The myth of safety

I heard a sermon the other day, and it started me thinking. (Isn’t that what good sermons are supposed to do?) The preacher was, among other things, encouraging us to steer clear of some of the supernatural things out there in the world (psychics, etc — it was around Halloween), and to concentrate instead on safe ways of encountering God.

The pastor encouraged us to find God in the following: salvation and baptism, growing the fruit of the Spirit, and ministering to the poor and needy. These, he described, are safe ways of finding God.

That was the term that started me thinking: safe. I started thinking back to the God-encounters folks in the Bible had, and how many of them could be described as safe. Starting from the front and working backward, I think we can agree that the apostles did not choose safety when they opted to follow Jesus. Jesus himself chose to put himself quite literally in harm’s way in order to please his Father. No one can say the life of a prophet was safe; not only was it life-threatening, but it was embarrassing to boot (Ezekiel playing with army men, then lying on his side for over a year is an example). Gideon, Moses, Abraham — all chose the unsafe way.

Before I go on, let me try to define “safe” in this context. Things are safe when the results are predictable. They are safe when others have done them first. They are safe when the welfare of our families is not threatened. And they are safe when we can stop at any moment.

So why do we play it safe? I agree that there are risks with trying to find God in the unsafe: we could have bad theology, we could encounter evil, we could look foolish, we could make mistakes. But God is asking us to take risks; He wants us to find Him in the unsafe.

Those things the preacher suggested are truly ways to encounter God, but we all too often limit ourselves to those ways, and we avoid anything that might be unsafe. Mike Yaconelli said, “We have defanged the tiger of truth. We have tamed the lion… The tragedy of modern faith is that we no longer are capable of being terrified.” I think it’s all too true, and moreover, we studiously avoid being put in a place where we could be terrified.

Let me close with a lengthier Yaconelli quote, which of course says it better than I could:

I would like to suggest that the Church become a place of terror again; a place where God continually has to tell us, “Fear not”; a place where our relationship with God is not a simple belief or a doctrine or theology, it is God’s burning presence in our lives. I am suggesting that the tame God of relevance be replaced by the God whose very presence shatters our egos into dust, burns our sin into ashes, and strips us naked to reveal the real person within. The Church needs to become a gloriously dangerous place where nothing is safe in God’s presence except us. Nothing — including our plans, our agendas, our priorities, our politics, our money, our security, our comfort, our possessions, our needs.

Pot and kettle

I saw this posting, and it reminded me that people are the same, no matter how they define themselves.

To summarize the post, this woman apparently describes herself as emerging, and is looking for a job in a “culturally relevant church”. She found a job description which seems perfect for her. (You really need to read that job description. Wonder if we could use it here….) Then she finds out that this particular community does not accept women in the lead teaching position, and watch the fur fly.

She and the folks on her blog proceed to take this church apart, in unflattering, ungenerous, and (dare I say) unChristian ways. Apparently, Ms. Pittman has already determined what an emergent, culturally-relevant church believes, and the ordination of women is on the list.

Others who respond agree with her in the most uncharitable terms, post email addresses of the church staff, predict they’ll “never emerge” (is that a goal, anyway?), and in general buffet the church for not thinking the same way they do. Sounds like something the modern churches would do.

One staff member from this church responded to the posting, trying to describe his church’s situation, but he was roundly dismissed as being disingenuous (read: lying), and the flogging went on.

If you skip down to the bottom, the third-to-last post (this morning, anyway, from Anonymous at 1:52pm) says more or less what I was thinking: this group of emergents is no different than the groups they are emerging from. In our zeal to get the world (or the church) to see our point of view and do something about it, sometimes we forget the big picture, which is to continue to look like Jesus in the midst of it.

Whether the issue is ordination of women, or incense in the service, isn’t one of the main points of the emerging discussion to “broaden the tent”, as it were, and allow more freedom of expression — not just different expressions — into the church?

What do YOU want to do?

Read this great post from Tim Schmoyer, and then think what a wonderful world it would be if your pastor asked you the question that Tim is posing.

The question, in case you didn’t bother going to the site is this (my paraphrase): “Church Volunteer, what ministry are you drawn to, and what passion is God wanting you to pursue in that area?”

After picking yourself up off the floor, you may just find your heart’s desire. I am convinced that God plants hopes and dreams for ministry into our hearts, and it’s up to us — and our church families — to draw it out, refine it, and plug it into the overall ministry of the Spirit of God in the world and in our church. Too many times we ignore or bury the desire, thinking “I guess it’s not God” or “it must be the wrong timing”. Those are, of course, the correct response for some desires, but it’s not always the response, and (quite literally) for God’s sake it shouldn’t be the default response.

One of my favorite verses is Ps. 37:4, but we ignore this! If you have been delighting yourself in the Lord (loving Him, being loved by Him), he will place desires into your heart! Yet we say, “it must be just me”, or, “I didn’t get a sign from God about it,” when it was God all along.

I was speaking with a friend of mine in the children’s ministry. I asked her to give her opinion about some directions in the children’s area that I was pondering, and her initial response was that she didn’t think much about it because the children’s area wasn’t where her interests really lay. So I probed a little and asked her what she did care about, and it was like releasing the floodgates! Ideas, hopes, and passion flowed out of her for a totally different area — but it was an area that our particular church hasn’t been addressing, so it has lain dormant. But where God has planted passion, I’m sure He is making plans to carry it out. I look forward to seeing what God has in mind for the desire He has given her.

So, ask yourself the question. What desires has God placed in your heart?

How do you measure success in Church?

There has been a recent verbal conversation I have had with several people about how to define success in a church. Is it always growth in numbers? Is it spiritual growth, but how do you measure that? It seems we get into a trap of comparison with other churches here too. They have built a new building before us or a bigger building. Or they added on before we did. And then we wonder what they are doing and what we aren’t. Do we need to copy it.

Here is a thought from my youth pastor friend in Colorado Springs. His church is in the city, so he has some more urban issues to deal with than our traditional Jo Co church. I told him about our conversation about defining success in a church and asked for his thoughts. Here they are:

“Success” in ministry is an interesting situation.
I think there are seasons in ministry. Sometimes there is incredible harvest in terms of reaching new people for Christ. This youth ministry went from 50 to 180 in about 2 years; that was right before I came. Then the realization set in that we had a lot of students who needed to be discipled; so we weren’t so worried about growing the numbers because we had to deepen and grow spiritually those students we already had. For me, just getting a student through high school can be considered a
success.

I thought the ‘seasons’ comment made perfect sense. It isn’t all about numbers, but we have to be able to recognize where we are at any given time.