The Entertainment-and-Performance-Driven Church is Like a Drug-Addicted Athlete (The Presence-Driven Church)

Trinidad

Jesus didn't have to put on a show to keep the crowds coming. In fact, sometimes the crowds got smaller because, let's face it, following after Jesus was not always a big culture-pleaser.

Some churches are very concerned to please and entertain people so they will keep coming and invite their friends. This is not necessarily good.

Tim Suttle writes:

"If the church is the body of Christ, then the megachurch is like an athlete on steroids.

Every major city has a bevy of churches drawing between 5k-25k people. To get a body to grow that big leaders have to use some sort of performance enhancer. These things—typically models, strategies, and techniques gleaned not from the gospel or the Christian narrative, but from the world of business and the narrative of consumer capitalism—serve as performance enhancers that help create enormous congregations with huge facilities and hundreds of programs.

The impact of these practices is akin to using performance-enhancing drugs. They actually alter the form and function of the body, causing real and serious long-term consequences for the church universal...

Our most celebrated church leaders have been feeding the church the equivalent of performance-enhancing drugs for decades. The rest of us immediately asked them how they were doing it so we could try it too. If anyone felt a hint of concern in those early years of the church growth movement, we easily shrugged it off because the results were so amazing. But sometimes we tend to forget the downsides."

For more see "The Megachurch Is Like an Athlete on Steroids."
See Suttle's book Shrink: Faithful Ministry in a Church-Growth Culture.

Join Me at Our Green Lake Conference! June 25-29

Denise Kukwa - Green Lake Holy Spirit Conference_PROMO from Norelle Lutke on Vimeo.


FOR CONFERENCE DETAILS GO HERE.

The World's Most Interesting Man?

From The New Yorker

Encounter, Not Theology, Breeds Conviction

Moon, over my house

For decades I have been saying that experience, not theory, breeds conviction.

Authentic theorizing comes out of experience. Otherwise theory is mere abstraction.

Regarding God, we could say: encounter, not theology, breeds conviction. Yes, we want to get our theology right. But theology without God-encounters is speculation in an ivory tower. Meaning, a disconnect. (Like, e.g., the atheist Old Testament professor that used to teach at Michigan State University.)

Anthropologist and missiologist Charles Kraft writes:

It is necessary to experience "the things Jesus told us we would be able to do if we have faith in him (John 14:12). It has been in vogue for traditional evangelical theologians and Bible teachers to warn people against basing doctrine on experience. Yet in the real world experience counts for a lot, and theory that does not work in experience is soon discarded." (Kraft, Confronting Powerless Christianity: Evangelicals and the Missing Dimension, Kindle Locations 76-79)

An Appeal for Purity

Linda, walking in Sterling State Park, Monroe

Before I was a follower of Jesus one of the things I wanted to do was have sex with girls. The truth is, I didn't have as much sex as some of my fraternity brothers did. Some of them were doing it left and right, and I only could look on with envy. My understanding was that this was normal. In a Godless universe as I understood it, who really cares?

When I entered the Kingdom of God things were different. In my new life I was told that genital intercourse was reserved for marriage. This radically different viewpoint made sense to me, and still does.

I do not expect this to make sense to someone who is not a God-believer, or not a Jesus-follower. If that's you, I think I understand. You are as I once was. Like, what's the big deal about premarital and extramarital intercourse? Of course, if there is no God.

In my fraternity one of the brothers had a little black book. The black book contained the names of girls on campus. It had numerical ratings from '1' to '10' next to their names. A '1' meant there is no way she would have sex with you on the first date A '10' meant she would definitely have sex with you on the first date. My fraternity brother charged ten dollars to look at the black book, which was constantly being updated. Many of us, including me, thought this was so cool, because we wanted to have sex, almost more than anything. Girls were for our pleasure. 

The Kingdom of God is different from this. God's Kingdom is upside-down compared to this. Kingdom thinking operates in the light, not the twilight.

I'm writing to any of you who say you love and worship God and Jesus and The Kingdom. If you are screwing around, why? In God's Kingdom this is unloving and unrighteousness. In their book Real Relationships Les and Leslie Parrott write:

"Having genital sex before marriage is clearly not in line with God’s principles. Sexual intercourse is a “life-uniting act,” as our friend Lewis Smedes calls it. That’s why sex outside of marriage is “sex-to-soon.” It violates the intended purpose of sex. “It is wrong,” according to Smedes, “because unmarried people thereby engage in a life-uniting act without a life-uniting intent…. Intercourse signs and seals—and maybe even delivers—a life-union; and life union means marriage."

Parrott, Les. Real Relationships: From Bad to Better and Good to Great (Kindle Locations 1966-1969). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

In God's Kingdom, do not mess with this. It is the road to relational failure (see Parrott's book for the supportive scholarship).

I know others are doing it, but why care about what others think and do? That kind of thinking is what created the mess you and I were once in. Choose your kingdom and embrace it.

Our sex-worshiping culture reveals that something has gone wrong. C. S. Lewis once wrote:

“You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act—that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?”

Look - sex was God's idea, not the enemy's. The destroyer of our soul works by taking things God made and then OCD-perverting them so that our love for the distortion destroys us from the inside. Surely the One who invented sexuality knows best how it is to be enjoyed, right? 

If you are a Jesus-lover but have blown it in this area, come back. You know about the cross. You know about forgiveness.  You know that repentance means doing a '180' and changing directions. Step up and be the prodigal son. Do it now.

Stop rationalizing your failure. Rationalization belongs to the kingdom of darkness. Rationalization muddies things. What once was clear to you has become cloudy. Just how many translations of 1 Corinthians 6:18 do you need? Our loving God, thankfully, pursues after us and then, counter-culturally, throws a party in heaven when we come home.

Flee from sexual immorality. (NIV)

There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another. Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body. (The Message)

Run from immoral behavior. (The Voice)

The Dismantling of Personal Power

Monroe

My current morning discipline is:

1. Read some of the Psalms.

2. Read some of Proverbs.

3. Read the daily entry from A Year with Thomas Merton.

Today's entry has Merton quoting Eberhard Arnold, on "power." This is a great thing for me to read this morning, as I am preaching today at Redeemer on Pentecost, Acts chapters 1 and 2, and the power given to us by the Holy Spirit.

Arnold wrote:

“Let us pledge to him that all our own power will remain dismantled and will keep on being dismantled among us. Let us pledge that the only thing that will count among us will be the power and authority of God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit; that it will never again be us that count but that God above will rule and govern in Christ and the Holy Spirit.” (In A Year with Thomas Merton, Kindle Locations 3172-3174)

God Re-minds and Re-members Me When I Fall Apart

Monroe County

I cried out to God for help;    I cried out to God to hear me...

¹⁰ Then I thought, “To this I will appeal:    the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand.
¹¹ I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
    yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
¹² I will consider all your works
    and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”

Psalm 77:1; 10-12

I have a stack of spiritual journals dating back to the mid-1970s. Occasionally, I go back to an old journal and read some of God's "mighty deeds" in my life. As I do this, I am re-membered. I am put back together again.

To re-member something is to "member again" that which has become dismembered. Parts that were once together, but got separated, are rejoined. 

At times I feel so discombobulated that all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put me back together again. But when I look back, and recall the many times God has brought me through it all, I feel hope for the days ahead.

I remember how...

¹⁶ The waters saw you, God,    the waters saw you and writhed;
    the very depths were convulsed.
¹⁷ The clouds poured down water,
    the heavens resounded with thunder;
    your arrows flashed back and forth.
¹⁸ Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind,
    your lightning lit up the world;
    the earth trembled and quaked.
¹⁹ Your path led through the sea,
    your way through the mighty waters,
    though your footprints were not seen.

I remember how God re-membered me in the past, how God put me back together when I was falling apart.

The strategy of Psalm 77 is an appeal to memory.

1) I am falling apart, and I need help.

2) I will remember what God has done for me.

3) In the remembering, God puts me back together again.

Jesus' Method: Proclamation & Demonstration (Needed Today More Than Ever)

Peony, in our backyard

I was trained in an evangelical Christian environment. For all I received from my teachers and pastors, I will forever be grateful.

My evangelical seminary training gave me tools to study God's Word and proclaim it. But it did not help me with two things I now view as central to my Jesus-walk; viz., how to have a deep prayer life, and how to demonstrate the Gospel of the Kingdom the way Jesus did.

I learned how to proclaim God’s Word, but was not trained or mentored in demonstrating God’s Word in love and power. To not both proclaim and demonstrate is, I believe, to be left with a half-Gospel. (This is my problem with a book like Shane Claiborne's Jesus for President. There is so much that is "gospel" in his book. But it's missing a heart chamber; viz., the supernatural and miraculous.)

I do not mean to criticize my teachers. I am greatly indebted to them. It was one of my seminary New Testament professors who introduced me to the kingdom theology of George Eldon Ladd. Thank you! I didn't realize how important this would be to me until many years later.

I’m convinced that there’s not one of us who has the Gospel exactly right in all areas, to include moi. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the way Jesus brought in the Kingdom was twofold:

1) He proclaimed the good news of the Kingdom of God, and then

2) he demonstrated it by doing things like healing and delivering people from demonic oppression.

Here’s how Ladd explains this in his excellent book The Gospel of the Kingdom:

“Our Lord’s ministry and announcement of the Good News of the Kingdom were characterized by healing, and most notably by the casting out of demons. He proclaimed the Good News of the Kingdom of God, and He demonstrated the Good News of the Kingdom of God by delivering men from the bondage of Satan.” (47)

Of course.

Then, Jesus told his followers to do the same.

Christians who devalue the importance of healing and deliverance ministry devalue the real Gospel. They have half a Gospel. If you are a theological kind of person, one reason for this devaluing is because of the influence of that nonbiblical theory known as "dispensationalism." (For a decisive refutation of dispensationalism see here, and follow the links.)

We need the full Gospel now, as much as we have ever needed it. If there is little or no evidence of a God who is not himself a philosophical naturalist, then it's no wonder many teens and young adults opt out of this.

We need "proclamation" of the Gospel. When someone responds to such proclamation in favor of Jesus, this is a work of God. I believe this. I also know it is easily explained away by philosophical naturalists. So, needed more than ever - demonstrations of the power of God, such as we believe happened in the ministry of Jesus. Acts 2:22 tells us that the signs and wonders and miracles "accredited" Jesus. They validated what he was proclaiming.

Then, Jesus said his followers would do the things he had been doing. That's us, correct? Demonstrations of God's power could be used by God to persuade some of His existence, right?

Followers of Jesus will follow his method. 1) Proclaim the good news. 2) Demonstrate the Word in love and power.

(For examples of the now-activity of God see especially Craig Keener's Miracles, and U of Indiana professor Candy Gunther Brown's Testing Prayer: Science and Healing.)

You Can't Sell Blueberries Unless You Affirm Gay Marriage

Holland State Park, Michigan

See HERE for the story.

When I recently re-read 1984 I applied it to stories like this.

For many more examples of totalitarian exclusionism see Mary Eberstadt, It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies.

Can Your Marriage Really Be Saved?

Bolles Harbor, Monroe

Can a failing marriage really be saved? If a marriage is an absolute train wreck, can it be transformed? If you are a follower of Jesus, you have to answer "Yes" to these questions. 

This is because, with God, all things are possible. Nothing is impossible for God. If God created the vast complexity of the universe, then rescuing a marriage is well within God's cognitive and creative abilities.

For the person whose marriage is in cardiac arrest, it all looks unresurrectable. But from my vantage point, and even more so from God's, the dead can be raised. I have seen it happen with marriages, many times. The person in the marital ER won't see it, because they have no experience in saving marriages. But Linda and I have. We have worked with hundreds of marriages at every level of sin and dysfunction. We have seen God work through us and others to set things right and make things better than ever.

The couple who looks at their troubled marriage and concludes, "This could never work", commits the "fallacy of hasty generalization." Here is a benign example.

1. I polled two college students who said Coke is better than Pepsi.
2. Therefore, Coke is better than Pepsi.

Such reasoning is faulty, because the sample is too small. One can't go from 1 to 2. To do so is to reason hastily. 

So...

1. I have never seen a disastrous marriage like mine be helped.
2. Therefore, my marriage cannot be helped.

But I have. Linda and I have a large sample group of hundreds of marriages we have worked with, and you haven't done this. 

In addition, this reasoning doesn't work:

1. I have friends whose marriages failed.
2. My friends are telling me to get a divorce (failure loves company).
3. Therefore, my marriage won't work.

Never look at the failed marriages of your friends to validate the death of your marriage. To do this adds another fallacy to the irrationality, the "fallacy of faulty analogy." No two marriages are the same.

Have we seen train-wreck marriages fail to come together? Yes. They fail because one or both partners refuse to:

a) get humble and get outside help;
b) look at their own selves and the faults they bring to the marriage; and
c) look to the God they say they worship.

All it takes is one of the two partners to bail out and refuse to get help. 

Sometimes Linda and I look at each other and say, "I doubt if this marriage will ever come together." And then, it does. God does it. We must trust that, even as we do our very best in counseling marital couples, God is doing infinitely better.

God loves to save marriages and families. It happens when:

a) Two people humble themselves and get outside help.
b) Two people look at their own selves and the faults they bring to the marriage.
c) Two people get on their knees and turn to God.

Note: Read Gary Chapman's One More Try: What to Do When Your Marriage is Falling Apart. Excellent!

See:

Marriage Takes Work

Saving Your Marriage: You Can't Derive 'Ought' From Feeling

Your Marriage Can Be Saved (Especially for Husbands)

Marriage Counseling Material

***
My recent book is: Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

I'm now writing Leading the Presence-Driven Church, to be published Summer 2017.