Keeping Church Un-cool

I like to read the ‘Comments’ section of a blog site.  It gives me a feeling for what people are thinking (or not thinking) about a particular topic.  This morning I read an online article from the Washington Post “On Faith” section  titled “How to keep Millennials in the church? Let’s keep church un-cool.”by Brett McCracken. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/07/31/how-to-keep-millennials-in-the-church-lets-keep-church-un-cool

Mr. McCracken was responding to an opinion piece written by Rachel Held Evans regarding “Millennials” (i.e. the youth of this generation) leaving the church because the church does not respond to their needs. (See her article at http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/27/why-millennials-are-leaving-the-church/) She stated in her article “I would encourage church leaders eager to win Millennials back to sit down and really talk with them about what they’re looking for and what they would like to contribute to a faith community.”

McCracken mostly opposes this thinking and states, “How about the opposite? Millennials: why don’t we take our pastors, parents, and older Christian brothers and sisters out to coffee and listen to them? Perhaps instead of perpetuating our sense of entitlement and Twitter/blog/Instagram-fueled obsession with hearing ourselves speak, we could just shut up for a minute and listen to the wisdom of those who have gone before?”

He further writes, “And for pastors, church leaders, and others so concerned with the survival of the church amidst the glut of “adapt or die!” hype, is asking Millennials what they want church to be and adjusting accordingly really your best bet? Are we really to believe that today’s #hashtagging, YOLO-oriented, selfie-obsessed generation of Millennials has more wisdom to offer about the church than those who have thought about and faithfully served the church decade after decade, amidst all its warts, challenges and ups and down?

Part of the problem is the hubris of every generation, which thinks it has discovered, once and for all, the right way of doing things. C.S. Lewis called it “chronological snobbery,” defining it as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.”

But a deeper problem is that Christianity has become too obsessed with how it is perceived. Just like the Photoshop-savvy Millennials she is so desperate to retain, the church is ever more meticulously concerned with her image, monitoring what people are saying about her and taking cues from that.”

He continues, “But at the end of the day, the Christian gospel is defined outside of and with little regard to whatever itch people think Christianity should scratch. Consumerism asserts that people want what they want and get what they want, for a price. It’s all about me. But to position the gospel within this consumerist, give-them-what-they-want framework is to open the door to all sorts of distortions, mutations, and “to each his own” cockamamy variations. If Christianity aims to sell a message that scratches a pluralism of itches, how in the world will a cohesive, orthodox, unified gospel survive?”

McCracken summarizes his article with this, “As a Millennial, if I’m truly honest with myself, what I really need from the church is not another yes-man entity enabling my hubris and giving me what I want. Rather, what I need is something bigger than me, older than me, bound by a truth that transcends me and a story that will outlast me; basically, something that doesn’t change to fit me and my whims, but changes me to be the Christ-like person I was created to be.”

Now to the comments.  Here is a sample of the 70 plus comments by the readers.

SuburbanRabbi

I think the issue here is far more complex than having a cool church or a real church, etc. Our culture has changed dramatically in the past 25 years. America has switched hips to rest on since the Beatles, the killings of JKF, RFK and MLK along with Viet Nam, Woodstock and finally the resignation of Nixon. After that decade of change everything has been up for grabs, including church. Then we had the decade of "Friends" and the public sex drama of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Our newscasters don't report news anymore. They make it. Language and culture are important. Music and technology have shaped our hearts. The church in America is now at the edge of our culture. That's where we were in the 1st century. We did OK. We had too. We will still. Keep being authentic and keep learning about the early church. What they believed is what they did! So what do we really believe by the evidence of the things that we do?

 AmyEdits

I wandered around in church life for 40 years--mostly Protestant. Then I found a home in the Orthodox Church. It is deep, rich, challenging, and incredibly worshipful. Why settle for fragments of the church when you can have the fullness?

geoffrobinson

I am now Reformed, but I grew up Roman Catholic. And although I have major disagreements now with Roman Catholic theology, I'll explain really easily why I hated going to church until I was 16. I was an unregenerate sinner. I would offer for consideration that many of the issues here is that many of the young hate God and the things of God.

 

Bookwyrm

I have been saying some of these very things, although not as eloquently and clearly. But the reason I stayed in the church while growing up is that I saw Jesus in the lives of the saints who worshipped at my church. They were very unhip - some poor, very old-fashioned, some uneducated (although others were highly educated and well-off), but they were the genuine article. They lived up to what they believed and their lives had a grace and peace that I thought was miraculous and I attributed it to God. They loved me, were interested in me, cared for me through some awkward years...and they lived lives of generosity.

 

DrivenB4U

I would offer that you could seek professional help to repair the damage religious delusion has done to you.  Also the young don't hate god. They've just figured out it's a trick.

Is it just a trick?  Is the church to change with the time to be significant or relevant?  Should the church import the latest music, dress, lifestyle, etc.?   If the church in America is currently “on the edge of our culture” where is the drop off point?  Ask yourself, “Is my church providing worship in a “deep, rich, challenging” way?  Or is worship not the point anymore?   Are members of the church living up to what they believe and emulating Jesus in their lives and making an impact on others?  What are your thoughts?

Listening: Nothing Is More Godlike

A counselor friend recently received this email from a couple that he and his wife had counseled:

“It was great to be with you yesterday and I want to thank you. You guys were great listeners. Allowing my wife to share the depths of her pain and express a brief picture of the extent of suffering we have experienced over these past two years was healing. She really felt heard and not overly diagnosed or analyzed. Before coming, she was afraid of having all her phrases picked apart for their rightness and wrongness. Instead, you really hurt for her. Your sympathy and expression over the severity of the trials were a great comfort. Thanks for being the body of Christ to us.”
Two sentences particularly struck me: “You guys were great listeners.” “She really felt heard.”

May I suggest that no ministry action we take is more Godlike than good listening?

 

God Listens to God

Just how Godlike is listening? It’s what God does toward God. The Persons in the Godhead listen to each other.

The Father listens to his Son: “Then Jesus looked up and said, ‘Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” (John 11:41-42). The Son listens to his Father: “I have much to say in judgment of you. But he who sent me is reliable, and what I have heard from him I tell the world” (John 8:26). “These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me” (John 14:24). And the Holy Spirit listens to both the Father and the Son: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come” (John 16:13).

God Listens to Us

But God not only listens to Himself. He also listens to us. As biblical counselor Wayne Mack put it, “The fact that our Triune God is a good listener should powerfully motivate us to improve in this area. The three persons of the Trinity listen carefully to each other and, amazingly, to us!”
Consider the moving story of the Egyptian slave woman Hagar in Genesis 16. Mistreated by Abram and Sarai, and pregnant and alone as a single mom, she fled and began her journey back to her homeland. But God’s eyes and ears of grace were open toward her. As she headed home, the angel of the Lord (an appearance of God himself) found her in the desert. He spoke to her, counseled her to return, and promised great blessing to her and her son. The angel then told her to name her son Ishmael. Why? “For the Lord has heard of your misery” (v. 11). (In Hebrew, the name Ishmael means God hears.) God’s love and care for this distressed woman began when God heard her cries. And it continued in an equally stirring scene in Genesis 21:17, when the angel of God assures her, “Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying. . . .”

God Our Listener-Redeemer

When did God’s deliverance of Israel out of Egypt begin? While we might look to his burning bush appearance to Moses in Exodus 3, the previous chapter highlights something that was prior to and causative of all of the Exodus actions: “During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God.
God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them” (Exodus 2:23-25). The Lord later repeats the same point to Moses when he appears in the burning bush (3:7-8): God’s hearing initiated the Exodus sequence. Israel’s salvation began with the eyes and ears of a Redeemer who sees, hears, feels concern, and then acts.
Do you ever delight in the saving ears of God? “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer. . . . The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles” (Psalm 34:15, 17; cf. 1 Peter 3:12). “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry” (Psalm 40:1). “I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live” (Psalm 116:1–2).

Listening to Others with the Ears of God

One takeaway for counselors seems obvious: Listen to others as God has listened to us. Here Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s rich insights remain unsurpassed:
“The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. . . . It is God’s love for us that he not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear. . . . But Christians have forgotten that the ministry of listening has been committed to them by Him who is Himself the great listener and whose work they should share. We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God” (Life Together, chapter 4).
Thank you, God, for being the Great Listener and for savingly listening to us. Help us to be like you in this way, knowing that there is nothing that we do that is more like you.

Join the Conversation

How much do you value listening in your friendships and ministries? What biblical truths motivate you to listen well? How have you seen God bless your efforts to listen well to others? Who are the top listeners in your life—friends, spouses, pastors, counselors? In what specific ways has God used them to help you or encourage you?

From an article by Robert Jones -  published July 17, 2013

http://biblicalcounselingcoalition.org

One More Thing (maybe)…On Public Prayer

Historically, spiritual revival most often begins with intensive, focused prayer. I believe all Christians (especially me) can improve in their prayer life  (particularly in the area of public or corporate prayer) so in addition to practicing praying I often seek advice to improve my prayer.  I found the following very informative regarding public prayer and want to share it with you.

Prepare Your Public Prayers: Helpful Advice from D. A. Carson

"If you are in any form of spiritual leadership, work at your public prayers. It does not matter whether the form of spiritual leadership you exercise is the teaching of a Sunday school class, pastoral ministry, small-group evangelism, or anything else: if at any point you pray in public as a leader, then work at your public prayers.

Some people think this advice distinctly corrupt.  It smells too much of public relations, of concern for public image.  After all, whether we are praying in private or in public, we are praying to God: Surely he is the one we should be thinking about, no one else.

This objection misses the point.  Certainly if we must choose between trying to please God in prayer, and trying to please our fellow creatures, we must unhesitatingly opt for the former.  But that is not the issue.  It is not a question of pleasing our human hearers, but of instructing them and edifying them.

The ultimate sanction for this approach is none less than Jesus himself.  At the tomb of Lazarus, after the stone has been removed, Jesus looks to heaven and prays, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.  I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me” (John 11:41-42).  Here, then, is a prayer of Jesus himself that is shaped in part by his awareness of what his human hearers need to hear.

The point is that although public prayer is addressed to God, it is addressed to God while others are overhearing it.  Of course, if the one who is praying is more concerned to impress these human hearers than to pray to God, then rank hypocrisy takes over.  That is why Jesus so roundly condemns much of the public praying of his day and insists on the primacy of private prayer (Matt. 6:5-8).  But that does not mean that there is no place at all for public prayer.  Rather, it means that public prayer ought to be the overflow of one’s private praying.  And then, judging by the example of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, there is ample reason to reflect on just what my prayer, rightly directed to God, is saying to the people who hear me.

In  brief, public praying is a pedagogical opportunity.  It provides the one who is praying with an opportunity to instruct or encourage or edify all who hear the prayer.  In liturgical churches, many of the prayers are well-crafted, but to some ears they lack spontaneity.  In nonliturgical churches, many of the prayers are so predictable that they are scarcely any more spontaneous than written prayers, and most of them are not nearly as well-crafted.  The answer to both situations is to provide more prayers that are carefully and freshly prepared.  That does not necessarily mean writing them out verbatim (though that can be a good thing to do).  At the least, it means thinking through in advance and in some detail just where the prayer is going, preparing, perhaps, some notes, and memorizing them.

Public praying is a responsibility as well as a privilege.  In the last century, the great English preacher Charles Spurgeon did not mind sharing his pulpit: others sometimes preached in his home church even when he was present.  But when he came to the “pastoral prayer,” if he was present, he reserved that part of the service for himself.  This decision did not arise out of any priestly conviction that his prayers were more efficacious than those of others.  Rather, it arose from his love for his people, his high view of prayer, his conviction that public praying should not only intercede with God but also instruct and edify and encourage the saints.

Many facets of Christian discipleship, not least prayer, are rather more effectively passed on by modeling than by formal teaching.  Good praying is more easily caught than taught.  If it is right to say that we should choose models from whom we can learn, then the obverse truth is that we ourselves become responsible to become models for others.  So whether you are leading a service or family prayers, whether you are praying in a small-group Bible study or at a convention, work at your public prayers."

D.A. Carson, “A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers (Baker, 1992), 34-35.

Originally posted by Brian Hedges on Wednesday, September 25, 2013.  

Evaluating Our Corporate Prayers

Ligon Duncan shares some thoughts of Samuel Miller (1769-1850; a Presbyterian theologian who taught at Princeton Theological Seminary) regarding corporate prayer in an article published in the 9Marks Journal titled “Thirty Two Principles for Public Prayer”.  Duncan writes, “Those who regularly bear the solemn responsibility of leading the congregation in public prayer are here again encouraged to study and reflect on this important matter. The consistent devotional use of such helps as Matthew Henry's Method for Prayer should be a helpful aid in preparing for such an awesome privilege and duty. In the introduction Samuel Miller's Thoughts on Public Prayer has already been commended, but perhaps an enumeration of some of Miller's main principles and admonitions will whet the reader's appetite for more and prove useful in evaluating our own efforts in corporate prayer.

Miller detected the following common faults in the public praying of the church in his day and they remain applicable to our own.”

Duncan then lists Miller’s eighteen frequent faults in public prayer followed by fourteen characteristics of a good public prayer.

I would recommend reading the complete article at http://www.9marks.org/journal/thirty-two-principles-public-prayer

Improving Public or Corporate Prayer

…….one reason why previous generations of evangelicals were more Biblically literate than ours is that there was more Bible content in their services than in ours. The word preached and the word prayed and the word sung were constantly reinforcing each other. The romanticism of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries emptied our hymns of most of their biblical and theological content. As noted above, only fragments of scriptural expression remain in our songs. We've already commented on the state of preaching and praying. The irony that the churches that profess to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture make such little use of Scripture and are becoming increasingly ignorant of Scripture is bitter indeed. What a difference it will make if you will call the people to worship with Scripture, invoke the presence of God with scriptural praise, sing a metrical Psalm, confess sins using Scripture language, read the Scripture, preach an expository sermon, sing a scriptural hymn, build your intercessions around the five categories found in Scripture, used by the early church, and revived by the Reformers, and conclude with a scriptural benediction. This done, Sunday morning and evening, fifty-two weeks a year, year after year will build a strong church, one characterized by scriptural literacy and spiritual maturity. If you worship in this way your growth may be slower than is acceptable to many. It may require that one take a longer view than is customary today. One may not gather large crowds overnight. But in the long run a church that builds a foundation like this on the words of Christ, will endure like a rock, and not be shaken.

Excerpted from an article "Recommendations for Improving Public Prayer" by Terry Johnson and published in the 9Marks Journal.

The entire article is available at http://www.9marks.org/journal/recommendations-improving-public-prayer

God's Ordained Methods

"God's providential arrangements often seem very mysterious.  We are shut out from  opportunities which seem favourable to the promotion of His kingdom within and around us: we are deprived of circumstances or associates which seemed needful for our growth in grace: we have sickness, poverty, distresses, reproach, persecution,  hatred, when we think we could serve God better in health, competence, ease, honour, tranquillity, and love.  But we are short-sighted: we are of yesterday, and know nothing.  All these things are ordained for us in the deliberate arrangements and counsels of His will.  There is neither chance nor mistake in the kingdom of grace.  Let us therefore, not only contentedly acquiesce, but adoringly rejoice in His wise orderings.  His good hand is in all our matters.  Let us therefore give thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Excerpt from "Family Devotions" by Henry Law

Happy Labor Day Weekend

(apparently they didn't get the memo....)