TILL HE COMES Blog

I have probably lost all my readers by now…but if you’re still out there, thanks for hanging around. I haven’t posted in a while because we’ve been moving. Wendy and I counted the other day, and we think this is our twelfth move in twelve years. Not fun. We do not like moving.

Hopefully, we can stay here for a while.

Anyway, during this move, Wendy and I realized (once again) that we have an addiction. We are addicted to books. Between the two of us, we filled 25 bookcases. These cases are six feet high, with five shelves each. And we stacked books on top of the cases also, so each one is holding six shelves of books. That’s a lot of books! 

Let’s see…if each shelf is about 2.5 feet wide, and we use six shelves on each bookcase, then we have about 375 linear feet of books. Not every shelf is packed as full as it can be, so let’s make it only 300 linear feet. That’s a football field of books!

And yes, in case you’re wondering, we don’t just collect books; we hope to read them all as well. I currently have over 80 books in my “must read NOW” pile. Sigh.

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Here’s a newsflash: I’m not a girl!

Nevertheless, one book I read this week was A Girl’s Guide to Life by Katie Meier. I now know more about makeup, hairstyles, and clothing selection then ever before. This, of course, is only the beginning of what I will learn.

You see…I have three girls. They’re still young (8, 6, and 4), but I figure that I better get a head start right now on learning about the issues and problems that growing girls face, and how, as a father, I might be able to help.

Fathers, as a tip for Father’s Day, if you have daughters, do yourself a favor and buy and read a copy of this book. It was excellent. I can’t think of anything Katie missed. She dealt with inner issues like self-esteem and emotions, body issues of clothing, hair, makeup, all the transitions of puberty, and moral issues like dating, sex, and religion. And Katie’s style of writing perfectly matched the content of the book. As I read, I often felt I was eavesdropping on a pajama party sleepover conversation where a twenty-something woman answered questions from a roomful of teenage girls.

I will definitely be giving a copy of this book to each of my three girls, and using it as a handy “reference guide” for myself as they get older.

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Disclosure: This book was sent to me by Thomas Nelson publishers for review through their BookSneeze program.

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I recently finished reading The Myth of a Christian Religion by Gregory Boyd. Overall, his approach is similar to the one I will take in Close Your Church for Good. He reveals how the church has become seduced by various powers which have kept us from living according to Kingdom principles. After laying the groundwork for this premise, he writes about various subjects that the church must avoid in order to revolt against these powers and return to living like Jesus. For example, he calls for a revolution in the areas of judgment (chap. 4), nationalism (chap. 7), racism (chap. 10), and greed (chap 11).

It was a good book, and I really appreciated how he approached each subject with grace and tact. After presenting an area of concern, he gave suggestions, but always with gentleness and respect, knowing that the Spirit may lead you or I to respond differently.

And that brings me to my only difficulty with the book. I think that he didn’t go far enough. Greg implies that though most churches in the world are enslaved to the Powers, he and his church have found a better way. I have never visited his church, but my guess is that if I did, I would not be able to tell that it was much different from almost any other church in town. He’s made some changes which I think are a move in the right direction, but are they enough to reverse the course we are on?

It’s like a Playboy photographer who doesn’t look at Playboy magazines, or a Tobacco Company CEO who doesn’t smoke, or a BP Oil Executive who drives a hybrid. If you’re still part of an abusive, exploitive, damaging system, who cares if you make a few tweaks with your own involvement?

Maybe what we need is not a revolution, or even another reformation. What we need is a death and resurrection.

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Brad Powell’s book, Change Your Church for Good, is actually a revised edition of a 2007 book by the same name. Essentially, it is just another book about how a pastor took a struggling church, made a few tweaks, and it is now a thriving mega church. The emphasis is on developing leaders and casting vision for the future. It’s a decent book if you’ve never read a book about such things.

However, as with all such books, the strong implication is that if you make similar changes, your church can become “mega” too.

To be frank, I’m tired of these kinds of books. I am sure Brad Powell is an excellent pastor, a great man, and a fine leader. He’s a fairly decent writer, handsome, and has done quite well in becoming the pastor of a mega church. I wish him continued success.

But the truth is that for every pastor who changes a struggling church into a mega church, there are a 1000 pastors who do the same things, lead the same way, and try the same changes, but still see their church decline. It’s not just about working harder, or having bigger faith, or pressing on until you see the blessing, or choosing leaders carefully, or sharing your life, or being passion ate when nobody else seems to care (all things Powell talks about in his book). Lots of pastors do these things, and their churches still die.

So what’s the answer?

Maybe, just maybe….our goal should not be to become a mega church. (Gasp!) Maybe, just maybe, the sign of success is not necessarily a bigger budget, bigger buildings, and more people. (Double gasp!) Maybe, just maybe, size has nothing to do with church effectiveness, and even if you get more bodies, bucks, and bricks, you still may not have a ”church.”

I’m beginning to think that the key to being a church is not getting more people into the church building, but getting more people out. When is someone going to write a book called, Close Your Church for Good?….that’s a book I’d like to read. Maybe I’ll write it.

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I recently wrote  that Jim Petersen’s book, Church Without Walls, made it into my list of top ten books. This book shares some of the principles and ideas which guided his ministry among unchurched Brazilian students. I liked the book because the principles he shares encapsulate my thinking from the past five years about the kind of life I want to live among the people at my job and in my neighborhood.

But principles are one thing; stories are quite another. Don Duntch of Quest Ministries recently told me that stories reveal where God is at work, especially stories of people gaining freedom in their lives and in their thinking.

So it was with great excitement that I recently learned about a book by Ken Lottis, who was Jim’s ministry partner in Brazil. The book is entitled Will This Rock in Rio? and is basically the story of what Ken and Jim did in Brazil.

Now that I’ve read both, I can say that the two books go together. While Jim’s book is informative, Ken’s is inspirational. While Jim’s book affirmed my thinking, Ken’s encouraged me to actually start reading John with someone. While Jim’s book answers the “Why” and “How,” Ken’s books says “Go” and “Do.”

I believe that if you read one book, you must read the other also. If you are a person who wants to love and live among the people who will never “come to church” both books are “must reads.”

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Plan B by Pete Wilson is a great book for reviving hope in a person whose life has gone terribly wrong. Through biblical truths and stories, it shows that although life may not turn out the way we planned or imagined, we can trust God to resurrect something good from our shattered dreams.

Part of me wishes I had read this book about two years ago when I was going through a very difficult and trying time in my life. So if you or someone you know is going through the loss of a job, or the death of a loved one, or facing a divorce, this book contains some good ideas for recognizing that God is a God of detours, that He is sovereign over shattered dreams, and He can heal any wounded heart.

However, there seemed to be a glaring omission from the book, which I have come realize in my own path through pain and uncertainty, and it is this: Things don t always work out. Every story in the book pointed to the idea that even though life may take a turn for the worst, in the end, it will all work out. Joseph goes to prison, but becomes the second in command over Egypt. Joshua faces hard times in the wilderness, but leads the people across the Jordan into the Promised Land. A man commits adultery and loses his job as a pastor, and almost loses his wife, but then gets to go on a speaking tour around the country helping others in the same situation.

The message of the book seems to be: Have things gone wrong? Don t worry. It will get better soon.

Sadly, this isn’t always true. Does God redeem and rescue? Yes! A thousand times, yes! But does He always? No. At least, not in this life.

Take John the Baptist. He proclaims the coming of the Messiah, and with Him, the Kingdom of God. But he gets arrested, and instead of getting freed, ends up getting beheaded. This was not the rescue he hoped for.  All the prophets had similar stories. The writer of Hebrews says that many of them were tortured, imprisoned, stoned, and sawn in two. There is no happy ending to being sawn in two.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m glad I read Plan B. It helped me a lot with my own questions and issues. I just think it sometimes painted too rosy of a picture that does not fully fit with either Scripture or reality.

Of course, no one wants to read that sometimes you may lose your job, go into bankruptcy, have your children die,  get divorced, contract terminal cancer, and finish out your days in suffering and despair. And since a book like that will never get published, there’s always Plan B.

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I recently read Charles Foster’s book, The Sacred Journey, which, according to the back cover, is a book about calling Christians to go on a pilgrimage.

Prior to reading it, I imagined it to be a book about going on a metaphorical pilgrimage, a spiritual trip within your mind. You know…recognizing that we are all “on a journey” and how we can take certain “steps” to ”progress” in our life of “following Jesus.”

But it became quickly clear to me that this is not what Foster meant at all. In his book, he calls Christians to go on a literal pilgrimage. Yes, that’s right. Getting off our butts, packing a bag (or just a change of clothes), and setting out (on foot is preferable) to go somewhere.  The destination, he says, doesn’t really matter, because it’s the journey that counts. Foster’s book explains the biblical basis behind this idea, and recounts many of his own pilgrimage stories.

I kept on waiting for him to say, “Now if you can’t go on a literal pilgrimage, you can always stay home and go on a metaphorical, spiritual pilgrimage.” He got close to this in the last chapter, but he never really came out and said any such thing. 

And so I became very uncomfortable with the book. I have a wife and three young kids. I have a job. I can’t go traipsing off  into the wilderness just to see what happens. Sure, I may connect with God, but I may also lose my job, my house, and maybe my family. He didn’t speak about how his own wife and kids handle his frequent journeys other than to say that he leaves them behind and misses them (p. 159). And of course, he writes books as a job, so he can take that with him. If I tried to take my job with me…well, I’d get put in prison. Those of you know what I do understand what I mean.

So while I enjoyed the book, and was challenged by it, I must conclude that most of us do not have the luxury to be a nomad.

But aside from that, is what he is calling for truly biblical? Certainly it is true that the Bible is chock full of examples of nomads, pilgrimages, and journeys. Yes, Jesus and Paul moved about. Yes, followers of Jesus have nowhere to lay their head. I can’t deny it.

But it seems to me that nobody in Scripture ever went somewhere just so they could connect with God, learn something about themselves, or grow on the journey. Whenever God’s people go somewhere in Scripture, it is so they connect with people, or more specifically, to connect people with God. A biblical pilgrim is not one who embarks on a journey to find himself, find God, or visit a holy site. Rather, a biblical pilgrim is one who embarks on a journey to find others.

So our “going” must be with people in mind. Foster did bring this out somewhat. For example, he says, “The purpose is not primarily to ‘inquire,’ but to meet: the ‘wise men’ are all the people you bump into, particularly if they’re on heroin and state benefits” (p. 141). But such statements are rare. I wish he would have elaborated and emphasized this point more.

He said over and over that the destination is not what is important; it was the journey that mattered. However, he seems to have made the journey the destination. To me, the significance of the journey is not the journey itself, but the people on the journey.  It is not “Where are you going?” or even “How are you going?” that matters. Rather, the real questions are ”Who are you going with?” and “Who are you going to?” 

And I think if you answer these questions, you will still go on pilgrimage, but it may not be to Jerusalem, Canterbury, or Rome. Instead, you may find yourself traveling to the next cubicle, the neighbor’s house, or the closest bar.

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Every once in a while I read a book that puts into words what I have been thinking, but couldn’t quite express. These are not so much “Aha!” moments as “Yes! Someone who understands!” moments. This last month, I happened to read two such books. Both put into words what I have been thinking and feeling for two-three years now.

Previously, I wrote about how the average reader can only read about 4000 books in a lifetime. These are two books I am glad are on my list. Both books might have made it into my Top Ten List. Definitely my top twenty.

The first book, Church Without Walls by Jim Petersen, is a book I’ve owned for about ten years, but never got around to reading. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t read it ten years ago, because it wouldn’t have meant much to me back then. Ten years ago, I thought I had church all figured out. I even wrote a book about it (I thank God it never got published…). Jim Petersen bases his book off of some church planting work he did in Brazil in the 1960s. He found that to really reach people who wouldn’t step foot in the typical church, he had to radically change the way the church looked and functioned. In the rest of the book, he summarizes the historical, theological, and biblical insights he came to as he struggled with how to allow this new church of Brazilian Christians be the church in their culture. (I recently learned that this this story is further developed in a new release, Will this Rock in Rio? by Ken Lottis.)

Jim Petersen then takes the lessons he learned in Brazil and applies them to our own time and culture. His basic conclusion is that various traditions have locked us into doing church a certain way, and have ceased to be helpful for many of the people we are trying to reach with the gospel (cf. p. 208). By abandoning some of these traditions, we actually liberate the church to live the gospel in our culture and communities. I’m looking forward to reading this book again.

The second book which got my heart racing is Repenting of Religion by Greg Boyd. Most Christians love to say they have a “relationship” not a “religion.” But the truth is that most of us just have another religion. I see this first hand every day at my job where I get to interact with people of seventeen different religions. Whatever differences they all may have, one thread runs through them all (Christianity included) — judgment and condemnation.

As Christians, we judge gays, lesbians, the rich, the homeless, people of other religions, atheists, heretics, criminals, drunks, drug addicts, prostitutes, pimps, politicians, and anybody else we can think of to point our finger at. Greg Boyd points out that Scripturally, these are not really the sins that God is most concerned about.  God is more concerned with other sins, which happen to be found in the lives of most Christians, especially those of us here in the United States.

But even this not Boyd’s point. He doesn’t just want us to shift our finger pointing from one target to another. He wants us to stop the pointing altogether. Finger pointing – judgmentalism – is a symptom of religion. “But wait!” you say, “Jesus judged. Paul judged. We are even told to judge each other! What about those texts?” Boyd is not ignorant of these texts and deals with all of them. His basic conclusion is that the only judging Jesus and Paul do is to judge the self-righteous, hypocritical, legalistic religious people for committing the sin of judging others.

As with everything Boyd writes, this book challenges your thinking and causes you to see certain Scriptures in a new light. If you want to learn to live out the love of Jesus within this world, you must read this book.

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Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision (IVP: 2009) is N.T. Wright’s attempt to explain once again his view on Paul’s use of justification. He wrote it as a summary of his view, and as a response to critics (primarily John Piper) who seem to not understand what he is saying.

The book is written with ironic humor and remarkable restraint, but the most amazing feature is the Biblical paradigm shift that Wright presents to his readers regarding justification. Though most of what Wright explains in this book he has written elsewhere, this book puts it all together in nice, orderly fashion, so that even if one does not agree with Wright, we can hope that they will now be able to critique his view with understanding.

As for myself, I am not yet fully persuaded of Wright’s view. His basic view is that justification is God’s law-court declaration that a person is in right standing (so far, so good) with God’s covenant. It’s that covenant part that raises questions, particularly since Wright’s definition of justification does away with the doctrine of imputed righteousness. Wright does not believe that through justification we receive the righteousness of Christ (p. 135).

And yet, what Wright takes away with one hand, he gives back with another. Wright argues that issues related to deliverance from the penalty and power of sin in our lives come through resurrection, not through justification (pp. 231-235). This, however, though a major doctrine, is a minor point in Wright’s book.

His main concern is to show how his view of justification makes more sense of the Pauline passages that speak of it. And with this, he is more than a conqueror. If, for example, you’ve ever struggled with what Romans 9-11 has to do with the rest of the letter, Wright’s view makes these chapters not only fit within the flow of Paul’s argument, but actually become the pinnacle and the climax of Romans. Wright’s strength in this is due to his insistence on reading the biblical text, not with twenty-first century eyes and sixteenth-century questions, but with first-century eyes and first-century questions. This, it seems to me, is the best way to read and study Scripture, and Wright does an excellent job leading the way.

If you want to understand some of the nuances to the current debate on justification, I recommend this book. If, however, you want to understand the thought flow of some of Paul’s letters (like Galatians, Ephesians, and Romans), this book must not be ignored. Take it up, and read.

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I have a confession to make.

I just finished reading a book by Brian McLaren.

Yes, yes, I know. Many of my old friends and acquaintances have long thought that I was sliding into apostasy, and now their suspicions are confirmed.

So since there is no chance of persuading them otherwise, let me go further and make another confession: I not only read the book; I enjoyed it.

As long as I’m making confessions (this feels good to get some of this off my chest), I might as well come out with all of it. I read the book, I enjoyed the book, and (gasp) I agreed with much of what McLaren said! I even cried at one point, and reread the chapter – out loud – to my wife!

Oh, and I guess that leads me to another confession, this one directed to Brian. I am sorry that in the past, I condemned you and your writings as “heresy” without ever actually reading or listening to anything you wrote or said, or trying to understand your views. That was wrong of me. I am planning on obtaining and reading more of your books, because even though I may not agree with everything, I like to read books that challenge me to think. Your books certainly do that.

The book I read was Adventures in Missing the Point by Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo. The book contains individual chapters on various topics, such as salvation, the Bible, evangelism, seminary, homosexuality, environmentalism, worship, sin, and postmodernism. Brian and Tony argue that many of us Christians approach these topics in the wrong way, and are therefore neutering the gospel of much of it’s redemptive power.

Aside from the fact that the book makes you think about these topics, one nice feature of the book is that the authors give you permission to disagree with them. They want the reader to think through the traditional views on these topics in a new light, so that we hold our views more lightly, with humility and grace. They help the reader do this through the format of the book. Each topic is assigned to one author, but the chapter concludes with a response from the other author. On nearly every topic, the two authors disagree with each other in some way, but they do so with gentleness and respect.

Christians are never going to universally agree on how to approach the “hot topics.” Personally, I am not sure that in this life, 100% agreement would be glorifying to God. What if God purposefully left things vague in Scripture and in life for a purpose? Maybe if we can learn to disagree in love, to maintain unity despite differences of opinion, to discuss tough issues with humility and grace, then we will no longer be “missing the point.”

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