Leaders today

In every generation there has been a popular movement to take a single characteristic of Christ and wrongly characterize him. The Gnostic church had this problem by making everything immaterial, the Roman Catholic church has this problem by making God overly concerned with service. Today we are by far to concerned with leadership. Is this true that Christ was a leader? Yes, of course that is true, the shepherding quality of Christ makes this extremely evident but that is not all that he does. Christ is not primarily focused on what makes a good leader; Christ doesn't demand us to go make leaders in the church. Instead we make disciples; does this require leadership? Yes but our role is not to focus on leadership.

Often times when we make this our focus we are taking qualities of leadership from secular leadership models and applying them to Jesus, the same way that most "Christian counselors" today use Freudian psychology with a bunch of proof texts tagged on. The church in America continues to measure our internal success by leadership seminars and numbers in the pews. This is not the success of Christ, at least not the way we ought to concern ourselves with spiritual maturity as taught by the Scriptures.  Christ the Savior died on a cross and rose again from the grave, that is success. What isn't successful is people who use Christian language, make worship erotic and can not articulate why the trinity is important in an "applicable" way.

The leadership movement is having a poor effect on the church for multiple reasons. The biggest problem I see, aside from wrongly characterizing Christ, is that everyone is a leader. That is not true, if everyone becomes a leader in the church, there is no longer any reason for the church to assume authority over anyone. We call people "leaders" because of an inventory they took in their undergraduate studies and placed them in roles as leaders, but not only do they lack the intrinsic desire but they are not capable. This will drown out the leaders already in the church, hurt and burn them and force them out because someone else is using gifts they don't have to fulfill a leadership role they don't belong in.

Was Jesus a leader? Yes, He was a leader but He was also a Servant and a Judge. The church needs to stop focusing so much on a single characteristic of God; especially this way. God is not sitting on a throne with a clip board and whistle as our spiritual coach, He isn't walking around carrying a brief case with numbers of who is and is not in the church, and He definitely is not raising up a church of elite leaders to just "live life together." He is calling us to make disciples despite of our leadership abilities, this is kingdom work, not being extreme or radical in your Christian walk.

"hip theology" 2.0

Rob Bell is back on the theological circuit with a new book. Just as warm and compassionate as before in "love wins". He begins this new video saying,  "I think there are a lot of people in our culture who can't do the God sort of belief system or the idea, so there is a very very very popular movement that essentially says this is all there is." The problem with any type of theology that caters to a specific audience is, it ends up looking and sounding likes it audience. That kind of chameleon Christianity is exactly what Rob Bell is talking about in his new book. It is an attempt to get people back into the church with soft, comfortable, therapeutic language and tone. His idea of overly compassionate theology is explicit when he explains that Atheism is not good enough explanation for life's questions, because of experience. "These seemingly supernatural occurrences have no other explanation except there is a loving God who gave them to you" seems to be the main idea. True God does give us experiences in life in order to grow to know him and deepen our affection for him. Although that is true this is not the center for our understanding of God.

If the new book entitled "What we talk about, when we talk about God" is as creative and organic as it sounds the orthodox community ought to be concerned about this book. That being said I am no prophet so I won't make predictions on the book but I will say this promotional video raises similar concern that the love wins promo did. Talking about God in new and fresh ways are fine, but when they re-define your theology in a way that makes appeals to people who are not religious, it will probably have a tough time fitting into the orthodoxy. Rob Bell is not tackling doctrines like sex or hell anymore that evangelicals even range on this book is a spear head at our understanding of God, which means we have a lot to worry about.

What concerns me the most is how he defines God at the end of the video. He makes the claim that God is not pulling us back to primitive living but instead always pulling us forward. This is Niebuhr and Bultmann for public consumption. It is a progressive and modern theological thrust; this makes works like Christianity and Liberalism a key text for Christians today. J Gresham Machen, Cornelius Van Til and Carl Henry were all men who confronted the liberal movement of the 20th century head on, we need to pay attention to these men and respond to men like Rob Bell in a similar fashion. Pay attention to what will happen with this book which comes out on March 12th 2013.

What follows is a stream-of-consciousness rambling. It's a little off the beaten path and uncommon for what one will typically find here. But what is this if not a place to think and write and come away unjudged (though admittedly, never truly unscathed)? 

While reading Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen a thought crept into my head. Does the loss of biblical centricism in the church inevitably lead to loss of authority in the culture at large? Does the church play that big a role in the life of the world? My gut says "no". But God is bigger than that. And his plans come about in the manner of his choosing. So couldn't it follow that his church is the catalyst for the culture, instead of the other way around, where culture dictates what occurs inside the walls of the church? I know that some view the church's newfound "tolerance" for sins of every kind novel, a new surprise to those in the evangelical world. But Machen knew it well, and he wasn't surprised by it. Once you allow criticism to creep in eat away at God's authority like maggots to road kill you lose everything. And it inevitably leads here. To where we are. Right now. 

I know that some may object to my employing what is known colloquially as the "slippery slope" argument, but I do not care. It's a valid argument. Once you invite doubt to set in about the inerrancy of Scripture you see no issue with women's ordination. Then you see no real need for a historical Adam. Once that's taken care of you really have no ground to stand on against homosexuality so they're now allowed full acceptance into membership and ordination. After that it makes perfect sense to simply throw out the bits of the Bible you still hold to be true altogether. Getting back to my point, how the church and culture relate to one another has been a topic of discussion since the first century. I'm not forming a thesis, merely asking a question. Have we in the church mixed up the formula? Have we inverted the figures? And can we flip them back, relate the culture to the church instead of the way it's been for the past two thousands years, before we lose authority altogether?

Speaking of running always in pursuit of something new... western thinkers seem to be all a tizzy over the possibility that the Roman Catholic Church will undergo some sort of Postmodern transformation.  The Cardinals will enter the Vatican as if it were a chrysalis.  The new Pope, preferably young and non-western, will turn the stodgy and slow moving religion of the Middle Ages into a beautiful, free, colorful butterfly.  This modern concern for catching tradition up with present trends has to it a glint of nobility.  Real problems and concerns demand that people react rather than predict.  Sometimes using traditions people can prejudge a crisis making them slow to meet the moment's demands.  In the modern western mind, however, individuals and institutions must flex with change because it serves as the essence of reality.  Traditions, more than the Roman Catholic Church, have become the outmoded DNA system; people should abandon it for a more freeing physiology which allows for unhindered, erratic flight.  Ideas that do not change, such as religious dogma and sacramental institutions, serve only to contain individual freedom.  The Roman Catholic leadership will have to explain why, even though it may choose someone non-European, it remains anchored to timeless traditions.  In fact, in the Postmodern world, all Christians have to make this argument without sounding like some kind of antiquated larvae.  We must turn the dialogue: tradition gives meaning to human lives which often become untethered from their real identities by the dizzying changes of daily life.  I wish the Cardinals luck.

Always on the Search for Something New

Acts 17:21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.

While in Athens Paul preached to the Athenian Jews in the synagogue.  Verses 17 and 18 describe his conversations with "devout persons" in the synagogue and "some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers."  They wonder what "this babbler" Paul, wishes to say.  He wished to preach the gospel, and that is precisely what he did.  But Luke gives us commentary on the typical behavior of Athenians in verse 21.  We are told they they spent "their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new."  Not complimentary in the least, it gives us a good picture of the culture Paul regularly spoke to.  A twenty-first century Christian is hard-pressed to relate to Paul's ministry of the first.  But this glimpse Luke gives into the minds and attitudes of Paul's hearers shows that not much has changed in 2,000 years.

Modern evangelicalism, with its "5 steps to a better marriage" or "7 guidelines of biblical stewardship" or some of its proponents' incessant need to find "new ways to live the Christian life," shows that the Athenians are alive and well among us, here and now.  Why?  Why do Christians think that we need to rethink everything?  Christ's church has persevered through two-thousand years of war, hatred, persecution, scandals, and endless splits.  And yet it remains.  If she loses her tradition, the church loses her effect, her witness.  And if she is always on the search for something new, she will lose everything she already has.  The importance of tradition is lost in the world of instant coffee and diet pills, and the church has struggled in attempts to relate to that world.  But why must we look for something new?  Why has it become so novel to hold on to the past and use that as a guide for the present and then on into the future?  Let us use the Athenians as a case-study for ineffective ministry. Let us hold on to what we have, and stop the fruitless search for something new.

"Never blush to own your religion; your profession will never disgrace you: take care you never disgrace that. Be like Jesus, very valiant for your God."  - Charles Haddon Spurgeon 

What if the Christian thought of their responsibility in life and service to society the way Charles Spurgeon does in this quote? C.H. Spurgeon makes a very hard claim for the Christian to follow with diligence. The previous charge is one grounded in a kingdom ethic that comes from scripture; one of valor and integrity. A person might react and say, "that is easy enough for him to say, he wasn't dealing with the same amount of opposition we have today in America, things have gotten worse." That type of thinking has prevented us from paying closer attention to church fathers and thus crippling our understanding of Christianity. I would submit that Charles Spurgeon deserves more attention than most, due to the fact that the church in his day had a similar status to our churches today. Like Spurgeon we must know the word, love the word and proclaim the word in love for the culture surrounding us. If the church in America will continue to submit its theological confession to the sensibilities of the culture, than it will end up much like the Church in Europe, dead and numb to the proclamation of the Gospel. 

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Romans 12:2 

Why verbalcatalyst?  A question better than its answer - it was available and given the absolute flood of digital opinions, beggars cannot be choosers.  Yet, even in the necessity there lies some invention.  Our tweeting, texting, and posting culture churns out words in such incredible volumes that words themselves are beginning to lose power and meaning.  It seems easy to give in to the trend and begin to imagine that words are poor communicators - action, action, we need action!  Yet Christ is the living word, the power of God unto salvation.  So words can transform, organize, and change people, environments, and contexts.  We must believe, despite the effects of verbal inflation in a gratuitously gregarious culture, that we can help change the world through words.  So, verbalcatalyst.