The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

AllanStanglin.com

Category: Church (Page 29 of 59)

Recover the Small Groups Dynamic

May 9, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Most baseball experts and historians today are debating the place in baseball lore of Josh Hamilton’s Tuesday night in Baltimore. The Rangers slugger hit four home runs against the O’s last night, drove in eight runs, hit for a total of 18 bases, and mixed in a double for good measure. He went five-for-five with no outs as Texas racked up its 20th win of the year and reclaimed the best record in the major leagues. Sports Illustrated’s Cliff Corcoran has written an excellent article that details Josh’s night and compares it with every other four homerun performance in baseball history. Click here to read Corcoran’s case for Hamilton’s heroics to be classified as the second best hitter’s night ever.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the 16th chapter of Leroy Garrett’s “What Must the Church of Christ Do to Be Saved?” he presses for more imagination, more risk, more innovation, more change in the way we are the Church. He complains, perhaps a bit too harshly, about our “boring, lifeless, gloomy” worship assemblies and, by implication, blames our declining numbers on our lack of joy and excitement. By pointing right at our Sunday assemblies right at the beginning of the chapter, Garrett probably causes the reader to focus on the wrong thing and actually miss his main point. I think Garrett’s main objective is to encourage joyful and exciting shifts in the ways we are church, not in the ways we do worship services. Although, the two paragraphs following his initial indictment certainly speak to all of our church life, not just what we do together on Sunday mornings:

At the heart of our problem is that we are caught in the trappings of our own institutionalism — or churchism might be the word. We have expensive edifices to pay for and to maintain, staffs to support, programs to fund. Our Achilles heel is the System. The System resists change, except occasional cosmetic change. Nothing real or substantial. The System demands conformity, and it is uneasy with thinking people around, especially a thinking preacher or a preacher that says something.

The System must maintain the status quo, and it must preserve itself at all cost. This is why it seeks to keep everyone satisfied by reacting rather than acting. And most significantly, the System is tied to the building. Regular church attendance, along with generous giving, is the essence of “faithfulness.”

This brings me to the one thing above most everything else that we must do to be saved. We must recover — or is it discover? — the great lost secret of primitive Christianity. That secret was the dynamic of joyous, Spirit-filled gatherings in homes.

Garrett is definitely speaking my language when he’s talking small groups.

If our salvation is tied directly to the Holy Spirit working in our lives to transform us more and more into the image of Christ — and it is! — churches should be in the business of teaching this transformation. This imitating Christ and becoming more like Christ should drive everything we do as a church. We should be all about planning the settings and fostering the atmospheres for this transformation to more easily and quickly take place. Where in your church do you and other members become more like Jesus? What program or setting in your church encourages self-sacrifice, considering the needs of others more important than your own, true community and fellowship, compassion and love and service? Which program or setting fosters Christian family where honesty and transparency are the norm and where burdens are shared? Which setting communicates accountability to one another, mutual responsibilities to one another, where we all rejoice and mourn with one another as equal members of the Lord’s Body? Which program more accurately reflects the gospel image of one people around the one table, fellowshiping with one another and with our Lord? It’s our small groups!

This kind of relationship and fellowship doesn’t happen in our ordered Sunday morning worship assemblies where, for the most part, we sit in neat rows and stare at the backs of each other’s heads while focusing our attention on one screen or one speaker. There’s more fellowship happening when you pass a hot dog to a stranger at a baseball game than when you pass the blood of Jesus to your brother in Christ at most Sunday morning gatherings. It doesn’t happen in our Bible classes either, not like it happens in smaller groups in our homes.

I’ll never get to know you — to really know you — if I never share a meal with you or spend time with you in your home. It’s in your home where I read the cartoons on your refrigerator and see the pictures of your children in the hall. You’ll never be completely honest with me and I’ll never be totally transparent with you until we get to know and trust one another. I can pray for you in Bible class when you add your name to the list. But I can’t really bear your burdens for you — with you — until I experience them with you together in our homes.

There’s more freedom to be spontaneous in our living rooms where the order of worship isn’t printed and distributed beforehand and the PowerPoint slides aren’t already in order. There’s more opportunity for Christian hospitality and serving one another where meals are shared and chores are assigned and kids are corralled. There’s more time for true testimony, more allowance for joyful laughter and even making fun of ourselves, and more room for tough questions and even periods of doubt.

These small groups are also ideal for friendship evangelism. Outsiders can often be introduced to spiritual things in the informal atmosphere of a private home rather than in a church setting. The joy and spontaneity of the home gatherings can also transfer to some degree to the public assemblies if only we will be less rigid. When are services are revved up and there is “a sweet spirit that fills this place” we will be more inclined to share it with others. Who wants to invite a friend to a boring service?

I’m a huge believer in regular small groups. I think our small groups do more for actual Christian transformation than our Sunday morning worship assemblies and our Bible classes combined. Yes, small groups are hard. They’re time-consuming. They’re energy-draining. They require a pouring out of oneself for the sake of others. Small groups demand personal sacrifice for the benefit of the whole. They call for commitment; they command sharing; they impose honesty and accountability. Small groups demand that we model compassion, that we forgive, and that we love. Does that sound like a Savior you know?

Peace,

Allan

Discover the Good News

May 8, 2012 / / 0 Comments

We’re exploring chapter by chapter Leroy Garrett’s “What Must the Church of Christ Do to Be Saved?”  In our increasingly post-denominational, post-Christian world, Garrett writes that we must make some significant changes if we are to remain a truly viable tool for God. The fifteenth of those suggestions is to center and focus our preaching and teaching and living on salvation from God in Christ, not on church ordinances and church histories and church rules.

Discover the Good in the Good News

Garrett points to the New Testament sermons of Peter and Paul and observes that they were centered on Christ and him crucified. They were all about God’s grace and his free gift of eternal life in the risen Jesus. New Testament sermons are about God’s great love as it’s revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of his Holy Son. That’s the Gospel! That’s the Good News! Jesus died for the sins of the world to redeem the world back into a righteous relationship with God!

Garrett says it’s wrong to preach sermons about baptism for seven straight nights and then call it a Gospel Meeting. But that’s what we’ve done.

Recent studies by some of our own scholars reveal that there has not been much good news in what we have called “gospel preaching.” In a 1988 article in the Gospel Advocate, F. W. Mattox explains that Church of Christ preachers have left it to “denominational preachers” to preach grace, faith, and the atonement while they “went about straightening out their misunderstandings of the place, action, and order of faith, repentance, and baptism in obtaining church membership.” Mattox notes that while others preached the atonement of Christ but not baptism, we preached baptism but not the atonement of Christ.

Garrett cites a study conducted by Bill Love in which Restoration Movement sermons from the early 1800s through the 1950s were analyzed for content. Compared to the 33 sermons found in the New Testament in which all 33 centered on the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus, our own Church of Christ sermons are embarrassingly weak. Love found the cross and empty tomb mentioned in only 25-percent of the hundreds of sermons he studied.

According to Love, 56% of the sermons during the Stone and Campbell generation contained the Gospel. But that number falls to 23% during the G. C. Brewer and Foy Wallace era. In the first two generations, before the Churches of Christ became a separate group, preachers referred to the cross an average of 52% of the time. Since then, the rate falls to 25%. Love’s conclusion is that “our focus moved from Christ crucified to his church, a subtle but destructive shift. Once our sickness took hold, we grew weaker and weaker, more and more anemic. Without the gospel, we lost the source of our faith.”

Yes, I’m afraid we have been guilty of diligently studying the Scriptures and believing that by them we have eternal life. At some point, sooner not later, we need to start preaching and teaching again that salvation is not found in the Bible, it’s found in the One to whom the Bible points. Forgiveness and reconciliation and eternal life are not found in the church, but in the One the church worships and serves. We’ve been guilty of maintaining a religion when we should have been maintaining a relationship with the Savior of the world.

More to Garrett’s point, he closes this chapter by claiming there are two “gospels” we can preach:

We can tell the world it is lost and must repent to be saved. Or we can tell the world what the Bible says, that just as in Adam all died so in Christ are all made alive, that all people are saved, so one only needs to accept the free gift. We can look at the world and say every one is lost except those the Bible says will be saved, or we can look at the world and say every one is saved except those the Bible says will be lost. Which is good news: You are lost, therefore repent; or You are saved, won’t you accept it?

The Church of Christ has had it backwards and has consequently preached bad news. We have preached that every one is lost, while the Bible teaches that every one is saved. Every one is saved except those who refuse the free gift.

Let’s preach the glorious good news. God has saved you through Christ, taking away all your sins. Won’t you accept it through faith and baptism?

Peace,

Allan

Stand in the Grace of God

May 4, 2012 / / 0 Comments

We’re working through Leroy Garrett’s book “What Must the Church of Christ Do to Be Saved?” We’re losing members and congregations at a steady rate in this country. Some would say we’re losing, or have already lost, a great deal of credibility. As a denomination (just wanted to see if you’re paying attention) there are some changes we need to make if we’re going to remain a viable partner in the Kingdom of God. Garrett’s fourteenth suggestion is a call for all our congregations to not just believe in the grace of God, but act on it. Live it!

Stand in the grace of God.

Every member of the Church of Christ believes in the grace of God. They would all readily acknowledge that we are saved by the grace of God and not by our own works. No one among us has the slightest interest in minimizing the significance of the grace of God. However, we must stand in the grace of God, and not simply believe in it. The Church of Christ has a head knowledge of grace, but at the gut level it does not, generally, know the grace of God. It is like living in a house wired for electricity and not being plugged into the power. This is why we’re not going anywhere, we’re not plugged in.

When we consider what grace does for people, we do not appear to have “seen the grace of God,” to quote Acts 11:23, even though we believe it is around. Grace makes believers more and more like Christ, but we are not known for our Christlikeness. Grace causes them to exult in their blessings, filling them with joy, good humor, and laughter; but we are not known for those qualities. Grace makes people gracious, less critical, more tolerant and more accepting; but is this where we are? Grace is never what one deserves, but is this what we have emphasized? Grace is God’s free gift, unconditionally bestowed, no strings attached; but haven’t we attached strings?

By now you’ve noticed a couple of fairly prominent themes in Garrett’s writings: Christian unity and grace. Our misunderstandings and misapplications of both have certainly stunted our growth as a Christian movement and greatly stifled our salvation impact in God’s world.

We have such a hard time realizing that God’s gift of grace is absolutely free, that it’s completely undeserved and totally unearned. We have traditionally understood the grace of God as his gift that makes up the difference as, or after, we travel the road to eternal life. We do the good works, we pray the right prayers, we worship in the correct manner, we get baptized by the proper method, we set everything up in our churches according to the Scriptural pattern, and God’s grace closes the gap to get us to heaven. We have lived by a “God helps those who help themselves” mentality, which, by the way, goes wholly counter to everything we read in the Bible. Scripture makes it clear that “God helps those who can’t do a crying thing for themselves.” But we don’t accept that. Or, at least, we’re not living like we do.

The proper view of God’s grace will, as Garrett observes, transform us into a more Christ-like people. We will act more like our Father when we finally realize what our Father has done for us. Jesus says we are to love one another as God has loved us. That means loving one another even when everybody around you is at their most unlovable. Our Lord tells us to forgive as God forgave us. That means forgiving everybody of everything. Everybody. Everything. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. And Scripture says we are to accept one another as God in Christ accepted us. That means we accept each other — yes, we accept all other Christians; those within and those outside our Churches of Christ — who don’t have every single thing completely figured out.

Jesus told the parable about the servant who was forgiven by his master of his great debt and then refused to forgive a fellow servant of his tiny debt, abusing that fellow servant and throwing him in jail. And we’ve been guilty of the same thing. We’ve imagined grace as something that covers us in our sins, but not in our Scriptural interpretations and doctrinal understandings. Grace covers us for things we might do out in the world, but it’s not enough to take care of us if we get something wrong in the Church. We’re not totally saved; we’re just barely saved, maybe. And everybody else is in a lot more trouble than we are!

I hold to the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi: the way we worship is the way we believe. If we view our Father as a tight fisted tyrant who’s keeping track of every single misstep, as a God who’s looking to judge and condemn, as a Lord who delights in watching us sweat it out, then that’s how we’re going to behave, too. If we view him that way and worship him that way, looking over our shoulders to make sure we’re doing everything exactly right so we can get to heaven, we’re going to treat other people the way we think God is treating us. That is not Good News. It’s not salvation.

When we “stand” in the grace of God, trusting in his goodness and mercy, then love, joy, and peace will flood our hearts. We will then be a more gracious people, magnanimous, full of life and enthusiasm, eager to praise God for his great mercy. We will take ourselves less seriously and be able to laugh at our foibles. We will not be so uptight, we’ll quit worrying, be less critical of others, more accepting, more forgiving.

Peace,

Allan

Accept That We Are a Denomination

May 3, 2012 / / 3 Comments

As we continue our chapter-by-chapter review of Leroy Garrett’s “What Must the Church of Christ Do to Be Saved?” we’ve reached now a funny little essay about our status as a denomination. It’s not funny “ha-ha;” it’s funny like “I agree with 100-percent of what Garrett is saying but I’m not sure how important it is in the big picture.” Writing about it in this space will help me think through it. Maybe we can do this together.

Garrett claims that, in order for the Churches of Christ to have any kind of a legitimate voice for Christianity in the future, we must:

Come to terms with our status as a denomination.

The main reason for accepting this term for ourselves and even applying it to ourselves, Garrett says, is for sheer honesty. Self-authenticity. Being honest with ourselves, being honest with one another, and with the world. We must be an honest people. Calling all other faith traditions “denominations,” but loudly and indignantly throwing our hands up in outrage and disgust when the term is used of us just isn’t logical.

To illustrate his point, Garrett asks the simple question, “What would we have to have to be a denomination that we don’t already have?”

By definition a denomination is a church with a particular name. The Church of Christ has a particular name. The Church of Christ has its own agencies such as schools, colleges, publishing houses, journals, conventions, missionary programs, and retirement plans. It has its own distinctive clergy, separate from those in other groups. It has its own definable doctrines. It has its own history and traditions that set it apart. It has its own list of churches in yearbooks and directories. The Church of Christ clearly qualifies on each of these points. So, I ask again of our leaders who keep on insisting that we are not a denomination: What would we have to have to be a denomination that we don’t already have?

Of course, this is just one result of our distorted view that we are the only true Christians and the only true Church. Thankfully, not as many of us think or talk that way as used to. But the D-Word is a strange phenomenon among our people. We won’t touch it. It’s taboo. Even the most open-minded and big-picture thinking among us won’t use it when referring to our movement.

Ah, there it is: “Our movement.” See, I do this all the time, too. The true word, the one that communicates to the world, the English word that really defines what we are is “denomination.” But I won’t use it, either. I’ll say and write words like “our movement” and “our faith tradition” and “our tribe” or “our stream of the faith.” But I won’t say “denomination.” Because I know what will happen to me if I do. I’m a gutless chicken.

It would surprise most people in our “tribe” to read this line from Alexander Campbell taken from his writings in the Millennial Harbinger in 1840:

We, as a denomination, are as desirous as ever to unite and cooperate with all Christians on the broad and vital principles of the New and everlasting Covenant.

Our founding fathers recognized early on that, in the strict sense of the term, we are certainly a denomination. To say otherwise is to be less than forthright. It’s dishonest. And people within our church families and those in the world are all equally turned off by dishonesty. It’s a stumbling block to the Good News of salvation from Christ. And we must relax a little on this.

Some would say — and, yes, I’ve heard it more times than I can count — that we cannot be lumped in with all the other denominations. We must be different. Ian Fair once told a group of us at an ACU Summit that if we were so fired up about being so different, why don’t we just bar all the doors to our church buildings and come and go through the windows?

Now, I’m not as concerned with our use or non-use of the D-Word as I am with the attitudes that determine that use or non-use. See the previous reflections on the earlier chapters that speak about our understandings of God’s grace and his will for unity among his children. We don’t have to call ourselves a “denomination” in order to be honest or spiritually mature. What we must do is stop saying with all of our words and language that we’re one thing and everybody else is not. That’s the point. It’s not so much about the word as it is about our hearts.

At the same time, Garrett offers some very helpful guidance on how to see ourselves and even speak of ourselves as a denomination in a way that acknowledges reality but still points to and prays for and works toward our God’s ultimate purpose.

A people can be a denomination as a temporary measure, looking for the time when the ideal will obtain and there will no longer be denominations but only the one Body of Jesus Christ.

A “denomination in protest” is a defensible position. We can even say that we are a denomination because we can’t help being one, and that we don’t believe in denominations as the ideal or the final end for the Church, and that we will work for that unity that will one day cause denominations “to die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large,” to quote another of our founding documents.

A denomination in protest. I can live with that. Can you?

Peace,

Allan

Abandon Our Claim To Exclusive Truth

May 2, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Thanks so much to Jim Sundberg for the fabulous work he did for us at the Great Cities Missions dinner and fundraiser Friday night at the Ballpark in Arlington. The Rangers great showed up with a whole bunch of autographed baseballs and then auctioned them off with great energy and flair. Baseballs signed by perennial All-Stars like Josh Hamilton, Michael Young, and Nelson Cruz each went for between $500 – $750. But the big money item was a ball autographed by both Nolan Ryan and Greg Maddux that brought a whopping $1,600! A night at a Rangers game beats a boring old fundraising banquet any time. But throw in Jim Sundberg auctioning off autographed baseballs and it becomes a spectacular event to never forget. As a kid in Dallas, Sunny was always my all-time favorite Texas Ranger. That spot has now been solidified forever. Thanks, Jim.

~~~~~~~~~~

I hesitated to review Leroy Garrett’s book “What Must the Church of Christ Do to Be Saved?” chapter by chapter in this space for several reasons. Chief among them is the fact that Garrett is a bit of a lightning rod in our faith heritage. His books and articles challenging us, pushing us, chastising us, have traditionally had polarizing effects. And he can come across to some as overly critical, overly cynical, and too harsh. But, ultimately, I believe the issues he raises in this compilation of essays and the conversations they provoke are way too important. It’s critical. We need to have these conversations.

Garrett’s next suggestion for saving the Churches of Christ for vital Kingdom work in the future is another angle on what is by now a familiar refrain:

We can believe we are right without having to believe everyone else is wrong.

Again, this idea that we in the Churches of Christ believe we are the only ones going to heaven dies hard. I understand not everybody was brought up to believe this. I know not every Church of Christ preacher and elder has always made this claim. But it is the way I was raised. In fact, recent conversations in my own extended family have confirmed that this position is still held quite firmly in many of our churches. I’m regularly asked by sincere and well-meaning Church of Christ brothers and sisters, “If we’re no better than the other churches, then why should we even exist?”

The thinking goes that if we surrender our claim to exclusive truth we forfeit our right to exist. If we are right — and we do believe we are — then everyone else must be wrong. If we are true and faithful Christians, then those who are different from us are not.

It is one thing for us to believe in absolute truth, which we all do since we believe in God, but it is something much different for us to presume that we have an absolute understanding of that truth. Truth is absolute; our grasp of truth is relative. One sobering truth speaks to that: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known (1 Corinthians 13:12). So, we can surrender our claim to exclusive truth (only we have all the truth) and still believe in absolute truth (which is a reality that is beyond our perfect understanding).

On the face of it, we are forced to conclude that we must abandon our claim to exclusive truth in order to be an authentic people. We have no right to exist believing that we and we only have the truth. We must admit that we are both fallible and finite, that we, like everyone else, are wrong about some things and ignorant about other things.

And yet we can believe, in common with all Christians, that we have found many precious truths that we live for and would die for.

I’m reminded of those powerful passages in 1 Corinthians 8-10 that speak to our so-called knowledge. These passages outline very clearly the mindset and attitude we are to have as we consider our own understandings of the Gospel as they relate to beliefs and practices:

“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.” (8:1-2)

“We put up with anything rather than hinder the Gospel of Christ.” (9:12)

“I make myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible.” (9:19)

“I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.” (9:22)

“Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.” (10:24)

A claim that we alone know everything there is to know about the will of God and that we alone have everything figured out and that we alone are doing everything right, or at least better and more faithfully than everyone else, goes completely counter to the above passages in 1 Corinthians and, honestly, against the whole of Scripture and the Spirit of Christ.

And, again, I’ll go back to our misunderstanding and misapplication of grace. If we ever actually comprehend that our righteous relationship with God is not a matter of our “rightness” or our worship practices or our baptism or communion theology, but a matter of surrendering to God’s merciful love and grace, we will quickly abandon our exclusive claim to salvation truth. Instead, we will praise God for his boundless mercy. We will then claim only to be a people who are continually seeking the truth as it’s revealed in Jesus. And we’ll eagerly join all those disciples of other traditions and different heritage as equals in seeking and understanding that truth together.

Peace,

Allan

Not the First Century Church

May 1, 2012 / / 1 Comment

In Leroy Garrett’s “What Must the Church of Christ Do to Be Saved?”  the author makes twenty suggestions for our faith heritage if we are to remain a viable voice for the Kingdom in our increasingly post-modern, post-denominational, post-Christian world. The numbers don’t lie. We’re losing our people left and right. And some things need to change. As Churches of Christ, some things we have refused to change over the years are now coming to roost. It can no longer be ignored.

Garrett’s eleventh suggestion is that we shed ourselves of the tremendous and unnecessary burden of trying to become an exact replica of the Church of the New Testament. Not only does Garrett say it could never be accomplished; it should never be tried.

Recognize that we can’t be a first century church.

Garrett writes that a lot of our people have for decades understood the Churches of Christ to be a complete restoration of the New Testament Church in name, in belief and practice, in leadership structure and worship. Frankly, while being raised in and by the Church of Christ I, too, was taught this very idea.

It is a fiction grounded on false assumptions, such as the church of the apostles having a particular name, which it did not, and that it had a uniform organization and clearly-defined “acts” of worship, which it did not.

There is no ground for supposing that God ever intended for his Church in each succeeding century over the past 2,000 years to be a first century church, even if it were possible, which it isn’t. The evidence rather suggests that God calls us to do for our generation what the primitive church did for its generation. Nothing in Scripture indicates that the earliest congregations were intended to be models for all time to come or even in their own time for that matter. The facts of history, culture, and civilization demand that the Church of Christ of the second century would be a second century church and that the church of the sixteenth century would be a sixteenth century church. Each generation of Christians is to serve its own time, drawing upon both Holy Scripture and the experience of the Church (tradition) for its direction.

A lot of this, of course, is predicated upon the ways we view and interpret the Bible. Those who see the Scriptures as a rule book and a list of guidelines and commands to follow in order to be “right” with God will seek those patterns and regulations and strive to be “right.” Those who understand the Scriptures to be the Spirit-inspired accounts of real people being impacted by a real God and the very real ways it’s all worked out in real life will look for something else. In considering church beliefs and practices, structure and worship, those brothers and sisters look for whether those things are in tune with God’s Spirit, whether they genuinely reflect the Gospel, and whether they bring glory to God.

Instead of searching the Bible and asking the question, “Is this what the first church did?” we should be asking, “Is this consistent with the person of Jesus?” The “pattern” for the Church — and this “pattern” will never change — is the person of Christ Jesus, our risen Lord. It’s his image we see in the mirror. It’s his likeness into which we are being transformed by God’s Holy Spirit. It’s his death, burial, and resurrection that should be modeled and proclaimed and upheld in every one of our beliefs and practices. The Good News should be the lens through which we view our church beliefs and practices. Jesus’ sacrificial service should be the spirit with which we enter every elders meeting and committee hearing. Our faith is in a person, not a policy; the Church is built on a relationship, not regulations.

No one congregation in the New Testament therefore can be viewed as our pattern, nor all of them together, but out of their experiences, their strengths and weaknesses, we learn how to be his Church.

Peace,

Allan

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2026 The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑