Anyone want to venture a guess why?

I’ll wait here for a second—

{“Final Jeopardy!” music plays while Dan hums the tune—}

Okay, time’s up.

I’ll preface the answer by saying that people can call me whatever they wish. I’m not zealous for my name but for the name of Jesus. And it’s for His name that I am shaken to the core by the reason why I got labeled a religious totalitarian.

My crime? I had the nerve to suggest that perhaps we need to work harder to teach Christians the Bible.

Yeah, my jaw dropped too.

There’s a growing trend in the Church that on the surface is a wonderful direction. More and more people are saying that when it comes down to it, knowing Jesus is what it’s really all about. If you’ve read my recent post on how to become a Christian, you’ll know that I end it with that same admonition. Eternal life is knowing Jesus.

Which is why I’m troubled by folks who go on and on about knowing Jesus yet have this perverse idea that they can get there by bypassing the Bible. You’ve got to wonder what it is about the Bible that makes them so reticent to want to know it or have it taught. Even more so, you’ve got to wonder what is going on inside them that the mere mention of knowing the Bible throws them into hysterics.

I believe this reticence about knowing the Bible well enough to understand the overarching story, the major themes, and particulars about who Jesus is, why He came, how the Church should act, and how Christians should live is a frightening trend. People who are supposedly the People of the Book seem to not want to have anything to do with the Book itself.

But we can’t tell God how we want to grow. He’s already shown us in the Bible. Just three simple verses encapsulate it:

“Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”
—Joshua 1:7-9

How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
—Psalms 119:9-11

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
—2 Timothy 3:16-17

Many of you know these passages. In fact, if you have ever memorized Scripture according to the Navigator’s Topical Memory System, they are key.

What cannot be escaped in these three is the power of the words of God. Power for courage and strength. Power for the avoidance of sin. Power for doing good works for the Lord.

People don’t give the 2 Timothy passage, as familiar as it is, enough power. Want to serve God? Know the Bible. Even if it’s the lowliest service there is, know the Bible. Did Stephen, who waited on tables in service to his Lord, give that profound testimony during his stoning based on ideas he pulled out of nowhere? No! He knew the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit set fire to that knowledge even as the stones fell down upon that saint!

If God asks that of a waiter, how can we possibly say that we, who too often consider ourselves above that position, are exempt from knowing the Bible? And if we don’t know the words of God in the Bible, what kind of strength and courage do we expect to summon when the mob comes, rocks in hand, for us?

The fiasco at Lakeland, Florida, that happened last year (anyone still remember the hoopla?) centered around a man who claimed he could take people to the third heaven.

Want to go to the third heaven? I can tell anyone exactly how to get there (and beyond) and I don’t need a circus around me to do it. Start by building a foundation on the word of God. Know it. Live it. Breathe it. Then when we’ve mastered the fundamental core of it, we”ll see we’ve built a ladder to the very bosom of God Himself. And that’s a whole lot higher than any third heaven.

The context in which I got called a religious totalitarian was evangelism. The idea that had been floated was that evangelism is a mindset/paradigm and not a program.

Evangelism is a mindset, to a point, but the reason we have people in the Church who are scared to death to evangelize others is primarily because they don’t know the Bible.

If I claimed to be a nuclear physicist and was subsequently asked, based on the credentials I claimed for myself, to speak at a conference on the topic of string theory, do you think I’d be a little panicked if I knew nothing about that basic topic? Yet that is the case with most Christians. We have no ease in talking about the Faith because the most obvious revelation of that Faith, the Bible, remains a mystery to us.

How much easier would it be for us to talk about being a Christian if we better knew the Book that outlines the entirety of our Faith?

We can’t know God if we don’t know what He has said to us through the Bible.

We can’t know Jesus if we don’t know what the Bible says about Him.

We can’t discern right from wrong if we don’t know the Bible.

We can’t know how to live as a Christian if we don’t know the Bible.

We can’t know how to determine which spirits are truthful and which are liars if we don’t know the Bible.

We can’t know the voice of God if we don’t know the Bible.

We can’t make any progress in the Faith if we don’t know the Bible.

God has graciously given us His words because He has ordained that our growth toward knowing Him comes through those life-giving words He Himself spoke.

If you and I want to know Christ and to come to a place of deeper revelation, we simply can’t skip over the most clear document presented to us on how to begin that journey of knowing. That totality of knowing rests on growing in knowledge of God through the Bible. It’s the springboard for every aspect of growth we Christians may achieve.

So something is seriously wrong when Christians go on and on about their deep relationship with Jesus, yet they have a strange reluctance to embrace disciplined study of Scripture. You simply can’t have one without the other.

Several years ago at the church pastored by the pastor whose Facebook forum started all this, we started Wednesday night classes for adults. I offered to teach a course in the basic truths of the Bible. I had originally called it “Theology 101,” but I was told the word Theology was too loaded, so it was changed to something less high falutin’. Other classes were taught that night, about four or five, so people could choose which to attend.

I covered the basics in my class, like the nature of God, why Jesus is the sole way to salvation, and core doctrinal theology. Though scores of people in the church were new to the Faith, I had only a half dozen in my class. The class that got 95 percent of the many adults who attended Wednesday nights was “How to Move in the Power of the Spirit.”

When the three months of classes were over, I had one student left who had not jumped to the “Power of the Spirit” class. She was very grateful and blessed me mightily. When I confessed to her that I had not seen her around church, she told me she attended a different church, but that a friend from my church had told her about the class.

I learned a great lesson that day. Every Christian wants to jump straight to the third heaven, everyone wants to move in power, everyone wants to be a great saint, but next to none want to lay the actual groundwork that will get them to that place. They’re sitting in “How to Move in the Power of the Spirit” class, yet they don’t even know what God has revealed to us about His Spirit in the Book that He gave us.

In a previous post in this series, I said that you can trace a lack of dying at the cross to the reason that so many Christians burn out, walk away from the Faith, or never achieve great things for the Lord. I have to add ignorance of the Bible to that post mortem also.

If I claim to move in great charismatic gifts, I can erect a tent and people will fill it; but if I say that I know the Bible inside and out, no one’s going to toss Franklins into an offering plate on my behalf and tell me how wonderful I am.

The genuine way of Christ isn’t flashy.  It happens in back rooms devoid of glory and acclaim, at kitchen tables wet with morning tears. It happens in the hearts of people who know there’s no way to cheat on God’s test to get that A+, so they study to show themselves a workman approved, even if that study demands some discipline and commitment.

So here’s to the so-called religious totalitarians who believe you can’t get to heaven on a roller skate. If that’s you, keep on keeping on, because your final reward will be incredible.

This feed is from Cerulean Sanctum (http://ceruleansanctum.com), a blog by Dan Edelen that covers issues facing the American Church.

Equipping the Saints: The Totality of Knowing God Begins Here

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My wife had an appointment scheduled that put her on edge because it had the potential to determine the course of the rest of her life. Jangly nerves and a tremor in her voice all said, “I really need you to pay attention to me right now.”

My son, watching his summer vacation slipping away, fell into that desperate state of attempting to pack as much living into five days as was humanly possible. Flubber had nothing on the kid. He was bouncing around the house begging for things to do, his sole mission to get me to pay attention to him right now.

Meanwhile, I’d awakened to a malfunctioning Internet connection and a deadline to meet. As the materials had to be emailed, that posed a bit of a dilemma. With my IT background, I normally don’t blanch when tech things go awry. But after some computer finagling, I came to the terrible realization that it was nothing on my end that I could correct; my ISP was down, no matter what the blinking lights on the modem said. It was the kind of situation I needed to deal with right now if I was to make my deadline.

And right at that moment of stark tech realization, kid yelling, wife anxious, the doorbell rang.

“Dad, there’s two people standing at the door,” my son added to his tirade.

I knew in that second exactly who it was.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses.

While that’s enough to start some people hyperventilating, I greatly enjoy talking to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I know their theology very well, know what verses to share with them out of their own (flawed) New World Translation bible, and generally throw a box full of monkey wrenches into the cogs of their apologetics. In short, I know exactly what to say to them. And I do it in a very neighborly and loving way.

Most times, that is.

Normally, I would invite them in, but the hyperactive son and the anxious wife who had to leave for her appointment in a few minutes did not make for the best environment. So I offered to have them sit down on our front porch in our three porch chairs—except two of the three chairs seemed to have gone missing.

So we stood around. Ugh.

I then began to commit a series of errors. Instead of steering the conversation toward the divinity of Jesus (as the JWs believe Jesus is a created being, the archangel Michael), I let myself get dragged to the end of that discussion prematurely, as we somehow jumped right to the Trinity, which requires nearly a full overview of Scripture to present accurately (as the JWs do well at dismantling piecemeal Scriptures on the Trinity, especially when presented standing around on someone’s front porch). When I attempted to go back to the issue of Jesus’ divinity, I asked for the junior JW’s New World Translation and immediately realized I couldn’t read it; the words were too small. This meant going to find either of the two pair of reading glasses I now own—of course, both eluded me. Then, I got the “brilliant” idea while looking for my glasses to pull out my Aland Greek New Testament in case we stumbled into differences between the NWT and the genuine text. Five minutes later, I think, I got back outside, hoping to talk more about the tirpartite nature of man and how it reflects the Trinitarian nature of God, but somehow I spent most of that time thumbing my way through my Greek NT and not enough concentrating on the tripartite explanation. Meanwhile, the truth of Jesus’ divinity was receding into the murky past of the conversation. At this point, my wife informed us that she must leave and the JWs’ car was blocking our driveway. Seeing this as the perfect out, the senior JW said it was obvious they and I were at completely different places and were never going to come to any agreement on anything, so so long, buh-bye.

And with that, there was no joy in Mudville; mighty Casey had struck out.

The postmortem of this moment doesn’t need the team from CSI to enunciate what went wrong. Anyone want to venture the answer?

It wasn’t that I was stressed by the events of the morning.

It wasn’t the time crunch or the blocked driveway.

It wasn’t an inadequate knowledge of the theology of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

And it wasn’t an inadequate knowledge of Christian doctrine.

What made the morning less than stellar was that I left the Holy Spirit out of that golden opportunity.

We’ve been talking for the last few weeks about what it’s going to take to get the American Church educated in the deep truths of the Faith, but what I want to add right now is that all the Bible-learnin’ in the world is pointless without the Holy Spirit to pull it all together and make it scintillate in our spirits.

I know plenty of Christians who can handle the Bible well. I know plenty of Christians who claim to know the voice of the Holy Spirit. But the kind of Christian I rarely meet is the one who puts both together.

You have on one side the intellectuals with their systematic theologies who could mount an apologetic that rolls like thunder but are tone deaf when it comes to listening to instructions from the Holy Spirit. On the other side are the charismatics who are always talking about the revelation they’re receiving by the Holy Spirit but who will search for hours if you ask them to locate the Book of Hezekiah in their Bibles.

My problem that August morning was that I didn’t ask the Holy Spirit to take charge of the time and guide me His way. I barged ahead like one of those deaf intellectuals, smug in my learnin’.

If we’re to make a difference in the education of Christians in America, we have got to start bridging the gap between the word of God and the Spirit of God. Because in truth, the only gap that exists in that gapless relationship occurs because of you and me. We’re the problem. The Spirit and the Scriptures are perfect.

And so I ask, what churches out there are teaching people how to listen to the Holy Spirit when it comes to correctly handling the Scriptures?

Because it doesn’t work if we know the Bible but can’t hear the voice of the Spirit tell us how to understand and use it. And it doesn’t work if charismatics go on and on about their spiritual gifts but then don’t give the Spirit of God the fodder of His learned word to work from.

If you are in a church that does a great job teaching the Bible but not listening to the Spirit, then you may be getting only part of the story. And chances are, your use of the Bible in those cases when you really need it are going to fall under the label of “the flesh,” and your effectiveness will be diminished. Likewise, if you are in a charismatic church that teaches how to hear the Holy Spirit, yet the average person can’t string together five verses to show why Jesus is God, then you are not putting it all together, either.

If we are to be effective ministers of the Gospel, we have to rely on the voice of the Spirit to lead us in all situations, especially in how to correctly handle the Bible. And we have got to ensure we know the Bible if we are to give the Holy Spirit living in us the free access to the discipline of our study.

Jesus didn’t drop Biblical knowledge into the heads of the disciples at Pentecost. He made what was already there more clear and more transformational. The Spirit brought to mind the time those men had shared with Jesus and amplified the Savior’s teachings. The Spirit made use of what had already been implanted.

And so it must be with us. It’s not enough to know the Bible or say we have the Spirit living in us. Unless we learn the synergy of the Spirit and the word (and—unlike me—ALWAYS rely on it), we’re going to whiff again and again.

This feed is from Cerulean Sanctum (http://ceruleansanctum.com), a blog by Dan Edelen that covers issues facing the American Church.

Equipping the Saints: The Synergy of Spirit & Word

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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.

This feed is from Cerulean Sanctum (http://ceruleansanctum.com), a blog by Dan Edelen that covers issues facing the American Church.

Equipping the Saints: That Catchy Tune

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We don’t know what the Gospel is. We don’t know what the Bible says about important issues of life. We don’t know why Christ came, or how to know Him, or why He’s the only Way. We don’t know our eschatology or why it even matters. We don’t even know why our service matters. We simply don’t know what we’re talking about.

I’m an avid birder (birdwatcher being the antiquated term) with more than 30 years experience in that field. I can ID 85 percent of North American Birds on sight, but when it comes to my region of the country, that number approaches 100 percent. Any birder can be fooled, yes, but I know my region’s avians.

If I meet a guy who introduces himself as a fellow Ohio birder with similar multi-decade experience, a certain expectation exists. If this guy tells me he was just down at the lake the other day and saw an albatross, I’m going to think, Mr. Experienced Birder’s skills are about as sharp as a sack of wet mice. If he adds that he saw a Carolina Parakeet, too, then I know his credibility is bupkis. It doesn’t matter what he may say his credentials are, he’s doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

In truth, I can pretty much tell you how long people have been birding just by watching their ID methodology, their ability to talk out difficult IDs, and their willingness to admit they may not have gotten a good enough look at that last bird for a positive ID.

What’s scary to me is that it’s far harder to tell how long people gave been Christians by watching their behavior or asking them simple questions about the faith. It should be obvious, but it’s not. There should never be a reason—ever—for us to encounter a “seasoned” Christian and come away thinking that disciple is about as sharp as a sack of wet mice. And yet we have those people in abundance in our pews on Sunday.

What does that say about the way we American Christians disciple converts to maturity?

Honestly, what should be expected of a convert to Christianity at one, three, five, ten, and twenty years after that conversion?

I don’t know why Christian leaders are not asking this eternal-life-and-death question. It may be THE most important question to ask!

How would I answer that question? Well, below I give  a “tip of the iceberg” list of five essentials per milestone year.

At one year, every convert to Christ should:

Have read through the entire New Testament once

Have completed a very basic theology class taught by pastoral staff that teaches core doctrines of Christianity

Know why Jesus is the sole source of salvation and be able to articulate that belief with supporting Scriptures

Be in a Bible study led by a mature Christian who knows the Scriptures and can communicate them effectively

Be participating in a church-sponsored service, teaching,  or outreach program

At three years, every convert to Christ should:

Have read through the entire Bible at least once

Have completed an intermediate theology class taught by pastoral staff that covers a wider range of important doctrines, including any denominational distinctives

Be able to articulate what the Gospel is, with supporting Scriptures

Be participating in a church-sponsored class that gives an overview of the Bible and covers the major themes in each of the 66 books

Be serving as an understudy to a leader in a church-sponsored service, teaching,  or outreach program

At five years, every convert to Christ should:

Be able to provide an overview of the major themes of each book of the Bible and exhibit a Christian worldview that understands the arc of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration

Have completed an advanced theology class that emphasizes apologetics and the finer nuances of Christian doctrine, including those that may be different from the church’s denominational distinctives

Understand the core teachings of at least one non-Christian religion or cult and how to rebut them

Be participating in a church-sponsored leadership class

Be serving as a co-leader in a church-sponsored service, teaching, or outreach program

At ten years, every convert to Christ should:

Be capable of teaching/leading one of the previously mentioned theology/Bible classes or a small group

Be commissioned as a church representative, capable of representing the church in ecumenical and interchurch events

Have helped to lead at least a half dozen people to Christ

Be discipling new converts

Be leading a church-sponsored service, teaching, or outreach program and be encouraged to start new ones to fill gaps in the church’s programs

At twenty years, every convert to Christ should:

Hold a church office or leadership position

Be able to identify spiritual gifts in others and mentor those people in those gifts

Be mentoring younger leaders

Be actively designing service, teaching, or outreach programs for the church

Be capable of planting a new church or serving on the mission field

I look at that list and wonder how any part of it can be deemed unreasonable. And if it’s not unreasonable, why are our churches not doing it?

It took me fifteen minutes to conceive the list above. One person, fifteen minutes.

If we want to know why the Church in America is making no inroads into reaching lost and broken people, we don’t have to go any further than the list above. If we want to know why our people are dull, listless, and incapable of articulating the Faith, look again at the list and see how our church educational programs compare.

What’s truly distressing is that anyone with a hobby he enjoys knows the path to becoming an expert in that hobby. She knows what is required to be the best she can be at her hobby. And he and she  pursue that excellence too.

Knowing Jesus and serving Him is far, far above being a hobby. Yet we treat it like one. In fact, because so few people are experts at it, we may be treating Christianity as less than a hobby. A dabbling perhaps. Something we do between syndicated episodes of Scrubs or when it doesn’t interfere with shopping or a round on the links.

No reason exists why we can’t institute attainable educational standards for converts that assist them to maturity. None.

We have no excuses.

This feed is from Cerulean Sanctum (http://ceruleansanctum.com), a blog by Dan Edelen that covers issues facing the American Church.

Equipping the Saints: What We Must Expect…and When

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