Back from Seattle

I’ve returned from the beautiful mosaic of industrial buildings, patchwork neighborhoods, dizzying roadways and clear waters of Puget Sound that is Seattle. The conference is over but my thoughts have only just begun. When I return from a conference I usually try to review what I learned and circle a few things to apply and work through. This conference has been different for me in that instead of writing down bullet point after bullet point I simply listened more for my heart instead of my head. This season I’m in has been one of deep stirrings, questions and thoughts that mostly have yet to surface. In other words, I don’t know what I’m thinking/feeling, I just know it comes from the depths of who I am.

I wouldn’t read too much into that because I can’t. Frankly, it’s another story for another time, a story whose plot has yet to materialize. There’s some cooking which still needs to be done.

However, I would say this, The Resurgence Conference was good for my soul. The theme was preaching but outside the initial message given by Mark Driscoll very little was said about preaching in my opinion. Like most conferences, the men who came to speak addressed what they wanted to address. For the most part, each did a great job! I was glad and blessed to hear what each had to say. But that wasn’t what made the conference for me. Like my last post alluded to – it focused mainly around relationships.

• I got to meet and hear men I deeply respect – C.J. Mahaney (I want to hang out with this man!), John Piper (a huge influence on my life), Mark Driscoll (I so appreciate both his boldness and sincerity).
  
• I hung out with guys I deeply appreciate – Bruce and Greg (fellow staffers and good friends), Chuck Land and Brandon Baca (sorry we missed you Tim, but Chuck and Brandon were blessings to be around), Darrin Patrick (you never know what a breakfast can turn into – here’s to hoping a partnership may be in the future by God’s grace – no matter how God lays out the future, I’m blessed to know you), and my brother Scott James (thanks for time, albeit brief, that you allowed me to have with you – seeing you made the trip for me).

The conversations, the laughs, the discussions – all of it was food for my spirit. Spending time with men like you makes the trip all worth it. It's fellowship I not only want…it’s fellowship I need. In the coming days and weeks I’ll blog more about the different things I’ve learned but I wanted to begin breaking down my experience by writing about what mattered most to me - people.

More thoughts from my trip to follow…

Old Friends, Friends, New Friends and Friends Yet To Be

This Sunday after preaching I will fly to Seattle to be a part of a preaching conference put on by The Resurgence which is a "movement that resources multiple generations to live for Jesus so that they can effectively reach their cities with the gospel by staying culturally accessible and biblically faithful" or you can simply know it as the ministry led by Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church and Acts 29 Network.

While there's no question I can improve my preaching and will learn about doing so at this conference, I'm most excited about being able to take a break from what I do, come up for air from the rigors of ministry and spend time with friends. Actually, it's the "friends" part I'm most pumped about!

I've got planned (at least on paper) to get some time with all different kinds of friends...

• Older Friends: I've got a cherished older friend named Scott who I hope to see. He's "older" not because of his age but because of how long I've known him - since college to be exact - which makes that close to twenty years (man, I am getting old). He has always inspired me with how his life has followed his mission. His mission statement? Help others while having fun. Hey, you may like the way he has decided to help others and want to help too. His job/ministry/mission is Fair Trade Sports.

• Friends: These are the guys I see and hang out with all the time. I so look forward to hanging out with Bruce and Greg who are a part of our leadership team. All of us preach at the church we serve and I can't think of any better men to do it with. I don't just like them as pastor-teachers but more so as guys who are trying to follow Jesus. They're fun and lighthearted but also serious about what's serious. If I didn't see anyone else but just hung out with them it would still be worth going. Add Chuck Land and his crew to the mix and my smile just broadens knowing these guys are coming too. Chuck (plus buddy Tim Barosh) has moved from the new friend to friend stage as time has passed and I'm very grateful for it!
  

• New Friends: This conference gives me a chance to spend some time with Darrin Patrick, a person who I'm developing a friendship with...at least as much of a friendship you can develop when you both serve as pastors at different churches. We've got a breakfast scheduled with each other during the conference, and I'll preach a couple of times at his church this summer so hopefully we'll get to know each other even more. My old college roommate attends his church and for years has prodded me to get to know DP telling me how much we are alike. So I was able to catch up with him when he came to Houston a year or so ago and was glad I followed my ex-roomie's advice. Darrin's a great guy and I look forward to hanging out with him too.

• Friends Yet To Be: This conference is put together by people who I respect and admire both pastorally and personally, so I assume that I may find many kindred spirits there among the attendees. Thus I hope God allows me to meet future friends whose company and fellowship I can enjoy for years to come as we seek to share the Gospel to the world.

Needless to say, I can't wait to leave.

May God in his grace watch over us as we leave, attend and return to our families. Amen.

Looking For The Real God

To know something like this came from a well-known secular TV show is quite amazing, adding to my wonder is how well the writers have put together a stinging indictment on the hollowness of liberal theology which seeks to give people a "one-size-fits-all" god that's not really worth following...or fearing.

(HT: Between Two Worlds)

Study the Bible? Arrrggghhhh!!!!

"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."
- Psalm 119:105 (ESV)

This past week I began a seminar on how to study the Bible. I was super excited to see we had 14 small groups sign up and attend. It didn't take long for me to get the message that this is something we definitely needed to do. As groups would huddle together to complete various exercises phrases like, "I'm stuck," "We're not sure what to do," and "Boy, this is hard," permeated the evening. Contrary to what some may think, the frustration was a good sign because it highlighted the fact that we were teaching people to use tools which maybe some, if not most, hadn't really used before - and yet these tools were for the most foundational of spiritual disciplines, the study of the Bible. In a culture that is increasingly becoming more and more post-Christian, I would think seminars like this would be essential for spiritual formation. Just another reason that frustration and learning how the study the Bible go hand-in-hand.

Bible study done well takes work. It is usually measured in long hours not short minutes. It forces us to be an active thinker instead of a passive recipient. It demands concentration, and sometimes that's a tall order for generations who've been raised by ADD television programming which pounds our brains with a thousand images a minute. Therefore, it shouldn't surprise us that struggle and difficulties arise after someone puts a passage of Scripture before us and says, "Study this text. Observe, interpret and apply what you read."

Again, the discomfort vocalized last evening only served to remind me that we're doing a good work. We're trying to get Followers of Jesus to learn to feed themselves - to cook their own food, properly handle utensils and enjoy the feast God has for them in his Word. Frankly, I know of nothing more important for a person's spiritual growth than that! So I'll lead another session Thursday night and remind myself that in helping people overcome their fears and frustrations of Bible study by giving them tools for that very work and being patient with the entire process, we're putting people in a position to receive God's grace in a way they may never have experienced before.

And that's definitely something worth working through.

Appreciating Tradition? A Lesson from Church History 101

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
-George Santayana

While I like learning history in general, the story of the church through the ages has especially captured my attention. I can remember in college taking church history courses as electives and sitting there furiously writing notes and listening as best I could, fascinated with how the church has become the church today. It always humors me when I hear others pshaw the past ignorantly celebrating the vain perception that their orthodox beliefs about God are completely self-originating. "All I believe is simply a product of the Bible and me," they proclaim as if, like a duck's feathers to water, their doctrine (and it's development) is impervious to any penetration from sources and influences outside the Scripture.

Yeah, right...and I learned reading, writing and arithmetic from Day 1 because they're so incredibly intuitive.

The truth is what we believe has been influenced greatly by those who have come before us. Dare I say, there is a place where tradition comes into play? Now before I'm raked over the coals and my Protestant card pulled, let me explain what I mean. The word tradition comes from the Latin tradit which means "to entrust" or "to hand down". It's the same word used in the Vulgate (the Latin-translated Bible) when Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:2, "...what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." In other words, "Hey Timothy, take the biblical, orthodox truth I shared with you and pass that down to others, and let those pass it down to the next generation, etc." Tradition.

And church history is really about how faithful (or at times, how faithless) the church has been at handing down the traditions begun by Jesus and the apostles. Admittedly, talking about tradition tends to bug the Protestant in me, but my adverse reaction isn't so much a response to tradition (if it's simply the biblical truth being passed down in ways the church can learn and grow from it) but traditionalism. Traditionalism celebrates the form not the function, the husk not the heart, the ceremony for ceremony sake without any justification from God's Word. Traditionalism sometimes makes tradition equal to Scripture, sometimes (in practice) over Scripture and sometimes departing from Scripture altogether. I have no stomach for traditionalism.

However, learning about tradition, at least in the 2 Timothy 2:2 sake, is something one will cherish as they study church history - how did the church keep its fidelity to Jesus and his Word throughout the centuries? The list is long of the those who faithfully carried the baton: Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Athanasius, The Cappadocian Fathers, Ambrose, Leo, Augustine and so on. These men kept to the heart of 2 Timothy 2:2 by developing the traditions for the church which would keep her faithful to Jesus and the Gospel, things such as formulations on the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and the Creeds (e.g., Nicene). These traditions were essential for the survival of a church continually attacked doctrinally from both outside and in.

Maybe that's why I see church history as so important today. Once again the Church finds herself plagued with the enemies of orthodoxy (another word for biblical fidelity). It is amazing how much is passed off as solid, evangelical teaching only to be material which takes people further away from the God and Gospel revealed in the pages of Holy Writ. What's the Church to do? I humbly suggest that a good step would be to reengage the study of church history, to reexamine the traditions handed down by the church fathers. I'd bet that most of the heretical and heterodoxical attacks we see today were dealt with by the Church well over a millennia ago. When I study early church history two things impress me: first is how brilliant and exacting these men were in formulating the biblical understanding of the issues of their day. Secondly, I was blown away with how the church fathers fastidiously appealed to the Scriptures to defend and articulate their position - which is a good thing if you're arguing for orthodoxy!

Now that's a tradition I can get behind.

P.S. - The genesis of this post comes from my completion last week of a wonderful little book on the history of the early church by Stephen J. Nichols entitled For Us and for Our Salvation: The Doctrine of Christ in the Early Church. I highly recommend it for those who want a brief glimpse into what was going on in the Church during first four centuries after the apostles had passed away...and passed down their traditions. So take a chance and temporarily set aside a book enjoying its 15 minutes of evangelical fame for the story of those whose writings will demonstrate their relevance long after others have been forgotten.