Recently there was a storm of outrage about Governor Brownback being booed at the WSU/KU game. How dare people boo the governor! Why, it's disrespectful and hateful. I've seen more than a few of my conservative friends up in arms about this.
And while I think some of the comments were funny (such as, 'how can he root for these teams when he's just as soon cut off funding for their schools'?), I agree at least in principle with what the frustration...leaders should be respected and prayed for. As a Christian, I should seek to pray for leaders I agree with and leaders I don't.
But I can't help but laugh when, living in the most red of red states, there is this outrage about Governor Brownback when he has been booed. President Obama, and most Democrats, can only hope to get off with booing from most Christians.
Will Christians repent for the hateful and slanderous things that have been said about Obama, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, and the like through most of my lifetime?
Will Christians turn off Fox News when 'fair and balanced' means little more than a token defender of the President while their hosts make endless and unsubstantiated allegations about him and his political allies?
Will Christians stop gleefully listening to hour upon hour of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the like, who are little more than hatchet men who know that their mostly 'Christian' audiences love to hear mocking and salacious attacks on their political enemies?
Living in a red state, I can guarantee that it takes a lot more 'courage' and 'boldness' to speak against the poor policies of Brownback, the Koch brothers, and their political allies than it does to complain about the President and the federal government. Everybody does the latter...almost nobody does the former. Especially at church, when many of my fellow Christians feel that tea partyism is equivalent to Christianity.
So I agree...what happened was distasteful. But until I hear 'Christian' people start to be more proper and righteous with their words (and not behave like 'spoiled brats' as one writer said...conservative Christians live with far more of a delusion of entitlement than anybody I know, but that's for another time), I'll not really take those complaints seriously.
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Saturday, February 21, 2015
The last of the heroes
As a young boy I grew up, like most kids, looking for role models. Coming from a family in which sports was important I gravitated towards athletes. Pete Rose, O.J. Simpson, and Dr. J were three athletes that I thought were the coolest of the cool. Yep, a gambler, murderer, and a legendary philanderer were my heroes, though I didn't know any of their dirty secrets at the time.
But nobody compared to Bruce Jenner, 1976 Olympic decathlon winner. Here was the greatest athlete in the world, a man among men. He was forever on the box of Wheaties, the stud we all aspired to be. He became a reporter, man about town, race car driver. He was so manly that eventually he replaced Erik Estrada on CHIPS. Sure, it didn't last...but even Estrada never was on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
When did it all go wrong? Maybe it was when he appeared on Silver Spoons. Or maybe when he was the star of 'Can't Stop The Music'. But was there ever a point where we could say he was headed towards this bizarre Kardashian/transgender/hit-and-run place he is at now? And what does the seven-year-old within me think of all this?
Heroes are strange things. There's something within us that looks up to certain people, and when those people no longer are what we thought they were (or we realize that they never were what we thought they were to begin with) it affects us. None of these heroes should be blamed for not fulfilling our expectations...but the spotlight can be a very hard thing, not only for the ones under it but the ones watching it.
I suppose I still have heroes, though they are more about genuine character than our imaginations. Heroes in recent years are people I know...a minister friend of mine who died recently after many years of faithful service to the church, or a grandmother who takes her children in when her kids aren't able to raise them well, or a teacher who year after year puts up with the crap of the modern education system because she loves kids. People like this will still fail sometimes, but at least they won't have married a Kardashian.
But nobody compared to Bruce Jenner, 1976 Olympic decathlon winner. Here was the greatest athlete in the world, a man among men. He was forever on the box of Wheaties, the stud we all aspired to be. He became a reporter, man about town, race car driver. He was so manly that eventually he replaced Erik Estrada on CHIPS. Sure, it didn't last...but even Estrada never was on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
When did it all go wrong? Maybe it was when he appeared on Silver Spoons. Or maybe when he was the star of 'Can't Stop The Music'. But was there ever a point where we could say he was headed towards this bizarre Kardashian/transgender/hit-and-run place he is at now? And what does the seven-year-old within me think of all this?
Heroes are strange things. There's something within us that looks up to certain people, and when those people no longer are what we thought they were (or we realize that they never were what we thought they were to begin with) it affects us. None of these heroes should be blamed for not fulfilling our expectations...but the spotlight can be a very hard thing, not only for the ones under it but the ones watching it.
I suppose I still have heroes, though they are more about genuine character than our imaginations. Heroes in recent years are people I know...a minister friend of mine who died recently after many years of faithful service to the church, or a grandmother who takes her children in when her kids aren't able to raise them well, or a teacher who year after year puts up with the crap of the modern education system because she loves kids. People like this will still fail sometimes, but at least they won't have married a Kardashian.
Monday, January 26, 2015
The 10 sermons we preach
There's a preaching urban legend that goes something like this...one reason many old-time preachers only stayed one place for a short length of time is that they only had a years' worth of sermons. When they would get through their year of sermons, they would move on to somewhere else, repeat those sermons, and move on again.
The truth is, most of us only have a handful of sermons. No matter where we begin, we end up in the same places. In Churches of Christ my experience is that the standard-issue list of traditionalist sermons goes something like this.
-1)The importance of sound preaching.
-2)The necessity of baptism by immersion.
-3)The evils of instrumental music.
-4)The evils of denominationalism.
-5)The evils of creeds, since we preach the Bible alone.
-6)Divorce and remarriage.
-7)The pattern of the church organization (a. a plurality of elders; b. the qualification of elders and deacons; c. the evils of parachurch organizations)
-8)The pattern of acceptable worship (singing, communion, giving, praying, preaching)
-9)The Adamic, Mosaic, and Christian dispensations (for expert Jule Miller-filmstrip-approved preachers only)
-10)The sins of worldliness we must avoid (pre-1970s); the proper role of women (post-1970s).
Again, it's not really important where one started from, but these themes seemed to appear in almost every kind of sermon I grew up hearing. Nadab and Abihu? That's a warning about instrumental music! Acts (oh, we loved Acts)? Numerous examples of proper conversion! The Pastoral epistles? Church organization AND words on Sound Preaching! For all of our talk about creeds, these seem to be the Ten Most Important Things.
I used to laugh at the small-mindedness of this list...but as I have now finished 15 years of full-time preaching and almost 20 years of full-time ministry, I'm starting to realize that most of my sermons keep coming back to the same subjects. I might well have close to fifteen hundred sermons in my files (and probably another 800 classes), but put them back to back and there's not that much variety. I would, however, like to think that the things I have focused on are a more Biblical list, things that are genuinely important to matters of Christian faith. So, what's my list, if I am being honest?
-1)Jesus is the only way to salvation.
-2)Grace, not perfect obedience, grants one salvation.
-3)The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
-4)The love, grace and mercy we must show to one another.
-5)The abject sinfulness of humanity, repeated again and again in human history.
-6)The calling out to God (as exemplified in Psalms).
-7)The power of the Holy Spirit for a transformed life.
-8)The call of God to return from sin (as exemplified in the Prophets).
-9)The teachings of Jesus for a full life.
-10)Why the power of the gospel enables Christians to live a holy life.
I'm sure that there are a few other things that I preach, but really most of my sermons end back up in these subjects. I like my list a lot better than the first list, and I think it's more at the core of Scripture...but after all these years I'm finding that I'm not so different than my preaching ancestors.
The truth is, most of us only have a handful of sermons. No matter where we begin, we end up in the same places. In Churches of Christ my experience is that the standard-issue list of traditionalist sermons goes something like this.
-1)The importance of sound preaching.
-2)The necessity of baptism by immersion.
-3)The evils of instrumental music.
-4)The evils of denominationalism.
-5)The evils of creeds, since we preach the Bible alone.
-6)Divorce and remarriage.
-7)The pattern of the church organization (a. a plurality of elders; b. the qualification of elders and deacons; c. the evils of parachurch organizations)
-8)The pattern of acceptable worship (singing, communion, giving, praying, preaching)
-9)The Adamic, Mosaic, and Christian dispensations (for expert Jule Miller-filmstrip-approved preachers only)
-10)The sins of worldliness we must avoid (pre-1970s); the proper role of women (post-1970s).
Again, it's not really important where one started from, but these themes seemed to appear in almost every kind of sermon I grew up hearing. Nadab and Abihu? That's a warning about instrumental music! Acts (oh, we loved Acts)? Numerous examples of proper conversion! The Pastoral epistles? Church organization AND words on Sound Preaching! For all of our talk about creeds, these seem to be the Ten Most Important Things.
I used to laugh at the small-mindedness of this list...but as I have now finished 15 years of full-time preaching and almost 20 years of full-time ministry, I'm starting to realize that most of my sermons keep coming back to the same subjects. I might well have close to fifteen hundred sermons in my files (and probably another 800 classes), but put them back to back and there's not that much variety. I would, however, like to think that the things I have focused on are a more Biblical list, things that are genuinely important to matters of Christian faith. So, what's my list, if I am being honest?
-1)Jesus is the only way to salvation.
-2)Grace, not perfect obedience, grants one salvation.
-3)The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
-4)The love, grace and mercy we must show to one another.
-5)The abject sinfulness of humanity, repeated again and again in human history.
-6)The calling out to God (as exemplified in Psalms).
-7)The power of the Holy Spirit for a transformed life.
-8)The call of God to return from sin (as exemplified in the Prophets).
-9)The teachings of Jesus for a full life.
-10)Why the power of the gospel enables Christians to live a holy life.
I'm sure that there are a few other things that I preach, but really most of my sermons end back up in these subjects. I like my list a lot better than the first list, and I think it's more at the core of Scripture...but after all these years I'm finding that I'm not so different than my preaching ancestors.
Monday, December 29, 2014
Stopping a sermon before it crashes...
Monday mornings for some preachers is a time in which they feel bad about the previous Sunday. For me, though, Monday morning is when I start outlining my sermon for the coming Sunday. If all has gone well in previous weeks, when I've been doing proper Bible study and prayer and reflection about what needs to be said (or, better said, what God is trying to say through me), outlining the sermon that will be formally written on Wednesday is easy. The sermon writes itself.
Today, though, I knew that there was going to be a problem. Even as I had done my preliminary on this sermon, it never really felt right. In doing this for almost 20 years, when I have to go hunting for scriptures to back up my premise, the sermon becomes something that is probably not worth preaching. This was one of those sermons. While I think that the premise was probably good and needs to be said, I had a hard time justifying the sermon. I came to realize while looking over my previous notes that it was more like a rant than a sermon.
Rant sermons are all too common by preachers. We get fired up about something that is happened to us, or something makes us mad, and we want the congregation to know what's on our mind. Or we get really invested in some particular doctrinal point and we think that the congregation isn't right until they agree with us. So we rant and rave, and in the end we haven't preached the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yes, it's frustrating to have wasted all that time on a sermon that won't (and should not) be preached...but it's better to have destroyed a sermon before it can do any harm.
If there is one blessing about having preached for almost 20 years, it's that there are plenty of sermons stuck away in the file cabinets. Not all of them are good, of course, or are worthy of repeating. But at least I have one that can be preached so that the church will be blessed rather than cursed.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Sunday Best
I have a long-running and (mostly) friendly debate going on with one of our members about the necessity of wearing one's 'Sunday Best'. Likely it comes from the fact that many of our members wear jeans, shorts, and other apparel to church that a generation ago would have been verboten. As my family is one of the culprits, I think he's trying to send a message to me, but I think he's even annoyed because I don't wear a suit to church, I am down to wearing a tie on Sundays 80% of the time, and on Wednesdays I wear blue jeans.
I can understand his argument, as it's one that I was brought up with. If you were going to visit the President, wouldn't you want to look your best? Indeed, the idea of dressing nicely for God, for giving him your best, that on the surface seems to make a lot of sense. And I agree that there are a lot of people who simply use changing fashions as an excuse to look sloppy.
But over the years I'm started thinking that his reasoning is all wrong. First, there is no Biblical command about wearing one's Sunday best. The only words about clothing in the NT are about what a woman should NOT wear: 1 Timothy 2:9 talks about wearing 'respectable' apparel, modest, and not 'braided hair, gold, pearls, or costly attire'. 'Modest' today has taken on the meaning of 'not indecent' and that's probably good considering many fashions today...but Paul's intent is explicitly that we NOT wear fancy or eye-catching clothing. Indeed, the city of Babylon in Revelation 18:16 that is clothed in fancy attire is a city that is doomed! 1 Peter 3:3-4 is even more explicit: "Do not let your adorning be external--the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear--but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." Church is never to be a fashion center; I can remember when I was much younger how women were especially excited about spring in order to wear their 'Easter fashions'. That's simply not right...and if we apply this to men, shouldn't we think the same thing? Shouldn't we wear our common, everyday clothing? If a man normally wears jeans to work at the plant, shouldn't he wear jeans to church?
Second, why do we think we are honoring somebody by wearing fancy clothes? When did that come into play? For much of humanity's existence a person who had two sets of clothing was considered rich. The fact that the church has bought so much into the idea that there is even something called fashion means we have failed somewhat in our discipleship. If we believe that 'clothes makes the man', then haven't we bought into worldliness? The only kind of clothing we should be really looking for are clothes that are washed white in the blood of the lamb (cf. Rev. 7:14). We are to be defined not by what it is that wear, but by how we have been 'clothed with Christ'.
It's fascinating how such an unimportant and unBiblical topic makes its presence felt so strongly in the mind of so many Christians. May we be a people who focus on things that are important, rather on things that matter not one bit.
I can understand his argument, as it's one that I was brought up with. If you were going to visit the President, wouldn't you want to look your best? Indeed, the idea of dressing nicely for God, for giving him your best, that on the surface seems to make a lot of sense. And I agree that there are a lot of people who simply use changing fashions as an excuse to look sloppy.
But over the years I'm started thinking that his reasoning is all wrong. First, there is no Biblical command about wearing one's Sunday best. The only words about clothing in the NT are about what a woman should NOT wear: 1 Timothy 2:9 talks about wearing 'respectable' apparel, modest, and not 'braided hair, gold, pearls, or costly attire'. 'Modest' today has taken on the meaning of 'not indecent' and that's probably good considering many fashions today...but Paul's intent is explicitly that we NOT wear fancy or eye-catching clothing. Indeed, the city of Babylon in Revelation 18:16 that is clothed in fancy attire is a city that is doomed! 1 Peter 3:3-4 is even more explicit: "Do not let your adorning be external--the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear--but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." Church is never to be a fashion center; I can remember when I was much younger how women were especially excited about spring in order to wear their 'Easter fashions'. That's simply not right...and if we apply this to men, shouldn't we think the same thing? Shouldn't we wear our common, everyday clothing? If a man normally wears jeans to work at the plant, shouldn't he wear jeans to church?
Second, why do we think we are honoring somebody by wearing fancy clothes? When did that come into play? For much of humanity's existence a person who had two sets of clothing was considered rich. The fact that the church has bought so much into the idea that there is even something called fashion means we have failed somewhat in our discipleship. If we believe that 'clothes makes the man', then haven't we bought into worldliness? The only kind of clothing we should be really looking for are clothes that are washed white in the blood of the lamb (cf. Rev. 7:14). We are to be defined not by what it is that wear, but by how we have been 'clothed with Christ'.
It's fascinating how such an unimportant and unBiblical topic makes its presence felt so strongly in the mind of so many Christians. May we be a people who focus on things that are important, rather on things that matter not one bit.
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