outside is better

Reading together

Over the last month or so, I have been drumming up folks to read scripture together in the new year. Last week, John Meunier also mentioned reading Wesley's Standard 52 through the year and some people expressed interest in doing so together.

I like reading with people, even if our only connection is via the internet. To facilitate greater interaction, I started two simple little blogs for both projects. They will be tweaked out in greater measure over the next few days, but if you are interested in either project, consider joining and contributing to them sites.

Let's walk this journey together!

standard52.tumblr.com

90daybible.tumblr.com

 

Contemporary Communion in Advent

This Christmas Eve we are having communion together in my congregation. I pastor and lead the contemporary service at my church and over the last few months we have used the more formal Great Thanksgiving liturgy in the United Methodist Hymnal. Due to both time and the fact I we have been pretty high church lately, I decided to use a less formal approach to communion for Christmas Eve.

The tension revolves in the sacramental conviction I have as a Methodist pastor to keep communion in line with the greater tradition of the Church. Specific words do not matter, but the greater story does. I wanted to find something brief but strong and would fit well within our service.

This Advent, my secret weapon for a few special services as been the A Christmas Sourcebook. I found this while in seminary and it has proven its worth several times over. It has plenty small bits that work well in Advent and Christmas services. It is a must buy for worship designers.

Below is what I am using to tell the story of Christ during our communion time. You can find it on pg. 23 of the sourcebook.

The grace of God has appeared, ordering salvation to all men and women. It trains us to reject the godless ways and worldly desires and live temperately, justly and devoutly in this age as we await our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of the great God and of our Savior Christ Jesus. It was he who sacrificed himself for us, to redeem us from all unrighteousness and to cleanse for himself a people of his own, eager to do what is right.

I wanted to share this great resource with you. Buy it and be ready for next Advent season.

Night Moves

I am a night owl. I have never slept that much. As a child, it drove my sleep enthusiastic parents up the wall. In college I was able to fully sculpt my sleep schedule. I normally don't wind down until well after midnight and I can be up fairly early in the morning. All in all, I need about 5 hrs to function as a responsible adult.

When I was younger, these late nights would haunt me. I would be by myself and could get easily absorbed in my own thoughts. If I was ever struggling with depression, it would manifest itself during these hours. Being by myself and wide awake at 3 am wasn't a good thing. I routinely would pull all nighters just because my head would keep reminding me of situations where I felt inadequate.

It was during a time of counseling I had someone actually mention that I might not need to force myself to sleep. It was at that time I heard the classic christian reflective phrase "redeem the time." John Wesley even wrote a sermon about it, number 93 titled "On Redeeming the Time." It was the same wise counsel who suggested I begin patterns of devotion late at night, in prayer asking for the Father to heal my mind and bring me to a greater life of holiness. Looking back now, that was just part of my prevenient Methodist training.

For the last 10 years or so I have patterned my devotional life around my late nights. The wife goes to bed early, and I try to use several hours for reflective work and devotion. I read scripture, journal, pray and take care of my soul.  I spent many years of college in healing prayer at night or reading pieces of classic devotional material.

I say this to encourage you to carve out the time in life for God. If we are able to devote a couple hours a day to television or random interneting, why can we not start to build up a deep devotional life? The Christian life is rhythmic, not stop and go. How can we expect to have the abiding relationship with Christ if we are not willing to invest the time.  God doesn't desire to be our acquaintance, but our Father. How can we expect to live holy lives if we don't train ourself in the habits?

Friends-Redeem the Time

A theology of the parsonage

I live in a parsonage. That means my church owns my house and I am allowed to live there rent free as part of my compensation. Even though I grew up as a preachers kid, I have never lived in a parsonage before. I really haven't even seen them either. Most of the churches I have been around chose to sell them and provide a housing allowance.

But I live in the parsonage. My church (St. Paul's UMC) built this house before they finished building their first church building. The early meetings of the church council met in my dining room. Sunday school classes, youth, children and other groups met in the parsonage in times of growth. My study has one natural spot for a desk, and the finish on the wood floors in heavily worn where countless chairs have been. The view from the window has aided countless pastors as they prepare the word of God for this congregation.

I pray in the same places the leaders of my church have always prayed. When the residence was transferred over to the associate pastor in the more recent past, the leaders of our contemporary service have lived, studied, prayed and prepared their sermon here. The house has a very specific purpose. It serves to care for those who pastorally care for a group of people called St. Paul's.

I can't get my job out of my head. Even at home, I am constantly reminded of the group of people I am called to pastor. While that might drive some crazy, I enjoy it. Every step around my house is taken in prayer. I am remindedin every room that my doors are open and that fellowship and hospitality are built into the rhythm of each day.

I live in a parsonage....and I love it.

 

We're Moving!!!

This spring has been full of transition. The last semester of my Master of Divinity kept me occupied with many things. Taking care of denominational tasks, finishing my last classes, writing my Thesis and attending to family meant a busy spring.

But now that it is all said and done, Meredith and I are excited about transitioning to Monroe, Louisiana. I will be serving at St. Paul's United Methodist Church as the Associate Pastor. I will primarily be working with their contemporary service as well as overseeing their student ministry.

St. Paul's is a great congregation with a history in the community and a flourishing ministry in Monroe. I lived the next town over in college and am familiar with the area. I can't imagine a better situation to be going into as I head back into full time vocational ministry.

I head to annual conference next week and we move directly after that. My Louisiana bones are aching to be back at home. Moving this distance is always interesting, but these last few days in Wilmore will be bittersweet. Meredith and I have made quite a life here. We often joke that we became adults in Kentucky.

So this means the blog might shift a bit. I don't exactly know where that direction will go, but I am excited about another season of life and the holy task of pastoring the people of God.

Is Congregational Worship Necessary?

I stumbled upon this blog post tonight. The pastor is explaining why his church will disband weekly worship in favor of an extremely intense discipleship ministry and a once a month large meeting.

Some of it sounds really good. He hits the nail on the head regarding several issues. For those that have a heavy heart for missions and the justice of God his language really fits into the movement that the evangelical church has been going towards in correcting some of its inclusiveness and narcissistic ways.

 But I think this is a great example of doing all the right things completely wrong.

 

Can a church that doesn't worship truly be the church? Before you go wild on me, read the whole post. The pastor gives the idea that the actions in worship aren't formational enough to be important.

I am not saying we do away with them, but we preach and sing too much and serve and love in radical ways far too little.  The answer is not to add love on top of the sermons and songs, but to decrease the sermons and songs and increase the service and love to create a balance that looks like the life of Jesus.

John Wesley notes that good works are only possible once a vibrant and intense relationship with Christ exists in the heart of the individual. His sermon  The Almost Christian speaks about justice being evident to those who still haven't turned their hearts over to Christ. Justification by Faith  mentions that the things of love cannot truly be done in the name of Christ unless we have we have directed our own entire love to him. Finally in his sermon, The Way to the Kingdom, Wesley really develops this by explaining how our good works are only truly righteous when they spring from the inward spirit that is truly only devoted to God.

 I don't mention these things to question the faith and salvation of these folks, but to plead for worship. Hebrews 10:25..."Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching." The eschatological makeup of the Church in worship lives with the expectation of the return of Christ.

 When the worship meeting becomes an evangelical outreach only, I would agree with many of the reasons for an evaluation. But worship should never been seen as a pragmatic event to draw people in. Worship develops a ragtag group of people into an eternal priesthood. We worship because we love Jesus Christ and want to join with the church around us, before us and in front of us in praising the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Worship staunchly stands against the world and says "No!!!

Worship stands in an intense relationship with justice. The Old Testament prophets had two messages for Israel; That their worship was bad and the poor in the streets were neglected. My friend JD has mention that if injustice exists in the streets idolatry is present in the sanctuary. The two are not held in opposition or competition, but a co-eternal dance. Mission and worship are in deep cahoots with each other.

Worship develops us into a people that can face the world head on, and bring the kingdom to it. We can't participate in the missio dei without also participating in the doxo dei.

Related Posts:
Geek to Chic: brand identity as Christians
Hymnaling (and being Methodist)
What drives us in Worship?

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This was originally posted at Levite Camp, a community fostering a theological conversation on worship design.

Lent and the shock of our system

I wrote yesterday  I feel out of whack going into Lent. This has been a busy few weeks. 2 trips to Louisiana/Mississippi and another one coming up next week (heading down to do ordination stuff..even more stressful). I found out yesterday  I need to have my wisdom teeth removed before the trip. I just hope I am not driving 14 hrs while still dwelling in In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida land.

Don't worry Mom, I wouldn't do it.

But as much as my schedule is hectic and my life is seemingly turned upside down, I have to remember the way faith in Christ and patterning my life after His is a shock to the whole secular enterprise that we dwell in.

 

The downward descent into the awareness of a deep need for holiness reframes the mind more than the necessary business is ordering my life right now. Lent isn't just about the awareness of sin, but the recognizing the sharp hold that it has in our lives. Lent makes me think about sanctification and how we grow closer to God. I think part of our ongoing journey of perfection doesn't take us away from the reality of sin, but brings us closer into realizing what each of us could do if we didn't know God.

My friend Aaron always says "Each one of us has just enough hell inside to light the whole world on fire".  For me, Lent is the confrontation of sin in the midst of the redemptive life with Christ. We confront sin by the active recognition that because of justification, it no longer has a hold on our lives. The moment we tell the Devil he can't control us, we get into a fist fight with him....and the Devil brings a knife.

We need the patterns of spiritual discipline to meet this battle. Lent is a time of prayer, fasting and intense scripture. Wesley called these "the means of grace". Because of the Means...the devil looses that fight, and realizes he brought a knife to a gun fight. Jesus wins that one for us.

So this Lent, think about where you could have been at without Jesus. Jesus is what free's us...nothing else.

The song that brings so many of these emotions to me is the old hymn On Jordan's Stormy Banks. This hymn speaks of Lent and the shocking reality of Jesus Christ and our place with him.

On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wishful eye
To Canaan’s fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie.

All o’er those wide extended plains,
Shines one eternal day;
There God the Son forever reigns,
And scatters night away.

I am bound for promised land,
I am bound for promised land.
Oh who will come and go with me?
I am bound for the promised land.

No chilling winds nor poisonous breath
Can reach that healthful shore;
Sickness, sorrow, pain and death,
Are felt and feared no more.

When shall I reach that happy place,
And be forever blessed?
When shall I see my Father’s face,
And in His bosom rest?

 

Hymnaling (and being Methodist)

I lead the singing at my church a couple of times a month. It is an eclectic United Methodist congregation in a fairly sketchy part of Lexington. I love it.  Leading worship in this unique setting taught me many things. The use of the hymnal in a congregation is the biggest lesson.

Methodists are a singing bunch.  Charles Wesley's hymns form a theological foundation for our tribe. I have a good buddy doing a Ph.D in Wesley studies and we have had some interesting conversations about the role of hymns.  I took a theology of song writing and one of the projects was answering the question "Can a robust Wesleyan theology be founding soley in the hymns?".

At The Rock (my church), I usually lead from the hymnal.  It makes it easy on an older congregation.  Even our younger folk enjoy hymns, probably due to the context. They really respond to older revival songs and we have several great musicans with their own interpretation of these tunes.

Using the hymnal means changing the way I play and chart out hymns. It has also been a great devotional study, going through these hymns early in the week and preparing for worship.  The great thing about the UM Hymnal are the distinctive sections of "Prevenient Grace" and "Sanctifying and Perfecting Grace".  This is the stuff of Wesleyans.

I grew up singing out of the hymnal and even though my home church started using screens when I was in middle school (mid 90's), I still ended up with a hymnal in my hand.  As a child, I casually flipped through the hymnal during the sermon. I had my favorite hymns that I always wished we would sing. The words drew me into the song.  Hymnals are a handbook on practical theology. 

Yesterday I led a hymn I grew up singing; "Only Trust Him". It was written by an old school Methodist, John H. Stockton.  He was converted at a camp meeting in the early 1830's, and spent his life as a minister, evangelist and hymn writer.  The fourth verse really plays into some classic Methodist language....

Come then and join that holy band,
and on to glory go
To dwell in that celestial land
where joys immortal flow.

The communal language and the focus on heaven struck me.  These are favorite plays for the people called Methodist. You can say they are themes that run wild in our songs. We know we need each other and we know we have been adopted as children of God.

Using these songs and songbook isn't a reversion to traditionalism, but tradition.  Worship is contextual engagement with tradition, narrating a story about what really matters.  Through the Holy Spirit, we are gathered in the song of the Church on earth and the Church triumphant. Our song is Jesus Christ and His eternal reign. That hasn't and never will change.

The Power of Connection: Blogging as a Methodist

Over the last six months I have entered into a new phase with both blogging and how I have been using social networking.  Through the abilities of the various platforms around the web I have found myself in revolving conversations with many like minded people.

Most of us have a vague association with Asbury Seminary; either as alumni, students or serving under Pastoral staff that come from the school.  So you might think our associations are pretty obvious, but the way that we have conversations with each other and toss around ideas is pretty distinct.  What is interesting is how each of us pushes the other into the limelight through retweeting, linking to or posting on our facebook wall about what another has written.  This community isn’t formal, we have never had a sit down meeting, although I think it would be alot of fun.

As a Methodist, this type of networking is in our DNA.  John Wesley’s Oxford Methodism was thought for years to be a large group of men meeting together at once.  Only in the last few years have we found (through de-coding Charles Wesley’s diaries) that it instead was a large network of small groups that overlapped in various ways.  Each had its own focus, but they were part of the broad movement of people wanting Christian Perfection.

Some declare blogging to be dead.  I think that it has morphed several times, and to different communities it behaves differently.  As a member of the wider Wesleyan theological community, I think the idea of connection and resourcing is part of what defines blogging and social networking.  It is in our DNA.  Since we view ministry as belonging to the whole church, we don’t need to feel territorial over our areas of influence.  We want to take what others that we trust have said and pass it along to our communities.  It is a great example of communities of faith following the same structure as the New Testament being passed around as individual documents among the wider Christian Community in the 1st century.  We don't want to hold on to information that we think will help the Church, so we send our best to the next place down the road.  This isn't about being an online Rock Star but part of a community.

I know that I appreciate when others link to me, because that means that a wider group of people see what I write and think, and I know that when I continue to point my network at others I am doing the same thing...I am widening faith in the way that my tribe always has.

Thoughts on Christian perfection

I was asked to guest post last week at Weekly Wesley, a blog that my Pastor, Rev. Aaron Mansfield runs on the roots of Methodism.  I wrote on Christian perfection, and wanted to share the post with my readers here. I have edited it a bit from the original post to better suit the community here.

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“What do you mean...? Are you trying to say that it is possible to not sin?”

I remember that night well. I wrote down my account of it in my journal and refer back to it several times a year. I was at a Bible study on Romans at the Wesley Foundation at Louisiana Tech University. Surrounded by a bunch of quasi-baptists reading through the book one of the guys mentioned how it wasn’t really worth it to fight sin. The director then said “You don’t have to sin”. The response in the quote above is a summary of the confusion and amazement that we all had. For a group of 200 college misfits that spent approximately 75% of their time trying to not get drunk, smoke pot or chase the opposite sex around it was pretty mind blowing.  We were used to hearing something along the lines of "..just cowboy up and quit sinning", it was a very pragmatic pull yourself up by your bootstraps approach to holiness.

That was my first introduction to Christian Perfection. It changed my life. At that moment I understood what it really meant to be a Christian, or more precisely to understand the power that had been given to me at justification that enabled me to be a Christian. By the grace of God alone, I am now empowered to strive further and further after him.

When we look at what really moved the original Methodist movement, Christian Perfection is on the top of the list. Every organizational move was designed to better facilitate perfection. It was a huge message, most commonly directed at the hell raisers of the day, those that thought their sins were so great not even God could forgive them. When the establishment attacked John Wesley and said he was attempting to break up the Church of England he always reinforced how Anglican he was and how he encouraged the societies to remain active in their local parish. After this formal answer he usually finished up by reminding his accusers that many in the societies weren’t ever in church before and completely belonged to the Devil. Perfection was truly changing not just these people, but the social and cultural landscape of Great Britain.

And it wasn’t something that was just passing in Wesley’s mind. He really thought about the role sin had in the believer. He broke away from his Moravian friends, his spiritual mentors, because they thought sin was completely abolished in the heart at the moment of justification. Wesley understood that for sanctification to really be a process of holiness, sin was only abolished at the moment of heavenly glorification. Humans are creatures of a free will, and the nature of free will will never leave us. It is a blessing and a curse.  This means sin no longer reigns in our hearts because of Jesus Christ, but it is still there.

We are given just enough freedom to accept or reject God (prevenient grace). Because of free will, we are able make the decision to accept the grace of God and therefore adopted into his family. But because of free will we can leave this family. Because of free will, it is possible for us to be free from enslavement to sin and instead grafted into the kingdom actions of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Instead of salvation using the language of the courtroom, it uses the language of family.  Grace and the Holy Spirit are given to believers in order to push them forwards towards God.  The focus isn't upon not sinning, but growing closer in relationship to the Triune God. That is what I think really drove it hope for me.

Wesley formed his entire theology around Christian Perfection. Many of these pieces seem life changing to us now, probably because they were to John, Charles and friends in the 18th century. They taught lives of complete dedication, and what it meant to be an “Almost Christian” (read that sermon if you want to be convicted). As John put it in “A Plain Account of Christian Perfection” there is no medium between serving God and serving the Devil. Perfection is the path for all those desiring to truly know the truth as it is in Jesus Christ.

It is funny to think of battling sin to be a point of evangelism, but for that group that night it was. I can think of many people whose lives were changed because of that impromptu lesson on Christian Perfection, mine included. Perhaps we should allow perfection to enter our preaching and teaching schedules as often as we talk about popular culture. What would our churches look like then?`