Instead Of A Show by Jon Foreman

I hate all your show and pretense
the hypocrisy of your praise
the hypocrisy of your festivals
I hate all your show

Away with your noisy worship
Away with your noisy hymns
I stop up my ears when your singing ‘em
I hate all your show

Instead let there be a flood of justice
An endless procession of righteous living, living
Instead let there be a flood of justice
Instead of a show

your eyes are closed when you’re praying
you sing right along with the band
you shine up your shoes for services
but there’s blood on your hands

you turned your back on the homeless
and the ones that don’t fit in your plans
quit playing religion games
there’s blood on your hands

Ah! let’s argue this out
if your sins are blood red
let’s argue this out
you’ll be white as the clouds
let’s argue this out
quit fooling around

give love to the ones who can’t love at all
give hope to the ones who got no hope at all
stand up for the ones who can’t stand at all
instead of a show
I hate all your show

Philip Zimbardo on "The Secret Powers of Time"

In this wonderfully animated video, Professor Philip Zimbardo (of the famed Stanford Prison Experiment) "conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world."

Come follow me... No really, come follow me!

"Christianity does not consist in any partial amendment of our lives, any particular moral virtues, but in an entire change of our natural temper, a life wholly devoted to God." --William Law

The church is full of hypocrites. How often is this the reason given for not going to church. When something is so persistent, it is usually worth investigating. What response runs through our head first? "I know but I'm not one... not my church, not my friends." We as believers need to examine ourselves daily. So many times we are like the duck who made friends with the dog. It learned the same tricks and even started to eat the same food but when the dogs owner went to the park, he wouldn't take the duck. It couldn't come because it was a duck, not a dog. We can learn the tricks like the duck. We can even eat the food like the duck, but like the duck, we may not be a dog.

This idea of being "wholly devoted to God" seems to have fallen by the wayside in our trendy comfortable churches. The consensus idea of a North American Christian meets only a few requirements; attend church semi regularly, tithe once in a while, and keep up the appearance of being moral. We have become moralistic church people instead of Christ followers. We fall into the pit of "being good enough to make it into heaven". We look at stories like David and Goliath and try to take moral lessons from them instead of realizing that they serve to point us to our standard which is Christ who is worthy of total devotion and all glory.

I am as guilty of this as anyone. I pray that God would give me a passion and concern for the church, for His people.

American Individualism and the Church

On any given Sunday morning forty percent of the United States of America sits in church buildings. We sit in padded pews or chairs, in air conditioned sanctuaries, sipping coffee. That same day, six thousand Africans will die from aids. Sixteen thousand children will die from starvation. One billion people will wake up without suitable shelter or with no home at all. We sit in our churches and shut out the hurting, dying world. Our actions, or lack thereof as the church speaks volumes. Even in our silence, we communicate something. We tell them that our night out to dinner and a movie, our custom made mattress, our morning latte is more important than their problems.

We call ourselves followers of Christ. We claim to worship the God of the universe. We are recipients of his incredible grace which has reconciled our sinful selves to Him. We tell the lost and dying world that we do not care. We plug our ears, cover our eyes and say "I care more about being comfortable now than about you spending eternity separated from God and his love."

This is what we say with our actions. This is what we communicate by spending our money and time on nothing but ourselves and our comfort. We place our ten percent into the offering plate and move on ignoring the picture scripture paints of a whole life sacrificed in light of the cross. I pray this will not be our legacy. We are commanded to love and to meet needs. Scripture tells us to care for the sick, the poor, the forgotten and dying world. We are commanded to love because he first loved us and we are no better than the rest of humanity. We did not deserve his grace any more than the African dying of aids or the child in India dying of starvation. When will our hearts be broken by what breaks our Fathers heart? When will we come to the stunning realization that we are not the center of God's universe? God's glory is God's greatest passion. He is glorified when we follow Christ's example and become servants to the world and not only tell them that he loves them but show it with our lives. We must be radically devoted to His glory and to making his glory known through our lives.

I believe that Christ followers have answered this call and given their lives for the cause of the gospel. Countless ministries have been founded for these very purposes. Compassion International, World Vision, Save The Children, Feed The Children, CARE are a few of the most recognizable. These are great programs run by great people. They do incredible things but it is time for the church to do the good we ought to. We need to stop contracting out to parachurch organization to fulfill the work of the gospel. I have seen people in local churches who care and want to make a difference. We as a church need to care. We must broaden our view of sacrifice in the Christian life and understand that following Christ requires we lay down our entire life.

Calvin vs. Wesley

This post was not prompted by any recent encounter with the Calvinism/Armnianism debate. It is something that has been on my mind since the beginning of my college career. When a new student at SEBC takes their first class dealing with doctrine, they find themselves standing on either side of a theological line. They may not know anything about this heated debate and be stuck straddling the line. That was me. I had never heard of Calvinism or Arminianism in my church or youth ministry. I quickly understood that this was a heated topic for debate and that people felt very strongly about their convictions. I realized that I needed to figure out what I thought about these two schools of thought. I began to read books, lots and lots of books about topics such as atonement, free will, God's knowledge, mans depravity. I read Grace, Faith, and Free Will. I read Chosen By God. This was the book that finally convinced me of reformed theology. I began to see where different denominations fell on this issue. I had people tell me what type of church to go to based on this theology. I really had problems with this. As soon as I took a side, people started drawing denominational lines for me that I was not to cross.

I had run across this denominational discomfort before. After I graduated high school, I became the intern at my home church. I was interning under an interim youth minister at the time and he put me in charge of the back to school event at the end of the summer. I wanted to have an area wide youth rally to focus on the idea of school as a mission field. I called Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Pentecostal churches. We had one other church attend the event and it was Baptist.

A fundamental change in practices is required of the contemporary church in how we network. If a young aspiring pastor plants a baptist church and desires to affect change in the community and unify the local church under the banner of God and does not cross evangelical denominational lines, he will never reach his goal. He may affect change in the baptist community. He may unite a few baptist churches under a banner. He will not unify the body, he will unify the arm. The church must work together. Paul addressed the church at Emphasis or the church at Philipi. These were likely letters to the multiple house churches of entire cities. These churches did not have the luxury of choosing who to work with. They were believers and were united as such. Luxury has been and will be the ruin of the North American Evangelical Church. Our luxury blinds us of the need around us. Luxury is what keeps our hearts docile. God desires a humble heart that will break for him and for what breaks his heart.

We would do well to attempt to return to the look of the Acts church in several ways including the way we network. If we do not, we will remain segregated and docile for the gospel.

I think we are willing to die... but for what?

Have you ever been to a high school football game? Have you seen the parents cheering on their children and the student section cheering on their peers? Have you ever been to a college football game? The cheering and dedication of fans there is three times as intense. We have such tunnel vision here in the south. Most people would agree that we will spend the most time on what is most important to us.

Philippians 3:8-12 "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead."

This passage clearly shows us that for the Christ follower, nothing is more important than Christ. Nothing is more important than our knowledge and relationship with God. Understanding these two principles reveals a stinging truth about our culture. We have removed God from the throne of our hearts and replaced him with things like football, money, sex, popularity, even comfort.

I work in student ministry so I work with a lot of high school football players. While this post is not directed at any specific student I work with, I want to use this example to bring out contrast because I have seen it and know it. Those same football players who spend so much time practicing say that they are Christians, Christ followers. I would simply ask them where their priorities are. What do they actually spend time doing? What is really sitting on the throne of their heart? Is it God?

I would ask those same questions to myself and to the contemporary church. What sits on the throne of the church's heart? Is it numbers? Do we calculate our spiritual health as a church by the number of people we pack into our buildings? Is it the building itself? Do we think we have a healthy worship ministry because we have the newest equipment or sing the newest chart topping Christian single? How about money or programs? How about self-righteousness? That one stings. Do we spend our time attempting to live righteously and do good works? I hope we do. As Christ followers we are commanded to but we must examine our motives. Are we living righteously because we are being disciplined in order to become like Christ or are we living that way because we think the goal is self improvement?

High school football coach charged in player's death – CNN.com
High school football player dies after hard hit – Komonews.com
High school football player collapses, dies during game – wkrn.com
Calif. High School Football Player Dies After Collapsing at Game - foxnews.com

I wrote about the dedication of a football fan at the beginning of this post. If you have ever played high school football or have a child who has, you recognize the term two-a-days. The average summer day for a high school football player consists of hours upon hours of practice in blistering heat. They wake up before the sun rises in order to make it to the field on time. They do not get home until after the sun has gone down. They work out so hard and run so much that it is common for players to throw up or pass out from exhaustion and exposure to heat. They are that dedicated and disciplined to become better at football. We are now finding out that the intensity of their practices harm them physically. Many of them find that their bodies are worn out by the end of their high school or college career. They wear themselves out in order to become better at football.

This example reveals in us the ability to devote ourselves to something so much so that we continue participating at the risk of death. Throughout the years of church history, accounts of missionaries and church fathers who sacrificed their lives for the cause of Christ have been recorded and published as books. We idolize them for their sacrifice. We must come to the realization that Christ calls us to the same reckless abandonment of our life as the martyrs we read about. It may not mean death but it does mean discipline and sacrifice.
Matthew 16:24-25 “Then Jesus told his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

If we are to call ourselves His church, let us be devoted to Him who has justified us and reconciled us to Himself because of His great love for us.

We as the church must examine the throne of our heart. Do we find God there? We must look at what we value and spend time on. If it is not God, he probably does not inhabit that throne and we must repent.

Sausage biscuits and talk of travel

I met a Norwegian teenage girl today. I was having breakfast with one of my student and he picked her up on the way. She is studying abroad here and has been here for seven months. She goes back June 1st. I've always been interested in travel and other cultures so of course I began right away asking questions about the differences she has noticed between our two cultures. The first and most obvious one was the food we were eating. She held a deep fried puck shaped potato in her hand. "Everything is either deep fried or barbecued here." She explained how all their food there was more home cooked and that there was more variety of style. I quickly asked about the difference in religious atmosphere. "Everyone here goes to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. It's not like that there. Nobody goes to church unless someone is getting married or there's a funeral." This struck me. I asked what the church makeup was like, if there were many evangelical churches there. She did not quite understand but said that it was mostly protestant she thought. I was surprised to find out that there weren't a lot of Catholic churches there. It really made me wonder what the mission field there is like. I wonder what kind of picture of the gospel has been painted there. What ideas about Christ and the cross are most prevalent. It must be so different in a place that has been saturated with religion for hundreds of years as opposed to America that is less than 300 years old. I cannot help but think that churches here become polarized when it comes to missions and spreading the gospel. They either have no part in it and are apathetic towards the cause of Christ or they become so "radical" for this cause that they spend all their time, money, and resources taking the gospel to places like Africa, places with unreached people groups. While I think Christ calls us to be radical for his cause I wonder if we lose sight of a full picture of missions. Yes, absolutely we should run with the gospel to all corners of the world and to unreached people groups but we should also run with it to places like Norway, where it may have become like an uninteresting relic to some, or to Birmingham, Alabama where we are inundated with "pop Christianity" everywhere we look and there are churches on every corner. Let us run with a clear picture of the gospel too all the world, our back yard and the other side of the globe.