Category: Church

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Following Jesus: Part 3-Loving Others

The second of the two commandments Jesus said summed up the Law and the Prophets is love your neighbor as yourself. This is another way we follow Jesus. In John 15, Jesus gave a new command. He said we were to love our brothers and sisters as he loved us.
The love that Jesus commands us to practice is a love that puts others first. It is a love that sacrifices for others, even to the point of laying down our lives. It is a love that does the same for others that Jesus did for us.

One of the primary reasons the early church turned the world upside down was their love, for each other and for their neighbors. The first Christians were well known for the way they cared for their brothers and sisters and the way they looked past social, racial, and other differences to form a family with God as their Father. They were also known for caring for their neighbors, often  putting themselves at risk. No matter what else was said about the early followers of Jesus, it was obvious that they loved others in a way far different from the culture around them.

It seems as if those who of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus are known more for what we are against and our fighting than for our love for others. We seem to be quite willing to forget the command to lay down our lives in exchange for what we think is power and influence. At times our worship seems to be more about ourselves than about the One who gave his life for us. The things that capture our imaginations are many times antithetical to the Kingdom and are self-centered instead of others-centered.

Loving others as Jesus loved us means giving up our “rights,” our interests, our wants, for the good of others. While we may be willing to step in front of a bullet for someone, how willing are we to give up our time, comfort, or possessions? How willing are we to essentially become nothing so that Christ might be glorified and others benefited?

Following Jesus can be distilled into two commands. We love God with every fiber of our being, and we love others. Everything thing else flows from that. It is not an easy thing to do. In fact, it is impossible if we try to do it in our own strength. If we belong to Jesus, we have his Spirit in us giving us the ability to love as we are called to love.

May we again be known for our love.
Part 1
Part 2 

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Following Jesus: Part 2-Loving God

If we follow Jesus, we will seek to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. The problem is that we don’t often really know what it is that we love. We may think that we love God, but our love actually belongs to something else. We pursue a different version of what the good life is, a different kingdom. In You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, James K. A. Smith makes the case that we are primarily loving beings and that our love is formed by habits and liturgies that we engage in. Many of the things that we do in our day-to-day shape us and present a vision of a life worth living that is antithetical to the kingdom of God.

Smith makes the point that our love for God is formed and strengthened by the liturgy of the church through the centuries. Coming from a background where we said that we didn’t do liturgy (even though it really was a liturgy of sorts,), I have come to appreciate the parts of a worship service, from the greeting and call to worship where we are welcomed by God and called to come apart and lift him up, to the benediction where we receive one final blessing from God and are sent out to bring his Kingdom to bear in our day-to-day. In between, we sing praises to God, confess our sin and receive a reminder of his forgiveness. We give a portion of what God has given to us as an act of worship, and we hear the truth, goodness, and beauty of Jesus from the words of Scripture. We gather around the table and remember what Christ has done for us and receive a foretaste of the feast to come in the new heavens and earth.

All of these things have deepened my love for God, his Kingdom, and his people. I have found that they have begun to work in me to wean my heart from those things the culture says we need to flourish. I have a long way to go, but I am confident that God will continue to work in me and give me a heart for him.

May we all come to love our Father more and more.

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Church Signs: “A Church Alive…

…Is Worth the Drive.”

This was on the sign in front of a church just down the road from our house. Now, I have no firsthand knowledge of how “alive” this church is, so I won’t address that. My issue is more with the idea of making a (possibly long) drive to a church.

When Jan and I were in the process of trying to find a church a few years ago, we visited a few churches within the metro area of which our city is a part. Most of them had good things going for them, and probably could be considered “alive” by most folks. None of them had any doctrinal issues that would have been a deal breaker.

There was one thing that steered us away from all of these churches. They were all at least a twenty to thirty minute drive from our house. While that would have been fine if all we were looking for was a Sunday morning worship service, we were looking for something quite different. We were looking for community, a place where we could serve, love, and be loved. We were looking for a group that we could join with in living as brothers and sisters who saw life together as the church as far more than just a once or twice a week meeting. We wanted a spiritual family that spent time fellowshipping and discipling as a part of day-to-day life.

We wanted to serve with the folks we worshipped with and worship with the folks we served with. We desired to be fully part of a community of faith. Fortunately, we have found that and I can’t imagine traveling one day a week to worship with people who I only see on that day.

There are a lot of folks who do prefer the drive in order to find a church which is “alive.” I know that there are churches like that who do kingdom work and truly make disciples. However, I believe that the model of smaller, parish type churches who live in community and are a part of the neighborhood where they are located are what is going to do the most work for the kingdom in the days to come. I believe that a time may come in this country when followers of Jesus will have to live in community in order to continue. It might do us good if we started now.

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Just Jesus and Me?

 When I was growing up, we used to sing a song about how it was “Jesus and me” traveling the road of life together. This went right along with the idea that salvation was an individual thing and that Jesus was “my personal Savior.” While there is a sense in which God redeems us as individuals, I believe that there is much more to the work of Christ than just Jesus and me.

I no longer believe that following Jesus is just about making him your personal Savior or that the Christian life is lived individually. As I have studied Scripture I have come to believe that when God calls us and makes us his children, he is making us members of a family, a body. The word for church means a called out assembly, not a collection of separate individuals.

The idea that salvation and the Christian life is an individual thing has done damage to the body of Christ. If you look around at the Church in the United States you see the results of an individualistic faith. In many places there is a lack of commitment to the larger body. People move from church to church for various reasons. Many times folks leave because of problems in relationships. Someone has done something against them and it’s easier to simply find another church than do the hard work of repenting, forgiving, and reconciling. It seems as if many look for a place where they can be served and “fed” (whatever that means) by a weekly concert and inspirational talk. They aren’t looking for community, or they don’t understand what community entails.

We are redeemed to be part of one another. We are a body and each part of the body needs each other part. I believe the day may come when those who claim Christ will have to come together and live as one body. We will no longer have the luxury of dividing over things that are not worth dividing over. We will be forced to live in harmony, forgiving each other no matter how many times they sin against us and loving each other with a selfless love, just as Jesus loved us. Maybe we ought to start doing that now so it won’t be such a shock.

May God help us to live together as fellow children of the Father who are members of one body.

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Challenges and Opportunities

As this year draws to a close, and we enter a new year that promises to be very different, Christians in America will be faced with many challenges. Along with the challenges, there will be plenty of opportunities.

This year has been hard on the church as a whole. Deep divisions have been revealed. Along with that, there is a growing distrust of Christianity. While some of these problems are a part of the way the world naturally views followers of Jesus, others are of our own making. One challenge is to be agents of healing where there is division. For too long, we have worried more about the things that make us different rather than the things we share. I know that there are issues that are important that must be dealt with and may be cause for separation. That is not what I am talking about. Much of the time, the things we divide over have more to do with preference and style than substance.

Another challenge we face is the way we are perceived. Jesus said that we would be hated and persecuted. That is true, and I think it could very well be worse than it is now. We need to make sure that we are really being persecuted, and then if we are, that it is because we belong to Jesus and not because we are arrogant jerks. We should be known more by our love and grace than by the size of our protests or the condemnation we speak. We should be known for our allegiance to the King of Kings, and not who we voted for.

I believe that our faith itself is going to be challenged. The days of Christendom are gone. I really don’t think the incoming president will keep his promises to make Christians influential again. If he does, I think it will end up hurting the church. We can no longer expect to have government enforce our beliefs. We can probably expect to be looking more and more at a society that is indifferent to us at best, or hostile at worst. The time may be coming when we will be forced to consider whether our faith is worth all of the stuff that will be happening.

The future may be quite challenging, but it will also present the church with opportunities. As we face more hostility, we will have the opportunity to examine ourselves for the reason behind it. If it is truly because of Christ, then we can rejoice that we have been counted worthy to suffer for the gospel. If the hostility comes as a reaction to our own hostility, then we will have the opportunity to repent and become the disciples we can be. We will have the opportunity to show the truth, goodness, and beauty of Jesus. As the face of the church changes and those who are not committed to following Jesus fall away, we will have have the opportunity to show who we belong to, not by our stands on issues, or our style of worship, our our doctrinal statement, but by our love to our brothers and sisters in Christ and to our neighbors. As our influence wanes, we will have the opportunity to affect culture by speaking and living the gospel.

May God give us the grace to be people who love, who are willing to live as a spiritual family which puts others first, and who show the world that the gospel is indeed Good News.

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Thoughts on the Election

The 2016 campaign is over and I think it is safe to say that the result is not quite what a lot of folks expected. Full disclosure: I didn’t vote for either of the major party candidates. So, I think I can speak on the result with somewhat of a neutral view.

I believe the last few months have uncovered some things about our country that most of us either didn’t see, or simply refused to see. Throughout the primaries and on into the general election there were things said and done that should never be said about or done to another person. I know that there have been some pretty nasty campaigns in our nation’s history, but that is no excuse for what came out of this election. That is one thing that saddens me.

Another thing that makes me sad is what I saw in the church. I saw people who claim to be followers of Jesus demean others who are made in the image of God, all because they supported another candidate. Questioning the faith of someone just because they don’t wear the same political jersey is not what Jesus had in mind when he told to us love our brothers and sisters. Many seemed to forget that our first allegiance is to the King of Kings and not to a person or party. I have said it before and I’ll say it again; some have sacrificed the gospel on the altars of political influence and prosperity.

I am also saddened by some of what I have seen in the days after the election. People on both sides are doing and saying things that they would condemn and have condemned in the folks on the other side. Folks on the winning side are decrying those who are chanting, “Not my president,” while forgetting that some on their side said the same thing not very long ago. Others are committing acts of harassment and violence against those on the “other side.”

 Americans have forgotten that we are all part of the same nation. We have divided along many lines and made it quite easy for power hungry demagogues to gain power by preying on our fears and convincing us that some of our fellow citizens are bent on destroying us. Even worse, those of us who claim to follow Jesus have forgotten that not only are we fellow Americans, but most importantly we are part of one body. Instead of hurting because one part of the body is in pain, we are telling other parts of the body Christ that they are useless and we don’t need them. As the Apostle Paul said, that is ridiculous! How can we expect the world to listen to us when we are not showing love to those in our spiritual family!

Judging from the past year, we have a great opportunity to show those who are watching the truth, goodness, and beauty of Jesus by the way we treat each other and by the way we treat the least of these in our society. The problem is that we have not been doing a very good job of that lately. May God change our hearts and help us to live like who we say we are.

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Lessons From Meatloaf

The singer, not the food. I know what you all are thinking. “Fred’s really lost his mind!” Now that may be true, but bear with me.

In the song, “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” there is a line that says, “I want you, I need you, but there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you.” I wonder if this might be descriptive of many in the church in the 21st century.

One thing I do believe is true is that many in the American evangelical church have a hard time being in community with other believers. I’m not talking about gathering in a worship setting once a week, although that is a vital part of community. I’m talking about spending time with other believers, gathering in homes and other places and digging beneath the surface to build up and challenge each other in following Jesus. That is community, and it can be messy at times.

I think many are saying, “I want you, I need you, but there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you.” In other words, they crave community, being known and loved for who they are. They want to be loved and accepted. They recognize their need for community. But.

But, when it comes down to the hard stuff, the hard work of loving as Jesus loves us, the messiness of sacrificially loving others with all their warts and blemishes, that’s a different story. Then it becomes, “ain’t no way!” Some hang out on the periphery, never quite throwing their lot in fully. Others find a church that only asks that they show up once a week and put their money in the offering plate.

Although we do want and need to be part of a fellowship that accepts and loves us, and that challenges us, it is not really about our wants and needs. It is about obeying what our King told us to do, to love one another and to lay down our lives for each other. That is how the world will know we belong to Jesus, not by how we vote or what position we take on social issues. The first Christians, with all their flaws, learned to live with and love folks from all kinds of backgrounds and with all sorts of issues. Even though they were far from perfect, they were known throughout the world for their love for each other and for those outside. And, they turned the world upside down.

May God help us to say, “I want you, I need you, and I will love you no matter what it takes.”

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Sticks, Stones, and Words

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” So goes the schoolyard chant. I beg to differ. While it may be true that sticks and stones may break bones, it is equally true that words can hurt, often in ways far worse than physical damage.

Now I don’t agree with the current way of thinking that wants “trigger warnings,” “safe places,” and other means of shielding people from speech and ideas that might challenge their own thinking. The desire to only see and hear what agrees with your presuppositions is a fast track to fear and ignorance. The lack of civil discourse is a growing problem in our society, even in the church.

I would agree that there is a point where we can become too careful with our words, walking on verbal eggshells in order to avoid making anyone feel bad. At the same time, I believe that those of us who follow Jesus are called to be careful with our speech. While we are to speak truth, we are called to do so in love. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that using terms of contempt is equal to murder. Ephesians 4:29 tells us we are to not let any corrupting or unwholesome talk come out of our mouths but only say things that build one another up. I believe this goes beyond just an admonition to avoid cussing and dirty jokes.

In his letter, James tells us that our tongues should be instruments of blessing rather than cursing. Paul says that our words should be gracious and add “flavor” to others. All through Scripture we are commanded to guard our speech, to say things that build others up rather than tearing them down.

Most of can remember times when the words of another cut us to the quick and caused long lasting damage. If we’re honest, we can also remember times when we have done the same. Churches have split over things that have been said, as have whole denominations. Hateful, evil speech is not just a problem outside the church.

Jesus said that the world would know we are his by our love to one another. May we follow our Master and King by being careful and gracious with our words, and also being gracious and forgiving toward those who blow it, because we all will.
Let us grow more and more into the likeness of Christ Jesus in everything, including how we use our tongues.

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Blast From the Past: Out of the Cave, Into the…

This was first posted on February 6, 2012. The healing process had begun.

Some of you have read my recent post about finding myself in a cave. I’m now out of the cave, although still not far from the entrance. I now find myself in the middle of a thicket, sort of like a stand of rhododendron or mountain laurel, so thick that you cannot see out of it. It is still somewhat dark, and the direction I should take is unclear. I see many paths out, but don’t know yet which one to take.

There is the path that would take me back into the church world I left a few years ago. Next to it is the path that would take me to the land of the mega-church. Here I could find a place to hide and lick my wounds. One path seems to go in circles, and looks as if it would leave me no better off. Yet another way out continues in the search for community. That is the path that interests me the most, and the way that I have learned most about in the last couple of days.

You see, I have learned something about community, and about myself. I think I’m beginning to learn why I spent time in the dark cave. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am a pretty laid back individual, but that when I am passionate about something, I tend to go all out. As I learned more and more about the God’s desire for his children to live as brothers and sisters because of Christ, I became more and more passionate with living in community. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.” As I look back on the past year, and my desire to have and fight for community, I realize I inadvertently pushed it too hard and may have been part of the cause of its destruction. I know that my heart was good, but I think I may have wanted community so badly that I didn’t see the problems that it was causing. Even though I tried to sacrificially love those around me, I think that I didn’t leave room for God to work, thinking that as long as we spent enough time together, growth and maturity would automatically happen.

I now realize that community is something that has to happen naturally, as God’s people learn to love one another. It is something that cannot be forced, and the Holy Spirit must be the one to form it rather than humans whose motives can be tainted by our own needs. I also realize that a particular form of community may not last as long as I think, and that I need to be willing to let it go when it is time. For those of you reading this who have been on the receiving end of my misguided efforts, I am sorry. I put the ideal of community ahead of my brothers and sisters. I was wrong.

As to what is next in this journey along the back roads, only God knows. I know that Jan and I still desire to share our lives with some fellow Christ-followers. I also know that it may not take any form that we expect. It may be in a regular gathering. It may take place in just getting together with one or two who share our desire. What I also know is that I want it to be something that happens as Christ’s Spirit moves, not when I think it should happen.

I’m learning to trust my Father. As I leave the thicket, I want to be hear my Shepherd’s voice and follow him wherever he leads, whenever he leads, and to whatever he leads. I would appreciate your prayers.

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Church Signs: “The Bible is Chock Full of…

…New Year’s Resolutions. “

I’m not against making resolutions at the beginning of a new year (although I don’t make them), and I’m definitely not against the Bible. I do have a problem with trying to mix the two. It is true that there are commands in the Bible and we are told that there are certain things that characterize followers of Jesus.

Trying to improve in certain areas of our lives is a good thing. As an athlete, I was always trying to improve my skills. As a coach, I never let my players rest on past accomplishments. In many careers, if you’re not improving, you’re going backwards. It’s good to try to be a better husband, father, etc. There is nothing wrong with trying to be a better human being.

Where I differ from what seems like most of American Christianity, is seeing the story of the Bible as a story, not of what we can or need to do, but of what God has done. A great deal of evangelical preaching is on how to be a better (fill in the blank). Fundamentalist preaching is about what we need to do to stay “right with God.” I beg to differ with both.

That kind of preaching can be inspirational, but it is not the gospel. The gospel is not about what we can do. It is about what Christ has done. Ultimately, there is nothing we can do to improve our standing with God, nothing we can do to make him love us. All we can do is put our total trust in the finished work of Christ on the cross. There is no amount of resolutions that can ultimately make us what we already are in Christ.

Again, let me emphasize that I am not against making resolutions, having goals, or trying to improve in areas of our lives. I can think of more than a few areas where I can use some improvement. I just don’t see the “gospel” of self improvement in Scripture. Your mileage may differ. Feel free to disagree.