04.05.08

Finishing Up in 90 Days

Posted in Reading, Scripture at 11:04 am by Anthony

Like other churches in Albany, our church has been involved in the Bible in 90 Days program.  It has been great for community unity and has gotten a lot of people into the Word.  It has also been very difficult for people to keep up.  As a minister, I was able to, but only because I was able to devote part of my “work” day to the task.  This week, I completed my Bible reading (in 89 days, no less!), and made a note of it on my Facebook page.  A friend of mine asked what new perspectives I had gained from reading the Bible cover-to-cover in a relatively short time span.  My reply was off-the-cuff, and I need to think about it more, but I thought I would post my thoughts here:

“As for new perspectives on the Bible, reading the OT was a needed reminder on the wrathful side of God’s holiness. It’s something we don’t talk/think about much anymore, but it dominates there. Another perspective is that I came to the conclusion that the Bible isn’t really meant to be read in 90 days. There were parts, especially in the NT, and there, especially in the gospels, where I really needed to camp out and let Jesus’ words work on my heart, but I didn’t have time because I was rushing to keep up with the schedule.

Not that the experience was a waste — it wasn’t. There are lots of things that tie together that I was able to connect — like the book of Obadiah & Malachi 1 and the Romans 9 thing about “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” Was he really talking about predestination of individuals, or God’s election of certain peoples, e.g. Israelite over Edomites / believers over unbelievers? In thoroughly CofC fashion, I lean strongly toward the later.”

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03.13.08

Self-Examination for the Church

Posted in Reading, Church Life, Mission at 1:04 pm by Anthony

I made my first trip to Africa in 1988.  Shortly after arriving in Kenya, I met Stan Granberg, and spent four weeks as an intern with the mission team in Meru where Stan lived.  I was impressed with him at that time, and continue to be.  Stan is now leading Kairos, which encourages planting new Churches of Christ in North America.  Stan is deeply commited to our heritage in Churches of Christ and wants to help us reclaim the best parts of our heritage. 

Today, I received the following email from Stan.  I thought it was worth sharing with you:

March 13, 2008

Dear Friends,

My wife and I have the opportunity to travel widely across the country, observing, listening to and engaging in conversation with the fellowship of the churches of Christ. As we do this I keep a travel log of what we are learning. Recently I was blessed to share with our local preachers what God has been doing through Kairos. Since many of these men are my “traveling companions in the kingdom” I wanted to share with them some of what I have been learning about our fellowship. The following is a condensed version of those thoughts. I pray these considerations will encourage and challenge you as you serve God in his great kingdom.

1. Our heritage is blessed by a powerful “believers church” theology that, in its strength, is not complacent with the world as it is. For church planting, it is this theological heritage that critiques pragmatism or personal preference as the foundations for decision making about what a church planter will do. Our believers’ church heritage should help us live out God’s desires in the midst of the fiercely opposing values of a world where the “prince of this world” rules hard. Leonard Allen in Things Unseen describes the essence of a believers’ church theology as an apocalyptic vision of the kingdom of God of which we are both recipients and outposts; this apocalyptic vision provides the dynamic that energizes us into service to the world.

2. Our fellowship is blessed by a deep desire to obey, rooted in a trust in God’s Word. When this desire to obey is based on relationship, knowing God—we do well; when this desire to obey is interpreted as being knowledgeable of the Word, disconnected from relationship with a personal God, we lapse into law-keeping which turns us brittle and harsh.

3. The Road Not Traveled – This is the title of the final chapter in John Mark Hick’s Kingdom Come, the story of James Harding, David Lipscomb and the Nashville Bible School. Our fellowship, and probably God’s people in general, tend to do better when we are traveling folk and not settlers. Our call is still the call of Abraham to leave Ur and of Moses to leave Egypt so that we can experience God as we travel with him. Working with John Mark’s theme, here are three areas that for me constitute the road our fellowship in our generation has yet to travel:

a. Reducing our pride and arrogance. Our spirit of debate and insistence on our correctness are signs. Our well-honed ability to critique, evaluate and look for fault is another. The most damaging evidence of this sin is our struggle with spiritual submission to those whom God brings with spiritual authority into our lives. I confess, I am truly a child of my heritage—I feel I can do better then “they can.” So I have the right to tweak, adjust, dissent. But honestly, I can’t do better. I’m doing the best I can. Lord enrich my willingness to be blessed by others.

b. Serving the world as part of the fellowship of the broken. Our strong “set apart” exclusivity has not only separated us from other believers’ traditions, it has often separated us from the world God intends for us to serve. If we are to be salt and light among God’s lost people we will gain the opportunity to be heard as we recognize that we too are members of the fellowship of the broken. It is this personal recognition that will raise our level of compassion out of the pew and into a life of transforming service in God’s world.

c. Developing a culture of generosity at the level of the congregation. My experience is that as individuals our fellowship can be generous—at times. This has seldom been my experience at the congregational level. A friend of mine recently made this observation of us, “When missionaries go to churches of my fellowship if they do not ask for big money, the churches are insulted. When missionaries go to churches of Christ your churches are insulted if they are asked for money.” Giving without expecting the benefit of the gift must truly be the definition of generous giving. My experiences suggest that generous giving is a road our churches have yet to travel.

I just wanted to share these thoughts with you as we learn together how to minister from our fellowship, calling one another to God’s mission among God’s lost people.

God bless you all for your contributions to the kingdom.

Stan Granberg
Kairos executive director

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05.26.07

Faster Than A Weaver’s Shuttle

Posted in Reading, Theology, Lifestyle at 8:06 am by Anthony

I’m slowly reading Interwoven:  A Pioneer Chronicle by Sallie Reynolds Matthews.  This amazing book was originally published in 1936 and records Mrs. Matthew’s memories of growing up on a ranch near Ft. Griffin, Texas.

For the nation’s centennial celebrations in 1876, the family traveled to the new, nearby town of Albany to celebrate Independence Day.  Writing almost sixty years after that event, Mrs. Matthews recalls how much the world had changed.

The next day we went to the Matthews ranch [remember, she was still a Reynolds at this point–abp] where Bennie and I spent the night and drove on home from there.  We always seemed to have plenty of leisure time in those days; boys and girls would visit and spend several days at the two homes.  There never was any great hurry to be going.  Now we have every convenience to make housekeeping easy and light, running water, both hot and cold, gas and electricity, telephones with which to order everything delivered to our doors, automobiles with paved roads to run them over and if we are in a great hurry we can take an airplane, yet we have so little time for visiting.  We rush, rush, rush here and rush there, and I do not see that we accomplish an extraordinary amount.  Do not think for a minute that I am one who thinks the old times are best for I do not.  I think we are living in the “Golden Age” but I do wonder where the time goes; it flies faster than a weaver’s shuttle. (p. 118, emphasis added)

Written between the two great wars, Matthew’s ideas of a “Golden Age” were common to her time.  Few of us today have such a view of our own times.  So we yearn even more deeply for the relationships of “the old times,” yet we adopt lifestyles that make time for long, casual visits almost impossible.

As believers, we know that the “Golden Age” is yet to come–an age when there will be no more “rush, rush, rush,” for time shall be no more.  It will not be our accomplishments, but our relationships, that matter.  Because we know our future, should that not help us set our priorities for the present?  Let us allow that vision to shape our lives now!

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05.08.07

Let God Be God — Part II

Posted in Reading, Scripture at 7:02 pm by Anthony

In The Spirituality of the Cross, Gene Edward Veith, Jr. describes his journey from atheism through mysticism and liberal theology to faith.* He found that the God of the Bible–specifically the Old Testament–revealed a sovereign God who will not conform to our image of what he should be or who we would like him to be.

I remember when I first began to read the Bible seriously. As I read the Old Testament, I was overcome with its sublimity, later horrified by passages such as God’s commands that the Canaanites be slaughtered. I began to realize that God was something “other,” someone far above my comprehension. I realized that I had been constructing God according to my preferences, positing qualities that I liked and ascribing them to the deity I believed in. In effect, I was making God in my image. But the God I was reading about in the Bible, whose energy blasted those who touched the Ark of the Covenant without the mediation of blood, was very different from myself, numinous, holy, and dangerous. And yet He rang true.

I probably never really believed in the vague, domesticated spirit of niceness that I had constructed for myself and found in my humane liberal theology. The real universe, with its danger and consequences and hard edges, such as cancer, shows no trace of having been created by such a sentimental deity. I probably knew, deep down inside, that I was making up a private little religion to make myself feel better, … . But this God I was reading about in the Bible had hard edges. He is absolute, utterly mysterious, and despite all appearances radically righteous. I began to see God in a completely different light, the light of holiness. And I saw myself in the rebellious children of Israel, ungrateful, inconsistent, and idolatrous. (pp. 39-40)

Veith, of course, doesn’t see God as all “hard edges.” He says that

“the reader comes to realize that this God of wrath is also the God of grace, that from the beginning He provided for sacrificial blood to cover His people’s sins, that He came in Jesus, that His wrath is swallowed up in the cross. As we read … we encounter the Law and the Gospel, through which the Spirit works to change our hearts and bind us to Christ.” (p. 39)

*This book is an explanation of Lutheran theology. I find much in common with my understanding of biblical Christianity, but also several important points of difference.

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05.05.07

Let God be God

Posted in Reading, Scripture, Theology at 8:07 pm by Anthony

Tomorrow I’ll be talking about doubt. I came across the following story which, though it didn’t end up in the sermon, I thought was worth sharing.

Missionary Gracia Burnham, who was held captive by terrorists in the Philippines for more than a year and whose husband was killed during the rescue, writes:

Sometimes I wonder, Why did Martin die when everyone was praying he wouldn’t? Why does Scripture lead you to believe that if you pray a certain way, you’ll get what you pray for? People all over the world were praying that we’d both get out alive, but we didn’t.

Her questions made her realize it isn’t always easy to comprehend God’s nature:

I used to have this concept of what God is like, and how life’s supposed to be because of that. But in the jungle, I learned I don’t know as much about God as I thought I did. I don’t have him in a theological box anymore. What I do know is that God is God—and I’m not. The world’s in a mess because of sin, not God. Some awful things may happen to me, but God does what is right. And he makes good out of bad situations.

Corrie Cutrer, “Soul Survivor,” Today’s Christian Woman (July/Aug 2003), p. 50

Incidentally, I’ve heard Gracia Burnham speak about how, during t heir capativity, they were greatly encouraged by the broadcasts of World Christian Broadcasting. This is a shortwave ministry sponsored primarily by Churches of Christ. I’ve been able to do some writing for them over the past few years.

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04.20.07

Gospel — Facts or Person?

Posted in Reading, Mission at 7:25 am by Anthony

After being a Christian all of my life, I find it amazing that I’m still working on answering the very fundamental question “What is the gospel?” As a child I was taught that the gospel consisted of “facts to be believed and commands to be obeyed.” When I was in college students and teachers debated whether the gospel consisted of all biblical teachings or “the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.” For a long time I accepted the shorter version, but as I’ve gotten to know Jesus better, I’ve found a lot of gospel — the good news of the kingdom — operating long before Jesus made it to the cross. Yesterday, in a commentary on Matthew by Stanley Hauerwas, I came across this statement.

That he [Jesus] must go to those in neeed indicates that the gospel is not and cannot be a set of beliefs. The gospel is the man, and this man must encounter actual men and women in order to call them into the community of the new age. Evangelism is people meeting and coming to know people. … A church that is not a missionary church is not a church. The book of Acts witnesses to the necessity for disciples of Christ to, like Jesus himself, be on the move. (p. 103)

Is the gospel a set of beliefs or a person? Or a set of beliefs about a person? Or a relationship with a person? Hauerwas’s point, and I think it’s a good one, seems to be that people whose lives are shaped by the gospel will be in relationship with people who need good news, who need Jesus, and that the gospel/Jesus cannot be shared apart from relationships. If the gospel is information, answering the question “What must I do to be saved?,” then that information can be conveyed without relationship. But when the jailor asked that question, Paul and Silas went to his home and shared with his family — in the context of real-life relationships, how “believing on the Lord Jesus Christ” was to be lived out. If lives are to be transformed, then it must happen through life-on-life sharing.

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03.23.07

Free Parking?

Posted in Reading, Mission at 3:09 pm by Anthony

I was looking this week for something catchy to put up on our church sign and I came across a saying that several churches have used in their parking lots — a sign that says:

Church Parking Only — Violators Will Be Baptized

I guess that would keep a lot of people away.  I was reminded of this when I read the piece below in Leadership magazine.  It’s written by Mark Buchanan from British Columbia.  He talks about how, in Mark 2, people who really needed Jesus couldn’t get to him because of the crowd who was gathered around him had shut them out.  Could that crowd be the church who, in listening to Jesus, often ignores the needs of those who need to get to him the most?

I’m new to Albany and I look forward to witnessing my first Fandangle.  This story may also help us reflect on how we can minister to our community and the many visitors who will be coming down our street.

Here’s the story — think about it.

Years ago I was invited to speak at a small church in a semi-rural lakeside community.  I arrived a half-hour before the service, and the building was still locked.  So I drove down the town’s main drag, which the church was on.  There, between the main street and the lake, were thousands of people gathered for a community-sponsored half-marathon.  A local band was already playing on a flatbed.  Coffee kiosks were doing a booming business.  Runners were stetching, limbering up.  The local radio station was giving live color commentary.

It was a festival.

I drove back to the church and found the building open.  A church deacon met me at the door, took me to a small office and, before we prayed, told me how upset he was: on Friday, the church’s parking lot had been freshly paved.  On Saturday, someone (”probably one of those people here for the marathon”) had driven an RV into the lot.  Turning it around, they’d creased the soft asphalt.

The deacons had called an emergency meeting for Sunday night, and the outcome would likely be that they’d use the church’s savings (they had over $50,000 in the bank) to hang a chain across the entrance of the church parking lot and prevent any further damage.

I decided, there and then, to preach Mark 2.  I stood up, read the text, and asked, “What roof tiles do you need to break?  What are you willing to suffer the loss of for the sake of reaching the thousands of people right outside your door?”

The parishioners sat unmoving, unmoved.

It was a dirge.

I’ve never seen a congregation clear out more quickly.  I don’t think it was to join the festival outside.

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03.20.07

The Treasures in the Heavens Are Now

Posted in Reading at 3:20 am by Anthony

This selection from Dallas Willard’s book The Divine Conspiracy complements yesterday’s lesson on “Treasures.”

There is, I think, a tendency to regard this treasure in heaven as something that is only for the ‘by and by’.  It is thought to be like life insurance, so called, whose benefits only come after death.  And indeed it is crucial to understand that, because we are friends of Jesus Christ, we do have ‘an inheritance for those of us who by faith are guarded by the power of God unto a salvation set to be revealed in due time’ (1 Pet. 1:4-5).  This is important.  As the Egyptians discovered long ago, we are going to be ‘dead’ a lot longer than we are alive on this earth.

But the treasure we have in heaven is also something very much available to us now.  We can and should draw upon it as needed, for it is nothing less than God himself and the wonderful society of his kingdom even now interwoven in my life.  Even now we ‘have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless angels, and to the assembled church of those born earlier and now claimed in the heavens; and to God who discerns all, to the completed spirits of righteous people, and to Jesus the mediator of a new agreement’ (Heb. 12:22-24).  This is not by-and-by, but now.

What is most valuable for any human being, without regard to an afterlife, is to be a part of this marvelous reality, God’s kingdom now.  Eternity is now ongoing.  I am now leading a life that will last forever.  Upon my treasure in heaven I now draw for present needs. …

What my life really is even now is ‘hid with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3).  What I ‘treasure’ in heaven is not just the little that I have caused to be there.  It is what I love there and what I place my security and happiness in there.  It is God who ‘is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble’ (Ps. 46:1). And as the apostle Paul has taught us from his own experience, ‘My God shall supply every need you have in terms of his riches in glory in Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 4:19).  This is the constant witness of the biblical record to The Kingdom Among Us. (pp. 230-231)

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