A.W. Tozer On the Program-Driven Church

The River Raisin at sunset

A.W. Tozer has written:

"Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all.

If we would find God amid all the religious externals, we must first determine to find Him, and then proceed in the way of simplicity."
–A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God, p. 17-18)

Busyness, if it is to be relevant to God's purposes, must emerge out of the presence of God. First, be with God. Dwell in Christ. Then, as Christ instructs, do. The church is to be a movement that is presence-driven rather than a mass of program-busyness that leave people too exhausted and time-spent to abide in Christ.

Sharing Christ with Muslims - Tomorrow Morning at Redeemer

Tomorrow morning at Redeemer (May 23), 9:30-11:30 AM.

5305 Evergreen
Monroe, MI 48162

Sharing Christ with Muslims.

Speaker: Jonathan Swift, missionary in Beirut Lebanon for the past 6 years, and now leader of The Dearborn Initiative.

Jonathan is a pastor, and is working on a Masters Degree in Islamic Thought at Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon.

Jim & Denise Hunter Preaching this Sunday at Redeemer

This coming Sunday morning Jim and Denise Hunter will preach on "Abiding in Christ." 

This is a core theme at Redeemer. Jim and Denise embraced "abiding" many years ago, and will bring us new insights into this.

10:30 AM

Prayer Takes Us Into God's Conference Room

Spring, happening now in my backyard.

My current, favorite definition of prayer is from Dallas Willard: prayer is talking with God about what we are doing together. And by "we," this means: God and I.

Apply this to yourself. Prayer, as Martin Luther King believed, is conversation with God. In the act of praying you are conferencing with God, about what you both are doing together. Prayer is a mutually cooperative conversation. In prayer, God and I confer about The Mission.

Many of us have gone to large-event conferences. I've been to some where God has met me in significant ways. These can be good. But we don't have to wait for the next conference to come around. We can confer with God now, today, this moment. The Conference doors are now open. Enter in.

For me, many of the most life-changing, spiritually formative times have been when I've conferred with God, 1-on-1. Just me and God. As wonderful as many conference speakers are, God is better. The God-conference is happening today. Cost of admission: $0.

Prayer takes you into God's Conference Room.

The Basic Questions of the Presence-Driven Church

Green Lake, Wisconsin

The basic questions of the Presence-Driven Church are variations on the basic question, which is: What is God saying to us?

The variations include:

• Where is God leading us?
• What is God telling us to do?
• What does God think of this?
• What does this look like from God's perspective?
• Is God building this house, or are we?
• Are we hearing God correctly?
• God, what are you saying to us?

These are the questions to ask, primordially. Agree not to do anything or build anything or move in some direction just for movement's sake, but only as God has told us to do so.

The basic requirement of anyone who is a leader should be: one who abides in Christ, and hears the voice of God.

This is one of the reasons why, as leaders and as a people, we don't vote on things. If the voters don't hear from God the voting will be in vain. If God isn't allowed into the house-building, then we are striving in vain.

In some contexts simply to raise the question "What is God saying to us?" creates tension. The person who asks this might be viewed as arrogant, or naive, or uneducated as to the correct protocol at "church meetings." If this question cannot be raised, then the church will be self-guided at best, demonically inspired at worst.

If these questions are unfamiliar, one might ask: "But how can we know what God is saying to us?" That's a good question. Optimally, as a leader you want your co-leaders to know the answer to this. Begin to instruct your people on: A.S.L.O.

If some are skeptical that God speaks to people today (or ever), then you've got deism. At this point the church is on their own, sans the leading of God. It makes me weary to even think of this, as a pastor.

Ask the question.

***
See also:

• The Presence-Driven Church
• Some More on the Presence-Driven Church

Blessed Are the Mono-Taskers, for They Shall See God

I spend a lot of time mono-tasking here.

I currently teach at two theological seminaries, one Chinese and the other African-American, and in our own Redeemer Ministry School. My core seminary class is called Spiritual Formation, also called Personal Transformation. My main assignment: set apart one hour a day, five days a week, to pray and listen to God, keeping a record of the voice and activity of God in a spiritual journal. Needed: listening skills; ability to meditate and ponder; desire and focus to allow God to go deep (see, e.g., Proverbs 20:5).

I also teach two philosophy courses at Monroe County Community College: Intro to Logic, and Philosophy of Religion. Needed to learn philosophy and think philosophically: the ability to think; ability to focus and stay on task; desire and ability to go deep; ability to ponder and meditate.

Both spiritual formation and philosophy are slow cookers, not microwaves. Both, if attended to, produce much lasting fruit in a person's life. Oak trees grow out of the soil of pondering deep and important life-themes.

Deep, lasting relationships are slow-cookers, too. This includes the God-relationship. Knowing God means way more than theoretical knowledge. As an analogy, one learns to ride a bike by actually riding it, not by reading books on it or spending a few hurried minutes with it here and there.

Sadly, it's time to say good-bye to both spiritual formation and philosophizing, at least in North America and any culture that continues to be "wired." An entire generation has formed that is, now, neurally incapable of deep thought. To understand this begin by reading Nicholas Carr's The Shallows. See the various Shallows-posts I've already made here.

Or check out this nytimes essay "Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction." The bullets are:

• “A book takes so long. I prefer the immediate gratification,” says a bright 17-year-old student. Professors take note. This student cannot attend to you for long. So he's not being rebellious if he's not paying attention.
• 
  "Developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks — and less able to sustain attention." So, in my spiritual formation classes, it is beyond-hard for more and more seminary students to pray, listen to God, and meditate on God-things for even a few minutes.
• “Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing,” said Michael Rich, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston. And the effects could linger: “The worry is we’re raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently.”
• Don't simply blame the kids for this. We've programmed them to Mc-think. "Even as some parents and educators express unease about students’ digital diets, they are intensifying efforts to use technology in the classroom, seeing it as a way to connect with students and give them essential skills. Across the country, schools are equipping themselves with computers, Internet access and mobile devices so they can teach on the students’ technological territory."
• I ban texting and laptops in my classes. I put this in my syllabus next to a picture of a skull-and-crossbones. Death to the multitaskers!  Because, e.g., "unchecked use of digital devices can create a culture in which students are addicted to the virtual world and lost in it." 
• Today's kids are "caught between two worlds, one that is virtual and one with real-life demands."
• "Research also shows that students often juggle homework and entertainment. The Kaiser Family Foundation found earlier this year that half of students from 8 to 18 are using the Internet, watching TV or using some other form of media either “most” (31 percent) or “some” (25 percent) of the time that they are doing homework." So what's so bad about this? It's only that you can't learn doing this, that's all. Yes, you can learn to multitask. "But this proficiency comes at a cost: [one student] blames multitasking for the three B’s on her recent progress report."  
• "Sean, a senior, concedes that video games take a physical toll: “I haven’t done exercise since my sophomore year. But that doesn’t seem like a big deal. I still look the same.”"
• "Some neuroscientists have been studying people like [these students]. They have begun to understand what happens to the brains of young people who are constantly online and in touch."
• "The heavy use of devices... worries Daniel Anderson, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who is known for research showing that children are not as harmed by TV viewing as some researchers have suggested. Multitasking using ubiquitous, interactive and highly stimulating computers and phones, Professor Anderson says, appears to have a more powerful effect than TV. Like Dr. [Michael] Rich [Harvard Medical School], he says he believes that young, developing brains are becoming habituated to distraction and to switching tasks, not to focus. “If you’ve grown up processing multiple media, that’s exactly the mode you’re going to fall into when put in that environment — you develop a need for that stimulation,” he said."
• "Students now lack the attention span to read the assignments on their own."

Ability to focus...  to deep-think... going...  going... gone... and with it the God-relationship going... going... gone...  at least in terms of the wired generation.

What am I doing about this? In my philosophy classes I assign little or no reading homework, since I assume 95% of my students won't read it anyway. I ban texting and laptops in class. In my lectures I look for dialogue and interaction, exposing students to the wonder of thinking. I give seminarians prayer assignments (not books to read on prayer, which may or may not be read anyway), and require that spiritual journals be kept. In some cases, they are met by God. A new-yet-ancient habit is formed, new neural connections are made, the joy and value of heart-stillness and heart purity are learned, and it's like life begins.

Remember that Kierkegaard told us Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing. To "will one thing." To focus on, attend to, be captivated by, be still before, one thing. What is the benefit of that? Blessed are the mono-taskers, for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8)

(For more see The God-Shaped Brain: How Changing Your View of God Transforms Your Life, by Timothy Jennings, M.D.)

How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life

Bazaar, in Nairobi, Kenya

I'm reading How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life, by British economic historian Robert Skidelsky and his philosopher-sociologisty son Edward Skidelsky.

"This book," they write, "is an argument against insatiability... It is directed at economic insatiability, the desire for more and more money. It is chiefly directed at the rich parts of the world, which may be reasonably thought to have enough wealth for a decent collective life. For the poor parts of the world, where the mass of the people still live in great poverty, insatiability is a problem for the future. But in rich and poor societies alike, insatiability can be seen wherever the opulence of the very rich runs wildly ahead of the means of existence of the many." (p. 3)

The Skidelsky's view is that the insatiable desire for "more" is rooted in human nature - "in the disposition to compare our fortune with that of our fellows and find it wanting." (Ib.)

What constitutes the "good life?" It can't be the acquisition of money. They write:


"Making money cannot be an end in itself— at least for anyone not suffering from acute mental disorder. To say that my purpose in life is to make more and more money is like saying that my aim in eating is to get fatter and fatter. And what is true of individuals is also true of societies. Making money cannot be the permanent business of humanity, for the simple reason that there is nothing to do with money except spend it." (p. 5)

Have you ever been on the death bed of a person who made and spent tons of money? I have. And it's pathetic to see if the rich materialist was banking on money and material things as the way to the good life.

Enter the Real Jesus, his warnings about making money and things one's god, and the promise of a satiated life, in him, irregardless of circumstances, because the goal becomes to give one's life away for the sake of God and others.

The Danger of Glorifying the Past

Monroe County sunset, May 18, 2013

Over the years I have met many people, some of them in churches, who point to the past as some kind of glory days that need to be recreated. For such people, the further one gets from those "good old days," the better they look. But truthfully, the "good old days" had their problems, too.

Thomas Merton quotes 19th-century Dutch historian Johan Huizinga as saying: “There is not a more dangerous tendency in history than that of representing the past as if it were a rational whole and dictated by clearly defined interest,” (In Merton, A Year with Thomas Merton, Kindle Locations 2389-2390)

In the glorification of the past the past gets distorted.

As for me, I find myself rarely (if ever) wanting to go back to the past. Yes, it's true that I think of the past with good memories. I sometimes think of Linda and I, living in East Lansing, with our two little boys. We had not much money (that was hard). We had one another (that was good). I think of those times, but never want to go back and do them again. My heart's desire is not to recapitulate them.

Instead, my heart aligns strongly with the apostle Paul's view, which is: one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14)

Moving forward and finishing well - that's what I am praying for. Pressing forward, not backward.

With this viewpoint we are freed from the tyranny of the often-distorted past and released to love God and move with His Spirit now, today. The Word does not say "Yesterday was the day that the Lord had made," but...

"This, today, is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!"

Prayer Summer - If My People

In Isaiah 19:23-25 we read:

²³ In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. ²⁴ In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. ²⁵ The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

In the Old Testament the three phrases in verse 25 - "my people," "my handiwork," and "my inheritance" - that are usually only applied to Israel. Old Testament scholar John Goldingay writes: "If Assyria and Egypt can be called God's people, anyone can be so called, even Britain and the United States." (Goldingay, 1&2 Chronicles for Everyone, 95) 

Keep this in mind, and consider what is perhaps the most famous biblical Call to Prayer, found in 2 Chronicles 7:14:

¹⁴ if my people, who are called by my name,will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

We can apply this verse to our own land, following the above reasoning out of Isaiah 19. Goldingay writes:
"If peoples want to claim the promise in 2 Chronicles 7, all they have to do is fulfill the same conditions as Israel."

To do this...

First, we have to "fall down." We have to humble ourselves. We have to assume the posture of a slave or suppliant before a king.

Second, we have to "plead." That's the literal meaning of the Hebrew word, which is usually translated as "pray." This is prayer as humble pleading before God our King. Goldingay says that, in 2 Chronicles, this is "not pleading for justice but for pardon, the kind of forgiveness only a king can grant, the pardon that ignores their deserving execution for their wrongdoing." (Ib.)

Third, this kind of prayer-appeal can only be made if we acknowledge any wrongdoing and turn from it. This is called "repentance." "Repentance is usually not a matter of feeling sorry but of changing what you do." (Ib.)

Finally, we have to "look to God's face." Not "seek" God's face like we are searching for something that is hidden. Rather, the word here means: turn and look at God. Goldingay writes: "The idea is of seeking from Yahweh the things that Yahweh alone can give - things such as a good harvest or insight about the future. When Yahweh's face smiles, these things from the face follow. God will soon note the corollary, that people must not be seeking the face of other gods." (Ib.)

In Western culture we usually go after good things by using our own abilities and minds. In 2 Chronicles we see a different viewpoint, which is: We are to get low, turn from any sin we are captivated by, and take the time to prayer-plead before our God. Then, and only then, will God "hear from heaven and heal the land."

Shall we do this together, now, in these days?

***

Prayer Summer begins June 1. 

• I'm challenging you to three months of praying, 30-60 minutes a day, 5 days a week, from June through August.
• You'll be on my e-mail list. I'll be sending Prayer Summer people things I am writing about prayer, plus video clips of myself teaching about prayer and encouraging a life of prayer.
• Prayer Summer Kickoff: Sunday night, June 9, 6 PM. Location: Toledo Vineyard. If you cannot make this event the audio will be online. Worship led by the Vineyard Worship Team. Then, I will give a challenge and call to prayer.
• I'd like to hear testimonies that come out of a life of praying. Prayer Summer people can submit testimonies which I may choose to post on my website (with your permission). 
• God's goal: mobilize more Jesus-followers into a life of actual praying.

If you want to be part of Prayer Summer and the Prayer Movement send me an e-mail and I'll add you to the group. 

johnpiippo@msn.com

Cost: $0.

Investment: deeper relationship with God, individually and corporately.

Prayer is: talking with God about what you and he are doing together. Prayer is: communication within The Relationship. Prayer is: conversation with God. Let the Great Conversation begin!

Solitude As the Place of the Great Encounter

Munson Park in Monroe

Henri Nouwen writes: "Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter— the struggle against the compulsion of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self." (Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart)

What does Nouwen mean by this?

First, "solitude" is being alone with God. There can be an interior solitude even when others are around. But mostly this inner condition is cultivated as one takes much time, without the presence of other people, to be alone in the presence of God.

Second, solitude is the place of the "great struggle." This struggle is "against the compulsion of the false self." This is the self that has come out of the kingdom of darkness. The false self is life-denying, controlling, manipulative, fearful, defeatist, and condemning. In solitude, especially as one begins to practice it, these unloving voices can make the experience crushing. In our busyness we have covered them up. Now, in our solitary unbusyness, the voices of darkness step onto the stage of our soul and recite their lines.

Third, solitude is also, thankfully, the place of the "great encounter." Here we meet "the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self." Here is God, who calls our name, saying, "You are my beloved child." In the God-encounter nothing surpasses this.

In solitude, the false self is burned away by the purging fires of loving holiness. This is soul's transformation into the joyous freedom of Christlikeness.