Bank Account of the Living Dead
October 8, 2009
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Benevolence, Boldness, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Community, Counterculture, Dying to Self, Godly Character, Maturity, Obedience, Relevance, Simplicity, Worship Feedback : 15 comments
When people talk about original sin, they love to point to toddlers committing two obvious sins: lying and screaming “MINE!” all the time. It’s so desperate and obvious it makes us laugh.
Nobody laughs when adults do it, though.
Which is why I am bothered by the sudden eruption of Christians, most of them political conservatives, who are screaming “MINE!” when they don’t like the idea of the government redistributing wealth. It’s not that I don’t blame them. 
I’m very sympathetic. I don’t like the government taking my money and giving it to someone else, either.
Did you notice the word my in that last sentence? Think about that for a moment. Then think about this: It’s a very short trip from complaining about giving money to the government so the government can give it to other people who may need it to complaining about giving money to the Lord so the Church can give it to other people who may need it.
The Bible says this:
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
—Colossians 3:3I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
—Galatians 2:20
Part of what made the early Church so radical to the Jews is that they got the concept of being dead. They understood it legally and spiritually. Someone declared legally dead could no longer be said to own anything. And spiritually, they understood it based on what John the Baptist initiated and Jesus advocated as the way of fulfilling all righteousness:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
—Romans 6:3-4
When you and I went down in that water, what came up from it was new. Whatever we were died. And what emerged from that water had no claims on the old life and the things of the world, for that new person was dead to those things, a new life now joined to Christ in His death.
This is why baptism has seen its meaning diminish in most churches today: We don’t stress that the person who comes out of that water is not the person who went in. We don’t talk about the burial. We don’t mention the old life that was abandoned for a new one that has us living as if all you and I own now is Christ, for we are in Him, and all we have is Him.
Those in the early Church understood the full meaning, though, which is why they could say what they did:
Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.
—Acts 4:32
Many will reply that I’m opposing capitalism. That’s the usual retort. But the truth is that I haven’t seen genuine capitalism in a long time. Genuine capitalism is a fantastic economic system in the hands of God-fearing people. In the hands of such godly people it works beautifully on a local scale for they balance the health of the local community against any race to the price bottom by any one controlling interest.
But the truth is that capitalism today is run by people who do not fear God. Such godless people long ago abandoned the health of the local economy in favor of globalism, where all that matters is the lowest possible price—which means that someone inevitably suffers for that price because community loses all meaning when the entire planet is involved.
Plenty of Christians make excuses for the condition of capitalism today. If I read my Bible correctly, though, I can’t see that God was ever keen on excuses.
Capitalism, socialism, communism—all have their evils. But the one system I never hear enough about, the one that is 100 percent evil-free is God’s system, the Kingdom (or call it Kingdomism, if you like).
The economy of God’s Kingdom is made up of people who died to self and gave up the childish notion of “MINE!” These people are puzzled by arguments in favor of 10 percent, because each of them realizes that all that is around them is in play at all times for the Lord and His Kingdom. Their lives and everything in them are 100 percent purchased and owned by Jesus.
We live in what some have deemed a “praise & worship generation.” I would argue that few of us understand what genuine worship is, especially in the context of our death and burial in Christ.
This classic verse says it all:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
—Romans 12:1
We are the sacrifice. And just a little study shows us from the Scriptures that what is sacrificed is never intended to get up from the altar, dust itself off, and go on as if nothing happened. No, the outcome for the sacrifice is death. And it isn’t a 10 percent death or even a generous 15 percent one, but 100 percent.
But that is my worship: 100 percent of all I am and anything connected to me. That is the life that fully celebrates Jesus and worships Him in Spirit and in truth.
Do we understand how far we are from the ways of the Kingdom? I know I do. And I understand it more each day. I want to crawl off the altar of sacrifice. I don’t want to be dead. I like “MINE!” too much, too.
Yet as each day passes, I enjoy that kind of compromised, half-dead, zombie-like existence less and less. Now, I can see what Jesus intended. And it is so much more than any of us can comprehend.
I want to be fully dead. It’s the only way to truly live.
Tags: Abiding in Christ, Baptism, Capitalism, Communism, Death, Dying to Self, Economics, Kingdom of God, Kingdomism, Local Economies, Sacrifice, Self-Centered, Self-Sacrifice, Selfishness, Socialism, WorshipRelated 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, WorshipRelated posts
The Lost Worship Song
January 21, 2009
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Church Issues, Miscellany, Oddities, Worship Feedback : 24 comments
Recently, I spent a good chunk of time looking for MP3s of old worship songs. My purpose wasn’t nefarious; I’m just looking to build the repertoire of the worship team at our church.
So I went skimming through some old (read: 8-10 years) worship song listings I had from my Vineyard church in California, stuff I played to much blessing for the congregation. Good songs. Tunes that got people worshiping. Music that blessed me as I played it.
My conclusion from intensive searching online for about a dozen of those songs? They may as well have never existed. They’re just gone.
Out-of-print albums. Missing entirely from iTunes or any other site. No Last.fm, no Pandora. No streams existing anywhere. I can’t even find a snippet in any form for my team to listen to, much less the particular arrangement I’d like to mimic.
That seems to me to be an enormous loss to the Christian community.
Sure, I might be able to find a copy of an old CD on eBay for $10, but I can’t afford that kind of dough to amass a stack of old CDs when I’m only after one song here and there.
Why is it that we still can’t get access to a lot of the backcatalog of some of the Christian recording companies who have all this music locked up? I complained about this before, but I find it even more amazing when genuine worship music, the kind church worship teams would play, goes MIA. I mean, if it was great 10 years ago, why would it not be great now? What’s wrong with rediscovering a classic for a new generation?
It seems to me that we’re gutting our own heritage by letting good music vanish into the ether.
I went looking for Cindy Rethmeier’s “Processional” and Kevin Prosch’s “(Even) So Come” and struck out everywhere I looked. An old Crystal Lewis version of the Prosch tune exists in video format on YouTube, and that may be what I have to go with, though the audio quality is poor and it’s hard to make out all the instrumentation. The Rethmeier tune, a lovely and anthemic song, is vapor.
Maybe this is a stupid beef. I don’t know. In the past, you cut a track to an LP and good luck when that LP went out of print.
Still, I would think we could do better in preserving our heritage in music, especially since it is now so easy to store music digitally.
So how about cutting us worship teams a break when it comes to access to old worship songs? If the CDs are out of print, what’s the harm in putting a lower bitrate MP3 on the composer’s site so someone can at least hear how the song goes? And don’t even get me going about the lack of availability of some of this stuff on iTunes. I know I would definitely pay $1 to download some of these songs just so the people in the pews can be drawn into a soul-stirring worship experience through old music that stirred us once and can do so again.
Tags: CCM, Contemporary Christian Music, Contemporary Worship, WorshipRelated posts
Cleansing the Charismatic Crackup, Part 2
August 19, 2008
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Cerulean Sanctum Series, Charismatic, Christianity Outside North America, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Discernment, Dying to Self, Faith, God the Father, Godhead, Godly Character, Heresy, Holiness, Humility, In the News, Jesus Christ, Leadership, Maturity, Oddities, Relevance, Revival, Simplicity, Spiritual Warfare, Supernaturalism, The Holy Spirit, Worship Feedback : 22 comments
Something is amiss in the charismatic movement.
If you read the first part of this series, in this post you’ll find more analysis of what’s wrong with the charismatic movement and what we can do to clean up the mess it has created in the Western Church.
Problems: Too many charismatics are more interested in what they can get than what they can give. Also, we love to talk about taking dominion over the kingdom of darkness, but we forget the primary means by which we cripple the Enemy’s purposes.
Solution: We need to be drilled on the Great Commission.
The selfishness of the charismatic movement that I mentioned in the first part of this series is dramatically evident in the general lackadaisical attitude too many of us have toward the Great Commission. So many of us in the West are chasing after gifts and ecstatic experiences that we’ve completely lost the others-centric focus of the Gospel. We’re experts at claiming promises and prosperity for ourselves, but terrible at leading people to Christ. And even when we do get that juxtaposition of soul-winner and Spirit-seeker like you find in some Pentecostal churches, the discipleship program consists of “Now here’s your Bible, good luck.”
As they say in my neck of the woods, that ain’t gonna fly.
Now we can talk all we want about Joel’s End Times Army and psych ourselves up for spiritual warfare, but nothing breaks the Devil’s back more than leading others to Christ and discipling them to maturity. So for all our talk of dominion, unless we’re making disciples, we’re losing the war. End of story.
And we are losing, I hate to say. At least in the West. In other countries, charismatics are astonishingly good at leading others to Christ. They stand as an Ichabod-like statement against us Western charismatics, especially those of us obsessed with prosperity gospel teachings. My fear is that our disease will infect the still-vibrant Third World charismatic Church some day and not the other way around.
Problem: The charismatic movement is a cult—of celebrity.
Solution: Time for the old guard, who failed to guard what they were entrusted with, to get off the stage.
I mentioned in my post entitled “Burned” that the prominent leaders of the last 20 years of the charismatic movement need to move on and let someone else lead for a change. By and large, the self-appointed apostles and prophets out there have run the movement into the ground. They simply don’t know what they are doing, and for people who supposedly exemplify Spirit-controlled leadership that’s a damnable crime.
We need to see new faces in the charismatic movement who are untainted by past stupidity. Better yet, we need more nameless and faceless people rise up. I think the second someone in the movement announces “Hey, I’m a prophet,” we should run the other way. The mark of God’s blessing on someone’s ministry is that he draws people to Jesus without drawing attention to himself. That’s the gold standard as far as I’m concerned. That’s humility. It recognizes that if we’re doing this thing right, then anyone is replaceable.
I’m really sick of these slick charismatic celebrities and their private jets and Armani suits. They’re killing the movement almost singlehandedly. Their followers should be ashamed, too, not only of the way their “heroes of the faith” act, but at the braindead way in which they’ve followed them.
Listen, no one should be immune from questioning. This “touch not the Lord’s anointed” thing is little more than a power trip used by self-centered leaders (and their minions) and a “check your Bible at the door” capitulation to spiritual sloth.
Frankly, I’m appalled at the backtracking I’m seeing from some of those supposed leaders involved with Lakeland. They’re repudiating people and events faster than you can say “blind guides.” That’s despicable. Those people deceived many. If the cadre of jokers leading the charismatic movement today won’t get off the stage, then we either need to boot them off or just start ignoring them. Sadly, the best way is to stop the flow of money. That will be immediately noticed, let me tell you. It may even wake some of these posers up. Repentance is a good thing; so is a little reliance on the need for daily bread.
Problem: We let the miraculous enthrall us.
Solution: We need to be more discerning and less surprised by the miraculous.
“But what about the miracles?” some will say.
You mean the normal Christian life?
Yes, normal. The wordly should be surprised by the miraculous, but charismatics shouldn’t be. Yet we giggle and fawn like Hannah Montana fans, running screaming to wherever the slightest inkling of the miraculous appears, often wasting huge amounts of money in the process.
That’s inane and childish.
What about the miracles? We should be used to them. Not in a ho-hum sort of way, but as mature believers accustomed to moving in the Spirit. Faith makes it so. We trust that God will make good on His miraculous promises, so we rest. It’s the faithless who should go ga-ga.
The Enemy can make miracles. Jannes and Jambres threw down their staffs and those inanimate pieces of wood turned into snakes, just as Moses’ did. The Bible speaks plainly that the antichrist will do miracles. Miracles, by themselves, are proof of nothing.
I will even contend that without the power of either God or the Devil, people may still work miracles. I offer Watchman Nee’s very deep book The Latent Power of the Soul for evidence. I didn’t understand that book the first time I read it. What Nee was saying went over my head. My review at Amazon was not all that positive. A few years later, though, and I see it now. Witnessing some of the so-called revivals that have cropped up in recent years, I wonder if we’re not seeing perfect evidence of the power of the soul on display. It would explain quite a bit.
Look, I’m absolutely in favor of “…with signs accompanying.” But one crucial lead-in statement must go before that trailer: “The Gospel of Jesus Christ preached in doctrinal purity….” If the charismatic movement misses that, it’s missed everything.
Problem: The charismatic movement is obsessed with novelty.
Solution: We must understand that there is nothing new under the sun.
I’ve written in the past about this obsession charismatics have with novelty. If I hear “new move of God” one more time, I’m going to scream. Why? Because that’s marketing hype, not Holy Spirit truth. If God moves in a untouched place on the globe among people who have never heard the name of Jesus, then by all means call that a new move of God. But the manner in which God moves doesn’t change because the means by which He has chosen for us to minister is perfect as is. We are to minister by the Spirit of God according to His Word. That was new once, but that was a long time ago. We should have gotten well acquainted with how that works by now.
Instead we work to add on to what God has done. We try to make it fresh when there was nothing wrong withits freshness to begin with. we are the ones who got stale, not God. And for the reasons I’ve already outlined in these last two posts.
My advice? The smartest thing any of us can do is to ignore the circus barkers who keep yelling “new” and “anointed.” If we do that, we’ll keep out the tired lies that are the foundation of so many of these supposed “new moves.”
Problem: We continue to tolerate the aberrations of the past, the worst excesses of the charismatic movement, digging them up repeatedly for each new generation after they were long buried.
Solution: It’s time to grow up and face today. In many cases, the good old days weren’t all that good. Wrong doesn’t get right over time.
Big-league heretic William Branham has been dead for decades, yet his name was invoked over Lakeland. Then someone dredged up Paul Cain. Sadly, the charismatic movement today resembles a bad horror flick: we are overrun with vampires who suck out the life out of people or zombies who eat our brains. And then there are the vampire zombies. Hey, if you’ve been hanging around the charismatic movement long enough, then you know what I’m talking about….
You know a movement has reached the putrefaction stage when it starts mining its old heresies and heretics for new material. I just don’t understand the fascination.
I’m going to end today’s comments with a warning.
While many aspects of Lakeland were old news, one was not. I’ve not seen anyone comment on this, but it’s something to watch for. This kind of convergence may serve as a warning in the future.
Lakeland was new in one startling regard: It brought many of the different streams of charismatic practice together.
Looking over the most recent “revivals,” each had a flavor unique to their particular stream. Toronto was largely a Third Wave charismatic happening. Pensacola was Pentecostal.
But Lakeland was different; it attracted everyone. It was the Rosetta Stone of charismatic events. You had charismatics of all stripes: Pentecostal, Third Wave, Mainline, Sympathizers, and variations thereof. Toward the end, in what was probably the pivotal moment of Lakeland, you had Third Wave poobah C. Peter Wagner swooping in with his New Apostolic Reformation banner attempting to tie it all up under the auspices of his group.
I’m telling you now, watch out for this. The days ahead will be marked by increasingly bold attempts to unite all the streams of the charismatic movement. I believe that will not be a good thing because instead of bringing a cleansing to the movement, it will instead unite all the craziness. Lakeland already proved this to be the case. We have not seen the last of this, though.
Be open to the Lord, but never stop being watchful, faithful, and wise.
***
Posts in the “Cleansing the Charismatic Crackup series:
Tags: Assemblies of God, Azusa Street, Bentley, Brownsville, Charisma, Charismatic, Charismatic Movement, Foursquare, Lakeland, Lee Grady, Murray, Pensacola, Pentecostal, Ravenhill, Revival, Toronto, Toronto Blessing, Torrey, Tozer
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