How Baptist am I?

I KIND OF ENJOY BEING A BAPTIST
There's lots of confusion about what a Baptist is.
Are they conservative?
Are they republicans?
Are they anti-abortions?
Are they anti-gay?
Anti-Disney/Harry Potter and pro-war?
Do they protest military funerals?

Some of these things can be said of a lot of different denominations.
Just in Northern Virginia you can find Baptists that don't let women teach and Baptists that are one stop away from Unitarianism.

A neighbor of mine once observed that the 'casual' Baptist isn't that much different from the casual Mormon.
Their religious experience seems to be centered around family and righteous appearances.
There are these social norms formed around what kinds of sin are okay and not okay.
If you play it right you can fit in and be accepted, it's all very... pleasant.
I grew up hearing how misguided the Pharisees and Judaizers were, and the warnings of legalism for the modern Christian... silly when you think about it, God is neither a respecter of 'worldly' culture any more than church culture. The Pharis-aizers were obsessed with sin and technicalities, we're supposed to be obsessed with grace.

ANYWAY
When I was a kid I thought that being a Baptist meant that you had a pastor from Texas that wore a light blue suit.
My wife went to college with a girl that grew up in the inner-city of a northern state. When Melissa told her that she was Baptist the girl had a look of surprise.  She said, 'You go to a black church?'

The significance of the Baptist Church is the autonomy of the local Church...
and in my experience the individual Baptist as well... so it's a lot like being non-denominational.
Maybe I was naive, but I was shocked early on to find that there were Baptists that were comfortable not agreeing with their Senior Pastor.  I wonder if the divergence got to the point where one didn't agree with the leading of the pastor, should they still stay committed to the church family or divorce themselves and find another family?  Some stay and make a stink (they should go), and some stay because their kids love the program (that's a tough one).  I've heard about pastors loosing their prophetic voice for winning approval by their disgruntled members... is that even church?

AUTONOMY
Although I like being Baptist, I don't understand Baptist pride.
Jews have a rich heritage.
Catholics have a rich heritage.
Even Lutherans and Episcopalians and... IDK, are Weslians a thing?
But one Baptist church doesn't share the same traditions and history with any other Baptist church.
I guess there are some Baptist churches (maybe somewhere in Alabama) that identify with the 'Great' Baptists of yester-year.  How relevant can your mission be in a hyper-culture if you are basically Amish?

My Religion 101 text said, 'ask 10 Baptists what it means to be a Baptist and you will get 10 different answers'.
It's like being punk rock in the 80s.
To some being punk meant that you were a delinquent and participated in 'risk-taking' behaviors.
To others it meant that you were socially conscious and abstained from all drugs and alcohol.
To other still it meant that you didn't bathe or you were a combination of absurd, morose and angsty.
The unifying factor was that you had to drive further than non-punk kids to buy a record or be content to listen to a college radio station with a really crappy signal... or mooch mix tapes from friends.
I also remember a feeling sense of community with any brand of punk, at least in Ballwin Missouri.

HIP TO BE SQUARE
Am I trying to make being Baptist sound cool?
No.
Trying to make Christianity look cool is a waste of time and kind of pathetic.
From a secular perspective, being Baptist is about as cool as Aunt Betunia and her red-headed step child.
The most unifying characteristics of Baptist Churches are buildings from the early 70s, and Donny Osmond style worship.
So what, does it affect me or my mission?
Would it be cool is my church was shaped like Godzilla and people like people like Helena Bohnam Carter hung out there? Yes.

I get the crits, I really do, but Church is like a weird uncle.
Weird or not, you love him because he's your uncle.
Don't expect the hipsters to get it.

MACRO LEVEL
That's pretty much where interest in my Baptist-ness ends.
I could care less about what the Southern Baptist Association does, it just doesn't affect me.
My interest in the local association is the same as my interest in meeting any kind of local youth pastor.
Because of autonomy, partnering with Baptist youth pastors isn't all that different partnering with youth pastors from other denominations.

I don't really notice my denominational distinctions until I start working with youth pastors from other churches.
For the most part I can do whatever I want to achieve the five purposes.
Some of my colleagues are restricted by what seem to me to be arbitrary boundaries, until it occurs to me their denominational tradition.

Here's a book that explains the differences of different denominations.  I have couple other chart books by this company, they're pretty cool. 

What is your denomination? What does it do for your mission and ministry?
Do you go to your denomination for leadership training? 
    If not, what do you do?

How I met Jesus: pt2

So after being active in ministry for a while I was reasonability versed in Christian ethics and theology.

I didn't know much about love.

I WAS NEVER VERY GOOD AT RELATIONSHIPS
I'd had a few girlfriends, but none that lasted longer than a few weeks.

I dated a girl that was a model for a little while.
Everywhere we went guys would look at her with desire and then look at me with confusion.
Also, girls would look at her in a way that I'm not qualified to interpret, and then they would look at me with interest.

After a dating for close to a year I thought the curse was finally lifted.
Then she dropped the bomb.
She said that she was feeling really convicted because I was 'such a great guy'.
She admitted that she was a heroine addict and that she wanted me to go with her to ask her parents to take her to rehab.
So I did, and that was the end of that.  Not much communication in rehab.

SETTING THE STAGE
Anyway, I was lamenting to my Pastor about my girl troubles.
I told him that I wanted to try dating a Christian girl.

I started dating a girl that grew up in my dad's church.
I was working in Fairfax and she was going to school a couple hours west.
We took it pretty slow during the spring semester.
Although we had plenty of phone calls where we didn't say anything but also didn't make any effort to end the call either.
Over the summer we were with each other constantly.

SHE MADE ME A MIX TAPE
I was pretty psyched.
I've made dozens of mix tapes for girls, but no girl had ever made me a tape.
It was a mix of Christian Ska.
I hated Christian music and I hated Ska.
So I didn't listen to it.

After she went back to school in the fall I missed her terribly.
I saw her tape and took it to work with me.
I was a night security guard.
I doing my patrol, wearing headphones, listening to Christian Ska.
I was in love.

Halfway through my patrol something the singer said caught my attention.
I stopped in mid stride and thought about what he said.
I radioed into the other guard and switched from patrol to the maindesk.
I rewound the tape a bit and listened again.
I was starting to feel very emotional.
I rewound the tape a bit one more time and listened again.
I started to cry.

The singer said,

'He loves you and He would rather die than live without you.'

Someone loved me so much that they couldn't live without me.
Prior to salvation, after we died... God was never going to see us again... a He couldn't live with that.
This is real.
And there was no guarantee, Jesus gave his life for me without any promise of reciprocating love.
Jesus has epic love for me.

It used to be so hard for me to understand the mechanics of salvation.
All it took was understanding true love.
It was no longer about sin and holiness, Heaven and Hell, taking advantage of fabulous deal...
it was a love story.

It was weeks before I could talk to anyone about what happened.
FWIW, here's the song


What's your love story?

How I met Jesus: pt1

BALLWIN MISSOURI IN THE 70'S/80'S
My parents raised me in a local Baptist Church in Ballwin Missouri.

There were no molesters or hellfire freaks (that I knew of).
It was just the last place in the world that a punk/metalhead would ever want to hang out.
The place was filled with old ladies with hats, dudes wearing suits, and a lot of well-adjusted preppy/jock type kids. I don't mean that in a judgey way, I think they had good intentions and were generally nice people.
The worst thing about my experience was the suffocating pressure to conform to the church culture or be ambiguously looked down upon (probably a pressure my parents felt and then displaced onto me).
I don't know what the church was really about, but after I grew a bit and started to have opinions the only thing I remembered was the culture of conformity and lessons on how to be 'good' according to adults.
So I decided that I hated Church.

For a while my 10th grade Sunday school teacher was this ex-hippie with long hair and a leather jacket.
He was really enthusiastic, but he would get frustrated when we showed no interest.

As I got older and my parents got more distracted there was less pressure to go to church.
By this time I think I was pretty much the only kid in my senior boys class.
The volunteer teacher was a smart guy, he saw that I was tuned out.
He was really cool about it.  He didn't force the curriculum on me, instead he would just ask me what was going on in my life.
Eventually I told him that I didn't want to do it anymore (waking up early on Sunday and sitting in our Sunday school cubicle).
We started meeting at a Dairy Queen after school and sometimes at his house.
It was a little awkward because his daughter was my age and she was this preppy girl that my kind didn't mix with. Also, I was not 'good Christian' material.
That arrangement eventually fizzled out.
But I walked away with something positive, I knew a Christian that was an okay guy.
He let me in his house and made me Sloppy-Joes, even though his daughter and I were not... well, we were never hostile to each other.

A WARNING TO CHURCHES
My youth pastor was fired while I was in the youth group.
He married a girl from the group after she graduated.
It's not as weird as it sounds if you know the circumstances.
Anyway, he was fired because people were worried about the message it would send.
Or, they were worried about the parents that were worried about the message it would send.
Ironically, firing him sent a worse message than the one they were worried about.
The elders were worried about some message about endorsing some kind of sin or saying it's okay to breach some relationship boundary.
The message that was sent was, "if you sin you're out".
The other message was, "we're all hypocrites".
All that stuff about forgiveness and grace was lip service.
I figured, the only way to stay in the church was to be as phony as possible, pretending to be in line with the Christian ethics de jour was the only way to be accepted.
So, even though Dairy Queen/Sloppy-Joe man was cool, I was out.

RETROSPECT
What do I think should have happened?
My first thought is that the Church is supposed to be like a family.
If my kids had an uncle that was gay, cohabitating, involved in an abortion, smoking weed or watching porn, I wouldn't disown him or fire him as an uncle.
I'm sure some pharisees would, but they shouldn't get to have a say in church policy.

My second thought is I'm very concerned about making fear based decisions.
There are certain kinds of adults that I don't want to expose my kids to, you know, predators, the ones that are targeting kids for evil purposes.
Aside from dangerous people, if I'm afraid of our kids being exposed to people and ideas that I don't want influencing them then I should prohibit the reading of the old testament. When we teach people about the life of King David there is some natural explaining that we guide through with the student.

Generally, I'd rather help my kids process what they are exposed to, do their own critical thinking about ethics and still accept people that have views they don't agree with.
I saw an interview with Jello Biafra (singer of the Dead Kennedys), he was asked how he would react if his child was listening to a Nazi-punk band like Screwdriver. Jello said that he wouldn't prohibit it, but would try to talk about it, ask "what is it you like about this band? Is it the killer bass player or something (the intense energy)?"
That's a pretty calm response to a pretty scary prospect, the idea of our kid going down the wrong path.
But what's going to help them more? An extreme reaction or a calm conversation?
I just feel like if no one is in danger of getting hurt, everything else is an opportunity to learn critical thinking and preparation for the independence of the adult world.

FAIRFAX VIRGINIA IN THE 90'S
Flash forward, I was out of High School, my folks split up. I moved to Fairfax VA with my dad.
I wanted to get my life together, which included having some kind of spiritual life.
If there was any 'seed' of faith planted in my youth it was guilt.
But, mostly I was just worried about going to hell.
I had a neighbor that raked his leaves at the same time as me all the time (he probably did it on purpose).
He was a pastor of an International Church of Christ cell.
If you don't know them, they are cultish freaks.
I hung out with him for a while and he really challenged my beliefs.

He said a lot of stuff that didn't make sense.
He said that I had to be baptized.
I told him I was baptized.
He said, no, I had to be baptized as a believer.
I said I was a believer at the time.
He said it didn't count, and I had to be baptized in his church.
I asked him what happened to people that wanted to be saved that lived in the dessert?
He said that God would work a miracle to provide water and if God didn't do that, then it was because God saw their heart, that the person wasn't really serious.
I thought baptism seemed like a really arbitrary requirement for what was supposed to be spiritual and transcendent.
His response was basically, 'well God said so.'
I thought, 'well, it sounds like you're saying so.'

THE TEST
He challenged me to go to my dad's Baptist pastor and ask him three questions (three that my neighbor had prepared), he said that this Baptist pastor would not be able to answer these questions and that this would prove that he was right.
I made the appointment, asked the questions, the pastor said 'I don't know'.
I was relieved to finally see some authenticity, so I joined the Baptist church.
My neighbor told me that he was dusting me off of his heels, and then he wouldn't talk to me anymore.
He proved that I made the right decision.

That's how I became a Baptist.
Next I'll tell you how I became a Christian.

Anyone else have a weird story about growing up in Church?
Anyone become religious before they came to Christ?
Have any experience with the International Church of Christ?
Please comment below.

Purposes of the Church, PT5: Evangelism

I have a lot of disclaimers about the purposes in my previous posts.
Evangelism sort shares a few of the conditions.

Like I said before, not all singing is worship, not all good deeds are ministry. 

The same goes for evangelism. 

There is a big difference between 'proclaiming the gospel' and making disciples.

Truth and Love, the Gospel can't have one with out the other.

I don't think a 'checklist' approach to evangelism will ever lead to real evangelism (as opposed to the other purposes where fun can lead to real fellowship).

But, I do have a style of evangelism that I came up with that can help Christians that don't do any evangelism to start in natural ways. 

THE ESSENCE OF EVANGELISM IS SHARING
Like all the purposes, evangelism is just another expression of the hardwiring shared with all mankind.
Everyone is a natural evangelist.
Every time I get into a car with my friend Jeff I am a prisoner to his solicitations of Swedish pop or rare Michael Jackson demos.
Everyone I talk to has something they want to talk about, something of interest to them that they are going to share with me.

Even my anti-social friends that are very selfish and never share anything have very strong opinions that they share when ever I see them.

What I learned from all my non-Christian evangelist friends is this,

passion is contagious. 

I'm more likely to give something like Swedish pop a chance when my buddy is obviously excited about it.
Back when I worked construction I would show up Monday morning and everyone would talk about what they did over the weekend.  What I did is I went to church.  Every Sunday our interim Pastor (a really old Marine) would tell a compelling story about war or survival.  The interim was an intimidating  guy, but he had great stories and I love telling stories.  Every Monday I would re-tell these amazing stories to my co-workers... and then I would make sure to tell them the spiritual application, the mind-bomb if you will.

SOMETHING FOR THE CRITICS
Sharing something new is sometimes about finding what is already shared between you and the other person, your shared views.
The common ground.
Rick Warren says that when someone tells him that they don't believe in God, he replies by asking 'what kind of God do you not believe in? I might not believe in that same kind of God.'

The civil rights movement taught us that we have more in common that we have differences.
Finding the common ground is the beginning.

WHY IS IT SCARY?
If I risk sharing something personal I'm risking rejection, and that hurts.
What's more personal that your spiritual life?
But lets face it, God shared his son with us and it was pretty much a guarantee that a lot of people were going to reject that gift and nail it to a cross.

I usually don't talk to my Step-Mom about comic books.
I make the assumption that she is not interested.
What we must understand is that by making that assumption we are by default making the assumption that they are not interested in us.
While it might be true, it is a judgement on that person that is not our place to make.

However, there is the 'pearls before swine' thing.
The point is, the decision of when and how much you share should be based on caring about people, not fear of rejection.

GETTING STARTED
There are many resources online about evangelism styles, so just Google it.
What you won't find is my own style.
It came to me when a student was telling me a story about a homosexual in the military.  Through the course of telling the story I learned all kinds of information unrelated to the story (what her brother eats for breakfast, what newspaper her dad reads, the social dynamic of her whole family riding in one car on the way to Church).  Every side detail was an opportunity to take the conversation in a different direction.
IS THIS WHAT ANDY STANLEY MEANT WHEN HE SAID 'KEEP THE CONVERSATION WITH NON-BELIEVERS OPEN AND KEEP IT GOING'?

In the old days, when talking to a friend, telling a story, I would edit out the details that revealed anything about my spiritual life.
Now, I make sure to keep any peripheral detail about my spiritual life in the story that I'm telling.
EXAMPLE

A few weeks ago I was hanging out with a friend making plans to see HP: The Deathly Hallows.  He suggested Friday night. I said I couldn’t, my church small group meets at my house on Fridays.

We were talking about movies, a nice safe conversation.  

Like everyone, I shared some information that was not directly relevant.  

I could have said, "I can’t do Fridays, Melissa and I have stuff on Fridays", that omission would have been accepted and natural but would not have led to anything else. 

Why is this powerful?

Any information we share (whether related to what we are talking about or not) in conversation becomes open for question or comment.
This is how all conversation works. Someone talks about movies and mentions babysitters, the conversation moves to babysitting and someone mentions how expensive it is, and then the conversation moves to the economy or something else. 

In this case my friend did ask questions about my small group.

“Is that the thing you do with teens?

No, that’s Sundays, this is people our age.

Oh, is it a prayer group?

No, it’s more of a book study.

Okay, is that the group that read Hunger Games?

Well, yea.. some of us have read it and we still talk about it, but officially we pick a spiritually based book and go a chapter a week and discuss.  I can pick you up if you want to hang out with us.”

Once we finally found a day to go see the movie, on the way to the movie, my friend asks me how someone can go to Heaven!

IS PRIVATIZATION A SIN?
I used to be pretty selfish when it came to my secular friendships. As a secret Christian I didn't want God messing with the only relationships where I could take off my puritan mask and put on my nihilistic mask. It sucked being a Baptist that didn't have a personal relationship with Jesus.  I had all these religious convictions without any of the divine acceptance that would have allowed me to be myself around church people and non-church people. Being a secret Christian I was able to observe how ineffectual other Christians were when they engaged my non-Christian friends, they had a adverse effect. The last thing I wanted, for the sake of my friends, was to sound as superstitious and offensive as the Christians that had turned my friends off of Christianity.

Withholding your relationship with Jesus is not about concise speech or tactfulness, this is spiritual compartmentalization.
We should be well spoken, but if we consistently censor out everything spiritual in our socializing, out of fear of awkwardness or a confrontation or whatever,  then we are not doing anyone any favors.  If we are worried about conflict and rejection then we are putting our short term comfort over other people's eternal discomfort. And we are really sabotaging the only purpose exclusively for this physical life.
There won't be any evangelism in Heaven.

One of these old friends I'm talking about was in the pornography business.
He wrote scripts (it's okay, you can laugh).

He wanted to branch out and do the soundtracks as well.  He hired me to record some songs that he wrote.
My recording gear was in my apartment.  During the session he commented on how many Christian books I had on my book selves.
He said that if he were God and wanted to get some message out to the world that he would make a movie.  He said, "like Terminator 2".
He said that it was successful all over the world, Japan, India, Russia, Africa, etc.
I told him that when someone releases a movie it becomes open to interpretation and in many cases people take it the wrong way.
If you are lucky enough to meet the director he can tell you explicitly what he meant.
That's why God came down to Earth in person, in the flesh, Jesus.
To tell us in person, the meaning of life and how to have it abundantly.

Bill Hybels of Willow Creek has a book that's a classic on evangelism.

We have a weekly evangelism spiritual habit, and it's going pretty good. 
I've done a few evangelism events that did not go well strategically.
I think the mistake is trying to get the lost to come to me. 
I've been meeting with some Young Life people recently. 
I like their missional philosophy, but I have questions about their efficiency. 
Admittedly, as an ex-punk rocker I have reservations about any ministry that relies on money. 
For the first five years in youth ministry I never used any money that the church budgeted. 
I guess I still have some of my own baggage to get over. 


How do you do evangelism in your ministry?

Purposes of the Church, PT4: Ministry

Ministry is loving people.

Love is a willed commitment to someone's well being despite how we feel about them.

My well being might depend on donations, physical affection or a kind word... but not all such gestures are an act of love.

YOU'VE HEARD THIS BEFORE
As I said in my previous posts on other purposes, true ministry comes from the heart.
Well intended deeds can be the lead in for less mature Christians to become active in ministry.

Love is personal, Jesus didn't pay others to love others or plan an event or program as a strategy for loving people.

disclaimer, I fully support macro level ministry. Yes, it's expensive and labor intensive, but if done right it can really help people and help the helpers grow. 

The principle of macro level ministry is that 'we can do more together than all of us individually'.

My only reservation is that I don't see people coming to Christ through macro level ministry and too many Christians can get away with doing macro level as a deed rather than an act of love. 

And just like the other purposes, ministry is proactive.
If I didn't look for opportunities to ministry to people I wouldn't be doing it. 

My suburban home can too easily be a gated fortress to keep me isolated from the people God loves. 

THE HOWS AND WHYS
A couple of months ago we had a blizzard.
I was laying in bed and thinking about how much it was going to suck to shovel out the van.
Then I thought about my wife.
She's always in a rush in the morning.
She'll do her routine then have to shovel out her car (in her work clothes) and get all sweaty and tired before she even starts her day.
So I shoved out her car.
No big deal, a husband ought to do that anyway.
I looked at my neighbors driveway.
My neighbor is an old dude that had a heart attack last winter.
He was out there shoveling.
I started helping him.
He was obviously tired and wanted to quit, but was probably too embarrassed to quit while I was still going strong (exaggeration).
After a while he said, 'that's good enough. Thank you.'
Then he went inside.

I thought to myself, 'If this was my daughter's house, would this really be good enough?'
'No'
So I kept shoveling.  And then it looked pretty good.
Except for the huge snow bank that the street plow made where the driveway met the street.
So I kept shoveling.
Then I looked at his other car... why does he have two cars?

I thought to myself, 'If this was my daughter's house, would this really be good enough?'

'No'

So I kept shoveling.

This is how God loves us, like his own child. 

WHERE DO WE DRAW THE LINE?

Ministry fatigue or 'burn-out' is always a concern, but our capacity to serve is based on our level of compassion.  When you have the Holy Spirit within you and you are face-to-face with human suffering there is no level of fatigue that will stop you from trying to help.

Rick Warren once tweeted: 

Sympathy is 'I feel bad for you'

Empathy is 'I share your feeling'
Compassion is 'I'll do anything to help you'

I know there is tremendous pressure in a church to be efficient and realistic.
Something to do with stewardship or talents I think.
Do we serve others to our own destruction?
I think it's a faith thing.
The patriarchs gave us many examples of when following God's will started out looking like self destruction.
I think the question is what would Jesus do?

Something that will make this easier is S.H.A.P.E.

Operating with in your 'S.H.A.P.E.' will reduce burn-out (using your spiritual gifts, passions, skills, personality and life experiences). 

See the SHAPE book for more info. 

Some parents may think, I'd love to give others my 'tunic' when they take my 'cloak', but I have kids, I can't deny my children for the sake of my personal ministry.
This way of thinking underestimates the power of love.  Otherwise it would be child abuse to have more than one child. And what is it we are really 'denying' our own children, love or material?
Do we love our children less if we give others the same love.
The big question is, do you love your children enough to teach them that they don't need material comfort.
Do you love your children enough to show them the fulfillment of loving others the way God loves us?

LOVE LANGUAGES
Serving others and gift giving is only a small part of loving others.
Ministry can also be a kind word, a hug, sitting quietly with someone after a loss.

CONCLUSIONS

Loving people isn't always fun or comfortable,  it's messy and personal... but fulfilling.
Loving people like our own children isn't realistic, it's an act of faith.

In my 11 years of ministry the most challenging book I ever read on ministry was this.
Never mind the politics, just try to hear the personal challenge. 

Currently the only ministry our youth group does is two spiritual habits:
love your enemy & sacrificial giving/serving
Every summer we drive up to Philadelphia (from Fairfax VA) to do M-FUGE. 
It's gives our students a few different ministry opportunities. 
VBS in an inner-city park, visitation, Habitat type work, and working at a food bank. 
The bummer is that it is only once week, in another state, and only a few opportunities are direct ministry. 
I'm working on a local partnership to do this year-round and maybe get the adults in our church involved. 
How do you do ministry in with your students?

Purposes of the Church, PT3: Discipleship

"WE ARE EDUCATED BEYOND OUR OBEDIENCE" Mark Batterson

I tend to think that reading, studying or memorizing the Bible is not discipleship.

I love ancient near-east studies, doesn't everyone?
But at the end of the day I realize that it's just reading for my own enjoyment.
It does nothing to help me take one step towards following Jesus.

It's true, all the purposes require some study.  If you don't know what worship is then you probably won't be fulfilling that purpose in your life.  But it doesn't take much. 

When I took Tae Kwon Do I started as a 'white belt'. 

I spent the first part of my first day observing. 

Then the teacher held the back of my belt while I tried to duplicate his moves. 

That was day one. 

Day two was spent 'shadowing' every move of the instructor. 

After a week I did my routines solo and the instructor observed me. 

My second year I would lead the large group warm-ups. 

My third year I holding the back of the belt of new white-belts. 

My point, experience is the best teacher. 

I took Tae Kwon Do for four years. 

I could have spent that whole time observing and listening to lectures and abstaining from all other forms of martial arts. I might have learned a lot about Tae Kwon Do, but I would have NEVER become a martial artist.
BTW, my instructor also loved to drink and slept around.
I didn't duplicate all of him, only what was significant about him as my martial arts instructor. 

WHAT MOVES SHOULD WE DUPLICATE?

Did Jesus study the Torah? I assume so.

He also cooked and ate fish on the beach, but this is not what set him apart. 

Jesus gave up all his possessions and ministered as a homeless person.  

He loved his enemies.  

He confronted those who would turn the Kingdom of God into a club of moral conduct.  

Everyday he was immersed in the culture and was face-to-face and hand-to-hand with people that were not a part of our culture or in our comfort zone.  

Jesus loved strangers the way we love our own children.

I'm told that the word 'disciple' means follower. 

Doing what Jesus did is discipleship.

Jesus walked on water. Peter followed him. 

VIDEO GAME DISCIPLESHIP: CHOOSE LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY

Once you identify what made Jesus special, you can't pick what part you want to follow.
If Peter hadn't stepped out of that boat it would have been really easy to reduce discipleship to the things that are comfortable and stimulating. All the 'hard' stuff of following Jesus is doable, the early Christians did it and many are doing it now.
The hard stuff is transformative.

LOVE VERSUS HOLINESS
Some people frame discipleship as being 'Christ-like'.
My concern is that to some people being Christ-like means being holy.
There are lots of holy gods, but only one loving God.
In Jesus' time there were a group that saw God as more holy than loving.
For the sake of holiness they didn't touch lepers or speak to prostitutes.
Jesus called them 'a brood of vipers'.

'Jesus didn't come to make bad people good, 

he came to make dead people live' Ravi Zacharias

I was at a summer camp and the adults we asked to give their testimonies to teach the students how to give their testimonies in the field. 

The first adult said, 'well, I used to drink and smoke and cuss and then I became a Christian and now I don't.'  

I thought to myself, 'I became a Christian and then I started drinking and smoking and cussing'.

I guess it's better than, 'I was going to Hell and then I became a Christian and now I'm going to Heaven'.

I'll tell my own testimony in another post, but for now I'll just say, 'My life used to be a futile pursuit of approval and manipulating people for pleasure and praise and then I realized what Jesus' love really meant, and now I feel unconditionally loved and completely fulfilled'. 

ACTIVE VERSUS PASSIVE

Following Jesus isn't something that happens to you while sitting on your couch. 

I've heard a lot of testimonies of something 'happening' to a person and then God 'happened'. 

I'm sure I'll appreciate that when it 'happens' to me, but I think I'd be ashamed if my only experience with God came in spite of myself. 

Discipleship is both internal and external.

To paraphrase James:

Without the internal, you only have empty deeds.

Without the external, your faith is dead. 

IS DISCIPLESHIP REDUNDANT?

So what does this mean, doing the other four purposes is discipleship?

If the purposes were merely external expressions then yes, but they are not. 

Discipleship is how and why you do the other four purposes.
To follow Jesus and be more like him, to be Jesus to a dead world. 

I promised to blog on my spiritual habits... it's still coming. 
I just got my budget approved to purchase the LIVE curriculum from Simply Youth Ministry. 
I'll blog about it later.
How do you do discipleship in your ministry?

Purposes of the Church, PT2: Worship

WHAT DO YOU GIVE TO THE GUY THAT HAS EVERYTHING?

I think that all the purposes are equally important, each purpose helps us to grow in the other four, but worship is our first purpose. 

Prior to the fall were the other four purposes necessary?

THE SYLLOGISM

As I said previously about Fellowship, there are traditional understandings of worship, and then what worship essentially is.  Some worship is singing, not all singing is worship, not all worship is singing. 

I would go as far as to say that sometimes singing during worship is not worship, and not singing while the whole church is singing can be worship. There have been many times when I have stopped singing and just listened and been inspired to revere God's greatness. 

There are pleanty of other articles out there that can give you ideas for other expressions of worship, so I won't spend any more text on it here.  Instead I want to talk about experiencing worship in spirit and in truth. 

WHAT IS LOVE?

What is the goal of worship? What is it?

Worship an expression of our love to God and sometimes feeling Gods love for us. 

You don't have to fully understand God to worship him, but it helps to fully understand love. 

Love is a willed commitment to another's well being despite how we feel about them. 

I don't want to get all theological about the application of God's 'well-being', it really has no relevance to the issue of our worship experience.  I want to focus what is ultimately relevant, 'a willed commitment' and 'despite how we feel'. There is a universal relationship principle here. 

LOVE IN MARRIAGE

Sometimes in a marriage there are no fireworks, sometimes the really beauty is the commitment expressed through our will over mundane circumstances or doing what's good for the relationship even if you aren't 'in the mood' (the whole 'richer/poorer sickness/health better/worse' thing). This is where the 'choice' part of love comes in (versus the feeling).  My pastor sometimes says, the feeling often follows the action.  He never feels like working out, but if he can just get to the gym, then the work out takes care of itself, the feeling like working out comes after he's started working out.

In my experience passion in marriage or in my walk with Jesus is something that has to be maintained.  The spark of intimacy must be protected from the ever present pressure of selfishness. 

LOVE IN WORSHIP

Sometimes I don't feel like worship, maybe I'm hungry or angry or tired, maybe I just don't like the music.  

But, the choice is what's important. 

Do you choose to have intimate time with God because it is stimulating to you, 

because of your mood? 

How would you feel if people only spent time with you or listened to you only when they felt like it or depending on what they got out of it?

Is that love? Is that an intimate connection?

We choose to worship because it's what's right, it's what's good for your relationship with God. 

CONFESSION
I'm not Catholic, so I don't know what the point is of traditional catholic confession.
But I'll try to illustrate why it is relevant for an intimate connection with God.

On my first date with my wife I 'put the best foot forward'.
I wanted her to like me, so I presented my strengths and concealed my weaknesses.
I created a mask.  This is the way of all mankind.
The down side is, if she decided that she liked me then it wasn't really me that she liked.
Out of fear of rejection I didn't show her the real me, the good bad and ugly, so by my own design I made it impossible for her to love the real me.

We do this with God too.
We pray to God while wearing a mask. This is one of the reasons why Christians don't feel God's love.
Not because God isn't willing to go deep, but because the Christian isn't.
We must make the choice to be real with God because God will not force it, love can only exist in the context of free will.

When I pray to God, I am completely honest,
1. because he knows my heart anyway
2. because 'while we were still sinners Christ died for us, guaranteed unconditional acceptance

When I confess to God all the good the bad and the ugly it is a chance to be feel unconditionally accepted and loved.  For many it might be their only chance.
Our level of intimacy God is measured by how much you disclose in prayer.
*I'll blog about resisting sin versus deflating sin in a future post. 

PRAYING CONSCIOUSLY
Hey, so praying is an easy way to connect with God, but it can easily be a way to become distant from God too.

Something that I watch out for in my marriage is 'scripted dialog'.
ex, wife comes home from work
'how was your day'
'fine'
'what did you do?'
'stuff... how were the kids?'
'fine'
'what do they do today?'
'nothing'

So, do we do this in our prayer life? Is it a potential threat to authentic personal conversation with the God of the universe?
Here's my recommendation: switch to the 'Prayer Remix' by Louis Giglio
He says that the top 4 things Christians pray for is:

Blessing, Forgiveness, for God to 'be' with us, and protection

The theory is that the first two are already given, the third is asking for less than you already have and the fourth is contrary to what Jesus promised to all his followers, Jesus said we would be persecuted.

Giglio offers the remix alternative:

Say thank you for blessing and forgiveness
Ask to feel the Holy Spirit's presence within us (ask to feel God's love)
Commit to act in a way that honors God when are persecuted

The beauty of it is that, if you commit to it, every time you pray and are tempted to go 'scripted' you pause and are reminded that you are having a real conversation.
It will change everything.

CHOOSE WITH GOD

On top of that, something that is good for a relationship is investing in the interests of your partner, not because you want a new hobby, but because your partner's interests are a part of who they are and when you love someone you love it all. 

ex, I like comic books, my wife likes classical literature and biographies. She doesn't give a crap about Spider-Man.  Every once in a while she will ask me about what I am reading and she will let me tell her the whole story.  I already know that she loves me, but this makes me feel loved. I try to do the same for her. 

God's interest is a real love relationship with you. 

As an omniscient being, God intellectually knows if you love him, but our worship allows God to experientially feel our love. 

Our love is the only gift that we can give to God.

Currently my youth ministry has no worship program.
I've just started going worship with my wife and kids in the living room on Thursday nights.
If I can develop it I'd like to start introducing an age appropriate version to my students.

Since worship is closely related to love I've found this book to be very helpful.
But also, it was helpful in other relationships including: marriage, family, friendships, co-workers, students and parents. 

How do you do worship in your ministry?