Intellectual Honesty

As a part of my morning devotions, I've been reading Amazing Grace, the biography of William Wilberforce by Eric Metaxas, which was loaned to me by Ed Gorman, a dear member of our congregation. The following passage from pp. 50-51 is a description of his conversation with Isaac Milner, a literal and intellectual giant of 18th century England who engaged Wilberforce persuasively from the perspective of his evangelical faith:

"Wilberforce was through his life possessed of a rare and bracing intellectual honesty. At Cambridge he had once been asked to sign his name assenting to the articles of the Church of England. This was viewed then as a formality, one of the college's ancient requirements for receiving one's degree; everyone simply signed the document and took their degree. But Wilberforce refused. He didn't at that time agree with the official tenets of the Anglican Church, or at least wasn't sure whether he did, and therefore couldn't bring himself to sign it, which delayed his degree for several years. In an age when, just as today, most people shrugged or winked their way through such hypocrisies, Wilberforce would not.
"But now his intellectual honesty would work in the other direction. With (Isaac) Milner as his interlocutor, he examined the same tenets of orthodox Christianity to which a few years before he couldn't give his assent. He seems to have wanted to know what was true, but until now had been unable to find out to his satisfaction. He knew that if he discovered a truth to his satisfaction he would have no choice but to embrace it and act upon it. Just as he wouldn't sign the paper assenting to beliefs he didn't hold, he knew that if he held a belief he would be obliged to act upon it, and not just in small and isolated instances, as with that signature, but in all of his life. He knew that the tiniest mustard seed can grow and grow and become a tree in which the birds of the air make their nests. Ideas have far-reaching consequences, and one must be ever so careful about what one allows to lodge in one's brain. Now, as the conversation with Milner continued, Wilberforce could almost see the birds of the air looking domestically in his direction."

Red, Blue, and Purple States

If you like maps and are interested in elections and demographics, you will probably find this analysis interesting.

Human Faces

The BBC is reporting that the Bali bombers were executed today in Indonesia. To be honest, I had mostly forgotten that act of terrorism and hadn't really given its perpetrators any thought for quite some time. I suppose I'm actually a bit surprised that they were still alive until now, though it sounds like others in Indonesia also expected this to have happened more quickly.

The part of this article that made the biggest impression on me, however, was the picture of the three men at the top.



I don't know if this is a difference between the BBC and the American news sources with which I am more familiar, but I am not accustomed to seeing the photos of condemned criminals represent them in such a natural - and even happy! - state. I hadn't realized it, but I'm used to seeing mugshots of unshaven, unkempt men (and usually they are men) who are presented more as criminals than as human beings. There is nothing in these pictures that helps to distance me from their humanity, and that is somewhat arresting (no pun intended).

To be clear, I am not trying to minimize their horrible act of terrorism in any way or to pretend that they are not vicious criminals. What they did was an act of pure evil. In fact, that's what stirs me about this. To see these young men looking so normal, so engaging, so much like people I would otherwise relate to reminds me of the great capacity for good and evil that resides in the human soul.

On one hand the fullness of their humanity exacerbates the depravity of their crime against other fully human beings. On the other hand, it also makes it much harder for me to be comfortable with repaying their lethal terrorism with lethal force. Regardless of one's political position on capital punishment, the whole cycle is clearly sub-human.

It makes me long for the restoration of all humanity in the image of the Son. God speed that work, and God speed that day.

One Big Family

I simply want to celebrate publicly the wonderful event in the life of our church family yesterday morning. We had our "One in Christ" worship service, cramming all of our weekly attendance into one worship time in two electronically connected rooms. It was a technological feat for us to pull off this rapidly changing two-way simulcast, but the technology only served the deeper challenge of helping our whole church worship and connect together as one big worshiping family.

Strong Fences

I can only think of a few childhood moments that struck me as so revelatory as the time that my increasingly reclusive grandmother admonished , "Strong fences make good neighbors." My grandmother had many wonderful qualities, but a healthy balance of extroversion was not one of them.

I'm afraid that side of my grandmother would be enjoying our culture more and more with every passing year.

We have so many fences between us. Here in Minnesota we are fast approaching that time of year when physical neighbors never see one another outside of their automatic garage doors. We know each other only by our tail lights. We have lots of relational fences, inhibitions that keep us from sharing our lives with each other in any meaningful way. Just a few nights ago I was running along one of my regular routes and tried to offer a simple "Good run" to another runner passing me in the opposite direction. But even that small effort fell victim to an iPod fence.

As our vision discernment conversations at First Lutheran have attempted to assess the needs of our external community, the need for friendships, connection, and a sense of community has frequently been identified as pressing. (I can't help but wonder, of course, if those of us in the church are really much better off in this regard. We've got a long way to go.) The more I look around, the more I agree and the more I realize how much fencing we will need to break down. This is not going to be easy. For some reason, we really resist getting closely connected with other people. Even though it brings deep joy to life, we seem to avoid it.

Would any of my readers like to chime in with their comments on the barriers that keep us from establishing genuine community with other people?

Disciple making

I blogged about this same topic on Saturday, but I got fired up about it again yesterday. What if we could design a simple, clear process for helping people to grow as disciples? Wouldn't that be great? (And, yes, I have read Simple Church, in case anyone is asking...)

The thing that got me thinking about this was Sunday's annual presentation of Bibles to third graders. This year we happened to have several (infant) baptisms scheduled right before the third graders got their Bibles. This created a very interesting sequence. First I stood up front with the parents and sponsors of the baptized children, asking them about their commitment to nurture the faith of this child that we were baptizing into the Christian community. Our baptismal service gives me the opportunity to charge them specifically to bring their children to corporate worship; to teach them the Lord's Prayer, the historic creeds of the church, and the 10 commandments; and to "place in their hands" the holy Scriptures. We as a congregation also promise to work with them and support them in this commitment to their children.

Then, right after the Baptism, the 3rd graders and their parents stood up to receive Bibles that our congregation purchased for them. My colleague, Pastor Angie, explained to the parents and children what these Bibles are and how to use them. And in this juxtaposition of events, even a dunce like me could see that we were doing something right. We parents and congregation members were honoring one of the promises we had made at the baptisms of these children 7-8 years ago. -- And we are working diligently to ensure that we consistently honor the rest of them too.

All this made me think about how great it would be to act just as intentionally for our whole community, and not just for our children and students. Being a Christian in a non-Christian world is no small thing. If we expect to grow together as disciples of Jesus, we really ought to invest some careful, strategic thought in a process that facilitates exactly that result. And then we ought to invest some disciplined, strategic effort in that process.

Make Disciples. Novel idea.

Confirmation

Giving an opportunity for Christian adolescents to confirm their faith is an old tradition. Without doing some homework, I couldn't say exactly how long Lutherans and other kinds of Christians have had a rite like Confirmation, but I know it's been a very long time.

As we had rehearsal today for tomorrow's confirmation service, I was having three thoughts:
1. This is such an important time in our students' lives. I'm so glad for the excellent job that has been done especially by our student ministry staff during the years leading up to confirmation.
2. This is such an important time in our students' lives. I wonder how we could help shape students into followers of Christ even more effectively and faithfully than we already do.
3. This is such an important time in our students' lives. I wonder how we could take this faith formation process and adapt it for the life of our whole church community. Maybe we could call it "conformation," all of us being conformed to the life of Jesus - though possibly in some very non-conformist ways.

Change and...Politics?

A speech you'll never hear from a major political candidate. For all kinds of reasons.

Faith?

That's a word that gets used an awful lot, though I'm rarely sure that we know exactly what we mean by it. "Well, I guess you've just got to have faith," we say. Faith in what? Or whom? To do what?

Obviously I know that when Christians say this they mean faith in God. But I wonder how often we reflect on what we're trusting God to do? Is it something that He has promised to do? And if not, is it appropriate for us to trust God for something God has not promised?

I'm thinking about this today because of the confluence of two books I'm reading. The first "book" is the book of Galatians that we're studying carefully at First Lutheran right now. The second book is a recent publication by Christian Scharen called Faith as a Way of Life. What I'm thinking about in particular is the Christ-content that Galatians gives to the word pistis or "faith." Faith(fulness?) is first of all Christ's, and then it is ours. In this context faith is not blind trust or hopeful optimism, but it is conformity to the mind and obedience to Jesus.

I've only just begun reading Scharen's book, but even the opening pages provoke me to ask what kind of faith he proposes as a way of life. It doesn't take long to sense that he is thoughtful enough to avoid any vacuous notions of faith, but I'm eager to see how a Galatians-like Christ-faith will shape his proposal. And I'm even more eager to see such a thing shape our lives.

Sub 2:04 Marathon

2:03:59.

That's 4:46 per mile.

I once ran 1 mile that fast. Haile Gebrselassie ran 26 in a row at yesterday's Berlin marathon. Man, these guys are impressive.

For the Kingdom of God

Some good words from Daniel at Sibboleth, who is teaching at Fuller Seminary in Northern California:

Excerpt: "...one of the priests at St. Patrick's Seminary, whose space we share, gave a welcome to the students. As part of his welcome he said that what is good for the kingdom is when we get about our shared calling to proclaim the gospel, not competing with each other but working together for the furtherance of the kingdom."

Amen.

Themes Rising - Part 3 (Others)

The third theme that seems to me to have been rising in our study, conversation, and reflection is the need for First Lutheran to be a church for others. Perhaps I should find a way to say this more precisely or articulately, but let me just be plain for now.

Of the three themes that I've blogged about in this strand (including also church of substance and church of generations), this is the one that I think represents both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity for us. At one level, of course, you have to ask, "Who doesn't want to be a church for others?" It sounds so obvious. But is it something that we're really ready to do?

First Lutheran has known decades of "success" and growth by being an excellent church to come to. We've had years and years of solid preaching, top-notch music, innovative children's and student ministries, and a whole plethora of other attractive programs and opportunities. Anyone looking for a good Lutheran church in the White Bear Lake area would have to think seriously about attending FLC. And, in some sense, much of this was done "for others." It was done to attract others to "our church," though one could be forgiven for wondering how often the "others" have been very other.

In 2008 much is still the same but much has also changed. Among the biggest changes is that the number of people who could be described as "anyone looking for a good Lutheran church" has gone drastically down. It is no longer enough to be a very "attractive" church when fewer and fewer people are interested in church at all - not if you want to reach non-Christians with the good news about Jesus.

Somehow we will have to grow from being a place people come to into a gathering of Christians that goes to the people. We'll need not only to speak Jesus-words in our pulpit and on our campus, but we'll need to live Jesus-lives in our communities and on our streets. In the 21st century, Christians have an awful lot of credibility to re-earn and we won't be able to do it talking to ourselves. (See also the comments, btw, on my church of substance post from a few days ago. Thanks to my readers for pushing on today's topic, and particularly on the importance of seeing this happen not just in church programming but as also as the spontaneous outworking of the lives of the Christians who call First Lutheran home.)

We have a lot to learn and probably a lot of experimenting to do as we figure out how to do this best, but I suspect that this issue is much more a matter of "how" than "if."

Themes Rising - Part 2 (Generations)

Thanks to those of you who engaged in conversation around the theme of being a "church of substance." We went off in some directions I hadn't expected on that topic in particular, but I'm really grateful for what you had to say.

The second theme that seems to me to have been rising to the surface in many of our congregations has to do with being a "church of generations." Especially in our listening groups, I heard lots of people expressing value and appreciation for the diversity of generations active in the life of First Lutheran. In recent years we've referred to this as our desire to be a "cradle to grave" Christian community.

On one hand, this almost seems like a no brainer. There's so much to be gained from the gifts of each generation, and it's a very natural fit to our past and present. On the other hand, this is also a real challenge. I'm sure at least some of my readers will know that quite a bit of current church leadership "wisdom" suggests that churches should pick a specific demographic target audience and try to reach that audience. I can think of churches I know that aim specifically for 30-somethings or younger families or boomers.

Biblically speaking, I think there's every reason in the world for us to strive to develop as a fully multi-generational community, and there are opportunities galore for growth, service and maturity that come with this kind of approach. But we should also probably acknowledge that following this road would (will?) present strategic challenges in areas such as program planning and resource deployment. Perhaps both the greatest challenge and the greatest virtue of growing as this kind of community is that all of us will have to learn to value the needs of others more highly than our own. And now that I say it that way, it sounds like a place I really want to be a part of.

Themes Rising - Part 1 (Substance)

First Lutheran is continuing to move toward greater clarity (and eventually implementation) of its calling. Our Vision Leadership Team met over the weekend to summarize our progress so far and to chart a course toward completing this discernment process. As we talked, I summarized three themes that seem to me to be rising to the top in our reading, talking, thinking, and praying. We are still intentionally refraining from any final evaluations or articulations yet, but just testing out some ideas on each other. Those of you who are following along here can test out these ideas in your comments if you'd like. In our group I suggested that we are discerning ourselves to be a church of substance, a church of generations, and a church for others.

By "church of substance," I mean many of the things that I said in our September 14 worship services. We have a long history of and a strong present commitment to spiritual depth and substance, including Biblical preaching, small group involvement, and a commitment to prayer. I don't think that many of us would want to see any of this change, except perhaps to see it grow stronger.

But "church of substance" also means something else to me. I'm also thinking about articulating and practicing this dimension of our church life in a way that is engaging to outsiders so that we offer them a substantial opportunity to engage with Jesus and his gospel. I want to see us make space and opportunity for people to ask their questions, no matter how challenging those questions might be, and trust that we can walk faithfully with them into real answers that are never glib and may rarely be quick or easy. It seems to me that First Lutheran may be uniquely equipped to share the hope of the gospel with people who have substantial reservations about the faith, and if that is true, then it is a calling from which we dare not shrink.

It would probably also be well to talk about substantial love and service to our community, but I'll save that for part 3.

Good News

That's been the theme at First Lutheran this last week. Good news. The NT book of Galatians is shaping our community life at FLC right now. It is being taught and studied in our Bible study groups and it is providing the themes for our worship and messages on Sunday morning. I don't think a day goes by right now that I'm not reading or studying this book somehow. That, in itself, is good news of a kind. It's good to be shaped deeply and consistently by the words of Scripture, and this book in particular has a history of potency in fueling the church's commitment to the Gospel and to life that is consistent with the Gospel.

One topic I'd like to think more about, however, is the relationship between "the gospel" as that term is used, for example, in Matthew, Mark, or Luke and "the gospel" as that term is used by Paul in Galatians or other letters. The audiences who heard Jesus proclaim the good news and who read Matthew's account of it had a lot of context in which to understand "the good news of the Kingdom of God." That wouldn't have meant much, at least at first, to a bunch of Greeks at Thessalonica or to the various audiences in Galatia.

We want First Lutheran to be and to speak good news to our community. I think it would be helpful to think about the ways that Paul translated this message to Mediterranean towns to which he traveled. It might help us think about faithful and applicable articulations of the gospel in 21st century, Midwestern, suburban North America.

Consequences of Clarity

"If nobody's left your church recently, then your vision is probably too broad."

I read that quotation a few years ago in a book called Simply Strategic Stuff by Tim Stevens and Tony Morgan. I wasn't really comfortable with it at the time, and I probably do still have some questions about it.

But just this last week I had a conversation with a friend from our church (not officially a member, but active) who shall remain anonymous in this post, who's probably going to go look for a different church. We've been talking a lot about reaching the non-Christians in our community recently (as I preached about last weekend), and this person was worried that we would stop "feeding the believers" if we did too much of that.

I'm sympathetic to this person's concern, and I'm glad they raised it with me. First Lutheran has a history of real Biblical substance, and I certainly want that to be our future too. So, friend, if you're reading this post, thank you for prodding me on this point.

At the same time, however, we are also discerning our calling to engage our unchurched world with the good news of the Kingdom of God dawning in Jesus, and I just can't imagine shrinking back from that call. We're still in this process of discernment, but that feature seems to be rising rapidly to the front. We've got to navigate the challenge of doing this without turning Jesus into a product to be sold or simply reducing our proclamation down to whatever is easy and palatable to the greatest number of people. Certainly there are temptations to do that.

It's sad to lose a friend and ministry partner from this church, but I also know that there are lots of churches doing various pieces of God's work in the world. Not every church can be everything, and, dear friend, you will be a blessing, no doubt, to another church. And if God leads our mutual callings closer to each other again, I shall be glad for the reunion.

The site of something historic

View Larger Map

Amy's first day of running was an out and back on Birch Lake Boulevard. Probably 1.5 miles, alternating jogging and walking. The local running scene had better prepare itself. Here she comes!

The experience issue

I intentionally avoid blogging about politics for all kinds of reasons, but Less than the Least has some very interesting comments up about the value and types of experience held by the major presidential and VP candidates.

The comparison is between three kinds of experience: time served in the federal government, time served in an executive position, and results produced. Definitely worth a read.

Galatians Link

Thanks to TC for the blog love on this fall's Bible study series on Galatians.

Don't forget, btw, to change your subscriptions to his new address.

Anthony Famiglietti

If you're a runner, you're going to love this interview with Anthony Famiglietti, or "Fam." His description of his job as an Olympic runner: "My job is to push myself to complete physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion everyday." Man, I love this guy!

He didn't achieve his goal of winning a Bronze medal in Beijing, but true to himself, he left it all on the track.

Confiscated Bibles

I don't know anything about the group "Vision Beyond Borders," but apparently they were carrying over 300 Bibles into China which were confiscated by Chinese authorities. This action isn't the worst act of persecution of Christians by any stretch of the imagination, but this sort of thing is always disturbing.

Radical Grace

In yesterday's post, I commented on some thoughts from a conference I'm attending right now, and today's post is more of the same.

The driving question for today's session asked whether Lutheran theology had any particular contributions to make to the mission of the Christian church. People floated a lot of ideas, everything from a decentralized power structure to a communal, non-individualist gospel (are either of these things particularly Lutheran?), but I continue to think that the most important contribution of Lutheran theology is the insistence on the radical and consistent priority of grace. Or, as Lutherans like to say, we try to get Law and Gospel and right. We want to tell people the good news of God's grace in Christ (gospel) and talk about "law" only insofar as it serves that purpose.

But I do wonder whether our churches are ready for the consequences of doing this. What if we really welcomed everyone with no preconditions? Would we be willing to build a community that considered Jesus to be the only non-negotiable. I wonder.

Something to offer?

"I don't think the church believes that it has anything to offer that the unchurched world really needs."

Ouch. I participated tonight in the opening sessions of "Missional Education: Savvy with Substance," and I was profoundly grateful for the excellent breakout group of which I was assigned to be a part. But then a soft spoken and thoughtful member of our group hit us with the line that I quoted to open this post.

How you evaluate the truth of that statement will depend in large part on what you think "the church" means. Is it true of an individual congregation? Of our denomination? Of the broadly defined Christian church on earth?

Frightening thought.

Meals Create Communities

First Lutheran hosted the last of the summer picnics that we scheduled off-site at Stellmacher park today, and it was awesome!

It's good for our church community to eat together and play together and be a family, but we could do that at our place. We held these picnics "off campus" so that we could share the love with our neighbors and make them feel like a welcome part of the family.

At each of these three summer community picnics, but especially today, I've been so delighted to see this dream coming true. Members of First Lutheran were mingling with new found friends at every picnic table in the park and showing simple, genuine Christian care for our neighbors.

This is only the beginning, but it has been a wonderful beginning. We know that Jesus loves our entire community, and we are committed to following Him as he leads us more and more to love our (literal) neighbors.

Depth

We are deep into the "listening group" process at First Lutheran right now, and I'm loving every minute of it! It's so great sitting down with other folks in the FLC community and hearing what's on your hearts and minds. Because we're still in process on this, I don't want to prejudice the future groups or short circuit the conversations at all, but I do want to celebrate one thing that I keep hearing.

We have a deep well from which to draw water.

It might be easy for us or other churches to get obsessed with how we should market, package, or present ourselves to our community and call that outreach or mission or evangelism. (And I do know how important marketing is.) But then there's always the danger of becoming a beautifully wrapped empty box. Or a dry well with a big, useless pump.

First Lutheran isn't perfect, and there's a lot of mistakes we can and do make. But we have a long history and a deeply formed culture of spiritual growth and maturity. We have great resources for hearing and answering God's call. And, perhaps most importantly, we have a deep, unbreakable connection to a Living Well, from which to draw and share the water of life.

Global Hoops

I don't think I'll ever stop loving the game of basketball, even if the safety of my oft-injured ankles prevents me from playing much anymore. Two interesting roundball stories are current today: first a link describing the U.S. Men's Olympic team's dismantling of Lithuania and then some interesting speculation about the possibility (is that even too strong a word?) of LeBron James playing in Europe after next season.

The Olympic team holds special interest for me because they are being lead by Coach K of my beloved Duke Blue Devils, and because I'm one of the many American basketball fans ashamed of what (UNC product!) Larry Brown did to our team in 2004.

The second story about LeBron intrigues me for a number of reasons. At one level, it's just another example of the globalization of everything. And, far fetched as it may seem, it makes just enough sense to plausible. Not only could the owners of one or more Euro teams throw incomprehensible amounts of money at LeBron, but this could also be a positive step for LeBron toward achieving his self-identified goal of becoming a "global icon."

(For a bunch of other USA basketball links, click here.)

It's a Story

I met briefly today with Lori Nicol from Augsburg Fortress, and she showed me a new Zondervan product that looks really interesting. It's called The Story, and it's an edition of the TNIV Bible spliced and arranged to tell the Biblical narrative as a chronologically ordered story.

The first thing I like about is simply the format. It's printed in a single column with no chapter and verse numbers. In other words, it looks more like a regular book, and, imho, that makes it much more readable and inviting. Our usual Bible formats create a real sense of unfamiliarity and foreignness, which those of us who have been reading the Bible for years hardly notice anymore.

What I like even more, however is the reminder that the Bible is a story. It's a narrative of God and His creation that centers in Jesus the Messiah-Lord. It reveals wise rules, but it's not a book of wisdom or rules. It teaches theology but it is not a theology textbook. It includes prophecy, but is not mainly prophecy either. It is a story of God's past, present, and future with His world.

The Story shouldn't be anyone's only Bible because it isn't a whole Bible, but it's an interesting resource and could be very useful for the purpose of gaining familiarity with the narrative backbone of the Biblical canon.

Face to Face

Yesterday evening, First Lutheran had its first "listening group," and it was fantastic. Thanks to all of you who were there.

Readers of this blog will know that our church community is trying to clarify its identity and calling. Just exactly who are we and what exactly are we supposed to do?

Last night we asked ourselves these and related questions and had some good heart to heart talking about it. I value these conversations at one level just because they are good venues for articulating great ideas. But, even more, I value these conversations because they allow us to build ownership and partnership together. We can look each other in the eye and build our team together.

If any of you haven't signed up for one of our listening group opportunities yet, please do. You'll be glad you did, and so will I!

Make...Disciples

I just got back from a three-week vacation, during which time I decided to take a break from blogging too. To any of you who have been following along...sorry for the delay.

Our church-wide process of vision discernment is still underway, and I'm really looking forward to our listening groups. I'll probably blog some more about that in the next few days. Today I just want to say something brief about a book that I read yesterday, Growing and Engaged Church by Albert Winseman. Other than sometimes feeling a bit like an advertisement for Gallup Research (it was published by Gallup Press), it was a very engaging (!) book.

What I have to say about the book, however, is really something that I've been thinking about all throughout this process. I am being reminded that the Great Commission of Jesus is to make disciples. That sounds obvious, and it is. But what I've been seeing more and more clearly is that there is no equation between "make disciples" and "make big churches." They might be related, and often they are. As a church succeeds in helping people who don't follow Jesus become followers of Jesus, there will often naturally be an increase in that church's membership or attendance. But so many churches and church leaders have seen church growth as being nearly equal to making disciples that we have sometimes confused the symptom for the cause.

As we discern more clearly the kind of calling that God has for us at First Lutheran, I know it will remain important for us to make and nurture disciples of Jesus and not necessarily to pursue numerical growth. We will preach the good news of the Kingdom of God and teach the Bible and help people discover their individual giftedness and help them to grow and mature in their relationship with God.

I do hope that God will help us reach more and more people and that more and more people will join in the work to which God calls us, but those results are more symptoms of faithfulness on our part than they are goals in themselves. They are vital signs, not actual congregational or spiritual health. I'd rather pursue health than the signs of it.

Olympic Track Trials

A number of the qualifying heats have now been run out at the US Olympic Track Trials in Eugene, and the talent of these runners is just too much to be believed. After the two qualifying heats for the men's 5000, Ian Dobson (who ran 14:01!) said "you think it should be a jog to run that time." These guys obviously have gears the rest of us do not have.

A service of prayer

I didn't get a chance to blog this until just now, but yesterday morning's service of prayer was an important moment in the life of our congregation. I count myself as very blessed to have the opportunity to be a pastor of this wonderful, prayerful, Christ-full congregation.

I am very much looking forward to the opportunity to have lots more conversation among our members about the ways that God is leading us to be a part of His mission to reach our world.
For any of you who are following along with our vision discernment process via this blog, feel free to chime in with your comments as a way to start those conversations even now.

One specific thought from my end:
I wrote more about this for the cover of the July newsletter, but one of the main things that God reinforced for me yesterday is my appreciation for First Lutheran's past. As we look forward to the paths that God is calling us to walk in the future, I am struck by the value of the roads that have lead us to this point. Without God's leading and without the faith and obedience of members in First Lutheran's past, we would never be where we are now and our options for moving forward would be far more limited.



As we contemplate the steps of our journey forward, thanks be to God for the steps that have brought us this far.

N. T. Wright on the Colbert Report

Now here's a combination I don't think I would ever have expected: N. T. Wright on the Colbert Report. He's discussing his relatively new book Surprised by Hope, especially his explanation of of a "two state post-mortem existence" beginning with heaven but culminating in the full arrival of God's new creation.

I read this book a few months ago and found it pretty helpful in a number of ways, but the thing I found most surprising about this interview was how informed Colbert seemed to be. He either knows more about theology than I would expect or his prep staff is pretty good.

A Bad Sign for the Vikings

If this kind of thing doesn't make you nervous...




...then this ought to. Sport's Illustrated's infamous Dr. Z has picked the Vikings to win it all next year.

Meanwhile, I'm still harboring hope that my hometown Cleveland Browns will return to the form they haven't shown since before those black days when Art Modell moved them to Baltimore.

Gas savers, Traffic saviors

With gas prices rising to over $4/gallon, it looks like more and more people are getting interested in raising their MPGs.

And here's a very interesting article on highway driving behaviors that reduce traffic congestion and save gas.

Round 2 (Part 2)

[Warning: this post is a little long. I apologize, but this topic is too important to abbreviate any more than I already am.]

(2) The second major topic that our vision leadership team discussed this week was the changing nature of our mission field and the rapidly changing relationship between "the church" and "the world."

Not all that long ago the church in America enjoyed a sort of home field advantage in the world. Our message was basically comprehensible to and even respected by the average person, even those who would not have called themselves Christians. Secular organizations wouldn't have dreamed of scheduling activities on Sunday mornings because that was church time; Christian clergy were respected in the community simply by virtue of their office; and basic moral behavior could commonly be referred to as "christian," as evidenced by the obvious condescension in a statement like, "That's wasn't a very christian thing to do." Churches like ours could open their doors wide on a Sunday morning and reasonably expect that new visitors would walk simply in. And once there, they were likely to have a good idea of what to do and what was expected of them. In fact, they had probably been raised in a roughly similar kind of place.

Times have changed.

The church can no longer reasonably expect respect and deference from the un-churched world, and the people whom we are trying to reach with the good news about Jesus are no longer primed to receive that message by prior experience in a church or even simply by years of exposure to a society steeped in Christian language, symbols, and practices. The church can no longer open its doors and expect the un-churched to stream in, let alone know what to do once they get there.

The key difference was crystallized for me once as I listened to a conversation between two leaders of very large churches in different parts of the country, one that began in the 1970s and one that began to thrive much more recently. The conversation went something like this:
Leader of the recently thriving church: When you started your church, you did it by going door to door and asking people if they were part of a church and if not, what kept them from doing so, right?
Leader of the church started in the 70s: Yes, that's right.
Recently: That's a huge difference for us. You could ask people what the problems were, then remove those problems, and people would be interested in joining your church.
1970s: Right
Recently: Basically you were asking people "Why not?" and removing the problems. We have to deal with people who are asking "Why?" and then show them a compelling reason. People we're trying to reach now are asking, "Why on earth would I want to be involved with anything as dumb, backward, and irrelevant as Christianity."

(In case anybody reading this figures out who these leaders are, I'd like to clarify that the leader of the church started in the 1970s is fully aware of this shift and is fruitfully engaging the 21st century world also.)

This is also a challenge that First Lutheran needs to meet. We must learn to live as a Christian church community that demonstrates the truth of the gospel in its life together so that our message is heard as more than just self-serving religious babble but, instead, as the declaration that the one good, Creator God is saving his obviously broken world - and he's doing it in Jesus.

For anyone who'd like to read some more about these important shifts in church mission, a good web resource can be found here. For print resources, two good books to read are They Like Jesus but not the Church by Dan Kimball or The Once and Future Church by Loren Mead.

Round 2

It's been a few days already since our research and leadership team for our vision discernment process had its second official meeting, but I haven't had a chance to blog it here yet.

We dealt with two main topics. I'll handle the first one now and then pick up the second one in another post.

(1) We spent most of our two-hour meeting talking about the prayer support that guides and undergirds this whole process, focusing especially on ways to involve the whole congregation. Pastor Angie began by telling us about the prayer vigil that she and others had begun putting together, and then we latched onto the idea of capturing the spirit of that vigil in a Sunday morning worship service for everybody.

What we're planning now - and I'm very excited about this - is a prayer service for Sunday morning June 22 at all of our four worship services. Angie, Linsey, Brad, and I are working on putting together a service of prayer, Scripture, and music that will hopefully facilitate us opening our hearts before God and putting us in a spiritual posture of listening and openness.

For any readers of this blog who are connected to First Lutheran (and I'm guessing that's most of you), don't miss worship on June 22. It's going to be an important moment in the life of our church. I can't wait!

$1 Billion dollar dinner?

Now's here's something you don't see every day.

I have no idea where this tab actually came from, but I'd sure be curious to know.

It's about Jesus

For any of you who with strong theological interests, you really should check out sibboleth's frequently excellent and insightful commentary.

Today's contribution includes an important quotation from the Essenes at Qumran that was highlighted in a recent book by James Dunn. Here's the quotation:

As for me, if I stumble, the mercies of God shall be my eternal salvation.
If I stagger because of the sin of my flesh, my justification shall be by
the righteousness of God which endures forever. ... He will draw me near by
his grace, and by his mercy will he bring my justification. He will judge me
in the righteousness of his truth and in the greatness of his goodness he
will pardon [atone for/cover] all my sins. Through his righteousness he will
cleanse me of the uncleanness of man and of the sins of the children of men.

A person could be forgiven (!) for thinking that the author of such a quotation was Christian, but he/she certainly was not. The importance of this point is the reminder that Christians were not the inventors of grace. Jews, even ones that took the law as terribly seriously as did the Essenes at Qumran, knew that God was gracious.

But if grace is not the peculiar characteristic of Christianity, what is? In a word: Jesus. The most basic Christian confession is and was "Jesus is Lord (cf. Rom 10:9 and the defining, knew-bowing, ultimate confession of Phil 2:10-11)." It is not "Justification by faith" or "God is love" or any other good thing of which we've become fond.

Utlimately I am not a Christian because Christianity is a better idea than any other religion (though it may also be that); I am a Christian because Jesus was raised from the dead. The world changed on that day, and all of us who follow Jesus are merely trying to work out what that means.

With a Little Help from our Friends

Thanks are due today to Lauren Redpath, a wonderfully talented local Christian artist who helped lead worship today at First Lutheran.

Thanks, Lauren. You've been a wonderful friend to First Lutheran in recent times. God's blessings on your continued ministry.

If you want to check out any of Lauren's upcoming gigs, you can check out her schedule, including a date at Tally's on White Bear Lake on July 2.

Key Issues - Part 4 (Alignment)

When I think ahead to what I hope for as a result of this extended process of discernment, I think alignment is near the top of the list. And when I say that now, I'm aware that it sounds so horribly boring, but just below the surface lies real excitement.

I get the chance pretty often to sit down with volunteer and staff leaders in our congregation to work on various teams trying to accomplish various tasks. All of these teams are wonderful and all of these tasks are good, but more and more I find myself asking how they are related to one another or to any larger unifying goal. In our church community, we are doing lots of generally good Christian things, and we are doing a basically wise and intelligent job running a fairly large and complicated organization. There's really quite a bit to feel good about.

But we could be doing a lot better.

We could be doing a lot better if we were acting more in concert with one another. I can just imagine if our children's ministry department and our student ministries and our worship planners and our missions leaders, to name just a few, all had learned to dream the same dream and pursue the same mission - each, of course, according to their own gifts and tasks. Our teams would be healthier, our energies would be higher, and our fruitfulness would be greater. I know I want to see that happen, and I really think that God wants to see that happen.

It's possible that I'm exciting about the possibility of greater alignment among the ministries of our church just because I'm an over-organized, control freak (really, it is possible...), but it's also because the opportunities are so great. God has equipped First Lutheran with an embarrassment of riches (of all kinds), and if we harnessed our potential and aimed it in one consistent direction - there's no telling what God could do in us.

Key Issues - Part 3 (Ownership)

I have never been a part of any kind of team that achieved something great together without having everyone on the team pulling hard in the same direction.

Some of First Lutheran's staff and volunteer leaders made a trip yesterday to visit Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines. Hope is now the largest ELCA church in America (and growing), and we took some time to dialog with their leaders about their direction and practices of ministry.

I think the meetings were mutually useful conversations with both sides sharing and teaching and learning from each other, but the biggest single take-away lesson for me came from seeing the broad-based (unanimous even?) ownership of their mission. It seemed like everybody at Hope knows and embraces the truth that they are a "great commission, great commandment church." They exist to love their neighbors and reach the lost, and they are not interested in agendas, divisions, priorities, or practices that do not help move them toward obedience to that calling.

I feel both convicted and challenged about the critical importance of this issue for the future of First Lutheran. In order to move forward, we must move forward together. For all of you who are reading this blog and are connected with First Lutheran, let me reiterate my invitation to you to be part of this process. Please be a part of our listening groups later this summer. Please offer your feedback right here on this blog. Please pray and listen for God's leading.

God's call for First Lutheran is a call for all of us, and we'll never get where God is leading if we don't go there together.

Key Issues - Part 2 (Passion)

First, some Biblical words, retranslated and out of context:
I wish you were either hot or cold. Lukewarm makes me vomit.

I think I've said this in a couple different contexts already, but if any of us find ourselves responding to any part of this discernment process with some form of "OK, that's nice," then it's definitely time for a check-up.

I know I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit and into the content of the next post on "ownership," but I remember wrestling through some vision issues a few years ago and being struck by the strong difference between ownership and agreement. I think the difference is passion.

The kind of things we're talking about in terms of our vision for ministry and our long range plan is heart-level, gut-level stuff. How does the God of heaven and earth plan to use our lives for the salvation of His broken world? If we can answer that question with cool detachment, then we haven't wrestled with it hard enough it yet.

What I really hope is that our whole congregation will grab hold of our clarified vision and say, "Yes, count me in. I want a piece of the action. I want to pour out my life for God's call, and I won't settle for anything less." But I'd rather hear someone say, "No way! Count me out! I'll never climb that hill with you," than hear someone say, "OK, that's nice. I guess I can accept that."

Key Issues - Part 1 (Urgency)

I had the chance yesterday to listen to some leaders from another church talk about a strategic planning process that they went through a few years ago. It was great to hear about God's leading in their community, and it really encouraged me about the importance of what we're doing. From their comments I took away four things that struck me as really critical in this work of discernment and planning that God has given us: urgency, passion, ownership, and alignment. Over the course of the next few days, I want to comment each of these. Today I'll start with "urgency."

Over the course of the coming years, First Lutheran is going to spend millions of dollars and burn through thousands and thousands of volunteer and staff hours. It is imperative that we know why. There's too much at stake to be unclear about this. We are using up far too many resources to be uncertain about what we want those resources to accomplish and exactly how we think we can use those resources to accomplish that purpose. It is urgent that we define our vision and form a clear plan to pursue it.

It is also urgent because the need is so great. Our immediate community is full of broken lives and broken hearts that can be restored by God's grace in Christ. Once we get clear on the way that God is leading us in particular to serve this community and bear witness to His Gospel, we can follow that leading with passion and be a conduit of His grace and healing to our broken world.

First Lutheran is already a place where lots of really good Christian ministry is happening (which has been true for a long, long time), and I am chomping at the bit to see us harness the resources and potential of this great community to accomplish even more in the Kingdom of God.

A Manly Church?

I had a great conversation today with Larry Szyman, the lead pastor at Faith Community Church in Hudson, Wisconsin. Like us, they're also going through a process of trying to clarify their identity and purpose as a congregation. God bless your work, Larry.

Among other things, we talked about the strange but persistent perception that church is a place more for women than for men - and this in spite of the church's long legacy of predominantly male leadership. (Not that churchmen have always been the most masculine types, I suppose.)

It's lamentable that our churches have so often presented Christianity as a religion with little appeal to the typical masculine spirit. As David Murrow described in Why Men Hate Going to Church, we've unintetionality created a church culture where strength, risk, and adventure are marginalized and we talk a lot of relationships and intimacy. Of course, neither relationships nor intimacy are bad things for men or women, but I don't know a lot of guys who realize that they need relationships and intimacy. Most of us hear stuff like that and want to run in the opposite direction.

But the main reason I find this so frustrating is that the character and call of Jesus is 180 degrees away from the soft, passive religion that we have sometimes created around Him. I think it's high time that we start reflecting the spirit of Jesus better in our churches, but not just so that men will be less turned off by what they perceive to be a feminine culture. The last thing I'd want is to try to force Jesus into some gender stereotype, whether masculine or feminine. That would just be losing the battle in the opposite direction.

But the strength and conviction that Jesus demonstrated when he flew right into the teeth of those who opposed Him is a strength that we all need to see when His Gospel calls us to turn around (repent) and lead lives that will probably be opposed by forces in our own culture. And if the church is going to stand up and make a difference in Jesus' name in this world, then we're also going to have to depend on the leadership of people of both genders who are ready to take courageous risks for the Kingdom of God.

A Good Start

The research and leadership team began meeting this past Sunday night to begin helping First Lutheran Church discern its calling and set its long term direction. It's a great group of people, and we are off to a great start. I'm really excited to see where God is going to lead us together.

We handled two main topics for the night. The first and most important thing we did was to build a strong foundation of weakness. It sounds funny now that I say it like that, but I'm not kidding. We prayed together and acknowledged the importance of being dependent on God instead of producing some kind of self-driven strength, which is a real temptation for many of us, perhaps all of us. As part of our conversation, we were responding to readings from Jim Cymbala's book Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire. The human brokenness evidenced in that book is more obvious than it is in most of our community, but that doesn't make it any more real, and if First Lutheran is going to be place of grace and healing that looks anything like a community centered on Jesus, then we may as well drop the charade and get on our (literal and metaphorical) knees before God.

Second, we took some time to look objectively and empirically at our church and region. We reviewed internal membership data and worship attendance data, and we reviewed census and survey data for the zip codes around FLC. At FLC, we have started to see some signs of numerical growth in the last 4-6 months, particularly in contemporary worship and in new member classes. From an external perspective, nobody was surprised to learn that our area is relatively affluent, well educated, and white with a higher than average majority of white collar workers and two-income families. We saw that only 1/3 of people in our area report being strongly involved with their faith, and only 13% list "finding a good church" as something that they are concerned with.

If people were looking for a church, there was a (to me) surprisingly even split among people who would prefer to worship in a traditional/formal environment and those would would prefer to worship in a contemporary/informal environment. And then another, equal number said they had no preference! People also expressed a fairly high value for bible study, theological discussion, and prayer groups, and they preferred worship services that are both emotionally inspiring and intellectually stimulating.

I'm looking forward to the rest of this process.

(If you want to keep up with just the posts on this blog that are specifically about First Lutheran's process of discerning its call, just click on the "discernment" label at the bottom of any of these related posts.)

Shades of Grey

A couple years ago I got hooked on watching Grey's Anatomy. I'm always a sucker for interesting characters, which they were in the first season... But I also got really interested in the story of Derek (Sorry, I just can't call him McDreamy!) and Addison trying to put their marriage back together after each of them had done their level best to destroy it. Their spirit of "it's worth fighting for" really grabbed me.

Like many bad habits, this one has lasted even without the substance that gave birth to it, and now we watch Grey's Anatomy online thanks to abc.com's full episode viewer. That means I'm usually running a few episodes behind and watch several at a time. Well, I recently watched the 5/9 episode (or was it 5/2?) and got a splash of cold water from my conscience.

When the gay boyfriend of a male soldier in the hospital for an experimental treatment sat in bed with the soldier-patient and kissed him before surgery, I have to admit that I had a negative, phsyical reaction. What bothers me about this is that I don't have the same reaction to every other damaging, sub-Biblical kind of sexuality in this show - and let's be honest, they are myriad. Why am I, without thinking about it, more comfortable with heterosexual extramarital sex than with homosexual sex? Probably because I am shaped more by Americal cultural expectations than by Biblical teaching. To make matters worse, I've even taught publicly about the hypocrisy of Christians who condemn homosexuality but tolerate adultery and premarital sex. Now I stand guilty of the same hypocrisy.

I've had more than enough friends feel the relational risk and pain that comes from using sex outside its marital context. You'd think I would be sensitized to this.

I still plan to watch the next episode, but I'll be watching through newly re-opened eyes. I wonder what the usual relationships will look like.

Go blue!

A fascinating diagram is available from the New York Times, displaying the component parts of the Consumer Price Index. If you want to see how gasoline is getting more expensive and computers are getting cheaper and see the trends on everything else from bananas to women's shoes and garbage collection, this is an interesting way to display the information. Looks like a good time to be buying TVs, computers, and video equipment.

Wonderfully Human - Part 2

Daniel at Sibboleth has continued with parts two and three of his thoughts on Biblical humanity, which seem, imho, to be right on.

I am reminded of Rodney Stark's book The Rise of Christianity (Harper Collins, 1996), and his often provocative explanations of "how the obscure marginal Jesus movement became the dominant religious force in the western world in a few centuries." The haunting (second) last line of the book touches directly on this conversation about the nature of humanity and, in my view anyway, suggests a high degree of Biblical, missional faithfulness among the early Christians: "Finally, what Christianity gave to its converts was nothing less than their humanity (215)." And just a page earlier, Stark explained "Christianity brought a new conception of humanity to a world saturated with capricious cruelty and the vicarious love of death."

I think the reason that I've found myself so moved by Stark's account of early Christianity is the compelling hope that he(probably unintentionally) offers for 21st century Christianity in an increasingly pagan world. If the early Christians inhabited the Biblical story of God's restoration of his human creation and lived out that story in their communal life, and if that Biblically shaped life effectively offered life in Christ to a dying world, I can't help but wonder what would happen if Christians today developed a sense and a taste for that same Biblical vision and mission.

(For a transcript of a short interview with Rodney Stark that nicely summarizes some of his views, click here.)

Wonderfully Human

My buddy Daniel Kirk at sibboleth posted some of his initial reactions to the unfortunate idea of being "only human," as if one's humanity were, from a Biblical perspective, something to be regretted. He touches on what I think is a very important theme in the whole Biblical narrative. God is not working to negate humanity. Indeed, according to the very sobering introduction to the story of the Great Flood in Genesis 6, he contemplated that once and decided against it. Instead, God is working to restore humanity to his original creative intentions, and he's doing it in Jesus.

That seems to me to be the idea at work in Romans 5, where Paul describes Jesus as a second Adam, and in Romans 8, where Paul takes the next step to say that God intends for those who are in Christ to be "conformed to the image of His Son." Having once created human beings in his own image and having seen them damage that image in sinful rebellion, God now works through the Messiah (the only perfect human being) to restore all who are in Him to full humanity in his image.

Holy Adoption

Our niece Isabella was baptized last week (April 26), and Amy and I got to be her sponsors/godparents, which is a huge privilege in itself. But during the baptism, it struck me that there is something especially wonderful about the baptism of an adopted child. Her parents Dave and Kari have already adopted her into the full privileges of their family, the complete equal of their biological son. She is a "co-heir with Krister" in her new family family. Now, in baptism, she's being joined to Jesus, adopted into the family of God, a "co-heir with Christ" as Romans 8 says it.
It never really made sense to me that some people have thought of adopted children as second class citizens in their own family - after all, they are probably chosen into a family more purposefully even than biological sons and daughters. I wonder, though, how often Christians similarly underestimate their standing in the family of God.