Awesome. I could hardly have hoped for more. Ray is the well known, highly respected Bible scholar, author and pastor of Immanuel Church in Nashville.

It reminded me a lot of a conversation Mari and I had with another great pastor-scholar,  Dr. Pete Alwinson, from Key Life (Steve Brown’s ministry in Florida). That was many years ago. Marietta and I were in a similar transition then, and pastor Pete listened, and was as gracious as pastor Ray in his affirmation and support.

Men like this, in their positions, are rare.

A lot can be learned from this short article, for pastors and churchgoers. Look at Ray’s story. You see imperfections, transparency, authenticity, which is so very encouraging. There’s hope for the rest of us! Ray’s a gifted teacher, but plain spoken. You can see more for yourself as you check it out. And I urge you to get ahold of his podcasts (The Real Jesus series is a great place to start) and hear his way with words.

An attorney friend of mine, well versed in ministry, recently saw Ray at a men’s conference. He mentioned that the message was “great.” And what he said next is what I’ve come to expect. “Ray,” he said “is different from most speakers.” Exactly.

“I’m an idiot, my future is incredibly bright, and anybody can get in on this.”

A mantra at Pastor Ray’s church goes something like this: “I’m an idiot, my future is incredibly bright, and anybody can get in on this.” It’s actually printed on the back of their business card I believe. Self deprecating? Yes. Humble, yep. Different? For sure. But here’s the deal: The statement points you to two other things that are a huge part of the culture of Immanuel Church (btw, both my recently college graduated kids are really involved at Immanuel, and are thriving).

1. Gospel + Safety + Time. Its the heartbeat of Immanuel Nashville, and it bears fruit, because…it’s emminently Biblical. I’ll steal from and paraphrase pastor Ray with a few of my own thoughts: GOSPEL is the good news for bad people, through the finished work of Christ on the cross.  Not what we do for God, but what God has done for us.  SAFETY is a desired trait of the environment there that people encounter.  Not one where people feel pressured, accused or cornered, but a refuge where anyone can grow.  Plus TIME, because no one changes quickly.  Discipleship, spiritual growth, requires the space for people to live their lives amidst the long lasting relationships and patience required for substantial transformation.  Out of this “gospel culture” comes a hyper focus on the saving work of JESUS, a loving and empowering COMMUNITY, and a clear MISSION to both comfort sufferers in their affliction and multiply disciples who will do the same. Check out immanuelnashville.com for more, or Ray’s book The Gospel.
2. I love this: Pastor Ray always says “you can be impressive, or you can be known.” Stop. Now…roll it over in your mind a bit! It’s a statement too pregnant for me to unpack here. Suffice it to say, in a world where we’ve become outrageously good at impressing people with how authentic, transparent, and cool we are…well… hopefully you get the idea. This means the opposite. And it’s disarming. And I learned a long time ago, it’s so much easier to just be known, as opposed to putting on faces. One other thought here…to let yourself be known as you really are, takes trust, it takes…gospel+safety+time.

So that’s a bit about Ray. A man who, when you attend his church or hear him speak, you often come away saying, “wow…I really feel like that was so close to how Jesus himself would’ve spoken.” A guy you should know. Check out the article here, there are plenty of takeaways in it. And you can see a video here, of Ray saying a few kind words about our endeavors at The Theology Project. Much luv y’all!

How Ray Ortlund Became Foster Father to a Generation of Church Planters

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I have a friend who I’d say is a humanist. A naturalist. And agnostic. Very bright educated guy, and successful. We talk business. We talk theology. I work on converting him. I’m grateful to know him. I’m happy he thinks highly of The Theology Project, because we respect each other, and because he loves to simply…think. He’s been on the boards of many non-profits, and knows a thing or two about that world.

He chided me recently because I had done a poor job (really no job at all), raising funds for my recent endeavor. He pointed out the sort of rule of thumb I’d told many of my own clients through the years…”Executive Directors need to spend half their time raising funds for their non-profit” etc etc…So I lamely explained my reasons. My reluctance, my loathing, etc. for asking for people’s resources. I noted the not-so-great taste left in my mouth after many years helping many non-profits do that, and so forth. I believe in our mission, so I have no problem believing folks should get behind it.

But often, leaders will tell you that fund raising is not really what floats their boat. Our passion is the the mission, not seeking donors. I’ve worked on more donor and partner activity for ministries than anyone ever should. For churches, para-church ministries, outreaches, missions, TV, best-selling authors, musicians, etc. including many small, mid-size and some of the largest Christian organizations on the planet. And I’ve done work for good secular organizations too. So I get it. I know the drill.

Still, I had a Theology Project donor letter on my desk for weeks. Couldn’t bring myself to send it out. Sometimes leaders are not the smartest. We struggle.

But then I saw this. Another batch of research, to compel us to action (here’s my mashup, with my own emphasis added):

“only 17 percent of Christians who consider their faith important and attend church regularly, actually have a biblical worldview.”

That’s a big deal.

And if these are the serious believers, then what about the rest?!

This latest research found:

“strong agreement with ideas unique to nonbiblical worldviews among practicing Christians… it is striking how pervasive some of these beliefs are…”

And here’s what the report concludes:

“The challenge with competing worldviews is that there are fragments of similarities to some Christian teachings and some may recognize and latch on to these ideas, not realizing they are distortions of biblical truths. The call for the Church …is to help Christians dissect popular beliefs before allowing them to settle in their own ideology…Informed thinking is essential to developing and maintaining a healthy biblical worldview and faith as well as being able to have productive dialogue with those who espouse other beliefs.”

Hey, it happens to me all the time. The world’s system insidiously creeps into my thinking. I even at times let it, invite it. Ugh! Then like many (most?) of my believing compatriots, I look and act like some sort of pagan Christian.

I don’t live and work in a sort of Christian bubble. I’m out there in the real world of the arts and business (as well as ministry) every day. And the onslaught is challenging. Relentless. “Conform to us!” is the world’s cry, it’s demand.

But Psalm 119:130 says “The entrance of Your words gives light; It gives understanding to the simple.” I don’t know about you, but I qualify as “the simple.” I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again…the more I worked for and with ministries, best-selling Christian authors, and leading publishers, the more I saw the need for good theology. In my own life and in the Church.

More than ever, we all need accuracy, definition and right thinking in our faith. I foment spiritual revolution for our time. A persistent loving provocation to think and act accurately, theologically. Christ-centric. Gospel-centric. (Please note I said spiritual revolution. Though you’d never think it from what is seen daily on Twitter, Scripture makes it clear that we are not at war with flesh and blood (Eph. 6:12). To follow Jesus means a walk of love, gentleness and humility to all, within and outside of the Church. And especially in regard to those with whom we may find ourselves in profound disagreement. To disagree with grace, love, understanding, kindness, and reason should be a mark of a Christian).

One of the richest books of the Bible, Ephesians, declares: “Be very careful then, how you live” (Eph. 5:15). The original language carries with it a meaning of caution, accuracy and exactness. While it’s always been important for believers to think and act with passion and precision, today’s high tech, media-soaked, digital world makes it more needful than ever.

I pray for a landscape where Scripture informs each nuance of our thought, yielding rich lives as Christ’s distinct people, glorifying and enjoying God forever.

Yeah. Basically, I’m on a mission.

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In our tech and media soaked mobile world, from layperson to leader, within the church and outside of it, many teeter on the brink of breakdown, digital dysfunction. The onslaught of tech is way ahead of what the church is ready to handle. The worlds of communication and scientific advancement are overwhelming our ability to cope practically, emotionally, morally, ethically.

Things are messy, we need answers, yesterday.

“I was suddenly faced with what I had been distracting myself from. Resting for a moment against the trunk of a tree, I stopped, and suddenly found myself bent over, convulsed with the newly present pain, sobbing.”
“An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images has rendered us manic information addicts. It broke me. It might break you, too.”
– Andrew Sullivan
http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-technology-almost-killed-me.html

Quoting Sullivan, Russell Moore then commented as follows:
“I was most intrigued by Sullivan’s proposals for the church to be a haven in a digitally exhausted world. ‘If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation,” Sullivan writes. “’Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasm, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day, when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary.’ He is exactly right.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/09/21/jesus-doesnt-care-how-many-twitter-followers-you-have/

A friend of mine in ministry once held up a cell phone and a tablet and declared “you’re looking at today’s moral compass.”

Another friend, Pastor Ray Ortlund from Nashville, says this: “The need of our times is nothing less than the re-Christianization of our churches, according to the gospel alone, in both doctrine and culture, by Christ himself. …though what a renewed church will look like might, at present, lie beyond our imaginations…” (He then goes on to reveal some of what that can look like). That’s from his book The Gospel: How The Church Portrays The Beauty of Christ, published by Crossway.

What and how we think about God = our future

Now, I’m a recently empty nest dad, a worker, writer, erstwhile pastor, and occasional speaker. I’m a pilgrim not a trained theologian, but I care deeply about what we think about God.

In fact I’m fully persuaded that when it comes to thinking about God and thinking about technology, there is a connection. The former illuminates the way to navigating the murky and often dangerous waters of the latter. But what does this “thinking about God” mean to everyday people like you and me? Let me explain.

Wayne Grudem, in a presidential address to the Evangelical Theological Society, nearly twenty years ago (JETS 43/1 (March 2000) 5–26, II.1) made a compelling case that God wants evangelical scholars to write more books and articles that tell the church what the whole Bible teaches us about current problems and questions facing the church. This is needed now and especially in the new world rushing in upon us. I was misty as I read Grudem’s document, as point after point resonated deeply with feelings I’ve had for years, yet am so very inadequate for. The Harvard educated scholar goes on to say that he believes the Bible was written so it could be understood by ordinary believers, and that intelligent believers who are not technically trained in exegesis, but who will seek diligently to find the teaching of scripture, can do quite a good job.

Grudem lists a host of real world issues, facing every church today, needing well formulated doctrinal guidance and honest evangelical consensus. How great would it be to bring gospel clarity both to the world and to the often tossed-to-and-fro-by-every-wind-of-doctrine church! Having said that, I would posit that there is not only a paucity of evangelical theological academic precision being brought to bear on some of today’s most difficult and pressing questions (as Grudem pleads), but also that there is a gap between those in academia and our pastors and congregations/lay persons.

Grudem makes excellent points. But I have found too, what Laura Simmons points out (in her fine book Creed Without Chaos, which is about one of my heroes, Dorothy Sayers). “The tendency of laypeople,” Simmons says, “is often to assume that because they are not trained theologians, they therefore have nothing to offer in the theological realm.”

I suggest, that we must effect a grassroots change in that regard. It is going to take a mass movement, head to toe (Eph. 4:16), to stem the tides of today’s myriad serious church challenges. But it begins with a spark. Dante wrote something like “from a small spark comes a great flame.” So called laypersons have an immeasurable amount to offer in the theological realm, as the Bible shows (Acts 4:13, 1 Cor. 1:20-29) and history has demonstrated.

In his review of Laura Simmons’ book, Robert K. Johnston, professor of theology and culture, Fuller Theological Seminary wrote: “As the institutional church falters, lay theology becomes increasingly important, infusing dogma with new life. In twentieth-century England, the list of such lay thinkers was impressive–Chesterton, Lewis, Eliot, and the least known of this group, Dorothy Sayers.”

Where are the masses of serious lay theologians we so need? I would suggest our churches, universities and colleges, are potentially filled with them, if we would but help them arise!

Grudem is looking for those who have doctoral level training in Old and New Testament exegesis to lead the way via their training. Amen. Twice Grudem asks whether it has become “true that the more people know about how to interpret the Bible with academic precision, the less willing they are to tell the church what the whole Bible says.” Is that a reflection on our culture? Are we timid to present our dogma, not preaching the very truths that are our best hope of creating an inroad into the hardened confused culture all around us?

Ephesians 5:15, speaking of really basic everyday life…conversation, sex, money and so forth, says “Be very careful, then, how you live…”

How do we fit THAT fit in with social media, our cellphone-gods, the internet, etc.? Read the whole chapter 5 of Ephesians, hear the exhortation, feel the conviction and strength of the dogma therein.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Martin Luther, George Whitefield, John Wesley and John Calvin, is their loving ruthlessness, when it came to dogma. A secret to their power was that that they understood “the dogma is the drama” (as Dorothy Sayers said). If Christ is the heart, surely the dogma is the blood pulsing through the veins of the gospel narrative. Just read Wesley on holiness, the cross and resurrection, Calvin on Romans, or Edwards on sin and forgiveness, as they bring an unapologetic apologetic. And don’t’ forget the majestic minds of Augustine and other Fathers, who also were bold in the narrative of the dogma. Understanding and articulating the core and often shocking message of our historical, Biblical, orthodox faith, as it applies to our new world, is critical. Not just by a few who are paid to do so, but by each of us. An economy of trickle down Bible-nomics won’t suffice.

All that to say…
• Nothing worthwhile is easy, especially when it comes to the narrow road, the narrow gate. (Matt. 7)
• Making a difference in our often upside down world, by knowing and walking with God via the Scriptures, must be led NOT ONLY by our theologians and pastors…
• But by each of us: By YOU.

2 Timothy 2:15 says “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” John Calvin said “The word is the instrument by which the illumination of the Spirit is dispensed.” (Institutes I.IX.3). Jesus said “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matt. 4:4).

So come broken, messed up (join the club), God-seeking. You lead the way in your own world: Become a lover, student, and a do-er of God’s Word. Lead others to this source of life. Search the Scriptures to speak to the craziness of our age. Do it by faith in the God of the Scriptures. Do it with your Helper, the Holy Spirit. Watch and be amazed!

As Ray Ortlund says: “We didn’t ruin God’s plan; we are God’s plan!”

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Resident Aliens
Life in the Christian Colony,

(and also) Where Resident Aliens Live: Exercises for Christian Practice

both by Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon

Bad Religion
How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Ross Douthat

No Place for Truth
or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? by David F. Wells

Your God Is Too Safe
Rediscovering the Wonder of a God You Can’t Control by Mark Buchanan

Systematic Theology
by Wayne Grudem

Still Sovereign
Thomas Schreiner, D.A. Carson, J. I. Packer, John Piper, and Wayne Grudem.

The Ale Boy’s Feast: A Novel (The Auralia Thread)
by Jeffrey Overstreet (Just finished the series of 4 actually)

Would love to hear what a few of you are enjoying…

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I began reading to my kids before they were out of the womb, just ‘cause I couldn’t wait to read to them, as my parents had done for me. Decades after the fact, I still have warm feelings of mom and dad reading Thornton W. Burgess (Reddy Fox, Sammy Jay, etc), Dr. Seuss, Curious George, and many more great books to us kids. We made a big deal of our trips to the library to pick out the next ones. My mom loved to tell the story of when I was in 4th grade. I read William A. Nolen’s “The Making of A Surgeon” and was sure I wanted to be a doctor. I took a reading test and passed at a college level. Mom’n’dad were proud! I read encyclopedias constantly for fun.

Books have always been a great friend. No wonder I ended up doing a lot of work in publishing, writing, marketing, preaching, music and so forth. One of my favorite writers, Dorothy Sayers, wrote advertising, mysteries, theater and theology. And my kids are both voracious readers. My daughter was chosen to tutor other children in reading…when she was in first grade. She and her brother love history, theology, fiction, biography, science, Shakespeare. They enjoy it all. I taught them to build personal libraries since kindergarten, and they each have…too many books.

Read. For yourself and for others. Don’t make the mistake of only reading to your kids at their current level either. I began quoting Calvin (John, the theologian par excellence, not Calvin and Hobbes the comic strip duo…although we read all the C&H strips and books too!) and Jonathon Edwards to my kids when they were still learning vocab like “see spot run.” We had great fun while dad (who was also reading and learning new things) did his best to explain and exposit hard passages to them, introducing philosophy, theology, critical thinking, hermeneutics, etc. while they were just out of diapers. Every moment was a teaching and reading moment. Today, both children are away on scholarship at fine universities, and both have prospered from the joy and power of reading well.

Nowadays, the internet makes it possible to find amazing books at ridiculous prices. Especially if you buy nice, used hardcovers. And of course, tablets and eReaders are a whole other world of reading. So find yourself a good book, and blow your mind…(-:

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Here I am with a couple other ridiculous drummers…Zoro, who’s played with Lenny Kravitz, Bobby Brown and many more, and Venzella Joy, who you can find traveling the globe with Beyoncé or playing with Jay Z.

Zoro and Venzella Joy are strong believers, and both said yes to playing on my next album, These Songs Vol. II.

Should be fun!

(And a shout out to the guy on the right in my photo with Zoro. That’s another good friend, Lee Gessner, who’s been publisher for such amazing men as John MacArthur, David Jeremiah and Billy Graham).

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Thoughtful Christian believers understand that there is good and bad theology, and fruit of each. But this isn’t just a matter of religion. Even respectable unbelievers — the atheists or agnostics among us — presumably have investigated their subject before deciding there is no god, or that god is unknowable or however they characterize god. That exploration, the study of the existence and nature of God is, in essence, theology.

However we reach our conclusions about God, whether casually or scientifically, our theology colors everything we do. It informs all we encounter, how we process life, and how we treat others. It determines the way we want to, and how we do…live our lives.

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The hair on the other hand – much to my wife’s delight – is a tad less.

“Give thanks to him with the harp, and on a guitar of ten strings, sing unto him.” – Psalm 33:2

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