The Downwardly Mobile Christian Leader

“Powerlessness and humility in the spiritual life do not refer to people who have no spine and who let everyone else make decisions for them. They refer to people who are so deeply in love with Jesus that they are ready to follow him wherever he guides them, always trusting that, with him, they will find life and find it abundantly.”

- Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus

I have been thinking about what it means to be a good and distinctly Christian leader, a leader after the example of Christ. I first read Henri Nouwen’s book, In the Name of Jesus, over ten years ago. I was in the midst of a great spiritual struggle and growing frustrated with my current church and felling like I was at a dead end in my Christian walk.

The great challenge of this book for me it the idea that the true Christian leader is not to consider his place at the head of the table, at the place of honor, but, rather, at the place of servitude. He is to consider himself last and the lowest priority. He exists only for the purposes of serving and equipping the Christians under his care for living the Christian life. He is to be the humble servant of all.

But he must also remember that humility and meekness does not equal weakness and deference. The Christian leader is to lead Christians and to do so with the confidence and passion that Christ modeled for us. The Christian leader is to be fearless before men and absolute in his convictions (in so much as they have their source in Scripture). Acts 4 gives us a good model of the bold Christian Leader. Peter and John answer the Jewish rulers boldly having put themselves in harms way for the sake of a lame beggar.

The Continuum of Church Purity

In my Church History class last Friday, my professor, Dr. Sean Lucas, gave us a description of how church history has been viewed with in terms of the purity of the church. He drew a simple line graph on the chalk board. The horizontal variable was a simple time line starting with the apostles and the early church. The vertical variable was supposed to be a measurement of the purity of the church. So when he started drawing this graph the level of purity was very high during the apostolic early church period, and the level of purity dropped off during the age of Constantine. It went in the tank during medieval Catholicism and rocketed upward as Luther and Calvin appeared…and so on.

The PCA and many other Presbyterian denominations we formed because of a concern for the purity of the Church. They saw the main line Presbyterian Church being compromised by a view that rejected fundamental Christian doctrines, things like: the deity of Christ and his resurrection, and the inerrancy of Scripture. The line was in the tank again or at least very quickly headed that direction. There are those who are concerned that the PCA’s line is once again headed downward and they are publicly decrying what they perceive as a compromise of the sanctity of scripture and the purity of Christ’s Church as it is manifested in the PCA.

I do not believe that my brothers are wrong for expressing their concerns. I believe that they do so out of a love for the Church and as Pastors of God’s people. They are protecting their flocks as any good pastor should. God bless them.

The specific issue that is fueling the debate recently is egalitarian feminism. There are those who believe that Covenant Seminary (where I am currently a student) and her President Dr. Bryan Chapell (and others in the PCA) have taken a position that is contrary to scripture regarding a woman’s role in the church. To further clarify, the question is not, “should women be ordained as teaching or ruling elders?” But the question is better stated, “Can a non-ordained woman participate in the life of the church in every way that a non-ordained man can?” Can a woman read scripture during a worship service or pray aloud during a worship service? Can a woman sit on or even chair a committee in the church? To my knowledge, no one is arguing for the ordination of women as teaching or ruling elders in the PCA.

What concerns me is that there is little or no charity being given by those who fear the church is under attack from what they view as a “feminist” position. It seems as if there is no room for debate on an issue that is totally debatable! We are making an essential out of a non-essential. What is worse, the debate is becoming shrill and unbecoming of the Bride of Christ.

Converting to the Ministry

There is a conversion taking place in my heart in and in my mind; which is strange because there hasn’t been too many of those over the years. I don’t remember when I actually converted to Christianity probably because, being very young, I never actually had anything to convert from. I do remember a moment of revelation about God’s grace and my sin that I had many years ago, but even that wasn’t a true conversion from anything. That experience didn’t so much as change my thinking as it gave the things I already thought more substance and weight. It took my theology from the compartment I kept it tucked away in and turned it loose in the ugliness of the mess I made for myself. But none of that addresses the true conversion I am in the midst of right here and now. My thinking is being challenged, and deepened. If this were an article in a Business Management magazine I would use phrases like, “paradigm shift” to describe what is going on.

I spent four summers of my (rather lengthy) undergraduate career working at a youth service project camp in East Tennessee. We recruited most of our new staff from our past campers, and often the fist year staffers would have a hard time adjusting because they wanted to revert back to being a camper again rather than take on the responsibility of a leader. We were constantly on the lookout for symptoms of a “camper mentality” in our first year staff. I think a lot of this current conversion is my own moving away from a sort of “camper mentality” to a “ministry mentality.” By mentality I mean not just my thinking but also the doing that is a result of my thinking. Preparation for ministry has been a process of refocusing my energies on becoming a servant in God’s Church; thinking about others first and putting others first. My time in seminary has not been just about learning things about the Lord, but letting those things shape me in a way that affects how I view the Lord’s people.

Second Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” This process of converting to a ministry mentality is fundamentally about the Gospel. I am discovering my place “in Christ” for the work of the ministry of his Gospel.

Sometimes You're the Windshield, and Sometimes You're the Bug

I won’t say it stunk, but it definitely wasn’t my best sermon ever. My text was Exodus 14:10-14. If you don’t happen to have a Bible handy I’ll just tell you that the text is about how God fights for his people. Specifically the text is the narrative of the time just prior to the crossing of the Red Sea. The people of Israel have fled to the desert and are pursued by the Egyptian army when they find themselves trapped between the chariots of the Egyptians and the impassable sea. God says to them, “I will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

Apart from a few structural and technical mistakes I made the development of my sermon; my delivery wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. Part of the problem is my own prayer life. E. M. Bounds says, "The character of our praying will determine the character of our preaching. Light praying will make light preaching. Prayer makes preaching strong, gives it unction, and makes it stick. In every ministry weighty for good, prayer has always been a serious business."

On the positive side, I had a great experience this afternoon going on a couple of home visits with the congregational care pastor at Central Pres., Lance Hudgens. We took Communion to two of our church’s shut-in members. In both cases there were live-in caregivers who joined us. It was such a cool thing to be able to deliver such an important part of worship to these people. It was extra special to me to get to help give communion to a man who was a WWII veteran.

It was such a great experience that it totally wiped out all the feelings of defeat and discouragement I still had from my so-so sermon the day before.

“I will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

Dim Memories

There is a dim memory in the back of all intelligent creatures’ minds. It is a deep, deep memory of a time when darkness did not rule the hearts of men and the world did not cry out for answers. It is less than a memory and more of a sense that sometime in the past the world had been altered in a way that made it less than it should be. When he looked at a sunset he had the feeling that he was not looking at sunsets the way they once were. The sunset as it appeared to him now was beautiful and fiery, it had all the right colors, the right effects. He breathed heavily as he stared watching the sun slowly make its way below the horizon. If the sunset seemed less than ideal to him, the problem was in his own heart. He realized after a moment that he was not paying close enough attention to the event he came to observe. His stomach sent a spasm of acid into his throat and he felt the urge to double over in convulsive cries. He concentrated instead on the sight in front of him and put aside the real reason for his coming to this point to watch another day slowly die away.

He stood there for a long while after the golden red crown of the sun had dipped below the distant green hills. Below him spread the entire countryside. The only town for miles lay in the valley below laid out like a pastoral scene. Lights were beginning to come on as the sun’s own light faded. The only thing anchoring the idyllic scene to the rest of the world was the barely visible line of the road as is broke out of the trees and followed the run of the valley to the north. There was no Lord’s house to dominate the landscape, no stately manor house to give an outsider the sense that this land and its people had any real purpose or for that matter any identity. But he knew these people. He was one of these people. Perhaps that is why his grandfather had laid this last task before him. It was his grandfather’s dying wish that he come to this spot and stand watch over the ending of the same day that began with the sudden ending of his grandfather’s life. His stomach churned again as the memories of the morning resurfaced like grubby fingers digging into fresh wounds.
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I wrote this just today after a talk I had with a friend from school. We were just encouraging each other to write more creatively since all we ever write here are academic papers and sermons. Anyway, we'll see where this goes.

This have been kind of tough here. For the first time we have not had the money in the bank to pay my whole tuition at the beginning of the semester, and on top of that we have had over $1k in unexpected car repairs in the last two weeks alone. The Lord is good however and money comes in the mail unlooked for. It really does!

I am reminded as I am working on my first sermon for class this semester that the Lord fights for his people! We have only to be still and see the salvation the Lord is working out for us.

Hebrew, My First Sermon, and a New Cellphone

Well, now that the summer is almost over I thought I should post and update you all on what has been going on in our lives. We have been quite busy this summer. Kathryn has started a new job teaching ballet at the Day Spring School for the Arts, I went on a trip with the Middle School and had a blast.

The biggest project for me this summer has been an attempt to teach myself Hebrew. Yeah…that’s right, me the language-tard trying to learn an utterly alien tongue. It has been hard and the progress has been slow. I doubt I will be able to test out of the Hebrew class like I had hoped but at least I will have a good head start on the vocabulary and some of the grammar.

I also had an opportunity to preach for a real live congregation for the first time in July, and it was a wonderful experience. I preached from Psalm 44 for the people of Hope Community Church here in St. Louis. The majority of the congregation is Korean speaking but they have an English service as well on Sunday mornings. Our neighbors, Trent and Emily Casto are in charge of the English service and Trent invited me to preach one week while he was on vacation. The Lord and the people there were very kind to this preacher-noob.

I also finally broke down and got a cell phone. Exciting.

Cause/Effect: Because God has given to us the Mosaic Law, we must regard the Law as good and perfect.

The Law of the Lord is not always seen a good thing that God has given to humanity. The Mosaic Law as seen by Luther is a “Mighty Hammer” which crushes the self-righteous spirit of humanity and conditions the flesh of the Christian to submit to righteous living according to the mandates set forth in the Law. The Mosaic Law under Luther’s view is largely seen as a negative force in the lives of humanity rather than a positive agent. Under the Lutheran view of the Law the Law does act to bring people to the savior but only as a result of their failure to positively fulfill the requirements of the Law. Its action is the negation of all the self righteousness found in humanity. Calvin’s view of the Mosaic Law is as a positive agent working toward the same goal of leading people to understand their need of Christ. Calvin says that the Law is like a mirror which shows us how we fall short of meeting the Godly standard. The Law is good and useful for the Servant of God, Calvin says, “by frequent meditation upon it to be aroused to obedience, be strengthened in it, and be drawn back from the slippery path of transgression (2.7.10).” Certainly the Bible regards the Mosaic Law as good and perfect. Psalm 19:7-11 is an example of a truly Biblical view of the Mosaic Law. According to the Psalmist, “The law of the Lord is perfect,” and it is, “sweeter also than honey and drippings from the honeycomb.” The law is called perfect and sweet because it was given to us by God and it sets for his children a standard of behavior which is reflective of God’s own character. The standard is not a human one but a divine standard. The case law which flows from the apodictic law are examples and scenarios of how God’s children are to regard worship, one another, and the rest of the world. When we see the law as a negative force in the life of the believer, we are really seeing God’s character as a negative. We should view the law not as a condemnation of our failures only, but also view the law as coming with grace. Calvin says of the Christian, “He lays hold not only of the precepts, but the accompanying promise of Grace, which alone sweetens what is bitter (2.7.12).” The practical implication of this is that the believer has confidence and assurance that the Mosaic Law no longer hold any sting of condemnation, for Jesus has borne that on our behalf, but it does still hold the sting of conviction of sin. That conviction, however, is forgiven by the Grace of Christ and we may be thankful for the Law and it’s painful but accurate reflection of God’s perfect character upon our fallen lives.

Cause/Effect: Because of God’s common grace, all of humanity contributes positively to the world.

In his grace to all humanity God has blessed his creatures with creativity and wisdom. We are his creatures and all of us have within us the kernel of the image of God. The world of art is an important indicator that God has blessed some with talents and insight in to using materials and images to contribute in a very positive way to the rest of the world. Creative talent is given to believers and non-believers alike. God is creative, he is the ultimate creator and that kernel of his image that resides in every man and woman is what gives to humanity their desire to imitate God in his creative endeavors. Just as the creation of the world expresses God’s character and nature so to is human creativity self-expressive and reflexive of the image of God which is part of God’s common grace. The same is true for much of human wisdom (Proverbs 8:1-4). It is no coincidence that throughout history much of human wisdom and philosophy has been geared towards the explanation of God and the human search for God. The image of the True God cries out in human hearts such that we are constantly seeking him through wisdom and philosophy. The evidence of Genesis 1:27 is seen not only in the arts and philosophy but in our everyday lives as well. We love our children and we naturally want to provide and care for them so that they might have a good future and a happy present (Luke 6:32-33; 11:11-13). I know that my parents sacrificed greatly for my sister and me when we were growing up so that we could get a good education and be prepared for our lives. In times of war stories of soldiers heroically giving up their lives are almost commonplace, although their sacrifices for one another are not commonplace in the least. This is another example of how God’s common grace is alive in the hearts of humanity, and by giving their lives for their comrades they contribute greatly not only to the causes for which they are fighting but also in the lives of the ones for whom they have sacrificed (Rom. 5:7). Despite the effect of the Fall, humanity nevertheless has and does contribute positively to the world in which we live. The kernel of the image of God is still at work and is evidence of the common grace of God’s hand at work in the hearts and minds of all people everywhere.