On Thursday December 11, 2011 renowned atheist and outspoken critic of religion, Christopher Hitchens passed away due to complications arising from his eighteen month battle with esophageal cancer. Hitchens spent his life pursuing his passion for writing, honing his gift for communication into a multifaceted tool capable of being both bludgeon and scalpel, and in the later years of his life this tool was most frequently used to promote the destruction of Christianity. Yesterday, this avowed and vitriolic enemy of the faith lost the final battle which we must all face. [...]

I found this video on Justin Taylor’s blog over at The Gospel Coalition.

Follow this link, and don’t judge it based upon the still frame of some cartoon old guy. The video is worth the 13 minutes. Let me explain why.

I recently through a Thanksgiving which brought me close to the realities of our fallen state in this world. There was sinful struggle, sickness, and death. One week later, I am preparing to lead a two and a half hour Bible study on the coming re-creation after the return of our savior. Perhaps the polarity of my past week has created a place for God to move with less interference from my flesh. Maybe the proven mortality of a loved one has caused me to confront mortality staring back at me in the mirror. Maybe God is just moving on my heart. Whatever the cause may be, when I saw this video I was brought low as my spirit lifted Christ high.

This video spoke to me; it spoke with power, wonder, and emotion. It spoke to me as a sinner, freed from my chains yet still bound to my flesh. It spoke to me as a saint, undeservedly sharing the glory of an unblemished savior. It spoke to me as a son of the most-high God, basking in His honor because of His grace. It spoke to me as a father, watching an animated video praying for my son.

At times it feels like my role as a father, husband, and church leader is too much to bear, and I am thankful for those desperate times. Because it is in those instances that I truly look to God to be my strength. He becomes my comfort. He becomes my deliverer. He becomes all that I spend my Sundays telling others He is. And he does those things in the most unexpected ways imaginable.

Today, He retook His place as my all in all through a cartoon. What a wonderful, mysterious God we serve.

Let’s begin with an illustration.

I am sure you have heard of the shoe company called TOMS. They do not make high quality shoes. They do not make the most attractive shoes. Nor are they the most comfortable shoes, yet this little company gained incredible popularity very quickly because of the reason behind buying their shoes: for every pair you purchase they donate a pair to a needy child. The reason behind buying these shoes is what drove their incredible success. TOMS became a movement in and of themselves, but the danger of a movement showed up when TOMS became a norm in youth culture; the true reason for their popularity was diluted as Sketchers, Forever 21, Justice, and many other stores started producing knockoff TOMS. You see what happened? The shoe became such a norm that now people don’t know why they are buying overpriced, low quality, and uncomfortable shoes. The reason was diluted by the power of the movement. The church cannot afford to let the reason drop in our pursuit of family ministry.

Family ministry is a necessity in the American church, and many bestselling ministry books are currently in the area of family ministry. The rise of the movement tells pastors that there is something important going on, so we all want to make sure we take part in it. The problem is that in our vigor to join the movement, we may miss the reason the movement began. Much like teenagers buying knockoff TOMS, we may be missing the point.

Average Christian mothers and fathers likely understand the family to be a launching pad for each child, providing them with all of the love, safety, and affirmation needed to be a successful individual.[i] That sounds great, but is it what God wants for the family? If you read through the Bible (including the Old Testament) it is very difficult to squeeze the individualistic, success-driven picture of the American family into a Biblical response of why God created the family. Time and time again God commanded fathers to teach their children all the commands of the Lord, remind their children of the great things the Lord had done, and discipline their children in order to teach submission to the Lord.

What if we, as Christians, actually believed God knew best? What if we, as parents, actually believed God had a greater plan for our families than raising successful (i.e. rich) children? What if God gave children to parents in order to fulfill the great commission?

Then Christian parents would probably believe themselves to be the primary disciplers of their children.

This is why we need Family Ministry. We need to retrain the American church to understand the family as a primary tool in God’s plan of redemption. It is not a stretch of the imagination to think that God wants to use families in His plan of redemption; he has been doing it since he called one man and his family to be a blessing to all other families. God still wants to use the family, but the family has to be redeemed. It has to be spiritually redeemed by Christ, and its purpose has to be redeemed by parents.

Parents need to see their role through the lens of the Bible. Deuteronomy 6 needs to become more than an idea; it needs to become a guidebook for how we make disciples, starting in our own home. Pastors need to reinforce this role to the parents in our congregations. We need to understand that the first and most important influence in the life of a child will never be our youth pastor; therefore, we should be working to train those who will be doing the heavy lifting of discipleship. We need to minister to families with a constant focus on the reason why. The local church is where parents meet to be equipped and trained; families are the frontlines of gospel warfare.

If we ride the wave of family ministry and lose the reason we need it, then we have done nothing more than take part in a flash in the pan movement, here today and gone tomorrow.  

If, however, we work through Scripture and come to an understanding of the family as God’s training ground for new disciples, then we are going to be a part of the greatest movement in the history of the world: the movement of a perfect, holy God towards his sinful, needy children.

I am currently the executive pastor at my church. This means my job is defined by implementing the vision of my pastor. It is my job to make sure his vision is protected, nurtured, and expanded by the rest of our staff. One of the key components of the vision for our church is to institute a thriving family ministry, and I assume most pastors reading this would say that a thriving family ministry is part of their vision too. And there is good reason why it should be.

Statistics

Most pastors understand the need for a family ministry because of stats like these –

Barna: Only 33% of churched youth say the church will play a part in their lives when they leave home.

UCLA: 52% of incoming students regularly take part in church events, but only 29% are still involved in church events by their junior year.

Ron Luce: 88% of kids raised in Christian homes do not continue to follow the Lord after they graduate from high school.

Brian Haynes: Only 67.8% of children under the age of 18 live with married parents. 25.8% of those children live with single parents.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: In 2006, an estimated 905,000 children were victims of abuse or maltreatment. 1,530 child fatalities resulted from abuse or neglect.

The statistics are terrifyingly bleak and readily available to anyone with ears to hear. Most pastors know about these statistics, and they feel the call to respond. For the past decade, there has been a growing movement towards family based ministry in response to the statistics like those above. Most likely, you feel the pressure to stem the anti-family tide that is drowning our culture.

There is just one problem, most of us, as pastors-in-training, were taught how to dissect a passage of scripture with the skill of a brain surgeon, how to speak with authority and passion, how to plant churches, raise missionaries, and seek the welfare of our cities. But no one took the time to explain the most basic step towards our need for a healthy family ministry. No one told us how to best start a home based movement in our churches. But there is one simple first step which will inevitably start your church down the right road.

The First Step

Instituting a healthy family ministry in your church does not begin with research. If you are a pastor, that probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to you. Everything begins with a solid knowledge base, right? Yes, but research will not get you there.

The first step in family ministry is not about fasting and praying for church direction either. You will need the guidance and wisdom only God can provide, but your prayers for the future of your church will be secondary to the most basic need in any family ministry.

The first step to a thriving family ministry is to be a minister to your own family. Before you blow this off as a given, I want to offer five questions for you to use to gauge your ministry to your family.

1. Do you preach the importance of family but justify your schedule to yourself during sermon preparation?
2. When you hear the word “calling” do you think of your wife and children or your title?
3. Which do you know better, your staff’s daily schedule or your children’s?
4. Does your family see the same energy exerted to deepening relationships as they see you exerting to improve your church?
5. Does your congregation hear you tell stories about your family? 

Before you ever try to implement a family ministry, you need to have a clear conscience and strong confidence when it comes to your family. You need to affirm your calling and place as the head of your household as often as you affirm your place as the head of the church. Your wife should feel she has a partner in the home, not an absentee ballot. Your family needs to see you planning for their future, leading family meetings, and pursuing their righteousness. Finally, your congregation needs to know the previous statements describe you.

The best way to start a family ministry movement in your church is to have a family worthy of emulation. Lead your family, then start worrying about how to get others to do the same.

How many times do you start a project, never looking ahead to discover your end goal, only to find you’ve made a crucial mistake along the way? For you, maybe that doesn’t happen. For me, it happens most times I start a project. I suffer from overeager disorganizationalism. It is a workable condition; it just requires lots of patience as it inevitably leads to blindsided-by-the-obviousization. I want to share how these personal afflictions led me to a new appreciation for the lordship of Christ.

My condition is not new to me. When I was in the fourth grade my teacher, Mr. Shirey, gave us an art project to do in class. He gave us a sheet full of instructions, a blank sheet of paper, and a pencil. His only directive to us was to make sure we read the instructions before we started. Well, I have to admit, I have always had a little bit of a competitive streak in me, and when he said we were all doing the same project all I heard was we were all racing to finish the same assignment. Needless to say, I did not read the instructions. Mr. Shirey told us repeatedly during the exercise to make sure we read the instructions, but I paid him no heed; after all, I had an imaginary race to win!

So there I am, pencil working feverishly, trying to finish this project until I reach the last instruction. It says something to the effect of “At this point, turn in your sheet of paper, but it must be blank. If you read ahead, you may turn in your paper now. If you did not read all the instructions, you must erase everything you have done in order to turn in a blank sheet.”

Little did I know that in the midst of my frantic drawing, the vast majority of my classmates had read ahead and turned in the project without touching a pencil. All I had to do was read ahead, but I was too entranced by what was right before me.

Last night, I had the occasion to discover yet another area of my life where this affliction (overeager disorganizationalism) runs rampant. I was spending some time reading through the Word as I prepared for bed. I have been reading through the New Testament and am currently in Acts 10. Last night, in chapter 9, I came to where God calls the church’s greatest persecutor out of darkness, into the light, and molds him into the church’s greatest apostle.

As I read the account of Paul’s conversion I came to where God spoke to Ananias, telling him to go and lay hands on Paul to restore his sight. Ananias objects, and God responds in verse 15 by telling Ananias that Paul is “a chosen instrument of mine, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel.” I got all excited, and scrambled for my pen, praying as I began underlining, “Lord, let this proclamation become the task to which you have called me as well.” Then, as I was underlining verse 15, I realized there was more to God’s proclamation about Paul in verse 16. Suddenly, my excitement was staunched, and my prayer was stilled. In verse 16, God continues explaining why Ananias needs to go to Paul. God says got to him, “for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake.” I had to stop my frivolous underlining and ask myself “if I desire the proclamation God spoke of Paul, am I also willing to underline and embrace the cost God required of him?” It was a sobering moment.

God’s call is not always a call to a life of ease. Sometimes He calls us to a life of glorious suffering. Sometimes His call is not about our life at all. When I read about Paul’s call, I realized how tough was God’s call to Paul. I am reminded of Bonhoeffer’s insight that frequently when God calls a man, He bids him, “come and die.” Considering all of this, I asked my wife if I was allowed to scratch out my underline, but she said no. Trusting her judgment, I continued to underline to the end of God’s call to Paul.

Much like my art project in fourth grade, last night I realized the danger in starting down a path of action without first counting the cost. Nonetheless, I am thankful to the Lord, who has brought me far enough along the path of sanctification that I am willing to count the cost, and still willingly bend my knee. Christ is my Lord, and I trust Him in every situation, both peaceful and painful, to be my portion, my prize, and my redemption.

I only hope to one day encounter suffering for His name’s sake, as did Peter and the apostles, which leaves my flesh limping as my spirit soars, rejoicing that I may be considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.

I wanted to make our readers aware of a fantastic discussion going on between Sam Storms and Michael Patton about the continuation of the gifts. To give you some background — Sam and Michael are good friends; Sam, as I understand it, was actually something of a mentor to Michael as they began in ministry. Today, they regularly work together, hosting a weekly podcast on theology (which is definitely worth checking out), but they nonetheless fall on different sides of the massive evangelical divide referred to as the Gifts of the Spirit. I encourage you to follow the link at the bottom of the page, add their website to your favorites tab, and continue following the conversation as it unfolds.

Ordinarily, I would encourage believers to explore this discussion in the comfort of their home seated across a coffee table  from a good friend, engaging with a searching, open heart. Having contentious debates over the blogosphere turns very nasty, very quickly. Not because we are nasty people, but because we are incapable of sharing tone, inflection, and an apologetic smile in the comment line of a blog. Sam and Michael manage to maintain civility toward each other throughout their dialogue (despite the many comments which are not so civil flooding the inbox below) and their conversation is edifying and convicting.

Read their conversation and look for yourself in their musings. I am thankful to say Sam’s Story exposed my preconceptions and self-righteous judgments against the straw man I called a “charismatic”. I now address Charismatics in my church with much more grace, understanding, and compassion than I used to.

Follow the link, and check out an informative and edifying conversation between two men who do not pursue truth to the detriment of their relationship, a skill I know I need to learn!

Why I Am/Not Charismatic

I watched Bob Ross the other day. If you’ve never seen Bob Ross, you really need to spend some time on the Public Broadcast Station. He is a painter who starred in a television show in the seventies. He was a white guy with an afro, a sweet disposition, and the happiest trees and clouds you have ever seen. Really great television. Well, I was watching him the other day, and I was struck by how much he praised one of his tools, his “friendly little fan.” The little fan brush he was using could do some amazing things. It could create a lighting pattern on the edge of bushes, create leaves on trees where there was once only a branch, and even spread out the ripples in a pool of water. It was truly an amazing little brush. Most of my brushes don’t serve me half as well. As I thought Bob Ross and his amazing brushes I was convicted about my admiration for John Piper. Strange, I know, but stick with me as I explain this a little more. [...]

One month ago I had the opportunity to hike into the Grand Canyon with my beautiful wife. It was awesome (I actually meant to use that word according to its actual definition)! It simply inspires awe as you behold something so expansive, stretching into the distance in all directions as far as the eye can see.

Five years ago I had the opportunity to go out into the deep blue ocean – to the point where there is no visible land in any direction. We anchored, our little boat rocking atop rolling waves, directly above a coral reef, and we spent our day scuba diving. As soon I slipped into the water, I discovered how strange and varied this world we inhabit really is.

Five months ago, my first child was born. I have seen a lot of truly incredible things in this world; I have visited numerous countries, climbed mountains, walked through deserts, and explored underground caverns. But nothing in Creation could compare to the beauty and jaw-dropping amazement that the birth of another human inspires.

This is all creation. And it all declares the majesty of God.

The Bible tells us in Genesis, the book of beginnings, that God created the heavens and the earth. Sadly, in today’s world, this simple truth inspires a never ending litany of questions. Long before the massive, earth-shaking influence of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was felt there were a lot of Christians who debated exactly how and when God created everything we see. After Darwin’s shockwaves moved throughout the world, these debates became wars, the questions themselves became battle lines, and many believers became enemies.

There are numerous interpretations of how and when God created the world and everything in it, but those interpretations will not be our focus here. If you would like to get a basic, working knowledge of the different views, click here. What we are going to be discussing here is not how various people interpret the creation account. We are going to discuss what a Christian should believe about the creation account.

The Creation Account and the Basics of Belief

God created. The most basic truth which every Christian should believe about creation is that God is the one who did it. If God is not the agent who created everything out of nothing, then the language of the Bible is, at best, misleading or, at worst, misled. The universe is not eternal, and there is no Big Bang without someone (God) causing the clamor. God created everything ex nihilo. The Word is very clear on this.

God created all things good. The Bible makes clear that before the Fall, all things were made good. God did not create a defective Garden. He created a perfect garden with the injunction that man spread the goodness of the garden to all of the earth.

Adam and Eve were real people. The biblical language in the creation account makes clear that a special emphasis was placed upon God’s creation of Adam – God spoke everything into creation out of nothing until, the Bible tells us, God formed Adam out of the dust of the ground. The switch in language shows a change in emphasis. Then we see that Eve was formed from Adam. Again, special care was taken here, that was not taken as God spoke things into existence. The Genesis account makes clear that Adam and Eve were created differently than all other animals. Also, the New Testament makes clear that Adam was a real person. Luke’s genealogy links Jesus to Adam and Paul speaks about Adam’s death leading to death for all other humans. In order to stay faithful to the Bible, one must agree that Adam and Eve were in fact real people, specially made by God, and distinct from the rest of creation.

The Fall is real. The importance of the Fall to the rest of the Bible is impossible to overstate. The whole of the Bible is written upon the basis that we are fallen and in need of revelation leading to redemption. Paul assumes the Fall, perpetrated by Adam and Eve was a real event, with real consequences. The Fall helps us to make sense of evil in the world. It also paves the path for redemption, because it is impossible to believe in Christ without first understanding our need for Him.

No matter what you believe about the length, the frequency, or the actuality of the days of creation you have to believe these things. Battling it out over whether there were simply six consecutive days of action or if there was a creation followed by thousands of years of destruction leading up to six days of intermittent action serves only to delineate interpretational methodologies between believers, but the first four issues listed above have the power to delineate believers from non-believers.

To believe in Christ, we must first believe in the awesome, good God who created all things, including us. Then we must recognize that we are not good, because we have been tainted by the sins of a real person who fell from God’s grace in the garden long ago. Not only are we tainted by His sin, but we are prone to continue his rebellion in our lives on a daily basis. It is these truths, communicated in the creation narrative that cannot be left out. If an interpretation of Genesis 1-3 makes any one of these truths an impossibility, then know you are not looking at an interpretation, you are looking at a false gospel.

God created all things; he created the Grand Canyon, the deep blue ocean, and my son. All are the work of a good God, all are part of a once good/now fallen world, and all are waiting eagerly for the day of redemption.

I am at a loss as I write this article. I was planning to continue a series of articles entitled “What if we believed,” but I had to break my own series to get some help understanding a recent political/social network event. Wednesday marked what many news outlets are declaring an historic day. The first ever Twitter based Presidential Debate was held. I agree it was an historic day, but I rank this as an historic low.

In the late 1850’s Abraham Lincoln engaged in a series of debates with Stephen Douglas, discussing the expansion of slavery into newly settled territories. These debates consisted of one participant speaking for an hour, followed by an hour and a half presentation and response from the opponent, with a thirty minute rejoinder allowed for the participant who spoke first. These were not Presidential debates, nor were these Presidential candidates; they hoped to be, and the debates were seen as their hope for party backing. These were just two politicians hoping to be chosen by their party, and their method of self-promotion was protracted debate through multiple venues on a serious and weighty topic.

Today, our presidential candidates debate one another in 140 characters or less.

This is embarrassing. Not for the candidates. Politicians have always been committed to doing what it takes to reach whoever they can.

This is embarrassing for us, the American people, who decide the worth and value of the most powerful man in the world by how little he can say about his position. If you’re an American ally, you have to be scratching your head, thinking surely we have a better way of vetting our global leaders. I know I am.

There are numerous issues which could be addressed, but I would like to find out if I am the only one who finds this ridiculous.

Therefore, in the spirit of our modern effort to make every voice heard, I would love to hear your thoughts on Presidential hopefuls squaring off in the Twitter-verse.

So, many of us believe in Jesus, right? We do not hesitate to use that exact phrasing whenever someone asks are you a Christian, why will you get to go to heaven, or how do you become a Christian. We always use that phrase: believe in Jesus. I want to encourage you to think about moving beyond that phrase and asking yourself a new question; do you believe Jesus? Do you believe His words, message, and commands? Ask the real question: do I believe this at a 10, or does my level of belief fall short?

Jesus made some pretty ridiculous claims. He also made some pretty tough statements. I want to examine some of what Jesus taught and ask the question, what if we believed this, really believed it, so strongly that we lived differently in response to it? Action is the evidence of our beliefs.

So ask yourself, what if I did not stop at believing in Jesus; what if I also really believed Jesus?

Maybe we would . . .

Seek blessing from the unending grace of God instead of working for blessing through our Godless independence, our temporary happiness, our displays of personal strength, our diligently self-focused desires, our judgment of others, our manipulative deceptions, our desire to force our opinions, or our artful dodge of those who may persecute us for our beliefs. (Mt 5:3-10)

Ask forgiveness from those whom we daily murder with our hatred and bitterness. (Mt 5:21-24)

Stop brushing aside our lustful desires as a small thing, a secret vice, or a personal issue. (Mt 5:27-30)

Take our wedding vows more seriously than our parents did. (Mt 5:31-32)

Pray, instead of resist, those who persecute us. (Mt 5:38-47)

Care more for God’s glory than our own. (Mt 6:1-8)

Work harder to help people discover the Kingdom of God than we do at our vocations. (Mt 6:24)

Be terrified of the coming judgment, which will mirror the judgments we have already passed upon others. (Mt 7:1-5)

Those are the easy ones. Now, let’s follow Jesus’s lead, pushing things a little further than our Sunday School moralism.

What if we believed . . .

We could approach God the Father as our Father? Would we struggle, worry, and wait when praying for something, or would confidently move forward, knowing sometimes God says yes and trusting our good Father when He says no? (Mt 6:9, 7:7-11)

The gate leading to Heaven is indeed narrow, and the way hard? Would we feel confident and assured by simply saying a prayer and then chasing our American Dream, or would we expect our Christian walk to be marked by something more substantial than a vague hope in a mystical prayer? (Mt 7:13-14, Lk 13:24-29)

That our actions belie our beliefs? Would we really make allowance for such a thing as a carnal Christian? (Mt 7:15-19)

That many will approach the throne room in expectation to be met with judgment? Would we continue to watch the sins in others go unaddressed for fear of personal offense? Would we continue to ignore the commands of God, give lip service to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, pursue material wealth, and consider our sin in light of our self-assurance that “it will be okay?” (Mt 7:21-27)

Believing the words of Jesus should dramatically alter the pursuits of our lives. Believing Jesus would do so much more than believing in Him. The question is, are you prepared to give yourself fully to a God who demands everything?

The question I will be considering in my next post will be whether or not we really believe that Jesus is Lord. In the mean time, continue asking yourself, “Do I believe this at a 10, or do my lips speak differently than my life?”