Hoo-rah!

Summer Sabbatical

Thanks to my good friend Will, my family and I are taking our first-ever sabbatical this summer.

We moved to Omaha in the summer of 2001 to take a college-pastor job with a 2-year old and a 2-week old. Since then the story of our lives has included:

• preaching or teaching in some capacity almost every week
• adding 2 more children, including going through the emotional rigors of a 3-year international adoption
• finishing a Master's degree
• completing major renovations on 3 different houses
• being called by God to envision, shape, and lead a church-planting effort
• raising money to sustain said church-planting effort
• growing said church-planting effort into a viable, self-sustaining church
• counseling, discipling, and helping people through all kinds of life tragedies
• being shot at, discouraged, and/or generally disrespected by every brand of heretic, wingnut, false teacher, dissenter, self-proclaimed theologian, and unrepentant Christian you can imagine

I have a strong back and a thick skin because you have to in order to be a church planter. I don't generally get my feelings hurt or cry myself to sleep; life is war and Satan's going to bring all he's got and that's the way things go. But Will senses that these years - especially the last 3 - have taken their toll on me. And I'm not disagreeing with him, because he is probably more in tune with my feelings than I am. (He just recently got me to admit that I have them.)

I love the Coram Deo family and I hate to be gone for any length of time. But starting at the end of May, my family and I be taking 6 weeks of sabbatical rest. Some kind and generous friends have provided a place far away from here for us to stay. I will not check my e-mail. I won't return your phone calls. I will not listen to podcasts. I will not prepare for any sermons or solve any problems or counsel anyone. I will simply rest.

My wife and I are going to try to use the time to establish some new rhythms with each other and with our kids: more praying, reflecting, and reading; fewer video games, movies, and TV shows. Lots of being and very little doing. Reading some books I've wanted to read for years but don't get around to because something else is always more pressing.

During our time away, Walker and the crew will be carrying the pulpit at Coram Deo. We're even flying in an Acts 29 brother from another state to help fill some preaching gaps. I would appreciate your prayers that this time would be deeply restful for me and for my wife. (Our kids are going to have a blast no matter what, but you can pray for them too.) And as I told our members, if anyone is planning on teaching heresy, committing adultery, rebelling against church leadership, or embezzling money, please don't do so during the next few months. We are looking forward to 6 weeks of peace.

Hannahisms

This is is the first post in a new weekly feature titled Hannahisms. In it we will share a few quotes that have stuck with us since our time studying under Dr. John Hannah. These words of wisdom will hopefully serve to heighten our sense of anticipation for his conference at Coram Deo next February. Without further ado...

1. If you're a Christian and willingly disobey God, He will judge your sin and break every bone in your body. In that day, thank Him for His grace.

2. Committees are places where minutes are kept and hours are lost.

Platitude of the Week

Realizing that the CD blog sometimes languishes without new material, and acknowledging that people far and wide visit our site expecting to be impressed and challenged, we decided today to implement some regular new features on the blog:

Platitude of the Week - some Christian cliche we've heard recently that needs to be excised from people's vocabulary
Hannah-isms - witty one-liners from Dr. John Hannah, in preparation for next spring's conference
Culture Feature - everything from news items to Kendal's observations about Omaha culture
Troubling Things - things that, in general, simply trouble us

I have the privilege of launching these new initiatives by posting the first installment of the Platitude of the Week. Here it is:

"comfort zone"

Usually paired (in Christian subculture lingo) with the prepositional phrase "out of," as in, "I need to get out of my comfort zone." For added emphasis, insert "really," as in, "We really need to get out of our comfort zones."

Let's face it: this phrase has reached its usable life. It is trite and vapid. What does it even mean? It used to mean, "I need to move outside of the zone or range in which I feel comfortable." Now, it means, "I need a Christian cliche which will allow me to verbally commit to something while making no change in my actual life, and which, when stated, will cause everyone in the room to nod and feel like I've said something actually comprehensible and honest."

I wish I could say that Coram Deo is devoid of this over-used phrase, but alas, nothing could be further from the truth. I have personally witnessed its use in three different settings this past week.

Is there anyone out there who will come to the defense of this hackneyed piece of verbiage, or is the plain truth of my argument enough to secure its universal demise?

The Heart is the Problem

Last week, Walker preached an insightful sermon about Jesus' contention that "There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him" (Mark 7:15).

The New York Times this week reported on a fascinating juxtaposition of external purity rules and internal sin:

Tehran, Iran - Tehran's police chief, who was responsible for a crackdown on immodestly dressed women for the past year, has been arrested, a spokesman for the judiciary confirmed Tuesday.

Web sites and local newspapers reported last month that the chief, Gen. Reza Zarei, had been arrested after being caught in a police raid at a brothel with six naked prostitutes.

Zarei led a crackdown that started a year ago to increase enforcement of Islamic regulations. Thousands of young women were detained for violating the Islamic dress code, usually for wearing head scarves that showed too much hair, coats that were tight enough to reveal the figure, or pants that were too short.

2009 Acts 29 Omaha Regional Conference: Dr. John Hannah

The purpose of this post is two-fold: 1) to give you a heads-up on a big event slated for next year at Coram Deo, and 2) to suggest a related listening project that will greatly benefit your soul.

Will, Kendal, and I have all had the privilege of studying church history under Dr. John D. Hannah, Distinguished Professor of Historical Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary. It is with great anticipation that we welcome Dr. Hannah to Omaha next February to headline an Acts 29 weekend conference on theology and church history.

Dr. Hannah’s genius is hard to describe – you have to experience it (which is why I’m asking you to listen to the podcast linked below). He is not well-known. He is not a prolific writer. He is understated in his manner and self-effacing in his style. Yet sitting under his tutelage is one of the most spiritually formative and intellectually insightful experiences you’ll ever have. He is a realist (some would say a pessimist) in a world of overly optimistic, save-the-world-tomorrow Christian hype-mongers. He’s the kind of guy who will tell you that “life is hard and then you die,” or that “revival isn’t going to happen anytime soon,” or that “if you get a 9-12% return on your efforts for the kingdom, that’s profound success.” He says in the podcast below that he made a decision early in life to be the same person in public that he is in private. So he will talk honestly about his failures in marriage and his oh-so-average prayer life and his dour pessimism about the church. And yet he does all this from a heart deeply rooted in love for Christ, a soul concerned to display the glory of God in everything, and a mind shaped by the best Puritan and Reformed scholarship in history (he is an expert on Jonathan Edwards and John Owen).

Listen to this message (from an Acts 29 regional in Dallas earlier this year), post your thoughts and comments here, and help us prepare the way for Dr. Hannah’s visit to Coram Deo early next year. More details to come.

Philosophers Only Take You So Far

Studying philosophy is beautiful because it teaches you how to think. Studying philosophy is also challenging because philosophers never agree about the most complex questions of life, truth, and meaning.

It is refreshing, then, to hear one of the most eminent philosophers in history exalt the wisdom and truth of the biblical worldview over against the self-important speculations of worldly philosophy. College students, next time your (Creighton or UNO) philosophy professor beats up on Christianity, consider countering with a healthy dose of the good Saint:

In Athens… the philosophers went milling about with their hangers-on, in broad daylight, here and there… each one belligerently propounding his own persuasions – some saying that there is only one world, some saying that it began, others, that it had no beginning; some saying it will come to an end, others that it will go on forever; some saying that the world is ruled by divine intelligence, others, that it is driven by fortuitous chance. With respect to the soul, some say it is immortal, others, that it is mortal; of those defending immortality, some say that the soul will turn up again in a beast, others, no such thing; of those defending mortality, some say the soul will die shortly after the body, others, that it will live on after the body; of these, some say it will survive for a little while, others, for rather a long while, though not forever. With respect to the identity of the highest good, some put it in the body; others, in the mind; still others, in both at the same time; still others drag in extrinsic goods and add them to the body and mind. With respect to the validity of sense experience, some say that the senses are always to be trusted; others, not in every instance; still others, never.

…Is it not the case… that the ungodly city has, without the smallest degree of critical discrimination, taken all these scrapping ideas from here, there, and everywhere, clutching them in pell-mell confusion to her bosom? Yet, these philosophers were not discussing such relatively indifferent matters as agriculture, architecture, or economics. They were holding forth on the deepest issues of all, the things that have to do with whether mankind is to live in happiness or in utter wretchedness.

Granted, that some of the things these philosophers said are true; still, untruth was taught with equal license. No wonder, then, that this earthly city has been given the symbolic name of Babylon, for Babylon means confusion… her diabolical king does not care a straw how many contradictory opinions she harbors or how her people squabble over them, so long as he goes on in possession of them and all their errors – a tyranny they deserve by reason of their enormous and manifold ungodliness.

How differently has… that other commonwealth of men, that other City, the people of Israel, to whom was entrusted the word of God, managed matters! No broad-minded, muddle-headed mixing of true prophets with false prophets there! They have recognized and held as the true-speaking authors of Holy Writ only those who are in perfect harmony with one another. These writers are for them their philosophers, that is, their lovers of wisdom, their sages, their theologians, their prophets, their teachers of good living and right believing – all in one. They know that if they think and live according to what these men taught, they are thinking and living according to God – who spoke through the inspired writers – and not according to man.

(Saint Augustine, The City of God, Book 18, chapter 41)

Cultural Relevance?

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life recently released a major study of the religious landscape in America. The study reveals that 26 percent of Americans are members of "evangelical" churches, while 18 percent belong to "mainline" Protestant churches. The term evangelical refers (loosely) to churches that hold to the authority of Scripture and to the biblical gospel of salvation by grace through faith, while mainline is used to refer to major denominations that are historically connected to the Protestant tradition but have generally abandoned the biblical gospel.

Since 1970, the stats for "mainline" denominations show a steady decline:

• Episcopal Church: down 34%
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: down 16%
• Presbyterian Church USA: down 25%
• United Church of Christ: down 38%
• United Methodist Church: down 25%

I worked a brief stint in politics after college, and on the campaign trail, we used to say "the numbers don't lie." Data has a way of revealing the truth. I report these statistics here for one reason, and that is to show that the numbers are telling a different story than the professors at your local college or the commentators on your favorite cable news channel.

The media and the academic elite beat it into our heads continually that to really be relevant to the culture, churches should stop preaching the Bible, relinquish our archaic beliefs in God and the afterlife, agree that Jesus was basically just a Jewish version of Gandhi, and hire lesbian pastors who will preach a gospel of "tolerance" that abandons all claims of truth and objectivity.

The data shows just the opposite: the churches that aren't doing this are growing, while the churches that are seem to be on a path to imminent death.

When the numbers and the academics disagree, be encouraged: the numbers don't lie.

Who Needs to be Converted?

Apparently the Catholics and the Jews are in a little squabble over whether it's OK to pray for conversion. From a Reuters news story:

In February the Vatican revised a contested Latin prayer used by traditionalist Catholics on Good Friday, the day marking Jesus Christ's crucifixion, removing a reference to Jewish "blindness" over Christ and deleting a phrase asking God to "remove the veil from their hearts."

Jews criticized the new version because it still says they should recognize Jesus Christ as the savior of all men. It asks that "all Israel may be saved" and Jews said it kept an underlying call to conversion that they had wanted removed.

Rabbi David Rosen, chairman of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC) and a leading Jewish interlocutor with the Vatican, welcomed the statement but said he had hoped for an explicit reference to proselytism.

"It is implicit in the statement that esteem and solidarity imply that proselytism is inappropriate but I would have been happier if this had been said explicitly," Rosen, who is based in Jerusalem, told Reuters.

2 comments:

1) Apparently it's not OK to want anyone to convert from any worldview to any other worldview. "Proselytism is inappropriate." To which I say: if you don't think your worldview is true (and therefore should be embraced by others too), then why would you hold it?

2) It's a good thing all the Catholics in the world are good to go. Apparently it's only the Jews who need to be converted.

Finding Common Ground

One of our trademarks within the Coram Deo community is a relentless commitment to biblical masculinity and femininity. We think men should be men and women should be women. And being a man means repenting of sin and following Jesus and holding down a job and taking a wife (as the opportunity arises) and being the spiritual leader of a family. We have often said that as the men go, so goes the family, and so goes the culture.

With this, our broader community is beginning to agree. This past weekend the Omaha World-Herald published some statistical data on the social problems in our city. Among the findings: more than 75% of blacks who gave birth in Douglas County last year were unmarried. And 400 unmarried female students within the Omaha Public School district were pregnant or gave birth last year.

Commenting on these statistics, the Omaha World-Herald editors state: "[T]he clear trend is toward regarding single teen motherhood as the norm and traditional two-parent families as the exception. That path leads toward continued poverty for young mothers and social confusion as the vital, positive role of responsible fathers is pushed to the cultural fringes."

"The vital, positive role of responsible fathers." Hmm. Almost like they're saying that men need to step up and be men. Almost like they're agreeing that sex is intended for marriage. Almost like they're saying that healthy marriages and families are key to breaking the cycle of poverty.

The great thing about statistics is that they help us all agree on the problems. Not everyone in our city agrees that the gospel is the solution. May God use Coram Deo to demonstrate that the transforming power of the gospel turns boys into men and produces the kind of masculinity that will measurably change the realities of sin and brokenness in our city.