The Monday Morning Quarterback

Yesterday I preached on suffering, a topic that I don't particularly enjoy preaching on, but which I believe is an important one to address. To the persecuted church the topic is probably a no-brainer. But for many affluent Western churches, the understanding that suffering is part of the package is frequently absent. I noted that some believe that if we follow Jesus we will be or should be protected from affliction and suffering. Some have an implicit understanding with God that goes something like this: God if I follow you and keep the commandments and live as faithfully as I can, then I expect you [or you are obligated] to protect me from suffering.

Some preachers of the health and wealth gospel fuel this heresy. They preach the gospel that if you are sick or have suffered some financial reversal your sin or disobedience is the cause of it. I have known people with incurable diseases who have had these well-meaning but misguided people praying for them, and when they are healed the afflicted person is blamed for not having enough faith.

However, the Bible is realistic about suffering, does not try to sugarcoat it nor deny it. At least two thirds of the Psalms involve complaining, lamenting, arguing, etc. with God about affliction and God's not remedying the situation. Jesus tells us that if we follow him we can expect suffering. Jesus promises to be with us in our suffering, and minister to us through the community of faith. When he comes again suffering will be no more. But in the meantime, in the "in between times" as theologians refer to it, we can expect to suffer. We need to look to Jesus and the church to help sustain us in these times.

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Thought for the Day

God writes straight with crooked lines.
--Spanish Proverb

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Prayer for the Day

Lord, I hand over to your care, my soul and body, my prayers and my hopes, my health and my work, my life and my death, my parents and my family, my friends and my neighbours, my country and all people. Today and always.
--Lancelot Andrewes

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The Power and Beauty of Language

I find not infrequently that the diverse books that I read converge on themes or ideas that I had not anticipated. The last couple of weeks this has occurred between two books I am now reading, The Jesus Way by Eugene Peterson and Grace Is Where I Live: The Landscape of Faith & Writing by John Leax.

Both authors have tremendous respect for words and the power of words and language. Peterson, for example writes,

Words are holy--all words. But words are also vulnerable to corruption, debased into blasphemies, trivialized into gossip...Language is previous to and foundational for all that is...Words are essential and words are holy wherever and whenever we use them. Words are inherently holy regardless of their employment, whether we are making up a shopping list, making conversation with an acquaintance on a street corner, praying in the name of Jesus, asking for directions to the bus station, reading the prophet Isaiah, or writing a letter to our congress woman. We do well to reverence them, to be careful in our use of them, to be alarmed at their desecration, to take responsibility for using them accurately and prayerfully (66-67).

John Leax writes, "Language is the soil in which message grows. Poets must care about message, but they must first be stewards of language. The message is like a seed. It must fall into the ground and die before it can be born into a poem" (30).

I don't think that we consider words holy, or that we consider ourselves as stewards of language. But as I ponder these passages, I increasingly believe that we are stewards of the language whether we are poets or not. Words are holy. In this context the admonition in James about our speech makes even more sense:

This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can't tame a tongue--it's never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!
My friends, this can't go on. A spring doesn't gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it/ Apple trees don't bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don't bear apples, do they? You're not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you (3:7-12, The Message)?

Imagine what are speaking and writing would be like if we really believed that words are holy and that we are stewards of language.

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Thought for the Day

The Bible tells us that the Christian is in the world, and that there he or she must remain. Christians have not been created in order to separate themselves from, or to live aloof from, the world. When this separation is effected, it will be God's own doing, not man's...The Christian community must never be a closed body.
--Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom

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Safe and Secure

Whenever a tragedy like those students killed at Virginia Tech occurs, it shakes up my complacency. It reminds me of my own vulnerability. As a way of dealing with this sense of vulnerability I find myself imagining myself in the same situation as the victims but somehow I do something heroic or God miraculously intervenes to prevent whatever it is that makes me feel helpless and out of control.

I imagine ways that I can feel safe and secure in the face of the tragedy a response I take to be quite human. At the same time, I wonder about what are reasonable steps to take to feel safe and secure, and when are certain actions or behaviors over the top? How can I live life well in the midst of a broken world and my own vulnerability and not become obsessed with safety and security?

Alan Hirsch in the book that I recently reviewed in my blog, The Forgotten Ways, refers briefly to "middle-class culture" and aspects of it that he believes work against "authentic gospel values." The middle-class culture, he writes, has to do with an emphasis--preoccupation--with safety and security. While he acknowledges that this concern stems from a legitimate concern for the health and well-being of our children, it can and frequently does become compulsive, it works against the faith.

Ultimately we are to seek our safety and security in God. And while we might give intellectual acknowledgement to this as an abstract generalization, in the concrete reality of vulnerability and fear, we tend to look for more tangible means of feeling secure. How much security seeking is appropriate? How do we decide what actions make sense and what actions are obsessive?

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Thought for the Day

All things are beautiful because you made them, but you [God] who made everything are inexpressibly more beautiful.
--St. Augustine

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Flash Forward

This Sunday I want to continue looking at the theme "On Being Human." Especially in light of the Virginia Tech tragedy, and the tragic death of William Judge this week, I want to look at suffering and its place in the human condition. The texts I will use are I Peter 3:8-18 and Luke 24:25-27. What is your theology of suffering? What do you believe about suffering and its place not only in the world in large, but in the life of followers of Jesus?

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Thought for the Day

A Christian concerned only about himself and the church and not also, in his personal and communal Christianity, strongly and totally concerned about the world too--the world that does not know God but is loved by him and reconciled with him in Jesus Christ--would be a contradiction in terms, no matter how laudable might be his work in the innermost circle.
--Karl Barth, The Christian Life

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Grieving with Those Who Grieve

Our hearts and prayers go out to the Judge family whose son, William, suddenly collapsed and died during lacrosse practice yesterday at St. Sebastian's. The scriptures enjoin us to "weep with those who weep" (Romans 12:15) and "to bear one another's burdens" (Galatians 6:2). At this time the family, friends, and schoolmates all need our prayers and support.

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Thought for the Day

We have changed Christianity from a radical cure into a minor precaution, like something used to prevent colds, toothaches, and the like.
--Soren Kierkegaard

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Thought for the Day

I live not only in a place, but also in a story.
--John Leax, Grace Is Where I Live

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The Dignity of the Laity

I'm in the process of reading Eugene Peterson's new book, The Jesus Way, for my devotions. Like its two predecessors in his series, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places and Eat this Book, it is excellent. Early on in the book he has a section called "The Laity Myth." He states eloquently what I have long believed and am trying to communicate as a pastor.

He writes,

I have spent much of my life attempting to expose that "laity myth" for the lie that it is. Along with many colleagues, some of whom I know, most of whom I don't know personally, I have been trying to scrub the words "laity" and "layperson" of any and every hint of condescension and to recover biblical dignity, restore gospel vigor, to every random follower of Jesus.
I want Christian men and women to carry the designation layperson boldly into workplace and marketplace, home and church, without deference without apology (10-11).

I want to shout this from the housetops. The two-tiered system the professional clergy and the amateur laity is a terrible perversion of the gospel. As Peterson points out, none of the first followers of Jesus were "professionals." In fact when it comes to following Jesus, "[t]here are no experts in the company of Jesus. We are all beginners, necessarily followers, because we don't know where we are going...Not a priest or professor among the twelve men and numerous women followers" (12).

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Thought for the Day

It is in the ordinary duties and labors of life that the Christian can and should develop his spiritual union with God.
--Thomas Merton

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Prayer for the Day

Holy Wisdom, too often, I cling closer to my routine than I do to Christ. And yet, each day is filled with surprises. Each plan goes awry in some dimension, yet often, apparent mistakes turn out to be blessings. Free me, Holy Spirit, to the knowledge that what looks like chaos to me is still under your sovereign, loving, and faithful plan. Allow me to worship you in my everyday activities through flexibility, through allowing others to do things in ways different than mine, and through responding to change and disorder with laughter and love.
--The Book of Daily Prayer

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Thought for the Day

The universe is not a waif and life is not a derelict. Man is neither the lord of the universe nor even the master of his own destiny. Our life is not our own property but a possession of God. And it is this divine ownership that makes life a sacred thing.
--Abraham Joshua Heschel, I Asked for Wonder

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Religion and Science Watch

As you know, I have a keen interest in the ongoing science and religion debate going on. From time to time I like to report on interesting thoughts, articles, or books which I have come across. The last several years have seen a burst of articles and books on science, especially taken from the angle that evolutionary biology, psychology, and even neurotheology, we have cracked the human need for religion and can now safely dispose of religious faith as a relic from our prehistoric past that may have at one time been adaptive, but now is no longer useful, and certainly not true.

Op-Ed columnist David Brooks had an interesting article in the April 15, 2007 issue of the New York Times with the title, "The Age of Darwin." He was going through an old museum dedicated to human progress clearly based on the grand narrative of humankind's march from primitive to a highly developed culture. Noting that postmoderns now vociferously deny any kind of grand narratives, stories that make sense of the world, whether Christian, Muslim, Marxist, Freudian, etc.

In an interesting twist, though, he notes that while it is not explicitly presented as such, the grand narrative that really holds sway today is that of Darwin. As he notes, you can hardly pick up a magazine that does not have an article on the latest bio/neuro findings which explain why we feel or think the way we do. He writes, "According to this view, human beings, like all other creatures, are machines for passing along genetic code. We are driven primarily by a desire to perpetuate ourselves and our species...evolutionary society is built low to the ground. God may exist and may have set the process in motion, but he's not active. Evolution doesn't really lead to anything outside itself."

I encourage you to pay attention to how and where this grand narrative appears in what you encounter through TV, newspapers, magazines, blogs, the internet, conversation, etc.

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Spring and the Red Sox

OK, I admit it. I'm excited about finally seeing the sun again and looking forward to seeing it for about four days in a row even! It couldn't happen at a better time, either, with the Red Sox and Yankees playing this weekend. I am hoping that Schilling can quite A-rods hot bat and that they can take at least two out of three. Any predictions?

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Thought for the Day

Jesus was master of making the music of life--not just with wood and string, tuners and frets, but with skin and bone, smile and laughter, shout and whisper, time and space, food and drink. He invited the disciples to learn to make beautiful life-music in his secret, revolutionary kingdom-of-God way.
--Brian D. McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus

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A Few Thoughts on the VT Tragedy

I felt the last few days as though I ought to blog about the tragedy that occurred at Virginia Tech several days ago. But in a media saturated world I don't just want to add more noise to the din already occurring. Yet, not to say anything doesn't seem right either, so I will make a few brief comments.

We need to pray for everyone involved, those who lost loved ones, those who lost friends, the Virginia Tech community, and for the family of the shooter. It is another reminder of just how vulnerable we all are, and that the feeling that we are the masters of our own fate and the captain of our own ship is an illusion. We are far more vulnerable that we like to admit. As a church we need to do some serious evaluating of our own ministries and missions. What message through our lives and our speech do we bring to the world? Are we part of the problem or part of the solution? What message do we bring about evil, suffering, security, and hope?

I wonder what you are thinking about this tragedy or how it impacts you?

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Thought for the Day

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
--Albert Einstein

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Communitas, Not Community

Chapter 8 covers the last of dimension of Apostolic Genius in Alan Hirsch's book, The Forgotten Ways. He borrows communitas along with another important word, liminality, for this aspect of Apostolic Genius from anthropologist Victor Turner. Turner, who studied various rites of passage among some African people, coined the term liminality "to describe the transition process accompanying a fundamental change of state or social position" (220).

Turner observed that at times people in this liminal stated experienced disorientation, isolation, being humbled and faced real danger. If those going through the rites passed through them, they reentered society at a different level. Therefore, liminality refers to "that situation where people find themselves in an in-between, marginal state in relation to the surrounding society, a place that could involve significant danger and disorientation, but not necessarily so" (220).

Those who experienced the liminality together formed a powerful sense of togetherness and bonding forged by the their need to survive. Hirsch argues that liminality and communitas therefore are the warp and woof of apostolic Christianity which allowed them to thrive in dangerous cultures. In contrast to liminality and communitas Hirsch refers to today's churches as "huddle and cuddle" which protect them from the dangers of the world. Most Western churches, especially middle class ones, focus on safety and security which he argues ultimately leads to death. He writes, "without any real engagement with the "outside world," churches quickly become sheltered artificial environments, ecclesial fish tanks that are safeguarded from the danger and disturbances in the surrounding environment" (230).

As an example of this he notes that in New Zealand 80 percent of young people raised in Christian environments abandon their faith after the first year in college and the number is high for other Western countries as well. "In youth groups," he notes, "we entertain the kids with loud music and games and teach them variations of 'Jesus loves me this I know for the bible tells me so' and then wonder why they can't cope in the more caustic environment of the university. Talk about an artificial environment" (230).

He has a good deal more to say in this chapter, but I found his notion of liminality and communitas as applied to the church intriguing and challenging. I ask myself how this might apply to an upper middleclass church like UCC in Medfield.

This is a great book full of fresh and in many ways compelling ideas that I believe would greatly benefit our own church as we pursue the discipleship path.

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Thought for the Day

Make a game of finding something positive in every situation. Ninety-five percent of your emotions are determined by how you interpret events to yourself.
--Brian Tracy

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Thought for the Day

The task is not to find the lovable object, but to find the object before you lovable--whether given or chosen--and to be able to continue finding this one lovable, no matter how that person changes. To love is to love the person one sees.
--Soren Kierkegaard

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The Monday Morning Quarterback

In my sermon yesterday I tried to recapitulate the themes that I have addressed in the "On Being Human" series. Using Scot McKnight's terminology, I noted that we are broken or cracked icons of God. We are meant to be "images" (icon comes from the Greek work meaning "image" or "likeness") of God but because of the fall we have become broken and distorted. Jesus, the perfect icon of God, came to restore us as God's icons. Through Jesus life, death, and resurrection--all of which is God's doing--we are restored. Our part of the restoration is trusting in God's grace and making the Jesus Creed--loving God and others--the goal of our life. The way of becoming restored icons is not through trying to be perfect, but trying to make the Jesus Creed the center of our lives, and when we blow it, seeking God's forgiveness and continuing to live the Jesus Creed.

Referring to the story of Moses descending from Mt. Sinai (Exodus 34:29-35) and with his face shining as a result of his being in God's present, I noted that disciples of Jesus should "glow" with Jesus' love. The church's purpose is to "glow" in the world with God's love because of the time that we spend in God's presence.

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Thought for the Day

Yes, in the purely human world the rule is this: Seek out the help and opinion of others. Christ says: Beware of men! The majority of people are not only afraid of holding a wrong opinion, they are afraid of holding an opinion alone.
--Soren Kierkegaard,

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Prayer for the Day

Take from us, O God, all pride and vanity, all boasting and self-assertiveness, and give us the true courage that shows itself by gentleness; the true wisdom that shows itself by simplicity; and the true power that shows itself by modesty; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
--Charles Kingsley

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Thought for the Day

As long as Christians will love the Kingdom of God, and not only discuss it, they will "represent" it and signify it, in art and beauty.
--Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World

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Flash Forward

The scripture texts for Sunday are Exodus 34:29-35; II Corinthians 3:17, 18; and Mark 12:28-34. The sermon is entitled, "Icons: Broken and Restored," and I intend to pick up the series on which I have been preaching, "On Being Human." Scot McKnight refers to humans as "broken icons" of God, icons which Jesus has come to restore to full splendor; and it is this theme I want to explore.

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More Reasons Why God Doesn't Answer Prayer

Pete Greig gives more reasons why he believes that God doesn't answer prayer in chapter 8 of his book, God on Mute.

6. God's Best: Some prayers aren't answered because God has got something even better for us.
7. Motive: Some prayers (even spiritual-sounding ones) aren't answered because they are, in fact, selfishly motivated.
8. Relationship: Some prayers aren't answered because God Himself is a greater answer than the thing we are asking for and He wants to use our sense of need to draw us into a deeper relationship with Himself.
9. Free Will: Some prayers aren't answered because God will not force a person to do something that he or she does not want to do.
10. Influence: Some of our prayers aren't yet answered because they are working gradually and not as an impersonal mechanism of forced control.

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Thought for the Day

It is a tragic error to think that Jesus was telling us, as he left, to start churches, as that is understood today. From time to time starting a church may be appropriate. But his aim for us is much greater than that. He wants us to establish "beachheads" or bases of operation for the Kingdom of God wherever we are...The outward effect of this life in Christ is perpetual moral revolution, until the purpose of humanity on earth is completed.
--Dallas Willard, The Great Omission

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Thought for the Day

Every life that is preoccupied with being like others is a wasted life, a lost life.
--Soren Kierkegaard, To Will One Thing

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Apostolic Genius and Organic Systems

In chapter 7 of The Forgotten Ways, Alan Hirsch discusses the next dimension of apostolic genius, what he calls organic systems. This is a dense chapter which I found intriguing and from which I will highlight a few of what I think are the most interesting and important ideas in it.

Hirsch discovered what is called the living systems approach as a model to understand and apply to the church. He writes,

A living systems approach seeks to structure the common life of an organization around the rhythms and structures that mirror life itself. In this approach we seek to probe the nature of life, we seek to observe how living things tend to organize themselves, and then we try to emulate as closely as possible this innate capacity of living systems to develop higher levels of organization, to adapt to different conditions, and to activate latent intelligence when needed...(p. 182).

His discussion about the living systems approach is congruent with Bandy's books like Building Spiritual Redwoods and Christian Chaos.

The concept that I found especially interesting and exciting is that of distributed intelligence. According to the living systems approach, all living things have innate intelligence, the ability to adapt, survive, and reproduce; and this ability extends not only to organic systems, but to systemic organizations like the stock market, cities, etc. So distributed intelligence has to do with the "capacity for developing higher life forms" (p. 182). The function of leadership, therefore, "is to unleash, harness, and direct distributed intelligence by creating environments where it can manifest" (p. 183).

This model is good news for the church because it takes seriously the gifts and calling of the laity, and trusts that by the power of the Holy Spirit and the presence of appropriate leadership the laity of the church will flourish. Rather than waiting for the clergy to do all of the work or to assign roles, etc., the Spirit can move in the congregation and use the unique gifts and callings of the congregation to emerge in ways that no one--especially the clergy--could have foreseen.

Another important concept in this chapter is that of movements. He defines a movement as

a group of people organized for, ideologically motivated by, and committed to a purpose which implements some form of personal or social change; who are actively engaged in the recruitment of others; and whose influence is spreading in opposition to the established order within which it originated (p. 191).

He argues that the apostolic church which turned the world upside down qualifies as a movement and he advocates for the church to be the church it must regain this movement ethos. He makes an interesting observation about the genesis of such movements: "new missional movements almost always begin on the edges of society/culture and among the common people. They are nonelitist. and they have the ability to excite and enlist others as leaders and participants" (p. 194). I think the history of rapid expansions of the Christian faith and awakenings bear this out for the most part.

The last part of the chapter discusses the importance of networks as opposed to institutional hierarchies. Borrowing from the sociological theory of Zygmunt Bauman (no relation to me), he discusses liquid modernity, a term that Bauman uses to describe the increasingly fluid nature of our current age. In order to address liquid modernity, according to Hirsch, we need a liquid church. "The defining element of this is church as a living, adaptive network highly responsive to the deep spiritual needs and hunger expressed in surrounding society" (pp. 197, 198). He has much to say about networks that I think are important and make me wonder how he views denominations in this model.

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Thought for the Day

The life of faith does not consist in imposing our will (or God's will!) either on other persons or on the material world around us. Instead of making the world around us or the people around us or our own selves into the image of what we think is good, we enter the lifelong process of no longer arranging the world and the people on our terms. We embrace what is give to us--people, spouse, children, forests, weather, city--just as they are give to us, and sit and stare, look and listen until we begin to see and hear the God-dimensions in each gift, and engage with what God has given, with what he is doing.
--Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

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The Monday Morning Quarterback

In yesterday's sermon I focused on the "time-bending" dimensions of the resurrection. Not only did the resurrection of Jesus vindicate his life, teaching, and passion, but through it the future was ushered in. The way things are meant to be and will be when God puts all things to rights, broke into the present in the resurrection of Jesus. We are to live "from" the future, in the light of what God has done and completed in Jesus.

The theological term for this understanding is eschatology and comes from the Greek word meaning "last things." The church is an eschatological body, a body that lives from the future. In a way the church is to be a colony of sojourners from the future who are living the life that God intends for all people to live and will live at the Last Judgment when God makes all things new.

The future has broken into the present, but not in its fullness, so that theologians talk about living "between the times." By God's grace we live the kingdom life now even though it has not come in its fullness and the world rejects the kingdom life.

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Thought for the Day

Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand--that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.
--Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk

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Prayer for Easter Sunday

O Lord God, our Father. You are the light that can never be put out; and now you give us a light that shall drive away all darkness. You are love without coldness, and you have given us such warmth in our hearts that we can love all when we meet. You are the life that defies death, and you have opened for us the way that leads to eternal life.
None of us is a great Christian; we are all humble and ordinary. But your grace is enough for us. Arouse in us that small degree of joy and thankfulness of which we are capable, to the timid faith which we can muster, to the cautious obedience which we cannot refuse, and thus to the wholeness of life which you have prepared for all of us through the death and resurrection of your Son. Do not allow any of us to remain apathetic or indifferent to the wondrous glory of Easter, but let the light of our risen lord reach every corner of our dull hearts.
--Karl Barth

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Prayer for Holy Saturday

O Christ, give us patience and faith and hope as we kneel at the foot of thy Cross, and hold fast to it. Teach us by thy cross that however ill the world may be, the Father so loved us that he spared not thee.
--Charles Kingsley

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Thought for the Day

Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
--T. S. Eliot

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Thought for the Day

[T]the world which surrounds us is temporary and its laws were negated by the Son of God's act of submission to them. The prince of the World triumphed, and as a result he lost.
--Czeslaw Milosz

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Flash Forward

Easter Sunday's texts are Exodus 13:3, Colossians 3:1-4, and Luke 24:1-12. The sermon title is "Remember the Future," and in the sermon I want to explore the role of memory and remembering in our resurrection faith.

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Thought for the Day

Easter would hardly have been, for two thousand years, the spring and center of Christian life and prayer, would hardly have provided the focus of Christian worship and the form of Christian hope, if the word Easter were simply the name of something that once happened in the past.
--Nicholas Lash, Easter in Ordinary

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Unanswered Prayer

In chapter 7 of God on Mute, Pete Greig begins to offer reasons why some prayers aren't answered.

1. Common Sense: Some prayers aren't answered because they're just plain stupid.
2. Contradiction: Some prayers aren't answered because they contradict other prayers.
3. The Laws of Nature: Some prayers aren't answered because they would be detrimental to the world and to the lives of others.
4. Life is Tough: Some prayers aren't answered because creation is "subjected to frustration" and has not yet been fully "liberated from its bondage to decay" (Romans 8:20-21). Tragically, life in such an environment is inevitably going to be acutely difficult at times.
5. Doctrine: Some prayers aren't answered the way we think they should be because our understanding and expectations of God are wrong.

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Thought for the Day

...biblical leadership always means a process of being-led.
--Martin Buber, Israel and the World

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Teaching the Bible in Public School

Stanley Fish had an interesting article, "Religion Without Truth," in the 3/31/07 issue of the New York Times. He referenced the recent article in Time, "The Case for Teaching the Bible," by David Van Biema about which I blogged. Those that want to conduct the academic study of religion like B.U. professor Stephen Prothero lament the dearth of biblical knowledge that people have which affects the ability to understand a good deal of great literature which references or alludes to the Bible and Bible stories.

Fish's point is that you really can't bracket truth claims which Prothero advocates in the teaching of the Bible. Fish argues that "The truth claims of a religion--at least of religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam--are not incidental to its identity; they are its identity." Bracketing religious truth claims are, according to Fish, like "studying the justice system and bracketing questions of justice."

While Fish believes that it is possible--although difficult--to bracket truth claims in teaching the Bible in an academic setting, he concludes his article with the question, "But if you're going to cut the heart out of something, why teach it at all?

What do you think about Fish's concerns?

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Thought for the Day

North American Christians are conspicuous for going along with whatever the culture decides is charismatic, successful, influential--whatever gets things done, whatever can gather a crowd of followers--hardly noticing that these ways and means are at odds with the clearly marked way that Jesus walked and called us to follow.
--Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

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Apostolic Genius: Apostolic Environment

In chapter 6 of The Forgotten Ways Hirsch addresses the apostolic environment as one of the factors of apostolic genius. This is a fairly dense chapter which I will attempt to address in only a cursory manner. Hirsch defines an apostle as "a pioneer, and it is this pioneering, innovative spirit that marks it as unique in relation to the other ministries" (p. 155).

A good deal of his emphasis in on apostolic leadership. He takes issue with the Christendom model which relegates apostolic ministry to an office as opposed to a function. He notes that in the apostolic church and in the church in China the leaders had the gifts and calling to lead and there were no clergy, no ordination process. Clergy and ordination emerged as the church became institutionalized, and has a tendency to be hierarchical. He writes,

Apostolic ministry, which was very much alive in the early church, was perceived as a gifting and a calling by God, was authenticated by a life lived consistent with the message, and was recognized by i6ts effects on the movement and its context, namely, the extension of the mission of God and in the sustainability and health of the churches (p. 153).

According to Hirsch, apostolic leaders create an apostolic environment by: 1) embedding mDNA through pioneering new ground for the gospel and church; 2) guarding mDNA through the application and integration of apostilic theology; 3) creating the environment in which the other ministries emerge (pp. 155-157). The "other ministries" to which he refers in #3 come from Ephesians 4 and are captured by his acronym, APEPT: apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic, pastoral, and teaching.

Hirsch eschews the metaphor of CEO for the apostolic leader which to his way of thinking is much too top-down. He opts for a more inspirational-spiritual leadership model that is bottom-up. He suggests that the apostolic leader is more of a mid-wife. "A midwife aids and assists in the birth of a child. All that he or she makes sure of is that all the conditions are right for a healthy birth--the birth is the result of things beyond the midwife's influence" (p. 166).

A farmer is another apt metaphor for the apostolic leader according to Hirsch. The farmer is not in control of the weather but attempts to create the conditions so that given good weather the crops will grow and grow well. The actual weather depends on factors outside the farmer's control.

I resonated with much of what he said in the chapter, especially the importance of the ministry of the laity. He never mentions that term, but the two-tier system of ordained and laity that we have tends to disempower the laity, which is the bread and butter of the church.

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Thought for the Day

Whoever can no longer desire the impossible will be able to achieve nothing more than the all-too-probable.
--Martin Buber, On Judaism

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Prayer for the Day

Oh yes, fix me, Jesus, fix me.
Fix me so that I can walk on
a little while longer.
Fix me so that I can pray on
just a little bit harder.
Fix me so that I can sing on
just a little bit louder.
Fix me so that I can go on
despite the pain,
the fear, the doubt, and yes, the anger,
I ask not that you take this cross from me,
only that you give me the strength
to continue carrying it onward 'til my dying day.
Oh, fix me, Jesus, fix me.
--African-American Spiritual

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