Provocative Title, Worthy Commentary
March 16, 2010
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Counterculture, Creativity, Godly Character, Maturity, Oddities, Simplicity Feedback : 9 comments
Michael Patton of Parchment & Pen delivers the provocatively titled “Eight Things I Hate About Christianity.” After reading it, I had the feeling that it is a post that would not be out of place here at Cerulean Sanctum.
While I tend to blanch at the word hate , Patton picks some good candidates for loathing. I know I’m uncomfortable with many of the same issues within the American version of Christianity.
While I recommend you read the whole thing, Patton’s condensed list is below:
8. Unanswered prayer = God’s “no”
7. Testimonies, BC and AD
6. Watchdog ministries
5. Seeker-driven Churchianity
4. Christian subculture
3. Legalism
2. Anti-intellectual mentality
1. Hell
The comments are open. Which aspects of Christianity as it plays out in America 2010 make you squirm?
Tags: Christian Subculture, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Churchianity, Evangelicalism, Michael Patton, StereotypesRelated posts
Why Christianity Is Failing in America – Further Thoughts
November 17, 2009
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Boldness, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Community, Counterculture, Creativity, Discernment, Dying to Self, Godly Character, Humility, Leadership, Maturity, Obedience, Oddities, Persecution, Perseverance, Prayerfulness, Relevance, Revival, Simplicity Feedback : 6 comments
I almost always post on Monday. I didn’t yesterday because I was thinking more about my post from Friday, “Why Christianity Is Failing in America.” A couple readers asked the question I knew would come—”"So how do we fix the problem?”—which led me into all sorts of introspective thought.
I don’t like raising problems without at least some stab at a solution. There are a million Christian blogs out there moaning about this problem and that, and I don’t want Cerulean Sanctum to simply add to the collective complaint. I’m looking for answers.
The question of how to overcome the kind of half-baked, slacker mentality that permeates American Christendom needs better brains and souls than mine to find lasting answers. I struggle with this morass we find ourselves in as much as anyone. I’m not sure how to extricate myself, much less provide life-changing answers to anyone else.
Still, a few core concepts might lead to resolution:
1. We Christians must stop worrying about what others think. For all our talk in America of being individuals, for all our love of the iconoclast who does it his way, for all our national pride at stepping up to the plate when no other country will, we Americans are stunningly conformist. And we are that way largely because we are scared to death of suffering eternal damnation because someone in the fast lane might think we’re not good enough.
For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.
—Galatians 1:10
The Church of Jesus Christ in these here United States will keep on preserving the status quo as long as we fear men. And truly, we are shaking in our boots at what others think of us. Such a group will never be martyred. But it’s going to take some level of personal sacrifice to break the self-conscious chains that tie us to conformity to the world.
2. We have got to take time apart from the world and reconnect with the brains God gave us. We Christians in America are some of the least introspective people in the universe. Talk of the “examined life” goes right over our heads.
If I could wish one thing for American Christians right now it would be to jettison whatever it is that keeps us distracted 24/7/365 (even church-related stuff), and get before God in silence to pray.
But more than prayer, I think that modern Christians must take back time from wordly living to do something even more necessary in light of the times we live in: We must think and meditate.
I am continuously startled by how pragmatism is rapidly undermining the base that Christianity was built upon. We’ve become people who fail to consider the consequences of each “new thing” we promote, even when those things seem on the surface to be great for the Church. Fact is, most aren’t. “Because we can, we should” is practically the mantra of contemporary Christianity in the West. And it is that way because we live unexamined lives. We bought the world’s marketing and we’re remaking the Church in a pragmatist image.
The way we are headed, perhaps we should just jettison the pretense and go for it. I hear about the lack of men in churches today. So why toss another chunk of change at yet another doomed-to-fail men’s program purchasable from whatever the hottest new church is? Just put up the stripper poles and hire a few hot things in skimpy outfits to dance before the service. It would work. You could probably find a Bible verse taken way out of context to support it, too.
Too extreme? Well, that’s what happens when Christians don’t take time to think about the consequences of everything we do. We’ve trapped ourselves in this race to the bottom because we turned off our brains during our rush to consume and be stylin’, with-it individuals like everyone else.
3. We have got to question the way we do EVERYTHING. We can go on and on about how Jesus turned the world on its head when He walked the earth, yet we go out from our Sunday meetings to live conformist lives that never question the status quo.
In concert with the call to sit in silence before God while asking Him to respark our burned-out minds, we Christians must begin anew to ask the question WHY. This is not an exercise with re-evaluating our doctrine. Too many churches fry their theology in the crucible of why. Instead, we need to place every aspect of our praxis as believers in America under the white hot stage lights of why.
Why do we sink enormous amounts of money into church buildings? Why do we slave in jobs outside the home? Why do we put our kids in private Christian schools? Why do we read only Christian novels? Why do we follow a church service order of worship, announcements, offering, sermon, go home? Why do we have a youth ministry? Why are there so few Christian leaders on the national stage who are making a difference? Why do we buy items made in the country of China that actively persecutes our fellow Christians? Why do we depend on others to feed us? Why are we letting Muslims outreproduce us? Why are there still orphanages? Why are we not making disciples? Why do so many of us wonder if we’re truly saved?
Why?
People looking to replace their “old” iPod they’ve had for two whole years don’t ask the question why. They don’t question anything except why they didn’t get their new gizmo in the mail the next day despite paying for overnight shipping.
People in the Church in America, on the whole, are not asking why. And worse, we’re not following up the why with the answer that the Gospel will give us. And that’s largely the reason why we keep doing things the world’s way and not the Lord’s.
4. Genuine community has never before been so needed. When Christians start sitting in silence before God, begin holding up their practices to God to be examined under the question of why and the Gospel’s reply, the next step is for the Christian community to join together to take what has been gained and change the world.
What Christian community?
Oh. Yeah. Hmm.
I no longer support the long-cherished belief that it takes one person to change the world. Fact is, with 6.5 billion people on this planet, nothing happens outside of groups. I can radically change my behavior and little around me will change. By its sheer enormity our culture tamps out whatever fires I may start as an individual.
Any godly change that will make a difference in the world today will not come through a scattered set of individuals but a like-minded group of hundreds—such as your typical church. That so few churches are able to spark that kind of change in their localities…well, you get the point.
The problems we face as a Church in America cannot be addressed by individual martyrs. And it’s going to take martyrs to buck the massive systems we’ve erected that blind us to the Lord’s way. You can crush an individual. It’s more complicated to crush several hundred people. The pressure is more equalized among all involved, with fewer individuals likely to crack entirely. (That’s the Body of Christ working as a genuine body, with each organ supporting the others.)
If I jump off the bridge, I make a small splash. But if several hundred jump with me, look out for the wave…
5. “Seek first the Kingdom” cannot be relegated to a platitude. Every Christian in the United States will raise his or her hand to the question of “How many here are seeking first the Kingdom?” But the biggest lie we Christians tell on a day to to day basis concerns how much we’re truly committed to that truth.
If you are a Christian, seeking the Kingdom first must necessarily change the entire way you live. It has to. That it’s not for so many of us only proves our failure to seek. We instead seek personal glory and comfort at the cost of discipleship. It’s as if we don’t believe in a life to come, only the vaporous reality of this physical world.
In America, pastors have the reins for leading people to Kingdom-mindedness, whether we (or they) like it or not. In truth, every one of us is charged to spur on our brothers and sisters to growth in Christ for His Kingdom. But sadly, until the Church here gets some momentum, pastors are it.
And so I ask pastors, why (there’s that question) do so few of your charges get what it means to seek the Kingdom first? Why is it that your people seek houses, promotions, vacations, and comfort above the Kingdom? Worse, why is it that you preach sermons that only fuel people’s desire to fill their lives with that which sets itself up against the Kingdom of God?
A simple example: I’ve heard a bazillion messages on how we Christians can prosper in our own lives, but I can’t ever remember hearing a sermon explaining why Christians should seek economic justice for the poor, even if it means they must become poor themselves to do so.
Genuine Christian education is in a freefall in this country. Our curriculum is a shambles of wordliness. Our sermons only prop up fallen kingdoms. Our people never see genuine Christian practice.
And it’s all because we’ve made the Kingdom of God a concept rather than a reality.
The Church in America will reverse its tragic trajectory when fearless groups of Christians who have meditated on the tough issues of our day, who ask the question why, band together and put the Kingdom first again.
That’s highly conceptual. I know that. But it’s going to be slightly different depending on where one lives and the strength (or weakness) of the local churches in that area. (Maybe I’ll provide some general practical advice in days to come.)
This is a genuine tar pit we’re in, folks, and we’re up to our necks in the world’s black goo. I will even go so far as to say that revival alone is not the cure-all. The Lord can light the fire, but we have got to be more serious about what we do when He does. And that will take many of us thinking while we challenge the status quo. Perhaps it will even take us rising up before the best of the fire falls.
I think that talk is not cheap in this case. I think talk can stir up the dissatisfaction that many of us feel. Perhaps that will build the momentum for a new American Church Revolution.
We can hang together or we can hang separately. God is giving us the choice.
Tags: American Church, Bravery, Christianity in America, Christianity in Decline, Community, Counterculture, Culture, Faith, Martyr, Martyrdom, Perseverance, Ray Ortlund Jr., Society, Soren KierkegaardRelated posts
Equipping the Saints: Blessed Are the Educated, For They Shall Know God
September 8, 2009
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Boldness, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Community, Counterculture, Creativity, Godly Character, Leadership, Maturity, Obedience, Perseverance Feedback : 11 comments
For the last month, I’ve been writing about the dire state of education in our Christian churches. People don’t know their Bibles, don’t know what their churches believe, don’t know how their Faith intersects daily living in 21st century America—in short, I will venture to say that the average adult Christian sitting in the pew of an American church today has less understanding of God than the average 10-year-old did 100 years ago.
And that’s pathetic. Whatever Christian education initiatives we’ve been foisting off on the people in the seats aren’t working. And they haven’t been working for a long time.
Truth is, I could write about this issue forever. It might become all I ever talk about here at Cerulean Sanctum. In reality, if you go back over past posts, the emphasis at this blog has always been to understand why so many people in the American Church today feel lackluster in their faith and what we can do about. So perhaps this current series is just a synopsis of six years of writing about discipleship. (I’ll let you read through the archives and draw your own conclusions.)
What follows below are ideas I’m convinced are a right start. They’re haphazard and not fully developed in this post, but I’m convinced that if we started doing these things in our churches, we’d gain the forward momentum we so badly need.
If I had to find one fault with the way we teach people about the Christian Faith, it’s that nothing we say this week reinforces what we said last week. In the same way, education in our churches fails on every level to reinforce what the Christian Church for centuries believes.
Why is it that nearly everything we do educationally within our churches reduces to gossamer that blows away at the slightest breath? How then can we expect people to withstand the gale force winds that exemplify our times?
Is it any wonder that no one evangelizes anymore? We say that what we believe is a matter of heaven or hell, but if we don’t know the basics of those beliefs, why would we want to parade our ignorance before other people?
Our young people who go through years and years of youth group graduate from high school and immediately shipwreck, with (depending on whose figures you read) anywhere from 50 to 85 percent falling away within a few years from the faith they supposedly once held deeply.
Is any of this resonating?
I think it all goes back to reinforcement, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly reiterating what we know and why. This takes the truth of God and packs it down deep into every nook and cranny of the soul. It gives people truth to fall back on because they continually hear it.
Learning is a relentless reinforcing that happens on every level of one’s interaction with the world. And we Christians can either reinforce the Kingdom of God in each other, or we can let the kingdom of the world plant its payload of corruption in our very hearts 24/7/365.
One of those kingdoms will win in the end, and I prefer it be God’s.
What follows is my take on just that kind of reinforcement as it plays out in a hypothetical church that I call Faith Fellowship.
When you walk into Faith Fellowship for the first time, on the left wall of the lobby is a massive poster that lists the 10 key beliefs of the church. On the right wall hangs the huge poster containing the corresponding 10 ways the church lives out those beliefs in practical daily discipleship.
The leadership of Faith sought the Lord concerning these 20 total statements, and every member of Faith had some say in their creation. Together, the people of Faith seek God to help them live out these 10 beliefs and 10 discipleship statements. Their shared statements are core to the purpose and heart of the church, reflected in every piece of the educational program.
You simply cannot miss those posters when you walk in. In addition, the pastor of Faith preaches twice yearly on the purposes of the church as espoused in the beliefs and discipleship statements, and the statements are taught age-appropriately at all levels within the educational system at Faith.
Because of Faith Fellowship’s conviction that education is critical to presenting men and women mature in Christ, the church has both adult and child Sunday School programs. In addition, it is assumed that additional educational opportunities will exist through small groups, formal midweek classes, and outreach opportunities that put what was learned into practice.
Faith Fellowship maintains at least one year-round Bible overview course that teaches a Christian worldview based on creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. In addition, a “jump in at any time” class covers the major themes of each book of the Bible, with a systematic chapter by chapter walkthrough. These classes are taught by those in church leadership who have shown themselves adept at handling the Bible. A course on how to read the Bible and correctly study it is also ongoing.
Because Faith believes that truth must be reinforced, the Christian education department at the church constructed a church-year curriculum in conjunction with pastors and preachers that teaches the same message age-appropriately through the sermon, midweek teachings, and all Sunday school classes.
How this works at Faith Fellowship is that the morning message delivered in the service may be on the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the Sunday School classes that follow the service offer a further unpacking of that parable’s message. The preacher is made available to interact with adult Sunday School attendees to field questions and to work with teachers to make sure the parable is grasped.
In addition, the children’s Sunday School classes also discuss the Good Samaritan, ensuring that parents and children have been taught the same material. This allows families to further discuss the teaching during the week (rather than putting parents in the weak position of having to dredge out of their kids “what they learned in church today.”)
Faith also believes that families should worship together regularly, so the children stay for the entire service on the first Sunday of the month. At these times, they receive a children’s sermon geared for their understanding that reinforces the preacher’s message.
The teaching cycle at Faith allows for a mix of straight Bible book/chapter/verse exposition and also topical messages. The leadership believes that a methodical teaching through the Bible is essential to grasp the entirety of the Bible’s message, while also understanding that topical series are necessary from time to time to address specific issues of the day. Faith believes that an either/or approach, as other churches often justify, only weakens overall understanding.
Also, because the leadership at Faith affirms the leading of the Spirit, cycles may be disrupted when the Spirit puts a particular message on a preaching/teaching leader’s heart. In those cases, Sunday School leaders may elect to follow the leading or substitute any of several general lessons that would apply at any time in the teaching cycle.
Unlike some churches, the youth ministry program at Faith Fellowship maintains a teaching cycle consistent with the overall teaching cycle of the church. Faith’s leaders also recognize the true purpose of the youth pastor (and children’s Sunday school leadership) must be to instruct parents in how to teach their own children the truths of the Christian faith. (This goal is assisted by the teaching cycle of the church, asit constantly reinforces the message age-appropriately, ensuring parents are more likely to know how to answer children’s questions on what they learned that week in church because the parent’s themselves received the same teaching, albeit at a more challenging level.) The youth pastor and children’s Sunday School leadership offer classes for parents on how to become better teachers within the home, and they work alongside those households missing a parent by offering supplemental help through a volunteer program that enlists others to help teach with the single parent.
The youth ministry program at the church also includes a catechism and/or “rite of passage” program that works to ensure core doctrines of the church (especially those reflected in the 10 beliefs and 10 discipleship statements) are both understood and lived in measurable ways that qualify youth to be full-fledged members of the adult congregation. Upon completing the catechism, youth are directed into adult responsibilities within the church as fitting to their identified spiritual gifts, but only after successfully passing the program to the satisfaction of church leadership.
The most controversial aspect of Faith Fellowship’s educational program is that it understands that church discipline is essential to ensuring the growth of people in the church. Full membership in the church requires that a set of educational standards be met and upheld by each prospective member. Growth isn’t a recommendation but the sign of the Holy Spirit working in the life of the believer. For this reason, the leadership will work in any way possible with those who fail to meet agreed-upon educational standards of the church. And even in those cases when no agreement can be found, the leadership of the church will work within the situation to help find a less demanding church that may be better suited for the individual. The leadership of the church doesn’t flinch from the reality that many are called, but few are chosen.
Faith Fellowship has many other aspects to its educational program. The people of Faith have refined these teaching standards to a place where people within the church grow and mature according to the Scriptures and the leadership of the Holy Spirit. It’s a successful direction that has made Faith a force for the Kingdom of God for the last 20 years.
I believe such a church as Faith Fellowship is possible—but only if you and I are serious about discipleship. As I noted, I’ve left much out of this discussion of this hypothetical church, but the fact remains: We Christians have got to start someplace, and I believe this is a good start, especially when coupled with the ideas I presented in a previous post in this series, “Equipping the Saints: What We Must Expect…and When.”
I won’t sit here and claim that implementing an educational system like Faith Fellowship’s would be easy. It wouldn’t be. It would require everyone put down his or her own agenda and focus on what matters. It demands a lot from the leadership and the people running the educational program. It demands a lot from the people in the seats. It’s not easy. But then again, growth isn’t easy.
Look, we can play at church for the rest of our lives and remain dabblers who don’t know what we’re talking about. Or we can grow up and leave infancy behind us.
The choice is ours. Now who out there is bold enough to start getting serious about discipleship?
Tags: Christian Education, Church Discipline, Discipleship, TeachingRelated posts
Equipping the Saints: That Catchy Tune
August 11, 2009
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Apologetics, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Creativity, Faith, Godly Character, Maturity, Relevance, Worship Feedback : 70 comments
I’ve long been a fan of Leonard Ravenhill, the British revivalist. Ravenhill can pack more punches in five minutes than the average megachurch pastor delivers in five years. We need more men like him.
If you listen to enough Ravenhill, the first unusual aspect of his preaching is that he continually sprinkles his messages with lines from hymns. What’s most amazing to me is that he’s probably doing this off the cuff. In other words, those hymns are deep inside him.
When we begin thinking about ways in which the Church in America can improve its education of the Body, most people look past music. I don’t.
“Shooting at the walls of heartache, bang, bang, I am _______________.”
If you’re over 40, I’ll bet the majority of you can fill in the blank to that lyric. Yep, it’s “the warrior.” I have a bazillion pop/rock songs from my youth filling my head. Fact is, I wish I could get rid of most of them, but there they stick.
Likewise—and in a far more edifying way—I believe our Christian hymnody is critical to transmitting truth that sticks with people.
When I was sitting down to write this post, the first hymn that popped into my head was this one:
The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is His new creation,
By water and the word:
From heaven He came and sought her
To be His holy bride;
With His own blood He bought her,
And for her life He died.
Elect from every nation,
Yet one o’er all the earth,
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With every grace endued.
Frankly, that’s a theology lesson in two verses. If you know that hymn, you’ve got a solid base of truth in your noggin.
Compare that to what CCLI says is the number one church worship song today:
Come, now is the time to worship
Come, now is the time to give your heart
Come, just as you are to worship
Come, just as you are before your God
Come
One day ev’ry tongue will confess You are God
One day ev’ry knee will bow
Still the greatest treause remains for those
Who gladly choose you now
It’s a good song. We sing it in our church. We played it just a few weeks ago, in fact. But you can’t escape the reality that just doesn’t say as much. In addition, it swaps the meaning of the word you between the refrain and the verse. I mean, just who is you ?
We could fisk old hymns and new worship songs forever, probably, but reading through old Methodist and Lutheran hymnals shows a far more rich theology than flipping through the average Vineyard, Integrity, or Hosanna worship song collection.
I believe there is a solid place for contemporary worship songs that are God-directed and contain more “emotional” lyrics. I remember the first Vineyard worship song CD collection I picked up. I was blown away. And honestly, it made me look at the Vineyard more seriously. It’s one reason why I spent 16 years in Vineyard churches.
But as is so common with American Christians, we pushed the pendulum so far the other direction on hymnody that we lost the rich base of hymns that were theology lessons in four verses and a chorus. Too much of what we sing today is devoid of theology beyond “God loves me.” Yes, that’s an essential truth, but c’mon…
One will argue that today’s songs are more directed toward the Lord, and while some of that is true, it’s missing a greater truth. A hymn like “The Church’s One Foundation” is like the stones the Lord asked the Hebrews to pile beside the Jordan to remember their crossing into the promised land. Hymns that aren’t directed right at God have a place because they remind us of who we are and what the Lord has done. They are the stones of memory that bolster our foundation in the truths we believe.
It saddens me to no end that my son’s generation will grow up oblivious to hymns like “Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart,” “For All the Saints,” “Christ the Lord Has Risen Today,” “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” “And Can It Be,” and on and on. I might sing them at home, but if my son hears them nowhere else, they will become artifacts, just like my dad singing opera arias is an artifact to me. My son may recall a nebulous, nostalgic mood, but the hymns will have otherwise lost their intended meaning.
I will go so far as to say that music’s staying power places it above nearly every other mode of communication. I may not be able to remember the content of a sermon I heard preached two months ago, but chances are high I’ll be able to recall and sing most of the new worship song that debuted that same Sunday morning.
And that’s why this issue of theology set to music matters. If the average Joe in the pew remembers a dozen hymns packed with spiritual goodness and depth, perhaps he’ll recall their truths in the time of testing in a way that he may not have responded based on other, less sticky, sources.
If we want to build a stronger Christian, then let’s write better songs that highlight the core doctrines of the Faith.
Tags: Christian Education, Christian Music, Church Music, Contemporary Christian Music, Contemporary Worship, Education, Hymn, Hymns, Music, Theology, Vineyard, Worship
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