Can the beauty of God speak for itself?

Archie Honrado


To contemplate God is to see beauty.

What a pleasure to see a piece of installation art speak for itself. In one of my pieces entitled “Wastebasket,” several crumpled pieces of paper are scattered around a wastebasket. To make it beautiful and simple installation art, I put a soft, aqua-blue spotlight on it. In this prayer station, I proposed two questions: How should you be looking at this art? and What do you want to do here? I witnessed two different reactions. A boy and his mom emptied the wastebasket on the floor, and the boy declared, “Just like God, dumping my waste.” A different family put all the crumpled papers in the basket without any comment.

I lived in Western Europe and was immersed in the architectural beauty of their sacred spaces, and I couldn’t agree more with Thomas Merton when he felt the presence of Jesus through the architecture of their cathedrals. But sadly, most of the cathedrals have become more like museums. After my time in Europe, I moved to Los Angeles—a land where I was concerned that my need to experience religion through sacred art could become malnourished. I know, I was a bit of a snub. I realized art’s limitation when I went to places like the Getty Museum. Museums and galleries put art on pedestals—not just literally—and unnecessarily venerate the creators.

I am most intrigued and mystified when artists allow their art to speak for itself. The less they say about their art, the more it speaks to me. I am drawn to it because of the lack of noise it makes. No wonder there’s an aspect of God’s beauty, character, and nature that speaks for itself. This reminds me of Psalm 19:1: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the works of his hand.”

Have you ever been to a mediocre art show, music concert, movie, or even worship service and walked away half satisfied? We long and yearn for beauty; nature is good at satisfying this need. We get disappointed at a mediocre artistic expression or show. We subconsciously want to symbolize the beauty of God in us because we demand God-like performance from imperfect creators imitating the beauty of God, don’t we?

Have you noticed how the experiential worship style continues to grow in popularity? There is a cautionary tale about experiential worship spaces that unknowingly mimics what artists and curators in museums try to achieve—a pure art-imitating life, or an educational experience—but often, they push their boundaries and flirt with providing patrons with a religious experience or otherworldly transcendence. That is why I copy them sometimes or get inspired by them. These avant-garde artists and museum curators are no doubt brilliant at transporting us to a world of beauty. It is a beauty, however, that in some ways only counterfeits God’s invitations to God’s beauty.

Creating sacred space can be limiting and limited to a museum type of experience only. Let us not create artsy, sacred space that venerate art and relegate the art of daily living out of God’s dwelling beauty in us. We can only try to create something powerful that will open us up into the awareness of God’s presence in our lives and not just an ornamental space like the post-modernists dictate. Imagine the psalm I have seen your sanctuary and behold your beauty and strength being reflected inside a staid, nineteenth-century, industrial-era building design. Can the beauty of God be seen in such a space?

God’s beauty can only be gauged by us. We’ve all been awed by nature and have thanked God for the beauty, right? What about the beauty found in the art of doing the dishes and the laundry? Do you revel in God’s beauty that is present in your quotidian living, and not only in spaces venerated or consecrated? When we do mundane stuff soulfully, the beauty of God will speak.

When we live our lives before the face of God daily, whether in the mundane, in the sensational, in affliction, or even in the virtuality of our realities, the beauty of God will speak for itself.

“Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.” –David Hume, Essays, Moral and Political, 1742.

To contemplate God is to see beauty and be invited to live in it.


Archie Honrado is a passionate worshiper of God and a 25-year veteran of children, youth, and family ministry through Youth With a Mission(www.ywam.org) in Los Angeles.  He is also the Los Angeles city coordinator for the DeVos Urban Youth Leadership Initiative.  He creates and guides prayer walks and curates prayer space for Youth Specialties and is a speaker with the Urban Youth Workers Institute (www.uywi.org). 


 





Lilly Lewin


I would say yes, the beauty of God can speak for itself, if we understand it; if we have access to it; and if we are encouraged to look for it.

When I think of the beauty of God, I think of a sunset over Lake Michigan, or the silhouette of the Olympic Mountains on the horizon with their snow-covered peaks against the crystal-blue sky of Washington State. I also think of my kids, especially when they were born; the beauty of those small faces, hands, and those amazing little toes.

For me, the beauty of God is about experience. I’ve experienced the beauty of God listening to music—like Handel’s Messiah. Or I’ve seen God’s beauty through others’ creativity in great works of art at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the National Gallery in London. As a visual person and an artist, I hunger for beauty, especially in vistas. God’s beauty found in nature always inspires me.

We all need help seeing the beauty of God—both the tangible beauty in creation and the beauty of God as our Father and Creator. Too often, we have placed ourselves in boxes—in cubicles in office buildings and in boxes made of brick, wood, or stone that we’ve designated for worship. For me, I’d rather be at the lake, on the beach, by a campfire in the woods, or even in my backyard. I’ve always experienced more of God’s presence and his beauty just from being outside, rather than in the building designated for the job.

In high school I sat in the balcony of our church and gazed out the window at the trees, wondering what God was talking about and doing out there. I met Jesus at camp in the mountains of North Carolina, and it’s still much easier for me to connect with God by taking a walk and watching the sunset. Thankfully I’ve had access to the beauty of God and have chosen to go after it.

Sadly, people often have limited access to the beauty of God. Or, we have access, but we don’t really live like we do. When we engage God on Sunday, it’s a routine and just the same as last week.

Living urban without resources; it’s a thing that closes us from the beauty of God. The authors of the Bible certainly never saw the dreary inner cities of major American metropolitan areas in the middle of winter. Yet tons of people in inner-city ugliness worship Jesus better than any suburban or rural people. Does poverty really prevent someone from seeing the beauty of God? I do think it makes it harder. In fact, George Hunter, in The Celtic way of Evangelism, says that we live in a pagan society today because so many of us live in the land of concrete jungles—places where trees and mountains and rolling hills and rivers are nowhere to be found. How do we help change this and help people engage in the beauty of God, even in a city?

We need to reacquaint our communities with the beauty and mystery of God. We need to provide ways for them to experience nature, like retreats and parable walks and times just to be outside in God’s beauty. Also, we need times to create. We need time for art, music, writing, poetry, etc. We need to help ourselves and others learn to practice silence and being still with God for longer than two minutes at a time.

We’ve either been trapped in our cars, driving on pavement from box store to box store, or we are in front of computer screens most of the day, so we are unable to see what beauty lies around us. We have lost beauty in busyness and in our need for organization and practicality. Thankfully, beauty for beauty’s sake can be rediscovered through art and exploration and pilgrimage to places of beauty and spiritual significance. It just takes time and practice and giving ourselves permission to try something new.

So I started taking students and our family on pilgrimages to experience places of beauty and spiritual significance. In the last few years, our church community had a bi-monthly practice of going to the Cincinnati Art Museum to listen to Scripture and see where God is and how God might speak to us through the various art pieces. Art Walk became a big part of my personal church experience, and I have spent the last decade designing spaces of beauty—sacred space—where people have time to experience God’s presence and engage his Word through all of their senses. And I have friends in Kiev doing medical missions because an entire church was founded there, thanks to a group of Ukrainian musicians who played and sang Handel’s Messiah for the first time and wanted to know the person they were singing about! The beauty of God in music and art is truly powerful!

Can you see the beauty of God if you want to? Can you choose to see it anywhere? According to the Bible, if we have seen the sun or the stars, we’re without excuse. So I’m toast. I’ve seen the beauty of God. I have to continually choose to see God’s beauty, and my desire is to help others learn how to engage God’s beauty for themselves. I’m choosing to make time to experience the beauty of God my Lenten practice this year. I’m looking forward to just being in his presence in the beauty of his world.




Steve Argue


Beautiful things are reflections of the creator. God speaks and creates (Genesis 1). Creation speaks in praise (Psalm 19; 150). Creation speaks to creation. Let’s not miss God’s beauty speaking within us and around us, that interprets and needs interpreting.

There is beauty within. Sadly, there are too many messages that tell us we’re not good enough, healthy enough, pretty enough, or productive enough. Being human is often described as a deficiency rather than an asset. I’m not calling for some sort of self-love that demands the entire world to worship me. Rather, I believe that God’s good news is our good news—that the best we can bring each day is our God-given, image-bearing selves. It’s when we resist this or try to bring someone else that we betray our beauty. Embrace the reality that God created you and calls you “very good.”

There is beauty around. It’s easy to believe this at a sunset, sitting on the beach, skiing down a mountain, or walking through the woods. It is much more difficult in traffic, in arguments, in tragedy, and in devastation. As a result, people can quickly fall into half-empty or half-full camps that either naively choose to see the world through the lens of Disney or who are unable to see beyond darkness and despair.

It seems to me that the hopeful message of Jesus is that we can find God’s beauty in everything. The obvious beauty (sunsets, laughter, happiness) doesn’t escape our attention, and we celebrate with it. Vigilant beauty-seeking rescues us from blinding routines that dull our senses to the miracles that are all around.

The less evident beauty is increasingly seen through a lens that is fueled by hope as we walk the crowded streets, seeing each person as made in the image of God; as we see the profound masterpiece of each awkward adolescent and as we discover that even our greatest enemies are more like us than different.

God’s beauty also moves us to weep over beauty’s absence. Those who seek beauty weep more over events of war, devastation, and oppression. They see systemic poverty as their own, own up to being part of the problem, and look to be part of the solution. They pray for all people, their own, for those in hellish situations, and for the people their country chooses go to war with.

They find that the beauty in our world is found in the blurred lines that resist being divided by conservative/liberal; modern/postmodern; male/female; Christian/Muslim; gay/straight. Beauty is found in third, creative ways that hope for all people everywhere. Thus, noticing beauty is more than an activity for the ignorant, young, hopeless artists, or the inefficient. It’s for all of us to notice, to name, to celebrate, to enter into.

Beauty interprets and needs interpreting. Does the beauty of God “speak for itself?” It certainly is speaking, and like any good message, it has layers of meaning. No one gets the message of love once. It takes on deeper and deeper meaning. No one values friendship because they acquired it once. It grows deeper, multifaceted qualities.

So it is with God’s beauty. As we understand (intellectually, experientially, developmentally) God’s story, it interprets what we see. And what we see interprets God’s story. Sometimes our experiences run ahead of our understanding, and we crave words/art/music to interpret what we’ve felt. Sometimes we know cognitively the concepts of love, grief, or faithfulness, but it bursts with color when we experience what we know.

Thus, I find I am drawn to the people who have thought and lived deeply. Beauty isn’t an experience or a concept but something that has been interwoven into the very person. There’s a quality in their words, a safety in their presence, a mystery I long to discover, a hope that runs deep. This is evidence of beauty discovered and beauty joined. Life lived here inspires everyone to join in, responding to God’s hopeful embrace that is speaking faithfully, perpetually, beautifully.


Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

How have some of the mistakes you have made helped you grow as a leader?

Mike King


Early in my ministry, I tended to be a person who avoided conflict. I became skilled at navigating away from confrontation. I just wanted everyone to be happy and love one another. Too often, my unwillingness to confront and be decisive in dealing with an issue head on actually added to the problem. I mistakenly assumed that my empathy for others would create space for them to heal, mature, and become more productive.

I regularly made the mistake of believing that doing just enough about the problem to get relief from the pain of symptoms caused by dysfunctional people would somehow be enough. Unfortunately, this assumption does not lead to a healthy environment. Ultimately, I had to decide what kind of leader I would become. I came to a difficult decision. I could not allow my desire to be liked by those I led and/or served keep me from doing the right thing and making tough decisions.

I had some close friends who are no longer close friends because I had to deal with the negativity they brought to our ministry environment. It was no longer enough to deal only with the symptoms. While I loved these individuals, I could not allow them to continue hurting people, dumbing down our culture, and holding us back from moving forward into a hope-filled future. It became increasingly clear to me that I had actually enabled their dysfunction.

Misguided empathy kept me from being responsible and truthful, not only to the disrupters, but to our whole organization, resulting in a toxic environment. My responsibility was to lead decisively. It is not only important to make decisions but to lead well once a decision has been made. What happens after a decision has been made is—most of the time—much more important than the actual decision. Edwin Friedman deals with this so well in his book A Failure of Nerve. His concept of a “non-anxious leader” is essential for leading well.

While I’ve had to learn that my desire for everyone to “just get along” is naïve, I have come to understand that a proper focus on nurturing cultural environments is important. I became obsessed with thinking holistically and systemically about environments and how cultural dynamics impact the way people work, play, create, live, love, interact, and relate to one another.

Being a leader who nurtures a synergistic and thriving environment requires a leader who is willing to take responsibility for his or her own ability to thrive. We can’t lead people well when we don’t take care of our own spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being. This focus on ourselves as leaders is not about selfishness. It is a self-differentiation that ultimately enables us to pour ourselves out (kenosis) for others.

Friedman has a chart in A Failure of Nerve that is helpful to remind me that I must lead in such a way that shows I’ve learned from my mistakes.

Poorly Differentiated Leadership… *focuses on pathology. *is obsessed with technique. *works with symptomatic people. *betters the condition. *seeks symptomatic relief. *is concerned to give insight. *is stuck on the treadmill of tying harder *diagnoses others. *is quick to quit difficult situations. *is made anxious by reactivity. *has a reductionist perspective. *sees problems as the cause of anxiety. *adapts toward the weak. *focuses on dysfunctional victims. *creates dependent relationships.

Well-Differentiated Leadership… *focuses on strength. *is concerned for one’s own growth. *works with motivated people. *matures the system. *seeks enduring change. *is concerned to define self (take stands). *is fed up with the treadmill. *looks at one’s own stuckness. *is challenged by difficult situations. *recognizes that reactivity and sabotage are evidence of one’s effectiveness has a universal perspective. *sees problems as the focus of preexisting anxiety. *adapts toward strength. *has a challenging attitude that encourages responsibility. *creates intimate relationships.

So, what are you thinking about as it relates to this post? What mistakes have you learned from?


Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. Seabury Books, New York, 2007, pg. 231





Lilly Lewin


I have made a lot of mistakes, and thankfully I’ve learned from them and am still learning from them.

I used to attempt to do everything myself and believed that only I could do certain things because I would do them “right” and they would look right and feel right, etc. Once upon a time it wasn’t okay to make mistakes.

Growing up as a perfectionist, I did my darnedest to prevent making them, striving always to do the best and be the best and working harder and faster to make everything as perfect as possible.

While I knew instinctively that no one is perfect and that we don’t live in a perfect world, I was wired as the oldest, responsible child to set my sights on that perfect goal. The pursuit of the straight As of high school continued as I started my career and had to learn the hard way that straight As aren’t possible all the time in most real-world, real-life settings; and that perfection shouldn’t even be the goal in most things. But, because I’m stubborn and pig headed, it took a lot of burnout and pain before I realized that it’s really only through the mistakes and failures that we all actually learn and grow.

I had to learn to give myself permission to be imperfect and to fail. I had to say out loud and really believe in my heart that getting a B rather than an A was okay. Life doesn’t have to be perfect because nothing is perfect. I had to learn to believe that if Jesus wanted perfection, he came to the wrong planet and the wrong people. I had to give not only myself but my team and my family permission to be imperfect too.

I had to learn to give myself permission to JUST SAY NO. Every gift has a shadow. I’m known as a person of great enthusiasm, creativity, and compassion. But in my enthusiasm to get people connected and to spread the kingdom, I have often over-planned my life and said yes to too many things. In “doing kingdom work,” I too often brought my family along for the ride, without asking or considering whether they felt called to join in. Just because I felt something was a worthwhile ministry opportunity didn’t mean it was right for a seven-year-old, and neither was prepping for Sunday every Saturday instead of taking a Saturday just to hang out.

I had to learn to take time off and practice real Sabbath—and allow others the gift of time off too. I learned that it’ s okay to take care of myself. I can take time to do the things I enjoy outside of my job. Everything doesn’t have to be about work. Everything doesn’t have to be about serving someone else. It’s totally okay to nurture myself. In fact, I cannot pour my cup out to others if my cup is dry or cracked. Because of my tendency to burn out, I began to practice silence. I came to realize that I don’t have to fill my schedule or the schedules of my kids, my family, and my youth group with too many activities. Less really is more! Along with taking time off, I had to learn the importance of planning ahead and not always doing everything so last minute that it fries the people who want to work with me.

I had to learn to give away ministry, to become a curator, not a dictator. Doing everything myself meant that I prevented others from using their gifts. It prevented me from sharing the ministry. A curator enables others to use their gifts and creates opportunities for these gifts to come together to make a beautiful offering. By curating worship and worship gatherings, everyone gets to play; everyone gets to express their gifts to God, not just the paid professionals. And I get to let go and allow the Holy Spirit to work and see amazing things happen that I never could have planned.

I had to learn that everything is practice! After years of stressing out about opportunities and experiences, I had to learn that nothing is pediatric brain surgery. Nothing in my life is as serious as my anxious, perfectionistic brain wants it to be. Every speaking engagement, article, retreat, Bible Study, worship gathering—all practice. By really living into this belief, I can be free to experiment, and I am free to be myself. I can relax. All of these are opportunities to learn. All are opportunities and gifts from God to grow and experience more of him. And again, I don’t have to be perfect. I have to just be open and give my best. And if it’s all practice, I have the freedom to fail.

I had to learn that I need people. By trying to do everything myself, I learned that I really need “partners in crime.” There is no way I can do everything. I need help, and I need to be okay with asking for it. Failing alone is useless because I have no one to process it with. Everyone needs someone to talk to, someone to process with, someone to cry with, and someone to commiserate with us—preferably someone you can say anything to; and this person might be way outside your worshiping community. That person can help us learn and grow through all the practice and all the failings and all the mistakes we will make along the way.

Finally, I have learned to let go and keep my hands open to receive. It has to be okay with me that the ministry is not mine. I have learned that I must hold things lightly. This kingdom stuff belongs to Jesus, and this gift of ministry is on loan, and it’s only for a limited time.

So I’ve learned to be grateful and to open my hands and receive the gift. I’m learning to relax, to rest, to release myself and other people to fail, and I’ve learned to “fail with style,” expecting Jesus to pick me up and dust me off. And I’ll be wiser for it.




Eric Iverson


At the age of 41, I feel qualified to speak on learning from failure. There have been plenty of instances, and I expect a few more. If you’re like me, then Mike Yaconelli's words will resonate: “God expects more failure out of us than we do.” Failure isn’t bad; in fact, if we are really dependent on God, we will be taking risks and not achieving what the world says we should. Failure to God looks different than it looks to us.

I fail because I am working toward my own glory more than I am working to bring glory to God. If we are honest with ourselves, this will be most of our realities. When we go about our daily activities, the motivator is usually making others happy, proud, satisfied, or justified in their signing your check every other week. I only attempt things I can do, not things that require God to show up. When we attempt things that can only happen if God is a part of them, and they are accomplished, then God will get the glory, not me. To be more useful, do more things that require God’s presence to happen.

I fail because I make the wrong decisions. I make the wrong decisions because I don’t listen to the right counsel. Those of us working in ministry wrongly equate serving God with understanding God and his Word. Hearing truth from others or teaching truth from Scripture does not mean we are filled with truth or are hearing truth from the Holy Spirit as we move forward in making decisions.

We are bombarded with lies all day, every day. Some are blocked, but I think most get through. Some are taken captive (2 Corinthians 10:5), but most grow roots. The way combat these lies is through the truth of the Word of God. The way we hear the Word of God is through spending time reading it (both silently and especially aloud—Ephesians 12:17) and letting it transform us (Romans 12:2). I have learned that I can’t trust myself and what I am hearing when I have not been constantly in the Word. The more I gain nourishment in the Word, the more likely the counsel I hear is purely the Holy Sprit’s, not from my flesh.

Lastly, I have learned not to quit after a failure has occurred. The great thing about failure is that we have the opportunity to learn from it. The longer I stick with it, the better chance I have to use that learning in a future situation. We feel so crappy about failure because we have so many of them in so many different areas. Stick and stay, fail and learn, grow and surrender control, and do what you do in a manner where God gets the glory for the outcome.

“Go, fail with gusto.” –Mike Yaconelli




Eric Iverson is a native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he lives with his wife Judy and their two children. A twenty-five year youth ministry veteran, Eric currently serves as the Director of Multicultural Integrity for YouthWorks, Inc., and has been part of two short-term missions summits at FYI. Eric consults, teaches, and trains nationally around issues of poverty, race, justice, and multi-ethnic ministry.


Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

Why is spiritual formation so often referred to as being on a path or journey?

Steve Argue


At a cursory level, I suppose it simply captures the reality in all of us that we are in process, in between, trying to find our way. Like many words (e.g., missional or authentic), this term risks becoming an ambiguous, hindering concept, co-opted into youth ministry subtexts. While youth workers use the word constantly in dialogue, teaching, and preaching, its meaning remains vague.

I do believe we’re called to a journey or pilgrimage, and I think each person must embrace its meaning before attempting to use it on others. What may be a hurdle for some is not the reality that spiritual formation is a journey but that journey (noun) calls them to journey (verb). Just because there is a journey doesn’t make someone a journeyer any more than acknowledging the existence of marathons make one a marathoner. Further, activity is not synonymous with journey any more than randomly surfing the web is research. Thus, I offer some signposts:

You know you’re on the journey when you’re moved by wonder. New territory heightens your senses as you experience something for the first time. Often the view is obstructed when one’s language, outlook, or assumptions blind one. Journeying people have the ability to see people and situations with continually first-time eyes. They believe that each situation, each person, every day is worth discovering more fully. Journeyers see. This is worship.

You know you’re on the journey when you embrace personal goals along the way. While journey is often referred to as the opposite of destination, this does not mean passive wandering in hope that the destination will appear. Do not hide behind the journey metaphor as an excuse for aimless wandering. Journeyers actively seek God, critically reflect on themselves, and discover that outcomes are likely not random events but fruit. Journeyers sweat. This is spiritual practice.

You know you’re on the journey when you’re laughing and crying. Journeyers get close enough to be moved by others’ journeys. Life is not lived at a safe distance, protected by power, theological dogma, or busyness. Journeyers find ways to come close enough to be moved to tears of joy and pain. They feel deeply, experiencing wonder and exhaustion. They recognize that there is nothing safe about their journey. Journeyers feel. This is solidarity.

You know you’re on the journey when you view the mundane as sacred. It’s the daily practices of love, charity, emails, conversations, spiritual practices, etc., that sustain the journey. These are the things that no one notices, yet this is the sacred stuff of journey. Leadership, vision, or events can blind journeyers from the smaller, more sacred, more essential things. Those who lose sight of this roll their eyes when receiving parents’ emails and get annoyed at “interrupting” phone calls. Journeyers live for the small, unnoticed acts. This is prayer.

You know you’re on the journey when you see yourself as the guest. Journeyers give up control. They come as visitors to every context, graciously learning, honestly seeking to understand, and resist forcing their agendas on others. Journeyers see every relationship as holy ground and every person as an image bearer. It’s been said that when one sees another as an opponent, the result is competition. But when one sees the other as a fellow journeyer, the result is partnership toward a shared goal where everyone risks change and transformation. Journeyers accommodate. This is self-giving love.

You know you’re on the journey when someone asks you how you’re doing and you say more than, “Busy.” Those who are on a journey have a story to tell, a discovery to share, an experience to express, and they can’t help it. Journeyers are beat poets and artists. This is witness.

You know you’re on the journey when you depend on others to journey with you. Those truly journeying recognize that they need the company of others. As numerous theologians have reminded us, the Christian life is personal but not private. The essence of Christian spirituality reflects the nature of the Trinity through journeying communities that perpetually tell the story of God in word and sacrament. Journeyers connect. This is the church.

You know you’re on the journey when you see faith as improvisation. When traveling, it’s tempting to overpack your creature comforts. Journeying is about packing less and leaving familiar things behind. It is more about improvising than making everything fit old paradigms. It exposes the limits of your faith categories and asks you to let go of your pre-packed theology, programs, and dogma. It asks you to reconsider your notions of God, world, and self, which will be both scary and liberating. Journeyers risk. This is faith.

You know you’re on a journey when you recognize that your pursuit is embedded in God’s pursuit of you. Journey is more than a self-focused endeavor. It is situated in the understanding that God is continually pursuing us, showing us the reality of our world where God’s love, grace, and recapitulation of you, others, and the whole world are happening already. At times you may lose your bearings, but you are never lost. Journeyers are embraced. This is the gospel.

Journey on, friends. Hope to bump into you along the way.

Lilly Lewin


Because that’s what life is. Life is a journey, and so is our life in Jesus. Life isn’t stagnant, and as much as we try to stay the same, to stay stationary, “the road goes ever on and on.” And as leaders, we need to talk about this because we tend to want to stay put, and we tend not to like or appreciate change.

Everyone starts at the same place. We all need God, and we are created to be in relationship with God. Many of us don’t see that for a long time. Some of us take detours along the way and meander in the wilderness or camp out in the valley or put down roots in the suburbs and just STOP, not wanting to go on the next leg of the adventure.

Some of us carry way too much stuff. Some of it we collect on purpose, and some of it is really heavy baggage that gets heaped upon us. Yet it all is a part of the journey. And the question is… Will we allow the journey to change us and transform us? Or will we have to continue to wander about in the wilderness? (Yet even in the desert God is there and continues to provide for his kids.)

With the journey of faith in mind, I often begin confirmation class with a handout. On the page, I’ve drawn a path. The road winds around, and there is a river with a bridge out; there are potholes on the road; there are mountains and valleys; there is a bus stop beside the path and a castle/cross/kingdom pic drawn at the end of the winding road. I ask my students to consider where they are on their spiritual journeys as they start confirmation (or as they start the new school year, or even the New Year).

Some might not even feel they are on the path at all. Some might feel they are in a pothole or stuck in the mud somewhere. That’s okay. We need to talk about that and allow them to see that God is in the process and with us in the potholes and even sitting beside us on the bench at the bus stop, even if we don’t see him yet.

Father Edward Hayes says that we are all “homeward bound” hobos—on the road home to be with Jesus (Lenten Hobo Honeymoon). We are all in process, and we all sometimes get stuck, and most of us take breaks along the way. And it’s okay to take baby steps.

Journey is how God has built the human experience. It’s unknown and ever changing. Life forces us to go forward; it’s the nature of time—birth, life, death; it’s what we’ve been given.

When it comes to spiritual formation, I really appreciate the metaphor of the journey. It gives me great hope. I’m not done yet. Nothing is set in stone. There is a path, there is a way, there is a road through. Best of all, I’m not stuck if I don’t want to be. I can take a new road and know that it will ultimately be safe because the King is with me. And for me, this is exciting! My life in Jesus really is an adventure.

“Thinplace… A pilgrimage of discovery and creativity” is the tagline on my business cards. Thinplaces are the places where one feels closest to God; where heaven and earth seem to touch. And pilgrimage involves going on a journey together, seeing what God is up to, and getting out of our normal routines. We travel together in order to discover something about ourselves; we travel together to understand and discover what God is doing and has been doing in our world. That’s why I believe in going on pilgrimage personally and with students.

We need to see, and we need to help our students see, how journey is woven into the entirety of Scripture. The children of Israel were pilgrims heading for a strange land. They didn’t really know where they were going when they left for Egypt. They really weren’t sure that it was a good idea anyway. And they definitely had doubts about their leader. They took major detours, building golden calves and complaining about food and water.

And even before that, Abram and Sarai were pilgrims, leaving their comfort zones and traveling to a place God would tell them. They too got confused and sidetracked along the way, sometimes with drastic results. But throughout their journey they were seeking to follow God and attempting to hear his voice and doing their best to listen to him.

And Jesus didn’t invite his disciples to sit down and memorize a bunch of rules. He invited them to follow him, to go with him and learn along the way.

It’s important for us to remember and for our students to know and understand that God has taken all his children on journeys of discovery and creativity; that life in Jesus doesn’t allow us to remain the same. Jesus asks us to get out of our boats and follow him. And if we choose to leave our nets, our lives will definitely never be the same.

Chris Folmsbee


First, I think it may be the healthiest way to view spiritual formation—as though each of us is unfinished, always becoming. So we refer to it as a path or journey to remind us of where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. Not only does it remind us of ourselves, it reminds us of others who have also embarked on the path toward becoming more like Jesus.

Second, to refer to it as a journey or path implicitly suggests movement. We aren’t a static people; we are a pilgrim people in exile, awaiting our future residence with God. A path or journey denotes progress or development.

Third, a journey is unpredictable, isn’t it? When was the last voyage or expedition you took that didn’t have some twist or turn—unwanted, maybe—but nonetheless, an arbitrary happening. Our path to formation is like this. It possesses sometimes an immediate and abrupt change in plans. We are who we are becoming to respond to those changes in plans. Ever been delayed at an airport? Had a flat tire? Lost your passport or had it stolen? All of these things contribute to our journey.

Fourth, a path has undulations. It has smooth and rocky soil. Paths have steep ascents and declines. Paths can be leisurely traveled or require great amounts of exertion. Is not the spiritual journey of becoming like Jesus very similar?

Fifth, a path or journey represents a course of action—a purpose. Spiritual formation isn’t passive; it requires certain practices and disciplines. Formation doesn’t just happen. Change may operate this way (except from a vending machine), but (trans)formation demands that we take up our cross, not simply sit and look at it.

Finally, just as a journey or path can open to other routes or passageways, connecting us to people along the way, so can our formation open us up to new dimensions of our soul, connecting us to people and places we’ve yet to discover.


Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

How has evangelism changed in the past two or three decades?

Mike King


Since I am in my 36th year of vocational youth ministry, I can respond to this question from the scope of my own experience. Evangelism was the primary focus of my early youth ministry efforts. To give more context to my evangelistic journey, see the September 7, 2010, Slant33 post. In the late ’70s and through the ’80s I gave little thought to any theological implications concerning the hard-hitting, strong-armed, manipulative, bait-and-switch, hellfire tactics I engaged in to get kids “saved.” Throughout the 1990s, this style of evangelism became increasingly disturbing, not only to me but also to hundreds of youth workers in my social network.

There are many reasons the practice of evangelism and the posture toward evangelism have changed so much in the last three decades. I’d like to think the primary reason for the change in my thinking about evangelism has been driven by deeper theological reflection concerning soteriology and ecclesiology. What does it mean to experience salvation? What role does becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ play in evangelism and salvation? How is evangelism connected to church? How does our society view proselytizing? What role does apologetics play in evangelism? How do we define apologetics in our current culture? These questions are really important, and the answers to these questions have dramatically impacted the issue of how evangelism is taught and practiced.

I strongly believe that the gospel, which means “good news,” has been defined and communicated in ways that has led to the good news not being genuinely and intuitively perceived as good news by most people outside the church. One of the reasons for this negative reaction has been the framing of the proclamation of our story of the gospel around a primary emphasis on how wicked and sinful human beings are.

We mistakenly corrupt the good news by starting the story of humanity in Genesis 3, with the fall. Yes, human beings are broken, but the story of humanity begins in Genesis 1, with God creating human beings in the image of God. Let’s tell the whole story! The idea that we have to place a hyper focus on our sinfulness in order to get people to respond to our evangelistic techniques does not work in our culture.

Several months ago I was verbally assaulted in a coffee shop by a young man involved in a college ministry who wanted to evangelize me. He started by asking if he could ask me a few questions that wouldn’t take more than “a couple minutes” of my time. His first question was, “Are you a good person?” I knew immediately where this was going. I replied, “Yes, I think I’m a good person.” He asked me if I was married. “Yes, for 35 years to my best friend.” His next question was, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”

I told him that I found his question, 30 seconds into our conversation, to be quite inappropriate and personal. For the sake of the conversation, I explained to him that my wife is the only woman I have ever been intimate with. He then proceeded to find a variety of ways to prove that I really was a bad person who certainly had lusted after other women and was therefore an adulterer (based on Jesus’ Beatitudes) who had no hope unless I prayed a prayer that he had written up, ready for vile sinners to recite. This came with the promise that I wouldn’t have to spend eternity in hell.

Being the fatherly person I’ve become and because of my love for college-age young people, I spent more than an hour engaging in a theological and biblical discussion with him. His head was spinning, but I could tell that his heart was opening to imagine a more Christian way to share and live the good news. He had been assigned to travel a half hour away from his church to do evangelism. I explained to him that he was in the neighborhood of my church community and that we were engaged deeply with people on a regular basis. I asked him if he were to lead someone to Jesus Christ, would he come back to build a relationship and disciple the new convert, or would that be the last time he would see that person? He acknowledged that he was only focused on getting people to “pray the prayer.”

This zealous, well-intentioned young man wanted to get people to believe what he believed about salvation, sin, and Jesus Christ. This methodology focuses on the progression of Believe, behave, and belong. If we can just get people to believe the gospel, they will begin behaving properly, and eventually they can belong to our churches.

When I think about how evangelism has changed in the last three decades, I think that the progression of Believe-Behave-Belong has shifted to Belong-Behave-Believe. God has instituted the church to bear witness to the glory of God and (like Israel) be a blessing to the world. Evangelism happens quite naturally when we are entrenched in faith communities that are actively caught up in cooperating with God’s compelling work of restoration—restoration between people and God; between people and their own brokenness; between people and other people; and restoration of all creation.

As our God invites us into the divine fellowship of the Trinity, so we should invite people to join us in community. In my church, we are intentional about being actively engaged in our community and inviting people to come join us, even before they believe or really know what to believe. In fact, they often actually begin behaving like Christians before they really grasp (believe) what it means to be a Christian. We engage in activities of justice that people want to participate in. We also embody hospitality. We throw parties and tell stories of love, life, transformation, and hope. Evangelism happens naturally when God’s people live astonishing lives as people of crucifixion and resurrection. We must recapture the essence of the gospel story that is truly good news for all who hear and see it.

Recently I have seen the following quote used frequently in blogs and books. This description of Christians, written in the late second or early third century, is found in the Epistle to Diognetus.

“For the Christians are distinguished from other people neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life, which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct, which they follow, has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive people; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking way of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners.”1

This quote is consistent with the narrative in the book of Acts that describes Christians as a community of people who do astonishing things. The citizens of Jerusalem viewed Christians favorably because they were generous people who demonstrated love and concern for their neighbors along with proclaiming the great good news. As a result, people were being added to the church every day. Christians who are lovers of people and bearers of a story that is perceived as good news by those outside Christianity create a compelling environment for evangelism. Embodied Christianity creates a portal to salvation and the church.

1 Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Church Library, Edinburgh 1867, Volume 1, pg. 307.





Lilly Lewin


Well, the scary thing is that I actually remember three decades ago and remember how we were doing evangelism back in the dark ages of the ’80s. As a high school and college student, I really wanted people to know Jesus, and I really didn’t believe that only people with “the gift” were the ones called to evangelize. Honestly, though, I never believed I had the gift, and I was much more about relational evangelism than the in-your-face kind. As a college student, I was in student leadership in Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. IVCF had a more relational approach to outreach and evangelism through small groups and mission trips, and that fit my personality better than cold calling or passing out tracts with the four spiritual laws written on them.

During my college years, my IVCF group sponsored a campus-wide outreach called Reason to Live that had nightly large-group gatherings in the basketball arena, packed out each night with students and faculty. Billy Graham was the speaker, but we only did an altar call on the last night, and we didn’t call it a crusade because, even back then, we felt that word was a negative.

The problem was long-term follow up. It too often didn’t happen. We told people the good news, asked them to receive Jesus, and had them “pray the prayer.” And then we left. We didn’t help these newbies learn to live out their faith or walk through the hard parts of the Christian life. And much too often, we didn’t talk about the hard parts at all. Sadly, after Reason to Live, our leadership team was so tired and we’d been working so hard for so long, that we didn’t follow up with many of the folks who actually filled out their little commitment cards.

Street preaching was also a part of campus life. Often you’d walk by at lunch and find a student preaching in the Pit outside the student union. The “preacher” got lots of hecklers but also a lot of listeners too. Last year, on the University of Cincinnati campus, a street preacher was confronted by the Christians on campus rather than the not-yet Christians. The Christians were verbally challenging the street preacher because they felt he wasn’t really preaching the love of God or forgiveness but a lot of legalistic condemnation, and they were discouraged by his style. This preacher didn’t care for dialogue.

There was an openness to the name Christian a couple decades ago that has been lost, thanks to negative press and negative impressions and comic stereotypes of believers in film and on TV. The impression of Christians, especially evangelical Christians, is that they are negative, judgmental, anti-everything, and this has shut down the openness of conversation on the street. People are skeptical, jaded, and a lot more afraid of fanatics. But they are also hungry to be listened to and to have authentic relationship. They just don’t want to be slam-dunked with Bible verses.

And since fewer and fewer people have biblical memory, it’s important not to make assumptions that someone actually knows John 3:16 or anything about the story of Nicodemus. Thus, in 2010, we have to start a lot farther back than we did in the 1980s. Even kids who have grown up in church don’t necessarily get that they have to respond to Jesus’ invitation and receive his gift of salvation. It’s more important than ever to take time with people and help them hear the story and learn how their own stories intersect God’s story.

Another change I’ve experienced in the world of evangelism is the difference between contemporary church and traditional church. Where many contemporary churches provide opportunities to accept Christ on a regular basis, more traditional churches rarely give their members the opportunity to accept Christ as their savior. They have you join the church, but there isn’t a traditional an altar call, so no one is ever invited to make a decision for Jesus. There is never an up-front “ask.” The assumption seems to be that if people want it, they’ll ask for it themselves.

But if we don’t ever ask the question, how will they even know there is a question? “Have you invited Jesus to be the Lord of your life? Have you received him as your Savior?”

Too often in the past, we led people through these questions but didn’t really stop to consider the consequences of accepting Jesus as Savior. It’s not all roses and perfection or big houses and fancy cars. Following God is hard work and can be painful.

What I see as most important in this age of relative truth is that I/we are living out our faith and actually loving people and serving them regardless of their response! Even if they are different from us, even when we are tired. Remembering that the way, the truth, and the life are Jesus—a person, not a doctrine. Faith in Jesus is a relationship, not just a belief system or a list of rules. And contrary to popular belief, the Holy Spirit is still at work and hasn’t lost any power! Now, that’s exciting!

People in 2010 want a holistic Christianity. They want to see how being a Christian actually makes a difference in one’s life now, not just in eternity. People in 2010 are focused on the present and how they are living now, not where they will be when they die. And people aren’t really worried as much about where they will go when they die. At least, not younger people. They are worried about getting into college and actually finding a job after that. Or whether they even want to go to college because what’s the point anyway? Everything seems so messed up. There is a real lack of hope.

Our emphasis needs to be different. It needs to be about living life to its fullest now, not just for eternity. And helping ourselves and others discover how to do this—doing it together in community!

Caring about what people need, learning who they are, not just dumping the Bible verses on them. Unlike in the ’80s, the question Where would you go, if you died tonight? is extremely outdated.

So in this new decade, I’m working on living missionally and building relationships with those I’d like to see experience the kingdom and know the King.




Dave Rahn


Evangelism has, apparently, embarrassed too many people in the Western church over the past few decades. A casual tour through any Christian bookstore reveals that this is a subject matter for the faithful that is out of favor. There isn’t much interest in marketing or teaching on the topic.

The salient feature of evangelism centers around proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. The good news is that salvation is available to any person on the planet because God loved us enough to step into history as a Jewish baby born in Bethlehem who would ultimately and willingly die on a first-century Roman torture device so that our sin need no longer separate us from God. The facts of this storyline were originally professed by hundreds of people whose faith in Jesus Christ so profoundly transformed their lives that they, in turn, changed their world. Many died as martyrs so that the truth of a resurrected Christ and hope of salvation could be known everywhere. They believed that the stakes of making this gospel known were worth forfeiting their lives.

Their faith in Jesus meant that they had acquired a new perspective on their earthly existence and were convinced that death no longer held any power over them. This freedom propelled them, and millions of Christ followers since, to fearless missionary efforts. They established communities of believers who could encourage one another for the task at hand—to make the one true God known to the nations.

Evangelism was and is the communication function assigned to the church. To be effective, it depends on the integrity of God’s people. The early church lived as compelling witnesses so that when they testified about the necessity of faith in Jesus they were not dismissed for incongruent lifestyles. They walked their talk, oftentimes gaining a favorable hearing from others due to the sheer attractiveness of their courage, dedication, and selfless, sacrificial love. It was clear that Jesus not only was their inspirational model, he fortified them with his indwelling power and constant presence.

I wonder if there aren’t a couple of distressing reasons that evangelism is no longer an urgent agenda for many churches. First, in our postmodern, truth-is-relative culture, are we still convinced that humans are utterly lost in their sin? Much of today’s preaching seems to deal with the common pain of our existence, certainly an issue the gospel addresses. But navigating the difficulties and trials of what life tosses at us is very different from zeroing in on our own culpability as sinners who cause damage because we are broken and incapable of self-repair.

A second fear I have is that many nominal Christians do not believe in the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ for salvation. There are sophisticated theologians who have painstakingly argued for nuanced ways to affirm that we are saved through Christ even if our faith is (mis)placed in some other source. It seems to me that this shifts the salvific burden to the quality of our faith rather than the certainty of Jesus Christ and the sole sufficiency of his redemptive work on our behalf. In any case, such inclusivity (at best) or universalism (at worst) certainly reduces the burden of our own evangelistic faithfulness.

I’m now prepared to offer a short and disturbing response to the question of the day. As someone who has walked with Jesus for 40 years, it’s my perspective that evangelism has changed over the past two or three decades. If we are truly dispossessed of convictions about how thoroughly sin wrecks everyone or how faith in Jesus Christ is the only solution to our lostness, it is easy to understand why evangelism is not the priority it once was in our churches. This shift in evangelism is not good.

There is one more factor at work, and I am sympathetic to how far-reaching it is for Christians today. We are increasingly “word weary” and do not, collectively, walk the talk as followers of Jesus. Evangelism of a few decades ago concentrated so much on getting the propositional truths of the gospel packaged well for delivery and understanding that we began to acquire a verbal formulaic faith. Our subsequent church structures and forms have been built to reinforce this pseudo-faith. We have bred Christians who may be strong in confession but weak in observable Christlike character. As a result, evangelism-as-explanation is left without Exhibit A.

Two streams of evangelistic approaches have evolved from this unhealthy landscape over the past few decades. One seeks to verbally steer would-be converts away from considering the poor evidence presented in the lifestyles of contemporary western followers of Christ. The other seeks to counter our image as slick talkers by shutting up and living well.

I view this shift in evangelism as a corrective and one that we still may not have dialed in just right.


Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

Have Evangelicals lost their minds? (I.E., Is the greatest threat anti-intellectualism?)

Lilly Lewin


I am a practitioner. I like to apply my faith—live it out rather than talking it to death. My relationship with Jesus is practical and hands on. I’m about loving and relating to people. I like to use practical things to pray with, like seeing a car and using it as a reminder to pray for a friend who drives the same model or helping out a single-parent family.

As a teenager, I wasn’t one to question or need proof for my belief. I’d experienced God and his presence, and that was enough for me. I know that many people need more. They want the proofs and the facts to back up all they believe. But sometimes too much head knowledge can be rough on the practicality and the faith part of faith.

Too much of anything tends to be detrimental. When a person becomes extreme—either overly intellectual or extremely anti-intellectual—evangelical faith and evangelical witness suffer. We cannot share the love of Jesus if we are constantly battling over who is right and who is wrong or who is in and who is out. If our faith comes down to a list, then we’ve really missed the relational factor of the Savior.

If we overanalyze and overthink faith, we can come to believe that we can figure out life on our own. God becomes a nice idea rather than a unique Creator who longs to be in a relationship with his creation. And I’ve definitely met those who feel they have out-thought God and no longer need him, especially some teenagers of late. On the other hand, God has given us great minds to use and great intellects to achieve brilliant things. And we need scholars and teachers and those willing to dig deep in words and in the lab to discover new things.

Evangelicals have always been the practical ones. Until recently, evangelicals were the ones making sure the kingdom was about the people who aren’t here yet; helping people find Jesus and get to know him in a personal way. But lately the extreme side of evangelicals seem to have lost their minds. They’ve allowed fear to control their actions; like wanting to burn Qur'ans or allowing a television personality to become a spokesmodel for God.

The true threat to evangelicalism is fear. And instead of being about what we are for, many people are now focused on what they are afraid of. My Bible says, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” Doesn’t yours? This fear of others has meant that we’ve lost a lot of compassion for the “least of these.” And doing unto others seems to have gotten lost too. And we are afraid of anyone or anything that is different from what we’ve experienced.

Fear makes us do stupid things. We overreact; we shut down; we choose to believe the worst rather than the best about a person or situation. We close ourselves off from people who are different and choose hate over love. Fear can also cause us to lose relationship both with others and with God.

Also, our love of TV and technology has increased fear. 24/7 media allows us to be overly aware of all that is going on all over the world all the time. And rather than using this knowledge as an inspiration to pray, the 24/7 nature of the news causes too many of us to panic. Hearing things over and over again causes confusion and anxiety. And entertainment media can also blow information out of proportion. Some people begin to believe that the world is out of control and that they have to do whatever it takes to defend themselves, their family, their faith. Many have become defenders, fighters, rather than peacemakers. And here may be where brains get checked at the door; thus, we forget that God is in control no matter what the news or the newspapers say. And we forget that God isn’t scared and really doesn’t need to be defended.

An additional negative about media is its ability to define people and things. Many of us have acquiesced to the media’s definition of who/what an evangelical is. Sadly, the word evangelical now is a label that isn’t positive. An evangelical is seen as someone who has the tendency to be “ultra-conservative, right-wing, tea party, afraid, and anti-everything.” Evangelicals too often are known for what they are against and who they are attacking, not for loving people or loving each other, or serving others or even serving one another. Why have we allowed the media to define and label, and why have we allowed the extremists to get all the press? Hum…

I’d rather see us embrace the evangelicalism that Menno Simons professed almost 500 years ago. He said, "True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant. It clothes the naked, it feeds the hungry, it comforts the sorrowful, it shelters the destitute, it serves those that harm it, it binds up that which is wounded, it has become all things to all people."

What would happen if I really live this out? Live out the Sermon on the Mount. Live out Simons’s quote. Not just love the Bible, not just believe the gospel, not just know and understand doctrine but actually love one another, actually love my enemies. And actually serve the least of these. And as I/we do, I/we will have less and less time to complain, less and less time to be fearful, and less time to attack others who believe differently. And the media will have a very different label for evangelicals.

Jim Hampton


Those of us who teach in seminaries often hear the old joke in which someone says, “How are things going at the cemetery?” I’m sure most of the time it is good-natured ribbing, but I also think it is often an indication of what people really think about seminaries (and about critical thinking in general). As one person put it to me when he learned I was a seminary professor, “Seminary is the place pastors go to lose their faith.”

However, we need to come to grips with the idea that being a critical thinker and being spiritually healthy are not polar opposites. In fact, as Dallas Willard reminds us, “We need to understand that Jesus is a thinker, that this is not a dirty word but an essential work, and that his other attributes do not preclude thought, but only ensure that he is certainly the greatest thinker of the human race: ‘the most intelligent person who ever lived on earth.’ He constantly uses the power of logical insight to enable people to come to the truth about themselves and about God from the inside of their own heart and mind” (quoted in James Sire, Habits of the Mind, p. 181).

Willard is building on the idea of St. Anselm in the 11th century: fides quaerens intellectum. "Faith seeking understanding." Anselm was not saying, "I understand, therefore I believe" nor yet, "I believe, therefore I don't need to understand." Rather, what he wanted to convey is that “Because I believe, I hunger to understand.” Learning feeds faith, and faith drives for fuller knowledge.

The problem, of course, is that being a critical thinker means we will sometimes (often?) have to consider ideas that seem to call into question previously held beliefs. Things we were taught in Sunday school, learned from our parents, or even heard from the pulpit are suddenly brought into sharp contrast with new information we’ve received. The reality is that this can be an extremely painful experience. No one likes to be told that what they have always held to be true may in fact not be. However, know that it is nothing strange, unusual, different, or unique. We who teach see it all the time. It is not your heart drying up. It is God trying to wean you off milk and onto more solid food. It's God trying to get you away from Snickers and Diet Coke and onto vegetables, fruit, and fiber.

This is a moral and spiritual process that many people—especially students of theology—pass through and which Paul Ricouer has described in three stages: first naïvete; critical awareness; and second naïvete.

Stage one is naivete. We have a simple, direct faith. We tend to see world in black-and-white categories. How do you know what to believe? What is right? The "authorities" tell us. Knowledge is absolute and unchanging—it is possessed by the authorities. Anyone who disagrees with the authority must be wrong. No compromise or negotiation. People raised in such environments often grow up to be stage-1 thinkers—authoritarian, dogmatic. However, when authorities disagree with each other (no matter what the area), it is deeply unsettling. How do you know which one to believe/follow? As soon as we have to explain why we believe one over the other, we have moved from stage-1 thinking. Just as Adam and Eve couldn't return to the garden, back to blind and uncritical acceptance of authority once they had tasted the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so it is nearly impossible to return to stage 1 after realizing its oversimplifying inadequacies.

Stage two is critical awareness. That's when we start learning stuff. Greek, Hebrew, doctrine, philosophy, church history. We start realizing that not all devoted believers say things the way we do or think the way we do. We learn that much in the Bible isn't what we thought, that some important passages have major unresolved issues, many passages have two or three genuinely possible and mutually exclusive interpretations. The result is a pain like no other. We feel stripped of our faith, our certainty. And since that stripping happened through the acquisition of new knowledge, we blame all new knowledge. At this point, we feel we have lost our first love. In Christian education, we call this the liminal phase.

We can retreat back to the first naïvete and resist any further learning, focusing on techniques and skills of ministry (except, of course, the skills of exegesis and theological analysis). We can try to unscramble the egg and get it back into the shell. People responding this way deny that their response is one of fear.

We can become cynics, masters of Christian learning and language but detached from all of it; we see it all as metaphors, images, nothing as certain or normative. A lot of scholars end up here and assume you can't have a profound and certain faith if you “really know the score." Unlike the retreaters, people in this reaction talk about their disillusionment and disappointment. They make no bones about their cynicism and even come to enjoy shaking people up. But there is a third option.

Stage three is a movement forward. We learn enough to become, once again, humble and small in our own sight. We laugh both at our early, naïve egotism (Satan, the prince of darkness and father of lies, is personally after me, so I must be important!) and at our critical cynicism (I actually thought I was smart enough to overturn a consensus of Christian truth, teaching, and experience). We realize that both naïvete and cynicism are immature.

This stage is often called second naïvete. We recover our simplicity, our directness in faith, but we realize that our outlook, however true, is at best provisional, certainly partial, and that God has a life beyond us. We are fearless in learning but also fearless in our believing. Oddly enough, people who are authentically in the second naïvete typically decline to say so. They merely see themselves as pilgrims, knowing what they know, wanting to learn more, and wanting to please God; but they leave the ultimate issue in God's hands, confident that he is good on his word, even if we ourselves are not always sure of the best way to interpret his word. We don't shrink from faith, but we know that "we know in part.“

Charles Wesley, the great Methodist hymn writer and theologian, is famously said to have stated, “Unite the two so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety.” Wesley understood that to be a biblical Christian meant that one had to find ways to synthesize our critical thinking with our spirituality. As we learn to submit our intellect and our heart to God, only then we will discover what Jesus meant when he stated, “The truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

Scot McKnight


Mark Noll, the story goes, was irritated with the direction of American evangelicalism’s premier institution, Wheaton College, and opined publicly in a book-length rant, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. It was a good read because there is an undeniable anti-intellectualism among many evangelicals.

I see it in an utterly baffling observation like this: “What’s all this about the Trinity? I don’t see the word Trinity in my Bible.” Or I see it in American Christians who, in what can only be called a cocksure manner, utter strong words on behalf of the Tea Party or Republicans or Democrats but, when asked about the simplest of explanations of an economic theory, have absolutely no idea how the economy works. For some it’s as simple as an ATM: put in numbers, out comes money. An economic theory is at work and is perhaps the single most ignored factor in political discourse.

But my ire is most provoked when I hear such banalities from the lips of pastors and preachers who, though they are seeking to appeal to the populist audiences to which they minister, are propagating the sort of superficiality that erodes our faith and deprives the intelligent parishioners—and there are more than most care to recognize—of growth and exploration and, sometimes, of a faith substantive enough to survive the withering impact of intellectual questions.

But we need to be honest: The intellectual life is not for all; not all care about how Trinity and atonement connect; not all care to think theoretically about the design of the state in ancient Israel and how it was impacted by the New Testament expansion into a global movement and then to consider how that might be best lived out in our world. Nor do all care to explore the subtle and brilliantly attractive connections of faith and science. And not all that many want to explore Charles Taylor’s theories of modernity and secularism. Let’s admit that perhaps the majority don’t care about such things. There’s no more reason to make everyone into intellectuals than to make all of us baristas.

But some people are intellectuals, and it is the calling of the Jesus Creed to love God “with all our minds.” This means the church—every church so far as it is able—must muster resources and make possible the exploration of the mind of God, the mind of Christ, and the mind of the church when it comes to intellectual questions.

Here are a few intellectual questions of our day, and a church that doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of the questions and the integrity required to tackle them seriously is irresponsible and in need of repentance.

I think of the massive shift occurring among our young adults about how to think Christianly while embracing some form of evolution. Most of my students don’t even question evolution but have profound questions about how to think through theological topics and what the Bible says in light of their embrace of evolution.

I think of the serious thinking being done today on the relationship of the state and the church. There is an instinct for many simply to align with a political party, and often enough the instinct is barely informed. But there are many today who want to ponder how to think Christianly about state, about economy, and about the kingdom of God in our world—and how the kingdom impacts the former. James Davison Hunter’s recent book, How to Change the World, is one sophisticated probing, and many crave conversation about these topics—and often from the angle of a particular expertise: economists have things to say, business folks have perspective… I could go on.

And I think of historians who want to know what Jesus was like in his Jewish world and won’t stand for banal analogies; they want to know who wrote Isaiah and are unconvinced it is a simple one-guy-did-it-all approach, and they want to work that into their doctrine of Scripture.

And I think of many who are deeply aware of how context and history and heritage shape what we believe, and they are aware that the Reformation’s questions and answers, while profound and valuable, are not ours—and they have new questions that transcend those questions and those answers, and pastors who want to regurgitate Reformation theology and pretend that is enough simply don’t get the job done for them.

And I think those who are studying contemporary culture recognize it is post-Christian and know that old methods don’t connect well. They want to explore a missiology for a new day.

So what can we do? Let me make three suggestions:

First, pastors need to recognize, legitimate, and support the value of the intellectual life. This means, at times, exploring some intellectual themes in sermons and classes. Some in churches like to hear a reference to Aristophanes and Shakespeare and even Richard Rorty.

Second, churches need to provide a safe place for intellectuals in a church community to gather with others, think about serious topics, and ponder away at issues that may not find resolution or that may—and here’s the reality—lead to answers that aren’t as safe as many pastors might prefer. Truth will win, so let’s work at it and not be afraid.

Third, intellectuals in churches need to demand that their pastor respect the intellectual life and that their churches provide a forum for intellectual endeavors. There is no reason why churches can’t invite Francis Collins to speak or ask a professional archaeologist to speak about recent discoveries. Again, the fields are ripe for harvest. Who will see the fields?


Comments (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

How do the ways in which we respond to failure shape and form our lives?

Steve Argue


Dear Failure,

It’s been awhile since I’ve written. You’ve probably liked it that way. But I’d like to take a minute and define our relationship. Here’s where I think we stand:

You’re my worst nightmare. I’ve been told all my life that if I believe in something hard enough, I can accomplish anything. I feel your pressure to accomplish. Anything. Everything. As soon as I experience success, you’re right there next to me, saying, “Bet you can’t do that again.” Or, “nice job this time, but you’ll need to wow them more next time.” Or, “Way to go, but do you think it was good as so and so?” So there you are, warping my perspectives, even my successes, in my American context that fuels your convincing fire.

You’re way too big. I want to get rid of you. I try to pretend you are wimpy, that you’re just an obstacle to overcome or a lemon that can be harnessed into lemonade. Rugged individualism tells me that what won’t kill me will make me stronger. Yep, I eat failure for breakfast. The problem is, you never go away. There always seem to be more obstacles. More lemons. I’m getting tired (and my bladder is really full).

You don’t shut up. My personal history has preserved your message. I try to shut you out so I can’t hear your recurring words speaking to me through familiar voices from my past. I pretend that it doesn’t bother me, but these voices find their way to some of the deepest parts of my soul, whispering your bitter words. “Your failure defines you.” “You may believe you’re fine now, but I know what you’re really like.” “Those good things you do look great, but I’m making you do them out of fear of me, out of anger to prove me wrong. You can’t shut me out with your good deeds; I’ll use them to make me even stronger, to haunt you even more.” How do I get you out of my head? Or is it impossible? It’s like someone telling me not to think of the color blue.

You’re an evangelist. You have even succeeded (failure is successful!) by getting me to believe in a different god and savior. I’ve been lulled into treating god as the one who makes the pain go away or gets me the job or makes it all better. You’ve convinced me that happiness is the greatest goal and that struggle isn’t real; it’s just “God closing the door because there’s something bigger for me.” What if struggle is the bigger thing?

Honestly, I get frustrated with God that God doesn’t just take you out. After all, aren’t Christians supposed to live victorious lives? Small groups would be so much more popular if people didn’t need to share their failures. The god of your church has people who are always “fine,” with a few daring to ask others to pray that they “have more patience.” You’ve succeeded to lull me and our Christian communities into groups that avoid talking about you for fear we find out that you really exist in all our lives. Therefore, we hide from each other and from ourselves. Nice job.

You exist. I don’t want to believe in you, but I’m choosing to. In fact, I’m going to love you. Yes, you’re lovable. Maybe, if I can embrace you, I’ll understand you and put you in your proper place. Therefore, I’m going to choose to think about you this way:

You are a reminder of my limitations but not a definer of my person. I know I can’t do everything perfectly, but I am called to live faithfully. I will not let you define who I am, but I think you can help me remember that I’m not made to do it all.

You are my limp, not my cancer. You highlight my natural limitations that aren’t burdensome but liberating. This freedom allows me to celebrate, not compare. It allows me to extend grace to others and to myself. You’re a limp that reminds me, not a cancer that kills me.

You are my teacher, not my excuse. I will seek to learn from you. You have something to tell me when I do experience you in my life. I will resist seeing you as an exception to blame someone else or excuse my responsibility.

You are my cheerleader, not my heckler. When you remind me that I have failed, I will choose to hear, “Good job, you took a risk!” rather than, “Told you so.” You are my gauge that celebrates risks and keeps me from playing life too safe.

My sense is that you’re not going to like this letter because it’s written directly to you, and I think you prefer a more stealthy relationship. My hope is that if I can be honest with you, I can be honest with others and get on living life the way I’m created to live it. See you soon.

Your friend,

Steve

Lilly Lewin


I fail a lot. I fail at being a good mom, a good wife, at saying “I’m sorry,” at thinking of others before myself. I fail at paying attention to what God is doing, to the needs around me. I fail at remembering names, and I always fail at remembering numbers. I also fail at making deadlines…a lot. Just ask all my editors.

Let me just say loudly, I hate to fail. In fact, I’ve spent most of my life trying hard—really, really hard—not to fail, yet I’ve been programmed most of my life to equate doing anything wrong, any little screw up, missed opportunity, or even a missed phone call or deadline, with failure. My view of failure has been one of the primary parts of my life. If we’re going to be friends, then you need to understand that this is how I see the world.

Is it possible that we can relate to all people simply on how they define failure?

My first full-time ministry job left me feeling like a failure. I was on a large church staff, my husband was also on staff, and it was my first job back after having a baby. At that point in my life, it wasn’t easy for me to tell the truth to people in authority and not easy for me to say I had a problem with something. So I wrote a letter to my supervisors and told them my frustrations with my job and why my job needed to change in order for me to continue doing it. I wasn’t looking to leave my job; I was just getting stuff out on paper. This was back in the dark ages of the early ’90s, before email. The result of that heart-pouring letter was…I got fired.

I felt like a complete and utter failure. The way it was handled was horrific, and we had to move because we couldn’t afford to live on just one salary. But more than that, I questioned my call to ministry. Had I totally missed it?

Twenty years later, I can safely say that I know myself better, and I know what Bill Cosby means when he says, “I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

What is it about failure we just don’t like? Or we just can’t stand? I hate to fail, yet I fail all the time. Doesn’t that seem stupid? I failed at getting this post in on time. How we define failure and who defines failure determines our view of our lives; and how we learn to love or hate it.

Many of us equate failure with pain. If I fail this test I’ll get in trouble with my parents, or I won’t make the grades I need to go to the college I want. Or, If I fail to pull off this event, this retreat, I won’t get the raise or get the props or get the praise I want/need.

I was programmed to strive for perfection in my family of origin. I was the performing firstborn who tended to do the right things and in the right order. I was driven to perform well; not to fail.

The sad thing is that my drivenness came from a dad who said, ”It’s a 99, why isn’t it 100?” when I showed him my report card. So I’ve spent much of my life striving for that 100.

Yet we all know in our heads that only God makes 100s; people do not (not to mention that God doesn’t have a big grade book in the sky). People mess up, screw up, and fall flat on their faces. All the time. It’s what people do. It’s one of the things that makes us human. The beauty is that we can get up and start over. We get to say we’re sorry and start over.

That’s one of the best gifts I can give my kids and my family, both at home and in my church—to say I screwed up, I was wrong, I handled that badly. And on my good days I even get to acknowledge that it might take them a while to forgive.

How we define failure and who we’ve allowed to define failure for us determines how we view failing. We allow other people to define failure for us—most often our parents. Or it’s the invisible “they.” If “they” define failure for us, then we can blame them and not take responsibility.

We tend to run from failure because we equate failure with pain. And we define pain as bad, instead of as a gift. We believe failure is bad, not good. If we believe that failure equals pain, then we will do whatever it takes to avoid failing because we don’t want to hurt. But what if pain is not my enemy? Pain can be my friend. Wouldn’t this change a lot in how and why we do things?

What definitions are we passing along to our kids and students? What are our everyday definitions of failure, and how are these affecting how we live our lives?

• We need to redefine failure so we don’t see it as only painful.
• If we are free to fail and free of the pain we feel when we fail, then all bets are off. What if we engage our common humanity, accept failure as just human, normal?
• We—you and I—get to choose how a mess-up affects us.

Is failure is an opportunity? Can we see failure as a gift, not a curse?

In the movie A Good Year, Uncle Henry Skinner says to young Max, “You’ll come to see that a man learns nothing from winning. The act of losing, however, can elicit great wisdom. Not least of which is, how much more enjoyable it is to win. It’s inevitable to lose now and again. The trick is not to make a habit of it.”

Andy Root


Failure really is no fun, but it is entertaining. I bet we could create quite a list of failures in ministry—failed games, failed events, etc. Some of my favorite youth ministry stories are stories of failure.

Like the story of my student Derek, who decided one night at a lock-in to play the game “break-in.” The idea was simple: young people divided into teams with the first team to break into the church winning. The kids loved it, but after a neighbor saw some kids trying to pull open a window, she called the police. My student, the intern youth pastor, next saw his student in the back of a squad car. That’s a failure, and a funny one.

Such failures are embarrassing and difficult in the moment but are great fodder for entertaining stories because they reveal that we’re human and that we’re not perfect. Embarrassment has an uncomfortable way of reminding us that we’re fallible. We love to hear of others’ embarrassment because it assures us we’re not alone with our failures and finitude—and maybe it’s just plain funny.

Now, of course, failure can be amusingly funny, but it also can be no joking matter. Leaving a group of young people because of a failure of discretion, or realizing that you failed to properly interpret your fit can be very, very painful. There are so many people who have hard feelings toward the church after working in it. And it is so painful because these failures forcefully remind us that we’re human—in fact, that we’ll die.

Failure feels like death; it can communicate that we’re not worth much; we might as well be dead because we’re worthless—at least at this task. And this often cuts even deeper because we’d felt like we were called to this task, like God had assigned it to us, and we either failed God or God failed us—either one is deeply painful.

So how do we deal with failure? I hesitate to answer this, for fear that I’ll start sounding like some self-help loser, trying to convince people that “failure is just the first opportunity for a new success” or something lame like that. Because anyone who has experienced real failure knows it is only the dark pit of hell. Plus, that sentimental crap is almost always the speech of winners; only the person who has mastered success can look back nostalgically at her failures. For those in failure, it’s just a heavy burden.

And what’s interesting is that the biblical narrative is filled with losers and failures. And not as counter examples, not as signs for why you should follow Yahweh so you can avoid failure. Rather, the crazy thing about the biblical text is that its central figures—its heroes, if you will—are failures. From infertile Sarah and Abraham to stuttering Moses to little David to the peasant Jesus from Godforsaken Galilee. It seems that the God of Israel likes losers; after all, Israel itself is qualified to be God’s people because they are small and insignificant. They are failures.

So I want to make an argument that I hope won’t be misconstrued or confusing—but I think the God of Israel is a God who embraces failure, who actually uses failure as the fuel for God’s own action in the world. I know, I know that this could be misused or misunderstood, opening up to some pretty crappy abusive practices—but honestly, so can making success the measure of God’s activity. So let me explain.

Throughout the biblical story, you have a God who acts from what theologians call ex nihilo, out of nothing. What this means is that God is not dependent on anything in creation or humanity to act, that God creates life out of nothing. Not only is creation ex nihilo, but from the ex nihilo of Sarah’s womb comes Isaac; from the ex nihilo of the virgin womb comes Jesus. God takes what is nothing, what is dead, and brings forth life.

I’m actually quite convinced that the Christian story is the story of a God who takes all that is dead, placing Godself in death, so that life might spring ex nihilo, out of death. God, throughout the biblical story, moves from death to life. If that is so, it is no wonder that this God, who places Godself in death, uses failures and losers—those with nothing, those knowing nothingness—to be God’s instruments and vehicles in the world.

So how do you deal with failure? Not by looking on the bright side; that’s just an optimistic candy coating that makes the failure go down easier. No, the way to deal with failure is grieve the hell out of it; to feel it; to be angry about it; to cry and cry; to be brave enough to get inside it and know it; and then, to take it and seek God in it because this God takes what is dead and brings forth life. The way to deal with failure is to trust in prayer, anger, hope, and fear that the God of failure will move out of our failure. Don’t make failure good; it isn’t (even the funny stuff). But in its horror, in its pain, seek God, knowing that this God promises to be present where there is failure, suffering, and death. This God takes failure into Godself so that from the darkness of reality, a light of life might break in.


Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

Culture. Consumeristic Church

Respond to this statement: The church has become consumeristic. 

Steve Argue


Youth Ministries need warning labels. I’m serious. And these warning labels shouldn’t be like the auctioneer speed-talking heard at the end of cholesterol-reducing commercials that promise that you can eat ribs and still lose weight, or the fine print on leasing the car of your dreams that you can’t afford. It should be right in the middle, in plain sight for everyone to see and understand that the gospel we’re attempting to live into will mess everyone up.

For parents… Warning: Sending your child to youth group has the potential of derailing your family’s priorities and will challenge you to articulate your own faith to your kids.

For youth workers… Warning: Serving in this ministry is essential for your own spiritual formation. You need these students as much as they need you. Doubt, insecurity, struggle, and pain will disorganize your neat life should you dare to enter in.

For students… Warning: If you participate in this youth group, we’ll show how far the rabbit hole goes.

We have a problem, however. Youth ministries need people to legitimize their existence. As a result, most of our recruiting toward students rides on sound bites of “fun.” Most of our communication with parents comes out of spin-doctor techniques that seek to impress parents in order to pay for our retreats and, let’s be honest, our salaries. Most of our recruiting for youth worker volunteers markets to support-a-child techniques, where “If you just give five hours a week to this child, he will worship you, leave her life of crime, and not end up in hell.” And if you think I’m exaggerating about any of these points, check out the product tables at most youth ministry conferences.

Now, I recognize that the issues I’m pointing out have, in some way, been perpetuated by my own ministry practices. So I’m calling all youth ministry types to own the problem with me. How have we, likely through good intentions, perpetuated a consumeristic culture within our churches and youth ministries?

Is it possible that ministry has conditioned students, parents, families, adults to church shop and use Priceline.com techniques to find the best returns on their giving dollars? Again, if you think this a generalization, simply look at the work of Christian Smith (Souls in Transition) or Tim Clydesdale (The First Year Out) and recognize that most religiously oriented young people who have gone through their adolescent years have adapted an American form of religion that is fueled by consumerism, self-fulfillment, and individualism. It’s a hard question to ask, but could this be the fruit of our labor?

The response to this question isn’t regressing to just preaching the Bible, or talking more about sin and hell. But it isn’t blindly repeating what we’re doing either. Rather, I’ve been inspired by the works of James Fowler and Sharon Daloz Parks to recognize that faith isn’t merely something we possess, get, acquire, gain/lose, or consume.

Faith is something we do. It is something that is dynamically changing as each person learns to navigate her/his connection with self, others, life, and God. It calls for all to be invited to participate within a community where everyone faiths together. One must make time. Value it above other things. Be willing to grow, even to change. All of these are the antithesis of consumerism.

Warning labels must also be placed all over the church too.

Podcasts… Warning: Thanks for listening to our messages, but it’s only part of the narrative our community proclaims. Only listening to this (without action on your part) will produce spiritual malnutrition.

Pews… Warning: If you sit here, you will likely be moved down one seat, across the world, or toward someone you don’t know or like.

As Annie Dillard puts it, “It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews” (An Expedition to the Pole).

Straw hats, flip flops, lattes, smart phones, retreat commercials, volunteer guilt trips, fun, convenient downloads. These are not bad things in and of themselves. But might they be symbolic for a consumer-laden faith we’re passing on? If so, what are we willing to do about it?

Maybe we have to reintroduce warning labels to stem consumeristic hegemony in our faith communities. Have more? Please share…









Lilly Lewin


Ya think? Our culture encourages us to buy, not to borrow. We are encouraged to buy our own rather than sharing something with others. We are encouraged to buy extra because we might run out.

We are trained to consider ourselves and our needs before the needs of others, unless the others happen to be on the other side of the world in a global crisis. Thus, we miss loving our neighbor next door or around the block, and we miss sharing our abundance or receiving the generosity of others.

How quickly we in church land get caught up in the mentality of the mall. We get caught up in spend and consume rather than the basics of the kingdom. Jesus invites us into a different kind of world, where the last shall be first and the least will be greatest. Jesus, and later Paul, invites us to get rid of the stuff that so easily weighs us down. Yet we’ve all seen it, and many of us have gotten sucked into the vortex of money=power=success, or bigger is better.

Bigger churches mean more givers and having bigger youth ministries. Bottoms in chairs equals success and might even get you a raise. In American church land we’ve been encouraged to consume—to find the best teaching, the best music, the best children’s ministry. As a youth pastor the first question I’m asked is, “How big is your group?” rather than, “How solid are your kids in serving the poor?” or, “How are your kids’ prayer lives?” We all know that’s not what God looks at. He doesn’t look at the outward appearance but at the heart. God’s kingdom invites us to give, serve, love, be thankful. And when we serve the least of these, we are actually serving him.

How did everything get to be about the Benjamins? How did church become about money, getting people to give more to the building fund, or even to missions, but not necessarily giving of themselves? We don’t want to actually get our hands dirty. Going downtown is too dangerous. These are excuses we’ve all heard.

In consumer land, we are successful if we have lots of stuff. And so it is in church. In church land we are honored for having more stuff, or if our church parking lots are filled with nice cars and SUVs. The people on the board tend to be the upwardly mobile and part of “the buck stops here” crowd. And just look at many of our church buildings. They have become bigger and better and filled with more choices, from Starbucks or fair-trade coffee and food courts, to WiFi and gyms; some churches are mini malls of activity. In consumer land, we’ve come to expect the best, so we expect our churches to be polished and to provide us with the coolest experiences possible. We expect world-class music, whether it’s from a choir or band. And shouldn’t our band sound at least as good as Crowder? Sadly, this all leads to performances rather than worship, but that’s another post.

We’ve created and become gourmet Christians. We choose churches based on our favorite flavors and our current appetites. We are used to choices in every other area, so when it comes to going to church, we can choose to worship on Saturday night at the mega church up the street because they have the best worship band; we can go to the fill-in-the-blank church on Sunday morning because their pastor is the best Bible teacher; and head off to the local Episcopal church on Sunday night to experience a Taizé or U2 Eucharist service. And we might add a small-group Bible study on Wednesday night because we need more food and fellowship.

As gourmets, we enjoy the flavors of the moment, but then we see only the great meal provided and miss out on the messiness of the preparation and cleanup that are the real life of a church community. As gourmets we don’t necessarily have to commit; we just consume.

Do we need more things? Do we need more to buy? Really? Why is it that selling everything and giving it to the poor seems like a nice idea but way too hard in 2010? Did Jesus really mean it? And as I pack to move, I sure have a lot of coats. What about that “have two coats, give one away” verse?

In consuming too much, we lose sight of being grateful and content with what we already have. We need more things to make us feel safe, current, relevant, and cool. I’m guilty. I like my iPhone a lot. I like to shop at the Gap over Goodwill. I wasn’t trained or encouraged to live simply. I battle having expensive taste with the knowledge that so many have very little. Compared to Warren Buffet, I’m nothing, but compared to 99.9% of the rest of the world, I’m a millionaire.

I admit that I need help. We all need help to get out of consumer land. Can we help ourselves and our church communities get into living in the kingdom? What if we thought smaller rather than bigger, better? What if we started with loving our neighbors next door and sharing our stuff with them—like the lawnmower or a ladder or even a vacuum cleaner? Could we borrow rather than buy the things we need? Especially items we only use once or twice a year? Could we adopt a family all year long, not just at Christmas? What if we started a thankful list, writing down things we’re grateful for and at the end of the week take time to read them all out loud, either on our own or as a family?

What if we encouraged each other to stay in the homes we have, rather than upgrading to larger ones, in order to help someone else who doesn’t have a home or who needs help with home improvements and cannot afford them? We can all spend less, serve more, and be grateful for what we do have, even the small things, and even if it’s not as great as the guys next door.

Brooklyn Lindsey


There seems to be a lot being said on the consumeristic nature of the church. I read a lot about being less consumeristic, both as an individual and as a church. I hear the more recent call of David Platt, Shane Claiborne, Zach Hunter, and others. I can’t shake the life and message that Mother Teresa gave to us. They all say in different words that our love for God should be manifested in how we respond to the “other” in our lives. Then there’s Jesus, the most compelling voice for us to turn away from the tendency to be consumerist and to love sacrificially.

But I work in a church, and I attend churches every week (including my own) where our goal is to provide comfort. It’s not included in our mission and vision, but it’s inherent in our conversations. We don’t want parking to be bothersome. We can’t have too many bodies in the hallway. We need to call the paper we hold a worship folder (not a bulletin). Our series need to appeal to our audience. The website should have a certain level of immediacy and up-to-date graphic design.

We do these things so people can be connected to the hope found in Christ—and I’d say that most of these things are good. At the same time, we tend a culture where if someone isn’t happy, they simply find a church that makes them happy. I struggle with this. I have struggled in churches, and I’ve left them. I am the consumer culture, and I’m a pastor.

I have more questions than answers. I don’t know how to have meaningful conversations about this, conversations that yield change. I would say that I love to speak justice language, as long as it means I can still have an iPhone, iPod, and YouVersion Bible. As long as we can still have passion-like worship services, AC, and coffee in the foyer. This is me being honest.

Can you tell I’m confused?

My husband and I did our internships in a large Nazarene church in Campinas, Brazil. It was an experience I’ll never forget. Over a thousand people gathered each Sunday. It was a large building with good pastors and good people helping out. But the thing that spoke to me most was how they shared the gospel without a parking lot. They didn’t purchase surrounding buildings to be able to tear them down and create space for cars. They simply expected that the church—if it’s truly the church—would find a way to worship regardless of the amount of land they could acquire. It spoke to this heart, just beginning in ministry, and I’ve wrestled with it ever since.

Nearly three years ago, Pastor Craig Groeschel posted a blog in a series on the future of the church, titled More Missional, Less Consumeristic.

He states, You might ask, “What is a Consumer-Christian?” In our church, it is the person who “church shops” for a church that meets his needs. Church is all about them. When the church doesn’t work for them anymore, they shop for another one.

He later goes on to share what the church will be like (or should be like): The future church will be made up of believers who:
• Are sick of living in material comfort while millions starve to death.
• Make money to give more than to consume.
• Believe in the power of prayer and fasting.
• Are willing to suffer for the cause of Christ.
• Will be engaged in missions both locally and internationally.
• See it as their role to lead people to Christ.
• See it as their role to help people in need.

I read things like this knowing that other cases are being made every day to be a kingdom church, not a “me” church.

I want to respond to this “future church” and say with my whole heart that I am a part of it. It’s just taking me some time to figure out how that can happen.

There isn’t much closure for me here. This sacrificial and others-minded life grows up as we walk with Christ, and it infuses purpose in the here and now, even if my current here and now seems a little bit far from the future I hope for. But isn’t that the very essence of our walk with Christ?

Christians should be known for their ability to become. We should be known for the ability to assess our situation in the light of Christ and respond.

Maybe not having an answer is a good answer as long as we are obeying the call of Christ that’s spoken through the Word of God, reinforced in the light of tradition, shared in the body of Christ as we celebrate and pray and reason together with the intellect that God has given to us all. And there’s even room for God to come in and speak to us unexpectedly, to illuminate our understanding with his Holy Spirit. Wow, thank God for the help we have!

The church is consumeristic. But we are also forgiven, growing, becoming, and being sent every day to change and respond to God in our world. Little steps are good steps. Big steps are good steps. Responding to Christ with total abandonment is good. Regardless of where we are, God is there with us, helping us and giving us peace when we don’t have answers.

Lord, I cry out to you as a young pastor who knows little of what you want for the church. My prayer is that you would help us be a church that loves, that will continue to serve those who are far from you as well as those who walk close to you. Help us grow in our knowledge of who you are so we can better understand who we are. Forgive us when our consumer hearts consume us. Replace those desires with your desires and we’ll respond in your strength. Help us think of others in our language, in the use of our time, in our planning, in our spending, and in our giving. We want to be transformed.

Suggested Reading: Freedom of Simplicity (Richard Foster)


Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

Leadership.Empowerment vs. Encouragement

What is the difference between empowering people and encouraging people?

Danny Kwon


The question of empowering people versus encouraging people cuts to the heart of my ministry philosophy and how I wish our ministry would function as far as it concerns our leaders, volunteers, and student leaders. People always say I am a great encourager. However, I have found that true encouragement can be found in empowering others. My studies in organizational leadership from the corporate world have helped me refine how I practice empowerment in the church.

In quoting W.A. Randolph, Fred Luthans, a scholar in organizational behavior, states the definition of empowerment as “recognizing and releasing into the organization the power that people have in their wealth of useful knowledge and internal motivation.” Another scholar defined it as “releasing the knowledge, experience, and motivational power that is already in people but is being severely underutilized.” These definitions of empowerment from the corporate world help one begin to understand what empowerment is all about and why and how we need to empower people in the church. For me, this ultimately means that I am nurturing ways in which others can lead within our ministry and use their God-given gifts for the church.

There are other vital elements of empowerment from the corporate world that can be applied to the church and relate to nurturing others to lead. For example, trust is a key issue in relation to empowerment. Those who write about empowerment in the corporate world note that trust is a two-way street where managers and employees have to believe in each other. They also discuss trust in reference to releasing the power within an individual. In doing so, they state how management must ensure individuals that they will be trusted within the empowerment process.

Finally, trust also comes from the sharing of vital information that equips employees to be informed to make important organizational decisions and lead themselves. Within a youth or any ministry setting, it is the difference between a ministry being just (youth) pastor centered and having other leaders, such as volunteers, lay leaders, and student leaders who are empowered in trust to lead and execute the ministry as shepherds also, rather than being spectators.

When trust is practiced with those we empower, we are also breeding loyalty to organization. As one business executive put it, empowerment is an act of trust that functions positively to breed loyalty in an organization. Perhaps then, engagement is a more precise definition of the loyalty that results from empowerment. Nancy Lockwood, another scholar, notes in relation to this that “employees who are highly involved in their work processes, such as conceiving, designing, and implementing workplace and process changes, are more engaged.”

Many ministries have issues with retaining effective volunteers. Perhaps empowerment can be one way to breed a loyalty of effective volunteers. It has surely helped in our ministry. We have volunteers who serve over the long haul because they feel a real sense of loyalty because they are empowered leaders.

Finally, organizational design is also a key element of empowerment. If an organization is to nurture empowerment, then it must provide the framework for it to flourish. Ministries that are more vertical or top-down in nature do not promote empowerment. However, horizontal organizations and leadership structures speak to ways that an organization can promote empowerment. Hence, as far as ministry in a local church, this means that ministries must be led by more than just the head youth pastor or lead pastor. Rather, leadership must be spread among different avenues and people.

Similarly, ministries can be designed to foster empowerment in their organizational design so that volunteers, lay leaders, and student leaders will be vital parts of the leadership of the ministries. Ultimately, this may be challenging to some leaders who have been engrained in a top-down leadership structure. However, if this is not done, the empowerment of others will never be nurtured, and the gifts and talents of many will not be utilized.






Helpful Resources:
Immerse: A Journal of Faith, Life and Youth Ministry

Lilly Lewin


I had coffee with a good friend this week who is an assistant pastor at a church. Recently their staff team went on a “retreat” together. As soon as they got in the van, the senior pastor began to cast the vision for the fall and upcoming year. Sadly, the tasks and goals lists just kept coming. There was little praise or encouragement for the year just finished, and there was no dialogue about problems and hurdles for the upcoming year.

My friend thought they’d get a chance to reconnect personally, get encouraged, and have some fun. He was expecting a year-in-review, some honest dialogue about what they’d been doing, and perhaps a little empowerment to get them going on the next things. But the entire weekend was task oriented, not relationship based.

The sad thing about most ministries is that we are too often asked to do our jobs and just “git ’er done”…with very little encouragement, much less the money or people power to do it well. What we really could use is a large glass of encouragement and gallon of empowerment; the freedom to do our jobs and do them well without being micromanaged. (And it would also be nice to have some time to recover in order to keep going!)

How does one empower someone else? Easy, really—help her see that she has power to begin with or give him true power without using it to control him. Know the gifts people have and allow them to use those gifts in ways that they will succeed.

Too often we encourage people—students, friends, our own kids—but we don’t help them attain what we’ve encouraged them to do or be. We don’t help them get the tools they need to do the tasks at hand. We cheerlead, but we don’t set them free to engage on their own terms. We encourage without empowering.

So, what does it mean to empower? Giving power and authority, enabling someone to do something in a positive way.

In order to empower someone, we often have to give up or give away our own power or status. We have to decrease so others can increase. It means letting someone else lead, teach, create.

And to encourage? Giving someone the courage and confidence, the hope to go forward. Sometimes it’s a real pat on the back; sometimes it’s a verbal blessing; sometimes it’s listening and actually hearing someone’s story.

What do I really want? Both! Don’t you? Please encourage me, and then empower me to do it well! Give me the tools I need to get the job done. Enable me to have the time, space, and tools to succeed. Give me honest feedback. And provide me with the resources I need to do well. Set me free to try and fail. And then encourage me to get up and try again.

Why doesn’t this happen more often on church staff? The reasons are simple and sad.

• When we get power, we never want to give it away.
• Others are a threat to our power and want to take it for themselves.
• The design of most churches is to be an expression of one person’s vision, held accountable by a group that doesn’t understand the real inner workings and problems of a church staff.
• What we really want is to have enough people and therefore enough money. If what I do doesn’t obviously lead to more dollars, what I do doesn’t matter.

While this is reality in many places, we all know it’s not kingdom living. Maybe you and I can’t change the system overnight, but this can and must change. What can we do?

• Change the definitions and lose the fear of power and giving it away. • Learn and practice taking the time to listen to each other and give good feedback to those we work with.
• Model the behavior we seek. Encourage others and give away power.
• Help others to see their gifts and allow them to use them!
• Help our students, our communities, and ourselves see our mission and use our gifts outside the church building—being the church in the real world.
• Build a real support system outside the church staff where we can get authentic feedback, courage, and hope.

Let’s choose to encourage and empower others as we long to be encouraged and empowered ourselves.

Andy Root


Empowering and encouraging seem indelibly connected to me. I think the core to encouragement is really seeing another, hearing another, and acting with and for another. I think we all feel encouraged when this happens.

And I think this kind of encouragement has rich theological significance. Being seen, heard, and acted with is what makes us human because we confess that God sees us, hears us, and acts with and for us. God does this within Godself first. As Trinity, God sees self, hears self, and acts with and for self as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Encouragement is central to love; and at the core of Godself is the love between Father, Son, and Spirit. But the love of encouragement always sends, and sending is empowering.

You’re a bad parent, even if you love your kids, if you don’t send them out into the world. We prosecute people who say they love their kids so much they locked them in the basement and never let them out into the world, never empowered them to be selves. Love always empowers to be sent into the world.

But this sending (to give it circular flavor) has to be connected to encouragement. You’re also a bad parent if you say, “I don’t give a darn what you do, just go out and have fun,” giving no support or encouragement in being sent.

So God’s love, as Trinity, sees, hears, and acts then sends. When God sees, hears, and acts God sends—first Godself and then, through Godself, us. Swept up into the love of God, encouraged, we are empowered to participate in God’s movement in the world.

And we see this most clearly in the second person of the Trinity being sent into the world as fully divine and fully human. Jesus is empowered by the loving encouragement of the Father to go into the world. He is sent to be human so humanity might know that God always see, hears, and acts and, in knowing, might participate in God’s own love, also being sent (empowered) to love and encourage those in the world, to witness to God’s action.

This means that God, through and in Jesus, encourages us to be human. God encourages us to face our questions, to be honest about our limits, to seek God within our human journey as we are sent and empowered by the Spirit to encourage others. So then in ministry, we empower people by encouraging them to be human, to live honesty in search of God—not in perfection but in their questions and doubts. The God of the cross empowers us by comforting and encouraging us that God is with and for us in our deepest sufferings and longings. We encourage and empower people in our ministry when we invite them to be human and, in their humanity, to search for a God who will send them into the world to love it, through the empowerment of the Spirit.

This is the problem with disconnecting encouragement and empowerment. To tease them apart can lead to spiritual abuse. Without encouragement, you don’t really care about the humanity of your adult leader, just that he or she is empowered to do the tasks you have for them—if you’re honest, to make you look more successful. So you can try and try to empower them, but if they never feel encouraged, never feel seen, heard, and acted with, then they can never really do ministry. Because, in the end, you’re inviting leaders to be sent into the lives of young people, to empower young people by encouraging them, by being with and for them as God—as Trinity—is with and for us.

But you also can’t encourage adult leaders without sending them, without empowering them. How often do we tell adult leaders that they’re super important to what we do and then never give them any leadership, never allow them to take ownership? To have really encouraged them is to give them the ministry, to trust that their empowerment to be human with and for young people, to go and encourage young people, will be the fullness of the ministry of the Trinity.


Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

Theology.Community and Salvation

What are some of the connections between community and salvation?

Steve Argue


Some of the connections between salvation and community that youth ministry workers might consider reflecting upon are:

What Does Connecting Me to We Mean? (Communal identity) It is no surprise that adolescents are naturally self-focused due to psychological, developmental, and socio-cultural forces. It’s also no surprise that young people typically mirror their cultures. From a western perspective, autonomy and individuality are strived for and celebrated. While having benefits, these cultural values can warp one’s need for interdependence—a necessity in development and the prayer of Jesus (John 17). Somehow, individuals must rediscover faith communities as essential, not optional.

Robert Webber (Ancient-Future Faith) reminds us of scriptural metaphors that define faith communities: the body of Christ as interdependent, tangibly expressing the very heart and healing of God together in our world. Salvation is found in our dependence upon God and each other, living out the very nature and purposes of God in ways that bless the whole world.

The people of God as the ones who, though different, find a unifying center in God revealed through Jesus Christ. Salvation is God giving us a new identity.

The fellowship of faith, where faith is practiced and grown as a verb, dynamically changing and growing as the community journeys together.

The new creation, where we celebrate renewal and resurrection in our lives. We gather as messed-up people, speaking hope and renewal to each other because of resurrection. Salvation is our message to each other that there is hope for you and me.

Kenda Creasy Dean (Practicing Passion) reminds us that adolescents have a tremendous amount of passion and seek to situate it in something equally as amazing. Salvation for adolescents, then, is showing them that the embodied, unifying, dynamic, hopeful faith community called the church is a place that is big enough for all their passion. This is good news for adolescents—salvation clarified and inspired by a community acting within the wonderfully complex, mysterious, multi-layered aspects of God’s saving grace. This is space big enough for adolescents to call home.

How Do We Connect the Narrative to Us? (Communal Discourse) The community acts as an interpreting community for young people, where questions can be asked and more questions can be offered. It is the place where faith language, symbol, and practice happen in the rhythms of life. Self-interpretation has its limitations, especially for young people who are seeking to discover and define their identities. Older people need space and skill to tell good stories from their own journeys (cf. Stanley Hauerwas, Growing Old in Christ), and young people need space to hear these stories, reflecting on their own.

Salvation, then, means inviting all into the narrative; finding connection in the midst of our diverse backgrounds and stories. It is what makes the church beautiful. It means not only young people understanding the narrative passed onto them but previous generations encouraging (and learning from) the next generation who continue the story with new language, ritual, and symbol. This may challenge some of our church/youth ministry assumptions about what participation with the whole community means and how we carry God’s narrative of redemption forward.

How Do We Embrace Suffering as Ours? (Communal Burden Bearing) Last month we had a worship service that created space for people to come and be prayed for. I listened to a wide range of stories that included both joy and tragedy. These are the stories that any faith community inherits. Faith communities that welcome young people open themselves up to their lives, embodying the good news.

More strongly, churches that commit to youth ministries must recognize that this move is not a step toward outsourcing youth issues. It is a portal to let all youth beauty, pain, drama, joy, expression, and messiness in. This is good news for everyone and one more picture of God putting the world back together.

Given limited space, these are some of my connecting points. What would you add?

Lilly Lewin


I just got back from a two-week pilgrimage with students, following the path of the Celtic missionaries who brought the gospel to Scotland and Northern England. Since we—the participants on the trip—all came from different places, we began to grow into community as we traveled together in a small van over winding roads (including some stops for vomiting along the way!). We lived together, sharing space and bathrooms very different from ours at home. We tasted new food and learned to cook new food and learned about different styles of leadership and communication. Then we repented when we really screwed it up.

Visiting places of incredible beauty, like the Isles of Iona and Lindisfarne, is a powerful way to encounter God. But laughing hysterically over jokes, burping, and finger puppets during evening prayer are also powerful and productive ways to engage God’s Spirit. By the end of the two weeks, we each had engaged God on our own, through what we learned from the saints of old and through each other along the way.

The Celtic missionaries—monks, abbots, and abbesses—were all about community. Their process was to move into the neighborhood and get to know the locals, learning the language of the people. While the monks on the continent were about separating from society, the Celtic monks believed in making themselves part of the local community and moving into its center. They didn’t throw out the art, music, and customs of the locals but helped them learn to see God and engage God through these things. The Celtic monasteries were places of hospitality, welcoming all who came to call. You were invited to eat with, learn with, and work alongside the Christian community.

In the Celtic monastery, one had a “soul friend,” who came alongside the seeker to help her learn to engage God and listen to her story. Today, more than ever, we need to be people of hospitality who are moving into the neighborhoods, learning the languages of our cultures, and helping others to see Jesus as we live and work and serve outside the church walls. We need to be and to help our students become people who listen to the hearts of others and go places where Jesus would go—among the outcasts and the poor and those outside the confines of the church walls.

Also, it’s important for us to find a community where we can safely share our stories and our hearts. We need other safe people to process the events and happenings in our lives. Each night along the pilgrimage we shared our experiences of the presence of God that day. And we also shared our frustrations when we didn’t feel connected to God at all. We had to learn to listen to each other and deal with stuff that came up in order to function on the road as a whole. People in a loving, kingdom community really do help us to connect our story to God’s story. As we listen to how others are experiencing life with Jesus, we learn and grow ourselves. We are never too old or too experienced to need this kind of community in our lives.

So to answer the question directly, the Celtic monks of old showed that how we live together reflects God’s love to those in the community and those who might be interested in joining us on the journey. In our two weeks, we had the opportunity to learn to love, share, serve, encourage, and say we are sorry. The people we hang out with really do impact how we live and act. That’s why we need to be a part of loving communities (which may or may not be churches. We all know many churches that aren’t loving or safe!) to help us live our faith.

Learning to live out our lives in the way of Jesus and following Jesus in a 24/7 way takes practice and encouragement. Salvation is caught, not just taught. Jesus didn’t have his followers memorize a bunch of rules or laws. The Jewish disciples already had enough of these. Instead, Jesus poured his life into the Twelve. They learned by doing; by practicing healing, casting out demons, praying and teaching and serving others. They went out in groups and in pairs and came back and processed together what they’d learned and experienced, the good and the bad. They practiced living out the kingdom of God, not just hearing about it. This was salvation; to do the kingdom as total beginners among friends. Jesus was comfortable with these untrained beginners doing the kingdom. And their friends didn’t have to be seminary professors to tag along.

In 2010, like in the 600s, people need to see the kingdom of God in action. They need to experience the people of God moving into their lives, loving and serving. As God’s people love and serve and share and listen and go the extra mile (doing their best in living out that “Sermon on the Mount” thing), then others will want to be part of the community and discover the gift of salvation.

Scot McKnight


Roman Catholics are taught that outside the church, there is no salvation. In Latin: extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Even if the official teaching of the Catholic church has nuanced this of late, the expression rankles even the most sympathetic of Protestants and evangelicals. For many, this line gives too much credit to the church. We’d rather it say, “Outside Christ there is no salvation.”

I would agree. We need the emphasis to be on Christ, but… Have you ever given much attention to the interconnectedness, the intimate union, of the Father and the Son in the New Testament? Or that this same union is extended to the church so we can say that Christ and the church are one?

Notice these words of Jesus: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). It gets deeper for Jesus: “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (14:11). This unpacks, even if we can’t comprehend it, the earlier statement of Jesus: “The Father and I are one” (10:30). We get it: Jesus and the Father are a sacred unity.

But Jesus extends this in the most amazing of ways when he extends the union of Christ and the Father to his church—both amongst church people and the church people with Christ! He prays “that [his people] may be one, as we are one” (17:11, 22). He defines this in the next verse: “I in them and you in me, that they may be completely one” (verse 23).

Two facts then: Jesus is one with the Father, and we are one with Jesus Christ.

The apostle Paul carries on this second fact we learned from Jesus, and he says this in a way that brings all the glory to Christ. Paul overtly asserts two difficult-to-put-together ideas: We are “in Christ,” and Christ is “in us.” And Paul says “in Christ” there is “redemption” and “death to sin” and “eternal life” (Romans 3:24; 6:11, 23). In fact, if you chase down the “in Christ” references in Paul’s letters, you will discover all kinds of benefits: grace, wisdom, victory, new creation, etc.

If we put this all into one bundle, we get this: Christ and the church interpenetrate each other so much we can say they indwell one another. Now to our point: If we are one with Christ as Christ is with the Father, and if salvation comes in union with Christ, then the church mediates that salvation as the visible and spiritual and verbal presence of Christ on earth. But it does so under two restrictions: First, it mediates and heralds salvation only in union with Christ. Second, it does so most effectively only when it is one.

Jesus told his disciples, in the most famous sermon ever, the Sermon on the Mount, they were both the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-16). There are good reasons to think Jesus may have meant they were salt to the Jews (the word for earth is eretz, or “the land of Israel”) and light to the Gentiles, for Jesus shifts from “earth” to “world” and draws on the great theme of Isaiah that the people of Israel, in the last days, would be a light to the Gentiles.

In these two words, salt and light—one evoking the idea of preservation and flavor through penetration and the other enlightening the world through the good news of the gospel—we see how we are to mediate and herald Christ in the world. But we only do this as disciples of Jesus. We don’t do this through our own ideas or our own talent. As disciples of Jesus we get to be salt and light.

But Jesus knows this happens most effectively when the disciples are genuinely one. The words of Jesus both haunt and excite:

I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23, emphasis added)

We can debate institutional vs. organic vs. missional vs. theological unity until we die, and we surely will, but the point is this: When we are one, as the Father and Son are one, we will be most effective in embodying and heralding Jesus himself to the world.

The church is called to embody and herald Jesus Christ to the world. The church, when it is one, embodies and heralds the love of the Father for the Son. And that same church, when it is one, reveals the truth of the claim that Jesus is who we say he is.


Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

1


Slant Topics

Search by tag

Ministry Tash McGill Culture Just Acts Methods Encouragement Gospel Tiffianie Shanks Apologetics Sarah Arthur Michael Novelli Middle School Lisa Sharon Harper Lilly Lewin Cross-Cultural Josh Griffin Danny Kwon Environment Paul Martin Vulnerability Planning Resources Kurt Rietema Journey Evidence Steve Argue Justice Andy Root Mark Oestreicher Tradition Adam McLane Ministry Context Leading Change Friendship Expectations Rest Adam Walker Cleaveland Church Response Recruiting Volunteers Anti-Intellectualism Young Leaders intergenerational ministry D.Scott Miller God is dead Worship Gatherings Children Ian Macdonald Karina Veas Mistakes Joel Daniel Harris Marriage Solitude High School Spiritual Formation Michelle Lang Media Internships Difficult Friends Communion student leaders Imago Dei Teaching Calendars Kerygma Chris Folmsbee Hope Time Cliche Brian Berry Empowerment Cultural Context Parents Teams Narrative Theology Oversharing Proclamation Marko Dating Jeremy Zach Programming Transition Mission Statement D. Scott Miller Mission of God Theology of Play Eric Iverson Academia Claire Smith Consumeristic Church Church Improvement Faith Kara Powell Theology Failure Sex Interns God Environments Prayer Awareness Dave Rahn Community Developement Research Beauty of God Evangelism Mike King Love Boundaries Short-Term Missions Social Media Albert Tate Formation Moving On Scripture Community Leadership Youth Ministry Discussion Lars Rood Salvation Jim Hampton Archie Honrado Church Environments Future Kevin Farmer Family Oriented Scot McKnight Holy Spirit Brooklyn Lindsey Giving Jason McPherson God's Story Books

Slant Archive

Sorted by Month


Featured Slants


See all the Slants...

Latest Posts

  1. How do you pray for your ministry? Barefoot Training 06-Feb-2012
  2. What's the difference between teaching middle schoolers and high schoolers about dating and sexuality? Barefoot Training 30-Jan-2012
  3. How do your mission statement and programming inform each other? Barefoot Training 23-Jan-2012
  4. In a strong denominational setting, how do you support your denomination? Barefoot Training 16-Jan-2012
  5. There is lots of talk about intergenerational ministry these days. What does that mean, and how are you pursuing it? Barefoot Training 09-Jan-2012
  6. How can a young youth worker gain credibility in his or her church? Barefoot Training 20-Dec-2011
  7. How do you identify and initiate student leaders? Barefoot Training 12-Dec-2011

  • UN
  • Bounce
  • Reverb
  • CMPC