The Nature of Ministry – from Brothers, We Are Not Professors (HT: Desiring God)

Just read a great little article on the nature and danger of pastoral ministry.  There is enough in this to meditate on no matter what the capacity is in which you serve in ministry (Pastor, Assistant, Ministry Director, Small Group Leader, or any interested church member).  Here is a quick highlight from the article:

“It was the enlightenment, not the Light of the World, that gave us education as its high and holy sacrament. What Jesus calls us to is to repent and believe the gospel. It is more important to us and our sheep that we would learn to believe more, than that we would find more to believe.”

via Brothers, We Are Not Professors – Desiring God.

The Upshot of Being a Stranger in a Strange Land

This is a fascinating read on why women are out-performing men in today’s economy.

As I read it, I couldn’t help being a pastor, researcher and communicator that there might also be connections to why the Christian Church has historically tended to grow the most when it was in a position of least influence. Perhaps there really is something to being “strangers in a strange land,” or to use biblical phrasing, “aliens and exiles.”

Something to consider.

Why Men Fail – NYTimes.com (HT: David Brooks)

Piss Christ, Revisited

Piss Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My friend Daniel Siedell has written another excellent article over at Patheos discussing the intersection of faith, grace and life through art (see below). It is well worth your time to read what might be the best perspective I’ve heard on Serrano’s Piss Christ.  And his thoughts on what it means to be a Cultural Theologian are even better.

I remember my first exposure into both topics – Piss Christ and being a Cultural Theologian – came from my dad.  He is an artist, and I have benefited greatly from growing up in a home where art was celebrated and questions were asked that forced us to think, not just regurgitate or rearrange preconceived prejudices.  When I fist came to know Christ, I remember one such question my dad asked: “What would you do if you saw a picture of Jesus in a toilet [or jar or urine] as a work of art?”

My answer then was somewhat astute for someone my age and maturity in Christ.  I answered, “Well, Jesus was crucified in a trash heap which was the equivalent of a toilet back in his day.  Whether the artist meant it or not, I think it’s an excellent picture of the beauty and grace of God in the midst of the crap of life.”

My response has not changed to this day, and thanks to Daniel, I know now that I was on to something back then.

Enjoy!

Piss Christ, Revisited.

Addendum: To learn more about how to see and perceive art with eyes of faith, and not through culture-war jargon, I highly recommend Daniel Siedell’s book God in the Gallery (Kindle edition here)  Also, for something philosophically similar but addressing cinema and movies, I would encourage Brian Godawa’s Hollywood Worldviews (Kindle edition here).

iPhone Orphans

I confess that I can struggle with this.  I wonder though how this also applies to Pastors and “books”.  I am all for redeeming the time and making the most of every opportunity, but digital devices and/or reading material of any kind, even if it’s sermon prep, can achieve this same catastrophic end.

iPhone Orphans.

Covenant Seminary: Why Sharing Information is So Terrifying, Essential

Covenant Seminary: Why Sharing Information is So Terrifying, Essential.

This is a great article by a friend, Joel Hathaway.  I’d encourage everyone, especially my pastor and ministry counterparts, to take the team to read and honestly assess the reasons why we are reluctant to share actual “data”.

Thoughts on Worship

“Welcome, one and all to this mornings worship at _____________ church.  We’re so glad you’re here.”

These are the words you may here at any given church on a Sunday morning.  For the most part we are so used to hearing them in connection with church that we simply let them glaze over our minds as we begin a church service.  I would be willing to bet that most of us tend to think more in terms of “going to church” than we do “going to worship”.  But worship is the activity of the church, and not a mere add-on to the church.

So, what is worship?

We usually evaluate and critique worship in light of our personal preferences or emotional responses to the stimuli that is worship.  But we rarely if ever consider worship to be a verb – something that we do!  It is more something to be consumed and critiqued than actively engaged with our full participation.

Why?  Where does this come from?

It seems that our worship expressions and expectations are conditioned more by our culture than on Scripture and more influenced by TV and media than truth and tradition.

That’s a loaded word – tradition – but it is a viable aspect of our worship.  No matter where you stand on any spectrum, you come to anything with a “tradition”  – a story that has led you up to this point.

Some people come from a formal church tradition such as Presbyterianism, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Catholicism, where worship reflected a strong stand on history, usually at the neglect and expense of innovation.  I would call this “traditionalism” – where everything we do is based on the way we’ve done things in the past, rather than careful reflection on the historic applications in light of contemporary audiences.

There are others of us who come to church and worship with no formal background, yet, we find ourselves shaped by suspicion of any and all authority structures (e.g. “traditionalism”). Our tradition is “skepticism”, and the burden of proof lies on everyone else to convince us that what is being said, taught, instructed or done is really “true” and the way it should be, and that I should do anything about it.

Both ends of this spectrum represent a fallacy to worship.  In both instances, worship is something that is done for me, rather than something that is done for God, and subsequently our benefit.

If worship is to be truly biblical, faithful to the tradition of the Bible and rooted in history to Christ’s church, and engaging His church in the world today, then it must be, what one author calls, “a royal ‘waste’ of time,”[1] where God is both the subject and the object of our worship, where we spend ourselves in the splendor of our great creator and covenant keeping King, and where we delight our selves in, and subject our emotions to, the full-hearted devotion to His Son that His Spirit enables.

Worship then is the engagement of our whole being in faithful service as the right response to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is after all what Paul the apostle says after making perhaps his greatest theological understanding of God and the gospel in Romans 1-11

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” - Romans 12:1-2 (ESV)

What does God-centered worship mean and what are its implications?

Put simply, worship that is God-centered is worship that revolves around and proceeds from God, not any human ingenuity, program, paradigm or plan.  It keeps and maintains that the highest end and the compelling reason to worship is God Himself – responding to who He is and what He has done.

So what then are the implications of God-centered worship?  I think Marva Dawn, in her

A Royal Waste of Time by Marva Dawn

book A Royal “Waste” of Time has several insights in the following quote I have found helpful in thinking along these lines; she writes:

I think our churches need to do much deeper thinking about what it means to worship God, what it means to nurture and to live the life of faith, what it means to be a Christian community that offers alternatives to the world, and how we can best reach out to our neighbors with the gospel and in service to them.  In order to do all that we have to stop asking which style of music to use and ask instead what will help us keep God at the center.[2]

God-centered worship has then the following implications:

1. God honoring
2. Character developing
3. Alternative-community forming
4. Mission equipping
5. Kingdom extending

These are implications rather then characteristics[3].  What I mean is that when our worship of God has Him as the subject and object, when He is the center of our worship, it will honor God in His worthiness and glory over the world, develop our character as His people following after Jesus in the world, form our corporate life into an alternate community within the world, equip us for our mission to participate in God’s saving, restoring gospel work to the world, and extend His reign and rule throughout the world.

These are the results we should see and expect when we have God as the center of our worship.

---

[1] Marva Dawn, A Royal “Waste” of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; 1999).

[2] Dawn, A Royal “Waste” of Time, 152.

[3] Characteristics of worship, as I see them are: God-Directed, Christ-Centered, Spirit-Enabled, Christian-Oriented, Seeker-Sensible.

Book Review: Leaders Who Last by Dave Kraft

Leaders Who Last by Dave Kraft

Well its time for another brief book review.  I recently finished Leaders Who Last by Dave Kraft, published under the Re:Lit banner of Crossway books.  Leadership and leadership development is a passion of mine, so when books like this come out, I’m usually on top of reading them.  This one slipped by me though for a few months before I dived into it.

The reason is because this has been one of the busiest season of my life.  In addition to my full-time pastoral role at Christ Church Santa Fe, I continue to serve other pastors as a Research Consultant.  But also two months ago we welcomed our fourth child into the world in Luke.  We are excited, but to any parent the first few months are the hardest (re-adjusting to an infant’s needs, lack of sleep, etc).

In that context, Kraft’s book was a breath of fresh air.  I have to say that in the pages of Kraft’s book I did not read anything new, necessarily.  Kraft is coming from a Navigator background, and myself having come up through Campus Outreach, I recognized many of the principles from other great books (thinking of LeRoy Eims, J. Oswald Sanders, etc).

But there was more. Kraft also weaved in some good principles and examples from the business side of leadership principles.  While I said there was nothing new, what was refreshing was to see someone integrate the biblical principles, theology of resource stewardship, and the practical insights and outworking in a context where leadership and effectiveness is prized highly.

Kraft wrote this with a particular audience in mind – that of the vocational ministry leader.  Every book needs a focus, so he should not be faulted for that.  Everything that he talks about is applicable to anybody.  His definition of a Christian leader I found to be quite heplful and refreshing in making room for leaders of various sizes and shapes: “A Christian leader is a humble, God-dependent, team-playing [that's huge] servant of God who is called by God to shepherd, develop, equip and empower a specific group of believers to accomplish an agreed-upon [also huge] vision from God.” (24, Kindle edition).

You can tell by my inserted comments what I like most about Kraft.  He both affirms the role of key/Senior/Primary leadership, but also the “with others” context that permeates the Biblical witness as well as the experiences of many business leaders.  Look at Apple computers (my example, not Kraft’s): where would Apple be if Steve Wozniak hadn’t been working with Steve Jobs (or vice versa).  This was the biggest strength, in my opinion, of Kraft’s book.

The other most helpful section of his book were the sections on Formation (chs. 7 & 8 especially) and Fruitfulness (ch. 11).  These chapters alone are worth the cost of the book.  They are filled with great principles and packaged in a way that can be readily assimilated into whatever context you find yourself engaging as a leader.

Chapter 7 is especially helpful in forcing leaders to think through not just what they have learned (past tense) but at what rate are they currently learning (present).  The leadership dynamic that is most challenging – to leaders and their organizations – is resting on the laurels of previous work, accomplishments.  This is seen in the drastic statement that should never be the determiner of a course of action (though it should be informative to any course of action): “In my experience…”.  I am all for cataloguing experiences, learning from them and implementing them into the present for a desired future, but when they alone are what determines what is done, how its done, when its done, and why its done, we as leaders have effectively stopped growing, reflecting, learning and therefore leading.  Kraft’s thoughts in chapter 7 help shatter that paradigm, and for this I am most thankful for his work.

For all of its strengths, I do wish that Kraft had spent a little less time trumpeting thoughout the book his own personal philosophy of how he is seeking to be a purposeful leader.  I’ll explain that.  Normally, I think its a good thing when leaders know, own and share their personal passion.  For Kraft, his passion is to “develop leaders who develop leaders” essentially.  I share that passion with him.  But what can happen when we make statements like this is we tend to warp our definition of leaders to a particular type of leader.  The effect this can have is that other types of leaders are automatically discounted, not because they aren’t leaders, or not even senior level leaders, but because they don’t fit the mold of what pops into our head when we say “a leader who develops leaders.”  This is a systemic problem in a lot of discipleship-heavy ministries (especially college student ministries) that I think this rhetoric tends to merely exacerbate the problem, rather than speaking truth into it.

With that said, though, I can heartily recommend Kraft’s book, and would counsel any pastor or ministry leader to have it, digest it, and work it out, into your life and various ministries.  That one complaint is not indicative of Kraft’s whole work, just a disagreement on frequency of use and wording.  His thoughts, experiences and insights into leadership effectiveness for ministry leaders in the 21st century are extremely valuable and would assist anyone engaged in humbly leading others for the glory of God.

Worth it = Leaders Who Last by Dave Kraft

Links to Various Teaching/Preaching

Had the privelege of preaching with Martin Ban and Anthony Bianchini for Christ Church Santa Fe Christmas Day Service. We each took 2 minutes to reflect on Luke 2:10-12. Plus, it was very cool to see one my dad’s (Jim Gensheer) art pieces being used as the artwork for the bulletin (and Podcast).

Click the link, take a listen and share your thoughts.

Sermons: http://www.christchurchsantafe.org/media.php?pageID=6

Education Hour/Sunday School Teachings: http://www.christchurchsantafe.org/media.php?pageID=63

Must Learn to Live As Missionary Citizens

Great thoughts by Timmy Brister over at Provocations and Paintings on Obama’s win and what it means for American evangelicals.  Read the whole thing here.  Here’s a quote:

On the other hand, I can’t help but think that the Obama presidency will help Christians who happen to be American to open our eyes to our syncretistic views of American Christianity.  While the fundamentalist impulse is to retreat into the ghetto, pull out the dispensationalism charts, and check the rapture ready index as a morning devotional, perhaps for the first time Christians will no longer seek to Christianize America but speak prophetically and live missionally in our growingly secular world.  Our greatest need is not to fight the battle against the culture but to fight against the battle against unbelief.  It is safe to live as functional atheists when we’ve got God in our constitution, on our coins, in the White House, but when the props are removed from us, how shall we then live?

We must learn to live as missionary citizens.

Worship Reflection 3 – Liturgical and Contemporary

Traditional Faithfulness or Contemporary Relevance.  Which is better for the church?

This is an interesting question.  It is also a false dichotomy.  It assumes that worship cannot be both.  I argue that it in fact should be both.  I argue this because we are in danger of the sin of self-righteous elitism if we pit one over against the other.

Worship that is pleasing to God is worship that is rooted and growing out of the church’s historic and catholic  roots, yet situated in its present contemporary context and sensible in the culture the church finds herself.  Below I highlight eight presuppositions – eight principles – that provide a foundation for the process of designing a liturgical worship service in a 21st century expression of the church.

1.    Liturgical does not mean Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian, or any other formal denominationally set form of corporate worship.  Its broader than any of these individually.

2.    Liturgical does not mean “Traditional”. It incorporates traditional elements, but cannot be defined or explained simply by referring to traditional aspects of corporate worship.  Every element was at some point contemporary – so to stick too closely to any one tradition is it succumb to traditionalism, not biblical faithfulness in a cultural context.

3.    Liturgical does not mean any one certain “style” of music and lyrics. This can actually be sin on either side of the spectrum.  If we opt for only “old words” to “old tunes”, or the converse, “new words” to “new tunes”, we practice idolatry in the form of cultural elitism.  There is much validity to critique of much contemporary music – especially that which passes for contemporary worship songs of praise; but the answer is not to go to “old lyrics/tunes” exclusively, but to labor to find, perhaps even write, new songs that convey the same ancient truth the church has historically sung.

4.    Liturgical means, “work of the people” (literal translation). This means that liturgical worship is best explained and described as God’s people responding to God’s initiation.  For some there is close connection to “covenant renewal” occurring every week within corporate worship.  At the least, liturgical worship is a corporate re-enactment and engagement with the drama of redemption, incorporating the dual movements of God’s initiation and provision and His people’s response and praise.
5.    Liturgical worship is rooted in history and connected in catholicity. When we say “history”, we need to include the history conveyed in the Bible as well as church history.  The church stands in a line that extends all the way back to Adam in the garden.  The people of God have existed since this time and have carried on through to today.  So we look across this spectrum, not just at any one distinct point.  It also branches out to include all the saints – those who profess and live under Christ’s lordship – spread out over the world and across time.  There may be particular expressions, but the church is a universal body, which incorporates with in it all the biblically based, God-honoring, Christ-centered, Spirit-empowered churches of the world.
6.    Liturgical worship includes the 21st century church. This links back to the premise that it is more than “traditionalism”, but it needs to be emphasized more clearly.  To say that the church is rooted in history is not the same thing as saying that the church only looks backwards in history for its credible expressions.  The church exists along a continuum of history of which its current setting and cultural context is a part.  We therefore need to labor to learn from the historical applications of worship and incorporate them into our current setting.
7.    Liturgical worship does not mean “technology free”. To say that one prefers worship that is void of technological impediments is to assume that the church has preferred to avoid technological advances.  If that were the case, what’s the point in forgoing an overhead projector screen for the use of paper bulletins, pamphlets or even hymnals – all of which are products of the technological advances of the 16th century printing press?  By making hard claims that we don’t need certain technologies, yet adopting others, is a misnomer, and needs to be carefully articulated as to what it is we are aiming to accomplish and why.  The church has always used technology, and therefore, we shouldn’t be hesitant to use the technology available to us, as long as it best serves the purposes of our corporate worship together.
8.    Liturgical worship is corporate worship that takes the shape of gospel re-enactment. This means that the basic structure of the corporate worship service is one of God’s call to worship, man’s dilemma of sin and God’s assurance of deliverance and pardon, God speaks to man through the grace of His word, and man’s response to God’s gracious initiation.  To say it another way, corporate worship should follow the drama of redemption – Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation.