A Commission to Students

Tyler Priest of the Priesthood and Emergent Village have posted A Blessing and Commission for Students. I always liked August and September in student ministry. Though the students were always dreading school starting back up and the summer coming to an end, there was great energy that came with the fall. We were always able to launch fun new series'. Our programming was high. Our attendance was high. It was a fun time! It is perhaps unfortunate the the lives of adults can't have more scheduled ups and downs. Anyway, without further ado, for all of the students out there, or any of us adults who have a soft spot in our hearts for students, here is a commission.

as you start this new year of school, we send you out with our blessings. we want you to know that along with God, we are walking with you. you are not alone. you belong to God, and we belong to each other.

when you walk down the halls, remember that we are on mission together with Jesus. in the midst of friendships, classes, games, performances, and events, may you remember that we are sent to bring heaven to earth, to be salt that heals and light that pierces darkness.

so go out, befriend the lonely and hurting, give hope to the hopeless, rise above the popularity contests that have trapped so many. give your best effort in the classroom, always seek the truth, ask hard questions, and never settle for easy answers. take every though captive and make it obedient to the way of Christ.

go and have fun. live lightly and enjoy this year. don’t spend too much time looking forward to next semester or next year or even next week. live in the now. do not worry. because of Christ, you are free to be your true self, the self you were created to be.

when you’re tempted, remember that there is always a way out. don’t crumble to peer pressure. instead, may you find that nothing will satisfy you—absolutely nothing will satisfy you—unless it is a gift from God. so may you have the wisdom to discern that which is from God and that which is not. and may you have the courage to live out that wisdom.

we send you out with the prayer that as you move about campus, you will carry deep in your heart the undying fire for our King and his kingdom. in this school year, may it be the kingdom that you seek first, that you hope for, and work for, above everything else. amen.

Teacher Forced to Resign For Questioning

Think Christian has reported on an interesting story about a High School Bible Teacher at NorthPoint Christian school, Kent Dobson, who hosted a show on the Discovery channel that questioned some elements of the Bible.

Dobson, the 31-year-old son of retired Calvary Church pastor Ed Dobson, resigned his post as Bible teacher at NorthPointe Christian High School last week after the school board questioned his role in the March 16 special, “Jesus: The Missing History.”
On the hourlong program, Dobson questioned biblical scholars on possible contradictions between the Gospels and the historical evidence of Jesus’ life. The questions included:

Was Bethlehem Jesus’ birthplace?
Was Jesus a carpenter or a stone mason?
Was Jesus’ eviction of money changers from the temple a political or religious move?
Is there any truth in the Gnostic gospels?
In the program, which is not scheduled for rebroadcast, Dobson does not definitively answer the questions or take a position. He interviews biblical scholars who present evidence that contradicts the Bible.

Here are some excerpts of the program:



The result was a flood of letters/emails from the parents of students at the school calling for action to be taken. The result was a board hearing, and pressure to resign. In the emails was included this little gem:

We understand that this was done with unbelievers and that parts of this were edited.

The part that actually concerns me that as a Christian the Bible was questioned. The Bible is never to be questioned!

Why as a Christian would one place himself in this type of situation where we would actually be questioning the Bible. (Boldness added, but the exclamation point was original)

Sure, we should never question the Bible. In fact, we should never question anything! We should just accept everything we hear as truth and never investigate anything!

Come on. I'm exaggerating to make a point. This really saddens me. Isn't the educational experience supposed to be less about indoctrination and more about competing ideas and viewpoints? Shouldn't we trust high schoolers to think and wrestle with evidence, ideas, and claims? Isn't all truth God's truth?

Suffice it to say, I completely disagree with this decision and think it runs contrary to education, in addition to making Christians look like indoctrinators rather than educators (which is largely true, unfortunately). When I was a Christian educator (as a youth pastor in a church), my goal was to get students thinking, wrestling, and questioning. I wanted students to think for themselves, rather than accept what I tell them and regurgitate it. The latter does not produce good citizens, thinkers, or disciples, but simply status quo, toe the line young people. and, I think as we see more people in their 20's leaving the church than ever before, it should be a sign to us that indoctrination is not working.

But, there are some other factors that come into play. Regardless of how right or wrong any of us think this decision is, it is a private Christian school making the call, funded on the dollars of the tuition paying parents. If the school wanted to require all teachers to shave their heads and grow beards to their waists, they could, right? So, they technically did nothing wrong from a legal standpoint.

In addition, Kent Dobson is apparently enough of a sought after Bible Scholar that it shouldn't be hard for him to get another job. But it is still sad. It means he has to leave all of his students and colleagues. It means he probably will have to move. It means he will have this black mark (if you can call it that) on his record for the rest of his life. I wish him the best. (And, incidentally, I think I've met this guy. He looks so familiar! I've been having a deja vu moment since I watched the clip.)

What is your take on this whole situation?

"An Invitation To Know God"

I'm back again with more from Donald Miller in Searching For God Knows What. I have to say that this may be my favorite book of all time, and it is definitely in my top three. We are doing a series in LiveWire Service this month on Identity, borrowing stories and examples from this book. It has been my favorite series we have done in the last three years.

Here we see Donald explaining how his thoughts on God and what it meant to follow Him changed. He wraps this up quite beautifully.

Jesus was always, and I mean always, talking about love, about people, about relationships, and He never once broke anything down into steps or formulas. What if, because we were constantly tyring to dissect His message, we were missing a blatant invitation? I began to wonder if becoming a Christian did not work more like falling in love than agreeing with a list of true principles. I had met a lot of people who agreed with all those true principles, and they were jerks, and a lot of other people who believed in those principles, but who also claimed to love Jesus, who were not jerks. It seems like something else has to take place in the heart for somebody to become a believer, for somebody to understand the gospel of Jesus. It began to seem like more than just a cerebral exercise. What if the gospel of Jesus was an invitation to know God?

There are a couple comments I would like to make about this.

1. It seems clear that Donald is referring to the experience of being born again; falling in love with the Savior and entering into an intimate relationship with God. I think we would agree with this in principle, but I would argue that it is not played out practically as much as we would like to think. For instance, what percentage of your church would you say is born again? By this, I mean really born again. They have had an undeniable encounter with the risen Christ. They have the appetites that born again people have, the appetite to worship, to read and study the scriptures, to pray etc. They have a faith that is stronger than just believing in a set of principles, but that is drawn from an experience that no skeptic can undermine. What percentage would you say? Half? Less? My pastor and I have a theory that the Church has taken people who are not born again and told them that they were, and then told them to crave the scriptures, and worship, and service to the body etc., but they do not have the appetites because they are not born again, so they do not grow.

2. Secondly, what percentage of the Christians you know merely subscribe intellectually to a set of true principles, and how many have actually fallen in love with Christ? I think this is one problem churches run into who make scripture "the point." I dint think we believe in God and have a relationship with Him because of the scriptures, and if we do, I would argue that it is an intellectual thing. No, I think it is the other way around. We believe the scriptures because we have met the risen Christ. Scripture then becomes our guide and our primary and authoritative source of hearing the will of the Lord. But, it is not "the point." God is "the point."

Anyway, those are my rants. I love how Donald can deliver a paragraph that is both beautiful yet incredibly deep and thought provoking. May we continually stress the importance of being born again.

The Lies We Tell Young People, Part 2

While navigating Yahoo! to check my email, I was struck by a headline on their news page. you know, the ones that they make as shocking and eye catching as possible so they can report more hits to their advertisers? Anyway, the title of the article is Can Cheaters Change: Can cheaters stop straying, or is infidelity a personality trait? What!?, I thought. Cheating is a personality trait now? Unbelievable. I read the article, which is very short and a disappointment based on the headline, but it basically says that 25% of men and 15% of women admit to sleeping with someone else while in a relationship, and that those who cheat are more likely to cheat again.

So, I'm sure you are left to conclude, as I am, that cheating is a personality trait, right? And what follows from that is that is it is a personality trait, like introversion/extroversion, it isn't wrong, per say, but part of who they are.

What a crock. Our culture is becoming so steeped in moral relativism that cheating, a practice that obviously hurts and destroys, is seen as a personality trait. This is the dominant worldview that is being handed down to the next generation: that all morality is relative, there is no absolute truth, and every belief is equally valid. Join me on my quest to find more examples of this in the media.

If you care to read more on this subject, I recommend this book on relativism by Greg Koukl and Frank Beckwith. I am about half way through it, and they have already blown relativism to shreds, both logically and practically. It employs quite a bit of deep logical terminology, but most high school grads should be able to follow it for the most part.

As a note before I close, I found it funny that this article, by David Zinczenko, is in a series called "Mysteries of the Sexes Explained." After thousands of years of trying to figure this out, thanks, Dave, for making this all so clear.

Preaching Tips From...Well, Me

Not than anybody really cares what I think, but I thought I would put down some "preaching tips" from my experience. As I try to become a better communicator myself, I try to learn as much as I can and continue to learn. By the way, I must admit that I completely stole this idea from Tim Ellsworth. It is interesting to see how our lists are different.

Two things to keep in mind: First, that I am young. I gave my first sermon when I was probably 14 to our youth group and have been speaking regularly for the last 4 or 5 years, but I am still pretty young. Second, I work with youth, so that effects my perspective a bit. Here we go.

1. Preach From the Bible

I had a professor that once told my class to always read, quote, and paraphrase the Bible in sermons as much as possible. "That way, when you are done, you know you said something inspired." Well said, Dr. Nunnally. I don't believe every sermon (or even most sermons) needs to be verse by verse expository preaching, but scripture should always be used. How can we get by with not using it?

2. Keep it Practical

My currect senior pastor holds to the idea that sermons should all be very practical. I agree. In a service like ours where we expect to have at least a handfull of newcomers present every week, we should keep it to something they can understand. They don't want hear about why we should boil goats in their mother's milk, but things like parenting, conflict, influencing culture, God's plan for marriage etc. they tend to care about because it speaks to their lives. There is a place for the esoteric studies of fairly insignificant bits of scripture, but that is not a Sunday morning. Another word for this would be relevance. People need something that is going to pertain to their lives.

3. Use Humor/Entertainment

Erwin McManus was once challenged by someone who accused his church of trying too hard to entertain people. His response, in my own words, was basically that to entertain someone was simply keeping their attention. Some people are entertained by hymns, or organ music, or expository preaching, or drama, or humor etc. I think he makes a great point. We are all trying to communicate a timeless message in new, creative ways. Whatever form that communication takes should depend on the audience. In LiveWire Student Ministries we use lots of humor, video, movement etc., because young people (actually, all people) learn in multi-sensory ways. This is not diluting the message, but rather, becoming better at communicating it. Jesus used stories, object lessons, humor etc. in his teaching, so why are we afraid to?

I must say though, that this, like all things, can easily go too far. Making jokes at a time that needs to be serious can lose a crownd quickly. Also, when the goal becomes entertainment, rather than communicating the message, it has gone too far.

4. Be Semi-Normal

Weirdness is not a spiritual gift; neither is it admirable. Some preachers seem to get off on using "insider language" or "preacher voices." Is there anything more annoying? This is the whole problem with the Christian Subculture that has been created. By pulling back and secluding, we have lost the right and the opportunity to speak into the culture. I am going to a conference in 2 weeks where Donald Miller will be giving a talk called "How to Share the Gospel Without Weirding People Out." I think that is a great point.

Now, I say semi-normal, because it is not entirely normal to lay down one's life for a dead criminal, or to simulate eating his body and drinking his blood or lots of other things for that matter. There is a level of percieved weirdness that all outsiders might have for Christians that involve core doctrines that just come with the territorry. But people need a real person. They are very good at spotting the phony.

5. Talk about Jesus

I tend to think that no matter what topic a person is preaching on, they should involve Jesus in the process. It shouldn't be hard, for he is all over the Bible, even in the Old Testament. It seems that the "model" from the book of Acts is just to tell about Jesus and what he did. That seemed to work pretty well. Therefore, we would do well to involve Jesus in our message every time, and to tell the story of the cross regularly.

There it is. It is certainly not perfect nor is it comprehensive, but I have my thoughts down. Feel free to critique, disagree, and call me a heretic if you must, but may we never give up the journey of becoming better communicators of the most important message in the world.

Hidden Sin

I have been thinking a lot about sin recently. There are many reasons. The topic we are discussing in our series on Wednesday nights to the Students, the stuff I am reading, the struggles people I know are going through, sin in my own life. From all of this, I have come to a very specific conclusion:

Sin is not a big deal to us.

We see sin as if it were on a credit card...that we can spend whatever we want without worrying about it. We sin staggeringly often, but are seldom arrested in our hearts to change our ways. I am talking to myself as much as anyone else. I notice this all the time. It boils down, again to my point, that Sin is not a big deal to us.

I think there are pretty much 2 reasons that this is the case in our world today. First, that we know the outcome: Jesus paid our debt. If all of our sin is covered, why is it such a big deal? We would never be so crass as to verbalize it as I am now, but I think it is what we tell ourselves. The scary thing is that Paul warns against this very idea. He writes in Romans 6:1-2 "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" Great question, Paul. And yet so many of us, I believe, are doing exactly what he describes, "Living in Sin." Sin is a way of life; a rut, if you will, that we have apparently no plans to get out of. Have you noticed how trendy it is to lie nowadays, even for Christians? Have you noticed how common it is for Christians to use profanity? Do you realize that according to youthpastor.com, 60% of youth pastors admit to having viewed pornography in the past month? Friends, sin is a major issue, and we need to do all we can to remove it from our lives. The problem, as I return to my point, is that we view it as already taken care of. What if it were harder? What if we still had to sacrifice a goat to gain forgiveness every time we sinned? What would that cost us financially? Would it change things?

The second reason I think that we view sin as no big deal, is that sin is primarily hidden in our lives. Sure, sin happens publicly on a regular basis on TV and the radio blah blah blah. But I mean in our personal lives, sin is so often hidden. What if we still practiced confession? The Roman Catholics did that for over 1000 years until it became legalistic and corrupt. The result is that we almost never confess anymore, and that leads to very little accountability on our part to change. When asked whether confession was necessary, C.S. Lewis stated that he wasn't sure confession was absolutely necessary, but that a man should at the very least make a list of his sins. We don't even get real and face our sins any more. What if we started confession again? And what if we no longer felt that we needed to hide our sin from everyone? I for one am sick of feeling like I need to pretend I have it all together. I am ready to throw in the towel on hypocritical perfection.

What do we have to do to make sin a big deal again? It is a huge deal for God, that is for sure. Allow me, while I am here, to make a few comments to add balance to this discussion. I am not promoting legalistic perfection or condemnation. God is a God of grace, that is for sure. But, as in everything, there is a middle ground that is healthy, with ditches on either side. I fear that we may have fallen into the "grace ditch," and no longer view sin as a big deal. My intention is not to urge us (or myself) into the other ditch, the "legalism ditch." What I do hope is that those who are serious about God will get their lives in order, that they will do whatever they have to do to remove deeply rooted sinful behavior from their lives. Don't wait until later; get it done now. I realize that this view is very unpopular because of the discomfort and shame that results (but honestly, after several of my blogs in the past, do you think popularity is my goal?). However, I think God is calling me (and maybe you) to a higher level of obedience and sacrifice for him. To a more serious view of sin and a declaration to not live a lie any longer. May God help us as we journey on this road of righteousness together.

As I continue these thoughts, I intend to go back to The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his reflections on "Cheap Grace" versus "Costly Grace." Feel free to join me as I continue this voyage to better understand what God is saying to me.