All posts in Church

  • March 9, 2009

    Brueggemann’s 19 Theses

    Walter Brueggemann is an Old Testament scholar who has spent so much time studying the Old Testament prophets that he seems to have turned into one. He scares me. He’s the Steven King of the authors I read. I remember reading The Prophetic Imagination on a flight from India and writing in the margin, “I wish I hadn’t read this…but I have and I am now responsible.” Walter Brueggemann scares because I think he’s right—that our society is far more distorted than we have supposed. But in this time of economic catastrophe, when Bel bows, Nebo stoops and the false gods of Babylon are shown to be incapable of providing the peace and security they promise, we may be open to a critique of our idols that could lead us to the truly radical alternative of hope in the living God. My prophetic declaration concerning 2009 has been that it is a year of falling idols and rising hope. May it come to pass. So without commentary, other than to say I agree with this prophetic perspective, I offer to you my adaptation and modification of Walter Brueggemann’s 19 Theses..

    1. Everybody lives by a script—whether implicit or explicit.

    2. We get scripted through the process of nurture, formation and socialization, and it happens without our knowing it.

    3. The dominant script in our society is one of technological therapeutic military consumerism.

    4. That script enacted through advertising, propaganda and ideology, especially in the liturgies of television, promises to keep us safe and happy.

    5. That script has failed. The script of technological therapeutic military consumerism cannot make us safe or happy.

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    2 Comments / America, Bible, Church, Culture /

  • March 5, 2009

    Credo

    Credo.
    I believe.
    I believe the Bible.
    I believe in Holy Scripture inspired by God.

    By why?
    Why do I believe the Bible?

    I know very few Christians who can adequately answer this question. If they are challenged by a skeptic at work as to exactly why they believe the Bible they find themselves on uncomfortable ground; their hands break out in a sweat as they fumble for a defense. Perhaps they go home, dig out a Josh McDowell book , cram for the “test”, try to memorize a few apologetic facts, and then head back to work the next day ready to explain why they believe the Bible…based on the arguments they read and tried to memorize the night before.

    But the problem with this defense is that it is disingenuous. As true as the apologetic arguments for the veracity of Scripture may be, it is not why they believe the Bible. The truth is, they believed the Bible before they knew a single apologetic argument. I doubt that one in ten thousand Christians believes the Bible because of historical, archeological, textual, literary, philosophical evidence. They believe in the Bible for a completely different reason, though they probably have never consciously understood this reason.

    I believe the Bible because I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and because I believe in the Church.

    Here’s how it works… Read more

    No Comments / Apologetics, Bible, Church /

  • February 26, 2009

    Engaging Orthodoxy


    Last month I was riding on a train from Rome to Assisi. Peri and I were going there to explore the stomping grounds of “an Italian poet from the 13th century” — Saint Francis, the remarkable “friar minor” who brought profound spiritual renewal to his generation by creatively preaching a return to the simplicity of the gospel. As I rode on the train I was reading about the development of the Apostles’ Creed on Wikipedia which I had googled on my iPhone, all the while listening to Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace by the Foo Fighters on my iPod.

    A synchronicity of centuries.

    1st century faith & gospel
    2nd century confession & creed
    13th century poet & prophet
    21st century culture & technology
    On the train from Rome to Assisi

    Engaging Orthodoxy
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    1 Comment / Christianity, Church, Culture /

  • April 14, 2008

    The Jesus Movement


    I keep copies of two historic Time magazines in my study.

    One is the famous 1966 Time asking the question: Is God Dead?

    The other is from 1971 reporting on: The Jesus Revolution

    Following up on my Revival? blog, here are some thoughts on the Jesus Movement.

    Modernity’s 300 year Enlightenment Project ended badly. Not only did it result in the abandonment of Utopian dreams brought on by the Holocaust and Hiroshima, it also inserted Nietzsche’s assertion that God is dead into the postmodern world, at least in the form of a question: Is God dead? In keeping with what Nietzsche was really saying, the question is intuitively understood in the postmodern Western world as — Is Christianity still relevant?

    The Jesus Movement was the answer.

    April 8, 1966: Is God Dead?

    June 21, 1971: The Jesus Revolution

    The Jesus Movement was the first postmodern revival and as such is a kind of prototype for what I’ve taken to calling unrevival.
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    6 Comments / Christianity, Church /

  • April 7, 2008

    Revival?


    I’ve been thinking on my “thinking day.” Thinking about…

    Revival.

    For evangelicals it’s a powerful and evocative word. It can almost cast a spell upon us. It conjures images of great days gone by and elicits the hope that perhaps it could happen again. You know, the second coming of Charles Finney and the ghost of D.L. Moody. If the word revival is spoken in the right way and in the right setting it can cause Christians to get a faraway look in their eyes and a pang in their soul. Especially if we happen to be living in a time when it is generally assumed the world is going to hell in a hand basket.

    (A hand basket? Why a hand basket? Well, that’s what they say.)

    I’ve been fascinated with revival ever since my conversion in 1974. It was during the height of the Jesus Movement and since I already had strong counterculture sympathies I promptly became the school Jesus freak. Overnight I went from Led Zeppelin to Larry Norman, started carrying a bible to school and traded my Erich von Daniken books for the writings of Watchman Nee. Pretty soon I was conducting bible studies almost every night of the week and helping lead a Christian coffeehouse. Then through the personal influence of Keith Green and Leonard Ravenhill I became student of historical revival and a seeker of contemporary revival for my own generation.

    Actually the Jesus Movement was a revival — a new kind of revival. It was not a geographically centered revival but a demographic revival located among the youth counterculture, though few evangelicals were able to recognize it as a revival at the time.
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    No Comments / Christianity, Church /

  • January 27, 2008

    Spring of Hope or Winter of Despair?

    I believe in…
    The holy Christian church.

    -The Apostles’ Creed

    It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.

    -A Tale of Two Cities

    To be in the church you must be in a church.

    To not be in a church is to excommunicate yourself from the church.

    But to be in a church is to become aware of the many warts and blemishes of the church.

    Welcome to reality.
    Read more

    2 Comments / Church /

  • September 28, 2007

    Isms That Need To Become Wasms

    I’ve got my nose to the grindstone.

    Preparing eight messages.

    Next week is our annual Word of Life Pastors and Leaders Conference.

    So here’s a blogette from some the stuff I’m preparing for next week:
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    10 Comments / Church /

  • July 2, 2007

    Lose Your Passion for Dumbness

    I will start this with no definite idea of where it will go. An adventure in the blogesphere. I’m not sure where I’m going, but I invite you to come with me.

    I remember reading in Bob Dylan’s Chronicles how when he first arrived in New York City in 1961 he was staying with a man who had a large library and how he found himself spending most of his spare time devouring volumes on history, philosophy, poetry and literature. Dylan then made some quip to the effect that, “You’ve got to lose your passion for dumbness.”
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    No Comments / Books, Church /
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