Counterculture

Who I Am & Why Cerulean Sanctum—Part 4

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In what is hopefully the final entry in this last month’s series covering my life’s journey, we come back to where we left off—at the Vineyard in 1989.

I came to the Vineyard after most of the leadership left the Presbyterian church I had been going to. Many of my friends and some of those leaders wound up at the Vineyard and I followed them there.

Now this does not mean that I was unfamiliar with the Vineyard. In fact, I"Fog in the Redwoods" by Dan Edelen had been listening to the worship CDs they had and loved the purity of what the Vineyard was trying to accomplish, recovering a worshipful attitude. I even recommended the church to some friends, so it was not a difficult leap for me.

It seems like an eternity ago, but at one time the Vineyard was highly controversial. Sadly, this was largely due to some poor choices the Association of Vineyard Churches (AVC) made in their attempt to remain on the “cutting edge” of the charismatic movement. But I’ll get into that later.

I started teaching classes at my new church and was heavily involved with the prayer team, the latter being a natural outgrowth of my desire to be an intercessor. Still, I was beginning to realize I had some unfinished business elsewhere.

After a few months at the Vineyard, I felt a calling to finish my education, eventually getting on at Wheaton College in the Christian Ed department. I attended a Vineyard church at Wheaton and encountered actual persecution for doing so. To this day, Wheaton acts like the AVC doesn’t exist. Being a charismatic at Wheaton was definitely no fun. The Kansas City Prophet movement blew up while I was there and I was forced into defending it by some profs who liked to put the lone charismatic on trial. The whole movement gave me the heebie-jeebies actually, so it was no fun trying to keep others at the school from throwing out the charismatic baby with the prophetic bathwater.

Truth is, Wheaton was stifling. I found the lack of openness to anything but what people grew up with to be a grind on me spiritually, so it was nice to get back to my Vineyard home church with my degree and my love for the Lord intact. In the earlier days of the AVC, there was a great emphasis on grace, and that was healing.

But what started with the Kansas City Prophet movement showed the dark underbelly of the Vineyard, too—an unwillingness to scrutinize “new moves of God” more fully before jumping on board with their imprimatur. The worst part was that when these new moves fizzled or their leadership fell into error, no one in the Vineyard would stand up and try to explain to the people in the seats what happened and why.

I met my wife, whose background was Evangelical Friends (the same denomination John Wimber had come from), in 1994 and she started coming to the Vineyard, too. I think it was a good thing for her, but we would not stay in that church for long. After getting married in 1996, I took a job with Apple Computer and we moved from Ohio to Silicon Valley.

Finding a church in California was something we thought would be easy, but we had a false start at one Vineyard church there before finding another Vineyard in Palo Alto that was a good place for us. We were at that church for almost four years.

Before we left for California, I asked the pastor of our Vineyard in Ohio to not let the church become a clone of Willow Creek. While at Wheaton I had done a year-long study of the Willow Creek ministry model and had come away seeing that what others were billing as the model of the future was actually an emperor with no clothes. I viewed that model as lowest common denominator Christianity and the last thing I wanted to see was that model being adopted at our Vineyard church. Little did I know how prophetic my warning would be.

After returning to Ohio in 2000 to address the ill health of my parents, we found our old Vineyard church had swallowed the Willow Creek ministry model hook, line, and sinker. Seeker sensitivity had become the new mantra and everything that had been good about the church had been dumbed down and laminated in order to not offend anyone.

But the Gospel is offensive to many people and you lose something by trying to take the cross and sin out of the equation. When my wife and I moved later to the far eastern portion of Cincinnati, we were now faced with an hour-long drive to the church. I’d just buried both my parents and we’d had our first child. After moving, we lost our primary source of income and were truly in the pits. When we needed to hear about the Lord most, we were instead getting sermon messages about self-esteem.

Things got better for us as we looked past our church for the spiritual strength we could not get there any longer. We also realized the importance of being local, so after a long withdrawing period we finally split from the Vineyard after fifteen years and have recently found a wonderful, small non-denominational charismatic church just a few miles from where we now live.

And that’s the whole story!

As for Cerulean Sanctum, this blog was actually born out of another blog I started in 2001 (does that make me a blog pioneer?) that looked at current events from a Christian perspective. But out of my dissatisfaction with the direction our Vineyard church in Ohio had taken, I felt a calling to change the blog to reflect the growing unease many Christians were feeling with the church growth movement, spiritual deadness in many congregations, foolishness in the charismatic movement, and “mega-Churchianity.” Many of us are reading the Bible and thinking, How come churches today are not like the one we see in Acts? That’s a very good question that we show much reluctance in addressing.

I want to tackle these issues because we cannot ignore them. The future of the Church in America depends on us using God’s wisdom to be strong and wise.

My heart is for the Church as it is expressed in America. I know where we can be because I’ve seen glimpses of how astonishing the Church can be when we are living out the truth of Jesus Christ in its fullness. But rather than this being the norm, too many Christians are settling for something far less. My prayer is that Cerulean Sanctum can be a nexus for people who are looking for more than lowest common denominator Christianity. I hope to inspire people to think more critically about many of the fads in Christian circles and to call us back to the true heart of the Lord.

Some would classify that as prophetic and perhaps it is. But that is why I am here. I hope you can be edified by the discussion here, and that together we can grow to become the Church God has always desired us to be.

Blessings on you all. Thanks for stopping by.

Is Spiritual Growth Measurable?

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A reader wrote me a thoughtful note in response to the post “What Constitutes Spiritual Growth?“. I started to write her an answer privately, but I thought I would instead share my answer with everyone.

Her question was the same one I asked six months ago: “How can we measure spiritual growth in people?”

This question is a profound one. I have asked many people how they measure spiritual growth and largely get blank stares and shrugs, and yet everyone agrees that it is critical. What is true discipleship if we cannot put a frame around it and how it should function? How can we teach or hope to train up people in righteousness without some defining standards? The fact that the comment section on that posting went empty was troubling to me.

Is spiritual growth measurable? Personally, I don’t believe you can measure spiritual growth like one measures IQ. Not all answers are found in pure science. A “scientific,” quantitative measure will always elude us.

Still, I believe the signs of growth are there:

1. Reproduction—I have had arguments with many Christians over this issue, but I cannot escape it. With spiritual maturity MUST come reproduction. We move from childhood to adulthood. Children do not reproduce, but adults do. We show people who do not know Christ who He is and ask them to come to Him. We teach the new in the faith so that they may grow up into adulthood, too. A parent can have a child, but part of parenting is raising that child to adulthood. So it is with the spiritually mature and the young in the Faith.

Some people are better evangelists and some are better teachers. I do not believe that one or the other is superior when it comes to reproduction. But we Christians must side on one of those two. I think a hockey analogy works here. In hockey, both the player who shoots the puck into the net and the player who passes the puck to the player who took the shot get credit for the goal. In our case, both the sower and the reaper rejoice together.

Growing Christians reproduce.

2. Fruit of the Spirit—Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Are they deepening in a person’s life as time goes on? We should be able to note this.

Stuart Briscoe of Elmbrook Church in New Berlin, WI is a prominent evangelical pastor. Briscoe once said something startling to me. He does not call anyone a Christian unless that person has demonstrably walked with the Lord for at least five years. Five years may be more than I would go, but I think it is a wise belief nonetheless for us to take care and to observe the fruits of repentance. A real conversion will “take” but a phony one will not.

Growing Christians progressively exhibit the fruit of the Spirit.

3. Gifts of the Spirit—I consider myself a charismatic, but a careful one. I think much of the modern charismatic movement has gone off the deep end. That said, I still believe that the gifts of the Spirit are an indicator of God actively working in a person’s life.

Now we know from Acts that many brand new Christians exhibited the charismata at their moment of conversion. This should not keep us from understanding that a mature Christian wields those gifts in a mature, wise way. You would not give a howitzer to a ten year old, and neither does God bestow true charismata to those who cannot handle them wisely. The Spirit of the Prophets is still subject to the prophets.

(A side note: Leonard Ravenhill, the great British revivalist, once said that a dove cannot fly without both wings. And just as a dove has nine primary flight feathers on each wing, there are nine Fruits of the Spirit and nine Gifts of the Spirit. I believe this is great wisdom and why I put both “wings” here.)

Growing Christians flow in the charismata with grace and humility.

4. Mirroring Jesus—If we know Jesus, then we know when people are becoming changed daily into His likeness. One of Jesus’ own will grow up to look like the Lord. We should be able to see that in the lives of people who are reaching maturity. He must increase as we decrease.

Growing Christians grow to resemble Jesus, their Lord.

5. Loved and Hated—People who are growing in Christ will be progressively loved by the true Church and hated by the World. This is a promise the Lord made to us. They hated Him and so they will hate us (see #4.) If we do not engender increasing opposition from the World as we live out the message of Christ, it is a sure sign that we have instead slept with it. Being a Christian costs something, and growing Christians cannot escape being hated for what they proclaim.

Likewise, the Church loves its own and recognizes its own. A person growing deep in the Lord will be loved by the saints. We Christians must also not fear being eclipsed by a younger generation if they are more vital than us in their love for Christ. Our body is not one of division, but wholeness, and we are always called to love the brethren.

Growing Christians will be loved by the Church and hated by the World.

So why do we do so poorly with this?

I believe that in large part the fault rests with leaders within the local church. I know that leaders are always an easy target, but ultimately the blame cannot go anywhere else.

We are failing in growing people to maturity largely because leaders are not actively watching their flocks. It is the responsibility of church leaders to guide the less mature. If we church leaders and are not involved in the active duty of watching to see if these five growth indicators are increasing or decreasing in our charges, then we have failed.

Deep calls to deep and the Spirit to the Spirit. Only the Spirit can discern growth in people; He is the measure of all things. But we leaders cannot do that discerning if we are not paying attention to the lives of our charges and the Spirit’s attesting to their growth (or lack of it.) It is not enough to preach a blistering sermon if we are not following up on how it affected people in their inmost Man. It is not enough to teach the Bible with authority if we do not take the time to ask the Lord to reveal the growth in the lives of our students.

With maturity comes responsibility. One of the responsibilities of the mature is to be actively involved in the spiritual growth of the less mature and to evaluate that growth against the Bible and the revelation of the Holy Spirit. If we do not do this, then we should not be shocked when so little comes of our ministry. The Church of Jesus Christ is a transformational entity charged with raising up the next generation of saints. We must know the standard and bring people to that point, drawing alongside to ensure the successful transition from childhood to adulthood in each believer. That calls for effort and discernment.

God help us all if we do not take that seriously.

“Judgmental Christians” and The Way of Christ for 2005

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I have been thinking quite a bit the last week about why we Christians are being progressively labeled “judgmental.” It is a word that seems to erupt out of the very fabric of society, smothering the voice of Christians in the public square, and offering a sanctuary for those who openly oppose, do not understand, or simply do not care to comprehend Christianity.

This is not a political blog, nor do I like mixing politics and the Christian faith. Too many Christian blogs and Web sites inextricably link the two and I wish to avoid that. Still, since politics is so critical a means of expression for many of those who do not side with Christian thought, it is a necessity to speak about this issue with some level of politics involved.

We live in an age when people are defined by what they are for or against. Nihilistic postmodernism has created an odd human, though, who seems to be more “against” than “for.” This last year drove that point home. Many politically-charged people argued vehemently against some person or issue, but when pressed were unable to articulate what they were actually for, or how to make the reverse of the thing they were against a reality. When the political season had run its course, we saw in those same people a new psychosis labeled “Post-election Stress & Trauma Syndrome” or (amusingly—no matter which side you are on) “PESTS.” This syndrome manifested in those who were largely against many things, but once they had wound up on the losing side of politics were unable to cope with the fact that their “against-ness,” once broken, left them nothing to be for. Their subsequent bout with PESTS being the natural outcome of having no positive ideas apart from their negative ones, they lived solely out of their anger toward what they are against.

When Christians spoke into the public square this year, the “judgmental” label was tossed around with abandon. I cannot ever remember hearing the word “judgmental” attached to Christians more than I did this year. Being a presidential election year surely made some of that true, but I think another force is at work here. It is the force of postmodern nihilism, the very heart of PESTS, and the core of what is left in people who dwell solely on the negative.

2004 will be remembered as the year in which postmodernism reached full flower. With its blooming comes a time when what we are for and against can no longer be assigned values (at least in the minds of proponents of postmodernism.) Relativism, so inherent in postmodern thought, has resulted in this resurgence of nihilism. That bleak outlook on life informed much of the discussion in politics this year. What the new Nietzsches accomplished in 2004’s discourse was to successfully stigmatize anyone who was actually for something, rather than being merely against something.

As a people who are defined by what (and who, especially) we are for, Christians drew the most attacks. Unable to understand that a worldview exists that does not merely state what it is against, postmodern voices in the public square operating solely out of a negative worldview successfully used the “judgmental” tag to label all opponents to their cause, opponents who actually stood for an issue. Nine times out of ten the ones labeled were Christians.

We should recognize this twisting. It is the same force that brands love “hate” and calls truth a “lie.” While this affords us Christians the proof we need that the world is hellbent on our destruction, we should not wear this with pride, but humility. We should not counter this opposition with noses in the air, but should instead become more humble in our recognition that the light of Christ only shows the darkness to be what it is. And we know how Mankind loves darkness.

In 2005 I believe we will see this labeling by those on the other side of Christ intensify. While we recognize the spiritual battle, our response should always be one of Christ the Servant. Our enemies are conquered by the burning coals they heap on themselves when we serve them out of true love. Our reminder for this year is to seek first the way of love while holding true to what is good, noble, and pure. No concession is needed to be what Christ has called us to be, but neither should we forget that the servant heart is what overcomes the world. For this coming year let us remember to always seek the way of servant love so that our enemies have nothing they can hold against us. We may never depart the judgmental label, but our enemies will look all the more foolish for using it.

Blessings for 2005.