Question #2...

Some time back a member of one of my former congregations submitted the following questions to me and asked that I respond. This person said that these are the kinds of questions that they are regularly asked about the Christian faith. My assumption is that all of us hear these kinds of questions from time to time, so I want to share both the questions and my brief answers with you. The answers are not entirely complete because the issues that were raised are complicated and require a certain amount of background in Biblical/Christian concepts that not everyone has. Let’s just say that it’s a start.

Question 2: Do I have to give so much money?  Seems the Church just wants money.  I’ve watched TV ministries and they always turn to asking for money.

We don’t actually have to give any money but we would hope that you would want to.

We are being asked to love God for what he has done for us, trust God with our lives and then learn to care about the people who live with us in the world.  

We are supposed to give because we are thankful for what God has done for us. If we know that Jesus died for us and purchased our salvation (salvation that he offers to us as a gift) then we respond to his love for us by giving back to him. Giving of our time, talents and money is supposed to be something we do willingly and gratefully but, of course, if we don't believe that God has done anything for us then we won't be highly motivated to give anything. It's a faith issue.

The church is really an extension of this conversation. It is meant to be more than just a religious club. The church is a gathering of people who have been called by God to tell everyone about the new life that is available through trusting in Jesus. Consequently, we give to support the work of the church because we want other people to experience the joy and peace that we have experienced. If we are unwilling to support the work of the church it suggests that there is something deficient about our relationship to God. It's a faith issue.

The simplest way to explain it is to say that Jesus gave his life for us and we are trying to gratefully give our lives back to him. Giving is good for us and our sacrifices are supposed to make a difference in the world. It is a faith issue.

Television ministries are hugely expensive to produce and broadcast and so they need a huge influx of cash just to keep their programs on the air.  Many of them have carried such a large financial burden that they end up spending too much time asking for money.  Many churches are in a similar spot. They have large buildings and large capital expenses and feel pressured to encourage their membership to remember to give.  I think we could say that most of these ministries are well intentioned but each ministry should be evaluated by how much they are doing to make a difference in the world. Think about it.

The Conversation Continues...

Some time back a member of one of my former congregations submitted the following questions to me and asked that I respond. This person said that these are the kinds of questions that they are regularly asked about the Christian faith. My assumption is that all of us hear these kinds of questions from time to time, so I want to share both the questions and my brief answers with you. The answers are not entirely complete because the issues that were raised are complicated and require a certain amount of background in Biblical/Christian concepts that not everyone has. Let’s just say that it’s a start.

1. Why are there bad things in this world if God is such a caring, loving God?

We live in a broken world…nothing is the way God created it (or intended it to be) including the people who populate the world.  There are things that we call “bad” (like natural disasters) that are really “neutral” (not bad or good.)  They are a consequence of what we know as “natural law.”  There are rules that govern the way the world works and sometimes we can be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Why would God let us be in the wrong place at the wrong time?  Because He loves us enough to give us a free will.  If we are being asked to choose to love God then we must have the freedom to choose to not love God.  If we are being called to trust God then we must have the freedom to not trust God.  If God were to step in every time we made a poor decision then he would (in effect) take away our right to choose.

In the same way, our freedom to choose to do right means that we have the freedom to do wrong and much of the suffering that we see in the world is a direct result of people choosing to do the wrong thing.  Our greed and our hatred create indescribable suffering in the world.  It is our fault.  God came to the world (in the presence of Jesus) to change us and consequently change the world.

The conversation continues...

The End of the World As We Know It

I was driving home from La Crosse this afternoon and listening to the radio as I rode along. The news of the day appeared to be a prediction that the Rapture will take place tomorrow and the world “as we know it” will come to an end.

When I got home I opened up my Facebook page to see what was happening in my very limited social network and I found my page spattered with more satirical comments about this same end-of-the-world event.

Now, let me state right up front that I don’t believe the Rapture will take place tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. It wouldn’t bother me if it did, but I don’t honestly think that this is going to be that moment.

What bothered me were all of the comments being made by people who had no idea what they were talking about and how quickly and easily they seem to transfer these “rapture” people into the world of the mentally deranged. Let me say again, I don’t believe that tomorrow you will have to worry about people being swept away into heaven but you will have to live in a world where there are people who believe in things that you might think are crazy. These people (just like the rest of us) deserve a bit of sympathy and a little bit of understanding.

The other thing that was running through my head was the larger context of my travels to and from La Crosse. This past week my father-in-law (one of those people whom we should all aspire to be like) struggled and died in a hospital bed surrounded by his family. The rest of this week has been tied up in preparing for and participating in a celebration of his life. As I was on the road today it came to me, that tomorrow may not be the end of this world for everyone but it will surely be the end of this world for someone and maybe instead of spending our time making fun of people who are apparently prepared to leave this world maybe we should think about making those same kinds of preparations in our own lives.

Like I said, I don’t expect to be swept up into the clouds to meet Jesus tomorrow, but I am ready to meet Jesus tomorrow and there is a significant part of me that is looking forward to that event whenever or however it happens. Maybe tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. we should pause and say a little prayer for that person whose life in this world is ending at 6:00 p.m. tomorrow. It wouldn't hurt.

Knowing The God I Love

I have lots of friends from my childhood who share a very special spot in my heart. Some of them I haven’t seen for years (or even decades) and yet I still consider them friends.

What’s ironic about this is that if you asked me about what they’ve done or where they’ve been or about what excites them about life I would have to say, “I don’t really know.” If we got together today we would spend most of our time talking and laughing about things we did forty years ago.

These are people that I am more comfortable talking about in the past tense. I still think fondly of them but I can’t really say that I know them anymore. We have spent too much time apart.

There are many people who would have to describe their relationship with God in a similar way. They know about God and they have memories of events or celebrations that focused on God but if you asked them to talk about what God is like or what God desires they would be lost. For many people Easter is one of those moments that is more about memories of celebrations past than it is about a present, living savior.

This is a critical discussion for those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus because we are called to be His witnesses. It is our job to share with the world what God is like and share what we know to be the Good News of forgiveness and eternal life. But, in order for this to happen we need to know the God we represent. This means we need to be serious about all of those ancient Christian disciplines like Bible study, prayer, meditation and worship.

Many people have been raised believing that these holy practices are akin to spiritual caster oil; unpleasant concoctions that are somehow supposed to be good for us but we want to keep at arms length.

What people need to understand (believers and the simply curious) is that these Christian practices are actually more like bridges that bring us closer to the God who came close to us in order to draw us close to Him.

This image is built into the messages of all of our special days. At Christmas God became a human being. He got close. At Easter Jesus invited us to share in His death so that we could share in His life. He invited us close. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit came to fill us with His presence and to write God’s laws on our hearts. He came even closer.

Worship is the thankful celebration of this ongoing relationship. This is what being Christian is all about.

What's A Congregation Worth?

A recent Christianity Today article attempted to answer the question, “What’s a congregation worth?” The underlying question was, “Does a church’s tax exempt status outweigh the economic value it adds to its community?”

The researcher, a man by the name of Ram Cnaan, who describes himself as “nonreligious”, estimated the monetary value of an urban congregation at $476,663.24 annually. Included in that number are things like money spent in the community for goods and services, time spent helping to keep families together, educational services, volunteer time, employment services and even crime prevention.

For a number of years, there has been a growing perception that churches have become irrelevant, that we have nothing meaningful to say and that we have become a drain on society. It is encouraging to me that someone is taking time to try to put a value on what churches do.

But, from my perspective churches have (or I should say “should have”) a lot more value that ends up going unnoticed simply because it can’t be quantified in dollars and cents.

How many people can be touched by one person who takes their eyes off of personal gain and begins to try to love their neighbor as they love themselves? How many kind words will one person speak in a lifetime? How many times will that person pat someone on the back or treat someone like they really matter and how will the person who has been touched find their life changed? How is the world a better place because one person understood what Jesus did for them and then tried to live their life sacrificially?

Think of the impact of one faithful person and then multiply that one person by twenty or a hundred. What is the impact of a congregation on the community in which they live? This may be the place where the word “priceless” truly applies.

People who see the church as simply a building or as a social gathering are missing the point. In New Testament Greek the word for church is “ecclesia” which means “those who are called.” We are supposed to be those who have been called out of the world to represent and serve Jesus every day. I think the question that the churched and the un-churched alike should be asking is, “How much impact does the ecclesia have on the community in which they live?”

If we, the followers of Jesus, aren’t making our new life in Christ real every day then there is something radically wrong with our relationship to Jesus. If we, who claim the name of Jesus, aren’t continually thinking about how we might love the Lord our God and how we might love our neighbors as ourselves (and then doing all we can to make that real) then we might want to think again about claiming to represent Jesus.

Asking what a congregation is worth is an interesting sociological study, but the question that might have more meaning is the one we ask ourselves. What difference does it make that I am a follower of Jesus?

An Ash Wednesday Reflection

Psalm 51, the assigned text for Ash Wednesday, is a confessional of sorts. The back-story goes like this: King David had decided to take another man’s wife (something you can do when you are the King.) and in so doing he had sinned against God, against his people and against another man’s family and like any sin there were consequences to his actions.

In this case David’s deception and infidelity, lead to a murder and a stillborn child. God saw the entire thing unfold and he sent Nathan, the prophet, to remind David that what he had done hadn’t gone unnoticed.

The one character trait that David had which made him “great” and a “man after God’s own heart” was that he was able to recognized his failure and turn in the right direction. Psalm 51 may be described as David’s journey back to God and it outlines for us some of the critical steps on that journey.

It began with confession:
“1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.”

This is how OUR journey toward God begins. We have to be able to see ourselves as we really are, realize the physical and spiritual consequences of our brokenness and then be willing to let God work in our lives to heal us. Until we understand our need for God’s forgiveness we will never look for him or lean on him. We need to recognize our need before we will begin our journey in his direction.

This may be one of the great challenges of the Lenten season. We are supposed to use this time to remember who we are and what our need really is. We are supposed to give more time to building our relationship with this Jesus who was willing to sacrifice his life for us and then surrender more of our lives to his control.

But, for the most part, we have made Lent into a time when we give up unimportant things for no apparent reason and we have made a day that was set aside for us to sweep out all of the excess in our lives and prepare ourselves for this time of penitence into one of the largest hedonistic celebrations in the entire calendar year.

We are supposed to be learning to live humble and sacrificial lives by allowing God to give us a new heart and new desire to be like him. Like David said,

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

This isn’t magic. We are not attempting to manipulate God into giving us what we want. We can’t expect that ashes on our foreheads or a cross in our pockets will somehow make us different. We must come with a sincere desire to be made new and a willingness to surrender everything we have to God’s control.

And if this is done right (if our journey actually takes us into the presence of the living God) then we should see a change in our lives and it should be natural to us to want to share what we have found. Like David said,

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

And if God is making us new then it should be expressed in thanksgiving. Like David said,

15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.

So, psalm 51 is for all of us who have found ourselves on the wrong end of the stick. If we are looking for healing then at some point we have to be willing to take our first step in God’s direction. Lent was meant to be that first step.

The Ash Wednesday ashes are a temporary reminder of our weakness and a testimony to our need for God’s forgiveness. The way we live our lives is meant to be an on-going testimonial to a Jesus who lives today and makes a difference in the lives of ordinary people like you and me. As David learned,

17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

These Are Uncomfortable Times

For the last week I’ve spent time sitting in front of my TV watching the world fall apart. The list of places in turmoil just seems to get longer and longer every day: Egypt, Libya, Iran, Morocco, Bahrain, Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. It’s kind of scary. If I were an “end times” kind of theologian I would probably be busy right now writing this into my latest end of the world theory.

The problems I have with all the things I see and hear are multiple and in categories.

Some of the problems are my own.
I have a tendency to be overly analytical. You could say that I’m a big picture sort of guy. I try to see all the sides. I want to look at a problem (or an opportunity) from all angles. Part of me believes that if I we lay out all of the facts that everyone will be convinced by the obvious, make the right choices and decide to get along. I sympathize with peoples’ fears and my personality wants everyone to be happy but the world we live in doesn’t operate with those same expectations. Sometimes I am amazed with my own naïveté. My heart aches. These are uncomfortable times.

Some of the problems I see are just splashed across the screen.
I see a lot hate and anger and fear. I hear all kinds of contradictory information and when different people offer differing “facts” on the same subject there’s a pretty good chance that someone is lying. I want to believe that people are honest but what I see and hear doesn’t leave me that option. I see a lot of “the end justifies the means” behavior, which has never been my favorite philosophical model. There is a lot of hopelessness going around. These are indeed uncomfortable times.

So, what can I do? How do I help to change a world that is out of control? What should I do?
The answers (in order) are, “Nothing,” “I don’t” and “Proclaim Jesus!”

I have found myself up against this wall more times than I can count. The world is not always a friendly place, people don’t always play fair and I can’t do anything to change that. One of the reasons I am in the business I am in is because Jesus changes hearts and people need their hearts changed. It’s all right there on the screen of my TV: people needing Jesus. Jesus has a lot of work to do and so do I.