Firsthand Faith: Making the Family Beliefs Your Own

Like authors Ryan and Josh Shook, I grew up in a Christian home. Years ago, I remember giving my testimony to the church high school group and being very clear that it wasn’t enough to simply ‘adopt’ the faith of your father and mother because that’s all you had; you had to take ownership of it in a more objective sense. Just because you were born in McDonald’s doesn’t make you a hamburger.

The Shook brothers — sons of Kerry Shook whose book One Month to Live attracted much attention — have developed this concept into Firsthand: Ditching Secondhand Religion for a Faith of Your Own (Waterbrook Press). Although the book is written expressly to people in this particular faith situation, early sales of the book indicated that Firsthand struck a cord with Christian kids in their late teens and early twenties; the very people that statistically experience a great faith upheaval in what can be pivotal and transitional years. Here’s a sample:

We watched our parents step out in faith and plant a church when we were boys.  They had very little money at the time, just a dream God had placed on their hearts to reach the lost and hurting.  They started with fifteen people and from there it dwindled to eight after the first gathering.  Five were our family!  Now thousands are part of the church.  But we know all the little miracles God did along the way as our parents would step out in faith and watch God come through.

We feel as though we’ve had front-row seats to watch God working in our parents’ lives as they’ve taken risks in faith to obey God’s call.  But in a sense it’s been their experience, not ours.  We need our own experiences of stepping out in faith and watching God act. We don’t want front-row seats anymore.  We want to be in the game! We want to see God at work up close and personal in our lives.   (p. 108)

The structure of the book is notable. Each of the chapters is followed by a section called Making It Real, which is itself divided into Other Voices (quotes from people in similar situations) Think About It (a short study guide) and Might Try This (a variety of action steps and links to short films by Ryan). In addition to the Other Voices section, the book is very much the product of interviews with young adults whose journey contains the type of faith crisis the book addresses.

Firsthand is a resource worth knowing about that allows a specific audience to reconstruct the foundations of their faith. I’m not sure why the religious publishing division of Random House chose to do this in hardcover — especially when its target market is the demographic most likely to download rather than purchase a print copy — but the $17.99US/$20.99CAN price has not dissuaded buyers. It should also be must reading for anyone who works in high school and college-age student ministry.

A copy of Firsthand was provided to Thinking Out Loud by Waterbrook Press’ Canadian distributor, Augsburg Fortress.

Bibles Worth Coveting

(Yes, I get the post title contradiction.)

I work a few days a week at a Christian bookstore. Some days it’s about retail, but some days I get into some really amazing conversations with people who have little to no faith background, which truly justifies the existence of the place.

There are a number of Bibles in the store that I always say I would grab if the store ever caught on fire. They are the Bibles I covet, and I do have a birthday coming up soon. (Okay, don’t anyone actually act on that, since I have connections you don’t.) So as much as I love my NIV Study Bible, here are few things I would gladly steal if I thought the boss wouldn’t catch me. (Yes, I know. You’re thinking, “First coveting and now stealing.” It’s just literary license, I actually am the boss.)

So here’s my personal wish list:

Note: None of these are weird, esoteric or scholarly editions that only hardcore Bible junkies or geeky academics would want.  This is for the average person reading this.

• The Voice Bible — I’ve reviewed a book here that describes the making of this translation, and at the sister blog to this one — Christianity 201 — I’ve been using quotations from The Voice now that it’s on BibleGateway.com but I don’t actually own one. Not yet. (Thomas Nelson; various prices)

• The Contemporary Parallel New Testament — As mentioned above, you can do a lot of passage comparison online, but there are still times when a physical printed page holds some advantages and grants greater impact.  Includes: KJV, NASB Updated Ed., NCV, CEV, NIV, NLT, NKJV, and The Message (Oxford University Press; $49.99 US)

• NIV Compact Giant Print Bible — While admittedly it clocks in around 2,400 pages, nobody told this 12-point type, NIV Giant Print Bible that it wasn’t supposed to be huge and clunky. The size is surprisingly manageable. Perfect for vain people who don’t want to admit they otherwise use reading glasses; and the only giant print Bible of any translations that I’ve seen that’s worthy of taking with you. (Zondervan; various prices)

• NLT Full Verse Cross Reference — This one is not pictured as it’s out of print. Tyndale House Publishers is notorious for taking all my favorite Bibles out of print. We’re not good friends. But I loved the idea of spelling out all the cross referenced verses instead of having to flip back and forth, assuming the cross referenced verses are truly relevant.

Currently on our coffee table is the aforementioned NIV Study, the ESV Study, The Message New Testament (we appear not to own a full edition), a copy of the Common English Bible (CEB) and the Quick View NIV which I reviewed here in November. (The part about the upcoming birthday is true, however.)

Baptist Sex Abuse

Okay, so it turns out there’s a blog called Stop Baptist Predators.

Okay, so it turns out there’s a blog called Stop Baptist Predators and it’s been around since late 2006.

Okay so it turns out there’s a blog called Stop Baptist Predators and each blog post deals with a new case of abuse or a new article in the media on the topic, and in the years 2007 to 2010, they published 122, 109, 109 and 113 posts respectively. Things slowed down in 2011 and 2012, but then again, I would get weary of dealing with this topic every 2-3 days for four years.

And I had to quote this comment from April 18, directed to Ed Stetzer:

Since LifeWay provides research and data on so many other topics relevant to Baptist life, I often wondered why you yourself weren’t keeping track of Baptist clergy sex abuse cases. I imagine that most parents would find it “enlightening” to learn how widespread the problem really is – and how easy it is for clergy predators to simply church-hop their way to new prey.

It’s a shame that someone has had to devote nearly seven years to documenting this type of thing online.

It’s also a good thing that someone has chosen to devote nearly seven years to documenting this type of thing online.  On behalf of the survivors you serve, thank you Christa Brown.

Read more at Stop Baptist Predators.

How to Disagree with a Blog Post

So we’re still getting great numbers of page views at James MacDonald Preaches on Finances on Easter Sunday, and not a small number of comments, especially for this blog.  Some of you haven’t been back there since it appeared, but I later added an update to clarify some of the comments I got both on and off the blog:

Update 4/4/13

Basically what you’re seeing in the comments section is four possible responses:

• Supportive (objectively) — People who feel J. MacD. was within his rights to preach this topic on Easter Sunday because it was a legitimate message even for “Holy Week.”
• Supportive (subjectively) — People who rally around J.MacD. as their pastor or shepherd and want to defend him.
• Opposed (subjectively) — People who choose to criticize J. MacD. on whatever grounds or based on whatever leadership criteria, or choose to examine this particular topic in light of other information about James and/or HBC.
  
• Opposed (objectively) — People who — regardless of whether or not they liked the message — feel the topic was inappropriate for Easter Sunday. 

It was the two objective type of comments we were hoping for.

I don’t want to people to comment on the particular issue here — you should do that at the original post — but I was intrigued with a graphic I found at Wikipedia. From the days of letter writers responding to newspaper editorials to modern forums and blogs, writing tends to follow this hierarchy:

Exploiting Communion to Make a Political Statement

I believe my good-better-best approach to the whole gay debate is much healthier response to the issue of Christians and homosexuality than the hardline, binary right-and-wrong approach that’s more prevalent.   In that respect, I think the Christian gay community have a better ally than this blog than I might get credit for; though some progressive Christians will consider me conservative nonetheless.

But the decision by Jay Bakker to create a rainbow themed communion bread on the occasion of the opening of his church’s new location in Minnesota clearly crosses a line — for reasons I get into below — though not everybody feels that way.   For example, if you don’t know the story, Tony Jones describes it:

Last night, Courtney and I were on hand to help our dear friend, Jay Bakker, launch the new Minneapolis site of Revolution Church.  You can hear Jay’s inaugural sermon, “Vulgar Grace Throws the First Stone.”

The photo above is a detail shot by Courtney of the rainbow communion bread that we contributed to the service. We baked that loaf — the same loaf that Courtney baked with our friends Rachel and Rachet for our (sacramental) wedding — in support of marriage equality. Jay has been an outspoken proponent of marriage equality and has performed several same-sex weddings. When he broke the bread last night, Jay told us to remember not just the broken body of Jesus, but also the broken bodies and spirits of many GLBT persons who have been persecuted for their non-heterosexuality.

At the blog Juicy Ecumenism (yes, that’s its name) we read another account:

Complementing the rainbow bread, Bakker spoke on grace and inclusion, focusing on St. Paul, who “gets grace the most,” as he was a ruthless persecutor of Christians before his conversion. “The Bible is full of unperfect [sic] people” and it was “murderers and traitors … literally starting a faith, being part of a faith and that’s what I would call the good news,” Bakker said. He added that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ghandi also “Really got the idea of what inclusion was meant to be, what loving your enemy was meant to be, what loving your neighbor.”

At Huffington Post:

Bakker reports that the rainbow communion has gotten people questioning his orthodoxy. He responds that “I don’t think Jesus is insecure about sharing communion with others, including gay folks who suffered. So many lives have been lost because of what Christians say and preach. Heterosexisim and homophobia are deadly.”

I don’t want to give a lot of space to this issue. I know this is an issue about which Bakker and Jones and many others are truly passionate.

However when you are also remembering the plight of people in the LGBT community when you are supposed to be remembering the death of Jesus, then you are creating a mixed meaning to the communion service, and making the remembrance of Christ’s death share the stage with some contemporary social issue.

But there is also the issue of altering the symbol used in the sacrament. True, Jesus lived in a world without food coloring, but we have to believe that when the scriptures say “He took bread and brake it;” we are looking at bread that free and clear of any additional symbolism, references, advertising or fortune cookie message. The formula is: The bread = Christ’s body, broken for you. There is no room here to add anything or manipulate this Eucharistic formula.

And why stop at rainbow coloring? There are other “ribbon” colors. Shall we observe a particularly colored bread on behalf of those who suffered child abuse or are fighting cancer? 

No.  The broken body of Jesus Christ is for the forgiveness of sin. And woe to anyone (see Rev. 22) who adds anything to that.

Pentecost and Beer

This is Steve Kennedy, editor of “T” magazine (formerly the Pentecostal Testimony) writing in the May/June issue:

Pentecost Sunday trails around the calendar tethered to the date of Easter. This year it lands on May 19, which happens to be the Sunday of Victoria Day weekend in Canada, commonly known as “May Two-Four” weekend — a reference to both the official date of Queen Victoria’s birthday and the popular choice of beverage consumed on this first holiday of the warmer weather. It makes for an interesting collision of cultures: the Day of Pentecost and May Two-Four weekend…

Using a Different Measurement Stick to track Religious Faith

I knew a guy who was day-trader. From the minute the North American markets opened to the minute they closed he was glued to his computer buying and selling stocks faster than you could blink. Many people use the internet these days to track up-to-the-minute trends as well as long term patterns. They wouldn’t be without it.

But others take a more grassroots approach. They say to talk to the drivers for FedEx or UPS if you want to know how the economy is doing. Those guys see a slowdown in the financial life of the country long before it has made the evening news. Others count large transport trucks.

And so it is with religious faith. We have metrics that we use such as giving and church attendance and extrapolate all manner of projections from that type of data. Here in Canada, the Hemorrhaging Faith study tracked church attendance generationally in four categories (a) Evangelical, (b) other Protestant, (c) Catholic outside Quebec, and (d) Quebec Catholics.  The numbers were not great, not even for Evangelicals, which I’m told should now be spelled with a capital ‘E.’

But the grassroots approach would suggest we should be tracking baby names; and if your interest is specifically Roman Catholic, the female name Mary. Along comes mary? Not lately. It turns out that while the Hispanic community is still strongly using Maria, elsewhere, the name Mary is in free fall…

Continue reading here.

Wednesday Link List

“For what we are about to receive…”  The human and the dog seem sincere but cats are always overly dramatic. (And why does the cat have a marking that looks like another cat’s tail? Photoshop? No way!)

Time for another link list. Try to have your suggestions in by 6:00 PM Eastern on Mondays. More during the week at Twitter.

• Hey! We finally made the Church Relevance list of the Top 200 Ministry Blogs, at number 143. Now what will I complain about? A giant shout-out to Kent Shaffer at Church Relevance.
• From the weekend: Best Mother’s Day graphic.
• Michael Patton notes that while Calvinists uphold ‘perseverance of the saints,’ he often encounters some among that group that lack assurance of salvation.
  
• At Red Letter Christians: The Six Worst Things About American Christianity. Wait, there’s only six?
  
• I once heard that Billy Graham once said his calling to ministry was simply that he was trying to do what Charles Templeton started but never finished. That, and the fact my father once served in ministry with Templeton draws me to articles like this one whenever they appear.
• Do-Not-Do-This Department: BibleDude offers six ways to ruin a mission trip.
• Does Greg Boyd think that, despite their different beliefs about Jesus, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are saved? Check out this five minute video.
  
• Diane Lindstrom offers a six-part series on The Sneaky Sins. (The link is to the intro, then click the banner and scroll through malice, deceit, hyprocisy, envy and slander.)
  
• Recurring theme: This time in Northern Ireland, another printer is threatened with court action over refusing to print material that goes against his beliefs.
• This week at Rachel Held Evans, we were introduced to a young Assemblies of God pastor Jonathan Martin (that’s two links to RHE.) And here’s a short preaching sample.
  
• Dannah Gresh does a TED Talk at Penn State University on the subject of virginity.
  
• A blogger calls into question the youth ministry concept, in light of areas where he feels it has failed us.
  
• A former pastor and church planter now finds himself roaming among various churches and offers ten observations now that he’s not an insider.
• “I know who made the environment,” Mark Driscoll reportedly said. “He’s coming back, and he’s going to burn it all up. So yes, I drive an SUV.”  More in a Religion New Service piece comparing Driscoll to Pat Robertson.
  
• Music video link # 1: Two years ago we did a story here on a Nepalese worship band, Aradhna. I was going to run a link to something more recent, but opted instead for one of their earlier videos which includes English translation.
• Music video link #2: If this hadn’t existed I would have added it to my own YouTube channel. Classic Maranatha! Music worship as Erick Nelson sings Fairest Lord Jesus.  This was posted a few months ago and has only seen a handful of views. Let’s change that.
• Music video link #3: Classic British TV footage of Cliff Richard covering Randy Stonehill’s First Prayer. Whether or not you believe in “praying the prayer;” this is a type of song that models Christian behavior; a type of song we just don’t hear anymore.
• Music video link #4: From our own channel, the 1988 kids album with no kids, Prism Red rocks out Amazing Grace. Heck, let’s add it below.
• From @philvischer ‘s Twitter: “Got a Groupon ad for a 3-pack of ‘Jezebel Panties.’ Yes, the most evil woman in the Bible now has her own line of underwear.”
  
• New blogs added to my 700+ bookmarks this week: The Nuance with Zach J. Hoag and a multi-author blog, Christian Blessings.
• Looking for more links? Ed Cyzewski offers five posts from Christian blogs you’ve never seen.
  

Songs with substance: Classic worship

If you check the right hand margin over at Christianity 201, you’ll see that all of the various music resources that have appeared there are listed and linked alphabetically. Take a moment to discover — or re-discover — some worship songs and modern hymns from different genres.

Rob Bell Defending His Position on Gay Christians

I am indebted to Trevin Wax for making me aware of today’s featured video. If you want to go deeper, be sure to read his analysis on what you see here.

Maybe you’re just tired of this topic. I get that. And the video runs 21 minutes and doesn’t mince words. But I think this is significant on a number of grounds.

First of all, Rob explains himself very well here, if only because the program hosts don’t allow him any escape. On the other hand, he’s not exactly on the ropes, either; he knows what he believes on this topic, and articulates it better here than I’ve seen elsewhere.

Second, Andrew Wilson clearly disagrees, but he so well models what Christian disagreement should look like. Trevin said, “Kudos to Andrew Wilson for maintaining his composure as he gently presses Rob not only to be clear on his position, but also to reveal the grounding for the position. Too often, discussions on this issue are so focused on the tip of the iceberg that the foundational, grounding elements of the argument are assumed and never made explicit.”

Third — and this at the core of where you lean on this issue — is the whole issue as to which of the Levitical prohibitions apply today and which do not. Wilson asks, “Is it a question of hermeneutics, or is it a question of exegesis?”  (That sound you hear is hundreds of readers clicking away as this distinction may be confusing to many, including one blog host. Reader thoughts on how to clarify this for the average reader are welcomed.) Trevin Wax noted, “Rob answers by appealing to the way the world is in order to make his case. He believes the church must affirm the world as it is. “

Fourth, there are the amazing wrap up moments where Wilson says he would not call Bell “liberal,” and where Bell affirms the brotherhood of those who disagree with him, or him with them.

When People Forget Why They Went to Church

So earlier this week I was speaking with a couple who operate their own automotive repair business. They were telling me how their primary purpose in attending church is to worship God, but people like to use Sunday morning to discuss car problems or even book an appointment to get some work done.

Okay. In a way I totally get that. Most of the ‘fellowship’ that happens in the lobby before or after church isn’t true spiritual fellowship. It consists of talk about the hometown sports team; how the kids are doing in school, piano and soccer; and the weird weather we’ve been having this year. Not so much of, “So what’s God been showing you this week?” Or, “I gotta share this verse with you I was reading yesterday.” Or, “Anything I can pray with you about over the next few days?”

That doesn’t happen so much. Maybe more in the U.S. than in my home country of Canada. But not a whole lot.

But what really got to me about this couple’s story is that people were requesting consultation and wanting to book appointments during the offering (okay it’s like the seventh inning stretch in baseball at some churches), during worship choruses (well, in some places it is more like a rock concert than a worship opportunity) and even during a prayer (ouch!). Remember, they weren’t standing in the aisle passing out business cards, people were coming to them.

Now, I love that worship services in western Europe and North America are slightly more casual. That necktie was choking me all those years and those shoes just plain hurt. But have we gotten too casual? Is a whole generation of church-goers emerging that has no sense of propriety; no sense of what it is supposed to mean to come into the presence of a holy God?

We got a comment this week on a old blog post here about guys who keep their hats on in church. Normally when I comment on a post that old, it’s spam and I’m all set to delete it. But this time…

Yes, now it is my turn. We can debate whether it is a matter of “custom” or a matter of scripture; I affirm the later. For 1900 years, the matter was clear: Women are to be veiled in church, men must not cover their heads. This is based on 1Co 11:2-16 and was understood this way – as I said – UNANIMOUSLY in ALL churches of Christ for two millennium! Now, in the WEST women took off the veil and became pastors – which is a severe discontinuation of Apostolic practice UNIQUE to the Western churches, esp. Protestants. And it is in THIS setting, that men became increasingly indifferent as well and started wearing their baseball hats to church a only couple of years ago. Also: Shorts are worn to church, and shirts are no longer tucked in – the body language became totally disconnected from the spiritual language we utter with our lips. Watch out: That’s contemporary Gnosticism! Where are these brave leaders who address misbehavior like this and put an end to it?

Now, you might just dismiss this a comment from an ultra-conservative reader, but I don’t. Not completely. That sentence, “…the body language became totally disconnect from the spiritual language we utter with our lips;” is the part that haunts me.

There’s a trend emerging, but where is that trend taking us? Some say to just relax because in a few years, the men at the bank and the real estate office will be back to suits and ties. (In our town presently, the only person who wears a suit is the funeral director.) But is a whole generation that’s known nothing but casual Sunday likely to go formal?

Typically, I find that people in blue collar jobs tend to dress up for church, while people in white collar jobs tend to dress down; at the same time as everybody tends to be very casual in their approach to weekend worship. Even the concept of weekend worship is a compromise which allows those who choose to have their entire Sunday free to play golf, picnic, visit family or head to the beach.

…In the meantime, I feel for this couple who owns the auto shop. They are trying to live their lives by a higher standard and are no doubt unimpressed by those who choose to violate their time of worship. If you were they, how would you respond to a mid-service request for auto service?