Yup, out of town again. See if you can guess where I am, comment and I’ll tell you if you’re right or wrong. This will be easy for a few of my readers

I went to an excellent Scott Phillips concert Saturday night at a local church. Scott is traveling throughout the country partnered with WorldVision, reminding the Church that She is an organism – not an organization – and showing the world the hope, freedom and love that can only be found in authentic Christ-centered community. To get a feel for his sound, combine the acoustic complexity of Shawn McDonald and Shane & Shane with the authentic, witty lyrics and storytelling experience of Derek Webb, but in a new and refreshingly unique way. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying his albums since the concert, particularly the organic heartfelt sound of his album “Love and the Like”. But the song that really struck me during the concert, which is incidentally the topic of this post, comes from his new album “Next Stop Willoughby”. Here are the lyrics to A Nursery Rhyme by Scott Phillips:

There is a man in me who is already free
And I’m just waiting
For him and I to meet; he’s who I’m meant to be
But I’m still waiting

And somewhere underneath, beyond what I can see
A heart is beating
A heart as pure and clean as newborn babies’ dreams
I feel it leading

And all because…
Chorus:
Mary had a little Lamb – his fleece was stained with blood
And everyone who killed the man
Was the target of his love
Oh-oh, oh-oh

Its enough to know that I’m a son in the battles yet to overcome
Its grace transcending
Because the war is already won, you know the bleeding and the dying’s done
Oh brother, what a happy ending

And all because…
(Chorus)

Bridge:
Every crime in my history, every crime that is yet to be
Disappeared when I first believed, whoa oh oh oh
So when the sun shines down on me, when the dark overshadows me,
Everywhere I’ve yet to be, the Lamb is sure to go
The Lamb is sure to go

That chorus blew me away when I first heard it, not only on account of Phillips’ lyrical genius, but also because of the profound truth that we have become new creatures in Jesus Christ, He has given us new hearts, and one day our sinful nature will be entirely eradicated and we will dwell with Christ forever in perfection. The battle of the flesh vs. our new hearts in Christ is familiar to every Christ follower. The daily struggle between the two is best described by the Apostle Paul in Romans 7:14-25 (ESV):

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Paul accurately captures the concept of the flesh by calling it “the sin that dwells within me” in this passage. Conversely, he refers to the new heart as his “inner being.” He doesn’t divide his nature in an attempt to eradicate his own personal responsibility for sin, but rather to explain the reality that we have to live with these two natures until we die and are united with Christ in perfection.

But isn’t my heart evil?
Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I continually point out aspects of Christianity that no longer effectively serve the Church (the people not the steeple), of which there are many. But aside from church architecture, monologue sermonizing, fakeness, and many other things the pastor-CEO’s teach, one of the most dangerous teachings in modern Christianity is that our hearts are evil. I’m not talking about nonbelievers here, Scripture makes it clear our hearts are evil apart from Christ. I am talking about once we become Christians. Pastor-CEO’s primarily base this off of Jeremiah 17:9, which says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (King James Version). This really is not an accurate translation of this passage, however. The passage would be more correctly rendered, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, ESV).

Without Christ, the heart is certainly desperately wicked, but when we receive the indwelling Spirit of God, Jesus gives us a new heart. He promised this to His people long ago in the book of Ezekiel. Speaking of the new covenant in the Messiah, God said:

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. –Ezekiel 36:25-27 (ESV)

‘Flesh’ in this passage merely refers to our physical being. But notice two phrases: “I will give you a new heart,” and “I… will cause you … to obey.” The Apostle Paul again offers an extremely helpful explanation. He says that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV). Very simply put, because of Christ I am a new creation and can now choose to live from my new heart. I am no longer bound by my flesh in its hostility to God and inability to please Him (Romans 8:6-8), I can now choose to obey, and His Spirit even causes me to obey.

Christ’s perfect righteousness gets credited to my account, and when God looks at me He no longer sees my shortcomings and fleshly desires, but He instead sees the holiness of His Son, Jesus Christ. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV). We will never be free from our fleshly nature while here on earth, but we have the same power that raised Jesus from the dead available to us in order to die to our flesh daily and choose to follow Christ and walk in His Spirit (Ephesians 1:19-20; Romans 8:11; Galatians 5:16).

And that’s all because Mary had a little Lamb. His fleece was stained with blood. And everyone who killed the man was the target of his love.

Let’s compare modern-day sermons to how messages were delivered in the Old and New Testament Church.

Old Testament Preaching/Teaching:

• The audience actively participated and interruptions were common.
• Prophets and priests didn’t prepare their messages beforehand.
• Any male older than 12 could be selected to read the text.
• Rabbi’s worked and lived among the common people, they all held day jobs.

New Testament Preaching:

• It often was spontaneous.
• It was delivered on special occasions to deal with specific problems.
• It had no structure, it often involved more dialogue than monologue (audience participation and interruption).
• One needed no special credentials to preach.
• Anyone was free to interject with a song, a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. It didn’t have to be pre-planned or approved, the people of God could discern truth from error themselves by searching Scripture.

Modern-Day Sermons:

• Delivered regularly, usually once a week.
• Given mostly by the same person, typically the pastor or ordained guest speaker.
• Spoken to a passive audience as a monologue.
• Usually follow a certain format (e.g. intro/video clip/funny story, three points, conclusion).

Is the modern-day sermon worth hanging on to? Today we often judge a church service by the delivery and content of the sermon, essentially relegating Sunday morning to a pastor’s performance on his or her message. Does the sermon and the way it’s delivered really help or does it reinforce passivity and stifle others from practicing their gifts? Frank Viola, in his book Pagan Christianity, points out:

…. the sermon fails to put the hearers into a direct, practical experience of what has been preached. Thus the typical sermon is a swimming lesson on dry land. . . . The church needs fewer pulpiteers and more spiritual facilitators. . . . We move far outside of biblical bounds when we allow teaching to take the form of a conventional sermon and relegate it to a class of professional orators. . . .

…. Research conducted by The Barna Group has shown that sermons are generally ineffective at facilitating worship, at drawing people closer to God, and at conveying life-changing information to those in the audience.

Take note of the key word throughout this entire post: audience. Are we trying to foster an audience or a community?

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” — The Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (ESV)

DISCLAIMER: I’ve already had to delete a nasty comment in reference to this post, so to clarify: I’m not denying that God can and does work through sermons, I’m simply questioning if it’s really the best way to do things.

There’s been a lot of good posts floating around lately, and I wanted to spread a little link love to those posts that deserve your attention. All four of these links will conveniently open in a new window or tab.

• If Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians Was Published in Christianity Today. From Sacred Sandwich. This satirical piece gives mock replies to Paul’s letter to the Galatian church as though it were published in a contemporary edition of Christianity Today. I laughed out loud a few times, sad but true. We often forget how serious heresy is, and how harshly we ought to deal with it.
• Four Unbiblical Models For Church. From subversive1. Blog author Keith Giles describes four of the most common church models used today: the Harvard Model, Hollywood Model, IBM Model (corporate/CEO church), and the Wal-Mart Model. He makes the point that we should follow the New Testament model.
• Gospel-Centered Discipleship. From Resurgence. Winfield Bevins writes, “Many churches in North America have given in to the sin of pragmatism. They have a pragmatic approach to ecclesiology that focuses on church growth more than on church health, and on cultural accommodation rather than biblical faithfulness. Some churches have either adopted a hierarchical structure that resembles a corporate business, or they simply have no church structure at all. The result is that many churches produce consumers and not radical disciples of Jesus Christ.” Be sure to read the rest.
• Seeker Driven Sermon Topics are a Hindrance to the Gospel. From Extreme Theology. Chris Rosebrough writes: “It never ceases to amaze me (in a bad way) how seeker driven / purpose driven sermons can provide such a trivial cadre of practical advice and NEVER get to the primary and important subjects of scripture, namely “repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus name” and sound Christ Centered doctrine. Yet, when one examines the doctrinal statements of these churches self-help centers its not as if they out right deny Christian orthodoxy, in fact most affirm orthodox Christian doctrine. The problem is that they don’t preach, teach and proclaim sound Christian doctrine from their pulpits. . . .” Be sure to read the rest of this one as well (it’s short).

Enjoy!

“If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”
        ~Saint Augustine

I saw this at Extreme Theology and laughed at how true it is. I can’t tell you how many VBS programs are themed after very worldly things (pop-culture icons, popular movies, etc.) and do a very poor job of teaching the love of Jesus Christ to children.

On the bright side, it gets the children out of parents’ hair for a few hours a week during the summer, and it will be fun to bring Grandma along to watch little Johnny sing about an amazing grace that neither he nor anyone in the family knows anything about. . . .

My wife, mom, brother, friend, cousins and I went to the Indianapolis 500 this year. We saw a couple groups of people who were “evangelizing” on the streets. The first example we saw was a group of people simply handing out gospel tracts by asking, “Did you get one of these?” Subtle, yet it can be effective.

The second example was a guy with a loudspeaker telling the crowd that they were going to hell for being drunkards and sinners. Not so effective. Stupid, in fact. This guy is profaning the name of Christ.

But the other day I heard about this guy. You have to admit, it’s a unique approach. And it was very effective.

This guy also mentions a campus pastor who did something very similar using a sign that said, “Religion is for the weak.” Jesus didn’t attract large crowds by using sound marketing principles. In fact, on some days He lost more followers than he gained. His crucifixion cost Him almost all of His followers. Those weren’t good marketing tactics – but they were amazing ways of saving us. I think Christ’s followers should be known for thinking outside of the box.

What are some ways you have seen people effectively “thinking out of the box” when it comes to evangelism? Why does impersonal evangelism usually fail?

The dictionary very eloquently defines a misogynist as “a man who hates women.” It seems that much of our theology was written by misogynists. Not that the Bible doesn’t say things that seem to indicate male headship (”women must remain silent in church”, “I do not permit a woman to speak”, etc.), but then again it also supports slavery and head coverings for women – practices we no longer follow. And yet gender inequality remains a reality in much of American Christianity. My purpose here is not to break down key texts in the debate, but for a great book that does just that, read Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis by William J. Webb. My intention is to simply make a point using logic.

Most of my readers would agree that there is no biblical support for a clergy/laity distinction, nor is there any distinction between sacred and secular. Church is not something we attend, it is something we are. Thus there should not be a special set of rules governing church life vs. so-called “secular” life as a Christian. Yet this is exactly what people do when it comes to the issue of women’s role in the church. For some reason, most evangelicals will tell you that a man is the head of the household, women cannot be pastors – and yet they will work for a female boss at their office. Hmm…. why the distinction?

So a woman can have authority over a man and even be his college professor, but she can’t teach him in church or have any say-so in the home? That is asinine. Logically, you can only have it one way or the other. If you honestly believe that women can’t teach men or hold authority over them, then you should not work for a female boss at work or send your sons to a school with female teachers. I’m not joking. Why is it ok to reserve misogynistic theology for the church but not in the fictitious “secular” realm? THERE IS NO SUCH DISTINCTION. This is because those who teach this often don’t really believe it. They recognize that women are equal, and treat them as such in every arena other than the local church. If you really believe in biblical primogeniture, then it applies in church, at home, AND in society.

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” – Galatians 3:28

P.S. Dan wrote this post, not Tiffany. But it has her full approval

Chris Brogan, a social media blogger, recently posted on the difference between an audience and a community. He writes:

The difference between an audience and a community is which direction the chairs are pointing. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. When we say community and we mean our selling demographic, that’s not the same thing. When we say community and we mean audience to absorb our message, that’s not the same thing. It’s important to understand this.

It’s okay to want an audience. When we’re trying to build awareness, we want an audience. We create things to get people’s attention. For some, the creation is advertising. For others, it’s face to face events. For others, it’s content (like this blog post). If you’re clever, you create in a variety of formats.

This builds audience. Audiences are those folks who gather to hear what you have to say. But that’s not a community.

Jesus often attracted large audiences. But He attracted most of them outside of synagogues, and He attracted nonbelievers. He met with believers, primarily His disciples, in more intimate settings. The church today seems to have this backwards. We make believers our audiences, and hang out in homes and more intimate settings with our non-believing friends. There is definitely room for having audiences of believers, but this is certainly not the primary gathering method, nor should it be the central financial focus.

Are churches today doing more to build communities or audiences? What do architecture, format, and seating arrangements have to do with it? How can these be changed to create a community instead of an audience?

Martin Luther penned these words shortly before he passed away, demonstrating his profound grasp of Christian spirituality. In Matthew 5:3, Jesus very simply says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The word used for “poor” in this verse is the term for a beggar. Those who are poor in spirit have no spiritual assets or credentials. They receive the Holy Spirit as beggars. Consider the following statement by John Kleinig in his book, Grace Upon Grace:

The Father’s kingdom is theirs as a gift, something that is always received and yet never possessed. Unless they receive God’s kingdom, they can never enter it and reign in it as kings together with Christ (Mark 10:15; Luke 12:32; 22:28-30).

In essence, spiritual maturity is thus the exact opposite of worldly maturity. Worldly maturity is measured by our increasing independence, our ability to be self-sufficient and accomplished. Conversely, spiritual maturity is measured by our increasing dependence upon Christ and His gifts. But it seems that American Christianity has transplanted this cultural model of maturity into the faith and now spirituality has become all about actualizing our spiritual potential or identifying our hidden talents. The proper understanding is that our spirituality has nothing to do with our performance, rather it has everything to do with receiving from God.

This is why in Matthew 5:6 Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Jesus pairs righteousness with dietary nourishment, something we receive. He does not compare righteousness to any action that we should perform, but rather to needs that must be satisfied by God Himself, hunger and thirst. It is God who makes us righteous, it is not something we can accomplish by our right attitude or conduct. Hence we pray, “give us this day our daily bread.” We rely not on our own skill to receive bread, but upon God’s grace. The same is true of our spiritual walk. As I posted on Twitter and Facebook earlier, “Our justification does not depend on our piety and our spiritual performance but on Christ and His performance.”

We are beggars. That is true. How can we contend against the grain of culture on the issue of spiritual maturity? How do we effect change in churches who focus on worldly growth rather than teaching utter dependence on Christ? How do we confront leaders who are building their own kingdoms, rather than continually receiving Christ’s? And most importantly, how do we change our personal devotional life to reflect the life of reception, seeking God’s gifts as beggars rather than His applause as performers?

UPDATE: Jay Winters posted about Begging For Attention from God and he has some great followup thoughts on this post.