Call of the Piper

We’ve been listening to an awful lot of John Piper recently.

Practically, we love his ministry. He preaches and writes powerful, relevant, biblically anchored material. He and his ministry, DesiringGod.org, sell books and CDs, but everything they sell is available for download for free. God’s message is for all, and Piper believes that it shouldn’t cost anything to hear it. If you want it on paper or on disc, they’ll send it to you at a good price that covers costs. This is an INCREDIBLE step that speaks volumes when held up against the “christian publishing” world.

His preaching is passionate and convicting. He is uplifting and encouraging. His ministry puts his sermons on the site for download, and also puts 2 to 5 minute summaries of many of the messages. We listened to a half dozen summaries last night while doing some chores, and we were individually in tears at least once each. We laughed, we said amen, and we were supported in our roles as women, men and Christians.

The sermons on the site go back to the late 80’s, and they’re all well thought out and strongly scripturally supported. His talks and papers are on theological topics, practical advice on Christian living, opinions on controversial topics and just about everything else. Go to the site, click “Sermons” and then “By Topic” and tell me that there aren’t at least 5 things on that page that intrigue you to hear more.

And don’t tell anyone, but (*looks around furtively and whispers*) he’s almost made me a Calvinist.

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In a wonderful confluence of thought, we had a sermon from a guest pastor this weekend, two days after I wrote up a first draft of this post. The sermon pointed out two possible ways of doing evangelism, and they line up with my thoughts on worship. I even stole his terms for the post title. Thanks John.

We’ve been studying worship for a long time. In reading and watching and listening in the last few years I think I’ve been able to pick out a split in the way various churches work.

First, there’s the type of church that emulates modern culture so that people will come to church because it’s comfortable and what they are used to. People will feel at home. Once people are drawn into the building then the gospel can be preached and people will hear it. This camp believes that by altering worship to be more appealing to people, more people will come and hear the message, which is a good thing. Church is geared towards bringing in newcomers.

Second, there’s the type that wants to stay separate from modern culture, but interact with it in a servant manner. These churches usually concentrate evangelism on external ministries rather than internal programs. This camp ministers to people’s needs, and then allows people to follow them back to church, which is a place for believers to be a body together. This, our guest preacher laid out, is what is intended by the great commission. Go out and, while going, make believers.

If the first group wishes to minister to a group of people, they find out what appeals to that group and give it to them, then present the gospel when they arrive to look at the appealing things. Show them something appealing and tell them about Christ when they show up.

If the second group wishes to minister to a group of people, they serve that group of people. If members of the group wish to know why the service is being done, they are told and opportunity is given for them to feel the same motivation. Show them Christ and He appeals to them.

From my observation, churches using the first method are growing much more quickly than the second. But, as the much-overlooked saying goes, Church growth isn’t about numbers. The issue is motivation. If you draw people in with things that aren’t Christ, then the other things will forever be more important. If a concert is what draws them to church, then church becomes a concert and stops being relevant if the concert stops.

I believe that this is what has led to the “worship = music” belief that is now so common; People have been lured into churches with nice music and atmosphere, and then we wonder why everything is about music and atmosphere. We put up a facade so that people walk in the door, and we wonder why they believe that the elements of the facade are the most important parts of church. We can’t be surprised when the bait is more appealing than the switch.

However, if you draw people in with Christ-like behaviour, then Christ becomes the most important thing. Suddenly each person is empowered again. No longer is evangelism “Hey! Come to my church! You’ll love it!”. Evangelism is showing Christ to people. Evangelism becomes being a light on a hill, making your very life your testimony. Even in circumstances of terrible pain and fear, God is relevant and powerful in our example. People were ministered to in the concentration camps, and are being ministered to in the middle of drought-swept African plains, and in the drug-dens of urban North America, and in offices in suburbia. Being a Christian becomes less about how we worship and more about what God is to us and what we are to God. We no longer appeal to the experts to evangelize for us, we each show Christ to people ourselves.

We shouldn’t need to draw people to church with music or video or events. We should draw them to church by showing them Christ.

A neighbour child after going for a ride around the neighbourhood in our wonderful friend Brian’s classic no-top no-sides no-seat-belts VW beetle dune buggy: “Wow! That was better than sticking your head out the window!”

———-

LittlePage3, upon hearing that we’re having hot dogs for lunch to use them up, after being part of our ‘No more nitrates’ conversation: “Yay! We’re having cancer logs for lunch! Whoohoo!”

We’re pretty rabid parents. That means that we are serious about our parenting, and that we are convinced that parenting is the highest calling a person can have. (Occasionally it means that we foam at the mouth and bite the heads off of things while we scream and thrash about, but mostly it means that first thing I said.)

We feel that the world has surrendered parenting. Second jobs to afford a big house rather than modest housing and staying home. Natal Day Care. Pre-Kindergarten. Kindergarten. After-school programs. Sunday school during church service. Sports. Clubs. Video games. Television. Anything to keep children entertained and busy without specific involvement except maybe as chauffeur or stuff-provider.

As Christians we are called to raise our children. Deuteronomy 6 says that not only are we to keep His statutes and commandments, but that our children and our children’s children are to as well, in order that we may live long upon the earth. Our grandchildren must obey in order that we are blessed. We have a responsibility to ensure that our children are raised to fear God. We are told to teach them these things at all points of the day, which indicates two things: firstly that we do the teaching, not someone else. Secondly, that we are with our children at all points of the day. We are called to be different than those around us. We are specifically called by our God to parent.

It has come to a point, however that Parenting has become a bad word, even in Christian circles. Parenting is nothing but stress and expense and burden and inconvenience rather than the blessing that scripture so clearly lays out. Having more than two children is inconceivable (pun intended). “I can’t even handle the two I’ve got!”. “Wow, you’ve got your hands full!”.

The icing was put on the cake (perhaps that nail put in the coffin?) during a video played before the sermon at our church this Sunday. The video was about how worship is what we are to do in the most trying times, in the most horrible of situations. A list of terrible experiences scrolled by while powerful music thrummed in the background over a flickery background of colours. We were told that we are to worship in the middle of:

Job Stress

(pause)

Divorce.

(pause)

Addictions.

(pause)

Parenting.

(pause)

Loneliness.

And then the movie went on to describe worship and other things. I don’t really remember, to be honest, because I was in shock. Parenting belongs in a list with Addictions, Divorce and Loneliness? I can sort of see their point if they went with “Parenting Stress” or “Problems At Home” or something. But to simply list “Parenting” as a terrible situation like that’s the norm… it just blew me away. I looked over at MrsPages who was also staring open-mouthed at the screen. No one else even noticed. We sat and felt more and more distant from the people around us.

Now, please excuse me. I need to go worship. The video said that Loneliness is a good time to do that.

The Scriptorium has a glorious article about what the church can learn from Calvin & Hobbes.

The article details Bill Watterson’s insistence that images of Calvin not be sold on merchandise. Watterson was convinced that his comic strip was art, and that part of the art was the relationship that the readers developed with the characters, and that the characters developed with each other. When taken out of context on the side of a coffee mug, or on a bumper sticker, those relationships are thrown away in exchange for a couple of bucks and a quick giggle.

“My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter” bumper stickers. Jesus Fish emblems eating Darwin fish. “God loves you [arms outstretched on the cross] THIS much.” Statues of Jesus helping children learn to hit a baseball. “Top 50 Christian Hits!” albums. Special Bible editions for Left-Handed Red-Haired Boys Who Hunt and Don’t Like Cheese.

Watterson was convinced that his message was important enough not to water it down with merchandising and trite sayings. The church apparently isn’t.

And they’ll know we are Christians by our t-shirts…

I thought I’d share a few places I’ve visited the last week or so.

This made me smile.

Advisory: YouTube is not a particularly safe place for children or adults. If you click through to the site, do so with caution, and please consider protecting your little ones and yourself with K9 Web Protection. It’s free and it works.

OFFICIAL NOTICE

Use of the phrase “24/7″ in the context of worshipping God, or in any other faith-based context, is now punishable by a beating from the Massive Overuse Squad of the Cliche Police.

Examples:
“Worship extends beyond Sunday morning, it’s a 24/7 thing.” *WHAP*

“Worship has to be a lifestyle, it has to happen 24/7.” *WHAP*

That is all. Carry on.

Our mortgage is up on September first.

I’ve been avoiding doing anything about it because it means trying to guess what’s going to happen in the next five or ten years with regards to a topic that I know nothing about: big finance.

Mortgages seem to be hot topics in the blog world, and CNN is full of articles on the impending crash of the mortgage market, and articles with headlines like “Black Tuesday Rains Terror on Financial Markets. Dogs, cats living together. Chaos!”.

Today we went to see the banker to talk about renewing. We checked online, and our bank was offering rates two and a half percentage points (!!) above most of the competition. ING Direct was offering 5.75 percent on a 5 year fixed, a local credit union was offering 5.85. Our bank was (unbelievably) offering 7.24.

We went in ready to walk away. We decided that we would be gracious enough not to ask them to beat the online price, but the local credit union was reasonable to ask them to match. I wasn’t expecting them to.

The banker turned out to be a young (it’s scary how young other people are getting all of a sudden…) gentleman who was friendly and helpful, and actually used the phrase “Oh, I don’t like to meet other banks’ rates. I like to beat them.” Those are very nice words to hear from a banker. Very nice indeed.

My magic 8-ball came up with “rates are going up, lock in” so we got a 5 year, closed, fixed rate mortgage, and the wonderful banker looked at our research and offered us 5.84. We signed, and it’s all over for another 5 years.

Maybe we could have saved a dollar or two some other way. But then I’d have to think about my mortgage between now and 2012, and I’d like to avoid that if at all possible.

Debt is always a touchy subject in the Christian sphere.

I don’t think there’s anyone who is actually pro-debt, but as soon as you start talking money with Christians, someone raises a topic like “Rich Dad Poor Dad” and starts talking about how it’s our Christian responsibility to use the markets and flip houses and get loaded by using complicated schemes in order to provide for our families and spend quality time playing with our kids in piles of dollar bills like Scrooge McDuck.

I’m not out to get rich quick (or slowly, for that matter). I just don’t want to have money be a stress in our lives. No, wait, correct that to: I just don’t want to have debt be a stress in our lives.

There are always folks telling us to dump every spare penny we can into our mortgages and retirement funds, so that we can retire early and have lots of money. “Get rid of that debt!”, they say. They want us to scrimp and save now in order to be free later.

Well, our debt isn’t crippling, so getting rid of it isn’t really that high a priority for us. We don’t have any “consumer debt”, all we have is the mortgage and a line of credit that we used in lieu of a car loan. We bought a house that we could afford. We decided what our payments should be and found out how much of a mortgage that would get us. We didn’t let the bank tell us how deep to dig ourselves in. We pay our mortgage on time every month, and we don’t use credit cards at all. We’ve tried very hard to always stay inside the “if we sold everything, we could walk away and take the car and our clothes with us” line.

Our philosophy has always been to pay off our debts in a manner that we can afford and use any extra money to live now rather than making things tight now to live later. We have a house that still needs a tremendous amount of work. If I own if 4 years faster, but it’s still a wreck, who cares? I’d rather get it finished and pay for it a little longer. If I scrimp and save and I die next week, all I’ve achieved is living a deliberately hard life. If I incur debts responsibly and pay my debts responsibly, but take the time and resources to enjoy life now, then I’ve passed on some memories and ideals to my kids and will still own my house eventually.

“Stuff” can be a god. You can worship stuff so much that you dig yourself into a deep credit hole and destroy any chance of freedom. “Debt-free” can also be a god, though. Scrimping and saving and dumping every single spare penny onto the debt in order to close the mortgage a few years early is an intoxicating religion that can be just as dangerous to your life and your happiness as worshipping Mammon.

Remember, it’s not money that’s the root of all evil. It’s the love of money.

Mark Galli expresses very well something that we’ve been mulling. Why are we looking to create new ministries and creative ways to reach people and new ways to transform the culture into a gospel tool, and new ways to transform the gospel into a culturally relevant message and new ways to change the world? That’s not what we’re asked to do.

This is brilliant in it’s pointedness:

I remain puzzled as to why we’re so bored with the very things Jesus asks us to do, like picking that foreigner up out of the ditch, giving away our goods to the poor, going to court with a young man who’s being railroaded by the system, taking an orphan into our home, going the extra mile with the oppressive and manipulative, forgiving the offender, baptizing, and witnessing. I find these things really, really hard to do. I fail all the time. If I can’t even do these things well, why would I believe that I could transform my culture, let alone change the world?

Christians are no different in charity giving, no different in divorce rates, no different in unwed parenting, no different in volunteer hours, no different in any other major way than the culture around us.

God doesn’t ask us to be like the world so they’ll come to church.

He asks us to be so different from the rest of the world that they’ll come to Him.