I believe Christianity is true for lots of reasons: philosophical reasons, textual-critical reasons, archeological reasons, scientific reasons, and even narrative reasons. In fact I spent several years immersing myself in arguments for and against God and it was quite some time before I felt comfortable affirming my faith based on these different criteria.

But let’s put that aside for a moment.

Tonight I found myself in awe of the community of faith I found myself in. That 100 people from all over the country gathered in the basement of a hotel in New York City and worshipped together; pursued God together; broke bread and blessed food together. Something happens in a group like that — community, connection, fellowship. We find ourselves a part of something so much bigger than us. And while there are other religions and other people of faith who have their own traditions, none of them seek to humbly approach the Divine in quite the same way that Christians do.

And my tribe has been doing it for thousands of years.

Even if I lay aside all of my reasoned arguments for being a follower of Christ, I find something immensely valuable in being a part of this community; of contributing my little part in the context of the whole.

I was reminded of that tonight.

We’re discussing practices of spiritual wholeness: keeping the Sabbath, establishing a rhythm of prayer, living simply. These are the rituals of the Christian seeking God, and of God seeking his people.

I thought I’d share a few things that stood out for me today.

Peterson on growing up Pentecostal:

I was lucky to grow up Pentecostal because I believed that everything in the Bible was livable. I wasn’t concerned with whether everything was literal, but I believed it to be livable.

On the never-boring and intriguing vocation of pastoring:

The only time there was ever any order was for an hour on Sunday morning. As soon as the benediction had been spoken all hell broke loose.

On the a non-formulaic approach to pastoring:

Being a pastor is the most context-specific vocation that exists. You can’t simply copy techniques because you have a unique congregation and you are a unique person who has specific gifts, strengths, and callings. Don’t try to be someone else. I think we’ve got to be content to not do some things when we don’t know how to do them.

On what surprised Peterson most about Jesus’ prayers:

How short they were. They were so short, succinct, and punchy. It turns out that prayers don’t need to be long, but the prayerful life should be long and we should live a life of prayerfulness.

There is a lot more I could post here, but I just wanted to give you a taste of what we’re discussing. For those who are interested, one hour of Peterson’s discussion will be live-streamed tomorrow on the Q website.

I’ll try and do another post tomorrow or later this week to give a few more updates.

Last year I read The Pastor by Eugene Peterson based solely on the outstanding reviews it had received on Amazon’s website. I rarely purchase anything on the strength of its reviews alone — Transformers is sitting with 4 out of 5 stars at the moment, so you know the system doesn’t always work — but Peterson intrigued me.

Before reading the book all I knew of Eugene Peterson was that he was the author/translator of The Message, a contemporary translation of the Bible that I’d used on occasion. The audience Peterson had in mind with The Message was contemporary — another way of saying that many Biblical scholars didn’t care for it because Peterson didn’t write a word-for-word translation. I had found it incredibly helpful for those who were reading Scripture for the first time and those who were looking to revitalize their Scripture-reading with a fresh take on this ancient text.

The Pastor is a memoir; it filled me with respect for Eugene Peterson and I was incredibly encouraged by his journey and his commitment to seeing his people grow in Christ-likeness. He pastored the same church for 29 years before retiring in 1991 and he has used the time in between to shepherd younger leaders and to help a new generation understand the Biblical texts.

Peterson recalls so many Christ-filled moments in his book, but I thought I’d share a few of my favorites.

On redeeming his congregation:

If the life of David that comprised prayer and adultery and murder could be written and told as a gospel story, no one in my congregation would be written off. For me, my congregation would become a work-in-progress—a novel in which everyone and everything is connected in a salvation story in which Jesus has the last word. No reductions to stereotype…

On refusing to boil the work of the pastorate down to “fixing” people:

In the disordered times in which we live, pastors can’t get along without [psychologists] Dr. Wall and Dr. Hansen. But their work is not my work. Knowing they are there to do their work, I am free to do my work. And my work is not to fix people. It is to lead people in the worship of God and to lead them in living a holy life.

On his wife Jan’s calling to be a pastor’s wife:

For Jan, “pastor’s wife” was not just being married to a pastor; it was far more vocational than that, a way of life. It meant participation in an intricate web of hospitality, living at the intersection of human need and God’s grace, inhabiting a community where men and women who didn’t fit were welcomed, where neglected children were noticed, where the stories of Jesus were told, and people who had no stories found that they did have stories, stories that were part of the Jesus story. Being a pastor’s wife would place her strategically yet unobtrusively at a heavily trafficked intersection between heaven and earth.

I could go on like this for a long time. I have well over 100 highlights in this book, and I had to restrain myself from coloring every page yellow.

If you’re serving as a pastor, I can’t recommend this book enough. Read it, marinate in it. I legitimately believe that Peterson’s book has already helped to shape my ministry and I look forward to re-reading it on an annual basis.

Next weekend I’m leading a retreat for the high school students of Carlisle Brethren in Christ Church. We’re calling it “Curious” and the goal of the weekend is to get students to think about their faith.

Within a few short years, every single one of these students will be leaving high school to begin college or a new career. If they haven’t thought about their faith by then, they’ll certainly be forced to do so quickly. We want to give them the tools to question everything.

College almost wrecked my faith. I questioned God, Christianity, the problem of evil, faith vs. science, the eternal destiny of every person, etc. For a long time I wasn’t sure where I would land.

Did I mention I went to a Christian school?

If I hadn’t discovered the tools to think for myself I likely wouldn’t still be in the church today. We want to begin crafting that in these students.

So this is where I need your help: put yourself back in high school. What do you wish you would have known about doubt, questioning, your faith, the Bible, etc. that would have been helpful as you entered your college years? If you felt inadequately prepared to face the world with your version of Christianity, what would have aided you in thinking for yourself?

Please put your responses in the comments section. Feel free to post anonymously if you feel the need.

Much could be said about the biography, but I wanted to draw your attention to what might appear an insignificant event toward the beginning of the book. Isaacson is explaining Jobs’s faith background and shares this encounter between a young Steve and his pastor:

Even though they were not fervent about their faith, Jobs’s parents wanted him to have a religious upbringing, so they took him to the Lutheran church most Sundays. That came to an end when he was thirteen. In July 1968 Life magazine published a shocking cover showing a pair of starving children in Biafra. Jobs took it to Sunday school and confronted the church’s pastor. “If I raise my finger, will God know which one I’m going to raise even before I do it?”

The pastor answered, “Yes, God knows everything.”

Jobs then pulled out the Life cover and asked, “Well, does God know about this and what’s going to happen to those children?”

“Steve, I know you don’t understand, but yes, God knows about that.”

Jobs announced that he didn’t want to have anything to do with worshipping such a God, and he never went back to church.

It’s likely that Steve’s pastor never gave a second thought to this encounter; that it appeared to him an insignificant question posed by a young teenager who was incapable of wrestling with a substantial answer. And yet decades later Steve Jobs thought enough of the event to recall it to his biographer.

As a pastor I want to be so very mindful of the “Steve Jobs moments” that may come my way: opportunities to pray with someone, answer someone, or take their concerns and questions seriously. We never know how thoughtless comments or underestimating a child might affect them for the rest of their lives.

In many respects we don’t have complete control over these encounters. I’m sure Jobs’s pastor didn’t intend to underestimate the intellect of the child who asked the difficult question. I’m sure there was much more behind Steve’s decision to leave Christianity than this one encounter. But I’m also sure we should make every effort to be mindful of the Kingdom moments that present themselves to us; moments we have the opportunity to enter into as we go about our days.

May you be awake and mindful of your next “Steve Jobs moment.”

After all, this is the same Jesus who just a few chapters beforehand had taken it upon himself to wash the feet of his disciples. Imagine — God in flesh; the very one who flung the stars into space, who formed our planet and breathed the breath of life into mankind living and walking among us. The same hands that healed the blind, calmed the storm, raised the dead . . . washing feet.

The Creator serving the creation.

And then this teaching in John 13:14-15 — “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”

Simply put: if the God of the universe is willing to wash the feet of his servants, shouldn’t we do the same?

Then we find Jesus in John 19, and this part of the story is really good. Jesus Christ, the suffering servant, has been beaten so severely that he is barely alive. He’s hanging on a cross naked and shamed with a sarcastic sign above his head calling him the “King of the Jews” and mocking his entire life’s work. His closest followers have abandoned him, his miracles have been forgotten, and many of the people who had been crying out “Hosanna” on Monday had changed their chant to “crucify him” by Friday. He is the epitome of a misunderstood, wrongfully accused, and isolated leader.

Pastor, youth minister, worship leader: I don’t know what ways you’ll be mistreated at some point in your ministries, but I feel pretty certain about this — you’ll never find yourself in a more hopeless situation than this.

Our human reaction to bumpy stretches of road in our life is fairly predictable. We feel sorry for ourselves, we begin to focus inwardly, and we stop looking out for others as we brace ourselves for the bumpy ride and hope it will end soon.

And this is why John 19 is incredible. While hanging on the cross, struggling for breath, Jesus sees his mother and the disciple John standing nearby. He turns to Mary and says, “Woman, here is your son.” To John he says, “Here is your mother.”

We’re told that John looked after Mary from that day forward.

Hanging on a cross, dying in agony, the weight of the world on his shoulders, Jesus looked out for someone else. Protected his mother. He served someone.

Christian leaders — there will be times over the course of your ministry when you are tempted to turn inward and feel sorry for yourself. I’ve been in ministry long enough to have experienced and even fallen to that urge on more than one occasion.

But here is the honest truth: it’s not about you. You don’t have to rise up in an angry fit of righteous indignation because it’s not about you. You don’t have to assert your leadership credentials in the fitful hope of forcing someone’s respect because it’s not about you.

What you must do is follow the Suffering Servant, give your life to your people, and love them regardless of circumstances. Sometimes this will mean that you can’t stay. Sometimes it will mean that you’ll lose “power”. Sometimes it will even be perceived as weak.

But when forced to choose between clinging to position / setting the record straight / feeling sorry for ourselves or loving others with the very heart of God, may we follow our Suffering Servant and count our earthly losses as Kingdom gains.

^{photo credit: Matthew Baker}

These bills would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA. The fallout of passing these bills would likely effect this website and others that you’ve come to rely on for information: Google, Wikipedia, Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, etc. That’s why I’m joining these and many other websites today who are trying to get the word out about how devastating this legislation could be for the internet as we know it.

The Senate will begin voting on January 24th. Please let them know how you feel. Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late.

For more information, please watch this short video on what PIPA and SOPA will do:

King’s message on equality usually gets stressed but his more fundamental call to love indiscriminately and to refuse violence is forgotten.

Boyd’s tweet reminded me to post one of my favorite quotes from Dr. King’s essay, Where Do We Go from Here?:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. … Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

And as my friend David Calavan points out, if you’ve never read his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, you really owe it to yourself to give it a read.

May the words of Dr. King find lodging in your heart this day.

The Bible verse above – quoted in the New International Edition, for ease of comprehension – says it all: Don’t make a show of your religion. There it is, unequivocal, clear as a daylight, and even – if you read the whole chapter – spelled out in great, almost excessive, detail. This is the same Bible that lies at the root of Tebow’s faith, supposedly; the book to which he makes frequent reference.

I’ve been following the Tebow story with a degree of fascination all season, as I’m sure many of you have. Frankly, if you’re a football fan, it’s been difficult to avoid it. Last week Time Magazine argued that Tim Tebow had a more prominent platform for speaking about Christ than any pastor or evangelist.

As one of the most influential believers in the United States, should Christians support Tebow?

Christians who are giving Tebow a hard time over Matthew 6:5-6 need to understand the passage in its proper context and historical situation. As Skye Jethani points out, Jesus doesn’t strictly prohibit public prayer. Rather, it is hypocritical prayer that Jesus is concerned with: those of us who would pretend to pray publicly with the motive of appearing more righteous than we are.

Jesus, after all, frequently prayed in public before meals and while listeners were gathered around. As a result his followers asked him to train them in prayer (Luke 11:1). If the motivation is coming from a true relationship with God that is simply overflowing into many facets of his life, Tebow seems to be standing on firm ground.

I don’t know Tim Tebow, but he seems like a good kid. He was mic’d up during a recent game and seemed genuinely kind and caring whether he was throwing a touchdown pass or getting ground into the turf by a 300-pound lineman. I’ve heard him thank God for the ability to play football, but I’ve never heard him say that God grants him victories (or losses). I believe it’s likely that his faith is genuine and I know for a fact that he has a huge platform to influence others.

So maybe instead of criticizing Tebow we should pray for him. He has the opportunity to talk about Jesus and have millions of people hear him. The temptation in his profession to walk away from God or to live immorally is astronomically high.

I hope he’s successful, but more importantly I pray that his fidelity to Christ remains strong regardless of how his career turns out.

But I’ll still be rooting for the Steelers.

A few things.

First of all, I’ll be linking to more things that I find interesting and making brief comments about them instead of every article being solely what I’m studying or what I’m thinking about. Those posts tend to be faster to write and hopefully they’re interesting reads for some of you.

Also, I’ve got a new podcast on iTunes. I was trying to figure out the best way to allow access to all the teaching I do and have done, and the simplest way was to create a feed that ties it all together. In a few months when we launch the new Carlisle Brethren in Christ Church website and podcast I’ll be sure and link to that as well. But I’ll probably keep this as it will also include teaching I do at retreats and other places, as well as occasional audio I may produce just for the podcast feed.

Finally, I’ve enabled a great way to subscribe to the blog. You can sign up for a weekly digest that will be delivered to your email inbox every Monday afternoon with the articles you may have missed from the week before. You can sign up for that in the sidebar or at this link.

I’m still working out the kinks in the new site, so if something doesn’t work for you please let me know. Also, if you’re using Internet Explorer 6 and something doesn’t work for you, please stop using that browser.

I’m looking forward to interacting with you guy.

Shalom,
Josh Crain
January 2012