Update on Radical

I finished rereading Radical by David Platt a few weeks ago. I took notes as I was going through it, in the hope that it would stick with me a little better than it did the first time.

Platt's thesis is that the American version of Christianity is self-serving and inward looking rather than focusing on spreading the Gospel to the whole world. Do our congregations pretty much stick to themselves, or do they spend their time and money reaching out to the unchurched?

Platt warns his readers that his book will be dangerous and will make them think differently about everything - he wasn't kidding.

I've been a Christian all my life. I have no idea how many times I've studied the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), or how many times I've heard sermons on it. For some reason, it took reading Radical for me to see just how "wicked" and "lazy" (those are the words of Jesus, not the words of Dave) it is to be fed the Word of God every week and never share it with others.

Moving On

Three weeks ago today, on March 11, 2012, my family and I worshipped for the final time at the church where we’ve had our membership for almost 19 years.

There were a number of factors that led us to the decision to leave; it wasn’t just one thing.  The best way to wrap all of those factors up in a single package would be to state it like this:  God is leading us in a direction that we wouldn’t be following by staying in that congregation.

The decision to leave was years in the making, but it’s been within the last nine months or so that I’ve talked with others (besides my wife) about it.  Our pastor was one of the first people I shared my thoughts with.  Considering all that he and I have been through together over the years, being up front with him was the least I could do.  There were two other fellow members with whom I also talked this over.  One of them, after hearing what I had to say about our congregation and my thoughts about worshipping elsewhere, said, “How’s it going to be any different anywhere else?”

I’m sure our congregation isn’t very different than most others within our denomination, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS).  Our pastor preaches and teaches from God’s Word; doctrine is not my issue with our congregation.  My issue is more along the lines of the overall purpose of the church.  More specifically, my question is, who’s the church for?  Is it for us, or is it for God?  Does the church exist to provide us Christians with a convenient place and time to worship, with an entertaining sermon and music we like?  Or does it exist to serve and worship God?

If you’re wondering what the difference is, I’d say it’s this:  is the congregation united in the mission of going out into the community and the world to teach and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?  I suspect that true commitment to the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19,20) is kind of rare, at least at the congregational level.  So to answer the previously stated question of my brother in Christ, “How’s it going to be any different anywhere else?” I’d probably have to say, “It most likely won’t be any different anywhere else!”

Which is exactly the answer I gave myself last November, when he first asked me that question.  Which is why we stayed an extra few months.  But enough is enough, and the time has come to move forward in our walk with Christ.

God calls us to tell others about His Son, and we can’t do this if we as Christians spend all of our time, energy, and resources within the walls of our church building.  It’s now on me, as an individual follower of Christ and as the spiritual head of my family, to heed His call.  If I don’t heed His call, then I’m just like those at whom I’m pointing my finger. 

I pray that God will grant me the spirit of a servant. I also pray that He will give me the wisdom to recognize opportunities to share the Gospel with the people in my life, and the courage to act on those opportunities.

Christmas Vinyl - 11/25/2011

So far this morning:

Chet Atkins (I usually start off my Christmas listening season with this one; it's one of my favorites. It follows the trend of the time for Christmas albums: one side secular, one side sacred.)

Mahalia Jackson (no baloney on this one - it's all Jesus, all the time with Sister Mahalia! Arguably the greatest gospel singer of them all.)

Partridge Family (really not as bad as you might think. It's very much an example of mass-produced TV teen heartthrob pop. The only cut that's kind of hard to listen to is this one: Frosty the Snowman. I indulged my son in one of his favorite activities - turning the turntable speed to 45. It STILL sounded too slow!)

Radical, by David Platt

I just finished reading Radical by David Platt. The subtitle is "Taking back your faith from the American dream.". I'd summarize the book by saying that American Christianity is largely characterized by comfort and materialism rather than going out doing the hard, uncomfortable work of making disciples.

Great book - I plan on getting my own copy.

Assessing Hymns and Praise Songs

My friend Mary sent me a link to an article from pluckedchicken.net . Here's the article:

CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING THE USEFULNESS OF A PRAISE SONG (OR HYMN...)

Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller offers these criteria that sound generally useful in evaluating music that may be used in church services. I just listened to an Issues, Etc. segment from August where they applied these criteria to the three most popular praise songs on the CCLI charts at the time. These were not just Christian pop songs, but songs actually written for and used in church services. This concept is a bit foreign to us, because we use our hymnary for almost all the sung music in church, with the occasional exception of sacred choir music. But I think the criteria Pastor Wolfmueller offers may prove helpful for evaluating the text of any song.
He notes that most of these praise songs used in worship are characteristically not didactic in nature. That is, they don't teach anything. Instead, he calls them mystical in nature, meaning that it's meant to induce an internal (emotive or psychic) experience of the presence of God, rather than about any objective act of God for us. Here are the criteria:

1. Is Jesus mentioned? By name or concept?
2. Is the song clear? Does it use sentences or sentence fragments?
3. Is it objective or subjective? About what God has done or about what is happening inside me?
4. Are law and gospel present and rightly divided?
5. Is there any false teaching? (Or any teaching at all?

So what I need to do next is memorize those questions.  Being able to assess a song as it's being presented during a worship service would be pretty useful, as opposed to waiting until later, when my disorganized mind will have forgotten much of what was in the song.

Universal Objective Justification

Sequence of events in my faith life since last March:

1. Attended a workshop session led by Pastor James Skorzewski (who goes by "Pastor Ski") of The Core (WELS) in Appleton, WI. Attended worship at The Core with my family the following evening. (March 2010)

2. Felt inspired by the experience. Have since been serving at my own congregation, Divine Savior (WELS) in Shawano, WI, with the aim of having it be more like The Core in terms of atmosphere and function. ("Atmosphere" = welcoming to people from outside of the congregation specifically and from outside the Christian faith in general; "function" = trying to make our worship at church and our work in the community more engaging for our members)

3. Discovered the blog Ichabod, The Glory Has Departed, authored by Dr. Gregory Jackson, about a month ago (October 2010). This blog speaks very strongly against certain leaders within the WELS. Among those named specifically are Pastor Ski.

Since then I've been attempting to understand the doctrinal issues that Jackson has with WELS leaders. This has not been easy for me, but I'm trying. Jackson's tone tends to be sarcastic and mocking, and he's attacking a guy whose preaching I really like. However, I'm striving to be impartial about the merits of his points, and not just dismiss him because of his style, and the fact that he's calling one of my favorite preachers a false teacher.

One of the first issues I'm trying to clear up in my own mind is that of universal objective justification (UOJ). Here's how I understand the term: UOJ says that God forgave the world when Jesus died, and that we all are forgiven whether we believe or not. Jackson, by my understanding, is anti-UOJ because it implies that heathens are saved even if they don't believe.

What seems to be called for here is agreement on what exactly is the meaning of several different terms, such as forgiveness, belief, and faith. I'm going to fall back on one of my favorite teaching tools, the analogy, to try to lay this all out in terms that I myself can understand. I realize that analogies are inherently imperfect, because they aren't the actual thing you're talking about, but merely like the thing you're talking about. Nevertheless, I'm going to plow ahead with a lottery ticket analogy. I certainly don't mean to trivialize the gift of salvation by comparing ti to a lottery; I'm merely attempting to put things in terms I'll be able to understand.

So, heaven (being saved, having eternal life with God) would be the lottery prize. Let's say that we can share in the prize if we have a lottery ticket, but it's not like a traditional lottery ticket in that probability enters into it. Let's say it's more like a ticket to a show or concert (now that I think of it, that's a much better analogy!) You don't have to match a random number, you simply have to possess the ticket, and you're in.

Now, you don't have to choose to buy one of these tickets to the show - if you had to choose to buy the ticket, that would mean that our being saved is up to us, and it is not. So to make my analogy better fit what I believe, I'm going to say that everybody gets a ticket. One morning everybody in the world goes to their mailbox, and there they find a ticket to the show. Everybody gets a ticket, whether or not they feel they deserve it, whether or not they believe the show is actually going to happen, they get a ticket.

Is this a valid analogy for universal objective justification (forgiveness of sins)? Justification and forgiveness of sins are the same thing, right?

The next part of the analogy is, what do each of us do with the ticket that we already possess? I can't choose to possess it - I already do possess it! However, I can choose to throw the ticket away. This compares to how we, with our free will, can choose to not believe; we can't choose to receive the ticket, but we can choose to throw it away.

So all are forgiven (have a ticket), but not all are saved (saved = use the ticket).

Here's where it gets tricky for me: are faith and belief the same thing? In my analogy, no one chooses to receive a ticket, but some choose to not use the ticket. If you can choose to not use the ticket, doesn't this imply that it's also possible to choose to use the ticket? Which would imply that we can choose to believe? I think this is really where my analogy breaks down.

So to summarize where I'm at: justification (forgiveness) is given to all, salvation can be forsaken by those who choose to forsake it.

I'm sure this is not the end of the development of my understanding of these issues. I pray that God will help me to understand, and that He will use me to help others to understand.

"Youth groups destroy children's lives."

I found this quote in Hipster Christianity (Baker Books, 2010, by Brett McCracken). The quote is by David Fitch, who is the founding pastor of Life on the Vine Church in Long Grove, Illinois.

I was so jarred by the quote that I thought I should turn it into a blog post, which would hopefully foster some input from my friends who are pastors, youth pastors, staff ministers, youth group leaders, or youth group participants (or survivors?).

I haven't had a chance yet to read up on the church's website or anything else the pastor in question has written. I have no idea what has led him to hold such a seemingly extreme view, but I do hope that I can gain some insight as to why he feels the way he does.

At this point, I can't imagine that I'll ever agree with him, but I would at least like to try to understand where he's coming from.