Book Note: Small Group Leadership as Spiritual Direction by Heather Webb

As GCF gets ready for the Fall Semester, I've been thinking a lot about small group ministry. GCF is committed to asking the tough questions about the integration of faith, learning, and practice, and we find that these questions are best addressed in small groups of people gathered around scripture, book study, or prayer.

I picked up Heather Webb's, Small Group Leadership as Spiritual Direction the other day. A quick read, Webb lays a foundation of what small groups tend to look like, talks about spiritual direction as a practice, reviews the interaction of direction with postmodernism and issues like sin and disclosure in small group settings, and offers three models for small group that are "directed" instead of "led."

The three new models are the "story-centered group," the "text-centered group," and the "prayer-centered group." Her descriptions of these are brief but compelling and may be worth the price of the book.

Some salutary quotes:
"On a rudimentary level, spiritual direction involves two people growing in their understanding of what it means to love God and others" (59).

"This is what spiritual direction is all about. It is pointing out God to someone who might not recognize God's voice" (58).

"Many spiritual directors dislike the term 'director' and prefer words that connote coming alongside someone, such as being a 'midwife.' The director is not leading as much as assisting in the birthing of deeper faith. The director is a friend or a wise mentor to the one in the process of rediscovering God. . . . Spiritual directors struggle with the directee, relying on God's Spirit to serve as the catalytic force for spiritual maturity" (64).

"Rather than seeing direction as a movement inward, it should be seen as the process of moving upward and outward toward God and others" (67).

"The art of spiritual direction can help create a bridge between our faith and the world in which we live [and] will have dialogue at its core. . . . The bridge metaphor means we can walk across without abandoning the starting point. . . . To be on a bridge, we must have a starting point. It is, then, essential that spiritual directors know what they believe. . . . In the face of difference, we have an opportunity to enter mystery that reminds us of our need to trust a God who is bigger than our boxes for God. We are reminded of a world larger than our own" (88-89).

Sermon for July 1, 2007, "Follow Me"

Text: Luke 9:51-62
I preached this sermon the second Sunday of my New Jersey trip I mentioned in my last post. I've included its full text here. The audio for both this sermon and "The Christ of God" are up on MEFC's website here.

“Follow Me”

When Monique and I lived in Princeton, we went with a group of people to a big, free concert in Philadelphia. Being outdoors, it was sticky, hot, and there were people everywhere! I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a setting like this, but it’s kindof like being in laneless, rush-hour traffic. People push and push to get the best seats, or the seats in the shade, or the seats that you’re aiming to get right then just because you’re aiming to get them. With people everywhere, faces pointed in all different directions, how do you keep a group together?

The method we devised was the hand-to-shoulder line. The lead person looked ahead, spotting holes that would allow our movement, but everyone else kept their eyes (and hands) on the person in front of them. With one person cutting the trail, we could make better progress than any one of us doing it by ourselves. But you did have to hold on and stay focused! If you lost concentration, you would be easily separated from the line by the press of the crowd.

[Page One: Jesus is leaving people behind] From our passage today, there is nothing more ominous than the line from verse 51: “Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” More literally, “Jesus set his face for Jerusalem.” The time is approaching for Jesus to be taken into heaven, and Jesus, knowing this, resolves in himself that nothing will stop his journey to Mt. Zion. Whereas Jesus showed patience before, now he is leaving people behind. Jesus is on his way.

The Samaritans cannot stand this. They do not welcome Jesus, because Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. Jesus will stand for no complacency here. If the Samaritans will not allow Jesus to stay one night and then depart for Jerusalem, then Jesus will not stay. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and anyone who wants a tame Rabbi is getting left behind.

The man who is walking along the road cannot stand this. He thinks that he will follow Jesus wherever he goes, but Jesus lets the man know that while the foxes and birds have places to rest, there is no rest for the Son of Man. Jesus in on his way to Jerusalem, and anyone who wants comfort is getting left behind.

Jesus pauses briefly to say to another man, “Follow me.” But, the man replies, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus retorts sharply, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and anyone who puts their family first is getting left behind.

“Still another says, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family.’ Jesus replies, ‘No one who put his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the Kingdom of God.’” Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and cannot stop or look back, and anyone who is hesitant or wants to wait or hedge their bets is getting left behind when they lose their grip on Jesus’ shoulder in the press of their lives. There are too many worries and cares in their world. The people left in Jesus’ wake must be thinking, “What could I have done to be worthy to follow this Jesus?”

[Page Two: Jesus is leaving the world behind] Last week, we talked about Jesus’ command for his disciples to take up their cross daily to follow him. Jesus, though once for all crucified, dead, buried, raised again, and ascended, still is leading disciples to Jerusalem by his Holy Spirit. Jesus is still on his way to Jerusalem, and he’s leaving the world behind.

The people of the world want a Jesus who will sit and stay awhile. Like the Samaritans, they don’t want a Jesus who is on his way to Jerusalem. They want a Jesus who will give them pearls of wisdom instead of pain. They want a Jesus who will show them wonderful mysteries instead of their sin. But, Jesus is still on his way to Jerusalem, and the world that wants a tame Rabbi is getting left behind.

The people of the world want a Jesus who will give rest for their heads. They want a Psalm 23 Jesus, a Jesus who comforts them when they are sad but never saddens them when they are comforted. But, the Son of Man has no place to rest his head. Jesus is still on his way to Jerusalem, and the world that wants peace instead of a spiritual sword is getting left behind.

The people of the world want a Jesus who will put their family first. They want a Jesus that will teach them how to be good husbands and wives, but they don’t want a Jesus who might tell them that they’re loving their spouses or children or friends more than they’re loving God. Jesus is still on his way to Jerusalem, and the world that wants a stable society is getting left behind.

The people of the world want a Jesus who will pause a moment so they can say goodbye to their old lives. They want a Jesus who sympathizes with their secret sins, but they don’t want a Jesus who wants to forgive and forget them. They just want to say goodbye to their past, but Jesus is focused on the future. Jesus is still on his way to Jerusalem, and the world that wants to hedge its bets is getting left behind.

The world has too many worries and cares, too many broken relationships, too much difficulty with obedience. Left behind by Jesus, the must sometimes wonder, “How could we have made ourselves worthy to follow this Jesus?”

[Page Three: Jesus is taking his disciples with him (even though they don’t deserve it)] Looking back at our passage for today, we might find it difficult to believe that people are actually making this trip with Jesus. This ragtag group of disciples is somehow keeping up a good hand on Jesus’ shoulder as they make their way through the crowd to Jerusalem!

They make their first appearance in verse 52, sent out as messengers in front of Jesus to make a room ready for him in the Samaritan village. Not only are they coming along behind, but they’re being sent out ahead. The disciples seem to be doing just fine, until they hit a bump in the road: the Samaritans want Jesus to stay a while…since the disciples tell them he won’t, they choose not to welcome him. When Jesus walks into the village, the disciples report the indignity and ask Jesus for permission to call fire down from heaven to destroy them. Jesus stops walking only for a moment to turn and rebuke them before walking to the next village. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and the disciples who want righteous anger from their Lord are getting…left behind? No, for some reason they aren’t. For some mysterious reason, Jesus is taking his disciples with him to Jerusalem whether they deserve it or not.

For some reason, Jesus has chosen this ragtag bunch, and he’s not leaving them behind. This point is reiterated over and over again in the Gospels. Jesus is about preaching the Kingdom of God, but his disciples don’t get it. Jesus is about healing the sick, but the disciples are in it for the power. Jesus is about dying for sinners in Jerusalem, but the disciples scatter at the first sign of trouble. When they ask the question, “How can we be worthy to follow Jesus?” they can’t find a good answer. They aren’t worthy in the least, but Jesus persists in bringing them along. Pressed by the crowd, by the concerns of the world, the disciples lose their grip on Jesus shoulder, but instead of getting left behind or lost in the crowd, they find that Jesus has reached behind him to grab their hand. Jesus persists in holding on to their hand even when they persist in letting go of his. Jesus is creating obedience in them, leading them to make the hard decisions, the decisions that hurt.

[Page Four: Jesus is taking us with him] Perhaps the number one evidence of our faith is that people keep on following this Jesus. As he runs ahead, not only our world but we ourselves fall behind. The world loses touch with Jesus and creates images or replicas of him, but some, some of us, even, persist in following Jesus to Jerusalem. What is there to explain this? Only one thing, and it is not a “what,” it is a “who.” Jesus is taking us with him, even though we don’t deserve it, through his free grace.

St. John wrote that Jesus is the eternal Word of God and that the Father created the world through this Word. Human beings were created to follow the Word through his world, one hand on his shoulder on a guided tour of the richness and depth of all that God had created for us. But, there was a test, a test that we failed. At the simple allure of the serpent, Adam and Eve let go of the Word’s shoulder and fell behind and were lost.

All of us their children are also lost. The tempting voice of the serpent has been multiplied thousands of times over as he speaks in other people’s voices. We were lost. But the Word, always moving forward to Jerusalem from all eternity, moved back into our world when he took on flesh and walked among us as Jesus Christ. This time the Word resolved not to let us fall behind. In becoming a human being, he persists in holding onto our hands. In taking us with him to the cross, he has killed the world in us. In taking us with him through his resurrection, he has given us a new start and a promise that he will never let go of us. In taking us with him in his ascension, he has given us the promise of new and eternal life, as St. Paul said in Colossians: we are now hidden with Christ in God.

Jesus is, as the book of Hebrews puts it, the author of our faith. He is the pioneer who cuts the trail ahead of us. This trail leads us necessarily to suffering and a death to ourselves and to our wants in the world, but it also leads us to resurrection and the glory of new life. Hidden with Christ in God, we are now becoming what God has claimed that we are in Jesus Christ. Those things that you know you should do but are putting off are already done and completed in Christ. By the Holy Spirit, Jesus is making you the person that is hidden with Christ in God. You might be scared of asking forgiveness from a person in this room, but in Jesus, you are already the person who has experienced that pain, embarrassment, and sorrow and come through the other side. By the Holy Spirit, Jesus is making you the person that is hidden with Christ in God. You might be hurting others by what you say and do, but in Jesus Christ that part of you is already dead and a new life of love has been raised. By the Holy Spirit, Jesus is making you the person that is hidden with Christ in God. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and, thanks be to God, he is taking us with him, holding on to our hands, and making sure we don’t get lost in the crowd, even though we don’t deserve it. Amen.

Sermon for June 24, 2007: "The Christ of God"

I've been in New Jersey the last week attending a conference and raising money for my work with InterVarsity. While in town, I was given the opportunity to preach twice at Montgomery Evangelical Free Church (www.mefc.org; both sermons will be available soon for streaming audio and podcast download on their website under "Sermon Player").

Both Sundays, I preached the Gospel text from the Revised Common Lectionary. It's fun, and just a little demanding, to hear God's Word for a specific situation from a text you didn't choose. My experience the last two weeks reemphasizes to me that the whole Gospel can be found in all the Bible's parts.

Note: There was a commissioning service for Stephen Ministers this Sunday. Stephen Ministries is a lay pastoral care program. Also, the brackets indicate the sections of the sermon. I follow very closely Paul Scott Wilson's The Four Pages of the Sermon: A Guide to Biblical Preaching (I think this is a must have and highly practical guide to preaching well; I read it through again in preparing my sermons this year, and, 2 years after preaching class, I love it even more).

Luke 9:18-24

“The Christ of God”

[Introduction] From time to time, we all say things that we don’t really understand. The boy who sees a girl and says, “I’m going to marry that girl” will only proudly remember he said that if he marries her. “For better or worse ‘til death do us part,” sounds poetic until the worse comes and we realize what we really said. The quick-spoken and short, “I hope you have children just like you,” from an exasperated parent hangs like a curse over the child when, as nature seems to have it, they DO start having children just like them. We say these things, they almost slip past our lips, and then, only later, do we really realize what they mean. This is the hidden power of our cutting words, promises, and confessions.

[Page 1: The disciples had to lose their lives]“‘But what about you?” Jesus asked the disciples. ‘Who do you say that I am?’”

Peter answered, “The Christ of God.”

When the other Gospels record this event, Jesus makes a much bigger deal out of Peter’s confession, saying things like, “Flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven,” or, “You are Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church.” In other words, he couldn’t have come up with this on his own. Our reading from Luke today highlights the same reality in a different aspect. Luke highlights that Peter didn’t realize the full import of his confession. He didn’t realize that in proclaiming Jesus the Christ of God, he really was signing his own death sentence. For this confession, he would have to lose his life.

For Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”

Verse 18 sets the stage. Jesus is praying in private and his disciples are with him. He asks them, “Who do the crowds say I am?” Up to this point, he has been healing and ministering and preaching, and it’s time for the quarterly evaluation of the congregation and the leadership.

The disciples respond quickly. “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.” The crowd, apparently, is only saying good things, or the disciples are editing. It doesn’t seem to matter to Jesus.

“But what about you?”

“The Christ of God.”

Peter is right, but he didn’t understand what his confession really means. This is why Jesus commands them to be silent. If the people who have been with Jesus day in and day out don’t understand yet, then surely the majority of the crowd will not either. Jesus tells him that the Christ MUST suffer and be rejected, killed, and raised. Not only that, those who want to follow the Christ of God have to follow the same path. The disciples MUST deny themselves and take up crosses daily to follow. In the other Gospels, it’s here that Peter rebukes Jesus, and where Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan.” Peter doesn’t want to have his glorious dreams of a Messiah torn down into this divine MUST. Peter wans a glorious Christ, but Jesus tells him that he MUST have a broken, torn, and defeated Christ. He wants a glorious place beside Christ, but Jesus tells him that he MUST lose his life in order to save it. In the end, Peter has become so focused on his life goals and expectations that he wants Jesus to conform to his expectations. But instead Jesus says to Peter that he must lose his life if he wants to save it.

[Page 2: We have to lose our lives] And the same is true for us: We have to lose our lives if we want to save them. You see, our problem is much like the disciples’. When Jesus puts the question to us about what the world is saying about him, we can say all kinds of things. “Well, Jesus, the world thinks you’re a great moral teacher, a political revolutionary, an advocate for the poor, a path to mystical enlightenment.”

“But who do you say that I am?”

By now, we expect this question and well up with pride because we know the answer: “You’re the Christ of God, only begotten Son of the Father, the Word incarnate, one Person with two Natures, God’s Revelation and the path to Reconciliation, our Salvation and our Promise of everlasting life.”

But, Jesus says to us as he said to his disciples, “I may be all those things, but my path isn’t one of glory but one of a cross. My path will lead you to participate with me in my cross. My path will cause you to lose your life in order to save it.”

The costs are steep. Hate your father and mother, Jesus says at one point. Pluck out your eye if it’s causing you to sin. Seek first the kingdom of God. Leave family and friends for the sake of the Gospel. We have to lose our lives. This is the divine MUST that we come up against as disciples. Jesus must suffer and die. We must participate in that suffering by laying down our lives as well. We must lose our lives if we want to confess him as the Christ of God.

But, like Peter, we don’t want to. We like to hold on to our Messianic dreams. We want to be successful. We want to be rich and powerful. We want to be recognized and respected (and, by the way, will break relationship with almost anyone over the smallest slight, compounding sin with sin until we get what we deserve). We will hold on to institution and power even at the expense of others. But Jesus says that we must lose our lives.

Since we want glorious lives, we seek to follow successful people, and we event twist our confession of Jesus to make him the kind of person we want to be ourselves. We want Jesus to be a great business person. We want Jesus to be a great counselor. We want Jesus to be an All-American athlete or a biker or a hip, relevant, Birkenstock-wearing yuppie. We want Jesus to lift weights at God’s Gym or cast ballots, depending on who we like at the time, either for elephants or donkeys. In the end, we have become so focused on ourselves that we don’t want to participate in Jesus’ life. We want Jesus to participate in ours. But, Jesus says, we must lose our lives if we want to save them. But, we don’t want to.

[Page 3: God saved Jesus’ life] Verse 22: “And he said, ‘The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

Thanks be to God: the end of Jesus’ life is not the end of the story. His disciples expected a Messiah to come in glory, but Jesus knew that he MUST suffer and be killed before the glory of the Resurrection. Jesus gave up his life, but God saved it on the third day. God saved Jesus’ life.

This is an important thing to consider. Jesus, fully God and fully human, walked among us for a short time. In that time, he lived in complete obedience to the Father, even to death on the cross. He lived in that divine MUST with his face pointed to a cross and walked the road from his birth to his death in humility and righteousness. When he submitted himself to this final death, he submitted himself as the Christ of God, the Messiah who everyone felt was supposed to be a hero, but instead was a servant. After he was killed, God raised him from the dead. God saved Jesus’ life.

So, when Jesus told the disciples’ that they had to lose their lives in order to save them, this was in the background. He was losing his life. The disciples were to take up their cross and follow Jesus. The life of the disciple is the life of walking with Jesus into Jerusalem at the end of his ministry, into pain, suffering, and death with a joy, a peace, and a confidence that God is in control. Jesus promises that if they would participate in his death by taking up their cross and following him in faith and obedience, then they will also be raised together with Christ in his resurrection. God saved Jesus’ life from the tomb, so also will God save their lives from shame, suffering, and death.

And from what we know, the disciples trusted God in this. They embraced Jesus’ cross and lived their lives as lost for his sake and the Gospel. It is said that some were crucified like Jesus, others were fed to lions, still others were flayed alive. But, first, because they lived their lives as lost, they experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and saw God saving thousands of people’s lives all over the world. The Scripture tells us about the communion of saints in which these apostles’ now live, and it promises for them and for us the final resurrection from the dead. It’s interesting that many tradition churches when they come to the part of the Nicene Creed that mentions the resurrection from the dead, they cross themselves. The path to resurrection is through the cross.

[Page 4: God will save our lives] Because God was faithful to raise his Son Jesus from the dead, he will raise everyone who believes. God saved Jesus’ life, and God will save our lives, too. If we make the confession that he is the “Christ of God,” we will of necessity find ourselves in pain, sorrow, and suffering, but we will endure these things for the joy set before us. St. Paul put it this way in Philippians 3: “I want to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection of the dead.”

We cannot earn the resurrection—there is only following Jesus along his way to the cross. First we believe that Jesus lived, died, and rose again on the third day for us and in our place. Our first step along the path is to lose our lives to God in faith.

Second, by God’s grace, we have to lose our lives in service to God and others. Faith is followed necessarily by obedience. God has saved our life already, so we need to let God worry about the results of our obedience, about the clothes on our back, about the hairs on our heads. Trust and obey, the old song says, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey.

It’s appropriate at this point to mention those who are being commissioned today to the Stephen Ministry. In an intense training period, they have learned to see themselves as caregivers to people in need. They are people who seek to care but not, interestingly enough, to cure. They have been taught to live in the reality that since God saved Jesus’ life, he is the one who will save all our lives. They know they are only caregivers, and God is the cure giver. For those of you receiving the commissioning, you are today promising to bear a cross. You are promising to bear with and listen to people in their grief, in their sorrow, and in their pain. You are promising to lose yourself in service to God by serving others. I pray that God shows you his peace and joy along the path down which he has called you.

Following Jesus on the way of the cross is what we all do, whether we realize the import of our words or not, when we with Peter make the confession that Jesus is the Christ of God. It’s not a comfortable trip, but it is the trip to which God has called us and by which God will save us. Montgomery Evangelical Free Church, hear the good news of the Gospel: God raised Jesus from the dead; therefore we too will be raised if we lay down our lives in faith and obedience to the Christ of God.

Let us pray.

[The prayer included some of these thoughts] There are resentments here, some petty, some serious, that have broken relationships in your body. There are people here too caught up in themselves to realize that the glory and respect they desire is due only to Christ, who died for them that they might die to their pride. Break hearts, dear Lord, that you might mend them. Break silences, dear Lord, that you might heal wounds. Whatever is the reason for these problems, Holy Spirit, cause these people to lose their lives at this point so they may experience your reconciling power.

Clearing the way for a theology of relevance

This post is a follow up to the previous post along with its resulting comments. I'm very happy that such a lively discussion developed, and I need to clear the ground before moving on to give a theological account of relevance.

1) So far, I have been sketching a non-theological, analytical argument about relevance. I, being a theologian, have not been able to keep theological language completely out, but I have attempted to do so.

2) Thanks to Travis' and Tim's comments, I realize that I need to make a distinction between objective and subjective relevance. Objectively, the claims of the Gospel of Jesus Christ are relevant to each and every individual because their lives forever have been determined by the Person and Work of Christ. Subjectively, the claims of the Gospel are relevant only to those people who have the ability (read: have been given the ability) to see themselves as addressed by it. They have made themselves (read: have been made) relevant to the Gospel (they have been changed to see themselves as addressees) and in so doing, the Gospel "has become" subjectively what it always already is, something that matters.

3) Given this, subsuming subjective into objective relevance is something we should avoid for it makes us both less aware of ourselves and less aware of the other. As the Gospel becomes more subjectively relevant to us, it matters more to us; that is, as we come to see ourselves and our lives as being encompassed by this story, then we find that the story has more importance than we thought it did, and because we have been changed to fit the story, we are more open to seeing how the story (in Tim's words) might be shown to be relevant to the people around us. But, to show the Gospel's objective relevance is the same as making space for the change in the other individual that establishes the reciprocal, subjective relevance I was referencing in my last post.

Before moving to a sketched theological account, are there any other clarifications I need to make?

Relevance begins with you

Several weeks ago, I posted about two types of relativism, one that I consider truly humble and the other I consider to only have the appearance of humility. Inside that post there is some definition given to the word "relevance," that I would like to readdress and work out some implications for the way Christians lead 'relevant' lives, lives that really matter.

Point 1: "Relevance is a two-place predicate." This means that the sentence "That song is just so relevant" is actually not a sentence at all. Relevance is an idea that links two other ideas. Something cannot be just "relevant." That something must be relevant to something else.

Point 2: "Relevance is reciprocal." In other words, relevance is a two-way street. If A is relevant to B, then by definition B is relevant to A. The person I heard this from first (Professor James Hall in his Learning Company Philosophy of Religion course) used the analogy of a street. So, for example, if there is a road from Nashville to Franklin then there is also a road from Franklin to Nashville. If you cut off Nashville from Franklin, then you have also cut off Franklin from Nashville.

Now, that is about as far as I got in the last post. But, given these two points, I think there are some interesting implications that we need to deal with in relationship to the way we as Christians think about relevance.

Implication 1: There are three ways to establish relevance. 1) You can change A to make it relevant to B. 2) You can change B to make it relevant to A. 3) Or, you can change both A and B to make them relevant to one another.

With relevance, we are dealing with ideas, not roads. We can't just 'build a road' from A to B and leave A and B unchanged. If A and B are not already relevant then something must change in them in order to make them relevant to one another.

And, given our definitions, doing any of these three things will establish relevance both directions, for if A is relevant to B, then B is relevant to A.

Implication 2: If A is unchanging, then B must change in order to establish relevance, and vice versa. And, as we've already stated, if B changes to establish relevance with A, then A is relevant to B.


Now, I was raised with the battle cry, "The Gospel must be made relevant!" Let's do a little analysis. First, this is an incomplete sentence. Let's add the second predicate: "The Gospel must be made relevant to our culture," I think is what these people meant.

Now in order to establish relevance, one of three things can happen. 1) The Gospel can change to be made relevant to the culture. 2) The culture can change to be made relevant to the Gospel. 3) Or, both can change in order to be made relevant to one another.

Can we establish relevance through any of these procedures? Can we change the Gospel? Can we change our culture? I'm going to assume the answer is "No" to both of these questions. As we've seen in previous centuries, especially in Europe, the attempt to change the Gospel to be relevant to the culture ended in the pseudo-Gospel of classical Liberalism (there goes #1). As we've seen in the last century, we can't assert enough influence over even our own nation to change it to be relevant to the Gospel (there goes #2). If we can change neither of the predicates, then we can certainly not alter both in order to establish relevance (there goes #3). For us, this means that there is no direct way to establish relevance between the Gospel and our culture. We either need to make our goal smaller, or give up.

Since, I still think relevance is a good goal to shoot for, let's try a bit smaller: "The Gospel must be relevant to our communities." I think we're starting to get there with this statement. In our communities of faith, we can begin to see how the community might be changed in order to make them relevant to the Gospel (and thus establish relevance between the Gospel and the community). Norms of common life can be established that allow a community to see themselves as part of the Gospel story, that understand the language of sin and redemption, that reach out to others in the name of Jesus Christ. When communities change themselves to become relevant to the Gospel, the Gospel becomes relevant to them and through them may become relevant to people entering the doors.

But, that's still probably not enough. Any church leader can put structures in place that should, in theory, make a community relevant to the Gospel, but that leader will only be frustrated if the liturgy is perfect but the people aren't paying attention. So, one step smaller again: "The Gospel must be made relevant to you." Or, better, "You must be made relevant to the Gospel." Relevance begins with you. When you take the time to pray, for instance, you are probably doing more for the relevance of the Gospel to the world than any kind of hemhawing with systematic theology.

What does it look like to become relevant to the Gospel? It means that when you read Scripture, the words are ever becoming more relevant to you. Because the Scripture contains the apostolic witness to the Gospel, we must continually go back there to find the place where we might change. When biblical words like 'justice,' 'righteousness,' 'holiness,' 'sacrifice,' 'sin,' 'judgment,' and 'Jesus' become living realities to you, then you know you are becoming more and more relevant to the Gospel since, interestingly enough, the Gospel is becoming more and more relevant to you.

And, since you are a being made up of the world you live in and the communities you thrive in, when you become relevant to the Gospel, the Gospel reaches through you to become relevant to your community and to your world. Only you know what it means to be relevant to the Gospel in your 9-to-5 at Bank of America. As you grow (another metaphor for relevance) in the Gospel, the Gospel will become more and more relevant to Bob, June, and Julie down the hall. We can't make the Gospel relevant to anyone, but we can make ourselves relevant to the Gospel, and in so doing, we will find the Gospel doing its work in the places we live, eat, work, and play. Relevance begins (but certainly doesn't end) with you.




P.S. for my theologian friends: this is not ultimately a theological account because 'relevance' isn't a theological word. A theological account might look slightly different, with obviously more emphasis on the living work of the Spirit in the individual, community, and the world.
P.P.S. This account should continue back up through the individual to the community of faith to the world, but it's just a blog. Please don't hear me preaching an individualistic gospel of moral improvement!

TableTalk (an experience in fine theology)

For this week's update, I want to share about TableTalk, a monthly, summertime group we're doing with Graduate Christian Fellowship.

The idea for the group came from reformer Martin Luther's Table Talk series, which are (I've been told) a series of books that are nothing more than notes taken on Luther's and his friends theological conversations around the table.

While we're not taking notes, GCF is having TableTalk about once a month during the summer where we get to sit, eat, drink, and imbibe some fine theology. Last month's topic was "Augustine and Pelagius Revisited: Free Will and Determinism in Christian Theology." Sound like too much? It might have been, but the atmosphere at the San Antonio Taco Company (where we're holding these) put us all at ease as we hashed out some of the basic issues in the classical debate over grace, sin, human nature, and free will. Much fun was had by all.

This Friday we're hosting our second TableTalk with the title, "What's God got to do with It?: The Incarnation through the Creeds to Chalcedon." We're going to cover the development of the idea of Jesus' humanity and divinity all the way through the fifth century of the church, spending a little bit of time on St. Athanasius' controversy with Arius and the implications of Chacledonian orthodoxy for the ways we tend to talk about Jesus today. Sound like too much? Well, if you're in town come Friday, come join us at SATCO on the porch at 4:00pm to find out. We'd love to have you join the conversation.

Christian "stuff"

Having grown up in the heyday of American evangelicalism, I know all about Christian "stuff." You know what I'm talking about: the bookmarks and key chains and books and music and bubblegum. I used to ask my mom to let me stay in the Family Christian Store while she browsed the mall. You could get everything there, I mean everything!

Sometime while I was in college, things started to shift (or, perhaps more likely, I started to notice a shift) in regards to how Christian "stuff" was sold to us. The Prayer of Jabez was the first I really noticed. Not only was the book cute and hugely popular, but all of a sudden you could get all kinds of "stuff" to go with it: calendars, bookmarks, study guides, even Bibles! You could have Prayer of Jabez wall-hangings and refrigerator magnets, journals and stationary. No longer just Christian "stuff," there was some kind of shift towards branded "stuff." (I'm still kindof miffed that I've never seen a Mere Christianity Bible, but I bet I could find one if I looked hard enough).

All of that said, this shift in Christian marketing has made me wary of Christian "stuff," especially the stuff that goes on the wall and becomes nothing more than decoration. Consider this passage from Deuteronomy (11:18-21):

18"You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 20You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.

Having gotten jaded to Christian stuff because it had become merely stuff, this passage reminds me that things like hanging Scripture on the wall can have a purpose: to teach us and our children to treasure the promises and commands of God. But, woe to those who hang God's Word on the wall merely to look at it or to mark themselves Christian over against the house down the street. Instead let us use them as tools to be reminded daily of God's saving acts on our behalf so that we might prosper in obedience along the way of the cross.

Humility and the Appearance of Humility

I was doing some musing the other day about two types of 'relativism' in relationship to truth claims, one which is humble and one which merely has the appearance of humility.

One is the suggestion that what I think is "true for me." This can be used both offensively ("This is true for me and how dare you question it") and defensively ("That may be true for you, but this is true for me"). It's defensive use has the appearance of humility.

But, while it doesn't question another's experience, it also doesn't allow another's experience to touch its viewpoint at all. Relevance, I've been told by a philosopher, is a reciprocal term. That means that if A is relevant to B, then B is relevant to A. In this case, the person who dissembles with the "true for you" statement cuts off their interlocutor from the conversation by saying basically, "Your experience led you to that conclusion, but mine led me to this one. Your experience is irrelevant to what I believe!" In the end, though it seems humble, the "true for me, not for you" line is as dogmatically close-minded as the worst types of fundamentalism, except instead of a fundamentalism based on centuries of accumulation in a sacred text, this fundamentalism is based myopically on an individual's experience.

A silly illustration: Jane points at a cup and says, "That's red." Joe responds, "No, that's closer to salmon." Jane retorts, "It may be salmon to you, but it's red to me!" This may seem of no consequence in talking about a cup, but it becomes even more important when we're talking about God, society, politics, morals, and all the things that effect people every day.

There is a second type of 'relativism,' however, that I think is truly humble. Instead of saying, "This is true for me," it says "This is my best guess." Any "best guess" is going to be based in personal experience, but instead of being dogmatically closed to the experience of others, it is open and assumes that it is attempting to describe a Reality that will either validate or invalidate its claim. By being open to other's experiences, it learns to describe the reality better and better. "My best guess," at its best, is a refining process.

Back to the cup, Jane says, "That's red." Joe responds, "No, that's closer to salmon." Jane replies, "Oh, really? How can you tell the difference?" Instead of maintaining her 'right' to call the cup red, Jane enters into a larger 'reality' of color differentiation.

In this second form of 'relativism,' one holds one's ideas about the world tentatively, and allows them to be questioned both by others and the thing being observed. So, Jane allows her ascription of 'red' to the cup to be challenged and enters into something deeper than she started with. But, the cup itself will also govern the conversation. If the cup were actually green, then the whole conversation above is a farce. While in the first conversation, Jane seeks to push her will onto the cup and uphold her will over against Joe's description, in the second, she submits herself to the reality she finds in the cup through Joe's description. That is the proper ordering, and we would all (especially us believers) do well to remember that when we seek to describe the One who revealed Himself through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Shrek the Third

On Friday, a small group of GCF'ers went out to see Shrek the Third. This is the first in our summer GCF Trip to the Movies series. Other movies we're seeing this summer are Ocean's Thirteen, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and The Bourne Ultimatum. It's a summer of sequels!

As far as sequels go, the newest Shrek installment was a lot of fun. The jokes were jam-packed and replete with pop-culture references. When Shrek and Donkey go to a medieval high school to find Arthur Pendragon, everything is fair game. There's a cheerleading squad in dresses and tall hats using "thee's" and "thou's." Nerds get their heads dunked in chamber pots. Lancelot is head of the jousting team, and Guenevere is the coolest girl in the school. Shrek breaks into a school gathering right after a "Just Say Nay" speech has ended. There's all of that and a lot more in the mix, especially since Arther is the one who will take the throne of Far Far Away.

But that leads me to my gripe for the movie. It feels like I can't see a movie whose moral isn't "Be yourself." Shrek's be-your-self-ness dripped all around the film, especially when Shrek is trying to convince Arthur to take the throne. It seems like the movie exists in a moral universe in which the only good is sincerity and the only evil is insincerity.

But, of course, it doesn't. Prince Charming is full of hubris and is entirely sincere about it. On the other hand, Shrek's character develops as he grows out of being-for-himself into being for his wife and children. The latter is obviously the better path for the Christian (and humanity in general), yet that real gem of selflessness is hidden under the 'moral' that creates Prince Charmings in the first place.

Wrapping up the semester

The semester is over, and the summer is beginning. I wanted to share the photos of our GCF End of the Year Party.

We're getting ready for the summer...more to come on that later. GCF is going to see Shrek the Third on Friday!

Profile: Matthew McMahon

Matthew graduated from Vanderbilt in 2006.

1. Tell us about your life. Are you married? Where did you grow up?
I was born and raised in the Hartford, CT area, the oldest of ten children. My father is a Pentecostal pastor, Christian school principal and music teacher, and my mother has been a teacher as well as full-time homemaker (emphasis on full-time!). My home church started a Christian school in our basement when I was starting second grade; the school added a grade level each year until I completed high school. (By that point, thankfully, we had a building!) I married my college sweetheart Carissa in 2002, before my second year of graduate school. We have two children, Bethany and Andrew, both born while I was completing my Ph. D.

2. Tell us about your education. Where, when, and in what have you done coursework?
My undergraduate work was done at Drew University in New Jersey, and of course I attended Vanderbilt for grad school. I majored in physics at Drew and achieved my doctorate in physics at Vanderbilt.

3. Tell us about your faith journey. How did you come to faith in Christ, and how has your faith been strengthened/challenged by your academic calling?
I was raised in the church, and am thankful to say that I can't remember a time when Christ was not a part of my life. I "asked Jesus into my heart" at five years old after listening to a Jimmy Swaggart tape for kids, famously telling my father that I was not going to bed that night until I had done so.

I found that my faith was challenged much more directly in undergrad than in grad school. This is partly due to the fact that we studied such virulently anti-Christian writers as Carl Sagan as part of a course on pseudoscience at Drew. It is also partly due to the fact that my graduate adviser is a religious man and encouraged me quite a bit in my faith during graduate school. While we would disagree on quite a few particulars of doctrine!, we had some basic metaphysical common ground. I would say that most of the faith-challenging features of the academic world came from sources outside Vanderbilt, in the wider scientific community, where philosophical materialism is rampant.

4. Tell us about your involvement with GCF. How has GCF encouraged you in both your faith and your calling?
GCF was a critical part of my spiritual life in graduate school. I became involved right from the start attending the Friday night meetings and attending a book study. I was greatly encouraged to find a community of serious Christian scholars who were unflinchingly committed to Christ and their education. It provided at once a place to think deeply about Christianity and a place to retreat from the pressure of grad school, especially in my first couple of years while I was taking a full courseload. It also provided a regular musical outlet, as I led the singing for those first couple of years.

5. If, based on your journey in faith and academia, you could tell the Church one thing, what would it be?
We must remember that Jesus did not come to save the smart; at the same time, we must remember that we are called to serve the Lord with all our minds.

Would you like to host a dessert?

As I've already shared with you, I'm currently raising support for the 2007-2008 academic year. GCF's projected budget is $70,300. Currently, we've estimated $31,900 in committed support for the year, which means we're still trying to raise the remaining $38,400.

One of the ways we raise support for the Graduate Christian Fellowship is by hosting desserts in people's homes or churches. GCF provides coffee, cheesecake, toppings, cookies, and a presentation aimed to introduce people to the work GCF is doing at Vanderbilt. Generally, hosts help put together a guest list, follow-up on the invitations we send, and offer a few words both before and after the presentation. These can be wonderful times of fellowship and are a great way to introduce others to what God is doing among graduate students and faculty at Vanderbilt University.

If you'd like to host or are curious about hosting a dessert in your home or church anywhere in the continental US, please post a comment here or email me at jasoningalls@gmail.com. We want to see students and faculty transformed, campuses renewed, and world-changers developed. Let's partner together to make it happen.

An action-packed week

Graduate Christian Fellowship and I were really busy this past week! It went something like this:

Monday night: Graduate Christian Fellowship Fundraising Dessert--we raised $1200 toward next year's budget. Thank God!

Thursday morning: GCF Prayer Meeting on campus--it was our first, large prayer meeting, and we hope it will be a model for regular (bi-monthly or monthly) prayer meetings starting next semester. A student and her husband (I haven't asked their permission to publish their names) led the prayer time as a reflection on God as the source and giver of wisdom. We prayed with Scripture in hand for ourselves, for the campus, and for the world. Two pictures made it out of the event, and they're in this album on Facebook (There are also pictures of other GCF and InterVarsity events in that album).

Thursday afternoon: Office Hours at Panera Bread. I had a couple of students drop by, and we had a lot of fun.

Friday afternoon: Lecture and Lunch discussion. We took a group to hear the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson (Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire) speak at Benton Chapel on campus and then retired to Panera Bread to have lunch and discuss the talk. I might post more extensive comments on the talk in a later post, but I wanted to share some of the pictures that I took at the lecture and then at the lunch afterward.

Saturday night: GCF Game Night! We had dinner together and then played Pit, Go Fish, I Doubt It (think B.S.), and the Great Dalmuti. We got to meet new students and were joined by some friends from NW Arkansas. The pictures are hiding here.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to slowing down a little bit this week! Thanks for supporting GCF through praying and giving!

On Conspiracies

Today, I spent some time watching a movie (posted here) that explains how 9/11 was not ultimately planned and executed by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists but by the lease holders of the WTC somehow sponsored by the U.S. Government. It is a wickedly interesting conspiracy theory that makes a haunting amount of sense.

Until, I think, one hears the 'other side' of the story as told by Popular Mechanics. I listened to their podcast that aired around the time their book Debunking 9/11 Myths hit the market. While there are always ways to wrap rebuttals back into the tight circle of the conspiracy (see the comments on the podcast), I feel they answer some of the biggest questions that the original movie raised.

That said, one thing struck me about the whole affair. At the end of a movie that implicates people in orchestrating a conspiracy to murder thousands in order to either make money or gain grounds for launching an attack on the Middle East, the question arises naturally, "Who would do such a thing?" I think that is one of the psychological effects of conspiracy theories, that we feel better about ourselves because we believe we could never do any such thing.

As Christians, however, we must stand back. One point of the Christian doctrine of sin is that, all other things being equal, every human being is capable, in and of themselves, of committing any sin. It is only by God's free grace that the majority of people in the world are born into circumstances in which they are not able to commit vast and damaging sins (only those petty sins that destroy the lives in their immediate vicinity). The result is that, if there really was a vast American conspiracy to destroy the WTC and attack the Pentagon, if you or I were put into the same situation as the conspirators, only the grace of God would keep us from making the same decisions they did.

St. Paul, talking to the first century conspiracy theorists who were concerned about the inclusion of the Gentiles, put it something like this: For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God... (Ro 3:22-23). The Jews felt righteous because they kept the Torah better than the Gentiles. How sinful we must be to gravitate to gigantic theories that maximize others' sinfulness in order to minimize our own.

2007-2008 Program Budget

Tonight, I'm hosting a fundraising dessert for the Graduate Christian Fellowship at Vanderbilt University. I'll be sharing with them GCF's program budget for the upcoming academic year. I wanted to post it here and ask you to consider partnering with GCF to see grad students and faculty transformed, campuses renewed, and world-changers developed in and through the good news of Jesus Christ. The budget itself is broken down by each of our Four Commitments: Spiritual Formation, Community, Evangelism & Service, and the Integration of Faith, Learning, & Practice.

SPIRITUAL FORMATION Our Commitment: Our desire to help graduate students integrate their lives under the Lordship of Christ begins with our commitment to Spiritual Formation. We believe that with the faithful practice of individual and corporate disciplines like prayer and Scripture study, students’ lives are transformed to continually express a growing faith, love and dependence upon God. Our Projects: Regular Prayer Meetings Total Project Goal: $3,000 Fall Retreat Total Project Goal: $3,500 Sponsor a day: $1,750 One-on-One Ministry Total Project Goal: $9,300 Sponsor Student Coffees: $300 Sponsor Student Lunches: $600 Sponsor a semester: $4,650 Small Groups Total Project Goal: $16,200 Buy Books for a Small Group: $500 Sponsor a Small Group: $1,500 Sponsor a semester of small groups: $8,100 COMMUNITY Our Commitment: We want grad students to know what it is like to participate in a transformative community that has experience with their specific struggles and also spurs them along to faithful stewardship and academic excellence. Our Projects: Annual Kickoff Picnic Total Project Goal: $700 Community Events Total Project Goal: $4,000 Sponsor a community event: $500 Sponsor a semester: $2,000 Large Group Total Project Goal: $5,000 Buy food for a large group: $150 Sponsor a large group: $650 Sponsor a semester: $2,500 EVANGELISM & SERVICE Our Commitment: Spiritual Formation happens in Communities directed towards Evangelism & Service. GCF is committed to publicly displaying the person and work of Jesus Christ both in word and deed through public forums, practical service, and intentional evangelism. We want to see our campus renewed. Our Projects: Neighborhood Work Projects Total Project Goal: $2,000 Sponsor a project: $250 Sponsor a semester: $1,000 Faculty Dinner Total Project Goal: $4,200 Sponsor a Dinner: $2,100 Underwrite the project: $4,200 Veritas Forum Total Project Goal: $16,200 Sponsorship: $2,000 Leadership Gift: $7,500 INTEGRATION OF FAITH, LEARNING, AND PRACTICE Our Commitment: The Integration of Faith, Learning, and Practice points to the truth that Jesus is Lord of every part of human life. We seek the truth about God and His world through critical reflection, open conversation, and challenging dialogue, and in so doing pray a world-changing prayer, “Thy Kingdom come….” Our Projects: Food for Thought Total Project Goal: $3,200 Sponsor a meeting: $275 Sponsor a semester: $1,600 Sponsor the year: $3,200 Social Sciences and Humanities Discussion Group Total Project Goal: $3,000 Sponsor a meeting: $375 Sponsor a semester: $1,500 Sponsor the year: $3,000 PARTNERING IN MINISTRY Projected Budget $70,300 To-Date Committed Support $25,000 Dollars Needed $45,250 To reach this goal, Graduate Christian Fellowship is seeking: Leadership Gifts ($5,000-$25,000 yearly) Examples: $24,000 yearly ($2,000/mo) $12,000 yearly ($1,000/mo) $9,000 yearly ($750/mo) $6,000 yearly ($500/mo) Major Gifts ($1,000-$4,999 yearly) Examples: $3,000 yearly ($250/mo) $2,400 yearly ($200/mo) $1,800 yearly ($150/mo) $1,200 yearly ($100/mo) Sustaining Gifts (under $1,000 yearly) Examples: $900 yearly ($75/mo) $600 yearly ($50/mo) $300 yearly ($25/mo) Please consider partnering with us to see students and faculty transformed, campuses renewed, and world-changers developed to the glory of God.

Graduate Christian Fellowship on Facebook

If you use Facebook, take a minute to visit our new Graduate Christian Fellowship Facebook group page. We're already starting to get members, and I'm meeting all kinds of new people who are interested in GCF. Join the group if you'd like to get invitations to our events!

The Fall into Prada

This Saturday, GCF hosted a movie night in which we watched The Devil Wears Prada and discussed it in relationship to the Bible's Fall-into-Sin narrative. The pictures are still hiding on the digital camera, but I thought I'd share some thoughts anyway.

The second time through Devil was still enjoyable. I really appreciate the movie on a lot of levels, not least of which is that it stars Meryl Streep as an evil, evil lady in high heels, the editor-in-chief of Runway, the premier American fashion magazine.

As Adam and Eve were tempted and fell into sin, so is Anne Hathaway's character tempted and falls into fashion. The main difference? In the Bible, the Fall is followed by the Curse. For the world, the Fall is just a coming of age story. Part of Christianity is the idea that we lost something irretrievable when sin entered the world. For Ms. Anne, whatever was lost is worth it in comparison with the gain.

The movie itself is worth renting for a priceless scene in which Streep chastises Hathaway for believing that her choices somehow exempt her from the fashion industry. "What you don't realize is that sweater you're wearing is not blue, it's cerullion," she says, explaining that the 'blue' sweater actually started in one fashion designer's coterie before being copied by other designers and then filtering it's way down through the department stores into the bargain bin where Hathaway's character discovered it. "What you don't realize is that you didn't choose that sweater. It was chosen for you...by the people in this room."

And it is the same way with Sin with which we are always already entangled; it was chosen for us by our parents so long ago.

Thank God for Jesus Christ.