On A Mission!

This Sunday I will be heading up to Wesley Woods to co-dean their Youth Mission Work Camp. I'll be taking 27 energetic, hormone-filled teenagers, plus 4 other chaperones from my church, up to serve God through serving others....painting, construction, roofing, landscaping....you name it! Please keep us all in your prayers!

And yet, as I've been mulling it over in my head the last few weeks, I've realized just how reductionistic the term "mission" has become in our lives. For most people in our pews, "missions" is that stuff that we support financially...that stuff that happens outside the church walls, in other countries, and usually done by trained "missionaries." But what happens inside the church walls...well, that's not missions. That's all about discipling the faithful who come every week to get their spiritual needs met and, hopefully, to get challenged as well.

Darrell Guder, professor of missions at Princeton Seminary, has written that in the Bible there are actually three distinct aspects of the church's mission in the world:

First, there's kerygma - proclaiming the Word of God, the good news of the Kingdom, that the world might know the objective truth of the faith. Paul winning converts at the Areopagus in Acts 17 would be a good example of this.

Then there's diakonia - reaching out to others with acts of service and unconditional love, allowing us (as the book of James might say) to show our faith by what we do. Peter and John healing the crippled man in Acts 4 is the example.

Finally, there's koinonia - authentically living out the life of faith in community with others, presenting an alternative method of relationships from that which the world gives. The description of the early church in Acts 2 is the example here....and notice what Luke says: because the early Christians lived this way in community, the Lord added to their numbers daily those who are being saved.

The bottom line is this: Christians have been reborn, and the earth is no longer our ultimate home. And yet, we are all called to be a city on a hill, so that all may see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven. Every believer should see his/herself as being on a mission. When we refer to our "work trips" as mission trips, are we somehow not doing justice to the fact that EVERYTHING the church does is "mission"....that EVERYTHING we do in Christ's name has the potential to bring the Kingdom of God on earth? Is it possible to communicate to our congregations that the way they relate to each other as brothers and sisters, the way they worship on Sunday mornings, the way they talk about their church in the outside world....all of these things are potentially missional moments that can give bring either glory or shame to the name of Jesus Christ?

May the Spirit of God convict us, and those under our shepherding care, to live every aspect of our lives in the intentional mission of our Lord!

Prayer 101

I'm currently reading N. T. Wright's little book, The Lord and His Prayer, as a resource for a youth Bible study. It's an excellent book and I recommend it to anyone. Wright elaborates on how Jesus' original hearers would have understood the words of His prayer...that in its original context, the Lord's Prayer is actually a "risky, crazy prayer of submission and commission." In reading it, I've become very convicted by how different my own prayer is when put next to the model provided by Our Lord. Actually, it is not surprising at all that in our individualistic, materialistic culture, Christian prayer tends all too often to focus on one clause in Jesus' prayer: "Give us this day our daily bread." Of course, there is nothing wrong with submitting our requests to God, with laying before Him our specific needs and those of our loved ones. What is wrong is that often, we fail to do this in the larger context of expressing adoration for Our Father, expressing our conviction that His Name should be hallowed, expressing our commitment to seeing His Kingdom come to earth, and expressing our honest confession of sin and temptation. As Wright comments, "We come to prayer, aware of urgent needs, or at least wants. It's tempting to race through the Lord's Prayer, as far as 'on earth as it is in heaven,' so that we can take a deep breath and then say, 'Now look here: when it comes to daily bread, there are some things I simply must have.' And then off we go into a shopping list. To do this, of course, is to let greed get in the way of grace....We owe it to ourselves, not to mention to God, to pray the prayer in a more integrated manner." I suggest that churches often misapply the Lord's Prayer in their worship, their Sunday School classes, and in personal devotions. What if, instead of merely teaching our congregants to memorize Matthew 6:9-13, we actually did something more "risky" and "crazy"? What if we model and teach our congregations to express God's attributes in prayer? What if we preached that hallowing God's Name means so much more than merely refraining from curse words, but actively living holy lives as representatives of His Name? What if we challenged them to not merely see "heaven" as a distant, otherworldly reality, but as the standard by which we should live out our physical, economic, social, and political lives here on earth...and then to pray for God's strength to make the necessary changes in our lives? What if we reminded our congregants that they are sinners who need constant grace, and that they must pray not just for forgiveness for themselves, but also for the strength to forgive others? And then, after all this is understood and prayed for, submit our requests to God. We might actually see that some of our requests need to be reformulated that light. If I understand Matthew 6:9 correctly, the Lord's Prayer is not necessarily what we should pray, but rather, how we should pray. May God give all of us the grace and understanding to take Jesus' practical guidelines and apply them, that we might grow in our relationship with Him and assist others in doing so as well.

Symphony of Triumph

The following is a piece I wrote a few years back, which my friend, colleague, and former roommate Jeff Vanderhoff always reminds me of, so I figured I'd post it here. It reflects my love for two things: Our Triune God, and classical music. Enjoy! We are all part of a great Symphony, which the Composer skillfully conceived at the beginning of time: Some of us are the Melody, our loud voices ringing out with the Message of the Music... Some are Countermelody, adding movement and variety, and enhancing the Melody with our bold originality... Some of us are the Bass Line, not outspoken or original but steadfast and supportive, without which the Melody would have no stability... All of us, playing our respective parts, make the Symphony a triumph. The Symphony is full of tension and struggle, but in the Composer's wisdom and design, the moments of tension always lead to a resolution of joy, while the most difficult sections are also those which challenge our abilities and make us better musicians. As we play our parts in the Symphony, there are three things we must always consider: We must strive to glorify the Composer by adhering faithfully to the Musical Score, and not glorify ourselves by adding prideful improvisation, for the less we deviate from the Score, the more the Audience will be convicted of its meaning... With the guidance of the Sound Man, we must strive to blend our parts harmoniously, that our performance may be a true reflection of the Composer's art... Finally, and most importantly, we must fix our eyes on the Conductor, who--with His nail-pierced hands--directs all of us to follow Him. The Symphony continues, and as we turn the pages to new and increasingly complex movements in the Score, we must be confident in this: One day, all the members of the Audience--whether they want to or not--will give the Composer a kneeling ovation. The Conductor will embrace each one of us warmly and say, "Well done!" And the Composer, sitting in the Balcony, will wipe the tears of joy away from His eyes as He declares once again that His Masterpiece is very good.

A History Lesson (the first of many!)

I recently finished a book by Robert L. Wilken entitled The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. It details the rise of the Christian Church from 100-400 C.E., from the perspective of the Romans who critiqued them. Not only was it just a good read for a history buff like myself, but it also was a very important reminder that we Christians should always be sensitive to how we are being perceived by the culture around us.

Interestingly though not surprisingly, I found many parallels between the situation of the early church and that of American Christians in the 21st Century: Christians being persecuted for their beliefs; intellectuals outside (and even inside) the church asserting that Jesus was not the very incarnation of God but merely a wise man or moral teacher; relativists proclaiming that Jesus is just one of many gods from which one may choose; and government officials trying to remove any trace of Christian truth and morals from the public systems of education.

It is very encouraging to know that 21st Century Christians are not the first to deal with a culture that seems hostile to our message. Indeed, the bitter sense of persecution is probably just what the Church needs right now. Christian Churches have been so concerned with "Power" for so long - whether at the national, denominational, or local level - that we sometimes forget about humility and service. We forget that it is not our calling to force our agenda onto the world, but merely be a loving witness to God's agenda of transforming human beings by the power of the Cross.

As human institutions go, the Roman Empire did very well...existing for well over a millenium, and several of its monuments still exist in Europe as testimonies to its greatness. Yet it fell. All human institutions are destined to one day crumble to the ground. Sooner or later, such will be the lot of the United States of America, the mainline denominations, even my own local church in Bakerstown. This should fill us with despair, but in my case, it doesn't.

Because while human institutions rise and fall, the Gospel of God's redemption has been steadfast and faithful from Noah and Abraham up to the present day. It has redeemed--and will continue to redeem--the only thing on this earth that is destined to live forever: the human soul. As C. S. Lewis reminds us in "The Weight of Glory," next to the sacrament of Communion, our neighbors are the holiest objects presented to our senses. If the Church of Jesus Christ wants to be involved in something that is truly eternal, it needs to be less concerned with maintaining its institutional polity and greatness, and more concerned with its original job description: Love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and love our neighbor as we love ourselves.