VirusDoc asks some good questions in the comments of my previous post. Rather than answering them there, I felt that they were worthy of their own post(s). Because I can’t seem to write short posts, I’ll answer them over the next few postings. I’ll start with #4:
Why do _you_ feel such a deep need for Christian unity?
Because I’ve experienced it, or at least something very much like it. As I explained earlier, my church once took some pretty radical stands on some things over the years. One of those things was unity. Our churches were united and codependent in a powerful way. This sprung out of several things, the prominent position of discipling for one and the belief in ‘one true church’ for another. Both of those ideas took some rather unfortunate turns over the years and as a result the foundations of what we called ‘unity’ were shaken. Discipling turned from love into authority and control and the idea of ‘one true church’ morphed into ‘we’re the one true church.’ But the unity that we had between churches was amazing.
As an example, in 1991 I was a Senior at the University of Cincinnati and about to go to NYC on my last quarter of co-op employment. I was going to need an apartment in Manhattan for 3 months. I simply called the church office for the NYC Church of Christ and told them I was coming and asked if there was anyone I could stay with. They hooked me up with a household where one of the brothers was leaving for the same 3 months to go work on the beginnings of the Big Dig project in Boston. His 4 roommates took me in as if I was someone they’d known for years. Not only that, but because this guy would have had to pay his full share of the 2 bedroom apartment’s rent (his share was $450 if I remember right), he volunteered to let me stay there for the same rent I was paying in Cinci – $150 a month – and he picked up the rest. That was for an Upper East Side apartment (83rd and Lexington).
This is how we operated, period. We were a family and it was expected that you’d act that way. This was not an isolated incident. I experienced this kind of open hospitality regularly from different congregations and people. We’d go to conferences in other cities and the members of those congregations would put us up for the weekend, having never met us before. Not on the hide a bed, no they’d take the hide a bed and we’d get their bed.
Isn’t this the ideal of Christian unity that many today blow off as unobtainable? This reminds me of what I see in the NT (Acts 2:44-45):

All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.

This is how God’s church looked in the beginning, and I think it’s how it should look today.

Look at the callender in the upper right corner and you’ll see that it’s been a bit sparse around here lately. Frankly, a big part of me didn’t want to sit down and write this tonight. Partly out of obligation to the 2-3 readers I have* and partly because I felt like it would do me some good to sit and write, I sort of forced my self to log on. Maybe it’s just the pace of my life lately (see here), I don’t know, but I’ve lost my fire for blogging. No, this isn’t a notice that I’m giving it up, it’s just been hard to get motivated about it. I really can’t say why, but I just don’t feel like it.
Well, I guess if I were honest, I can say something about why. Over the past few weeks I’ve been writing sporadically about fundamentals of Christianity. I threw a gauntlet down of sorts in the begining that Christians ought to be able to agree on the basics of Christianity and that we ought to stop fighting over trivial matters. While I still think that this is a great ideal, I guess I’m not so sure I want to write any more about it. Frankly, I figure that I will offend somebody or spark some angry debate and I don’t want to do that – or more accurately, I don’t want to feel the wrath of those offended. I want to write more on the subject, but the thought of doing so is a bit oppressive.
Jesus took stand on things. He stood up and said this is right and that is wrong, unequivocably. He was not afraid to step on toes, even to the point of calling those who defined ‘religion’ in His day, basically, evil. My friend Douglas Jacoby recently posted some interesting observations (writen in 1991) about the nature of God’s prophets throughout history. Namely, they are almost always in a small minority (frequently alone) and are almost always persecuted and opposed by a majority of religious leaders. He offers several examples from scripture, go check it out.
Being in the minority is not fun, especially if it’s a persecuted minority. If one examines the scriptures honestly, you start to see why they killed Jesus. He stood up and told the people, the leaders, that they were wrong and in fact were far fom God. To stand up for God can be a lonely position. I don’t want to be isolated and persecuted for speaking up for God, so I guess that’s why I’ve hesitated to post my thoughts on specific fundamentals.
I recognize that this all sounds a bit arrogant. Who am I to assume that I speak for God? Certainly, just because history shows that God’s prophets were in the minority does not mean that every minority view is from God. I would say, however, if everyone in the religous world agrees with you, better watch out. So when I think about posting my take on Christian fundamentals, I know that if it is to be close to God’s it will be uncomfortable to many. I will not find much agreement.
The ‘Christian’ population in the US is very large and on some level quite homogeneous. There’s a certain agreement on not challenging each other on what we believe about fundamental things. Sort of a “Don’t ask don’t tell” environment. We’re all ‘Christian’ so it’s all good. Frankly, that turns my stomach. Jesus wasn’t afraid to tell people that they were flat wrong, and even the brothers in the first century corrected each other on fundamentals in doctrine (Acts 18:24-26, Acts 19:1-5, Galatians 2:11-14). We ought to trust our Bibles and our God to lead us and take a stand on His plan.
But even as I type this I know that my version of God’s plan and anothers will be different. And I know that it’s easier and more comfortable to discuss less important matters than to resolve our differences on fundamentals. But as I look around at ‘Christianity’, I see some great hearted people with some amazing thoughts and insights on God, but I know that we are on different pages on fundamentals and it tears at my heart. What they define as Christianity and what I difine it as are differnet things. I long for a united church. I long to be able to say “I’m a Christian” and to have people know precisely what that means. Is it too much to ask?
I guess at some point I’ve got to take my stand and throw out there what I believe. It is a bit silly, isn’t it, to get worked up about exposing my heart when this little corner of the net is clearly not that well traveled anyway. Oh well.

Continue reading “What Have I Gotten Myself Into?”

Heard an encouraging message tonight at church. It came from Harlem Salim, the evangelist of the Indonesain International Churches of Christ. He was here in Columbus for our church conference entitled ‘Strong in the Grace”. I must say that I was underwhelmed by the conference, but I think that had more to do with me than the conference itself. Many people were encouraged and inspired by what they heard. So I guess that makes it a success. Right now I am just bogged down by, well, life. There’s been just a bit too much life for my tastes right now.
Work has been, well, without going into details let’s just say pretty stressfull of late. Crazy deadlines & demands, miscommunications, pulled in many directions, lack of support. I’ve also been lobbying for getting help with a project for a friend at work, without much success. That finally got worked out today, thankfully. I’m no good a approaching the boss, or his boss (the owner) let alone both with what amounts to a favor.
My barbershop chorus, the Singing Buckeyes is ramping up for fall contest. We’ve got some pretty amitious songs we’re learning. It’s been a few years since we’ve been on top in our district, and we’re trying to regain lost ground. We’ve got a new director (a little over a year now) and we’re making some great headway. There’s a bunch of pressure to get up to speed, put in extra time practicing, etc. We’ve got an all day coaching session this Saturday that I really need to be at.
The deacons have been going from house to house meeting with the people. It’s been encouraging to get to know people a bit better, but it’s also been pretty exhausting. We’re paired up and the brother I’m with and I have been doing two a week. The group we’re meeting with are all across on the other side of town, so each visit is about 1 hour of drive time there and back. Each meeting itself has taken about 2 hours. Don’t hear me wrong, I’m very glad we’re doing this (I’ve gotten a few free meals!), it’s just that I had know idea how much work it would really be. Not to mention that emotional exhaustion that comes from hearing people’s struggles and concerns. Or hearing that they don’t have concerns when I feel so much concern for my church right now.
The conference itself was a big undertaking for our small church. We’ve had these type of conferneces before, but other (larger) churches sponsored them. This year our minister when out on faith and said that the 120 or so disciples in Columbus would host it. So we did and over 800 were here this past weekend. My role, as children’s ministry deacon was to coordinate children’s ministry for Sunday morning. Let’s just say that it didn’t go as well as I would have liked. The planning, that is, Sunday morning itself went off with out a hitch. Dispite lots of emails and attempts to get information, I did not know up until Sunday AM how many kids I’d have or how many teachers would be there from other churches to help. I came very close to cancelling the children’s ministry all together. For a while I felt a like I was going to loose no matter what I did. In the end, the disciples from other churches came through and we had more than enough teachers. I was even able to let a few go back into the church service.
And to top it all off, my two older daughters go in on Tuesday to get their tonsils out. Two under 10 rcovering from surgery in the same house next week ought to be fun. Mom is coming down to help either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, which will be very good, but it will probably be a little crazy around here. Oh, and did I mention that the middle one broke her arm on Monday?
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that I was a little out of it at church tonight. People were asking me simple questions and you’d think they had asked me to do Dick Chaney’s taxes in my head. I just looked at them dumfounded. Reading this post, it makes a little more sense. (I honestly didn’t figure out how much I was dealing with until I wrote this out tonight!)
So tonight when I heard Harlem speak the following, it was as if a burden had been lifted and everything was OK. It was something like this:

Remember, you’re the son of the King.

That kinda puts everything else in perspective, doesn’t it?

It’s a two-for-Tuesday on Virusdoc trackbacks here a Salguod.net. He has his Evidence for God, Part V out today, and it’s a great post. Here’s a tease:

Faith (or hypothesis, or stubborn determination) is a requisite to knowledge in a world where reality is often buried several layers beneath perception.

Go read it, you won’t be disappointed.

It’s been a while since I started a discussion on Christian fundamentals. It’s time I got back to it. Check out the begining post as well as this one about the real Jesus and this one about defining fundamental.
So why do I feel the need to go down this path? Well, that’s a long story (and this is a long post). Some of it I’ve aluminated here in other posts, but I’ll attempt to put it all together here.
Though I had grown up in church and had been taught the Bible throughout childhood, my Christian journey began in earnest after my sophmore year in college. It was then I met up with members of the Cincinnati Church of Christ, a part of what was later to become the International Churches of Christ (ICoC). I started to go to some Bible studies and eventually entered into a personal Bible study series. I was then confronted with the realities of discipleship and commitment. I realized that my casual, simple, vague ‘belief’ was not enough. God demanded all of me, all of my heart, mind and soul, and if I was to be sincere about this Christianity, I must change. Frankly, it was a tough decision. Life as I had been living it was pretty good, if dull. Things were relatively easy outside of the challenges of school, but I always felt as if there was something more. What I saw in front of me as a true Christian was purpose, meaning, joy, community and depth, all of which I lacked and longed for. But along with it came responsibility to God for my actions, challenges to stay on the narrow path and an obligation to care for others. Was I willing to take the challenges with the blessings? I ultimately decided that I had no choice. I loved God and could not turn away now, not knowing what I do. I could not go back to the content simple life of a man who didn’t know better. I was baptized on August 26th, 1988.
What a whirlwind followed over the following years. I found friends like I never thought possible. People that I could share my darkest secrets with (and did) and get help, compassion and understanding in return. I remember those college days with great fondness. Those were formative years and I was surrounded with great young men and women. I’m blessed to still have relationships with a couple of them here in Columbus, a few others I see from time to time in other cities. We had great passion for being our best for God and helping each other do the same. We were involved intimately with each other’s lives. When one would fall, we would rush to help him up. We were together constantly. The passing of time has probably put a certain gloss on those years, smothing over the bad times. I know that we made mistakes in our zeal, but my experience was overwhelmingly positive.
After college, I entered the singles ministry and later met my wfe to be. She enthralled me from day one. Again, I was surrounded by incredible men and great relationships. They gave me advice on how to express my growing feelings for her and still keep the relationship pure. Without these men and their advice, I know that the start of my relationship with Maria would have been much more difficult as my emotions and passion would have most certainly overcame my convictions about God’s standards.
We got married and moved to Detroit at the same time. We were blessed to be discipled by the same couple for 4 years. Their example of marraige and family had a great impact on me. I have always looked up to them and admired them. Their two incredible children are grown and gone and they stand as a testimony to their faith and perseverance. They stood by us and helped us through many an early marraige crisis. We were able to call them at any time (and did) with a problem and they were there for us. I don’t know where we’d be without them.
We left Detroit in 1996 to come to Columbus on a ‘mission team’. We were two of 25 that came from Detroit, Chicago, Cincinnati and Cleveland to start a new church. We had great dreams of turning Columbus upside down with God’s message. We would build a church that would restore true Christianity here. Those first years were incredible. We grew from 25 to about 125 in around two years. In those first weeks we met daily, sharing about all the ways we had shared our faith with people, who we met and how they had responded. Amazing things happened. The OSU gymnastics coach (and USA Olympic assistant coach at the time) had been told of our new church by an ICoC member when he was at the Olympics in Atlanta. Later, that person left his name and contact info with our minister, who lost it. But on campus shortly before our first service, the minister’s wife met a tall white man who said he was the coach they had been trying to find and he’d love to come. He gave her his number. Later, when she called to follow up, though she had reached the gymnastic coach and yes he had met someone in Atlanta, he said had never heard of her. He came to church and turned out to be not tall and white, but short and black. Neither remembered ever meeting the other, but there he was.
Maria and I moved here without jobs and without savings. We found out the day we left that she was pregnant with baby #2, and we had no insurance. We lived in my sister’s basement for a month while we looked for jobs and a place to live. We found a man that rented us a 3 bedroom townhouse with no references becuase he just ‘knew we’d do fine.’ Maria got a job quickly with a temp agency and within 6 weeks I had a fulltime job with a fledgeling design firm. Their insurance would cover Maria’s pregnancy, a great relief. Our incomes were higher and our expeses lower. It seemed that God was with us.
I mentioned that the couple in Detroit ‘discipled us’. The ICoC had been founded on the principle of discipling relationships, amoung other things. The principal there was that a more mature Christian would mentor, or ‘disciple’ you as you grew as a Christian. As you can tell, I benefited greatly from these realtionships. If it weren’t for these men over the years, I would not be who I am today, not even close. Unfortunately, there were terrible abuses of disipling, incorporating ‘one over another’ authority into the mix. Discipling relationships as they were originaly are almost non-exsistant in out churches today.
I grew up as a Christian as the ICoC grew as a movement. We were small, in only a dozen or so cities when I became a Christian in 1987. By the year 2000, we had a church in every country that had a city of over 100,000 people in it. We had a passion. We were going to do as they did in the first century, win the world. Evangelism was our priority. We went to the malls, we knocked on doors, we talked to our neighbors, our co-workers, stopping people anywhere and inviting them to study the Bible or come to church. We were tied together through discipling. We all had disciplers that told us how to live for God. Smaller churches were Discipled by larger, older ones. We were expected to follow God’s standard in the scriptures for giving, sharing and avoiding sin. We were challenged if we didn’t. God’s standard was high and ours were expected to be as well. It was exhilarating. I felt as though I was a part of something big and meaningful. We had a God ordained job to do.
If it all sounds a bit arrogant, presumtuous and condesending, well, it was that too. I remember proclamations that we were the ‘one true church’ and that God would draw all true Christian to our movement, ‘The modern day movement of God.’ Many stupid and unloving things were said and done in the name of God, the mission, unity, obedience to leaders or other things. Many folks were hurt. My wife and I escaped much of that, thankfully, but we have known others who were not so fortunate. We were criticised for these abuses, but we brushed those people off as ungodly persecuters. About a year and a half ago, a leader named Henry Kriete wrote a 41 page paper titled “Honest to God” listing and challenging these abuses and calling us to change. It sent a shock wave through our churches. Many leaders resigned or were fired, many people left the churches as they learned of thses things. Many disciples, emboldened by the times, spoke out harshly against their leaders, inflicting the same pain on them that they were so angry over. Discipling trees and leadership structures were dismantled. All leadership above the church level is gone.
At this time, I too was pretty shaken up. I was forced to consister what I believed and why. What was truly important? Did one really have to have a discpler to be saved? Sounds silly, but at one time I might have agreed with that. How about quiet times, tithing, what church to go to? I have resolved many of these, but how to identify God’s church is one that still eludes me. During the past 17 years the idea that I belonged to something big and meaningful was a powerful one. The sense of mission and unity was amazing as well. Frankly, I miss those things. A little part of me longs for a return to the old days, when we were going to save the world. I want a bigger dream.
It seems to me that there ought to be a core that defines Christianity. Things that we can rally around. Things we can unite in. Those things must come from scripture and they must be clear cut. If we simply try to find those things that there is no argument over, we wil have a soggy, milktoast, limp, lifeless religion that does God’s power, might, love and conviction a grave diservice. Christ did not come to earth to get beaten senseless and hung on a cross so we could unite in the idea tha ‘God is love’ or some other such platitude. No, he died that we might live, truly live. I used to look around at the world of ‘Christianity’ and scoff, amazed at their stupidity. I now look with more sober judgement, for I realize that I am stupid to. But I also look and wonder, is this all there is? Arguments and debates over trivial things. Is this the best we can do for a God that loves so much?
No, I am conviced that if we are to call ourselves Christians, we must do more. We must try harder, go farther, sacrifice more and love more radically if we are to do God’s sacrifice any justice. I will not be content with mere contentment and warm, happy feelings. I refuse to believe that this is all there is. I refuse to give up the idealism and dream of a united church. The question is, what do I do with it? What can I do with it?