Blogging toward LCI

On April 12-15 University United Methodist Church will be the host church for the Large Church Initiative of The United Methodist Church. To quote the LCI 2010 website:

LCI 2010 is a national training event offered by the United Methodist Church Large Church Initiative Steering Committee in partnership with the General Board of Discipleship. LCI 2010 will introduce you to leading thinkers, major speakers, cutting-edge systems for making disciples and making decisions that make disciples. You will leave San Antonio with new tools for coaching individual disciples and coordinating institutional decisions. These tools will grow your congregation larger in both size and significance. Your team will also establish new contacts, friendships and peer networks that can assist you for years to come. LCI 2010 will help any congregation, especially those with a weekly worship attendance of 350 and more.

The theme for the 2010 event is Disciple Making & Decision Making in the Large Church. You can visit the website at lci2010.com to learn about all the keynote speakers and workshop. As we get closer to the event, I want to write about some of the things we will be sharing as the staff of University, especially surrounding the Pathway to Discipleship.

In the first breakout session, I will be leading an offering called “Creating and Implementing a Discipleship Core Curriculum.” This is where we will talk about the nitty-gritty of our Pathway to Discipleship and how to implement a similar structure that works in the context of another church. University’s pathway is three-fold. When people come to the church, we invite them to have a Jesus Meeting, learn the Jesus Message, and begin to hear their Mission from Jesus. I won’t go into the whole pathway here but instead invite you to check out the following posts:

How Goes the Pathway?

How Goes the Pathway? Part II

How Goes the Pathway? Part III

I am looking forward to the session. We will be a couple of years into the pathway by then and should be able to share a lot of what we have learned. As we continue to roll toward April, I will be writing some more soon on some of the other breakout sessions.

Peace,

will

Bible History - In Fast Forward

I just finished Karen Armstrong's The Bible, A Biography. I want to start this review with a warning: depending on who you are, you might not like this book. It might even make you angry. Armstrong writes from a historical, academic perspective, not a faith perspective. Some people of faith are uncomfortable having their sacred text examined and deconstructed through the lens of critical history. If this is true for you, there are many other great books about the Bible written from a faith perspective that you might enjoy.

With that said, this is a great book and I think it adds a lot to our dialogue and understanding as Christians. In my New Testament Survey class, I begin by reminding the class that we all read scripture through a lens. We may think that we read the Bible with pure eyes, unaffected by our own context, bias or understanding, but this is simply not true. The eyes of a middle class 38 year old male Christian living in 2009 in San Antonio, Texas can't possibly see the words of scripture the same way as 25 year old female Jew living in the first century living in Palestine (if she could read and had access to Torah scrolls - which is pretty unlikely.) They can't possibly see the words in the same light as a 60 year old new believer living in Rwanda. I think the brilliance of Armstrong's book is that she gives a history of this lens. The way we read, study, interpret and consider scripture today is based on the history of not just scripture itself but thousands of years of rabbis, priests, reformers, theologians and pastors who have considered scripture in a myriad of different ways and debated, argued and even fought violently about how we should approach the sacred texts.

Armstrong takes us through the development of the Torah and how it became the writings (or scriptures). She sets up the context for the development of the New Testament. She then moves into a number of chapters on how we began to interpret these writings: through midrash (the rabbinical interpretation of the Old Testament); the the lens of the early church fathers who looked through the lens of charity, through the spiritual practice of Lectio Divina. Through all this, we hear how different people used different means to draw meaning out of the texts and how these different means created different meanings.

Armstrong then moves through the reformers who tried to get back to the original texts and make those texts available to all to empower all believers to consider their own interpretations and meanings. The book ends with a look at the forces of modernity and how the way we read the Bible today is affected by modern thinking and by the push back against modern thinking.

The reason I titled this post "Bible History - In Fast Forward" is that the author does indeed fly through the history of the Bible. I have read some critiques that she makes some arguments without really defending them. Although that can be problematic, I believe had she paused to fully articulate each point the book would have never ended. She does offer excellent notes in the back should you want to follow the argument deeper.

Again with the warning: even if you are open to this type of scholarship, Armstrong might step on the toes of your belief at times. I believe that is okay. You don't have to agree with her or even the scholars she cites. I believe points of disagreement strengthen us. In fact her epilogue speaks directly to that. We could all benefit from a little more listening, even to people we don't agree with.

peace,

will

Christ the King

I sort of miss the rhythm and pattern of the Revised Common Lectionary and the intricacies of the church year. I do believe that the thematic series that define the year on both the north and south campuses are the most effective way to live out the preaching ministry at University. However, I still have tremendous respect and appreciation for the rhythm of the liturgical year. At University, we don't completely ignore the liturgical year. Of course, we still observe Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter. But you won't hear much about Christ the King Sunday or Baptism of the Lord Sunday. You won't likely notice when we are in the fifth Sunday of Epiphany or when it is Trinity Sunday. You may notice that our stoles change color with the seasons of the church year: green for ordinary time, white during Easter, blue for Advent - but we don't talk about it much.

I miss these things not out of sentiment but out of my call to teach. These seasons, I believe, were developed as a teaching tool to connect us to the overall story of salvation and redemption. The rhythm helps us to find focus and to continually return to some of the essential parts of the story. I was thinking about this this weekend which was, by the way, Christ the King Sunday.

The following is from my sermon on Christ the King Sunday which I preached at Grace United Methodist Church in Corpus Christi in December of 2007:

The Christian calendar is a little different than the secular calendar.As the world begins seriously winding down the year we, as Christians are starting a new one. This week marks the final week on the Christian calendar. We start a new “liturgical” year next Sunday as the first Sunday of Advent. As Christians, there are certain ways we set ourselves apart from the world and our understanding of time is one of those. As the world is still counting down to the end of the year, we will already be beginning a new one. But like the rest of the world, as we come to the end of the year, it is good to reflect on the year that has passed. That is sort of what Christ the King Sunday is all about.

Over the years, I have learned to love Christ the King Sunday. Here is why: It has become, for me, a Sunday of reflection about the Christian year that is ending. Next week is the first Sunday of Advent. In Advent, we prepare ourselves for the coming of God into our world in Jesus Christ.

While television and retail outlets are telling us it is time to sing “Joy to the World.” While we will still be singing “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” and “O Come O Come Emmanuel.” Advent is the time when we prepare our heart and minds, our churches and our homes for the arrival of the new born King.

Before we enter into a time of looking forward, as we end this one year and prepare to enter another one, have we yet figured out who this king is? During another Christian year we will celebrate the birth and sing,

Hark the herald angels sing, “glory to the new born King”

But what does that mean? We will see Jesus praised by the wise men and treated like royalty,

Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain. Gold I bring to crown Him again, King forever, ceasing never, over us all to reign.

But why?

We will stop thinking in kingly terms when we hear of him calling his disciples and teaching and healing. He will look more like the leader of a rag-tag revolution as we are led up to his confrontation with authority and his arrest and crucifixion. Then the kingly image will seem more appropriate as he is raised from the dead. Royal yes, but king implies a kingdom to rule over. His resurrection will cause us to look back at what he said and did. His ascension will remind us of that he reigns with the Father and Holy Spirit now and always. And then we will end up right back here, at the end of the year, ready again to prepare our hearts for the promised coming and will we yet know what kind of king we are expecting?

If you want to think more about that last question and consider the Kingship of Jesus as you prepare for Advent, that complete sermon and another sermon on the same topic are available in my sermon archive here:

Christ the King Sermons - Pastor Will's Sermons

Blessings of Grace and Peace,

will

Anticipation

I am not very private about it but, in case you don't know, our son Joshua came to us as a foster child about three years ago. We adopted him over a year later. Foster parenting and adoption are strange and wondrous things and I would never give up the experience. One of the strangest things for me about foster parenting and adoption is how radically different the experience is from that of parents who go through pregnancy and childbirth. There is a lot of pregnancy and childbirth that I can't speak to because I have never been through it even as an observing husband. But, I do know this: expectant parents have an anticipation calendar. I have walked alongside enough friends, family and coworkers to see a glimpse of this. The parents see it coming and life begins to change as the date gets closer. (Women who have given birth will, of course, say that this is a bit of an understatement.) I have watched life begin to change with each month as the moment gets closer and closer.

Alisha and I had a different experience. Training, home-study, interview, paperwork, sign-here, "we will call you." "Are you free Friday? We have a ten month old boy." I remember saying at a staff meeting that I was going home early because we were getting a child tomorrow. It is all very abrupt.

So I guess in normal terms, we are feeling a little pregnant. We have re-certified as foster parents and we are just waiting. We don't know when or exactly what we might expect. I just have to keep my phone in case we suddenly have a baby.

I would say, "I will let you know" but I might not mean it. Foster care comes with its appropriate amount of privacy. So, the web is not a place I tend to share much about who will live with us. But if you pay attention, you will figure it out.

peace,

will

Focus Focus Focus

I recently finished Larry Osborne's Sticky Church. There are plenty of reviews out there so I am not going to give it a full treatment here. I am still wrestling with the book because it has some very specific recommendations for ministry that lead in a different direction from the vision we are currently following. However, the book is great and full of wisdom. While it may not fall in line with our current process for making disciples and taking disciples deeper, it is still a good process. Any church who does not currently have any process or has a process that is not working, should give it a read.

I do want to focus on one section of the book that does relate to some of the struggle that we face here at University. In chapter 12 "Overcoming the Time Crunch," Osborne writes a section on cutting the competition. The plan of ministry that has been effective at Osborne's church, North Coast, is sermon-based small groups. In order to create an environment for those groups to flourish, the church has had to work to eliminate ministries that compete with the core ministry. I can guess that for some readers of the book and, at this moment of this blog, that line of thinking in unnerving. We don't see ministries as being in competition with one another, right? All ministry in the name of Jesus is good ministry, right? Well, yes... but. It is a matter of focus. There is a great sentence in the chapter: "We also know that if given the choice, many people would pick the ministry they enjoyed the most, not the ministry they needed the most." (p. 93)

This line really fits in with our thinking on The Pathway to Discipleship. Under the old model of thinking the idea was to connect new people to anything you could because connected people would stick around. But that doesn't necessarily play in a society where people come to us often with no relationship with Jesus, no understanding of the most fundamental parts of what it means to follow Jesus, no familiarity with the Word of God in scripture, no skills in reading the Bible on their own, no prayer life and no instruction in the practice and discipline of prayer, etc. When that person comes to us, if we consider all ministries to be equal and they are invited to the cafeteria line, why would they not choose the ministry they enjoy the most? If someone likes to sing, why not join the choir? The choir is an amazing ministry of worship. The choir offers praise to God and leads the people in lifting their hearts to God. It is a great place to meet people. However, if new Christians jump right to the choir, where will they connect to the Gospel? Where will they learn to read the Bible? Where will they learn to pray?

My friend Cynthia very helpfully compared it to life in college. Colleges typically require some core courses and then allow for a certain number of electives. They do that for a reason. They know that many students, if given total freedom of choice, would just choose classes that sounded interesting or even fun. The students would likely miss out on some of the necessary fundamentals.

This is why we encourage our new members to jump into The Pathway to Discipleship a number of core courses that offer them the chance to have a Jesus meeting (to understand their own need for a relationship with Christ, the hear the Jesus message (understand the news about Jesus) and listen for their mission from Jesus (consider their own call to be in ministry.)

Whenever I go down this path, I get push back from folks who think this sounds way too authoritarian, as though we know what is best for you and are going to force you to do it. That is overstating it a bit. Although pastors and church leaders must humbly admit, we don't have all the answers, we are charged with leadership. Elders in the United Methodist Church are called from among the laity and ordained to a life of word, service, sacrament and order. We are charged with being spiritual guides to lead and facilitate in the lives of those seeking God. And while we are called to be bold in encouraging people, we are never forcing anyone to anything.

peace,

will

p.s. I always love comments but I have made a change on the way we comment. There are some places where anonymous comments are appropriate, but this blog can be a conversation and conversations require context so I want to know and I want others to know who is writing in response. If you want to comment but not for every one's eyes, just send me an email at will@uchurch.tv

Fearless

Still catching up writing about my vacation reading. I had a chance to read Max Lucado’s latest, Fearless, Imagine Your Life Without Fear. I have always liked Lucado’s writing but I have never considered it earth-shattering. However, I am willing to say that this book is important. Max Lucado has always had a way to make important theological truth accessible to everyone and he has landed on an exceptionally important and timely theological truth.

We are afraid of everything and even worse, we base our decisions and our very lives on this fear. Fear has become a commodity in our society with media and marketing playing to our deepest and darkest fears to get us to do things and buy things that might not otherwise match our values and worldview. And here is the worst part: each breath of fear is a mark of disobedience. The author reminds us that Christ’s most common command was against fear:

His most common command emerges from the “fear not” genre. The Gospels list some 125 Christ-issued imperatives. Of these, 21 urge us to “not be afraid” or “fear not” or “have courage” or “take heart” or “be of good cheer.” The second most common command, to love God and neighbor, appears on only eight occasions. If quantity is any indicator, Jesus takes our fears seriously. The one statement he made more than any other was this: don’t be afraid. (pgs. 10-11)

This is a very relevant book to review on this weblog about discipleship because one of the biggest modern barriers to discipleship is fear. We cannot become what God is calling us to become when our lives are rooted in fear instead of love. If you want to live a life free from the spirit robbing specter of fear, give this one a read.

peace,

will

Surprised By Hope

You might not like this book. I believe N.T. Wright to be one of the most gifted theologians of our time but he tends to make lots of people angry. Wright has found a shady spot between conservative evangelical Christianity and liberal mainline Christianity. It is a spot that tends to drive everyone crazy.

In Surprised By Hope, Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N.T. Wright takes on and amazingly hot topic: heaven and the afterlife. It doesn’t seem like a hot topic but it is. Here is the deal: it is not a hot topic as long as you don’t challenge people’s personal beliefs about it. And challenge personal beliefs, Wright does.

Every week, in Christian churches around the world, the people speak the words to the Apostles Creed,

I believe in the Holy Spirit;

the holy catholic church;

the communion of saints;

the forgiveness of sins;

the resurrection of the body;

and the life everlasting.

But, when you ask people about that “resurrection of the body” thing, you find some muddy answers. For Wright, this is not an odd addition to our belief; it is at the center of Christian hope and belief. Starting with an amazing contextual overview of the belief systems surrounding the time of Jesus, the author call us to consider what we believe about Jesus, his resurrection, ascension and final return and at the same time consider what we believe about our own duty as Christians, our own final destination after death and our own role in the present and coming Kingdom of God.

I am not going to review Wright’s work point by point for a few reasons. First, this book has been out a couple of years so there is plenty to read online in terms of reviews and rebuttals. Second, Wright is infinitely smarter than me, so his work can stand just fine without me meddling in it. Third, you really should just read the book. A fair warning about that: I believe that N.T. Wright writes in a readable, accessible way. However, this is some dense stuff. A lay person may need a theological dictionary to get through some terms like eschatological dualism and parousia. But even thought the text gets dense at times, the key messages are clear and readable.

I really think this may be required reading for Christians who are serious about understanding what they believe, especially in terms of life after death. Even if you set the book down disagreeing with Wright’s premises, it will force you to get a better handle on what you believe, how you live those beliefs out every day and how you share the hope within you with others.

peace,

will