The Purpose of Church Is Not to "Meet Needs"

(Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan)

"Church" - not a building, but a people movement following after Jesus and His Kingdom.

The purpose of "Church" is to be a corporate people that is being formed into greater and greater Jesus-likeness (see, e.g., Galatians 4:19).

As "Church" what we place our focus on is important. For example, the purpose of Church, the Church's raison d-etre, is not: to meet people's needs. James van Yperan writes: "A church organized around meeting needs breeds selfishness, and it inevitably leads to competition, control, and conflict." (Van Yperen, Making Peace: A Guide to Overcoming Church Conflict, p. 35)

When church people start talking about their needs not being met, we have a big problem rooted in a false, unbiblical idea of "church." James 4:1-3 expresses this.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? 

Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 

2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. 

You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. 

You do not have because you do not ask God. 

3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, 

that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

If, in church, I don't get my needs met (= what I want for me), then fighting for my rights follows. 

OK. But what about my needs? Do they mean nothing? Of course not. But I must distinguish my true needs from my wants and desires. Then, I am to abide in Jesus, the One who meets my deepest needs. 

All I need is found in Christ. That is my experience. I'm not looking for Church to meet my needs. I am looking to God to meet my needs. I arrive at church on a Sunday morning with my needs already being met. And often, my needs are met through the church (the people of God).

"Church" is God's vehicle for bringing redemption to others. The early Acts-Church was not following after Jesus for the sake of having their needs met. They were on a Mission. They were being morphed out of the world-system and into Christ and His beautiful Kingdom. And in the process the secondary effect happened of having their truest, deepest needs satisfied.

Van Yperan writes:

"Is your church actually encouraging people to think and act like the world? Are you forming believers who are not a “people”? The church is the spiritual “place” where God forms His people. We are chosen to be people who are being transformed into Christlikeness. The problem is that we have become so accustomed to thinking and acting like individuals we cannot even see or accept that we are forming selfishness, not godliness—until a conflict or crisis arises. God has called us into a kingdom much greater than our selfish needs, dull familiarity, and easy assumptions. Scripture stands in stark contrast to the narcissistic and autonomous thinking of our self-absorbed world. God wants to remake and redeem our needs before He meets them. He calls us into a culture formed by the Cross." (Ib., 36)

The Counsel of the Ungodly

(Jerusalem)

Years ago I used to frequent a small coffee shop. I would take a book, my journal, a cup of java, and read and write.

One day the county atheist society was sitting a few tables away from me. Three atheists were there. I was around a corner, with my back to them. I couldn't see them, but I knew the leader. He had challenged me in the local newspaper. He said, "No pastor would dare meet with me!" I responded in the newspaper with my phone number, and a request for him to call.

He did. We met. For two hours. The time was spent trying to help him understand what he was trying to say. I helped him clarify his arguments against Christianity. Then, I showed him where he was wrong. Gently, I hope.

There used to be a group of older men who regularly met in the café. I could hear their lively discussions. A couple of the men were loud, confident they understood the deeper recesses of politics, economics, religion, whatever. They were experts on every subject, so much so they didn't need to google anything. Or footnote anyone. It seemed to me that no one around that table had a clue of what they were talking about, at least when it came to these matters. I found their counsel uninspiring.

Psalm 1:1 states:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,

    Nor stands in the path of sinners,

    Nor sits in the seat of the scornful...

In the little atheist group, and the global wisdom of the old men, we see the "counsel of the ungodly." You find such counsel in churches, too. Like, e.g., when some Christians once watched a movie and told me, "If we build it, he will come."

The counsel of the ungodly is not someone encouraging me to smoke cigarettes, or watch "The Bachelorette." The counsel of the ungodly is, says Dallas Willard, "just the way most people talk." (Willard, Living in Christ's Presence, p. 46)

Willard gives examples.

"The counsel of the ungodly is “Live as if it matters what people think of you.”

The counsel of the ungodly is “Live as if the outcomes of your life are on your shoulders and you control them.”

The counsel of the ungodly is “Live as if aging is something to worry about.”

The counsel of the ungodly is “Live as if satisfying your desires and appetites is central to your well-being and a wise strategy for living.

That's the counsel of the ungodly. It goes on all the time, and we rarely even see it." (Ib.)

Willard writes, "Just listen to the conversations we have with each other, and that’s the counsel of the ungodly." (Ib., p. 47)

What, then, is wise, godly counsel? Psalm 1 continues,

But his delight is in the law of the Lord,    

and in His law he meditates day and night.

³ He shall be like a tree

    planted by the rivers of water,

    that brings forth its fruit in its season,

    Whose leaf also shall not wither;

and whatever he does shall prosper.

Willard writes: "There’s a decision that everybody faces, and part of the danger of the world is it causes us to forget that we have to decide who we are going to learn to live from." (Ib., p. 48)

***

My books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church 

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship  

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

Halvor Ronning - Psalm 23 - Paths of righteousness

Here is my friend Hal Ronning sharing background information needed to understand Psalm 23. Hal was our tour guide when Linda and I were in Israel. What a blessing that was! Hal and his wife Mirja are great biblical scholars and head the Home for Bible Translators in Jerusalem. Hal also has been to Redeemer to speak and teach.

Abortion - I am Pro-Life and Pro-Choice

 

                                             (Crossing Lake Michigan on The Badger)

When it comes to abortion, I am Pro-Life.

I believe that the conceptus/embryo/fetus is human life. It's human life that is innocent. It's human life that is defenseless. I believe it is morally wrong to kill an innocent, defenseless, human life. I am Pro-Life. 

When it comes to abortion, I am Pro-Choice.

The abortionist movement believes the mother has the moral right to choose to kill an innocent, defenseless human being. But this ignores the inborn human life, and their freedom to choose.

I believe the inborn human life has a right to choose. If anyone has the right to choose, it ought to be the human that is about to be executed.  Therefore, I am Pro-Choice.

But isn't a conceptus/embryo/fetus cognitively incapable of making any choice? Correct. But a newborn baby is also cognitively incapable of making any choice. The inability to make a choice for life, or for death, is not cognitively accessible to a human life until they are...  how old? 

I believe the following reasoning fails.

1. The conceptus/embryo/fetus is incapable of making choices.

2. Therefore, it is not immoral to make the choice for them, and terminate them. 

This argument morally fails because it would include infanticide. (*See, e.g., the debates surrounding atheist Peter Singer's beliefs about the morality of involuntary euthanasia, where Singer makes an arguably false distinction between "person" and "human life.") 

I believe it is morally right to wait until a human life can exercise its own right to choose between life or death. Why not give them the choice of whether they want to live or not? Upon meeting a person struggling with this choice, a vast majority of counselors and pastors will help the person choose life. But once more, that will be their choice.

I am bringing the word 'choice' back into the Pro-Life camp. The life-or-death choice belongs to the inborn human life. That's how it should be.

I would counsel them to choose life, and walk with them on the road that leads to life. 

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you 

that I have set before you life and death, 

blessings and curses. 

Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.

Deut, 30:19

In this regard, I am Pro-Choice as well as Pro-Life.

***

*See HERE, e.g.

Wisdom Is Beyond Information and Knowledge

(Gull Lake, Michigan)

In the biblical books of Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs, the pinnacle of humanity's search for meaning is wisdom. Not information. Not knowledge. Wisdom. 

Many use the Internet to access information. Beyond that, few matriculate to knowledge. Precious few beyond that graduate to wisdom.

"For all its resources, the digital humanities makes a rookie mistake: It confuses more information for more knowledge. DH [The digital humanities] doesn’t know why it thinks it knows what it does not know. And that is an odd place for a science to be." (Timothy Brennan, "The Digital-Humanities Bust," The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 17, 2017)

Brennan, a professor of cultural studies at the University of Minnesota, goes on to say that the Digital-Humanities promotes ""digitization, classification, description and metadata, organization, and navigation." An amazing list, which leaves out that contradictory and negating quality of what is normally called "thinking." It would be a mistake to see this banishment of the concept as the passive by-product of a technical constraint. It is the aim of the entire operation." (Emphasis mine.)

It leaves out....   thinking. Few are the thinkers; fewer yet are the wise. Information is not knowledge, and is further yet from wisdom. (See The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, by Tom Nichols.)

Wisdom is a deep well, requiring a lifetime spent in focus and discipline. Wisdom is a mile deep and an inch wide. Information is shallow, an inch deep and a mile wide. (See Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains.)

Information says "X is."

Knowledge says "This is how X is."

Wisdom says "This is why X is."

Information grows like mushrooms. Knowledge grows like an oak tree. Wisdom grows like a sequoia. 

Ecclesiastes says,

There's nothing better than being wise,

Knowing how to interpret the meaning of life. 

Wisdom puts light in the eyes, 

And gives gentleness to words and manners.

Peterson, Eugene H.. The Message Remix 2.0: The Bible In Contemporary Language (p. 941). 


***
Two of my books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Forgiving Others - Three Stages

(Chicago)

What is forgiveness? Lewis Smedes, in his paradigm-changing book Forgive and Forget, stages the process of forgiveness this way.

1) You surrender the right to get even with the person who wronged you.

You will no longer engage in ways of making them pay for how they wounded you.

You give whatever justice should be exacted over to God.

You let it go.

2) You reinterpret the person who wronged you in a larger format.

You begin to see the person as God sees them. 

This helps us avoid creating a "caricature" of the person who wounded us. "In the act of forgiving, we get a new picture of a needy, weak, complicated, fallible human being like ourselves."

We begin to see that we are "that kind of people" too, not in the details, but in the heart.

As you begin to view the person who hurt you this way, forgiveness is taking root in you.

Forgiveness will be securely planted in you when you experience stage three, as a matter of your heart.

3) You develop a gradual desire for the welfare of the person who wounded you.

At this stage you are like Jesus, who loved us even as we were his enemies and wounded him on the cross.

Consciousness Presents a Problem for Scientific Naturalism

(The River Raisin, in our backyard)

A "recalcitrant fact," writes J.P. Moreland, is a stubborn fact that doggedly resists explanation by a theory. "No matter what a theory's advocate does, the recalcitrant fact just sits there and is not easily incorprated into the theory. In this case, the recalcitrant fact provides falsifying evidence for the theory and some degree of confirmation for its rivals." (J.P. Moreland, "The Image of God and the Failure of Scientific Atheism," in God is Great, God is Good: Why Believing in God is Reasonable and Responsible, 33)

A stubborn fact that keeps holding on, for scientific naturalism, is the nature of human persons. In this regard Berkeley philosopher John Searle writes:

"There is exactly one overriding question in contemporary philosophy... How do we fit in?... How can we square this self-conception of ourselves as mindful, meaning-creating, free, rational, etc., agents with a universe that consists entirely of mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, brute physical particles?" (In Ib., 34)

Moreland answers: "For the scientific naturalist, the answer is "Not very well." (Ib.)

In fact, it was this recalcitrant fact, among other things, that led the famous philosopher-atheist Antony Flew to turn to theism. Flew writes:

"The rationality [consciousness, freedom of the will and unified self] that we unmistakably experience - ranging from the laws of nature to our capacity for rational thought - cannot be explained if it does not have an ultimate ground, which can be nothing less than an infinite mind." (In Ib.)

Consciousness presents a problem for scientific naturalism.

***
See Moreland's two books on this for more detailed reasoning:

The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism

Consciousness and the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument

***

Other blog posts on consciousness I have made...

J. P. Moreland's Argument From Consciousness for God's Existence

Self-Refuting Loops & the Mind-Consciousness-Brain Problem

Recent Resources on the "Really Hard Problem" of First-Person Subjective Consciousness

Chalmers's Nonreductive Explanation of Consciousness

First-Person Subjective Consciousness and the Existence of God

Philosophical Naturalism: Some Posts

Immaterial Consciousness Leads Me to Think About God

Consciousness as Real and Immaterial

Consciousness and Creation Out of Nothing

Stop Finding Fault with Others

                                                                         (Monroe, MI)

How far do I want to follow Jesus?

This morning I read Matthew 7:1-2:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 

For in the same way you judge others, 

you will be judged, 

and with the measure you use, 

it will be measured to you.

Jesus is talking about people. My problem is that I make too many judgments about people without understanding. I know that judging without understanding is ignorant and foolish. When I do this, I am often wrong.

Sometimes, I speculate. Speculation is a form of non-understanding and, as such, usually a waste of time. I've expended a lot of time guessing about the actions of other people, sometimes forming judgments based on my predictions. 

Jesus; words are not about making judgments, but about judgmentalism. We make countless judgments every day. The lights in my room are on. Or, It's going to br cloudy today. I judge that those two statements are true. Linda and I are tired of winter. That's true, too. And, If X keeps using heroin, he could die. That's true. All these judgments involving states of affairs can be made with a good heart.

Judgmentalism, however, is about a different heart attitude. A judgmental person is a critic of others. A judgmental person is someone who condemns others.

New Testament scholar R. T. France writes: "Judge (krino) often carries the connotation of "condemn," and it is in that sense that it is used here." (France, The Gospel According to Matthew, p. 142)

France continues:

"This passage is concerned with the fault-finding, condemnatory attitude which is too often combined with a blindness to one's own failings. The least such an attitude can expect is to be judged with equal harshness by other men. But the passive [tense], as often in Matthew, probably conceals God himself as the agent. Just as he will forgive those who forgive (6:14-15), he will condemn those who condemn." (Ib.)

John Stott writes that Jesus' command "is not a requirement to be blind, but a plea to be generous." (In Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew, p. 165)

Commenting on these verses, Morris writes:

"Jesus' words surely refer to the divine tribunal. To be quick to call others to account is to invite God to call us to account. That judgment of some form is required of his followers is clear from the demand that they cast not what is holy to dogs (Mt. 7:6); what is forbidden is censoriousness, the readiness to find fault." (Ib.)

Craig Keener writes that "Jesus does not oppose offering correction, but only offering correction in the wrong spirit." (Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, p. 240)

Judging others while being blind to my own faults is toxic.

Condemning others is not my responsibility.

Judging without understanding is foolish, bringing pain not only to others but to myself as well.

I agree.

"But Jesus demands more than agreement from disciples: he demands obedience." (Keener, Ib., p. 241)

Biblical Answers to Cultural Values Seminar - Live Zoominar - April 6

 

 

Renewal School of Ministry 

Biblical Answers to Cultural Values Seminar 

Time/Date: This live seminar will be held on Saturday, April 6, 2024 at 11 a.m. Eastern Time. It will last 2 - 2.5 hours. 

Content: In this course a panel of HSRM leaders will discuss several important values that are commonly held by people in our culture. We will offer a biblical perspective on these values. The panel will discuss ways to address these values as we talk with people we know. 

There is $5 fee to cover costs for taking seminars in the Renewal School of Ministry. 

Please enroll for the seminar on our website: https://hsrm.org/rsom. 

The teachers for this seminar are:

 Dr. John Piippo, Pastor at Redeemer Fellowship Church in Monroe, Michigan

Holly Collins, Director of Worship at Redeemer Fellowship

Dr. Clay Ford, retired pastor and former Director of Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries, California. 

The panel will be moderated by Rev. Ed Owens, Holt, Michigan

Inner Peace Has Power to Shape Environments

(Munson Park, across from our house.)

The more time we spend in solitude, silence, and listening in the presence of God, the more we are at peace with God, others, and ourselves. This is because peace is a fruit that is produced when we are attached, branchlike, to the Prince of Peace.

We carry this peace in our homes, and into the workplace. The peace that is ours affects the social atmosphere. 

Inner peace has power to shape environments. I know some people who carry such peace, and it affects me. 

Henri Nouwen writes about this in The Way of the Heart.

"It will be possible to move into the midst of a tumultuous world with a heart at rest. It is this restful heart that will attract those who are groping to find their way through life. When we have found our rest in God we can do nothing other than minister. God’s rest will be visible wherever we go and to whomever we meet. And before we speak any words, the Spirit of God, praying in us, will make his presence known and gather people into a new body, the body of Christ himself."

***

My books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

Encounters With the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)