A Lot Can Happen in a Day...

So this weekend my wife and I decided to build a rock bed in our back yard. It was a great way to start the day and a lot of fun. However, what we didn't know was that underneath our house, our main sewage drain was backing up with dirt and water as a result of root damage and line breaks. It's amazing how much can change in a day. That night we were up till 2 in the morning waiting for city workers to finish digging a ten foot hole in our front yard to the main sewage line to see if there was blockage on the city side. There wasn't. The following day, a dump truck, earth mover, jack hammer, four city workers, and a plumber were camped outside our house deducing our plumbing problems.

In the end, we got the news that our problems would range in the three thousand dollar range. A lot can happen in a day...

Although we are now weighing all of our options, getting second and third and fourth opinions, considering what part of the work we can do ourselves, the whole experience has turned out to be a subtle but great blessing from God. The news couldn't have come at a worse time. In a month I will be an unemployed student, school is expensive, Lauren's hours will be cut back, and, after our plumbing mishap, our emergency fund will be close to depleted. Oh...and our washing machine broke.

It's amazing how quickly God can strip the comforts and delusions of safety from us and make us cling to Him. After the initial shock of everything, my wife and I slowly began to realize that our panic and fear was contrary to what we believe about God and His love for us. That evening, feeling the weight of uncertainty crushing my chest, Proverbs 3:5 began to whisper in my ear.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding."

I had memorized that verse in AWANA when I was five. But that evening it became more than just a sentence, it became the Spirit pleading with me to trust Him. It reminded me that my wife and I now have a wonderful opportunity to trust God without the distractions of financial comfort, to cling to each other without the predication of stability, and to put our hope completely in the will of God and His good grace towards those whom He has chosen.

So as strange as it sounds, I thank God for old pipes, a bad economy, and an unknown plan. Because of all those things, my wife and I can stop trusting in our budget and emergency fund to save us, and start trusting that our shepherd knows where He's leading us.

Ravi Zacharias and Post-Modernism

This afternoon I took our dog to the dog park at White Rock Lake and brought a book I've been meaning to read for a while, Jesus Among Other Gods by Ravi Zacharias. I first heard Ravi Zacharias while driving from Arizona back to Texas after one of my breaks from school. My youth pastor and mentor Randy gave them to me with only the introduction that this man will change my life. I can still remember listening to his lectures about "Can Man Live Without God" while driving through the forests and plains of northern Arizona and New Mexico. The experience oddly enough, was one I don't think I'll ever forget. Listening to this brilliant yet humble man talk about how he came to know God and who Jesus was in the midst of all the other world religions was profound and life changing. At the time, it was something I really needed. College had posed a serious intellectual challenge to my faith and without thinkers like Ravi Zacharias and others, I could have very easily been swept up into the same pseudo-spiritual post-modern thinking that has paralyzed so many others of my generation.

So, of course I shouldn't have been surprised this afternoon when, within pages of the beginning, he challenged my soul once again. His book begins with a candid look at the true nature of post-modern thinking. As I prepare for full time ministry, I often times forget the particular challenges I will have to face doing ministry in the post-modern, technological, and information-overloaded world. The absolute claim of Christ as the only way to heaven has never been more distasteful to the metanarrative of a culture as it is today. I wanted to share with you what Ravi Zacharias wrote about post-modernism because it really encouraged me and reminded me of the difficult battle those in ministry have of teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

"Yet if the human spirit is to survive and every legitimate discipline to find fruitful expression, truth cannot be sacrificed at the altar of a pretended tolerance. All religions, plainly and simply, cannot be true. Some beliefs are false, and we know them to be false. So it does no good to put a halo on the notion of tolerance as if everything could be equally true. To deem all beliefs equally true is sheer nonsense for the simple reason that to deny that statement would also, then, be true. But if the denial of the statement is also true, then all religions are not true."

I'm excited to read more and be challenged more by this man's faith and brilliance. I'm sure I will be writing more about what I read in his book.

In Celebration of Freedom...

A Post-Christian America?

Apparently the recent findings of a survey have caused quite a stir in the evangelical community.

"According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler's attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent."

This quote came from another article I saw in Newsweek about the effects this survey has had on America. Since this survey has come out, there has been an uproar about America becoming less Christian and more secular, mainly by Christians. I talked about my initial reaction to these finding's in a recent post. In the Newsweek article, Meacham talks about how many Christian conservatives are labeling the present as a post-Christian time. Of this he writes,

"Let's be clear: while the percentage of Christians may be shrinking, rumors of the death of Christianity are greatly exaggerated. Being less Christian does not necessarily mean that America is post-Christian. A third of Americans say they are born again; this figure, along with the decline of politically moderate-to liberal mainline Protestants, led the ARIS authors to note that "these trends … suggest a movement towards more conservative beliefs and particularly to a more 'evangelical' outlook among Christians." With rising numbers of Hispanic immigrants bolstering the Roman Catholic Church in America, and given the popularity of Pentecostalism, a rapidly growing Christian milieu in the United States and globally, there is no doubt that the nation remains vibrantly religious—far more so, for instance, than Europe."

I'm going to have to agree with Meacham on this. It is very much so an exaggeration to conclude that a 10% drop in religious affiliation, from 85% to 75%, signifies a post-Christian age.

I'm also reading Donald Miller's book Searching for God Knows What and have found his examination of Religion very insightful into the current response of American Christians, and certainly my own responses, to the recent religious survey.

Donald Miller writes, "It is true people need Jesus, not religion. And yet at times I am concerned our most passionate missionary endeavors are more concerned with redeeming our identity as Christians within the {fallen culture} than with presenting Jesus to a world looking for a God." In an earlier chapter on Morality (a very good chapter) he writes:

"I assure you, once we leave the fight over our country's future and enter the spiritual battle for the hearts and souls of the lost, the church will fourish, and the kingdom of God will grow. God is not in the business of brokering for power over a nation; He is in the business of loving the unloved and pulling sheep out of crags and bushes."

So I guess the question I'm asking myself is why do I care if a survey says there are less people affiliated with churches in America now than ever before? When has that ever mattered to Jesus?

Something to think about...

Rethinking the Gospel

Have you ever tried to recreate a moment for a picture? Like that time your friend tripped down the stairs into the man walking on stilts or the time you opened up your big Christmas present when you were five or the first time you looked at your future wife and knew she was the one. Whenever these once in a lifetime moments happen, the camera never seems to work fast enough. So we try to reenact it, try to recreate it so that we can capture that memory on film forever, to show our friends and family and future children.

But the truth is, those pictures are never as good as the original moment. We always show those pictures and qualify it by saying, "You should've seen it in real life, this picture just doesn't do it justice." It's just a stale imitation of what it originally was.

Sometimes I think the way we present and think about the gospel is a lot like a reenacted picture. The story and picture we show our friends doesn't come close to the profound experience of it.

John 17:3 says, "And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."

Although I had read this verse before, the impact of what Jesus said had never really hit me. When I think of the gospel I always think of the Romans road, or the giant canyon with me on one side and God on the other and the cross being the only bridge across. But when I read this verse, I get the impression that there is something more to the gospel than just the facts.

Eternal life is knowing God, and Jesus whom He sent. Eternal life isn't knowing the facts or the belief systems. It's the difference between looking at a picture of the Grand Canyon and driving through northern Arizona to experience it for yourself.

I think this helps me to understand the lack of impact the gospel can have on people here in America. All I present to people most of the time is just a reenacted picture of the real thing. I'm not bringing them with me to meet God and see for themselves, I'm not showing them how it feels to be completely loved and redeemed and walking in the presence of the ever-mysterious, infinitely majestic, and joyfully frightening God.

And that's why much of the world responds to the gospel with, "Maybe if I had been there..."

A Charge to Worship Leaders

As someone involved in worship leading, I'm always trying to better understand the role worship leaders play in the church. In my first year of college I did a lot of research on the role worship plays in the church and you can read about it by downloading the Worship Chapter of We Who Have Ears.

Sometimes I can't help but feel like the role of the worship leader in a church is not much more than the leader of pep-rally before a big game. Worship leaders are usually not expected to be involved in the scriptural shepherding of the congregation and generally do not have much pastoral connection with the congregation apart from the Sunday services.

I understand that each person in the church has their role and that the worship leader is not the same as the teaching pastor or pastor of counseling. At the same time, I think many worship leaders have forgotten that their first responsibility, like any other person in leadership in the church, is shepherding the congregation.

I know as a worship leader I have been guilty of putting the music planning and service flow before other responsibilities. Many times, I didn't even consider things like discipleship and scriptural shepherding as my responsibility. They were just added bonuses if I had time to get around to them.

The more I experience the church and the way it functions, I think that worship leaders, in an attempt to free them up to perfect the music and flow of the service, have been marginalized to a role that is much smaller than it was intended to be. Why aren't worship leaders active in discipling? Why aren't we active in teaching? Why aren't we active in counseling members of the congregation? Why aren't we expected to understand the Bible in a way most other pastors are expected to understand it?

I want to challenge my fellow worship leaders to see their role in a new and bigger light. We are not just band leaders and our main responsibility isn't to the music or the service flow or even the other band members, choir members, and orchestra members. Our main responsibility is to shepherd the flock and build the spiritual depth of our community.