“Let them eat cake”

Posted on May 5, 2009 by Richard Heyduck

The last couple of issues of the United Methodist Reporter have featured articles on GracePoint UMC, a recent church plant in Wichita, Kansas, that grew quickly, but let the denomination this spring. It’s depressing to invest so much money, energy and excitement only to lose the fruit. But it shouldn’t be surprising to people familiar with the way the UMC tends to operate. With few exceptions, we don’t know what to do with high energy innovate leaders. High energy leaders who excel at working within the system, yes, we have plenty of places for them. But people who push hard and are non-conformists? Our system pretty much pushes them elsewhere.

The Reporter spoke with Dan Dick, a UM leader (soon to be on staff at the Wisconsin Annual Conference):

He feels the denomination got off track in the 1990s “when we veered off and started pursuing the church-growth movement” so popular among nondenominational churches. He likens that model to a new business start: Select a location in a growth area, get a dynamic CEO-type leader and find “two or three very deep pockets to draw from, to be able to launch a really nice facility, good parking, good equipment and technology.”

While that formula may work in a congregational setting, he said, it’s not especially beneficial to a connectional system like the United Methodist Church, which seeks to create communities of faith that are accountable within a denominational structure.

Focusing on numerical growth and expansion isn’t really central to the Methodist identity, Dr. Dick argues. And while United Methodist churches want to reach as many people as possible, the Wesleyan focus is instead on building communities that equip people to live as Christian disciples.

“That’s a very different thing,” Dr. Dick said. “It’s one of the reasons why we are traditionally and still are fundamentally a small-membership denomination.”

Most successful United Methodist church starts, he said, tend to have three things in common: They are a satellite of an existing congregation, they have a committed core group of leaders and they are designed to meet a specific need, such as a different racial or ethnic demographic.

GracePoint was a fairly good model, but its expansion was “poorly executed,” Dr. Dick said. Though the church plant sought to launch satellite campuses to reach different audiences, he said “they operated congregationally in a vacuum” and weren’t as concerned about where other United Methodist congregations were present. “They were going into a head-to-head competition rather than seeking ways to be collaborative and connectional.”

I read this and hear that (1) we need to keep our churches mono-cultural and (2) work hard to make sure everyone is happy. If Dr. Dick’s theory is correct that would explain why our denominational membership and evangelistic efforts boomed through the 1970s and 1980s, only to crater in the 1990s when we started to pay attention to the Church Growth Movement. But if that’s the case, why have we had so many books and articles before the 1990s decrying our lack of evangelism and our failure to reach people and grow churches?

I am in a position of no authority in the denomination. I pastor a small church in a small town. I am not charismatic in any sense of the word. My gifts are more in teaching and academia than in growing organizations. But I do know a few things.

1. We need to repent of our compulsion to keep people happy. In our local churches we work so hard to keep the long time members happy that we’re unwilling to make changes that might reach new people – even if those “new people”are our own children and grand children.

2. We need to be more concerned about people becoming followers of Jesus than we are concerned about them becoming OUR followers of Jesus.

3. We need to not only say we want young people in our churches, but we need to stop making them act like retired folks before we allow them to have a say in what we do.

Posted in church growth, United Methodism | 4 Comments

Three Lines

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Richard Heyduck

One of the illustrations I use when I teach on discipleship is the image of three lines. The first line we cross is the line of commitment to Christ. We come to a point where we become followers of Jesus. Crossing the second line is the act of taking responsibility for our own spiritual growth, not expecting it to happen automatically. The third line signifies a commitment to the spiritual well-being of others. That’s the general picture. Now for some more detail.

First, these three lines are ideal. Though they represent a hypothetical normal order of Christian maturity, some people differ. God’s grace works in the life of all people before they come to faith. While it might be most logical or most common for a person to begin by crossing the first line – commitment to Christ – I have seen people who were brought to cross this line by means of taking up spiritual disciplines, the normal way a person takes responsibility for his or her spiritual life. BY grace a person catches a vision for a life with God, and, finding that vision attractive, develops (again by grace) the intention to pursue that vision, and takes up practices through which God then draws him or her to faith.

Likewise, in others God graciously imparts a deep love for people. This love is more than just a feeling of warm affection, but a deep and genuine desire to see another (or others) flourish. At this point there is need for another clarification. When I teach on the third line, taking up a commitment to the spiritual well-being of others, I am taking “spiritual” more broadly than some others. When I seek the spiritual well-being of another person, I am seeking to do my part to help them flourish in God’s Kingdom. This attentiveness seeks to help them experience the fullness of salvation, a healing not only in their relationship with God, but also their relationships with others, with themselves, and with creation. When someone who has not crossed the first or second line begins with this commitment, chances are that such a person will lack the full vision of human flourishing within Kingdom dimensions. Nevertheless, their commitment to the well-being of others (perhaps not even yet conceived as spiritual well-being), is pleasing to God. Once such a person crosses the first line of commitment, the addition of more specifically spiritual dimensions will be a natural addition.

While all three of these types of commitment are necessary steps in Christian maturity, it is not uncommon to find individuals (or even movements) that focus on only one of the three. Some individuals (and some traditions) focus solely on crossing the line of commitment to Christ. It is supposed that getting people to heaven (or into the resurrection life of the future) is the sole goal. Once a person crosses this line, he or she can then move on to the rest of life. Perhaps one’s faith is viewed as a sort of eternal fire insurance, a get into heaven free card, or an expression of personal choice. Crossing the line of faith is a good thing. But I’ve seen too many examples of people who settle for only crossing this line who later appear to give it all up, and lapse into nominal Christianity or even fall away altogether. In crossing the first line they have grasped that Jesus calls us to life. But in neglecting the other two lines they miss that he also calls us to a life, a way of living. A mere decision for Christ simply isn’t enough to sustain people in their faith over the long haul.

The three commitments represented by the three lines are so intertwined in the fullness of the salvation wrought in Jesus, that resting on any one commitment alone, not only causes one to miss the blessing of the others, but also produces a distortion of the one which one has crossed. If I settle for only crossing the first line, coming to faith in Jesus, I miss the true nature of that faith if I fail to take responsibility for living a life with Jesus or fail to recognize that that life with Jesus includes his invitation to become a willing participant in what he is doing in the world and the lives of its inhabitants.

John Wesley claimed that there is “no holiness but social holiness, no religion but social religion.” The context of this claim was an argument with people he termed “mystics.” The mystics taught that the best way to reach maturity in Christ was to go inward and go alone. Wesley, however, noticed in scripture that Jesus’ call, while directed at individuals, was not to a solitary life. He called Peter, James, John, Andrew, Thomas and the others to follow him together. Necessarily, therefore, when we cross the second line, there is a tie to a community, to an actual group of people (actual as opposed to theoretical, a visible fellowship of disciples, not merely an invisible church of true believers). Thus while crossing the second line entails personal practices and disciplines (worship, prayer, immersion in scripture, etc.), these disciplines are also best done when a living connection to other believers is sustained. This salvation we access by faith is something we live out together.

When we cross the third line, the step of taking responsibility for others, we are expressing a lack of willingness to hold the blessings of God for ourselves. We are acting on the recognition that part of what it means to be a Jesus person is to join in his mission (“as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you”). As God produces love in our hearts for our neighbors, we find a passion to see them come to know Jesus and experience the same life and love we have found.

Merit does not come into the picture – it is not the case that when we cross the third line we become worthy, either in advance or retroactively – of God’s grace experienced in crossing the first line. We cross the third line, not to earn God’s favor, but simply because living a life of active intentional blessing to others is part of our salvation. God has called us to much more than just going to heaven when we die – to more than living with Jesus for eternity.

A final observation. From one perspective it might look like crossing the line is understood as something we do. Here I am, I see the line, and in my wisdom decide to cross it. The New Testament perspective, however, compels us to see that the truer understanding recognizes the necessary action of grace throughout the process of recognizing there is a line, coming to the line, deciding the line can be crossed and that I ought to cross it, and then taking the step of crossing it. Every step of the way God is drawing me. Every step of the way God is enabling me to respond, yet at no step compelling me to take that next step. God’s loving grace is invitational more than compulsory.

Posted in Discipleship | Leave a comment

Reading Tribal Church

Posted on April 30, 2009 by Richard Heyduck

I just finished reading Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation by Carol Howard Merritt, the book we’re supposed to be reading for our next monthly district clergy gathering.

The book’s points can be summed up fairly briefly:

  • Young people are crunched from many directions today. They desperately need people to love them, accept them, and encourage them.
  • Most young people reject traditional sexual morality, if not for themselves, then for their friends. If we want to void alienating them, we will have to find ways to accommodate this rejection.
  • Most young people tend to be religious pluralists and soteriological universalists. We’ll need to respect and encourage diversity on all levels if we want to reach them. If we’re narrow-minded and preach/teach that Jesus is the only way, we won’t have younger people in our churches.
  • The church tends not to be very friendly or accessible to younger generations. We need to find ways to not only include people from younger generations in what we do, but actually give them power within our churches.

As one who would, in many settings, be labeled conservative, I find the first and last points more congenial to my convictions and approach to ministry. As one who used to be young, I know what it is to feel economic distress. I’ve been unemployed. I’ve had to move every few years. I do not own my own home and even with declining real estate prices see them as beyond my reach. In that context I know the pressure to have my wife and me both work full time “real” jobs so we can provide for our children and our future, and yet make the sacrifice to not do so for the sake of our children (one of whom has autism and needs and will always need special care).

I know how difficult the church can be for younger people. I’ve served churches where I get stern lectures for not kowtowing to racist attitudes and where I have the district superintendent called in to complain about my bringing in too many neighborhood kids. My wife and I have worked intensively with young couples to bring them into the church only to have them run off on their first visit to worship.

I know what it is to have church leaders consider “traditional” worship the only real (“reverent” is the commonly used word) worship, while folks from younger generations (including my own children!) yearn for a newer, livelier style. My own children are still a captive audience, but for how long?

The first generations of Christians were considered odd balls. They stood out in their communities. One characteristic that differentiated them was that they loved each other. This love was not merely in terms of kinship or blood relation. Well, it was blood relation – not their blood, however, but participation in a common redemption by the blood of Jesus. That kind of love across social boundaries attracted outsiders.

Christians in the ancient world were also considered odd for their exclusivism. When persecution arose, the authorities would have been happy to release their Christian prisoners – if only they’d add Caesar to their pantheon. It wasn’t like they’d have to actively worship Caesar or the gods of the state. Just a pinch of incense, just enough to fit in as good citizens. Those wacky Christians would rather suffer than honor any god other than the One incarnate in Jesus.

I suppose a difference between my position and the authors is that I see a need for Christians to be distinct from the broader culture. We need to be distinct from the broader “conservative” elements of culture (notorious for an emphasis on wealth, prosperity and economic freedom) and from the broader “liberal” elements of culture (notorious for an emphasis on sexual expression and freedom). The Christianity pictured in the New Testament was extremely diverse – but not diverse in every way. It wasn’t the diversity of say, having a pitcher, a goalie, a quarterback, and a forward on each team. Rather it was more like the diversity of having a pitcher, a catcher, outfielders and infielders on a team, playing a common game. The diversity of the church was also a transformative diversity – more than “let’s be friends and each pursue our individual projects and feel good together.” All were invited to Jesus. All were challenged to – and needed to! – repent. Some needed to change in their economic practices. Some needed to change in their sexual practices. Some needed to change in their relational practices.

I read this book as one yearning to reach the younger generation. But my call is to reach them specifically for the sake of Jesus, so they might become his followers. I know not all will initially be attracted. I’ll have to lovingly pursue them. I’ll have to befriend even people I don’t agree with. I’ll have to pray like crazy. But they’re worth it.

Posted in Books, church growth, Evangelism, Spirituality | 3 Comments

What’s Next?

Posted on April 29, 2009 by Richard Heyduck

We humans are such odd creatures. We seem to oscillate between giving no thought to the consequences of our actions to being paralyzed with fear by imagined consequences of our actions.

Take one of the proposed constitutional changes in the United Methodist Church as an example. Here’s the proposed text for part of Article IV:

Inclusiveness of the Church — The United Methodist Church is a part of the church universal, which is one Body in Christ. The United Methodist Church acknowledges that all persons are of sacred worth and that we are in ministry to all. All persons shall be eligible to attend its worship services, participate in its programs, receive the sacraments, and upon baptism be admitted as baptized members. All persons, upon taking vows declaring the Christian faith and relationship in Jesus Christ, shall be eligible to become professing members in any local church in the connection. In the United Methodist Church no conference or other organizational unit of the Church shall be structured so as to exclude any member or any constituent body.

Doesn’t look very controversial on the face of it. One might naturally read the statement as saying something like, “We believe Jesus came, died, and rose for all people. Since Jesus came to bring all people back to God and to invite them to take up his kingdom agenda, we his followers aim to do likewise. There is no category of humans that we seek to exclude from this ministry.” For one who reads the New Testament and takes it as authoritative, I don’t see how they could be other than affirming of such an inclusive mission. So what’s the problem?

All UMs who have been following debates within the church for the past thirty years know what the problem is. Our greatest outward schism these days is over homosexuality. Some are convinced that the practice of homosexuality is perfectly acceptable from a Christian point of view. Others are convinced otherwise. The current disciplinary language affirms homosexuals as people of “sacred worth,” and thus a category of people not to be excluded from our ministry work. At the same time, the Discipline teaches that the practice of homosexuality is “not compatible with Christian teaching,” that we do not recognize or perform homosexual unions (whether “marriages” or another other kind), and do not accept “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” into ministry. These statements, however, are in parts of the Discipline other than the constitution. Thus, opponents reason, if the amendment is passed, the new form of the constitution will trump these exclusions, making them null and void. Since we say that “no conference or other organizational unit of the Church shall be structured so as to exclude any member or any constituent body,” that means that any member is eligible for participation in any body of the church. Currently this article has specific non-exclusions: “race, color, national origin, status or economic condition” do not exclude one from membership and participation in the UMC. It is possible that some see the switch from particular non-exclusionary language to complete inclusionary language as a less controversial (opponents may say “devious”) way to bring currently excluded groups into the areas from which they are current excluded.

If this constitutional amendment is adopted, surely some will seek to rule out the current disciplinary restrictions regarding homosexuality. But because some might – or even surely will  – pursue this course of action, is the language of the amendment any less true to our Christian convictions, regardless of our position on the acceptability of homosexual practice?

United Methodists often pride themselves on not being literalists. Such pride is mistaken. We, like most other collections of humans, are selective literalists. While some may push the literal language of an amended constitution at this point (along the lines of the “all means all” campaign) to turn the UMC toward official acceptance of homosexual practice, a literal reading of this text, as in purely literal readings of pretty much any text, be pushed to what seems absurd. Let’s consider other forms of exclusion we currently practice. When it comes to age, we have disciplinary language on mandatory retirement. Can’t do that – that’s exclusionary. Though I’m not aware of any specific disciplinary language on this point, I’ve never heard of a child (under the age of 16) being ordained in the UMC. Sounds exclusionary to me. What about the current educational requirements for ordination? Some people lack the capacity for such education – and we heartlessly exclude them from ordained ministry.

Surely such reasoning is silly. No one is out pushing for ordination of children or the uneducated. No one wants bishops and pastors to keep going until they drop dead or become totally senile. But a plain literal reading of the text of the proposed amendment could surely lead in such directions. Since people might use the text in this way, we need to refrain from tinkering with it at all, lest bad things happen.

If we argue this way, maybe we should take up Stanley Hauerwas’s idea of keeping the bible away from people also. There are passages in the bible that if read and applied literally might be used to justify and promote what we take to be murder. Yet while I strongly believe many unintended consequences have come out of the way some people have handled the bible – the word of God (not just the word of the General Conference of the UMC) – I still believe the bible in the hands of people to be a good thing. Dangerous? Certainly. Ought we to teach people to handle it rightly? Absolutely. But that goes for the Discipline as well.

Knowing then, that consequences I thing wrong might flow from passing this amendment, I’m still inclined to vote for it. I’m not basing this on my confidence on the maturity of discourse and argumentation in the UMC. I’m afraid my confidence in that is very low. I’m also not basing my position on a commitment to the gospel of inclusion. While I think there is a proper biblical concept of inclusion, I cannot see that what goes by that name in most discussions today has much connection with such an account. Rather, the gospel of inclusion, as I hear it preached, sounds much more like a version of modern individualism than the gospel of Jesus. I also have no confidence that debates over “sexuality” (I doubt the helpfulness of abstractions in this case) end soon or reach a conclusion satisfactory to all. We UMs mirror our culture (as we have since the beginning) in being pretty messed up in this area. Whether we identify as heterosexual or homosexual we tend to be (mis)ruled by our desires, thinking (with Alexander Pope) that “whatever is, is right.” Our desires are, so since God made us and everything good, our desires must be good also. Surely we ought not to thwart that which is good? (My position on this is that while we shouldn’t thwart that which is good, we need to (a) sometimes say “no,” (b) sometimes say, “not yet,” and sometimes (c) recognize that we might be mistaken in our identification of a good.

Instead, my inclination to vote for it is that as far as I can tell from my submission to the authority of the bible and orthodox Christian theology it is simply true. We United Methodist Christians do believe that Jesus died for all. We do believe that God calls all people to die to sin and live to holiness.

Enough rambling for today. If you’d like to argue with me, go for it! I’m amenable to correction or persuasion.

Posted in Bible, Discipline, United Methodism | 9 Comments

Memories

Posted on April 28, 2009 by Richard Heyduck

A Happy Memory: One Sunday about 14 years ago my son did the children’s message for the church service. Well, it was sort of a reverse children’s message. In a normal children’s message an adult gets up and tells the children a story. In this case it was a child – five year old – telling the story. He got up and told the story of the book of Jonah. He did a great job. I was really proud of him.

A Sad Memory: After the service that Sunday the church members were telling me what a great job my son did. One of them told me, “He knows the bible so well. He knows it even better than I do!”

I was happy that my five year old son knew the bible well. I was sad that someone who had been in church for at least five decades didn’t know as much as a five year old. What have we been teaching all these years? How have we been teaching our people?

Posted in Bible, Discipline | 1 Comment

Inerrancy and the Spiritual Formation of Younger Evangelicals

Posted on April 14, 2009 by Richard Heyduck

In his book by this title, Carlos R. Blovell argues that institutional commitments to a doctrine of biblical inerrancy like that found in the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Philosophical Society are not conducive to the spiritual formation of younger evangelicals. He notes,

“It has been my experience that younger evangelicals feel the tension most when they are left with an authoritative Bible whose authority has been practically all but voided by philosophical and exegetical details that regularly keep popping up. What ends up being authoritative in the end is the evangelical tradition and this tradition  has to be taken on faith to the effect that it best represents what is ‘in’ the Bible.”

As younger evangelicals face the demand that inerrancy is the doctrine on which evangelicalism, or, more personally, their true faith, stands or falls, along with the multitude of qualifications, challenges and even incoherencies in that doctrine, Blovell sees the tension leading them away from the Christian faith altogether. If inerrancy is strictly essential to real Christianity, and inerrancy falls apart under what they take to be rigorous examination, then they are left with no choice but to leave.

Blovell wishes to remain both a Christian and an evangelical. He challenges the current generation of evangelical teachers to discover ways to have a high view of the Bible and its authority that are (a) truer to Scripture, (b) truer to the history of the way Scripture has been used by the faithful through out the ages, and (c) sensitive to the spiritual needs of their students. While he says that he wishes to contribute to such an account in the future, this book serves to identify the need rather than to offer the right way forward.

Evangelicals, especially those in positions of authority in evangelical institutions, are faced with the constant challenge of “going liberal,” or appearing to “go liberal.” Since maintaining the centrality of inerrancy is perceived as the main bulwark against going liberal, I’m not optimistic that many will listen to Blovell any longer than it takes to write him out of evangelicalism. One might think that Wesleyan evangelicals, given the fact of less of an interest in inerrancy in their own tradition might be able to take this step. Since Wesleyans are already suspect in an era when evangelicalism is primarily defined by Calvinists, it will likely be hard for them to take this step, however.

Posted in Bible, Books, Evangelicalism, Inerrancy | 6 Comments

Cult of Accountability

Posted on April 3, 2009 by Richard Heyduck

In his essay on the epistemological problems underlying the current economic crisis, Jerry Z. Miller refers to the “cult of accountability:”

The cult of “accountability” was linked to key innovations that turned out to have unanticipated undersides. One was the shibboleth of linking pay to performance, which put a premium on schemes that purported to measure performance. This tended to produce “hard” numbers that seemed reliable but were not. It created tremendous incentives for CEOs, executives, and traders to devote their creative energies to gaming the metrics, i.e. into coming up with schemes that purported to demonstrate productivity or profit by massaging the data, or by underinvesting in maintenance and human capital formation to boost quarterly earnings or their equivalents.

Accountability has been all the rage for the past decade, especially since the failure of Enron, Worldcom and their ilk. The thought is that if we can gain objectivity and accuracy by means of stricter and clearer accountability, we will avoid those problems of the past.

Business is not the only enterprise facing higher accountability. In at least my Annual Conference (of the United Methodist Church), we have had a greater emphasis on accountability over the past few years. As with Enron et al., the need (I admit that it is a need) for accountability arose from perceived failure. Our conference leadership saw that the churches of the conference were failing. While the population of the region was growing, the churches at best (and there were few at this level) were keeping even. Most of the churches in the conference were declining while the population grew. This failure was further evidenced by the lack of professions of faith in congregations. Half the churches in the conference were showing not a single profession of faith in a year. Speaking plainly, that means that as far as the official statistics show, not a single person had become a Christian through the ministry of that church that year. A key response to this crisis has been increased accountability, effected by weekly reporting of key statistics: Worship Attendance, Professions of Faith, People in “hands on ministry.”

All of these are good things. Having people come to worship, come to faith in Jesus, and join in Kingdom work – all of these are essential to church health. But are we missing something? Is it possible that just as the “cult of accountability” reflected faulty epistemological assumptions on the part of business and the economy, our own adaptation of that cult could reflect faulty assumptions as well?

Posted in church growth, Economics, Epistemology, Texas Annual Conference | Leave a comment

Stuck

Posted on March 31, 2009 by Richard Heyduck

Sometimes we get stuck. While getting stuck is commonly taken to be a bad thing, it depends on where we’re stuck or what we’re stuck in.

Perhaps you’re stuck in a family that keeps on loving you even when you act unlovable. You try to pull away, try to go your own way, but wherever you go, you end up back with the people that love you unconditionally. You’re stuck.

Maybe you’re stuck with Jesus. Like the disciples in John 6 you’ve seen Jesus do some wacky things – things that make no sense to you at all. Other folks fall by the wayside. You think of going away yourself. But you say to yourself, “Who else has the words of life?” And you stay with Jesus. You’re stuck.

Sometimes being stuck isn’t so good. Years ago at one of my previous churches I stopped by to visit a family. The man of the house was home alone so I visited with him. His wife was the church attender in the family so I usually only saw him at his house. I’d visted with him a few times before, but this time in the midst of our conversation he blurted out, “I’m not a believer. Everyone thinks I’m a Christian, but I’m not.”

At that point I’d been pastoring that church for a while. I’d never seen him at church. When I consider what the bible says and what I find in the Christian tradition, it seems normal for believers to spend time with other believers. A primary way that happens in our culture is by doing what we call “going to church.” Since I had never seen this fellow do what I thought was a normal activity for believers, I was not shocked by his admission.

In small town Texas our culture has a veneer of Christianity. Except for those real sinful folks, we assume everyone is at least sort of a Christian – especially if they’re from a church family. Some of them will even tell you, “I’m a Baptist.” “I’m a Catholic.” “I’m a Methodist.” We assume: Nice person, faithful to his family, hard worker, good citizen – must be a believer. But he’s not. And he finally built up his courage to tell someone. He’d never told his wife. He’d never told his kids. Never told a soul.

You know what? He’s not the only one. I’ve talked to several folks over the years, people outside the church like him, as well as every Sunday attenders, who finally admit that they’re not believers. They’ve heard the sermons, they’ve read the books, they’ve considered the arguments, they’ve been on the retreats. Nope. Nothing there.

I think there are more out there. Maybe they’re still actively trying to believe. Maybe they haven’t admitted to themselves – let alone to another – that they don’t believe. They keep thinking: If only I do this, then I’ll feel it, then I’ll believe. But they don’t. They’re stuck.

Part of that stuck (“stuckness” might sound better grammatically, but it sounds just plain bad) might be that they’re not really open to God. They say they are – they tell themselves and others that they are. But they’re not. It might be that God just hasn’t broken through to them yet.

I think believing in Jesus is a good thing – when understood biblically, the best thing. I want people who are stuck on the outside of belief to become unstuck. What can we do?

In the first place, I pray for my friends. I’m not just praying for sinners or lost folks. I’m praying for my friends. I believe my relationship with them matters.

Secondly, our churches need to admit the reality of this phenomenon. Instead we get stuck on numbers: Attendance, membership, offering, budgets. Or stuck on routine – doing what we’ve always done. Or stuck on keeping up appearances. We need to learn to tell the truth and become a place where people can safely tell the truth about themselves. I’m not assuming, however, that we have infallible insight into ourselves, or that telling the truth is simply or easy in any way. It’s hard. Some of the things we take to be the truth aren’t. When it comes to believing in Jesus this works two ways. Sometimes we say that, yes, we are followers of Jesus. But we’re fooling ourselves. We might think we’re telling the truth, but we’re not. Other times, we might say, No, we’ve tried to be believers, but we’re not. But that’s not quite right either. Jesus has more of us than we even know ourselves.

But assuming for a moment that at least some of the time we know the truth about ourselves. We need churches that allow people to openly identify themselves as seekers. None of the churchly or semi-churchly non-believers of the type I’m talking about are excited or proud of their lack of belief. They sound like they’d rather believe. What would happen if we allowed them to be open about their seeking? In such a setting perhaps others could come along side them – not with condemnation and lecturing, but with love and encouragement. I’m convinced that really healthy churches will have more than just believers showing up on Sundays.

A final thing we need is genuine work of God in our midst. Excellence is good, but we need more than excellent bulletins, sermons, studies, & music. We need more than clean restrooms, convenient parking and friendly people. We need God. We need the movement of God in our midst doing the unpredictable and the uncontrollable in our midst.

Sure, there will be rationality involved. God doesn’t desire us to leave our brains home or in sleep mode. But we need more than rationality (but surely njot less).

Sure, there will be emotion involved. God doesn’t desire that we somberly mourn the passing of our loved ones every Sunday. There’s joy that Jesus has defeated all the powers of sin, death and hell for us. The very stones would cry out if we didn’t. But we need more than emotion (though surely not less).

We need God. We need God’s work in the lives of individuals and families, work that is inexplicable by any other means. We need people to step into the story of God and then report what they see, hear and experience. We need God if anyone is going to truly come to faith. Then we might become unstuck and help other become unstuck – and stuck again with Jesus.

Posted in Evangelism, Local church, Spirituality | 1 Comment

Evolution in Texas Classrooms

Posted on March 27, 2009 by Richard Heyduck

The Texas Board of Education is again facing the issue of how to teach evolution in our schools. In an opinion piece in Tuesday’s Dallas Morning News Daniel W. Foster, M.D. argues in favor of teaching evolution. He closes his piece:

My views on this are informed by my faith. I am an elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Dallas where I have taught church school for more than 30 years. The teacher of the faith that I follow, confronted with the secular world of the Roman Empire, said “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God, the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21)

To paraphrase, the teacher said, don’t mix up faith and the secular. The State Board of Education should heed that lesson.

Sounds to me like Dr. Foster is a disciple of John Locke. The church’s job is to deal with eternal life. The magistrate’s job is to deal with real life issues of this world.

The context of Jesus’ statement isn’t “the secular.” It’s paying taxes. “Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar,” his challengers asked him. They knew they had him this time. If he said, “Yes – Caesar is an authority we need to recognize and bow down to,” then the Jews would stop following him. If he said, “No – We Jews should reject the laws of that pagan,” they could call in the Roman authorities to have him arrested. Either way, they finally had trapped Jesus.

But Jesus eluded their trap with the words the doctor quoted. But the Christian tradition has, to a great extent, not been content to divide off a secular realm where faith – if we mean by that, discipleship to Jesus – has no say. Is the doctor suggesting Christians – people of “faith” – should have nothing to say about abortion? Capital punishment? Stem cell experimentation? Slavery? An equitable tax code? War crimes? After all, Caesar wants the say on all these things. Sure our current Caesar is happy for us to have opinions about these things, just as long as we either agree with him or stay in our closets praying.

Coming to the doctor’s particular subject, does teaching that everything came into being by purely natural and purely random forces, that there is no such thing as purpose or meaning in life – unless that purpose or meaning be completely autonomous – have no connection with any legitimate form of faith? Saying that science qua science has nothing to say about these things is one thing. Saying that followers have no legitimate reason to question such things is another.

Posted in Church & State, Evolution | 1 Comment

Foolish Spending

Posted on March 21, 2009 by Richard Heyduck

I’ve heard a lot about foolish spending lately. Most recently it’s million dollar bonuses at AIG. Before that it was a lavish executive retreat. A few months back it was an office bathroom renovation.

Foolish spending is nothing new. A few years ago I heard of a major corporation paying $210 million dollars to a CEO (who is now running Chrysler) to make him resign. Sounds pretty foolish to me.

But who’s to decide what counts as foolish? We’re going through a time when government is taking over large swaths of the business world and legislating definitions of foolishness. “Excessive” pay is now deemed foolish, and the tax code is being re-written to punish the recipients of foolish largess. They don’t seem to understand that if congress has to approve of economic activity to make it legitimate, there will be much less economic activity.

I think yachts are excessive. I’ve never had a yacht and never thought I needed one. Years ago when the luxury tax was increased to hit yachts, it didn’t bother me. I wasn’t one of those rich guys out to buy a yacht. It’s also a good thing I wasn’t one of the not-so-rich guys who built or maintained yachts. If so, when the rich guys stopped buying yachts (that’s the message they got from the increased taxation), the yacht builders took the hit. Didn’t hurt the rich guys. They were still rich.

I’m sure some people think my industry is foolish. Can you imagine giving ten percent of your income to something as foolish as a church?  If people stopped giving to churches just think what they could afford: new cars, second homes, nicer vacations. But then some of us would be out of a job.

I’m not a big spender. I never have been. Family members tell me it’s genetic.  If everyone was like me we’d have a much smaller economy. Do our political leaders want everyone to be like me? Or do they want people to spend freely (like they used to) so the economy will recover? Will they promulgate a list of acceptable things to spend money on?

Maybe the government is hoping to do all the spending itself. Their wisdom is surely greater than that of the ordinary human. They know how to save money, too. Some are really creative. I’d rather see them get out of the way of us ordinary fools at the bottom of the food chain.

Posted in Current events, Economics | 1 Comment