision to the practical details, everyone on the team needs to be willing to come together to find the best realistic solution. This is especially true, if you, like me, tend to be an idealist. I can sometimes find compromise difficult because I so highly value the academic ideal way things are 'meant to be'. While someone else sees my idealism as a stubborn intractable personality, I can see it as a commitment to the way things are supposed to be with a touch of perseverance.

It was in a moment of tension between me and a more grounded co-worker, that he said to me, "you know we aren't dealing with platonic ideals here..." He was saying, "John, here in the real world, things have to work. Real, physical, life and blood people are going to use this program and it has to work."

My co-worker was referencing a Platonic worldview. He was jokingly calling my attention to the day-to-day nitty-gritty details and challenging me to come off of my idealistic high horse. At the center of Platonism is this sort of ideal vs. real dualism. A Platonic worldview believes this world is a shadowy reflection of the true world. This physical material universe is a copy or distorted mirror-image of the non-physical immaterial true world. The true world is the world of forms and types, perfect and unchageable. Our world is the world of copies and material objects. Within this worldview, death means being set free from the physical to go and be alive in the non-physical ideal. To me this sounds an awful lot like the popular Christian idea of heaven. Earth is the imperfect material copy of the perfect immaterial heaven.

For evangelical Christians, heaven is the place you go after you die. You escape earth; you leave your body; you go to heaven. In heaven we get new bodies for sure, but we think of them as bodies like angels floating around on the clouds. Heaven is a spiritual place; earth is a physical place. These are the ideas that I find I've inherited from my evangelical tradition, and I don't think they are biblically accurate or very inspiring.

If I believe that I'm going to leave this world and go to another place after I die, it's hard for me to become inspired and hopeful about my actual life here on earth. For me it produces two responses. The first response can be called escapism, which causes me to take on a sort of headonistic attitude, 'eat drink and be merry'. Who cares about the state of the world? Who cares about the state of the climate? Who cares about my own personal growth? The second is a form of hard asceticism. If heaven is a spiritual place, then everything physical is evil. If God is spirit and spiritual, then I want to mortify everything physical in my life and only nurture the spiritual. This is the sort of thing that cause evangelicals to disdain wine and fear enjoying sex too much.

In the following posts, I'd like to present a different view. One that I think is more consistent with the biblical narrative, and one that I've found to be very inspiring and hope-filling.

Heaven 1: If you were to die tonight....

2008-05-01T11:07:00.001-06:00

A few years back (8, I think), I went through an Evangelism Explosion training. The training consisted of teaching you a packaged Evangelistic sales pitch that could be presented verbatim on demand. The presentation always began with the question:

"If you were to die today and find yourself at the gates of heaven, what would you say? What reason would you give for why you should be allowed to enter?"

Or something like that. The rest of the presentation was pretty standard evangelical stuff: sin, separation from God, substitutionary atonement, reconciliation through Christ, salvation from hell by praying a prayer. Once we learned the presentation, we would head out into the community, spread the presentation, and tally the results--count the number of people who prayed the prayer. I happened to be in Africa at the time, and this presentation proved to be extremely effective. Almost everyone who was willing to talk with me, would end up praying with me, often in tears.

Hundreds of us hit the streets. When we reconvened later that evening, we calculated the total number of people who had been 'saved'. The numbers were staggering. Literally hundreds of tallies went up on the overhead projector. Shouts of hallelujah and praise God rang out in the chapel as we celebrated the guaranteed future entrance of these souls into heaven.

While I had some doubts about the methodology and some regret that there was really very little follow-up, I was mostly very pleased with the program. Everyone seemed emboldened in the act of evangelism, and the results were plain to see.

But I wonder how biblical a promise we were selling? As I reflect on this project now, it seems like we were selling a form of Platonism dressed up in Christian-ese language. We were telling people that when they died, they would go to this 'heaven' place up in the sky where they would experience a perfect world. They would leave this world behind and find a new and better disembodied spiritual world with God.

As I've studied the New Testament over the last few years, one thing has come repeatedly to my attention: evangelicals consistently misunderstand heaven and life after death as described in the Bible. Over the next couple of posts, I'm going to share some thoughts on heaven, and why I think it's important to have a more 'biblical' perspective on it. I believe it has an important effect on the way we live our lives today.

A new Blogging Browser

2008-04-30T09:37:00.001-06:00

I'm trying out a new browser that has as its sub-text, "the social web browser". It has a lot of built in features, like posting new blog posts in an easy integrated way. In fact, I'm posting this blog from my browser's interface.

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