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Sermon Series Start

Preamble:
Pursuing unity among churches and ministries has proven some of the most challenging work I’ve been involved in while in ministry. Building trust and working as a diplomat between differing view points takes a lot of time and energy.  If I’m honest, there have been many times that I have given up hope and expected relationships to collapse, churches to break up, ministries to pack up and move on.  Please, before you read another word, please don’t utter those terrible words: “if the church were just …” or “if Christians were just …”.  Please. Hear me out.  Because I think you may have left your casserole dish in the church kitchen, uncleaned no less.  Or perhaps it was your Bible left behind in the fellowship room.  You left the lid off, left the copier jammed, didn’t pick up after your event, or you forgot to lock the…. You and I, and a few other Jesus followers, are “the church” and so the church is messy and hard, just like my family is, just like your family is.  And that’s what the Bible tells us we should expect until Jesus returns. Please know this is not an excuse for criminal negligence, abuse, or gross incompetence. When those happen in church contexts Christians need to address them clearly, assertively, and with victims’ needs closely in mind. Here I’m speaking of regular and common human peculiarities, cultural insensitivity, selfishnesses, forgetfulness, inconsiderateness, lack of communication, etc. This is real life in the church and it is a common source of disunity. But unity is worth a fight. True unity inside the church and across churches is very much worth fighting for.  I see at least three reasons that this day-to-day, operational, ground-level unity is important for us as Christians to understand, embrace, and work hard for.  I believe: 1. Unity in Christ is Real. 2. Unity in Christ is Theologically Demanded. 3. Unity in Christ is Worth Fighting For. 4. Unity in Christ Reflects the Trinity.

October 25, 2020
Unity in Christ is real (or Unity in Christ is near) – Ephesians 4:1-7 (NIV) As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.
Scripture Reading: Ephesians 4:1-7 Benediction Reading: ‭‭Psalm‬ ‭67:1-7‬ ‭NIV‬‬

November 1, 2020
Unity in Christ is theologically demanded (or Unity in Christ is here) – Philippians 2:1-7 (NIV) In fact, it could be argued that working to the point of pain and discomfort for the sake of unity in Christ may be theologically demanded by the gospel.  Let’s look at Paul’s famous passage to the Philippians.
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Scripture Reading: Philippians 2:1-7 Benediction Reading: 1 Peter 4:7-11

November 8, 2020
Unity in Christ is worth fighting for (Unity in Christ is coming) – Galatians 3:15-4:7 (3:24-29 quoted, NIV) So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Scripture Reading: Galatians 3:15 – 4:7 Benediction Reading: Hebrews 12:1,2

November 15, 2020
Unity in Christ reflects the unity in the Godhead – John 17 Great Command – Father Great Commission – Son Great Community – Spirit
Scripture Reading: ??  Benediction Reading: ??

POSSIBLE PROBLEM: This doesn’t yet really adequately get to one important point I want to talk about. I believe the Bible supports a unity that demands diversity (of peoples, gifting, backgrounds, economic and social histories, etc), so a unity without uniformity. I’m not sure which of these sermons would intersect well with that. I think Galatians was were I was going to emphasize it. Are Romans 12 and 1 Cor 12 brought into the Galatians passage? What about James 2? What about men and women? What about race today?

Resolution for “All People” question in the credentialing

When pastors and missionaries are working through their credentialing processes for licensure and ordination they are asked many required questions. Several of these questions address important issues that impact our current situations in ministry.  Theological issues surrounding racism, cultural distinctions, and critical nature of reaching people of diverse ethnic backgrounds is not currently addressed at all. 
Will you join me in asking the EFCA districts and national office to create and use specific questions for these Credentialing Councils  engaging theological reflection on ethnic distinctions, racial constructs, and practices surrounding multicultural ministry for Pastors and Missionaries?

BACKGROUND:

After the theology conference in 2018 it seems important for the EFCA movement to consider what tangible things we can and should do to make progress in seeing our churches better reflect the gospel mandate in the area of ethnic and cultural diversity.  One small, but important step forward would be to require questions to be asked during the licensure process for EFCA pastors and missionaries that theologically engage them directly with the implications of the 8th Statement in our statement of faith as it applies to their ministry context.  If the districts are going to be strongly encouraged to include additional questions on this topic, they will need to hear from pastors and churches that it is important to us. Therefore, in February of 2018, I crafted a draft resolution for the signature of pastors and church leaders. Now, in June of 2019, I only believe more strongly that this is an important, even if small step. 

RESOLUTION CONCERNING STATEMENT 8 OF THE EFCA STATEMENT OF FAITH AND CREDENTIALING COUNCILS:

  1. Whereas the Evangelical Free Church of America Theology Conference focused on justice and reconciliation issues in 2018 and clearly expounded the need for church leaders to clearly understand the central role of reconciliation in the gospel’s immediate implication for believers, specifically the uniting of people across culture and status boundaries in the body of Christ.
  2. Whereas the Gospel according to Luke records Jesus’ first message delivered in his home Nazareth which focused on God‘s grace reaching across cultural and ethnic boundaries (Luke 4:14-30).
  3. Whereas John’s Gospel begins by declaring that Jesus made the world, brings light into the world, and takes the sin of the world, and includes Jesus’ prayer that believers have unity and love that reflects the unity and love found in the Trinity which followers of Christ are brought into. (John 1 & 17)
  4. Whereas Matthew’s gospel lists Jesus’ genealogy explicitly showing the cross cultural and diverse ethnic ancestry of Jesus and closes with Jesus’ great commission to making disciples of all nations. (Matthew 1 & 28)
  5. Where as it seems clear the apostles saw that the good news about Jesus and the kingdom of heaven necessarily includes the reconciliation of peoples of all tribes and nations to each other as they are reconciled to God. (Col 3:7-14, Gal 3:26-29, Eph 2:11-22, 1 Peter 2:10, Rev 5:9-10) 
  6. Whereas the Evangelical movement in the United States has been overly concerned with personal justification at the expense of corporate reconciliation.
  7. Whereas the Evangelical Free Church of America has largely neglected its responsibility to engage, evangelize, disciple, involve, promote in ministry, and empower in leadership those beyond its own cultural heritage, specifically those considered not “white”.

We, undersigned pastors in Evangelical Free Churches from across America, believe that our credentialing process requires specific questions about the reconciliation of all people groups as an important part of the gospel of Jesus Christ and critical to our role in leading individual churches within the body of Christ in faithful obedience to his gospel.

Therefore, we propose the following questions, or questions more clearly articulated, be added to the list of questions asked of all those pastors and missionaries seeking licensure for ministry.

  • How do you understand the gospel’s impact on social relationships beyond one’s own culture and what implications does that have for the ministry of your church? 
  • Is the homogeneous unit principle congruent with Biblical church ministry? Why or why not?
    • How do you address tensions among those who only want to minister to those who are “like them”?
  • How do you proactively model reconciliation in your church / ministry?

Glass Jar Half Empty

I recall in my youth, long, late-night discussions with friends about the brain the in jar quandary. (Yes, it was a thrilling group of friends.) One friend was always reading philosophy, and if I recall the idea closely enough, it could be stated: How do we know that our five senses are legitimate reflections of actual things rather than some stimuli that make us believe the world around us is actually there and real? How do we know that we are not just a brain in a jar with connections false stimulation? I guess one could say this is a philosophic Turing test. (I understand the updated version of this philosophic quandary involves a grand computer simulation.) It wasn’t too long after these conversations that the Matrix trilogy explored this idea at some length (and possibly depth).

Recently a friend introduced me to an article from The Atlantic : https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/how-generate-infinite-fake-humans/606943/ an article by Ian Bogost (or someone or something claiming to be). I really enjoyed reading the article even as the content concerned me deeply.

A great article quote: “The internet has made it worse, by evaporating physical bodies into digital phantoms and then pressing them into ever-denser slums of infinite scrolling. The sheer profusion of actors online has foreclosed their need to be real at all: the armies of bots and the Russian sockpuppets, the corporate tweeps and the AI deepfakes. One can just as easily get into a heated dispute with a bot account generating random replies, or with an automated customer-service agent matching inputs to outputs, as with a human foe who is frantically tapping words into a glass rectangle. Humankind has remedied the shock of modern life with pleasures from its reverberations.” 

Reading this article it struck me: we have created the vat, the jar, for our own brain. Our Matrix saga begins as we realize our fears by creating them. Our “social” accounts isolate and our “likes” and “views” fuel our loneliness. Our fearsome demons take shape as idols in our hands. We worship with our time even as we curse the mechanism we are tweeting, posting, and blogging on. The prophet Isaiah was right, we should know this is artificial, it was fashioned to be just that. It is only designed to be realistic enough that we can control it from our jar and still imagine ourselves as its central and only ultimate agent. But “is this thing in my right hand a lie?”

Ok, now I don’t think it’s the end of everything real or good in the world, but I do think the most important words I share are spoken in person and the most important likes, shares, and snaps are actually hugs, handshakes, and cheers. I guess if anything this article reminds me that I have to place limits on my virtuality and avoid a neo-Gnostic praxis. To live embodied, present, and awake to my physical surroundings and proximate persons is increasingly a discipline to be developed and maintained.

Dead Sea Scroll Documentary

I watched an interesting, short documentary about the Dead Sea Scrolls recently and thought I’d share it.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/dead-sea-scroll-detectives/

Or search for “PBS Nova Dead Sea scrolls”.

Interesting to hear an update on the Dead Sea Scrolls and some of the drama that surrounds antiquities. I’ve read articles about these kinds of things but the update includes the Bible Museum and details about the trouble they had recently. I think they dealt fairly with the issue.

Don’t Go To Church

Don’t Go To Church
by Pastor Chris, November 2017

Don’t go to church
Be the church
Stop attending a service

Once or twice a month
Or even thrice or more
Stop attending and rather gather

Collect with the “also called”
Join in their songs and chants and prayers
Offer up your own

Bring with you Christ
And as the church reforms
Every Sunday, a great mystery you will see

God with us: proclaimed, professed, possessed.
A family of “also called” sinners becomes a radiant bride.
So don’t settle to go to church
Watching, attending, observing, critiquing

Rather be, remain, and reform weekly or more
The mysterious gathering of little Christ-ones
That reconstitute his collected body, his rebuilt temple, his restored family
The group of misfit rebels, sinners, and malcontents
That the Father called, the Son redeemed, the Holy Spirit sealed.

Come rejoice and worship. Come greet and embrace. Come expect divine engagement because the “also called” ones have reconvened.

Don’t settle for going to church this Sunday.
Jesus didn’t die for that.

But he did die for those he “also called” friends.
Even me. Even you.

I’ll see you when we gather next
together his body, his bride, his people.

Extended quote by Chesterton: Chapter 5, Orthodoxy

In Sunday’s sermon, I used a few quotes form GK Chesterton.  I’ve put them in a little extended context here.  Also the link below will take you to the entire chapter.  Again, I came across this chapter while listening to the audiobook.
Extended quote by Chesterton: Chapter 5, Orthodoxy
It will be said that a rational person accepts the world as mixed of good and evil with a decent satisfaction and a decent endurance. But this is exactly the attitude which I maintain to be defective. It is, I know, very common in this age; it was perfectly put in those quiet lines of Matthew Arnold which are more piercingly blasphemous than the shrieks of Schopenhauer —
“Enough we live: — and if a life, With large results so little rife, Though bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth.”
I know this feeling fills our epoch, and I think it freezes our epoch. For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening.
No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it?
….
But the important matter was this, that it entirely reversed the reason for optimism. And the instant the reversal was made it felt like the abrupt ease when a bone is put back in the socket. I had often called myself an optimist, to avoid the too evident blasphemy of pessimism. But all the optimism of the age had been false and disheartening for this reason, that it had always been trying to prove that we fit in to the world. The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit in to the world. I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its meat from God. But now I really was happy, for I had learnt that man is a monstrosity. I had been right in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse and better than all things. The optimist’s pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything in the light of the supernatural. The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. The knowledge found out and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark house of infancy. I knew now why grass had always seemed to me as queer as the green beard of a giant, and why I could feel homesick at home.

WORD OF TRUTH mini-study

While preaching in James, I came across a phrase I studied then and came across again preparing for a sermon from 2 Timothy chapter 2:  “The Word Of Truth”.  What does Paul mean when he uses the phrase?  What did James think?  May first short studies seem to indication they were referring to the Gospel and perhaps at times, the object of the Gospel, Jesus.   Here are the texts I started with:

James 1
16 Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. 17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18 He chose to give us birth through the [in or by the] word of truth (λόγῳ ἀληθείας), that we might be a kind of first-fruits of all he created.
2 Tim 2
Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen. 15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. 16 Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly.
2 Cor 6:7
4 Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5 in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6 in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7 in truthful speech [in the word of truth] and in the power of God (ἐν λόγῳ ἀληθείας, ἐν δυνάμει Θεοῦ); with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 8 through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9 known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10 sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
Eph 1:13
13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message [word] of truth, the gospel of your salvation (τὸν  λόγον τῆς ἀληθείας, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τῆς σωτηρίας ὑμῶν). When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,
Col 1:5
3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people— 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message [word of truth, namely, the gospel] of the gospel (ἐν τῷ λόγῳ τῆς ἀληθείας τοῦ εὐαγγελίου*)6 that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.
*Genitive of Apposition: Provides clarification for ambiguous or metaphoric main noun.