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For others, the pain and hurt is way down deep and forgiveness is significantly more difficult. That’s ok. But there is something that everyone must do: begin the journey.

God tells us many hard truths in his word, and one of those is that we can’t experience forgiveness unless we forgive. And that is a tough pill to swallow. Because we all want to be forgiven but we don’t all want to forgive. But there it is in plain red letters on a white page. We know that there are things for which each of us needs to be forgiven and we know that there are many things that we need to forgive. So that’s where we need to start.

Let’s be clear about what forgiveness is not…
Forgiving does not mean that what was done to you was right. Some of you have been terribly hurt and abused in unimaginable ways and will carry the scars of that hurt for your entire life.

It does not mean that there should be no consequences for the sinful actions of others against you.

It does not mean that you allow someone to hurt you or take advantage of you again in the same way.

It does not mean that there aren’t going to be some boundaries between you and the person you’re forgiving.

But it does mean that you let go of the hold that their actions have on you. A hold that is causing you to be angry, a hold that is causing you to be cynical, a hold that is robbing you of energy, and robbing you of faith. It’s robbing you of the joy that Jesus Christ wants you to experience IN HIM.

“For when God commands us to wish well to our enemies,” Calvin said, “he does not therefore demand that we approve in them what He condemns, but only desires that our minds shall be purified from all hatred.”

Forgive
You may have someone to forgive today, so why not begin that journey? We often sin against each other and we have all sinned against God. Ultimately, all sin is sin against God. When we become reconciled to him we will become reconciled to each other.

When you forgive it means that you are giving up your desire to personally punish that other person in any way. You are leaving that in God’s hands, as the only righteous judge who will see that justice is ultimately done.

You may need to forgive someone this morning. It might go back to your first memory, when you’re three or four, or it might go back to this morning on the way to church. Put it all on the table.

And do remember this: the power of your prayer for forgiveness is limited by the degree to which you obey the command to forgive.

_______________________________________________

This post is part a series on forgiveness, based on a sermon called “Forgive and Be Forgiven”. You can listen to the sermon audio here (or right-click and “Save As…” to download)

Other posts in this series:

Part 1 – Don’t Be a Hypocrite
Part 2 – A Prayer to Be Recited?
Part 3 – Giving Up the Desire to Punish
Part 4 – Don’t Be Like the Unforgiving Servant
Part 5 – The Older Brother Syndrome
Part 6 – Living the Forgiving (and Forgiven) Life
Part 7 – What Forgiveness Isn’t…

Related posts:

1. Living the Forgiving (and Forgiven) Life What does it look like to live a forgiving (and forgiven) life? That life will be marked by these traits and you will make a habit out of these practices:...
2. Giving up the Desire to Punish Matt 6:12 says, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors….” and then Jesus follows that up in verses 14-15 with, “For if you forgive others their...

1. Make forgiveness your default response
Decide now that you will respond to a wrong with a desire to forgive. Make that your end goal from the beginning.

2. Forgive in advance, just like God does
Someone is going to hurt you. Someone is going to tear you down and say vicious untrue things about you. You don’t even know who this person is yet, but you can choose to forgive them in advance. When we do this, when we choose forgiveness even before there is repentance, all the other person has to do is accept what we’re already offering.

3. Be forgiven
In the same way, God has forgiven you and is offering that forgiveness to you. Some of you are living life in a state of being unforgiven. This is a tragedy because you can be forgiven and it would make a world of difference. How can you receive God’s forgiveness? By confessing your sins and trusting in him. That’s it.

“Father, Forgive Them”
I’ll give you one more reason to forgive… As Jesus was hanging on the cross, beaten, bruised, cut, covered in blood, he looked down at those who had done this to him. He looked at them and didn’t feel rage… he looked at them and didn’t take the vengeance on them that he could have taken. These people who had falsely accused him, imprisoned him, beaten him, put nails through his hands and feet, hung him up on a wooden cross and then taunted him while he hung…

He looked at these people, who did far more to him than anyone has ever done to any one of us and said… “Father, forgive them….” (Luke 23:33-34). And when he died, he died so that we could experience the forgiveness of God. His life and his death were saturated with forgiveness.

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” – C.S. Lewis

Jesus is the model and he sets the pattern for us. Even while he hung in front of his own murderers, he chose to forgive. He chose to forgive because he chose to live a life of forgiveness. He chose to forgive in that moment because he had chosen forgiveness long before that moment came.

And this is how he would have us live our lives today.

An Exercise in Forgiveness
If you take a moment to examine your life today, is it marked by the habits I mentioned above? Are you making forgiveness your default response to every offense? Are you forgiving in advance just like God does? Are you ready to forgive not just what has happened to you in the past but what will happen to you in the future as well?

If you examine your life and relationships, do they seem to be saturated with forgiveness

_______________________________________________

This post is part a series on forgiveness, based on a sermon called “Forgive and Be Forgiven”. You can listen to the sermon audio here (or right-click and “Save As…” to download)

Other posts in this series:

Part 1 – Don’t Be a Hypocrite
Part 2 – A Prayer to Be Recited?
Part 3 – Giving Up the Desire to Punish
Part 4 – Don’t Be Like the Unforgiving Servant
Part 5 – The Older Brother Syndrome
Part 6 – Living the Forgiving (and Forgiven) Life
Part 7 – What Forgiveness Isn’t…

Related posts:

1. Giving up the Desire to Punish Matt 6:12 says, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors….” and then Jesus follows that up in verses 14-15 with, “For if you forgive others their...
2. Don’t Be Like the Unforgiving Servant In Matthew 18 Peter engages in that famous exchange with Jesus. He asks, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven...
3. A Prayer to Be Recited? Matt. 6:7-8 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not...

And if you have not repented of very much, you will not be forgiven of very much and you will find it difficult to love others. This is what Jesus is getting at in Luke 7:47 when he says – “he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

Often this is a character trait of people like me, who grew up in the church as believers. In many people’s eyes – and especially in our own eyes – we’ve lived “better” lives than the rest of you. After all, there are a lot of bad things that we haven’t done.

But this perception is simply NOT TRUE. In reality, we just sin in less visible ways. We are like the older brothers in the Prodigal Son story….

The Prodigal and The Pleaser
You know the story… the prodigal, the younger brother left home in disobedience, blew all his money, and sinned in every way he could imagine. The “good son”, the older brother stayed home and obeyed his father, was wise with his money, and had high moral standards. And yet, in the end, it was the younger brother who knew he deserved nothing and begged for – and received – mercy. The older brother believed his father owed him for his good behavior.

Many of us who grew up in the church as believers think the same way:

1. We think highly of ourselves
We think so highly of ourselves on the basis of all the bad things we haven’t done. We haven’t pursued wild living. We didn’t do the drugs, we didn’t sleep around, we didn’t end up broke in the gutter… so we’re “better”.

2. Others think highly of us
We have a “good reputation”. We think of ourselves, and are thought of by others as “good people” who do very little wrong and must be on “good terms” with God.

3. We love to have people in our debt
We love to have someone in our debt. We love to make them feel – and let them know – that they owe us something. And they better work awfully hard in our presence to win back our favor! This also draws attention away from our own flaws. Our flaws, like the older brother’s are usually less visible, but from God’s perspective they are no less ugly.

4. We are likely to be punitive
We often believe the lie that we’re better. Other people have done bad things and should beg for our forgiveness for the rest of their lives. Those who have wronged us need to pay for what they’ve done! They need to pay their way up to our status level…. But that’s not the way grace works.

5. We’re likely to be ungracious
When someone wrongs us and asks for our forgiveness, we like to hold it over them for just a little bit longer. We’re don’t act like the father of the prodigal; we’re not out there looking for them and we’re not even looking down the road to see if they’re coming.

Do you see yourself in this description? I see myself.

As a result, our relationships are often characterized by the making of accusations and holding people to a standard of perfection that we ourselves only appear to meet. We must maintain our higher standard, protect our reputation… and so we are often ungracious and punitive.

Instead, our relationships should look like this. In the words of Thomas Oden:

“Where forgiveness pervades a relationship, it is no longer dominated by aggressive charges, counterclaims, and legalistic attempts to recover damages… The Lord’s Prayer makes it clear that we are bound to share with others the forgiveness we have received from God.”

_______________________________________________

This post is part a series on forgiveness, based on a sermon called “Forgive and Be Forgiven”. You can listen to the sermon audio here (or right-click and “Save As…” to download)

Other posts in this series:

Part 1 – Don’t Be a Hypocrite
Part 2 – A Prayer to Be Recited?
Part 3 – Giving Up the Desire to Punish
Part 4 – Don’t Be Like the Unforgiving Servant
Part 5 – The Older Brother Syndrome
Part 6 – Living the Forgiving (and Forgiven) Life
Part 7 – What Forgiveness Isn’t…

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And Jesus replies, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.” And then he continues on from there in a parable…
Matt 18:23-35

“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made.So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.

But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.

Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt.

So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

Too often we act like this unmerciful servant. We have been forgiven of much but we refuse to offer forgiveness to others. As we can see from this parable,  God the Father does not take kindly to unmerciful servants. The servant in the parable was delivered over to the jailer until he should pay his debt, and Jesus says, “So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” So to refuse to forgive is to live in captivity!

Forgive and you will be forgiven
Again and again Jesus drives home this point – refuse to forgive and you can’t experience forgiveness. It is a very blunt and plain idea:

Luke 6:37 – “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven;”

Mark 11:25 – “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”

These are very straightforward words. Forgive and you will be forgiven. And if you do not forgive, then you will not be forgiven…When it comes to forgiveness, it appears that God deals with us the way we deal with others. He measures us according to the measurement we use on others.

“He doesn’t say,” says C.S. Lewis, “that we are to forgive other people’s sins, provided they are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however mean, however often they are repeated. If we don’t we shall be forgiven none of our own.”

So who are you, having been forgiven for so much, to withhold forgiveness from someone else?

_______________________________________________

This post is part a series on forgiveness, based on a sermon called “Forgive and Be Forgiven”. You can listen to the sermon audio here (or right-click and “Save As…” to download)

Other posts in this series:

Part 1 – Don’t Be a Hypocrite
Part 2 – A Prayer to Be Recited?
Part 3 – Giving Up the Desire to Punish
Part 4 – Don’t Be Like the Unforgiving Servant
Part 5 – The Older Brother Syndrome
Part 6 – Living the Forgiving (and Forgiven) Life
Part 7 – What Forgiveness Isn’t…

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2. Giving up the Desire to Punish Matt 6:12 says, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors….” and then Jesus follows that up in verses 14-15 with, “For if you forgive others their...
3. Don’t Be A Hypocrite! We all want to be forgiven, but we don’t always want to forgive. CS Lewis said it well: “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to...

Jesus says “when you pray,” not “if you pray.” Prayer is assumed for those who live as citizens of the kingdom of God under his reign. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases, do not be like them. These people think that the more words they use, or the more times they repeat a prayer like a mantra, the more likely they are to be heard. We all know people like this, right?

Is This a Prayer to Be Recited?
So he tells them what not to do, and next he instructs them in how to pray. In Matt. 6:9-13 he instructs them to pray like this:

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.”

Jesus earlier speaks against “vain repetitions” and “empty phrases” – in other words, God is interested in the heart’s cry, not the “right” words said many times, as if they had some magic power. He’s warning against saying the same words over and over again until they are nearly meaningless. Ironically, anyone around my age who grew up in Canada and went to public school will attest to the fact that saying this prayer every morning got a little bit repetitious. In doing so we kind of missed the point that Jesus is teaching us how to pray, not teaching us a prayer to recite word for word.

And even though this is not so much a prayer to be recited as a prayer that models how to pray, it is not wrong to recite it. It is a good prayer obviously and no one should forbid you from saying it, but if we only ever recite it and never allow it to shape the rest of our prayers then we’ve missed the point.

The disciples say, “Teach us to pray” not “Teach us a prayer.”

_______________________________________________

This post is part a series on forgiveness, based on a sermon called “Forgive and Be Forgiven”. You can listen to the sermon audio here (or right-click and “Save As…” to download)

Other posts in this series:

Part 1 – Don’t Be a Hypocrite
Part 2 – A Prayer to Be Recited?
Part 3 – Giving Up the Desire to Punish
Part 4 – Don’t Be Like the Unforgiving Servant
Part 5 – The Older Brother Syndrome
Part 6 – Living the Forgiving (and Forgiven) Life
Part 7 – What Forgiveness Isn’t…

Related posts:

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This has massive implications! Think about it…

Defining Forgiveness
When you forgive, you stop feeling angry or resentful toward someone for an offense, flaw, or mistake. It means that you grant free pardon and to give up all claim of retribution. The modern sense is “to give up the desire to punish”.

Have you ever thought of forgiveness this way? Have you ever considered that when you refuse to forgive someone you are holding on to a desire to punish them? You desire a vengeance that belongs only to God.

Practicing Forgiveness
When we do forgive, we shouldn’t be hypocrites about it. Pretending to forgive is a very dangerous thing to do. Acting like we’re not feeling angry or resentful toward someone when we are actually angry and resentful is very unhealthy. Saying that we’ve forgiven someone when we actually haven’t will put us in a worse state than simply being unforgiving, because now we’ve added dishonesty, a lie, to the equation!

But this doesn’t mean that we are to just bury our anger and resentment deep inside and not talk about it. While it’s true that once we’ve forgiven someone we should no longer continue to make reference to those hurts, it doesn’t mean that you carry around your hurt secretly and indefinitely BEFORE it’s dealt with.

Hurt and anger need to be acknowledged and addressed, but once an offense has truly been forgiven, we are not to continue to bring it up as a guilt mechanism or as leverage against the person we’ve forgiven.

A Hard Task
I’m not saying that forgiveness is easy… It can be a hard task that requires a lot of effort and a lot of stress.

I’m not saying that forgiveness can be forced… No one can make the choice for you to forgive. That choice is yours alone.

I’m not saying that it always happens quickly… Sometimes it is a very long journey because you were hurt to such a degree that it has negatively affected every aspect of your life.

So you might need to express your hurts to a trusted friend or counselor so that you can discover the depth of your hurt or anger or disappointment so that when you forgive (like prayer, that you will forgive is assumed), it will be a complete forgiveness with no lingering bitterness.

We all need help to heal, but in order to heal we MUST pursue forgiveness. John Calvin said: “Those who refuse to forget the injuries which have been done to them devote themselves willingly and deliberately to destruction, and knowingly prevent God from forgiving them.”

He is not saying that you are beyond hope if an old unforgiving spirit raises its head from time to time in your life. Sins and circumstances will surely offer you opportunities to be hurt, and with each hurt an opportunity to refuse to forgive, to hold a grudge. This will happen in the course of life.

But if you find yourself often holding grudges, or if you have been holding a particular grudge for quite a while, then you should be very cautious to approach God for forgiveness because you will be making the plea of a hypocrite.

Remember: The power of your prayer for forgiveness is limited by the degree to which you obey the command to forgive.

And this is not some sort of bargain where you earn God’s favor or forgiveness BY forgiving others. The truth is you will find it incredibly difficult to receive God’s forgiveness if you persist in having an unforgiving spirit toward others.

_______________________________________________

This post is part a series on forgiveness, based on a sermon called “Forgive and Be Forgiven”. You can listen to the sermon audio here (or right-click and “Save As…” to download)

Other posts in this series:

Part 1 – Don’t Be a Hypocrite
Part 2 – A Prayer to Be Recited?
Part 3 – Giving Up the Desire to Punish
Part 4 – Don’t Be Like the Unforgiving Servant
Part 5 – The Older Brother Syndrome
Part 6 – Living the Forgiving (and Forgiven) Life
Part 7 – What Forgiveness Isn’t…

Related posts:

1. Don’t Be A Hypocrite! We all want to be forgiven, but we don’t always want to forgive. CS Lewis said it well: “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to...

The power of your prayer for forgiveness is limited by the degree to which you obey the command to forgive.

So we need to learn how to forgive, but first we need to learn about hypocrisy…

Give, Pray, Fast – But Don’t Be a Hypocrite!
The three most important acts of religious devotion for devout Jews in Jesus’ time were giving to the poor, prayer, and fasting. There is no doubt that these are all very good things. But like many things, they had become opportunities for prideful religion. They had become opportunities for people who craved the praise of men; good things had taken on some bad religious baggage.

But they were still good things, and Jesus doesn’t throw these good things out. Instead, he gives some instruction about all three of these in Matthew 6. It’s worth noticing that for each of these three good things – giving to the poor, prayer, and fasting – Jesus gives the same instruction. And that instruction is this: DON’T BE LIKE A HYPOCRITE

A hypocrite – a stage actor, a pretender, someone who plays a part, someone who pretends to be something they are not.

We shouldn’t be this way, Jesus says, because when we act this way we get a reward. But the reward we get is only from other human beings. They like us, “respect” us, think well of us, maybe even treat us with reverence. And this is a great reward… if you are earthly-minded. What could be better than reverence and affection from your fellow human beings, your coworkers, your fellow church members?

But Jesus says not to be a fake. Don’t be hypocrite. Don’t pretend to be something you’re not. Don’t do things in order to gain favor with other people.

1. Not when giving to the poor…
In the first part of Matt. 6, when you give to the poor, don’t go to the poor neighborhood in a bus that says “ON TOUR – Feeding the Poor! Look at me!”

Don’t do this – instead, do it in such a way that if nobody ever knows about it, that’s totally fine.

2. Not when fasting…
Later in Matt. 6 he talks about fasting and again he says DON’T BE LIKE A HYPOCRITE. When a hypocrite fasts, you know about it, because they work hard to look gloomy, they disfigure their faces…

“Oh, I’m so hungry!”

“Really? Why don’t you eat something?”

“Oh, I can’t – I’M FASTING! This is sooooooo hard! I haven’t eaten in days because I’m so holy and God is so pleased with me!!!”

Don’t do this – instead, do your best not to give any physical clues. Smile. Splash some water on your face.

3. Not when praying…
In Matt 6:5 Jesus talks about prayer in the same context:
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.”

Don’t be like the hypocrites – they pray loudly in the most public of places. “Oh Lord, thank you for making me such a holy and humble person! I am your chosen servant! Let everyone know my deeds and praise me – I mean YOU… let everyone see my deeds and praise you…”

Don’t do this –instead, Jesus says, “when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Go into your room, shut the door, pray to your Father who is in secret… We are to pray in a way that glorifies God, not in a way that brings glory, popularity, or fame to ourselves – not like hypocrites. God prefers sincere plainspoken words to precise articulate speech from a hypocrite’s heart.

Guarding Against Pride
The principle in all three cases – when giving to the poor, when praying, and when fasting – is that when we are about to do something that will gain us some attention or glory from others, we are to do it as secretly as possible. This is to guard us against pride. Pride is always a mechanism for stealing glory from God, and we are never to do that.

And in each case there is a reward at stake. In each case we must choose what kind of reward we will pursue. If we are like the hypocrites, we will certainly receive a reward. This reward will be the praise of men. But if we do these things in the way that Jesus commands – if we give to the poor in secret, if we pray without an audience, if we fast and no one knows – we will receive a very different reward. We will be rewarded by God.

_______________________________________________

This post is part a series on forgiveness, based on a sermon called “Forgive and Be Forgiven”. You can listen to the sermon audio here (or right-click and “Save As…” to download)

Other posts in this series:

Part 1 – Don’t Be a Hypocrite
Part 2 – A Prayer to Be Recited?
Part 3 – Giving Up the Desire to Punish
Part 4 – Don’t Be Like the Unforgiving Servant
Part 5 – The Older Brother Syndrome
Part 6 – Living the Forgiving (and Forgiven) Life
Part 7 – What Forgiveness Isn’t…

No related posts.

I have felt this many times, and it seems I am always dumb to its intended purpose. God does not withdraw his presence, but from our sense of his presence. And in these times we choose to believe that he is still there and we act upon his promises and commands. This act of faith is counted to us as righteousness just as it was for Abraham.

And he does this – as he does all other things – for his own glory, and so that we do not become like children of privilege who know that they are fortunate only in theory. Children of privilege are seldom in need and are rarely required to face their own faults.

But God is the type of father who allows us to make foolish decisions in order to have us learn, in practice, what it means to trust him. He allows us these adventures in error in order to remind us that what good is found in us has only Him as its source.

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Budding writers, take note… here are some highlights…

“We’re not in the business of selling you newspapers,” a former editor of mine liked to say. “We’re in the business of buying your time.”

The reader has a thousand other things he could be doing with his time, and a thousand willing vendors eager to fill it. The writer, alas, generally has nothing better he could be doing. At any rate he cannot, if he discovers one lot of readers is not to his liking, turn them in for another.

You do not do the reader a favour by writing something for him to read. He does you a favour by reading it.

People choose a writer, that is, rather in the same way they choose a friend. As a rule, most of us don’t like to be shouted at. We’re disinclined to spend time with people who are always angry, or perpetually glib for that matter. Certainly we’re unlikely to be persuaded by them, which is surely the point of the exercise: if a writer’s first duty is to be read, his second is to bring the reader to a point of view he did not already hold.

Read the whole thing here.

No related posts.

The proper activity of professing Christians who disagree with one another is neither to ignore, nor to conceal, nor even to minimize their differences, but to debate them.

We are “to maintain the truth in love,” being neither truthless in our love, nor loveless in our truth, but holding the two in balance.

—From John Stott, Christ the Controversialist (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1970), pp. 22, 19.

No related posts.

No related posts.

Take naysaying, for example – the dull art of objecting to something so obsessively that you forget what you approve of. We church folk seem especially prone to this behavior.

I actually don’t think naysaying is inherently bad; in fact, on occasion, I engage in it. But this engagement is governed by certain principles. Absent these, it becomes a unique brand of herd mentality lacking the ability to stop and perform a reality check. Unburdened by principle, strident advocates of naysaying quickly adopt a line of logic that goes like this: “Someone I trust says this is bad so I don’t need to waste my time looking into it. I can say it’s bad with confidence. I can even quote the bad parts of it in order to deter others from looking at it!”

The Birth of the “Anti-book”
And here’s how it usually works: First, a trusted scout reads the source material. If, as expected, the source material contains some error, they return as heralds to report their findings. Next, the shepherds (pastors, bloggers, church leaders) are informed of the findings via a blog or a much-forwarded email.

These shepherds naturally take up the task of redistributing the information to their own flocks. In the process they appear to be doing the hard work of discernment, while in fact they may have done none. Whether their “flock” sits before them in pews from week to week or is only accessible via electronic media makes little difference. They are often less a flock to be cared for than a distribution network to be exploited. The distributed findings are accepted as damning proof against someone the recipients of said findings themselves have probably never heard or read.

Finally, if the scout is wildly successful, his efforts will culminate in the publishing of a book. No longer do these words exist solely as pixels on a screen. The incarnation of these findings in tangible form has an undeniable legitimizing effect. The publication itself is usually a scrapbook of sorts that claims to be authoritative on all matters relating to the persons or ideas that are under attack. The problem is the book, and indeed the entire process leading up to it, contains only the most inflammatory sections from other sources and arranges them in such a way that all context is lost.

No matter. This publication becomes a sword and standard in the hands of the assembled army, consolidating a unity of purpose that further fuels their efforts. In addition it is also passed around as a sort of gospel tract to outsiders, ensuring the recipient that reading the book will be of great assistance in correcting their misguided theology.

The climax of this crusade is a chorus of condemnation comprised mostly of people who haven’t read the source material but want to appear as if they have.

Avoiding Traps and Hazards
When you encounter a book like I’ve described above, if you begin to read it and find that you haven’t heard of or read anything by half (or more) of the authors you’re reading about, STOP READING, PUT DOWN THE BOOK, and most certainly do not distribute the book to others with an encouragement to read it.

I once witnessed someone make a strong objection to a proposed mission statement based on the fact that it contained the word “reconciliation.” The objector reasoned thus: “reconciliation” is a word used frequently by Rick Warren, whom he considered a heretic; therefore the proposal was to be rejected.

This clearly illustrates the danger of being blindly against someone’s ideology and naively hyper-protective of your own. It is also evidence that the person is spending more time reading anti-books than the Good Book whose honour they claim to be defending.

Often people are drawn into the practice of unprincipled naysaying because they lack the theological language to express themselves in any other way. In addition, their targets are often people who possess both theological confidence and rhetorical strength and this can be an intimidating façade to challenge.

We do need to confront each other, but we need to do so humbly and with much grace. Simply telling each other what we think is right and wrong is fruitless if we’re not standing on the word of God. The last thing we need is warring armies of sycophants, lining up behind the man or woman they believe to be most right.

No one, regardless of his or her status among those you trust, is infallible. Absolute trust in anyone leads very quickly to cultish devotion.

John Piper didn’t die for your sins. Neither did Brian McLaren.

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Desiring God, Revised Edition John Piper

Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis

Here We Stand!: A Call from Confessing Evangelicals for a Modern Reformation James Montgomery Boice and Benjamin E. Sasse

The War of the Worlds H. G. Wells

The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien

INSTITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION… John Calvin

Lectures to My Students Charles Haddon Spurgeon

‎The Hero With a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Stephen Chbosky

The Pursuit of God A. W. Tozer

Chronicles of Narnia Box Set C S Lewis

Dynamics Of Spiritual Life Richard F. Lovelace

The Problem Of Pain C S Lewis

Pagan Christianity? Frank Viola, George Barna

The Naked Gospel Andrew Farley

One Thousand Gifts Ann Voskamp

The Gifts of Imperfection Brene Brown Ph.D.

Abba’s Child Brennan Manning

Let the Nations Be Glad! John Piper

Radical Reformission Mark Driscoll

Don’t Waste Your Sorrows Paul E. Billheimer

The Communist Manifesto Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Irresistible Revolution Shane Claiborne

Radical David Platt

A Tale of Three Kings Gene Edwards

The Screwtape Letters C S Lewis

Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond

The Holiness of God R. C. Sproul

Beyond Good and Evil Friedrich Nietzsche

Reason within the Bounds of Religion… Nicholas Wolterstoff

The Crucified God Jurgen Moltmann

The Doors of the Sea David Bentley Hart

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Ok, this seems somewhat unremarkable, right? But it's not. Guesses?

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Here’s what Doug has to say:

You have a button in front of you, placed there by a helpful genie. But instead of giving you the standard three wishes (and why doesn’t anybody ever wish for ten wishes?), the genie has limited your options.

If you push the button, the real income of all the “have-nots” in the world will double overnight. Their health care will be twice as good as it is now, their disposable income will be twice as large, their houses will be twice as nice, and so on. But another consequence of pushing this button will also be the fact that the “haves” will see their prosperity increase ten-fold. They will all be ten times richer, thus enabling them to swank around all day.

To spell it out, this means that the divide between the rich and poor will widen, but will do so in a way that leaves the poor undeniably better off.

This is your ethical “dilemma,” and part of your test is whether or not you even think of it as a dilemma. Would you refuse to push that button out of hard principle? Would you push it, but with a guilty conscience? Or would you, like me, push it while whistling a cheerful air, with your hat on the side of your head?

If you would not push it, or if you would push it reluctantly, then that urgent yearning for social justice that you feel all the time in your gut is not compassion at all, but cancerous envy. It is evil. It is a deadly sin that must be mortified. You don’t love the poor at all — you hate the rich, and you want to use the poor as a club. And why would this malevolent genie want to take your precious club away?

Pretty interesting dilemma, yes? Let’s hear your thoughts.

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Hospitality is at the center of the Gospel. A life of hospitality is essential to the life of a follower of Jesus. “Hospitality condenses a lot of the meaning of the Gospel.”

A Rich Tradition
There is a rich tradition of hospitality in scripture:

Genesis 18 – Abraham and Sarah – Unexpected guests are offered hospitality… food and rest. They discover they’re hosting angels and receive a message of joy and hope.

John 1 – Jesus was not received hospitably but he was hospitable. He welcomed people and fed them.

Luke 24 – The Road to Emmaus. When he breaks the bread they recognize him.

Rev 3:20 – Jesus standing at the door knocking.

Eden – humans hosted in a garden, Exodus – food from heaven, Jesus says he himself is the bread of life, the bread form heaven…

A Powerful Apologetic
In the first century hospitality marked the gospel as authentic because people from diverse ethnic backgrounds shared meals together and treated each other hospitably. This was a great witness to the watching world. It was a very powerful apologetic.

Almost everything happened around hospitality and shared meals. In the context of hospitality they nurtured new believers. It wasn’t easy even then. They had to remind each other to remain hospitable. The overlap of household and church is where hospitality happened.

But it was not just a Christian practice. Hospitality was generally viewed as a pillar of morality on which the universe rested. It was seen as a form of mutual aid and was often connected to the divine. But only Christianity tied it so closely. The ancient church was convinced that opening their doors to the poor and helpless was the way of Jesus but also did it because they might be entertaining angels. (Heb 13:2)

Our welcome to strangers will reenact God’s welcome to us. We welcome one another as Christ welcomed us. The practice of hospitality roots us in mundane things: food, security, shelter…

Hospitality is at the heart of congregational and pastoral care and outreach and worship. Christian hospitality is different. It isn’t a way of reinforcing social standing but a way of negating it. We are to welcome everyone, not just people who are able to return a favor.

Protestant Reformers recovered the practice. We’ve domesticated it, turned it into hosting only family and friends. The loss of a biblical hospitality practices was at the root of the formation of welfare and other social services.

Why Recovery of Hospitality is Important
1. Gives us a fresh lens to think about our faith

2. Crucial to the credibility of the gospel. People today are convinced less by rational arguments (although those too are important) than lived-out beliefs

3. The number of people who are coming to faith from non-Christian backgrounds. It encourages personal mentoring, accountability and relationships that are formed through hospitality

4. It helps to reconnect church and home. “The front door of the home is the side door of the church.”

5. Our culture is open to mystery (in fact, dangerously so) and as Christians we have a window into the ultimate mystery.

Challenges when we embrace this practice
Why do we hesitate? What makes it hard?

It rearranges our lives and lifestyles. Our lives are more exposed. When we invite people and share ourselves it exposes our deficiencies and weaknesses. It unravels our attempts to project a certain image. Vulnerability. Hospitality stretches us.

It is riskier today; we can’t always welcome everyone. But people don’t always need a social worker or a therapist; they need a friend, someone to care for them.

Summary
Consensus here is that this was a lot to take in for one session… and I haven’t done the session justice with these notes. I’ll be getting and reading her book and there’s a study guide too.

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What is “ideological church”? How does it undermine mission? Ideology is the study of how ideas form social groups. When we church plant we are forming a sociological group. We gather people around a way of life.

How do churches get ideologized? We gather people around a vision that often subtly puts down other churches in order to differentiate. But why not state what we’re for rather than organizing by what we’re against?

1 Cor. 3:22 – whether Paul or Apollos or Ciaphas, all belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God. Paul is calling us out of ideology and ideological church.

We’ve become known by what we’re against. That’s the kiss of death for mission. When we do that we gather other people who are mad about the same thing. We just seem prone to manufacturing ideology. When we ideologize we only attract those who already agree with us and cut off the people who don’t. It helps to drum up business when we sloganize. It draws people of like mind.

People coalesce around ideological objects. The problem with this is that we lose you reason for being once the object we’re against disappears.

Four signs a church is being ideologized

1. Organizes around what we’re against. Us vs. them
2. A perverse enjoyment about the things you believe. “Whew, I’m glad we’re not them!” “See, we’re right after all!”
3. The idea that was good originally gets removed from practice
4. It works to distance us from on-the-ground real life. It distracts us from living the belief in any way.

We must break the cycle of ideological church. Ideology shapes us to have a posture over against someone else. We simply become antagonistic.

Related posts:

1. re:CALL – 2011 Church Planting Congress #recallcpc I’m in Winnipeg this week at the 2011 Church Planting Congress. Here are some of the featured speakers: Christine Pohl, David Fitch, Gary Nelson, and Skye Jethani. More info on...

Luke 15 – The Parable of the Prodigal Son. The younger son represents consumer Christianity. He doesn’t want his father; he wants his father’s stuff.

Commodification: We have come to believe that nothing has inherent value. In a consumer culture everything becomes a commodity. Divorce, abortion, slavery, pornography, prostitution… these are all examples of commodification. People have no inherent value other than what they can provide for us. There are more slaves in the world today than any other time in human history. This is possible when we see people as having no inherent value.

And we tend to see God this way. He has no inherent value other than what he can do FOR us. God revolves around me.

Alienation occurs when we separate a product from the means of its production. We begin to believe that these things only exist to satisfy our desires.

All of our production of bibles, bible studies, and other materials aren’t making a dent in biblical illiteracy. Why? We only want to know what God can do for us now. We’re not interested in the grand story. God is a product we consume; we only want what we can get from him. “We’ve made Jesus into the duct tape/WD40 combo pack. He’s what you need to fix just about everything.”

Consumer Christians are fat Christians. So we try to give them to “exercise”… “get on mission”. So they come to believe that they’re supposed to be doing something FOR God and when people “get” this we consider it a victory. This is an overreaction to consumer Christianity. We’re turning Christian consumers into unbalanced Christian activists.

We have made mission into an idol. We’ve made the mission of God into something more important than God himself. We must be careful that we don’t so overreact to consumerism in our churches that we fall off the other side. We can’t make activism into an idol.

God doesn’t need you to accomplish his mission! Does he prefer you to obey? Yes, but your value and significance does not depend on what or how much you do.

Implications
John 21 – Jesus asks: Do you love me? Then feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep. Our first task is not to call people to a mission, but to call people to Christ. The sheep belong to him, not to us.

When we make mission the “be all, end all” we tend to take the same calling, our calling and make it universal for everybody. But it’s not our job to impose a calling on them; Jesus will do that. Our job is to lead them to him so that they can hear his call to them.

The Dilemma
We do have “fat Christians” but what’s the solution? Lead them to Christ and then leave them there. Take the mantle of calling off our shoulders and put it back on His shoulders. They are his sheep; let us feed them well.

Summary
This was unexpected and is bound to be unpopular with some attendees, but it had a much-needed corrective tone. We do tend to overreact, thinking that our response to negative trends must be completely absent of the characteristics of that which we are reacting against.

Has mission been made into an idol? In some ways and in some places, yes it has. I would venture to say that the CPC is one of those places where this danger exists. Skye’s talk runs quite contrary to the thrust of the previous CPC.

***Recommended as a good companion to Skye’s talk: “Church Planters and Missionolatry” [He didn't mention it and I’m not sure he’s read it, but his talk reminded me of it.]

Related posts:

1. Skye Jethani – “Sight and Imagination” #recallcpc Session one of this year’s Church Planting Congress in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Jethani starts by inviting the conference attendees to sing Amazing Grace together. “Was blind but now I see…” Is...
2. Roger Helland – Missional Spirituality: Embodying God’s Love From the Inside Out #recallcpc Roger serves as the district executive coach of 26 Baptist General Conference churches in Alberta with a mission to help establish and empower missional, disciple-making leaders and churches. Worskshop: What...

Worskshop: What sustained Jesus for mission? What is the connection between spirituality and mission? What does the Great Commandment say about the structure and substance of a “missional spirituality”? What practices will enlarge our hearts for mission, disciple-making and church planting?

Emil Brunner – “The church exists by mission as fire exists by burning.”

John Frame has a book coming in 2012 called “Missional Theology”. “Missional” is not a fad or church growth theology. It’s not going away. It is embraced by a wide variety of theological perspectives.

“The North American church culture is not spiritual enough to reach our culture.” – Reggie McNeal. Does this imply that the culture is more spiritual than the church? How is he defining “spiritual”?

John 4:31-35 – Jesus and the woman at the well… The sustaining food of mission is to do the will of the Father. A missional spirituality feeds and forms mission.

We are discipled by our culture by consumerism, celebrities, technology, etc. These shape people’s spirituality. And so we need “counter practices”.

“Temple Spirituality”
Temple spirituality believes that if we run people through enough programs, they’ll come out the other end “spiritual”, equipped, and capable.

Temple spirituality says that ministry occurs on the weekend at the church building. This is a “temple fixation” rather than teaching people to experience God on the road, as they go. Helland says that people are not shaped by temple spirituality… this is what leads to the lives of Christians being no different than those of the larger culture.

Video: The Missional Church Made Simple

Jesus spent more time on the road than he did in the temple. He didn’t try to transform culture; he took on the culture. It’s not about doing missional things but about being a missional people. It’s both an identity and a worldview shift.

Spiritual formation is about enlarging the size of our heart. Teaching is transformational to a degree but unless we put these into practice, they are just ideas and won’t amount to much. Practice is part of teaching.

There is no place for a personal piety that doesn’t work out in actual mission. The issue is not methodology. It’s about being a missional people. How do I become like Jesus in my context? If there’s no evidence of transformation in our own lives, then we have no message for others. Don’t just study the bible; push bible studies into bible practices.

Summary
Helland’s workshop emphasized the importance of both teaching and practice in forming a missional spirituality. Missional spirituality is embodied love. Obedience and remaining in Christ are key practices for discipleship.

Takeaway quote: “If there’s no evidence of transformation in our own lives, then we have no message for others.”

Related posts:

1. Gary Nelson – “Jeremiah 29 and Psalm 137″ #recallcpc Dr. Gary Nelson is the President of Tyndale University College & Seminary and author of “Borderland Churches: A Congregations’ introduction to Missional Living” (Chalice Press, 2008). The church he attends...