Thoughts on a Prayerless House of Prayer, “Premarital Sex” as an Oxymoron, and More

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I’ve been accused of being a thinker, but I just bluff well. Fact is, my Myers-Briggs is strongly ENFP, which makes me a feeler instead. Still, I’m always in my head, though the heart rules.

Some things I’ve been pondering…

Prayerless House of Prayer

I don’t have any figures to back me up, but my own experiences over the years tell me most evangelical churches spend about five minutes praying corporately during any 60-90-minute Sunday meeting. Mainline Protestant churches may up that to 10 minutes out of about an hour. Either way, it’s slim pickings prayer-wise.

When Jesus drove the moneychangers out of the temple, He referred to the temple as a house of prayer. While it’s an error to conflate the OT temple with a NT church, the idea that corporate prayer matters still exists. Consider how many references to prayer the Bible contains.

Consider this also: On your own, you can listen to a recording of a teaching/sermon, sing songs to God, and find out about goings-on in your church, but you can’t pray corporately without a corpus, the Body of Christ.

So what the heck is our problem on Sundays with praying as a group of believers and actually spending some time doing so? Isn’t that one of the purposes and tasks of the Church? Do we simply not believe our own mantra concerning the power of prayer?

Makes you wonder if one reason people eschew church meetings is because the church isn’t doing what it should be doing anyway, so what’s the point?

Is Premarital Sex an Oxymoron?

Facebook’s trends sidebar recently included “news” of celebrity couples who “saved themselves” for marriage by refraining from the wango tango before the wedding. How bizarre that this qualifies as something we need to know.

We think of fornication as sex before marriage. Adultery is sex after marriage but with someone who is not one’s spouse. Both trend high on the “really bad sins” list in the minds of most Christians.

A challenge: What does the Bible say constitutes a marriage?

Almost all Christian wedding ceremonies quote this verse from Genesis:

So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
—Genesis 2:21-24 ESV

Here’s the baffling reality: For as highly as God and Man hold marriage, there’s no proscribed marriage ceremony in the Bible. No set words to say. No vows to make. Nothing. We have other examples of things to say or do as shown in the Bible for hallowed events, but weddings, nope.

When you look, almost nothing is said except that a man who defiles a virgin must pay a bride price for her and make her his wife, but if her father objects, the man still must pay dad the money (see Exodus 22:16-17).

So does the wedding ceremony really mean anything?

If we get down to the purest essence from that Genesis passage, we find these elements:

  • Leaving parents
  • Holding fast (cleaving) to a spouse
  • A sexual union that formally makes the couple one flesh

So, is marriage simply the following?

  • Have sex exclusively with one person, leave your parents, and set up your own household.

Because it seems to me that’s the definition of marriage from a biblical perspective. Which makes the whole issue of premarital sex an oxymoron. The sexual act itself creates what God recognizes as the formal union. There’s no ceremony there, just the intention to start a separate household.

We understand why adultery is wrong. But what if the real sin in fornication isn’t the sex itself but having sex without any intention both to stay true to the other person and to establish a separate household with them?

Really changes the perspective, doesn’t it?

Super Bowl as Church Meeting

Heard more arguments for making Presidents Day the Monday after the Super Bowl. I don’t see any drawbacks in doing so.

Except that the Super Bowl has become an alternate Thanksgiving Day, only with friends instead of family members. It’s the religious holiday for people who feel no compulsion otherwise to do anything religious.

Used to be that Sunday evening church services didn’t bow to the Super Bowl, but now they do. Many churches cancel whatever Sunday evening meetings they ordinarily hold in deference to the Big Game. One could argue that all the elements of a church service (communion meal, worship, separation from other events, identification with a restricted group, and fellowship) exist within a Super Bowl party.

Makes me wonder if instead of decrying our perpetual slide into worldliness and placing too much emphasis on things that will pass away (such as Super Bowls), we Christian instead try to understand what we have done to our church meetings that so many people would rather be at a Super Bowl party substitute.

False Football Prophets

Dear Lord, I hope it’s not true that some self-proclaimed prophet said revival would only come to America if the Panthers won. Looks like my hopes are dashed.

Are there any genuine prophetic voices left out there?

Of Kingdoms and Politics

Christians I know continue to line up behind their chosen presidential candidates, and it’s a hot mess honestly, much more than usual. It says something about the beliefs of the supporters and how they read the Bible.

  • Those who feel the need to upset the establishment, to turn against the Pharisees and usher in a new kind of Kingdom, so to speak, support Trump or Sanders.
  • Those who desire a kinder, gentler, humble Kingdom are falling in for Carson.
  • Those who want a Kingdom that transcends boundaries and makes peace between factions look to Rubio.
  • Those who instead want the King to come, winnowing fork in His hand, to separate the wheat from the chaff support Cruz.
  • Those who nostalgically recall the way the Kingdom used to be are in for Christie, Bush, Kasich, or Clinton.
  • And I’ve got nothing for Fiorina.  😉

Thoughts?

Want to rebut or endorse any of my musings from above? Please comment below. Your comments make Cerulean Sanctum a great place to be, and I appreciate them very much.

Thoughts on Ed Stetzer’s “3 Things Churches Love That Kill Outreach”

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Ooutreach by outstretched handOver at Outreach Magazine online, Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, notes three things churches do or believe that inhibit their ability to do outreach. Obviously, outreach is one of the major tasks for the Church, so knowing how NOT to do it is a big deal. As they say in the biz, “Read the whole thing.”

For the purposes of discussion, here are the three Stetzer items:

1. Too many churches love past culture more than their current context.
2. Too many churches love their comfort more than their mission.
3. Too many churches love their traditions more than their children.

Let me begin by laying some groundwork for my thoughts.

For the past 35 years or so, the Church in America has been on a tear to reconstruct itself. In that time, we have seen major initiatives within most churches and denominations to adopt seeker-sensitive practices, to move toward church growth models, and to become more culturally relevant.

Considering the state of the Church in America today, one must be forced to admit that almost all those initiatives have failed miserably to produce more or better disciples. I’m not sure we can find any Christian leader who thinks the Church, as a whole in America, is better off, by nearly any measure, than it was before this experimentation began. Biblical knowledge, conformity to Christian doctrine, evangelism, retaining our youth, community—those initiatives mentioned above failed to produce desired outcomes in any of those areas.

I want to focus on one aspect of those initiatives especially, since it pertains to the core of Stetzer’s comments: the Church meeting as outreach tool.

When you have dominant seeker-sensitive churches confessing that their model failed entirely to make disciples, have we put too much confidence in our switch from “church for believers” to “church for unbelievers”?

I think that outcomes show us the answer is yes. Not only did turning our church meetings into a nursery for non-Christians NOT gain us the outcomes we desired for them, but we sacrificed our ability to make deeper, stronger disciples of the people we already have who already believe.

“Church meeting as outreach tool” backfired. We moved away from sending Christians out of the church to make disciples out in the world before we bring them into the church, and it cost us dearly.

What we do in our meetings must be for the edification of those who already believe. Changing that to cater to nonbelievers has been a stunningly bad decision that must be reversed if the Church is to start rebuilding itself.

My concern with the Stetzer piece is that it’s trapped in the amber of the 1980s, promoting a ministry philosophy that over 35 years has proved largely incapable of creating disciples, which is the primary mission of the Church.

Moving on…

Stetzer’s points #1 and #3 above are essentially the same, just tweaked for different age emphases. I’ll address them together.

Stetzer writes:

“It’s remarkable, and I’ve said it many times: If the 1950s came back, many churches are ready. (Or the 1600s, or the boomer ’80s, depending on your denomination, I guess.)

“There is nothing wrong with the fifties, except we don’t live there anymore. We must love those who live here, now, not yearn for the way things used to be. The cultural sensibilities of the fifties are long past in most of the United States. The values and norms of our current context are drastically different and continue to change.”

Let me counter with this Scripture:

“To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children who sit in the market place and call to one another, and they say, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.'”
–Luke 7:31-32

The modern American Church has tried desperately in the last 35 years to show itself culturally relevant and hip. Pastors drop references to The Walking Dead or Breaking Bad in their sermons. Churches have small groups based on cultural affinities such as video gaming or hip hop music. In fact, whatever is cool in culture is what drives our youth ministry. If society talks about a cultural issue, we talk about it too. Heck, like a dog, we wallow in it and then say to society, “Look how up we are on the stuff you like!”

Again, what has this gotten us when it comes to making disciples? Nothing.

Stetzer’s main beef is with tradition. I think that’s an old argument left over from 35 years ago. It’s not the point.

Going back to that Luke passage, the Church is missing that point when it focuses on being counter-tradition. What it should be is counterculture.

More than ever, I believe the fix for what ails the American Church is not culture but counterculture. I strongly believe that many people today are desperate to get away from contemporary culture and back to a slower, more personal, more meaningful place that does not shift daily at the whims of style leaders and their thought leader cohorts. That word authenticity keeps rearing its head.

In fact, I have come to wonder if the solution for the Church is to instead examine culture and then head 180 degrees in the other direction.

That mentality may also ask that we examine tradition and see if it is, in fact, already 180 degrees. If so, then rather than throwing it out because we are counter-tradition, we instead consider embracing it when it’s counterculture.

Stetzer derides being stuck in the 1950s, but I think it’s not just the elderly who are nostalgic. Young people are growing sick of modern culture too. They’re looking for counterculture, but what they’re finding instead in our churches is cultural concession. The world piped, and the American Church danced. For the last 35 years or so, that has benefited no one.

As for Stetzer’s #2…

While I agree that the mission of the Church must, in many ways, conflict with comfort, cultural concession is tiring. I may be speaking solely for myself, but when I come to church on Sunday, the last thing I want is trendiness and the very cultural crap I’m forced to wade through daily. When the Church looks just like the world, no option for a “set-apart place” exists.

Yet people are desperately searching for such a place. In a world governed by clocks, where are they to find the comfort of timelessness? In a world filled with 15-minutes of fame, where can they find the comfort of lasting meaning? They are NOT finding those essentials in a church that operates like a cultural haven, yet that kind of comfort is a necessary balm. We desperately need that kind of comfort if we’re to be refreshed to go out into the world and be countercultural.

Do you want effective outreach in your church? Here’s what I suggest:

1. Make the church for the Church. The seeker-sensitive model failed. Bring back the model that intends for Sundays to be the time when maturing believers are fed meat, not milk. Make it a safe place to practice spiritual gifts and to do the mature things a mature Church fellowship should do without fear that some unbelieving visitor will be weirded out or offended.

2. Remember that outreach means to reach out. The mission field exists beyond the four walls of the church building. Equip people to evangelize out there. Lead the lost to Christ out there, then bring them into the church.

3. Be countercultural. Instead of doing whatever the world is doing, ask if the opposite is the better, more lasting way and closer to the heart of God. You may be surprised how many people are looking to escape culture rather than to embrace it.

We’ve had 35 or more of failed outreach ideas. Time to stop doing what doesn’t work and get back to what people really need.

Do American Christians Want to Be the Church?

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Church gone fuzzyFor all the handwringing about half-hearted evangelism and declining church attendance…

For all the lamentations about lack of community…

For all the conflicting PR about organic, emerging, institutional, house, simple, and traditional churches…

For all the grousing about spiritual gifts, cessationism, charismania, and talents…

And for all the preoccupation with politics, Kardashians, Dancing with the Stars winners/losers, sports fanaticism, the “right” schools, the future, the Consitutution, police states, ISIS, endless End Times “prophecies,” and every last minuscule thing that has precious little to do with being a Child of God…

I am increasingly concerned that Christians in America have no desire to be the Church. We just don’t.

We talk like we do, but it’s mostly talk.

I confess that this is true of me as well. I am not exempt. I talk big, but I struggle to find ways to make the things I talk about work. I think this is true of most people in America. Something must be done; now if someone would just do it…

It may also be true that the systems we have in place that make American Christianity what it is only complicate being a genuine Christian attempting to live as the genuine Church.

But Americans have a way of making the things they value most work and work well—which is why I wonder if we truly value being the Church.

Do we wake up and immediately ask God to make us the Church? Is that such a burning concern for us that we give it the priority it deserves?

It’s not that we don’t love God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. It’s that we’re not so sure about people. The vertical still has value. The horizontal, not so much.

Let’s get real, though: If the horizontal isn’t there, is the vertical? Or are we fooling ourselves?

Then there are the endless battles…

For all the talk of trying to preserve the Church in America by taking on the culture and standing up for what is right, have we really preserved anything? Or did “fighting the good fight of Faith” lead us into the wrong battlefields, allowing our flanks to be decimated? Do we now find ourselves in a position where our soldiers are walking away and going back to their homes, weary and looking for something, anything, to distract them from realities they can no longer face because their wingmen went home too?

How many people out there are asking if they can do this anymore? How many have already decided they can’t?

Does anyone care?

Maybe this post is too grim. Maybe it’s not grim enough.

As for me, I think some people still care. I just don’t know if they have enough momentum to steer anyone else their way. Maybe the final outcome was always the remnant, and this is what it looks like.

I admit that I don’t have any answers beyond what I’ve posted here already on Cerulean Sanctum.

It just seems to me that somewhere we went off the rails, and instead of working to rectify the situation, we wandered off, distracted. Maybe this is the “powerful delusion” the Bible speaks of. Maybe we Americans who profess to know the Lord are falling under its spell too.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not as dire as I think it may be. God knows I want to be wrong on this issue.

Do we Americans really care about being the Church? If we still do, how do we prove it?

Maybe you have an answer. If so, please comment.