Month: March 2006

Seventeen Churches

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This morning, I was pondering how many churches in my 43 years I’d spent at least three months attending. The number came up seventeen; they are listed below in close to chronologicial order (though I returned to the Springdale Vineyard twice after returning to the Cincinnati area.) I spent at least three years in the churches listed in boldface.

  • First Lutheran Church—Cincinnati, OH
  • Hope Lutheran Church—Cincinnati, OH
  • Trinity Lutheran Church—Mt. Healthy, OH
  • Shadyside Presbyterian Church—Pittsburgh, PA
  • First Christian Assembly of God—Cincinnati, OH
  • Fellowship Christian Church—Cincinnati, OH
  • College Hill Presbyterian Church—Cincinnati, OH
  • Elmbrook Church—Brookfield, WI
  • Vineyard Community Church—Springdale, OH
  • Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Wheaton—Wheaton, IL
  • Assemblies of God Church—Naperville, IL ?
  • Willow Creek Community Church—S. Barrington, IL
  • Ginger Creek Community Church—Aurora, IL
  • Vineyard Christian Fellowship of San Jose—San Jose, CA
  • Vineyard Christian Fellowship of the Peninsula—Palo Alto, CA
  • Montgomery Community Church—Montgomery, OH
  • Clear Mountain Community Church—Williamsburg, OH

That seems like a lot, but when you factor in college and moving, maybe it’s not unusual. How many churches have you attended for at least three months?

Christian Fiction: Religious Publishing’s Redheaded Stepchild

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Pile of open booksBeaten like a redheaded stepchild.

It means to be singled-out for abuse, since a redheaded stepchild will ultimately look different from the rest of the children in the family and is probably the one child who looks most like the absent parent.

Last week, a couple commenters wondered why I was writing fiction instead of nonfiction. Acquainted with my writing here at Cerulean Sanctum, they thought it odd that I was abandoning what they felt was a career in nonfiction (presumably through authoring books that teach on a topic) to focus on novels.

That’s a legitimate concern. I answered in the comments of that post, but have pondered that question on and off over the last week. The Lord hasn’t really burned any one issue into my soul in the last few hours, so rather writing nothing for today, I thought I’d expound on this issue of the worthiness of Christian fiction and my reasons for pursuing a career as a novelist.

My wife calls me a Renaissance Man because there’s not a field I can’t discuss to the point that I could fool most people into thinking I worked in that field. I’ve had so many disparate jobs in my life (and even more suggested to me by well-meaning advocates) that I’m most definitely a jack-of-all-trades. Couple that with reading on everything from Einstein to Frankenstein, and you have the a modern day equivalent of the 17th century’s Man of Letters.

Unfortunately, our culture has no real place for Men of Letters and jack-of-all-trades. The Renaissance is long past. Ours is the Age of Specialists. Anyone who’s recently applied for a job that asks for skills in twenty-five areas knows that fulfilling twenty-three of those areas won’t cut the mustard nowadays.

The same is true of nonfiction in the Christian world.

Read the dustjacket of your average Christian nonfiction title, noting the author bio. Every time I do so, I’m amazed that the author even has time to write considering all the degrees he’s earned, the ministries he’s founded, and the sheer number of leadership roles any one person can have. I think, Man, he’s got to have a butler or two to juggle all he does. It takes me six hours just to cut the grass!

That reality carries ramifications.

One of the unfortunate truths of publishing is that the average Joe doesn’t want to read another average Joe’s wisdom. Because I own a freelance writing business, I routinely get folks asking me if I will write their life story. Usually the requester tells me that their story is so jaw-droppingly astonishing that I’ll be seeing my name in The New York Times Book Review if I write up their life.

I tell every one of those folks the same harsh truth: Unless you’re a recognizable name, no one cares how amazing your triumph over adversity is. Joel Osteen overcomes a case of dandruff? A million copies sold from WalMart alone. You regrowing your limbs after having them bitten off by 20-ft. tall radioactive squirrels escaped from a top secret government lab? Well, maybe your mama will read it if it goes on sale at Big Lots.

Likewise, should I try to write for the nonfiction market, unless I can produce an author’s bio that makes me sound like Rick Warren, John MacArthur, Thomas Aquinas, C.S. Lewis, St. Augustine, and Max Lucado rolled up into one, no one will pay to read what I think about some issue in the Christian Faith. Free blog? Maybe. And even that’s a struggle.

Fiction, though, is a horse of a different color. I don’t have to be the pastor of the most mega-full megachurch of them all. I don’t have to have been the past director of the American Red Cross, Operation Mobilization, and Youth for Christ all at the same time. My wife doesn’t have to be the founder of six different women’s ministries now in ninety-seven countries and counting. My kids don’t have to be the valedictorian and/or first team All-American. I don’t have to have an Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Clio, Patsy, Gold Medallion, or any other award. I don’t even have to say that I once taught a night class on self-esteem at a community college.

All I have to do is write a good tale.

The irony of the whole fiction vs. nonfiction divide is that the divide itself doesn’t truly exist. In a novel, I can do as much teaching as St. Paul if the story will bear it. Through stories, I can actually expound on three or four different subjects that the buyer of a nonfiction book would never tolerate mixed together. You could never sell a nonfiction book on classical music + quantum physics + chastity, but you could write a novel that encompasses all three.

Here’s another case in point about the nature of nonficti0n (facts) vs. fiction (narrative). I’m going to toss out two teachings by Jesus. Without thinking about them too much, what are the details and points from each?

  • The Olivet Discourse
  • The Parable of the Good Samaritan

Okay, so not everyone knows Matthew 24 as the Olivet Discourse. What if I said it was Jesus’ teachings on the Last Days? Does that help with the specifics at all? No?

We remember virtually every parable, don’t we? Narrative resonates. I was talking with a librarian today at my local library, and we were discussing how easily we remember the great novels of our youth, their messages still echoing deep within us. The Old Man and the Sea. The Red Badge of Courage. Little House on the Prairie. The Cay. They stick with us because their narrative framework carries within it embedded truth. When we recall the story, we recall the greater meaning behind it.

I can’t remember all the points from all the sermons I’ve heard. (I don’t think I’m the only one, either. So fess up!) But I can recall most of the stories told within those same sermons.

My personal library is four feet to the left of me as I write. All the titles are jumping out, but as I scan each one, many of their facts are lost to my foggy memory. Narrative, on the other hand, pops right into my noggin. I can’t recall all the details from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, but I can envision almost every scene from the book next to it, C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce.

I’m nobody in the grand schemes of the publishing world. No marquee flashes my name in neon. You can’t get my teaching tapes from CBD. But what I can do is tell a tale well. And as any publisher or agent will tell you, that’s exactly what their dying for in the fiction market, embedded truths and all.

Christian fiction may seem like the redheaded stepchild to some folks, but right now, there’s no better way to bring the truth of Christ into a world that gets bombarded by facts each day. “Tell me a story,” is a phrase that hints at the captivating power of narrative. Whether we’re seven or seventy, when we’re engrossed in a story, our souls are open to the Lord.

Tags: Fiction, Nonfiction, Facts, Narrative, Story, Teaching, Church, Faith, Christianity, Jesus, God

Battling Testaments!

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BibleDoesn’t everyone think that his church is a Bible-based church? Is there anyone out there who goes to a church she thinks is NOT based on the Bible?

One of the phenomena I finally noticed this year is the fact that we have three kinds of churches we consider to be Bible-based churches. I can’t believe I never realized this before this year, but I suspect the level at which we discern where our leaders are taking us is far lower than our comfort zone. We just don’t want to admit it.

Many of the battles we see within Christendom, particularly in America, are rooted in a fundamental problem with how we view the authority of Scripture and its complete, unified message.

What do I mean by this?

Well, take a sampling of churches you’ve been a part of in your walk with Christ. They’re all Christian churches and as such would be considered an outgrowth of the New Testament as it adjoined and grew out of the Old Testament.

But what too often happens in our churches is that we fall into a divisive view of Scripture that pits the New Testament against the Old and vice versa. From this internal battle, we generate a litany of disagreements about how to properly walk out the Christian life.

Walk into a Pentecostal church and you’ll notice something right away: there’s a lot of quoting from the Old Testament. When Pentecostals talk about God’s promises, there’s quite a dependence on the OT for those promises. Here are a few you’ll hear:

I would have fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of Jehovah in the land of the living.
—Psalms 27:13 MKJV

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked. Because you have made the LORD your dwelling place— the Most High, who is my refuge— no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent.
—Psalms 91:1-10 ESV

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
—Psalms 103:2-5 ESV

Praise the LORD! Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in his commandments! His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever.
—Psalms 112:1-3 ESV

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
—Jeremiah 29:11 ESV

Naysayers on the NT side don’t want to hear about prosperity, health, strength, smarts, wealth, and all that stuff. That was the Old Covenant; the message of the New Covenant is 180 degrees the other way. For them, this OT stuff runs counter to how they read the NT. Their theology comes back with the following:

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. ”
—Matthew 6:19-20 ESV

Then Peter said in reply, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.
—Matthew 19:27-29 ESV

And [Jesus] lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. “Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.”
—Luke 6:20-26 ESV

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
—1 Corinthians 1:27-29 ESV

To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.
—1 Corinthians 4:11-13 ESV

I find it surprising that Pentecostals and charismatics are basing their theology on Acts 2, yet they go back to the OT for their promises. On the other hand, those Christians who wouldn’t be caught dead in a Pentecostal church sometimes act as if 2 Timothy 3:16-17 wasn’t true:

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 ESV

An attitude exists that somehow relegates the OT to the past, as if the NT is the only real Scripture for the Church (even if the apostles and NT writers were only quoting from the OT). It’s like the OT ceased to exist once the canon of the NT was completed.

Let me tell you: the people in the seats are confused.

The hot new word in Christian circles is worldview. We love the idea of a coherent Christian worldview, don’t we. I know I do.

But if that’s true, then why are we stuck in one testament or the other? Wouldn’t a comprehensive Christian worldview fully integrate the Old Testament life of the faithful with the New Testament life of the faithful?

Unfortunately, you see battling testaments everywhere. One that burst on the scene recently was the environmental care flap after a few Evangelicals asked us to ponder global warming. The NT supporters instantly let us know that the Revelation tells us it’s all going to burn, while Matthew’s inclusion of Jesus’ Great Commission makes it the only thing we as a Church should be doing. The OT supporters, on the other hand, went back to Genesis and reminded people that the original call to stewardship of Creation that God gave Man in the Garden has not been rescinded.

And the mouths started yappin’.

Are we afraid of the Whole Bible? Are not the Scriptures the unified words of God to Man? If so, then why do we pit the OT and NT against each other? Where is our scholarship that makes it possible for us to be blessed by God with health, wealth, and might , while also understanding that in this world we will have trouble, sickness, and poverty, even in the Church?

I’d love to see an American Church that is routinely operating out of both the New Testament and the Old, not afraid to link both. Instead we get the NT aficionados battling the OT aficionados. Every so often we do get that third way, the Whole Bible Church, but in my travels it seems to be a rarity. Still, it’s a rarity we need to ensure is less rare every day.

What will it take to make us a “Whole Bible” Church?

Tags: Bible, Scripture, Old Testament, New Testament, Church, Faith, Christianity, Jesus, God