D.A. Carson’s latest work, Scandalous: The Cross and Ressurection of Jesus, is simply excellent. The writing is crisp, the exegesis superb, the theology invigorating.

I especially loved this illustration about the real story of the Titanic.

Perhaps part of our slowness to come to grips with this truth lies in the way the notion of moral imperative has dissipated in much recent Western thought. Did you see the film Titanic that was screened about a dozen years ago? The great ship is full of the richest people in the world, and , according to the film, as the ship sinks, the rich men start to scramble for the few an inadequate lifeboats, shoving aside the women and children in their desperate desire to live. British sailors draw handguns and fire into the air, crying “Stand back! Stand back! Women and children first!” In reality, of course, nothing like that happened. The universal testimony of the witnesses who survived the disaster is that the men hung back and urged the women and children into the lifeboats. John Jacob Astor was there, at the time the richest man on earth, the Bill Gates of 1912. He dragged his wife to a boat, shoved her on, and stepped back. Someone urged him to get in, too. He refused: the boats are too few, and must be for the women and children first. He stepped back, and drowned. The philanthropist Benjamin Guggenheim was present. He was traveling with his mistress, but when he perceived that it was unlikely he would survive, he told one of his servants, “Tell my wife that Benjamin Guggenheim knows his duty” –and he hung back, and drowned. There is not a single report of some rich man displacing women and children in the mad rush for survival.

When the film was reviewed in the New York Times, the reviewer asked why the producer and director of the film had distorted history so flagrantly in this regard. The scene as they depicted it was implausible from the beginning. British sailors drawing handguns? Most British police officers do not carry handguns; British sailors certainly do not. So why this willful distortion of history? And then the reviewer answered his own question: if the producer and director had told the truth, he said, no one would have believed them.

I have seldom read a more damning indictment of the development of Western culture, especially Anglo-Saxon culture, in the last century. One hundred years ago, there remained in our culture enough residue of the Christian virtue of self-sacrifice for the sake of others, of the moral imperative that seeks the other’s good at personal expense, that Christians and non-Christians alike thought it noble, if unremarkable, to choose death for the sake of others. A mere century later, such a course is judged so unbelievable that the history has to be distorted (30-31).

You can buy the book here.

2. Use forms with freedom. Learn from The Valley of Vision or Hughes Oliphant Old or the Book of Common Prayer. But suit their prayers to your own purposes. The Didache, after laying down set prayers for Communion, also allows “the prophets to give thanks however they wish.”

3. Pray Scripture. Don’t just ask God for what we want. Let him teach us what we should want.

4. Don’t footnote. Spurgeon: “It is not necessary in prayer to string a selection of texts of Scripture together, and quote David, and Daniel, and Job, and Paul, and Peter, and every other body, under the title of ‘thy servant of old.’” The Lord already knows who said everything so don’t tell him again in your prayers.

5. Leave the preaching for the sermon. Don’t exhort. Don’t explain texts. Don’t unpack complex theology. Spurgeon again: “Long prayers either consist of repetitions, or else of unnecessary explanations which God does not require; or else they degenerate into downright preachings, so that there is no difference between the praying and the preaching, except that in the one the minister has his eyes shut, and in the other he keeps them open. It is not necessary in prayer to rehearse the Westminster Assembly’s Catechism.”

6. Share some details of congregational life, but not all. A good shepherd will often mention by name various sheep that need special care. But don’t try to cover every engagement in the last three months or surreptitiously announce the youth retreat in your prayer (“Lord, be with our young people gathering this Friday at 5:00pm with their Bibles and a sleeping bag…”). Spurgeon one more time: “As I have said before, there is no need to make the public prayer a gazette of the week’s events, or a register of the births, deaths, and marriages of your people, but the general moments that have taken place in the congregation should be noted by the minister’s careful heart.”

7. Pray so that others can follow you easily. The goal is edification (1 Cor. 14:17). So don’t let your sentences get too long, too flowery, too ornate. If you write out your prayers, write for the ear not for the eye. On the other hand, don’t use distracting colloquialisms like, “Lord, you’re so sweet.”

8. Keep it relatively brief. Better to be too short than too long. Five minutes is plenty in most North American churches. Seven to ten minutes is possible is you are experienced and have trained your people well.

9. Remember you are praying with and on behalf of others. Use “we” and “our” (like in the Lord’s Prayer). This is not the time to confess your personal sins or recount your personal experiences.

10. Order your prayer. Make sure there is a flow and direction. Don’t get too wordy. Keep a good pace. It often makes sense to work from the inside out, praying first for concerns of the congregation and then moving out to the community, the global church, and the world.

11. Beware of verbal ticks. For example: popping your p’s, smacking your lips, sighing, ums, mindless repetition of the divine name, unnecessary use of the word “just” and “like,” an over-reliance on the phrase “we pray” or “we would pray” instead of simply praying.

12. Show proper reverence, confidence, and emotion. Pray like you mean it, like God is God, and as if he really hears us.

13. Pray before you pray. Ask God for help as you prepare. Ask him for humility and grace as you go up to pray.

Being outside the West Michigan vortex, this is the first I’ve heard of any of this. The controversy is convoluted, but it goes something like this: Last year, Dustin Lance Black, screenwriter for Milk, the biopic about gay-rights pioneer Harvey Milk, was in Holland working on a new project (go here for a critical review of Milk’s historical accuracy). Black’s attempt to show a screening of Milk at Hope College, my alma mater and one of three colleges affiliated with the Reformed Church in America, was rebuffed.

Not surprisingly, this prompted some to rally around Black and his film in an effort to combat the town’s perceived homophobia and to encourage conversation about homosexuality in this conservative part of the country. A few months later Black came back to Holland to show Milk to a sold-out audience in town. Black even blogged about his experience in Holland, Michigan and at Hope College for the Daily Beast. The not-so-subtle title: “Milk Screenwriter Battles a Gay-Bashing College.”

Two days ago the issues surrounding Milk and homosexuality resurfaced again with a lead story in the Grand Rapids Press.

Influential alumni are lining up against Hope College policies they claim shun homosexuality on campus and create an unwelcome environment for faculty, students and guests.

The alumni group — formed in the wake of the college rejecting Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black’s offer to show his film and hold a discussion about sexuality — has sent trustees a petition calling for change and a new panel to advise the president.

Among the leaders pushing for the moves are two children of past Hope College presidents, a retired Reformed Church in America minister, a former ambassador and distinguished journalists and athletes.

As is often the case, those agitating for this kind of institutional change are doing so in the name of open discussion. One recent graduate, Karis Granberg-Michaelson, argues, “”We are simply not having a dialogue. We’re having a monologue, and that doesn’t help anyone.” According to Black, writing in December, “They [Hope College and Holland] had simply never discussed gay rights openly before, and here I was, an interloper, threatening to thrust this hot-button issue into their community.”

I beg to differ. I was a student at Hope College from 1995-1999. There was no issue talked about more than homosexuality. The Dean of the Chapel, Ben Patterson ironically enough, was openly disdained by some faculty (and fewer students) for his public opposition to homosexuality. We had television crews and reporters on campus frequently. There were clotheslines draped across the pine grove protesting our “intolerance.” Mel White, a pro-gay advocate now with Soulforce, spoke on campus to a packed-out chapel. I was there. Students wrote letters to the editors back and forth in the student newspaper. The campus community talked about homosexuality, it seemed like, for two years straight.

Hope College has discussed this before. Holland, Michigan, even though it is conservative, is not just hearing about homosexuality for the first time. There are open and affirming churches in Holland. There are still GLBT supporters among the faculty. This issue tore through the campus over ten years ago, and, I imagine, has never completely gone away. The RCA, the parent denomination for Hope, just concluded three years of intentional dialogue on the subject. A new subject this is not.

And yet, Hope College, and the RCA, still believe that homosexual behavior is not consistent with biblical teaching.

Some Hope alumni disagree (whether they are “influential” as the Press calls them remains to be seen). They have a right to make that disagreement known. But no one can say that there hasn’t been discussion or that West Michigan has never consider this issue. Besides, a private Christian college has a right to decide what it does and does not want to promote. Some conversations are worth having. Some are not. And some conversations are actually advocacy in disguise.

One final thought. As providence would have it, Dr. James Bultman, Hope’s president, spoke at our Classis meeting Tuesday night, the same day this latest story hit the papers. I don’t want to attempt to quote President Bultman for fear of misquoting him. But from what I heard at this public venue I want to convey how impressed I was with his remarks, the last few minutes of which directly addressed this controversy. Bultman is passionately committed to preserve Hope from secularization, wanting to the college to excel in academics and maintain its Christian identity. He is not reactionary in any way, nor as conservative as I would be in some areas, but he is unapologetic in insisting that faculty members know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And judging from his courageous comments on Tuesday, he will not budge on the issue of homosexuality.

The ministers and elders of our Classis gave him a long and loud round of applause when he was finished.

If you love the word of God and the health of the Reformed Church in America (and there are a few of you out there who read my blog), President Bultman and Hope College deserve your prayers.

I was filling out our census form this morning, asking my kids for their names, ages, and birthdays. I got to my little girl and said, “How old are you Elizabeth?”

“I’m two,” she said.

“Very good.” I skipped a few questions, looking for something she could answer correctly. “Elizabeth, are you white?” She look down at her princess jammies and said, “No Daddy, I’m pink.”

Can you believe they don’t have a box for that?

Patterson on why we pray:

So we must pray, because the work of the church is God’s work, not ours! We must also pray because prayer actually gets God’s work done. That’s the way prayer is seen in heaven. Ponder this scene in the throne room of heaven: An angel stands before God holding a golden censer, burning incense that is mixed with the prayers of the saints on earth. These prayers go up before God, and then are mixed with fire from the altar and hurled back down on earth. The amazing result is cataclysm on earth, “peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake” (Rev. 8:5).

Now picture the saints on earth, huddled in their prayer meetings. If their experience of prayer is anything like mine can be, they may often feel their prayers are barely making it to the ceiling, or are dribbling out and rustling across the floor like dry leaves. Prayer doesn’t frequently bring with it the sensation of cosmic power unleashed, what poet Georg Herbert called “reversed thunder.” But that is exactly what is happening! The whole creation is shaken by the prayers of the saints. Something is happening as they pray. Work is being done, whether they see it or not. Deepening Your Conversation, 24-25

I love this story about the power of prayer to preserve the integrity and witness of the church.

Bob Bakke, of National Prayer Advance, tells of churches of Ipswich, Massachusetts, and their experience of this kind of prayer. After the first Great Awakening, three churches in this community convenanted to follow the pattern suggested by Edwards. In each congregation, cell groups would meet weekly to agree in prayer. Monthly, the separate congregations would then gather the cells and conduct all-church prayer meetings of agreement. Then quarterly, all three would come together for the same kind of praying. This pattern was followed faithfully, without interruption, for a century. Two remarkable things happened during this time. All three churches reported periodic harvest or “ingatherings” of souls, in which there would be a number of new believers brought into the congregations, about every eight to ten years. Also, during this time, all of New England was being swept by Unitarianism. But not these three churches. They remained firmly true to the faith while apostasy swirled around them, but not over them. Around the time of the Civil War, the prayer meetings ceased. Within five years these churches all capitulated to Unitarianism!  Deepening Your Conversation, 165-66

And here’s one more quote from Patterson, this one on the importance of praying the Bible, especially the Psalms.

Prayer is more that a tool for self-expression, a means to get God to give us what we want. It is a means he uses to give us what he wants, and to teach us to want what he wants. Holy Scripture in general, and the Psalms in particular, teach us who God is and what he wants to give.

When the members of his synagogue complained that the words of the liturgy did not express what they felt, Abraham Heschel, the great philosopher of religion, replied wisely and very biblically. He told them that the liturgy wasn’t supposed to express what they felt; they were supposed to feel what the liturgy expressed. To be taught by the Bible to pray is to learn to want and feel what the Bible expresses—to say what it means and mean what it says. God’s Prayer Book, 7

You can check out the Magnify Conference here or join us for worship this Sunday at University Reformed Church as Ben Patterson brings the word.

You may know that I work in East Lansing and C.J. Mahaney lives in Maryland. I’m pulling for the Green and white of course and C.J. is cheering on the mighty Terapins. We figure a friendly wager is in order (assuming both teams make it out of the first round; if not, all bets are off). The standard “I’ll shave my head if my team loses” did not seem like a fair bet. So here’s what we came up with.

If Michigan State wins, C.J. must…

1. Come preach at University Reformed Church again.

2. Write a blog post about why the Spartans are the superior basketball team.

3. And post a photo of himself wearing MSU attire.

If Maryland wins, I must…

1. Go preach at Covenant Life Church.

2. Blog about the awesomeness of Maryland basketball.

3. And show the world what I look like in Maryland gear (no turtle I’m told).

I hope Maryland squeaks by Houston in triple overtime so they can meet Sparty on his run to another Final Four.

In the intra-evangelical discussion about what is the mission of the church there are unhealthy extremes we can all recognize. “Ah, let it all burn up. Who cares about food and water for the poor? Who gives a rip about HIV? Give ‘em the gospel for the soul and ignore the needs of the body.” That’s one extreme. Likewise, I think we can admit this is careless too: “Sharing the gospel is offensive and to be avoided. As long as the poor have job training, health care, and education that’s enough. The world needs more food not more sermons.”

But on a good day the best representatives from both sides make valid points.

For example, here’s what one side wants us to hear:

When you love, you love the whole person, right? So why do so many churches seem disinterested in the human problems in their community and around the world? Didn’t Jesus heal the sick? Didn’t the Good Samaritan help the beaten man just because it was the neighborly thing to do? He didn’t give him a gospel tract first. Look, I’m in a city with crime, homelessness, poverty, broken families, and a failing education system. If we love God and we love people, how can we not care about these problems? Yes, I want to see people come to know Christ. People need the gospel more than anything else. Hell is real. They need reconciliation with God above all else. But they also need food and a job. Christians should care about these needs too. We are supposed to seek the peace of the city. Therefore, our vision needs to be bigger than providing a safe church for middle class people to have a safe experience of God so they can drive back to their safe neighborhoods and ignore a world of problems around them. The Bible has too much to say about loving the poor and caring about justice for us to simply save souls. Heaven is not a place for ghosts to fly around. It’s an earthly place with resurrected bodies where matter matters. We don’t reflect the reality of heaven if we turn a blind eye to the flesh-and-blood world in which we live.

Granted, this doesn’t say everything the missional side wants to say or in the way they might say it. But to the degree that this (the above paragraph) is your concern, I’m right with you. We should do good to all people (Galatians 6:10) and love our neighbors as ourselves (Matt. 22:39).

But I also sympathize with what I hear (and have said) on the other side:

Yes, we agree that the Christians should love people in word and deed. We too want to see our communities flourish. We think it is good and right to support relief work in Haiti or build an orphanage in Africa or repair a park in our city. But we are jealous not to lose or de-emphasize in any way what makes the church unique. The goal is not to make the world honor us for our good works, but honor God in their hearts. There are any number of institutions or humanitarian organizations or even members of other religions devoted to the problems of poverty and suffering. But what about eternal suffering? Who will give the perishing the words of life except the church? If we truly love people we will share the gospel and disciple them in Christ. Of course we want the peace of the city. Who wouldn’t? But biblical shalom is not simply human flourishing, it is also, and irreducibly, faith and repentance. There is no kingdom without worship of the King. Besides, we aren’t going to change the world or transform the culture, at least not by our efforts and strategies. It’s too complicated and we’re too ignorant. Only God builds the kingdom. The church is not the custodian of the culture. The church’s role is to be the church. This means preaching and sacraments, discipline and membership, and displaying a counter-cultural community. We’ll influence the world, but do so as we live our regular lives, pursue our specific vocation, and love the people as God puts in our path. So absolutely I want to help people. But the church can only do so many things. And the main thing we must do is testify to the work of Christ and raise up disciples of Christ.

I know there are all sorts of differences that still exist, and I don’t claim to be mediating some third way (you know how I feel about third ways), but I would hope that most evangelicals could agree with both of these paragraphs. The difference is some of us want to say, “Yes, but…” to the first paragraph and others want to say “Yes, but…” to the second.

One side fears careless, loveless indifference to the problems and potential opportunities all around us, a dualistic disregard for the whole person.

The other side fears overly optimistic (and exhausting) utopian dreams, a loss of God-centeredness, and a diminishment of the church’s unique and urgent message of Christ crucified for hell-bound sinners.

Both are real dangers.

What is the way forward? Well, I believe the Great Commission is the best summary of the mission of the church, and this puts the emphasis on proclamation and disciple-making. But a healthy church will also be growing in love, love for God, for each other, and for the world.

So in the end I think there is a lot the best representatives of both sides can agree on. Surely we can agree that a church which believes in the centrality of preaching and the necessity of gospel proclamation, a church which refuses to water down the offense of the cross and the reality of hell, a church that demonstrates compassion for the suffering, a church burdened with an anguish for the lost, a church with a heart for the city and a zeal for the glory of God in all things for the joy of all peoples—surely we can agree this is a good church.

An Ide is a term used in the Roman calendar to signify a division based on the moon’s phases. For March it falls on the 15th. The day is (in)famous because on it Julius Caesar was killed in the Senate after reportedly being warned by a seer to “Beware the Ides of March.”

On a cheerier note, it’s also Ted Kluck’s birthday. Happy birthday buddy.

Yeah, I know this is from ten years ago. But hey my church is in East Lansing. I certainly wasn’t going to show last year’s video.

Kalin, Durrell, Draymond, Raymar, Delvon, Korie, Chris, Derrick and the rest of the gang, have fun. And, if at all possible, go on a six game win streak.

P.S. No, none of the MSU basketball players go to our church.

P.P.S. But stop on over anytime guys. Free books on me (within the NCAA guidelines of course).

“He who presides over a system which aims at nothing higher than formalism, is far more a servant of the devil than a minister of God.”