Category: Christ & Culture (Page 40 of 45)

Strangers In The World

May 22, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

“To God’s elect, strangers in the world…”

The apostle Peter addresses his letter to God’s Church, calling them “strangers” (KJV), “pilgrims” (NKJV), “those who reside as aliens” (NASB), “strangers in the world” (NIV). This first line reminds all Christian believers — those scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia as well as those scattered throughout Texas, Oklahoma, California, Montana, and Kentucky — that we are an alternative society. We are a counter culture. The Christian community is called to show a desperate world how to think and speak and act and behave differently.

Holy Scripture and the life of our Christ and his apostles always calls us to change the world; never to conform, instead to convert. And the only way it works is for us to be different.

Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic, was once asked why the revolution there against the communists was successfully non-violent. He answered, “We had our parallel society. And in that parallel society we wrote our plays and sang our songs and read our poems until we knew the truth so well that we could go out to the streets of Prague and say, ‘We don’t believe your lies anymore’ — and communism had to fall.”

God’s Church must be a similar kind of parallel society. And we best form that society when we assemble together to worship. We speak our language together, we read our stories of God and his work with his people together, we sing the hymns of faith together, we pour out our prayers together until we know the truth so well that we can go out into the world around us, denounce the lies that threaten to force us to conform, and invite the world to share the truth with us. We are shaped by a Biblical narrative that tells a much different story from the one in our surrounding culture.

Marva Dawn in A Royal Waste of Time: “Rather than becoming enculturated and entrapped by the world’s values of materialistic and experiential consumerism, of narcissistic self-importance and personal taste, of solitary superficiality, and of ephemeral satisfaction, members of Christ’s Body choose his simple life of sharing, his willingness to suffer for the sake of others, his communal vulnerability, and his eternal purposes.”

Sociologists know that any alternative way of life that is substantially different from the larger society around it needs its own language, customs, habits, rituals, institutions, procedures, and practices if it’s going to remain alternative. These things are paramount to upholding and nurturing a clear vision of how we are different and why it matters.

Are we as Christians committed to the alternative way of life described in the Scriptures and incarnated in the Christ? It’s the only way to communicate to the world what they’re missing. If we’re too much like the surrounding culture, we have nothing, no alternative, to offer.

“Dear friends, I urge you as aliens and strangers in the world…live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God.” ~1 Peter 2:11-12

Peace,

Allan

Bigger Than We Think

May 14, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

It’s bigger than we think it is. It’s good to be reminded.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be a part of a church family that embraces the vision and the mission of our God to seek and save the lost. Missions giving, missionary support, local community outreach, and benevolence all play central roles in what’s planned and what’s done here at Legacy.

I wish everybody could come up here just once before the week’s over and spend just half an hour in the Church Planting Movements Conference. Missions Resource Network is hosting the event here at Legacy. It started yesterday and it continues through Saturday. Between 80 and 90 church planters from every single continent on this planet are meeting upstairs right now praying, planning, networking, teaching, and learning how to better evangelize the lost of this world.

You should see our upstairs youth center! An inspiring blend of different colors, cultures, languages, ages, backgrounds, worldviews, political systems, economic situations, and talents. All together in one room, in one place, with one common goal to spread the good news of salvation for the one world in the one Lord and Savior, the crucified and resurrected Christ!

I’ve had a chance up there to visit with George Hall, a friend of mine who’s planting churches all over Guatemala, dozens of them in the past ten years. Yesterday I caught up with Brian Robinson and his wife, Kristen, old friends from Oklahoma Christian. They’ve just sold their house in Tyler and are taking their family of six to Rwanda for a 14-year missionary commitment. We helped them here in the office yesterday with faxing and notarizing some of the paperwork on their house. Every person has an amazing story. Every family up there has a godly vision, an unquenchable fire to seek and save the lost.

Mark Hooper tells me the potential exists for several thousand churches to be planted all over the world in the next 20 years due to the efforts upstairs here this week! Praise God!

What a jarring reminder, what a much-needed wake-up call, that this eternal Kingdom of which we claim to be citizens has no national borders. The Kingdom we belong to knows no political boundaries, no cultural walls, no language barriers. Christ died for all. Period. And his love compels us to take that great news of salvation to every man, woman, and child on the globe.

It’s bigger than we think it is. It’s good to be reminded.

When I was at Austin Grad, part of the requirements in Allan McNicol’s worship class was to visit three churches, three different worship assemblies, from different faith streams, and provide an analysis. I’ll never forget the Assembly of God service we attended in a modest area of North Austin. I can tell you everything about that morning. In detail. Come on, I wrote a six-page paper on it. But the thing that stuck out the most to me that day and still inspires me to this moment were the flags hanging from the ceiling in their worship center.

There was an American flag. And a Canadian flag. And a Mexican flag. There was a flag representing Brazil. Puerto Rico flags and Venezuela flags and Japanese flags. Flags representing countries in Africa and Asia. Not just flags from countries in which they had supported missionaries. Not just flags from countries in which there were Assembly of God congregations. They were proudly displaying flags from every nation on the planet. Yes, Iranian flags, Iraqui flags, Afghanistan flags. Over 300 different flags. Every flag from every country. An unmistakeable reminder, a multi-colored impossible-to-miss message that we are one in Christ, that his Kingdom knows no national borders.

I’d love to hang 300 flags from the ceiling at Legacy.

Because when God adds us to his Kingdom, we join a Kingdom that has outposts in Iraq and China and Russia. They belong to us and we belong to them. Disciples of the King. Past, present, and future. Every nation, every tribe, every language, every people. Spanning the four corners of the globe.

It’s bigger than we think it is. It’s good to be reminded.

Peace,

Allan

Please, Don't Buy This Bible

May 13, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

It was only a matter of time. We should have seen it coming.

God have mercy on us.

Thomas Nelson publishing has put out what they’re calling The American Patriot’s Bible, a NKJV version of God’s Holy Scriptures “targeting the spiritual needs of those who love our country.” In their own promotional materials they tout this new Bible as using the history of the United States to connect the people and events of Scripture to our own lives. “The story of the United States is wonderfully woven” into the Bible by these people. And now they’re selling it, complete with a glossy cover depicting, not the cross of Christ, not the empty tomb, not the historical and traditional symbols of the Christian faith but, the American flag, George Washington, and the Declaration of Independence.

Please, don’t buy this Bible.

To borrow the words of Greg Boyd — and I agree with him with everything I’ve got — this Bible is “idolatrous, dangerous, and profoundly damaging to the Kingdom. I feel compelled to denounce it in the strongest possible way I can.”

The goal of this Bible and its publishers is to tie American patriotism to the Christian faith, to make the two one. To be a Christian is to be patriotic, according to this Bible. To be patriotic is to live the way God calls us to live. The teachings of Christ “results in the purest patriotism.”

This Bible claims that the phrase “One nation under God” in our country’s pledge of allegiance strengthens the spiritual weapons mentioned in 2 Corinthians 10:5 which “forever will be our country’s most powerful resources in peace and war.”

This Bible equates John 3:16’s “God so loved the world that he sent his only Son” with Colin Powell’s quote about sending our soldiers into foreign lands to fight for freedom. Same thing. See how God-like we are? This Bible claims in other notes and charts and quotes in the margin that fighting for liberty has always been at the heart of our religion. It quotes General Douglas MacArthur saying that sacrificing (and, of course, killing others) for country represents “the noblest development of mankind.” The commentators on the pages of this Bible add, “as long as other Americans serve their country courageously and honorably, his words will live on.” Whose words? God or MacArthur? In this Bible, it’s hard to tell. And that’s by design.

John 8:36, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed,” in this Bible, is paired up with a long commentary on the Bill of Rights. In direct opposition to our God’s demand that we actually give up all our rights.

Joseph’s statement in Genesis 45 that God had sent him to Egypt to preserve life is equated in this Patriot’s Bible with our country’s Declaration of Independence. Don’t you see? God sent Joseph. God sent the Declaration of Independence. Same thing. See how blessed we are?

Israel’s demand for a king in 1 Samuel, in this Bible, teaches that Americans have a duty to vote.

??????

Please read Greg Boyd’s review. Click here. It’ll take probably three or four minutes to read. But you need to read this. Please. I’m begging you to read it. He says it much better than I can. This is important. These are teachings that go completely against the whole of Scripture, wrapped up in Scripture’s suit and tie. This is Satan — yes, I’m serious — the wolf sneaking around in sheep’s clothing.

The fact that there’s a market for this kind of Bible is disturbing to me. It’s a sad statement about the state of God’s Church and his people in this land that there would be demand for it. This is the kind of thing that perpetuates the practice in our churches of praying for our American soldiers and their families, but not praying for the Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers and their families. We pray for the success of our soldiers, the completion of our country’s mission, but not theirs. As if God is on the side of the U.S. As if our politics and our economic systems and our wars are the righteous will of God and nobody else’s is. This is the sort of stuff that keeps us thinking that God’s will for the world is salvation in Christ AND democracy AND free enterprise. All three. In that order. We think. These are the blasphemous teachings that keep Christians in this country feeling good about asserting personal rights and personal freedoms, at the expense of others, in direct violation of our Savior’s teachings. This Bible weakens the Kingdom.

Please, don’t buy it.

And may God have mercy on our souls.

Peace,

Allan

A New Sign

March 17, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

Is it unethical — is it wrong — to organize a college basketball pool among the ministers and staff? Wouldn’t that be a lot of fun? Would anybody in the church freak out?

We’re all filling out our brackets as a family tonight at Stanglin Manor. Not for money. Nobody plays for cash. It’s all about pride. This is the fifth or sixth year now the whole family has followed the tournament with picks on the line. And I’ve won every single year. Except last year. Whitney won the contest last year. And she’s been talking smack now ever since Sunday. Revenge is mine, I will repay.

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Do you think the Church still views its God-given mission as presenting and proclaiming an alternative lifestyle? Something better. Something higher. Something radically different. Something you can’t find anywhere else on this planet. Something you can only find inside a community of faith. Something that only belongs to children of God and followers of the Christ. Something real. Ultimately real. Eternal. Otherworldly. Belonging to another reality. The real reality.

Shouldn’t we be proclaiming and living something that can’t be purchased at Wal-Mart or consumed at Chuck-E-Cheese or experienced at a Multiplex Movie Theater? And, if so, doesn’t that mean our means — our methods of this proclamation and living — should also be otherworldly and radically different? Christ-like, not earth-like. The Jesus Way, not the American Way.

From Resident Aliens, by Hauerwas and Willimon:

The most interesting, creative, political solutions we Christians have to offer our troubled society are not new laws, advice to Congress, or increased funding for social programs — although we may find ourselves supporting such national efforts. The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the Church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers.

The Christian faith recognizes that we are violent, fearful, frightened creatures who cannot reason or will our way out of our mortality. So the gospel begins, not with the assertion that we are violent, fearful, frightened creatures, but with the pledge that, if we offer ourselves to a truthful story and the community formed by listening to and enacting that story in the Church, we will be transformed into people more significant than we could ever have been on our own.

As Barth says, “The Church exists to set up in the world a new sign which is radically dissimilar to the world’s own manner and which contradicts it in a way which is full of promise.”

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I’ve added a new link to the blogrole on the right hand side of this page. It’s Made In The Streets, the great work of Charles and Darlene Coulston in Nairobi, Kenya. They’ve been working with abandoned and orphaned and run-away children there for 15 years, reaching out to them with the love and mercy of God in Christ, showing them and living with them this citizen-of-heaven reality that is so radically different from the other, seen and temporary, “reality” all around them. You’ll be blessed by visiting their site.

Peace,

Allan

Called To Die

March 13, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

My great friend Jim Gardner posted this on his blog a few days ago. Its very Bonhoefferesque. It reminds of the call of our Savior to follow him when he’s purposefully walking the path to Jerusalem and his horrible death. Deny yourself. Pick up your cross. Get in line behind me and follow me. It’s from a lecture given by Timothy Dolan, the recently appointed archbishop of New York.

“Maybe the greatest threat to the Church is not heresy, not dissent, not secularism, not even moral relativism, but this sanitized, feel-good, boutique, therapeutic spirituality that makes no demands, calls for no sacrifice, asks for no conversion, entails not battle against sin, but only soothes and affirms.” (“Church News,” Times-Dispatch, Richmond, VA, 2-25-09, A-10)

I wonder sometimes about the call of our Christ and whether or not that call is reflected by the practice in and of our churches. I worry sometimes that we’re not really calling our people to much more than showing up regularly for a spiritually-uplifting worship service, guaranteed to contain all the elements they enjoy in just the right order they expect.

Are we, like Christ and the Apostles, calling our people to grow? To change? To be continually converted? Are we calling our people to sacrifice? To give everything up for the sake of others? For the cross? Are we calling our people to faithfully eradicate sin? In our own lives? In our neighborhoods? To wipe out the sin in our churches?

Are we guilty of allowing a culture to develop in our churches in which, if things don’t go our way, we complain to the proper persons until we’re promised “I’ll look into that” or “Let me take care of that.”? Have we created, or at least fostered, a church culture that insists on our “rights,” within the congregational family and the broader community?

Our Lord calls us to die. To give away our lives for his sake. To be last.

Jesus bends over backward to make very clear he’s calling us OUT of our comfort zones, not to them.

I’m re-reading a great little work on the Lord’s Supper by Markus Barth, Rediscovering the Lord’s Supper. And right in the middle of this book he tackles this difficult call. Barth claims — my paraphrase — the Church of Christ ought to reflect the Christ of the Church.

“…Christ became weak, poor, despised, a scandal, and a foolishness to human reason, experience, and social standards, in order to come to those who are weak, poor, despised, who are considered scandalous or foolish, and who are treated as social outcasts. He came to them to be with them and to redeem them….As foolish, scandalous, and outcast as Christ is in relation to the world, so should Christ’s congregation be within the city.”

What changed? When and how did fitting in and looking good and being seen as successful in the eyes of the community become so important?

Wait. I’m on a new topic. Sorry.

The call to die. That’s the thought. Now, how do we do that as a church? Within our congregations and in our communities, how do we follow our Savior and die?

Peace,

Allan

Christ Is All And Is In All

January 16, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

I enjoyed a fantastic lunch today with Manuel Calderon, our Hispanic minister here at Legacy. We’re planning a bi-lingual worship assembly for next Sunday in an effort to better integrate our Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters into our church family at-large. And it’s facsinating to me that the barriers between us—the Anglos and the Hispanics—have much more to do with culture than with language.

They all speak English!

Granted, some communicate in English better than others. But of the 35-40 members of our “Spanish-speaking” congregation, only one or two speak exclusively Spanish. It’s not the language that divides us as much as it is our different cultures, our different socio-economic situations, our different “classes,” our different colors, our different backgrounds. We are increasingly speaking the same language, yet our Hispanic brothers and sisters remain segregated from the Anglos in our Christian churches.

You know, “segregation” is an ugly, ugly word in the history of this country. We have argued and revolted and debated and fought and bled and died to eradicate segregation in our larger society. And we’re still fighting. Because it’s such an awful word. It’s such a horrible distortion of what it is we claim to stand for.

But ‘segregation” seems to be perfectly OK in our Christian settings. And I don’t think we can be perfectly OK with that.

We have black congregations and white congregations and nobody seems to care. We have white congregations with 30 Hispanics meeting by themselves in a back room and nobody seems to care. For some reason it’s approved as OK. It’s brushed aside as “the way things are” or simply ignored as “the way it’s always been.” It’s excused as “the way they want it.”

Is it the way Christ Jesus wants it?

The early church was scandalous in the ways it welcomed all classes, all cultures, all genders, all languages and dialects into its fellowship. We’ve managed to avoid that scandal by segregating ourselves. The early church had to work through many difficulties, had to learn how to sacrifice and serve and look out for the needs of others as they welcomed all comers. We’ve avoided that hardship and the lessons and the spiritual growth that come with it by keeping to ourselves.

As church leaders, we should never wet our fingers and stick them up in the air to see which way the wind’s blowing. We should attempt to change the wind!

I don’t know about you, but Colossians 3:11 means something to me.

“Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”

Galatians 3:28 sounds like truth to me.

“Their is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

We pray for Christian unity. We long for the day when all our differences are ultimately rendered meaningless. We anticipate that great banquet when all the nations and languages and tribes and peoples are gathered around our Lord’s table. We yearn for the realization of the perfect union we share in Christ Jesus.

I think if we’re praying for something, we ought to be working for it too. I think if we see something as God’s eternal will, we ought to be doing something about it.

We’re trying at Legacy. We’re trying. We’re not perfect. We’re not moving nearly quickly enough. It’s messy. It’s hard. But we’re trying.

Peace,

Allan

Category: Christ & Culture (Page 40 of 45)

Strangers In The World

Bigger Than We Think

Please, Don't Buy This Bible

A New Sign

Called To Die

Christ Is All And Is In All

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