Pulling a Sting

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

When he said it, not many of us really thought that much about it at first. In fact, it sounded a bit odd. We were all sitting around the Ockenga conference table—the thirteen of us as we do every month at our Pastors Roundtable—and one of our group told us very innocently that the thing that finally was bringing his congregation back to life was his fledgling little Junior High ministry.

This pastor had been racking his brain for years, trying to motivate his church toward some sense of vitality. He had given his congregation the big vision talk, followed quickly by the even bigger envisioning process, leading to the development of a vision statement. He had read all of the books. He had preached all the sermons about perishing without a vision. Nothing seemed to pry his congregation from the grips of years of lethargy. Nothing…nothing seemed to be working.

And then, out of no where, with hardly a strategy in mind and certainly beyond the scope of his own best intentions, the right volunteer couples from his little church in Maine, with the right giftedness and sincerity in their hearts, connected with the right junior high students. And it was this that brought new life as families began to be attracted to his little church. Broadsided with the simple and unintended! Imagine that; the life and vitality of a church resting on the narrow shoulders and low riding jeans of a group of adolescents. The church took off.

In subsequent conversations with this and other Pastor Roundtable groups, similar stories began to surface. In another of our New England churches whose pastor had a cup of coffee on a pro sports team, the church’s sports ministry to the community became the place of new growth and excitement for the congregation. For another pastor, it was their children’s ministry. Imagine a church whose annual summer focus on Vacation Bible School became the spark that has brought genuine excitement to the entire congregation the year round.

I wonder sometimes if we miss the forest through the trees for those of us who are committed to breathing new life into our places of ministry. With our best intentions in tow, we place five thousand pounds of vision and strategy down on a five hundred pound church. It is utterly crushing.

I admit it. I have done the same thing periodically when asked to do church consulting. Frankly, it is not that difficult to diagnose the problems within most churches. The real difficulty lies in churches having the resources and the will to respond to the solutions offered. The economics of the situation work like this: The smaller the church, the bigger the problems to be solved. But, alas, the smaller the church, the less resources there are to respond effectively to proposed solutions. The solutions sometimes almost become more onerous than the problems.

To be considered healthy, why must every church have a thriving small group ministry and thriving youth ministry and thriving evangelism ministry and thriving hospitality ministry and a thriving community outreach ministry and so on…? Rather, what if we looked at our churches more organically than systematically? It takes some investigative work, but where is the place—sometimes ever so small—of vitality in your church? Where is there evidence that God is working, and how can we come along side of that place(s) where He has decided to work uniquely in your setting? Where is the thin thread in your church that, if pulled, could unravel into whole new possibilities for your church?

I am convinced that every church has these areas, sometimes in the most surprising of places. As one pastor of a church that is filled with the currently perceived deadly demographic of elderly people told me the other day, the point of excitement currently in his church is a small group of his elderly couples that have found new excitement in their faith. The fragrance of their newfound excitement has wafted across the rest of the church. Go figure, old people and junior high kids: places where God is doing His best work in His church. There must be a God.

Thanking God for Friends from Seminary

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

They were the first couple that Marcelle and I met when we arrived at seminary back in 1982, and we quickly became the best of friends. To avoid referring to them as “they” or “them” let’s call them “Keith” and “Rebeccah”… Keith and I had many classes together and talked through all kinds of subjects. He and Rebeccah introduced us to music we hadn’t been familiar with but liked right away and that has been a part of our lives ever since. They also taught us some card games and, as poor seminary students, much of our leisure and entertainment time in seminary was spent playing cards together as two couples and talking into the night. We also went camping together (at the foot of the Maroon Bells ) and enjoyed great times of fellowship.

We wouldn’t be where we are today were it not for the influence of Keith and Rebeccah, and others like them, in our lives. Keith saw me as a seminary professor long before I could ever see myself that way. He became the president of the student body and appointed or recommended me to serve as the student representative on the seminary’s Faculty Affairs Committee, which gave me the opportunity to get to know faculty members and see how they conducted some of their business and to imagine what it might be like to be in their shoes someday. When Carl F. H. Henry came to campus it was Keith who arranged for the two of us to have a private meeting with him, during which Keith referred to me as the “theologian” of the student body. It was a title I didn’t deserve, by any means, but it reflected Keith’s perception of my gifts (and calling), one that would later be confirmed by others and within myself. To this day I don’t remember a bit of what we talked about with Dr. Henry, but I’ve never forgotten the complement paid to me by my friend and what it said about his view of my potential!

Keith has been a faithful pastor since our days in seminary. He’s now pastoring a church in Arizona. Marcelle and I just enjoyed a wonderful visit from Keith and Rebeccah. They took the time to come and spend a few days visiting and catching up with us. We walked the freedom trail in Boston, visited Salem, attended church together, discussed the Bible, theology, ethics, philosophies of ministry, ministry challenges, family issues and many other things. We also enjoyed evenings with long card games and deep conversations into the late hours. He and Rebeccah continue to be an encouragement to us and models for us of faithful ministry in both good and very challenging circumstances. I thank God for them and the roles they have played in our lives.

Do you remember particular friends from college or seminary that have encouraged you, or helped you identify your gifts or who played key roles in shaping your vision for your future ministry? Was there someone (or more than one person) without whom you don’t know how you would have gotten through, or that you feel made a significant contribution to your understanding of God’s call on your life? If you haven’t been in touch with that person for a while, or haven’t expressed your appreciation for them recently, perhaps you should think about giving them a call or writing them a note. And perhaps you might even think about planning a way to get together again for a few days to renew that friendship, and see if you don’t both benefit from the truth expressed so well in Proverbs 27:17: ^“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (NIV).

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

A big God requires that we think big. Perhaps the reason our churches aren’t thriving is because we haven’t thought big enough? Right?

So, we set big goals for ourselves and our places of ministry, our churches. BHAG—Big Hairy Audacious Goals—is the current battle cry from a couple of years ago. Big Hairy Audacious Goals for prayer: (“It’s not enough for a few people to pray. Imagine what God could do if thousands of people prayed for the same thing at the same time, preferably at the same place?”). Big Hairy Audacious Goals for evangelism: (“Pick a number, any number; how many dare we save for Christ?”) Big Audacious Hairy Goals for missions: (“Dare we strategize campaigns that would encompass whole countries, even entire continents?”). Big Hairy Audacious Goals for churches: (“Big churches require big programs and big budgets designed to bulge our imaginations”). “We receive not because we ask not.”

To drive these goals, we, of course, need a vision. A neighborhood corner store kind of vision will not do. We need a mega-store, Wal Mart-Home-Depot kind of vision. We need an expansive vision, a great vision that matches the bigness of God. Dare I say, to truly honor God, we need a vision that explores the very frontiers of God’s providence in our lives? “If there is no vision, the people perish.”

And, of course, a big vision requires a certain type of leader. Big, thick, deep voices are required to not only think and articulate big, deep, expansive thoughts, but also provide the will to see these mega-visions through to their end. Leaders need to be out front—way out in front--of their organizations, calling their people to the kind of obedience required to fulfill these big visions. We need more big daydreamers, daydreamers for God’s glory.

In the midst of all of this mega-vision casting we hear a thin small voice: “God hates visionary dreaming.” Come again? A wisp of a voice it is, indeed, almost in auditable. Have we heard him right? The logic of the words run so counter to the current orthodoxy of obedience. There it is again: “God hates visionary dreaming.”

Allow me to put the words into context. Quoting from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's, Life Together,

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Bonhoeffer's creaky, sixty-plus year old words about Christian community fall like a thud on the current evangelical landscape. They just do not add up in our current economics of obedience. The words sound downright counter-intuitive to what we know of the way God works in our lives and expects of us. But are they wrong?

Perhaps Bonhoeffer's words expose a growing theological presumption on our part, a presumption driven by a deficient understanding of who God is in the economy of His design for His world. As well intended as our big designs are on behalf of God and His Kingdom, are they not sometimes tainted ever so lightly with our own hubris? Does God need us to fulfill His Kingdom here on earth? Certainly. By an act of His grace, He has providentially written us into His grand redemptive story. But, does He really need us in the ways we often design for Him? I sometime think if God were somehow written out of the big plans we have for Him in fulfilling His Kingdom, it would take an uncomfortable amount of time for us to realize His absence. At the end of the day, our grand designs for God are wonderfully expendable.

Perhaps the net effect of our well-intended pandering for doing great things for God is that our big goals and big visions and big plans sometime overshadow the hard work of obedience. Cast our eyes back to the narrative of Scripture and Church History. What is the pattern we see? Do we really see the great imprint of God’s work in redemptive history as the product of well conceived, humanly orchestrated, BHAG plans? Not really. More times than not, God’s story is one of steadfast, obedient people being caught up and transformed by a divine plan that extends far beyond their own best intensions. It may be that God’s work is periodically manifest in dramatic fashion. More often than not, however, the work of God is an exercise in plain, hard obedience.

It is easy enough to throw out big numbers, make big promises, set a big strategy that get our juices flowing. And, we would think these are harmless. But are they? Doug Birdsall—Executive Director of Lausanne and our own Director of the J Christy Wilson Center for World Missions—has made the observation that one of the dangerous trends in the mission’s movement today involves many of the current mega-strategies going on in missions. On the surface, setting big goals for winning millions of souls for Christ appears to be the very thing that will excite our imaginations and incite our prayers. In reality, they have had the effect of diverting much needed attention and resources from the really hard work of life long missions efforts by so many faithful missions agencies.

But, finally, Bonhoeffer's words are mostly directed toward church leaders. Leadership is a delicate thing, isn’t it? Looking across the landscape of the church today, don’t we see enough examples of leadership blinded by ambition, but falsely camouflaged as faithfulness? This is not to say that Christian leaders with big, deep visions aren’t sincere, but, isn’t this the point? Sincerity is a dangerous gatekeeper to what is truthful and right. Our hearts are so vulnerable to our own self-deceptive ways.

What is the antidote to this self-deception for those of us in leadership roles in the Church? Contrary to what we would guess looking at the row upon rows of books on leadership located at not only Border’s but also our neighborhood Christian bookstore, the New Testament really speaks very little about being a good leader. There really is so little biblical evidence for the need for big visionary dreamers. The clarion call of the Gospels is all about being good followers. This is what Jesus asks of us, to be humble dreamers with enough sense to follow Him.

Through the Blistered Glass

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone. I celebrated it in our Exegesis of Revelation class by reading a bit of William Butler Yeats’ poem The Wanderings of Oisin. It recounts the tale of the Irish hero Oisin and his faery lover, with St. Patrick cast in the role of the disapproving, joy-killing Christian. The poem begins:

S. Patrick. You who are bent and bald, and blind,

With a heavy heart and a wandering mind,

Have known three centuries, poets sing,

Of dalliance with a demon thing.

Oisin. Sad to remember, sick with years,

The swift innumerable spears,

The horseman with their flowing hair,

And bowls of barley, honey, and wine,

Those merry couples dancing in tune,

And the white body that lay by mine;

But the tale, though words be lighter than air,

Must live to be old like the wandering moon.

Now by any orthodox account, Yeats was as woeful a theologian as he was wonderful a poet – and not simply because of his treatment of Patrick in the Wanderings. He was a devotee of Theosophy, a blend of Platonism, mysticism and highly doctored Buddhism that quickly degenerates into a vague, incoherent babble of Quarternaries, Triads, and something called an Etheric Double (you can read more on Yeats and Theosophy here: http://www.yeatsvision.com/Theosophy.html).

Why, then, read him in a course of Revelation? The answer is that, for all the becloudedness of his vision, Yeats still sensed or saw something, and spoke of it, in a way that often puts the church to shame. The words “the swift innumerable spears” are great poetry not only because they trip liltingly off the tongue, but because they evoke the remembrance of faded martial glory better than a thousand essays on the subject. In a much greater way Revelation, and all the apocalyptic bits of the Bible, offer us a vision of God’s kingdom that cannot be captured by staid, prosaic analysis. The seers throw us into the maelstrom of God’s grace and judgment; they set before us the horrors of the Abyss and the wonders of the New Jerusalem. They are so wild and dis-orienting we tend to avoid them altogether.

But doing so wraps a tourniquet on the church’s spiritual imagination. I have often contemplated teaching a course Horrible Protestant Fiction; I am now inclined to add another, Non-Existent Protestant Poetry. Both are exaggerations, of course; I am sure that worthy endeavors in both fields have been undertaken by the sons and daughters of the Reformation. But we Protestants do tend to be prosy proclaimers and inveterate explainers, with little patience for the ambiguity that inevitably resides in lean lines of verse. And I suspect our relative neglect of apocalyptic (aside from its utility for end of the world calculations) is a part of the problem.

We must of course reckon with the rarity of poetic genius. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and God’s scatters his creative gifts as he sees fit. As often as not they end up in what we consider the wrong hands (see our prior blog on Avatar for further evidence). We may have “acres of diamonds” at our feet, as Russell Conwell used to preach, but we don’t appear to have acres of Yeatses in our pews waiting to be furrowed. But those few who are genuinely gifted will not thrive if the church puts before them an impoverished, visionless Christianity. Preachers and teachers need to spread before their people the banquet of imagery in Revelation and Ezekiel and Daniel and Zechariah. If such texts prove rather hard to manage, that is a large part of the point: we shouldn’t want a God who fits so comfortably into our old word order that we can never move into his new one. If he does not shake us up, he can never wake us up.

Tolkien saw all this as clearly as anyone, though he did not make the connection with apocalyptic explicit, and his essay On Faery Stories remains the essential treatment of the topic. But it is fitting to end with an image, from the writer Frederick Buechner, in his book The Alphabet of Grace:

The window by the table where I work has large, old-fashioned panes with wavy places and blisters in the glass…my eyes are fixed sightlessly on the window just beyond the writing table and remain fixed there for I have no idea how long. Finally their sight returns and I see that all this time I have been looking at the window without knowing that I was looking at it. Through it there is a white picket fence across the street, and one of the blisters in the glass pane has taken an oval-shaped piece out of the fence and out of the grass beyond the fence; it looks as if there is some kind of hole in the world there, some kind of oval-shaped entrance to another world inside this world. (pp.89-90)

Are we willing to go through the blistered glass?