The bluehavens

I just noticed that somewhere in the past I must have accidentally deleted all comments when I thought I was just deleting the spam. My apologies to everyone whose comments I deleted.

You know something’s wrong when you can’t tell the difference between obscene spam and a sermon series. (Warning: click on that only if you want to be outraged.)

or not.

Science fiction once again proves that it is not so future oriented as expected.

Oklahoma resolution 1089, telling the feds to mind their own business. We need more like this. Much more.

From his Web site:

As we think seriously about contextualizing the message of the Bible, let’s remember that we must also labor to bring about, in the minds of our listeners, conceptual categories that may be missing from their mental framework. If we only use the thought structures they already have, some crucial biblical truths will remain unintelligible, no matter how much contextualizing we do. This work of concept creation is harder than contextualization, but just as important.

I would say that he has hit the nail on the head, finding the spot where contextualizers fail miserably. Instead of creating new concepts, they dummy down what they have — the precious Word — so that their audience can ‘relate.’

Thinking more on ‘contextualization’:

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned by all those who advocate using ‘rough’ language under the pretext of ‘contextualization’ is a discussion of the actual speech acts which they want to ‘contextualize.’ That is, what they’re missing/neglecting is that speech acts have a context of their own. This is so obvious, I feel almost silly mentioning it, but as I said, I haven’t seen it dealt with by ‘contextualizers.’

What contextualizers tend to focus on is the audience, which is only one part of context. When I speak to my kids, I speak in one way, but when I speak to my wife, I speak in another way. Only in joking would I use ‘baby speech’ at work, and never would I use baby speech when in a meeting with a provost or vice president or high-level director. (As an aside, in one of the faculty councils I work with, one of the faculty couldn’t think of a good way to describe a proposal. He fumbled about and finally spat out, “It’s too loosey-goosey!” We all laughed, because (a) we understood what he meant and (b) it wasn’t the appropriate term for the audience. Were it not for contextualization, we would not have laughed.)

But what they forget is that speech acts themselves have inherent contexts. A presidential speech has a context. Remember Ross Perot and his charts? People chuckled because he brought one context (the corporate board meeting) into another context (presidential candidate stumping).

Or take the example of teaching: at work, I conduct training sessions on some of our Web services. The context demands from me a particular way of speaking. I don’t go into immense detail on the philosophy of what the service is about — I merely tell my ‘class’ how to use the site. To go into the philosophy of why we constructed the site the way we did would be inappropriate because it is not paying attention to the context of the gathering.

Likewise, sermons. If you read sermons from the history of the church, no matter what era you are reading, even though there are different cultural expectations being met, there is always a commonality in the speech act. That commonality is a reverence and respect for the Word of God and a seriousness with the topic.

Look at the sermon exemplar we have in the Gospels, the Sermon on the Mount. In it, we have hyperbole which results in some humorous images — I’m sure the listeners might have smirked when the image of the plank in one’s eye was given — but nowhere do we see Christ cracking jokes in order to make a ‘connection’ with his audience. Nor do we see him descending here into scatalogical language for the sake of ‘making a point.’ Yes, Paul used such in his writings, but that is a different speech act. To compare the speech act of a sermon with that of an epistle is to compare apples and oranges.

And I’m afraid that’s very much what the pro ‘contextualizers’ do. They look for any reference in Scripture that supports what they want to do and then say, “A ha! See?!? Christ made a joke! Therefore, making the sermon into a stand-up comedy routine is just contextualization like Christ did!” or “Hey! Paul used scatalogical language! Therefore, infusing the sermon with very earthy language is just contextualization like Paul did!” The darling child of contextualizers is the ’sermon’ on Mars Hill in Acts 17. My reason for the scare quotes is that the sermon there is not a sermon to a bunch of believers (as one should find being given to a local body on a Sunday), so we have to be careful in the comparison — something that contextualizers don’t do.

In Acts 17, we see Paul making references to the culture around him. No one argues with that. Let me repeat that: no one argues with that. That is not the issue at hand. The issue at hand is that contextualizers don’t pay attention to the different natures of speech acts. They confuse stand-up comedy with preaching; they bring crass language into a speech act that we don’t see having such language in Scripture.

OK, enough of that for today. Just a few thoughts that were brewing in my mind.

Abraham Piper, on the Desiring God blog, just posted six reasons why pastors should blog. I’ve been blessed more by John Piper’s Desiring God ministry than probably any other parachurch ministry, but I find I must disagree with the younger Mr. Piper’s 6th point, which is that pastor’s should blog “to be known.” He expands:

This is where I see the greatest advantage for blogging pastors.

Your people hear you teach a lot; it’s probably the main way that most of them know you. You preach on Sundays, teach on Wednesdays, give messages at weddings, funerals, youth events, retreats, etc.

This is good—it’s your job. But it’s not all you are. Not that you need to be told this, but you are far more than your ideas. Ideas are a crucial part of your identity, but still just a part.

You’re a husband and a father. You’re some people’s friend and other people’s enemy. Maybe you love the Nittany Lions. Maybe you hate fruity salad. Maybe you struggle to pray. Maybe listening to the kids’ choir last weekend was—to your surprise—the most moving worship experience you’ve ever had.

Does this strike anyone else as odd? It seems to me that the weight of Scripture shows that we are to emulate our pastors by their behavior and action. We are to imitate our pastors as they imitate Christ. (1 Thess 1:16, 1 Thess 2:14, 2 Thess 3:7ff, Heb 6:12, Heb 13:7, 1 Cor 4:16, 1 Cor 11:1, Php 3:17) Indeed, this was not a small thing for Paul; from the weight of these verses we can see that Paul felt that a spiritual leader led in no small part through being a model of Godly and Christ-like behavior.

I’m not against blogging (obviously), but the younger Mr. Piper’s reasoning strikes me as odd; he seems to be making the argument that a blog is to be used as a tool for a pastor’s flock to get to know him. Now, it is possible to get to know someone in part through a blog, but it seems to me that the younger Mr. Piper is putting more weight on the ability for us to know a shepherd of God’s flock through a blog than would allow for the flock to truly ‘know’ the pastor. Indeed, is this not an indication of just how watered-down our idea of ‘knowing’ people is these days?

God gave us bodies, and unless we fall into some gnostic heresy, we have to recognize that we know people mostly through incarnational living: that is, through living one with another. Read the New Testament and notice how many times we are told to love our brothers and sisters in Christ by doing things one to another. While some of these can be done long-distance, most of them require physical presence to be fully realized. Likewise, we can see our shepherds and their Godly behavior through writing (recall: I’ve benefited greatly through John Piper’s ministry and his Godly behavior, although I’ve never met him), but it is through walking with them, living with them, that we learn more how to be Godly and Christ-like. If you have to blog in order for your flock to get to know you, something has gone radically wrong, and your ministry has moved from being that of a pastor and shepherd to something extra-church.

Indeed, as an editor and writer, I’m well aware that writing allows you to create a barrier between yourself and your reader. I may (or may not!) sound very erudite and eloquent here, but those who know me personally, who have met me and spent time with me, know that I talk a lot, but when I get down to serious matters, I start to hesitate, to pick my words carefully. But in writing, I can present a persona that is not entirely me. I’ve seen that with blogging pastors as well. And how often have we seen flame wars erupt in online forums because people have identified motives in the written words where such motive was not in the heart of the writer?

I hope I’m misinterpreting the younger Mr. Piper. I hope that what he really meant was that blogging is only a small tool for allowing the flock to be able to imitate its shepherds, but the way he phrased it makes me think otherwise.

This weekend at church was the last at the church’s campus, but also was the first at our new location, just a couple miles up the road.

Sunday morning we had a ‘farewell’ service for the old campus, with an excellent sermon by the pastor about the positive aspects of sacrifice, based on Hebrews 13. We are to offer a sacrifice of praise, etc. Very moving. Then we celebrated the Lord’s Supper (the first time we’ve done it at the new church). Then, in the evening, we had an ‘orientation’ meeting at the new location, which is another church we’re renting in the evenings. Lovely location, nice building. It was great to see the entire body (except for one person who was sick, and two of the older people who couldn’t make it) show up as a body to approve this move.

Part of that service was a report about the church’s financial position. As with most small churches, the costs of running a church with a full-time pastor are more than the tithing can support (hence why we sold the building). What was very refreshing was how honest and open the financial information was. The elder that did the reporting gave us exact numbers. How refreshing from our prior church, which talked alot about openness and honesty, but never gave actual numbers and would create budgets out of step with giving, and then tell the members they’re sinning when giving didn’t meet budget, even when giving was up from the previous year.

Speaking of the previous church, I see that they’re making the promised push to have members reaffirm their membership. (I’ll ignore the fact that this begs the question why leadership needs to do this if they’re in touch with their members.) What’s missing from the Web site detailing this process is any mention of the fact that members have to affirm the by-laws. The by-laws, however, are what caused the recent eviction of two elders (who stood in the way of the lead pastor getting them approved) and the exodus of many long-time members from the church. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Still, I’m rejoicing at the improvement I’m seeing in my family now that we’re at a healthy church once again. Praise God!

I’d like to report that the sermon this Sunday at church really stirred me. Unfortunately, I can’t report that, not because the sermon may have been bad, but because I had the hardest time paying attention, due to a two-year old kicking me incessantly during the sermon. I was in and out with her throughout the service. But my wife and oldest son both said it was a good sermon, and I’m sure it was.

One thing I did notice, though, was that the pastor cataloged a number of the sins that separate one from God. (Yes, I know all of them do, but he was cataloging just some of them: don’t misread me, please.) He was very careful when speaking of sexual sin: he didn’t descend into any lurid or scatological talk in talking of the sin. As a matter of fact, he called it ‘immoral behavior.’ Oh, what a fresh change from the past three years!

The latest issue of The Founders Journal has a book review of The Radical Reformission — better late than never. The reviewer does a fair job with the review, including rightly discussing how this ‘reformissional’ idea of ecclesiology is backwards: instead of bringing people to Christ and then having these new babes in Christ go to church for edification, the ‘reformissional’ idea is to make church appealing to them so that they are wooed into the kingdom. But what happens is that your preaching has to assume a high level of ignorance about sin. After all, you’re now preaching to unbelievers instead of to the bride of Christ.

Where my pastor on Sunday was able to say ‘immoral behavior’ and we all knew exactly which sins he was speaking of, the ‘reformissional’ pastor has to go into explicit detail in order to make sure his ‘congregation’ (which, I would argue, is better called an audience) understands what sins he is referencing. Instead of a sermon that focuses more rightly on Christ, you get one that focuses on sin, sin, sin, going into detail that detracts from Him Who saves us from the sin.

So, it was wonderful to be reminded of our need to be holy without the sermon being all about how sinful we are. The sermon (what I heard of it — note to self: always remember to bring the crayons…) was about Christ and what His death did for us. Like I said: refreshing.

From Dorothy L. Sayers:

It is the dogma that is the drama—not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death—but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world, lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to the heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something that man might be glad to believe.

(HT: James Kushiner at MereComments)