What Can Jesus Do For You?

When did following Jesus shift from taking up a cross, expecting persecution, being a servant, and giving up your life to 12 things Jesus can do for you?

We are drowning in a culture of consumerism. What can Brown do for you is the motto for everything. If you don't get good service, complain and it will be fixed otherwise you go somewhere else. As the customer, I am always right. I deserve to be helped. What's in it for me?

I really don't believe people (me included) are trying to be selfish. In fact, if you were to try and point out to someone their self-centered nature they could probably give you a list of all the things they have done for others lately. (the fact that we keep those lists at the front of our minds probably says something about our attitude toward being servants) But we are surrounded by messages that tell us we deserve more; we deserve better. Car commercials show us the luxury car that will meet all of our comfort needs while raising our standing in society. Investment firms remind us of how much they can make our money grow so that we can afford the bigger and better. We build houses where everyone has their own room with their own space and their own entertainment so that we can get what we want when we want with no sacrifice or compromise. It is all about us and most of the time we don't even realize we are thinking it.

This leads to a dilemma for the church and for pastors of churches. Denominational leaders, church boards, congregational lay leader, as well as pastors themselves are driven by numbers. How many people are we getting into the building? How many people are being converted? Or would the better phrase be, "How many people are buying Jesus?" We don't talk to each other about it in these terms but we are really marketing and selling the Savior of the world. The One who created all that we see is now being sold like a product. The worst part...I don't think we realize we are doing it.

I have heard sermons lately, from people who I know love God and have a heart for seeing people know Jesus, presenting the gospel in a way that puts the emphasis on the benefits to us. This used to show itself in convincing people that heaven is great and hell is bad so you should get to know Jesus who can give you heaven and keep you out of hell. It seems to have transformed into a multi-step program about how Jesus can make our lives better.

• If we are faithful, God will bless us. This approach rarely defines blessing in a very helpful way and it usually leaves open serious pain and questions when bad things happen to "good" people.
• Do the "right" things and God will make you prosperous. But what about dedicated Jesus followers in third world countries who have nothing?
• Follow Jesus and things will work out for you in the end. Our implication of "end" is generally not an eschatological one. It is usually pointed toward the end of this particular difficult circumstance in which I find myself.

I'm not just talking about "hard-core name-it-and-claim-it" preaching. We are hearing this in evangelical churches whose intentions are not bad. They may just be a little misdirected. We are selling people a Jesus who solves their problems and makes their lives more comfortable. I hope we aren't misrepresenting the message of our crucified LORD.

So here is the question. How do we redirect the tide? How do we begin to help each other see the blinders society has placed on us? In our cities there are churches on every street corner and if we begin to challenge the powers (dare I say idols?) of comfort, pleasure, and self-satisfaction people are going to begin to go to those other churches. How do we move people to a new way of thinking without moving them to another church that isn't challenging the comfort of our day?

God, give us undivided hearts directed toward you. Help us to get our eyes off of ourselves and onto Your mission for saving the world. Forgive us for our self-centered attitudes and grant us the grace to walk humbly, justly, and with the mercy You have shown to us.

More Than a Bassoon

Does anyone out there like music? I don't mean like to listen to music while your checking your email, talking on the phone, cleaning the sink, and clipping your toenails. I'm talking about LISTENING to music. Listening for the intricacies of how the instruments work together. Listen to how they compliment each other and at times contrast each other in order to express something. Listen to how there are times when the music fades and gets so soft it is difficult to hear in order to set up the next crescendo that will blow your mind. Listen to the times notes aren't played in order to stress the importance of the ones that are. I mean LISTEN to music. I wonder what would happen if we listened to Beethoven's 9th but tuned out all instruments except the bassoon? What would that be like?

Why do we sometimes just listen to the bassoon of our Bibles? Why do we focus on a few pet passages and miss the grand symphony that is being played? We get a verse here and there from Paul and call it the gospel. Then we take "the gospels" and read them with that lens or as a batch of sayings from Jesus about how to live life. Then we work backwards from there to the quaint stories of the Old Testament that we treat as stand-alone stories to illustrate a moral. What an exercise in listening only to the bassoon. We have missed the symphony!

I have always been drawn to the Old Testament and the more I get into it the more it influences the way I read the New Testament. I am afraid we are missing so much in our churches because we don't have a clear picture of how the OT frames what the writers are doing in the NT. They are building on the salvific story of God for the world that the OT has been building and the climax comes in Jesus.

• Matthew begins with a genealogy from Abraham to Jesus and makes it pretty clear that this Jew is a part of the story that comes before him. In order to understand him, you had better know his story.
• Mark starts with a prophet in the vein of Elijah pointing back to the OT prophets and what they had been looking and longing for. What was that? What does it mean that John was a prophet like Elijah?
• Luke begins in the Temple and this is important not to miss. Without the OT we don't know how the Temple influences what is going to happen in the life and ministry of Jesus.
• John goes back to the beginning. God created and now He is creating again.

If we don't understand the beginnings in Genesis, the redemption and covenant in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, the monarchy and Temple in the "historical" books, and the promise of the new covenant in the prophets we are going to gravely miss the point of the gospels. We won't understand what is happening and will be only getting a small sliver of the greater symphony.

Paul is then a response to the gospel or good news of the life of Jesus. His writing isn't the gospel but the follow-up to the gospel. He is also influenced by the stories that have come before him and without that background we will read him incorrectly.

The point is this; we can't minimize the Old Testament to a collection of stories, rules, and sayings that stand independently from each other and the NT. It is all a part of the same story and plan and we must approach it to make that connection. We need to rejuvenate our OT studies and let it influence the way we read the NT. We need to soak in the entire symphony rather than settling for the partial pleasure of the bassoon. The bassoon player is good and you may enjoy his playing but he is going to agree that the whole orchestra will change you life.

Between the Word and Finanaces

The idea of ministry as a vocation has started to become a bit of a strange idea to me lately. The idea that a pastor is supposed to be following God's leadership and preaching the Word of God to people on a weekly basis regardless of how much that Word could offend people, while at the same time being paid by the money that those same people bring as a offering seems to put a pastor in a very difficult place. If it is the pastor's role to be a truth teller and to give people a Word from God on a weekly basis then chances are that those words are not always going to tickle the ear of the listener. And let's be quite frank, people don't always like to hear things that challenge their lives of comfort. I'm not saying that pastors should always be beating up their congregations with their sermons but there are going to be times when the church needs to be given a little push to get back on the right track. We all need that push from time to time. But how easy is it to be the giver of that push when the people you are pushing are making decisions about the paycheck that supports your family?

Maybe the pastor isn't supposed to be the only truth teller and that is the job for the church as a whole to be doing for each other. That takes some pressure off the pastor but it still raises the question for me as to what the role of the pastor then becomes. Is is caretaker? Vision giver or leader? CEO? Administrator? All of these roles seem to me to be things that the Body we call the church should be doing collectively as a community. If the role of the pastor is spiritual director then why do we employ them full-time? Why don't we work the church in a more community fashion and pay some people part-time here and there for administrative duties?

I'm just wondering if the idea of "full-time pastor" is going to become a thing of the past. Why not organize a church as a body of believers challenging each other and caring for each other in a spirit of unity and love? Is this idea a pie-in-the-sky dream that can't happen? Does a group of people always need someone "in charge?" This is something I want to look into Biblically and practically in the next while and see where it takes me. It may not be too appealing to those of us who "work" for the church currently but it has been on my mind and I need to get at least a little resolution. Just thinking here. Anyone have any answers for me?