If your primary aim is to gain a sense of community, it will always allude you.

In our consumeristic society, there are many who move from organization to organization, from one friend network to another friend network, and, yes, from one church to another church in pursuit of community. They pursue community directly.  A sense of community is often perceived (in consumeristic terms) as a religious commodity that the church dispenses for all who long for it.  Yet, after a while, people are shocked that their direct pursuit of community often comes up short.

What has gone wrong? They have not understood that some ideas are rightly considered by-products of aiming at something else; some pursuits are by-products of other more central pursuits. Community falls within this dynamic.

Community is the by-product of aiming and pursuing something else. Community is cultivated by loving and serving others.  Think about Mother Teresa.  She created community not by directly pursuing community but rather by loving and serving others. Eventually there arose around Mother Teresa an extraordinary global community. People would flock from all corners of the globe to Calcutta to be part of this incredible community that was cultivated not by pursuing (and wanting and longing for community) but rather was created by love and service. The same holds true in the local church.

I love what Paul Miller in A Loving Life writes: “You don’t find community, you create it through love.”  If you are desperate for community, begin by loving and serving those around you.[1]

The general axiom that applies to forming community in a local church is this: the more you intentionally love and serve others, the more community you will experience.  That is, community is created through intentional expressions of love and purposefully serving alongside others.

In 2020, tweak the famous words of John F. Kennedy into a theological mantra: “Ask not what your church can do for you, ask what you can do for your church.”  If you do, you might just find what you are looking for – a true community of faith. 

**********

[1] Paul Miller, A Loving Life, p. 100.

Miller also writes, “Instinctively, we hunt for a church or community that makes us feel good.  It is good to be in a place where you are welcome, but making that quest central is idolatry. And like all idolatry, it ultimately disappoints. But if we pursue hesed love, then, wherever we go, we create community. Here are two different formulas for community formation:

Search for community where I am loved….become disappointed with community

Show hesed love [a sacrificial, covenantal love]....create community.”

Do you know how long it takes the average person to read the Bible in a year? Surprisingly, only about 70 hours.

That’s less time than the average American spends in front of the television every month. In other words, if most people would exchange their TV time for Scripture reading, they’d finish reading the entire Bible in four weeks or less. If that sounds unworkable, consider this: In no more than fifteen minutes a day you can read through the Bible in less than a year’s time. (Don Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines, 29)

There are lots of Bible reading plans that are profitable for the Christian. Let me mention six good options:

1. The Kingdom Bible Reading Plan. This plan involves reading the entire Bible in a year but only 25 days every month. You will read through every book of the Bible once and the Psalms twice.

2. The Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan. This plan involves reading the entire Bible in a year but only 25 days every month: two NT readings, 1 reading from Wisdom Literature, and 1 reading from the rest of the OT.

3. Bible Reading Program for Shirkers and Slackers. If you’ve tried reading the Bible before…and, well, come up a little short or given up entirely, this plan might be for you. Different genres are assigned on different days on the week.

4. The 5x5x5 New Testament Reading Plan. Read through the entire New Testament in 5 days a week, 5 minutes a day.

5. F-260: A Bible reading Plan for Busy Believers. F-260 is a two-hundred and sixy day reading plan that highlights foundational passages of Scripture by reading 1 or 2 chapters a day for five days/week.

6. 5 Day Bible Reading Program. Covers the whole Bible in chronological fashion. Read the whole Bible in 5 days/week.

Having a specific plan & a specific place to read your Bible is so critical for getting into God’s Word.

The same goes for reading the Bible with your kids. Family Devotional Readings give you a few ideas for reading passages with your kids.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. . . .a time to keep silence, and a time to speak. (Ecclesiastes 3:1,7)

A pastoral colleague recently bemoaned, “It feels like I get hammered if I do, and hammered if I don’t.”  He was referring to the constant pull of our culture these days to “make a statement” about the current “hot topic” trending on the 24-hour news cycle or on social media.  The pull to “use your platform” from the pulpit to the blogosphere is an interesting dance for the contemporary pastor because there exists some inherent tensions in pastoral ministry in shepherding the flock, teaching the gospel of grace and truth, and modeling winsome cultural engagement in an increasingly fragmented world.

On the Value of Statements 

I was initially ordained in a mainline church which, for several decades, felt comfortable occupying space near the center of American culture.[1]  For most of my lifetime, the chaplain of the U.S. Senate has been a Presbyterian (from 1969 to 2003).  The ethos of Presbyterian cultural engagement for several decades seemed to carry an attitude best portrayed by the famous TV commercials in the 1970s and 1980s with the line:  “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”  In the commercials, the entire room would stop – in silence – and lean in closely to hear whatever E.F. Hutton had to say.  The luxury of Christian cultural engagement 40-50 years ago was that people listened to the church.

That time has passed.  Case in point:

• Only a few years ago, my former denomination, the PC(USA), spent time and energy outlining a peace resolution for Israel—Palestine.  Oh the hubris of it all!  Was the world (or even the Middle East) really listening and paying attention to a bunch of (predominately white) American Presbyterians thousands of miles away?  What was the value of all that time and energy spent on statements about Israel-Palestine by a bunch of American Presbyterians? 

• A short time ago, a prominent blogger was calling for Christians to “walk out of their churches” en masse if the priest or pastor didn’t speak out against the separation of children from their families at the US-Mexico border.  I personally wonder whether such vitriol reflects an ache and a longing to restore the primacy of Christendom’s authority.  Surely the culture is listening to the church….right? 

Yet, as the church has been pushed from the center to the periphery of American culture, its cultural engagement radically (and necessarily) changes in tenor and tone.  Recognizing the massive shift from a Christendom mentality to a post-Christian era mindset is indispensable for guiding pastoral discernment for wading into cultural engagement in the contemporary world. 

Ever since Theodore Roosevelt coined the term, US Presidents have been known to use their “bully pulpit” to trump up favorable public opinion for high-profile initiatives.  A hot-button topic will arise in the country, and the president will inevitably begin communicating far-and-wide about the issue in hopes of swaying public opinion. 

Yet George C. Edwards III, the presidential historian at Texas A & M, after conducting a massive study on the “bully pulpit” over the last six decades of American history suggests that the steady stream of statements from US Presidents have almost always failed to move the needle of public opinion or translate into significant legislative victories for presidential policies in Congress. 

"It is true for all presidents. They virtually never move public opinion in their direction," Edwards tells National Journal. "It happened for Ronald Reagan. It happened for FDR. It happens all the time. You should anticipate failure if you're trying to change people's minds. The data is overwhelming.”[2]

A Biblical Tension Built into Pastoral Ministry

It was the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper who famously declared, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”  The Kingdom has already come in Christ.  As a Reformed pastor, this knowledge leads me to believe that Jesus cares deeply about the racism of our society, the treatment of immigrant families, the character of our political discourse, and the integrity of those who govern.  This is not how it’s supposed to be.  Christ wants to cry “mine” over the injustices of our day, just as he prophetically decried the injustice of his day.    

Yet Herman Ridderbos (another Dutch Reformed theologian) reminded us of “the coming of the kingdom”.  The kingdom is not yet.  There is an eschatological tension inherent in the proclamation of Christ’s kingdom.  One day there will be a reckoning.  Martin Luther once said there are only two days: “today” and “that day”.  The Kingdom of Christ also cries “wait” – because on that day “there will be no more mourning or crying or pain” (Rev. 21:4). 

So how does a contemporary pastor shepherd the flock within this tension? 

A Few Guiding Thoughts

1.     Nobody is listening in today’s world.  So maybe the most radical prophetic posture for a pastor to take is to…listen.  Listen to the congregation: for their hurts, for their scars, for their aspirations. Is there a kind of prophetic listening that contemporary pastors can develop which actually precedes speaking?  Might prophetic listening actually be more effective than prophetic speaking in many cases in our divided and broken world?  I believe that deep listening begets strong wisdom.  We need contemporary pastors to listen to the myriad of ways congregations have been spiritually de-formed over the years in order to shepherd effectively in today’s divided world.

2.     I’m convinced that people who chide pastoral leadership for “not weighing in” are typically asking for a “bully pulpit” rather than a “prophetic witness”.  A bully pulpit is typically aimed “at the other guy” who sits “across the aisle”. Most of what passes for prophetic statements today are really just regurgitated “hot takes” from political pundits. A true prophetic witness is likely to have all of us on our knees asking for repentance.

3.     Prophetic statements without prophetic action can be meaningless.  Not always.  And not in every case.  But our human condition is all-too-easily deceived into smug self-righteousness just because we share a carefully worded statement decrying the latest injustice in our world.  Be careful: one’s righteousness does not depend on what you are against (or whether you use your “platform” – which everyone erroneously thinks they have in today’s social medial world – to weigh in on current events).

4.     The way of wisdom may be silence.  I know very few people whose expertise or vocation qualifies them to speak with proper nuance on every contemporary issue of the day.  Pastors, like most people, only have a limited amount of time to get properly informed; by the time one has researched the issue carefully, the current “crisis” has probably moved onto something else.  Humility and wisdom are often displayed in not weighing in on every controversial issue.  

5.     Dialogue or Statements?  Furthermore, nagging contemporary issues are often addressed in the church most effectively through conversational dialogue rather than pulpit pronouncements.  Again, not always.  And not in every case.  Yet, often these issues are best tackled through the slow discipleship of individuals within the flock.    

6.     Pastoral ministry is guided by the Word of God.  There is a temptation to let the 24-hour news cycle set the agenda for pastoral ministry.  Yes, there is a place for winsome cultural engagement. Yes, the church should not be afraid to address “what people are talking about” in our culture.  Yet the culture doesn’t set the agenda for pastoral ministry.  In fact, I firmly believe that many souls are being distracted spiritually (or even lost entirely) by an inordinate amount of attention paid to the 24-hour news cycle.  We’ve reached a tipping point in American evangelicalism wherein even we in the church are more fascinated with the Mueller Report than we are with the reports of Matthew and Mark.

Pastoral ministry, in this sense, is counter-cultural and prophetic in its insistence that people encounter the Word of God.  As people are “rooted and built up” in Christ and “strengthened in the faith” (Col. 2:7), pastoral ministry unleashes an equipped body of believers to be salt and light and carry a biblical worldview out into the world to make more of a difference than any “bully pulpit” could ever hope to achieve. 

—————

[1] Perhaps it was the case that the mainline church was always just a mirror that reflected the moral “center” of the nation.

[2] See George E. Condon Jr. and National Journal, “The Myth of the Bully Pulpit: Presidents can talk all they want (and they do), but it won’t get results”, The Atlantic, April 4, 2013: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/the-myth-of-the-bully-pulpit/443067/.

I still remember the conversation.

Walking along a gravel path in the woods of eastern Kansas over 20 years ago, I first heard a truth that makes more sense the older I get:

“Busyness is a serious obstacle, if not one of the main obstacles, to Christian growth and spiritual maturity.”

To be honest, I was surprised to hear it at the time. Surely, I thought, there were more temptations to the Christian life than…busyness.

It’s interesting that if the church still talks about sin at any great length, it usually harps on the social sins – those outward behaviors which can easily distinguish those who belong (us) from those who don’t belong (them), the righteous (us) from the unrighteous (them), the saints (us) from the sinners (them).

Yet if the DNA of sin could be seen under a microscope, I wonder if we’d see two dominant threads of genes, especially as it characterizes the western church – selfishness and busyness.

If sin, by its very nature, is anti-social, then it stands to reason that selfishness (the very epitome of being anti-social) makes up quite a large portion of sin’s DNA. (Conversely, it’s not by chance that the essence of Christianity is relational — love God and love others.) Selfishness is as ancient as Genesis, so it really comes as no surprise that sin and selfishness are such good buddies.

What is more surprising – and more recent — is the Western church’s capitulation to modern culture’s hectic pace. Busyness is laying waste to the church both corporately and individually. All of us are being swept down the fast-moving current of busyness and we usually never recognize how far down the river we are until it is too late. And, by “far down the river”, I mean how disconnected we are relationally — both from God and others. If the church is serious about relational Christianity and spiritual growth, we need to address both of these dominant strands of sin’s DNA, one ancient and one more recent.

Personally, I need to look selfishness in the face and own up to it. (The ancients used to call it repentance.) Likewise, I need to have a healthy relationship with my calendar which means it takes orders from me -- not the other way around. A healthy relationship with my calendar means, quite simply, that I am the boss.

Slow is good for the soul. Slow is good for relationships. There is a basic contemplative “posture” to the Christian life that I am increasingly being led to believe is simply part and parcel of spiritual growth which is only nurtured by slowness (rather than through a hectic pace) and by embracing (rather than denying) one’s limits.

I have come to the realization that “slow is necessary” for the spiritual life. It didn’t come without a fight. “Fast-ness” still rears its ugly head. If I never recognize the battle, I lose every time. But, the good news is that the more I recognize the battle (and the importance of the battle), the more likely I am to gain the upper hand.

Slow is necessary. Soul-food is difficult to swallow at the drive-thru.

See also:  "Slow is Beautiful".

Spiritually-speaking, I want to grow. Growing implies movement. Movement implies progress. Progress can be measured. Progress means success.

If only the spiritual life were so easy.

The spiritual life is slow. I don’t do slow well. In fact, I hate slow.

The spiritual life is like mile 23 of a marathon: you can’t see the finish line, two people just passed you, and you begin to wonder “now…what am I doing this for”? (Take my word on it if you haven’t had the “privilege” of running a marathon.)

I’ve been struck lately about the slowness of the spiritual life. The never-arriving-part of the spiritual life. The I-wish-I-was-more _____ (wise, faithful, prayerful, generous…) part of the spiritual life. The-I-know-that-I-should-focus-on-Christ but it’s-so-easy-to-focus-on-self part of the spiritual life.

I want spiritual jumper-cables at hand at a moment’s notice to automatically put a spark in my life whenever the spark (seems) to fade away. I want to grow. And I want to do it yesterday. And I want to have learned that lesson already. And I want to have read those books three years ago. And I want to have said my prayers more intensely, more contemplatively, more faithfully, more articulately, more meaningfully.

I want to grow.

Yet, what if, in addition to using the word grow, we used words like rest and abide, celebrate and dance, commune and soak, serve and listen? What if the spiritual life isn’t about how high the tree grows but how strong the roots are? What if the spiritual life isn’t about how fast the tree grows but how many years it endures? What if the spiritual life isn’t about how beautiful the tree is but how many birds can find rest in its branches? (And maybe just 1-2 birds finding rest there is enough.)

Rest, abide, celebrate, dance, commune, soak, serve, and listen.

Maybe I’m thinking about growth all wrong.

Here are three blog posts worth sharing during Holy Week. Christ lived, Christ died, Christ rose again — We Enjoy So Great a Salvation!!!

J.I. Packer on the 6 Things You Should Tell Yourself Every Day

1. I am a child of God.

2. God is my Father.

3. Heaven is my home.

4. Every day is one day nearer.

5. My Savior is my brother.

6. Every Christian is my brother too.

J.I. Packer suggests that if we want to focus the New Testament message in three words, he would choose ADOPTION THROUGH PROPITIATION.

Kevin DeYoung’s post on Salvation by Propitiation

We are always in desperate need to more fully understand the depth of our salvation in Christ.

Kevin DeYoung: There are many biblical ways to describe Christian salvation.

Salvation can be understood ritually as a sacrifice, as the expiation of guilt through the death of Christ on the cross.

Salvation can be understood commercially as redemption, as a payment made through the blood of Christ for the debt we owe because of sin.

Salvation can be understood relationally as reconciliation, as the coming together of estranged parties by means of Christ’s at-one-ment.

Salvation can be understood legally as justification, as the declaration that sins have been forgiven and that the sinner stands blameless before God because of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.

3 Reasons I changed My Mind about Penal Substitution

Penal substitution cannot be tossed out as simplistic. Modern-day rants against the cross being a “form of cosmic child abuse” from a vengeful Father against an innocent Son cannot be sustained by a careful exegesis of scripture nor bear the weight of Trinitarian theology nor reflect the church’s historic witness of what truly transpired on Good Friday. So YES — we still glorify God during Holy Week because Christ lived the life I could never live and died the death that I deserved.

Daniel Hames: Yet as I began to read Scripture more deeply, I came to see these texts in the light of Scripture’s great themes and typologies. I could see no other way to interpret them—the animal skins in Genesis 3, the ram in Genesis 22, the Passover lamb and the firstborn sons, the darkness of judgment the night of the exodus from Egypt and the darkness that fell as Jesus died, all the undeniable language of propitiation and the blood on the mercy seat, and so much more.

Actually reading the Scriptures in their cohesive entirety, and seeing the Old Testament repeatedly preview the gospel, showed me that Jesus bearing our sin and its penalty is central—not peripheral, and not artificially imposed—to the story’s vast sweep.