You Call THAT a Love Feast?

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When I was growing up in the Lutheran Church, the Jesus People revolution was beginning to permeate a few more open-minded traditional churches. In my youth group we sang songs by Ray Repp, Larry Norman, Honeytree, and Don Francisco. Everyone sported longer hair and Jesus was “what was happening.” The elements in communionPeople talked about community, and partaking of the bread and wine went from being just “communion” to “The Love Feast.”

Fast forward more years than I care to admit and while some of that 70s hippie Christian mentality has worn off, the idea of communion being “The Love Feast” has never left me. The Book of Hebrews talks about heavenly things having earthly counterparts, and I see the Marriage Supper of the Lamb as being represented here by our time of communion.

Why then is communion within our churches today such an amazingly lackluster event? Why do so many of us eat “bread” that consists of quarter-sized, airy wafers or little wheat tic-tacs? And where did the wine go? Some feast, huh?

No, I’m not trying to be sacrilegious. This is one of my top five pet peeves with the way we practice the Faith. It baffles me that for those who believe that communion is held strictly as a remembrance it’s done in such a forgettable way. As for the more mystical who believe that something special happens when we partake of communion, are we expected to believe that a thimble of Welch’s and a molar-cracking divot of hardtack are components of a transcendent experience? Evangelicals come off the worst here. The farther away you get from the Lutherans and Old Line Presbyterians, the closer you are to grape Kool Aid in a plastic shotglass and stale, crumbled saltines.

I’ll be honest here: I believe we are dishonoring the Lord by not going all out with communion. Frankly, I’d love to see churches completely bag the juice and crackers routine, hold a special communion service at least once a month, and serve a real meal during which the church fellowships and communion is handed out—and with a genuine varietal wine (Cabernet for those used to wine and Beaujolais for those being weaned off Welch’s) in a real glass and a basketful or two of fresh-out-of-the-oven homemade loaves of bread with some genuine heft to them. (Or, if you want do do it eaxctly right, consider making up some unleavened bread. Either way, get one of the best bakers in your church to make it.) Encourage people to rip off more than a dime-sized piece, too. Hold it in the sanctuary if you have no other space. (And if no one in your church can cook, rent out the local Italian restaurant and use church money to pay for everyone’s meal.) Spend several hours praying for each person who needs prayer. Confess your sins to each other. Dance a group dance if need be. But by all means, be a living church of living people and not a dry desert hostel filled with stoics. Go home refreshed for the joy and exuberance of it all.

And you—yes, you in the house church—stop laughing.

MacArthur, MacArthur Everywhere!

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John MacArthurOne of the phenomena I’ve encountered in the portion of the blogosphere I regularly visit is an absolute mania for all things John MacArthur. In my post about Jack Hayford, I noticed that I, too, uttered the name that crops up everywhere I turn.

Now John MacArthur seems to be a nice man who honestly loves the Lord, a solid preacher, and a prolific author with some good books, but I have to wonder, What is the obsession with him that I see on blog after blog after blog? Is it just that so much of the message we are getting today from other sources is so ridiculously poor that MacArthur’s receives adulation for merely being good?

Here’s my dirty, little secret: I’ve heard him speak on his “Grace to You” radio program and read a few of his books, yet I’m left curiously unmoved. Never once has his radio program or his writing driven me to my knees or made me want to lift my hands in spontaneous worship. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never been happy with his cessationist views or the fact that he took on the fringes of the charismania out there and painted it as the rational middle, gutting the whole of it in the process. Nor do I support his dispensationalist eschat0logy. Still, there are preachers I disagree with far more whom I resonate with more than I do MacArthur.

So I don’t get it. I’m glad we have him out there, but he barely registers in my library or in my listening. As for me, I’ll stick with Tozer, Ravenhill, Lloyd-Jones and their like. In fact, just the other day I saw a Ravenhill video that has still got me all scrambled up inside trying to work through the depth of it. I’m not sure the entire collected works of MacArthur could do the same for me.

Readers, please tell me why so many can’t stop talking about MacArthur because I feel like I must be failing to understand something that everyone else knows intrinsically.

From CT: Two Men Swimming Against the Tide

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I almost blogged about my epic trial this week to locate a single copy of Christianity Today. For a magazine that was once the most widely published of its type, I couldn’t believe what a struggle it was to find the title anywhere.

That said, the online version serves up two articles I think are worthy of note.

First, the man gracing the cover of the July edition is one of my favorite preachers/pastors, Jack Hayford. The title of the article about him, “The Pentecostal Gold Standard“, nails it. Christianity Today feature on Jack HayfordI’m glad to know that Jack Hayford is on the side of folks like me who have a charismatic background. As much flak as Hayford takes for being a Pentecostal, John MacArthur counts him as a close friend, as does Lloyd Ogilvie. What a testimony that Hayford can serve as that kind of a bridge. When white flight hit his church’s surrounding neighborhood, Hayford stayed put. And he always prays over every seat in the massive Church on the Way that God blessed him with, a church that started out with just a handful of people. Not only has Hayford never pastored anywhere else, but he’s never had a desire to. A man of that kind of character is so very rare today. God bless him!

Second, an interview with Dennis Bakke stirred my heart after my business series. Formerly the CEO of a large energy company, Bakke realized that it took more than lip service to “Kingdom Principles of Leadership” to bring the empowerment of Christ into the workplace. His radical ideas of how to make work enjoyable and to truly cultivate teamwork are insane from the viewpoint of what many Christians have been told work should be. But I have to admit, I loved everything he said. He has a new book out, too, that I will have to read. It may be the breath of fresh air we all need after years of stifling books on leadership. I’ll let you read the article to find out the book’s title, okay? 😉

Two Christian men trying to do it right while doing it differently—kudos to both of them!