Antidote to Apathy?

One of my most passionate students sent me an email today telling me to watch a video: Dave Meslin: The antidote to apathy. The video related to my recent post about the lack of spiritual hunger in many American Christians, which we might call apathy. Meslin proposes “that apathy, as we think we know it, doesn’t actually exist.” People do genuinely care about changing the world, but “we live in a world that actively discourages engagement by constantly putting obstacles and barriers in our way.” These make change difficult if not impossible. He offers a number of examples. Here are some:

1. Obscure, difficult public notices “intentionally exclude” people who might want to engage (contrast with private company ads that intentionally engage you so you’ll buy their product).
2. Money controls messages in public spaces, so many important messages go unheard because they can’t “pay for signage.”
3. The media filters political content (choosing instead to focus on “celebrities and scandals”), and when they do report on politics, they provide no information on how to get involved (contrast book, movie or restaurant reviews that provide name, address, show times, etc.). This “reinforces the dangerous idea that politics is a spectator sport.”
4. In the movies, heroes are “chosen,” or called by prophecy.  But in reality, leadership is “voluntary;” it comes from within. You follow your dreams and work with others to make them come true.
5. Political parties, which should be entry points for engagement, have become uncreative, uninspiring groups that feed cynicism instead of engaging people in bold, creative initiatives for change.

“You add all this up together, and of course people are apathetic; it’s like trying to run into a brick wall.”

Very interesting. He’s right and he’s wrong.

He’s right that society makes it very hard to be an agent of change. There are too many people who benefit from the status quo. He notes a number of important barriers that are as prevalent in America as in Canada, where he lives.

But his conclusion is wrong. He says, “As long as we believe that people are selfish, stupid or lazy, there’s no hope … If we can redefine apathy not as some internal syndrome, but as a complex web of cultural barriers that reinforce disengagement, and if we can clearly define, clearly identify, what those obstacles are, and then if we can work together collectively to dismantle those obstacles, then anything is possible.”

He’s wrong because coupled with these legitimate obstacles and barriers, people really are selfish, stupid and lazy. Internal and external factors work together to block social change. “Real substantial change” is possible, but it will only happen when we fix both the broken systems and the broken people who create and perpetuate those systems.

Hope in the essential goodness and potential of people is the arrogant delusion of the Enlightenment. In reality, change begins in recognizing our own brokenness. And hope is found in the good news that God can turn selfish, stupid, lazy people into selfless, wise, passionate servants of his kingdom. These renewed people actually can change the world, because they are inspired and empowered the strongest force in the universe: the Spirit of Almighty God.

Following Jesus, the Servant King: A Biblical Theology of Covenantal Discipleship

In Following Jesus, Jonathan Lunde provides a much-needed theological exploration of who Jesus is and what it means to follow him in covenant relationship. This second volume in Zondervan’s new Biblical Theology for Life series (of which Lunde is the editor) is a fine follow-up to Chris Wright’s The Mission of God’s People. These two works leave me with high hopes for the rest of the series!

Essentially, Lunde sets out to tackle the tension between the unprecedented grace and the uncompromising demand of Jesus. He resolves the tension by placing Jesus in his biblical-covenantal context. Here’s the short answer to the apparent paradox: Jesus the Servant gives us all the grace and enablement we need to faithfully follow him as our King. Lunde unpacks this thesis by answering three questions in three consecutive parts of the book.

The “Why” Question: Why should I try to perfectly follow Jesus’ high demands if I’m saved by grace? The answer turns on covenantal patterns, which develop throughout OT covenants and continue in our New Covenant (N.C.) relationship with God.

1) All biblical covenants are initiated by God and grounded in his prior grace. The N.C. culminates this pattern: Jesus is the ultimate expression of grace that earlier covenants pointed toward and promised. (e.g., a second Adam, final Passover lamb, atoning sacrifice, promised king of peace and Spirit-anointed Servant).

2) The gracious grounding of the covenants never diminishes God’s demand for wholehearted obedience. Abraham is called to walk faithfully and be blameless, Israel to be holy, and David to reign righteously. N.C. texts anticipate a restored people living in absolute fidelity to their king.

3) Life in covenant with God is lived by faith. Faith is the only proper response to God’s gracious acts and promises and the only means of enjoying God’s blessings. When we attempt to reconcile Paul’s gospel of grace with Jesus’ demanding discipleship, we must recognize two things. 1) They each emphasize different aspects of the covenantal relationship. 2) Biblical faith is always expressed in obedience, even as obedience assumes faith.

Therefore, the superlative grace of the N.C. does not permit us to soften Jesus’ radical demands. Rather, it calls us to unprecedented faithfulness in obeying them! Why follow Jesus? Because obedience is always at the core of covenant relationship with a gracious God.

The “What” Question: What does Jesus call me to do as a disciple? In short, he calls me to submit to his reign, obey the Law as he mediates it and carry out his mission in the world. First, Jesus’ prophetic call to wholehearted devotion to God is actually a royal call for exclusive allegiance to him. He is the promised Davidic king who embodies God’s will (which is why following him equals following God) and the new Moses who freshly articulates the Law for the New Covenant community. Jesus’ mediation of the Law involves three functions. As “filter,” he blocks some parts of the law (e.g., sacrifices and circumcision) because he has fulfilled their purpose, even as he upholds their ethical aims (e.g., repentance and circumcision of the heart). As “lens,” Jesus clarifies the Law’s intent that Jewish traditions had obscured; he recovers the primacy of love for God and neighbor, mercy, compassion, truthfulness and the purpose of Sabbath. I might add justice, righteousness, humility and exclusive worship to the commands that Jesus recovers, though Lunde does not include these. As “prism,” Jesus refracts OT laws to a higher level of demand suited for a Spirit-enabled N.C. community. This community fulfills OT hopes for a restored people, ruled by a righteous Messiah, who reflect God’s character and extend his blessing to the world. Jesus’ disciples, therefore, carry out Israel’s mission. But, just as Israel’s covenantal calling was contingent on ethics, so the church’s mission depends on disciples’ emulation of their master’s preaching, serving and suffering. What are we to do? Live like Jesus.

The “How” Question: How do we follow such a high demand? Why is there such a contradiction between the incalculable grace we receive from Jesus and our faltering and failure to follow his commands. This “discipleship dissonance” corresponds to the already-but-not-yet reality of the Kingdom: despite Jesus’ sacrifice and the Spirit’s enablement, we still live in the flesh. Therefore we must engage in the same empowering rhythms that were built into the Mosaic covenant: regular remembrance and reception of God’s grace enables an obedient response. Lunde rightfully points to the necessity of the Spirit in this transformation process.

The balance of this section leads us into the heart of Jesus’ ministry to discover the Servant’s enabling grace. This was the most enjoyable and stimulating part of the book for me. Lunde explores Jesus against the backdrop of Isaiah’s prophecies of the Servant of Yahweh; he highlights their initial fulfillment in the post-exilic community and their consummated fulfillment in the life of Jesus. First, Jesus is the representative. He identifies with a sinful people in his baptism and temptation, achieves the righteousness they never could and makes that righteousness possible for his followers. Second, Jesus is the redeemer. His suffering, atoning death and resurrection fulfills the vicarious suffering experienced by the Israel’s faithful remnant on behalf of the nation and the “resurrection” of that remnant after Israel’s “death” in exile. Third, Jesus is the restorer. He reconstitutes Israel around himself by calling unworthy disciples. He invites outsiders in by sharing meals with sinners and calling them to repent. He announces the end of exile and the in-breaking kingdom by healing the sick, while, ironically, the blind and deaf nation rejects him. He demonstrates God’s presence and power to defeat the devil by delivering the demonized. Finally, the suffering of the Servant and the reign of the King meet on the cross and in the empty tomb. The Messiah abandoned on the cross is vindicated in the resurrection, which opens the way for all nations to submit to his royal reign.

In each of Jesus’ roles as Servant, his work provides both grace for disciples to receive and a pattern for disciples to follow. Accordingly, each chapter ends with “Empowerment for Discipleship,” reflecting on how we might remember, receive and respond to Jesus’ enabling grace. The bottom line is this: “Grace foils legalism. But grace fuels righteousness” (274).

Lunde’s final chapter, “Following the Servant-King Today,” draws out some practical implications of covenantal discipleship. Here are a few highlights: a contrast between covenantal discipleship and the “Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism” prevalent in American churches (Christian Smith, with Melinda Lindquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers [Oxford: OUP, 2005]); a call to spread the good news not just of a Gracious savior, but of a glorious King who deserves and demands complete devotion; a challenge to develop disciples who can articulate the meaning of Jesus and his kingdom; a rebuke of teaching that ignores Jesus’ commands or makes radical, sacrificial obedience an optional an optional extra for the super-committed. No. Grace-enabled obedience is the essential calling of all who follow Jesus!

Following Jesus is a welcome addition the growing body of non-technical studies in biblical theology. This reader would only have asked for a simpler structure on the “why” question in order to streamline that discussion and reduce repetition. More editing to simplify and clarify the prose would have increased readability. (The latter critique applies to me too, so it is entirely sympathetic!) Nitpicking aside, I heartily commend Lunde for giving us a thoughtful and accessible presentation of Jesus as the culmination of the OT covenants and the completion of the OT story. He shows how Jesus person and work continues the trajectory of crucial biblical themes. His approach draws out overlooked implications from often-ignored narratives such as the ministry of John the Baptist and the baptism and temptation of Jesus. The “Relevant Questions” that conclude each chapter provide for reflection and discussion, an added bonus to a terrific text for college courses on Jesus and Christian discipleship. I will return to this book often as I teach on Jesus and Biblical Ethics. Perhaps most importantly, Lunde’s timely work gives theological foundations to an emerging generation of believers who are fed up with the domesticated Jesuses on offer today and who want to reclaim his radical demands. Jonathan Lunde offers us the gracious covenant context we need to avoid the pitfalls of legalism and compromise and to humbly and wholeheartedly follow Jesus, the Servant King.

More Musings about the Church

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague recently. He is not the only critic of what he called the “church-growth movement” (I find myself such a critic at times), but his critique took a different and intriguing angle. Most often the movement is criticized because it makes church a market-driven enterprise to satisfy spiritual consumers or because it sacrifices depth and discipleship at the altar of growth and comfort. Both are legitimate problems that large churches must wrestle with and strive to avoid. But my friend mentioned another, less noticed problem, and the way he explained it got me thinking.

He argued that the focus on growth brings the surrounding culture into the church and makes the would-be holy community indistinguishable from the world. The church loses power to change the world because it becomes a reflection of the world. Our shrouded light stops shining. Our diluted salt stops preserving. We fail to change the world because we uncritically invite the world through the front door.

Interesting. I’m not sure this is always true. Many churches work faithfully to maintain the tension between hospitality and holiness. But this is tough to do, and my friend’s comment ought to give us pause to evaluate how our body composition effects our mission execution.

Perhaps it’s worth asking: Have our seeker-sensitive approach, our consumer-driven church culture and our contentment with canned and shallow discipleship produced results that no one intended? Have they compromised our holiness and, consequently, stained our witness and disabled our mission to the world?

My Postmodern Two-Year Old

My wonderful, beautiful daughter, JulieAnn, has a bit of a stubborn streak. For a time (she’s growing out of it now), she was quite certain she could make things true or false just by declaring them to be so.

JA: I want grapes.

Mom: You’ve already had grapes, but you can have a banana instead (which was there in the kitchen).

JA: We don’t have any bananas. We have to go get them at the store.

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Dad: (at bedtime) JulieAnn, please put this pull-up on; it’s still dry.

JA: No it’s not. It’s wet.

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Mom: (in the morning) JulieAnn, it’s time to take your wet pull-up off and put your panties on.

JA: My pull-up is dry.

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Dad: Let’s get you coat on so we can go outside.

JA: I don’t want to put my coat on.

Dad: JulieAnn, you need a coat. It’s cold outside.

JA: No it’s not.

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Grandma: (running her fingers through JulieAnn’s hair, JulieAnn reacts because some hair gets pulled) Sorry, I was getting the tangles out.

JA: (crying) The tangles are not in…They’re not in!

Grandma: I think you must be tired.

JA: No I’m not.

JulieAnn’s beliefs and declarations do not alter reality no matter how much she might believe – in her little two year old world – that they do. I’m not really sure how much she believes herself and how much she is just trying to assert her independence. But her obviously false statements illustrate the postmodern illusion that we can define Truth based on nothing more than personal belief or preference. Here’s the lesson to learn from JulieAnn:

To say that truth is not true simply because we don’t want it to be is, quite simply, childish foolishness.

Somehow it doesn’t seem so obvious when we’re talking about the existence of moral norms or the truth claims of competing worldviews. But the point remains: we don’t define reality; we are simply right or wrong about what it actually is. And eventually, reality will confront us. We can deny truth and deceive ourselves for a time, but eventually, truth will hit.

Baby Spoons or Silverware

I’ve spent all my life in Christian education. I attended a wonderful Christian K-12 school nearly all the way through, went to a Christian college, spent four fantastic years in seminary, and now I teach high school Bible in a Christian school much like the one I grew up in. Sitting in chapel last Wednesday, a question came to my mind. Are we, in American evangelicalism, spoon-feeding our kids (and adults) or are we teaching them to use silverware so they can feed themselves?

Many of the students in the chapel go to church and youth group regularly, come to my bible class daily and attend chapel each week. In all these contexts, they are “spiritually fed.” But as I observe some of them in the classroom, I notice that for all the spiritual nourishment they receive, there is relatively little corresponding appetite. And some who are hungry are nearly helpless to feed themselves, let alone prepare and cook their own meal. These trends seem to repeat themselves in the broader church.

The day after chapel, I engaged a couple of my classes on this issue. I started with an analogy. Newborns have a sucking instinct and an intense desire to eat; they are serious about this (and they remain serious throughout childhood, needing nourishment to support rapid growth and development). At around six months, they learn to take food from a spoon. Then we introduce finger food. A few months later parents take the plunge and hand the spoon over to the baby. This is tough at first. Their uncoordinated attempts make a mess of table, bib and face. They often revert to using their fingers. But they keep at it. Soon they can control the spoon and eventually they can get food from plate to mouth without getting it in their hair. As they grow, they learn to master fork, knife and napkin and eat like adults. Many Christians seem stuck in the early stages of this development, depending on others to feed them. Why? My students’ responses were interesting. I can divide them into two categories: blame the restaurant (the church/school) or blame the eater (the Christian). Most fell in the former category. Here I’ll reflect on a few of them.

• If the baby food doesn’t taste good, why would we want more? Why to eat if we don’t een like the food? Perhaps it was providence that the day I brought this up we were covering Revelation 10, where the prophet John is commanded to eat the scroll of God’s Word, so he can speak it to the nations. It tasted sweet as honey in his mouth, but turned his stomach sour. God’s Word is like that: bittersweet. It can taste like honey and burn like fire (Revelation 11:5, 10; Jeremiah 5:11-14). Often, the truth hurts. It confronts us. When it does, we can choose to despise it or grow wise from it, to chew and swallow or spit it out.
• We’re overfed and not given time savor the food and absorb the nutrients. We get indigestion and throw up. There may be some truth to this. There is much fast-food teaching that resembles Burger King buck doubles. And these kids’ parents control their spiritual (and nutritional) diet as much or more than they do, so they can’t always change the menu. But I know there is deep and profound truth in what many of them hear each week (I know some of their pastors and listen to their chapel speakers; many are fantastic). There is much to savor if they choose to. I suspect indigestion is due not to over-consumption of spiritual food, but to other parts of their diet that prevent proper digestion: media, virtual reality (video games), and social life, both substandard encounters (facebook and texting) and authentic face-to-face relationships.
• People don’t give us silverware. There is also some truth to this. I struggle with it as a teacher. In the short run, spoon-feeding is easier. Less mess. Less work. Not to mention I’m trying to feed a table full of students with varying abilities and appetites. I fear that the hungry, who would eagerly take up the tools and eat a solid meal, sit famished or frustrated while we add jelly and raisins to the salad so the rest will eat it.
• Perhaps an equal and opposite problem is that many have not acquired a taste for nutritious food. Most Americans (to my bewilderment) intentionally acquire tastes for expensive and potentially harmful things (like coffee and alcohol), but we don’t develop an appetite for the bittersweet message of the Bible. One student said people may be turned off by intimidating or offensive parts of the message. This is certainly true; it never ceases to scandalize (1 Corinthians 1:23)! Another, when we were discussing baby food, asked why our parents make us eat mashed up vegetables when we were little. My blood immediately boiled, and I said we eat them because they’re good for us! Despite the diabolical lie that only what feels and tastes good actually is good, often the best things for us are those we like the least. My family has gone through a nutritional overhaul since my first daughter was born. My wife wanted to give her a chance at good health by building better habits from the start. I now enjoy foods I never would have imagined and find myself disgusted by food I used to like. Perhaps the bittersweet message of God’s Word is a taste we must acquire.
• One student represented this side of the argument when she stated simply, “People like candy.” It’s interesting how the spiritual mirrors the nutritional. Americans live on junk food and empty calories. We like it because it tastes good (again, it’s acquired, or rather engrained since it’s been fed to us since birth). We might know all the statistics and health risks associated with our diet, but we ignore these and keep eating because it tastes good. Until we change our appetites, truly good food will taste bad to us. It’s like my boss, Joe, who likes canned fruit over fresh because he spent years on a fishing boat without access to the good stuff. How can we penetrate the denial and convince people that healthy food is delicious. Perhaps we need to explain the difference of ingredients and share our food slowly so their tastes can change. Perhaps some people need a purging process.
• Here’s an insightful reason: The people before us don’t know how to feed themselves either (so they can’t teach us). I tend to agree. It’s no secret that most evangelical Christians are biblically and theologically illiterate. The sad part is we either don’t realize it or we don’t care. We sit in the cushy church chairs, content to eat mashed up peas and applesauce off the spoon. And some (thank God not all![1]) of my students sit in class either completely disengaged or moaning and groaning because they’d rather watch a movie than digest the life-giving, life-sustaining words of the living God.

I can’t understand it! Where is the appetite? Human children have an instinctive urge to eat. Don’t (or shouldn’t) God’s children hunger to feed their soul? We sing, “This is my daily bread / Your very word spoken to me / And I I’m desperate for you.”[2] Are these empty words? Where are the Christians who join the Psalmist in their thirst for God (Psalm 42:1) and longing for his truth (Psalm 19:9-11; 119:103)? Milk is indispensible for growth (1 Peter 2:2). Eventually we must move on to meat (1 Corinthians 3:1-2; Hebrews 5:11-14). But if we would do so, we must learn to take up the tools and eat.

 

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[1] I am extremely grateful for those students who engage in the learning process. I’m not sure if I could keep doing my work without them. They bring joy and encouragement to their teacher’s soul.

[2] Marie Barnett. “Breathe.” Mercy / Vineyard Publishing: 1995.

Redeeming Education: Imitating Your Teacher

Here's an insightful post from my friend, Jeff Haanen, explaining how Jesus taught by sharing life with his disciples and how they learned by imitating his way of life.
Redeeming Education: Imitating Your Teacher: "Jesus shocked his contemporaries with his method of teaching. He didn’t go on and on giving commentary on the law, as most of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law of his day did (and many “scholars” do today). His method was simple: gather a group of disciples, live with them, teach them the way of the kingdom of God, and most importantly, show them the way with your life..."

Christian Education for Christian Ethics

I am, admittedly, a nerd. Analytic. Brainy. Theoretical. Theological. I love the world of ideas. I get kicks out of learning, research and reading that many today, especially among the younger generation, probably find strange. So one could say I’m predisposed to over-emphasize education.

So let me start by stressing that I recognize the value of emotion and the inadequacy of knowledge without the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 1:7). I believe body mind and heart are fully integrated. That in fact, is the only way this argument makes sense. My contention is that for the church to cultivate Christians whose new life is expressed ethically in their bodies, we must nurture the development of both their hearts and minds.

So far so good, right? But my observation of Christian people, Christian worship and Christian education leads me to believe we’ve left the mind behind.^[1] It seems many American Christians fall into one of two categories: 1) basic unfamiliarity with the Bible, or 2) basic knowledge of Bible stories, usually learned in Sunday school, but little understanding of how the stories relate and together tell one Grand Story of Scripture.^[2] Even the second category – knowledgeable, but non-integrated – is inadequate for training disciples who actually live like Christ.

By way of illustration, consider a ladder.[3] At the top is wisdom: life lived in light of God’s truth, in obedience and service to Christ. The first, foundational rung of the ladder is a grasp of the overarching biblical story.

Wisdom

Discerning Engagement of Culture

Ethical Standards for Moral Reasoning

Worldview Formation

Biblical Story

Most Christian schools rightly aim to achieve most or all of the top four rungs. We want to create critical-thinking, Christlike disciples who have a Christian worldview. But we often fail to realize that Christian ethic and worldview grow of the Christian Story of reality, the biblical Story of reality, the grand Story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. This story answers the critical worldview questions: Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? What’s the problem? What’s the Solution? ^[4] The Christian faith is a worldview.^[5] It’s a worldview grounded in a Story. And the Story is more than the disconnected mishmash of apparently unrelated teachings, miracles and hero stories found in most curriculum materials and children's Bibles. All of these are part of the Story. But the Story is bigger and more complex than all of these. Big and complex, yes, but not beyond us. And actually, when we boil down, no bigger or more complex than the fairy tales I read my five-year old daughter. We can teach the basic plot to our children.^[6] As they grow, we can flesh out the Story, add details, characters, subplots, etc. We can explain how the stories relate and function together, and how the Story intersects with other aspects of life. Then, when they face the challenges of an increasingly godless culture – challenges that delude, derail, and even destroy the lives of many young adults – they will be more prepared to expose these “hollow and deceptive philosophies” (Colossians 2:8) with God’s Truth from God’s Story.

May we relearn, reclaim and re-teach the old old Story with all its life-shaping and world-changing power.^[7] May the story stir our hearts to sing and our hands to serve in worship of our God and King.

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[1] Mark Noll has called it a scandal. J. P. Moreland calls us to love our God with all our mind. But calls seem largely unheard or ignored, perhaps because they’ve come through a medium (books) that misses the target audience, or perhaps because they drown in the noise of an entertainment culture. A notable exception (in a more culturally engaging medium is the Truth Project. It is terrific resource that raises the questions Christians should be wrestling with. But I wonder how well it motivates and equips Christians to pursue learning. If they view a 12-hour video series as a completed project rather than a few bricks in a building, it may do just the opposite. Let’s hope that it raises questions and opens doors to discovery that people actually pursue.

[2] D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), chs. 5 & 6.

[3] I realize this illustration focuses on the intellectual aspect of growth to the exclusion of other factors like community and the work of the Holy Spirit. But I believe these all work in harmony and the process is impaired without them all.

[4] N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 122-26. For more than what’s here, but less than Wright’s difficult chapter, check out Learning the Script and Playing a Teacher in God’s Unfolding Story: Reflections on Christian Worldview and Vocation.

[5] Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Should We Live? (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1999).

[6] The only good example of this that I’ve seen for children is The Children’s Storybook Bible. There is a raft of good, recent books for adults that aim to recover the Story and help us read it. Two that I’ve found helpful are Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004) and Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), esp. chs. 3-5.

[7] On the life-shaping influence of the stories we tell our children, see Plato’s Republic, 376d-392c.

Embracing the Unholy Church, part 2

One teacher who’s helped me learn to love and embrace God’s fractured and faltering church is Eugene Peterson (one of my book mentors). He discusses the issue in his recent an exposition of Ephesians entitled Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ. The lines of chapter one cut right to the chase: “Church is the textured context in which we grow up in Christ to maturity. But church is difficult. Sooner or later, though, if we are serious about growing up in Christ, we have to deal with church” (11). At points throughout the rest of the book, he helps us deal with church by getting to the bottom of what and why it is.

He begins by affirming the church’s purpose: it is the Spirit-empowered witness to the kingdom of God in the world. It is the community that practices death-defeating resurrection life in a world where “death gets the biggest headlines” (12). True, we’re not especially good at this resurrection life, and on the surface, our practice looks incongruent: hypocrisy and imperfections, fights and factions, failure to convert the world or clean up its morals. Many see this and become disheartened or dismiss the church as irrelevant. But, Peterson argues, there is more to church; there is “deep church” (a phrase he borrows from C. S. Lewis). Peterson looks at the church in front of us, warts and all, and asks a profound and thought-provoking question: “Do you think that maybe this is exactly what God intended when he created the church? Maybe the church as we have it provides the very conditions and proper company congenial for growing up in Christ, for becoming mature, for arriving at the measure of the full stature of Christ. Maybe God knows what he’s doing, giving us church, this church” (14).[1]

Peterson laments that in America we define church in terms of function, not essence. We focus on our role in achieving God’s purpose. We evaluate through lenses of pragmatism consumerism. “This way of thinking – church as a human activity to be measured by human expectations – is pursued unthinkingly. The huge reality of God already at work in all the operations of the Trinity is benched on the sideline, while we call timeout, huddle together with our heads bowed, and figure out a strategy by which we can compensate for God’s regrettable retreat into invisibility” (118). He argues that such an approach leads to shallow, statistically-measured attempts to achieve relevance and culturally-defined success.

To move us beyond this myopic approach, Peterson introduces the phrase “Ontological Church.” This is essential church, behind the scenes, below the surface. There is more to church than meets the eye. Much of what is happening is invisible. It is the work of the Holy Spirit, growing people up in Christ. It’s not what we do; it’s what we are and what God does. We are included because of what God has done to us and for us. Then we participate in his ongoing action. How we participate certainly matters. He calls us to faithful obedience. But the foundational work of God among us is what makes us church, however imperfectly we live it out (17-8).

I see a few keys to help me move beyond disillusionment and into loving embrace of the church:

• God is working inside the house that often appears inglorious. The house is us, and it’s under construction (Ephesians 2:22). He is working in people, slowly, silently, through his Spirit. When I stop looking at the exterior, walk in the doors and start engaging people, I see God changing them. And I’m encouraged.
• Ministers merely participate in God’s work (1 Corinthians 3:5-7). We do not change people. God does. This is freeing truth. It allows me to use my gifts and love people and let God renovate hearts.
• When imperfect people grow increasingly into God’s likeness (holiness), God gets glory. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing…to the praise of his glory (Ephesians 1:3-14). When we join in the transformational process, we give God glory and thus fulfill our creaturely vocation.

Eugene Peterson is one of the great prophetic voices in the American church. After 50 years of biblical study and pastoral ministry, he has much wisdom to share, and I believe he sees what many of us miss (especially us younger ones who are more a product of our time than we realize or care to admit). For those of us struggling to serve the broken church in North America, his is a voice we should hear and heed. Practice Resurrection is a great place to start.[2]

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[1] In all my discontent with church, I’ve rarely considered that God actually desires a community in constant process, a people always approaching wholeness, a perpetual witness of hope in a hurting world. But it makes sense, not least because the church reproduces itself. Old, wise saints must leave the mission to less mature leaders. Spiritual babies are born and must grow up (cf. Practice, 181-82). Perhaps the ever-transforming church is God’s chosen means for transforming the world.

[2] His most recent book, a minister’s memoir called The Pastor, also looks good. Hear him talk about it here.