"A Gospel with Few Consequences" -- Quote from Ken Myers

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“Believing in a gospel that has few earthly consequences is, ironically, just the sort of state our secularist neighbors would wish us to sustain. They, too, are dualists, believing that religion may be a fine thing for people, so long as they keep it private. Their secularism isn’t threatened by Christians as long as they aren’t too ‘Incarnational.’ As long as the cultural lives of Christians aren’t significantly different from those of materialists and pagans, secularism is safe. Christians may pray ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ but as long as they don’t actually do anything that demonstrates how such a petition should affect their political, economic, and cultural activities, the Enlightenment legacy is safe.”

Ken Myers

We're Building a Church. What Do We Mean When We Say "Church"?

This is a great little video from a church in Brussels.

The church isn't a "WHAT." It's a "WHO." It's a people.

Or...as we've stated...it's not a NOUN but a VERB. It's not just a bunch of poeple but a bunch of people engaged in and changing the world.

Or, as the kids' song says, "The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The church is not a resting place. The church is a people."

Or...well...take a look at the video...


When We Say Church from Doug Peterson on Vimeo.

"Should We Have Constructed This Church at All?" -- A Look at N.T. Wright

As readers of my blog will know, I've been pastor at Girdwood Chapel for 10 years so far and much of that time has been spent working towards constructing a new church facility.

This new building was a dream of the congregation's before I got here.  They'd been planning for a new building since even before their last pastor, their first full-time pastor, showed up in 1996.  After I got here they'd already pushed back plans to begin construction twice, each time having to turn away work teams from the lower-48 that were very eager to help with the construction.  The congregation had been planning to build with the good folk of the local Catholic congregation on some property together, but kept getting delayed as they worked on issues with the property.

Well, why was a congregation that averaged only about 35 people so eager to construct a building?  Was their ministry really, in a any way, intimately tied to a "brick and mortar" facility?  Couldn't most of their ministries take place outside of a church building?

These are good questions.  And I'm not really sure how to answer them for the time before I was here as a pastor.  My guess is that a lot of the construction talk was, perhaps, a little premature.  However, even though they only had about 35 in attendance, they shared the small 30-foot by 30-foot building with the local Catholic congregation, effectively doubling the size of the congregation that was worshipping in that very tiny (some call it "quaint") building.  Plus, I think we need to understand that the present focus on "house churches" wasn't quite as strong.

However, a couple of years after I got here, we started averaging above 50 in worship and we had to add a second service to accommodate the growth.  This is because, with an average of 50 in worship, we were having some Sundays at 60...which stressing our space.  That was a problem.  Also, we were having trouble meeting the educational needs of the congregation as we were beginning to have Sunday School in three different facilities:  children at the Chapel, youth off-site at a restaurant, and adults at a member's home.  We were finding that the ministries we wanted to be involved in were having trouble because of the lack of space.   Moreover, not having a restroom limited the number of user groups that wanted to use our small space.

We looked around at other options in the community--the school, rental property--but couldn't find anything.  The monthly rents seemed just too high for what we'd be getting out of the deal.  There was no "community center" (as there is now) and there was no "Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Church" building (as there is now).  We didn't seem to have any options.  And so, we started planning for a new facility and, probably 8 years after that time, we're still trying to get into the new space.

I feel, in a way, that I have to make excuses for why we're building a new facility.  I know that the amount of time we've been taking on this construction has worn down, emotionally and energy-wise, our congregation.  And I know that we're going to be dealing with the debt to pay it off for some time.  And, furthermore, I know that a lot of new ministries and churches are finding that they really don't need "brick and mortar" buildings to engage in ministries and build relationships.  And, perhaps, if we'd been a brand-spanking new ministry, we would have found that we could have evolved on a more "house church" model.  But we were a church that had been around for 50 years...now 60...and already had identified with a church facility.  That facility was just too small for it.  And, after all, we knew that the building was not an end in and of itself but was a "tool" -- a tool to build and foster community and a place from which to send people out in ministry in the world.  I think we've been clear about that all along.

I recently received some help in my reflection on this on buildings and ministries through an interview with N.T. Wright in "Faith and Leadership" called "N.T. Wright: Working on a Building."

Although he was Bishop of Durham in the Church of England for seven years, N.T. Wright doesn’t think about the church in terms of institutions. He thinks in terms of community.

“The institution is like the scaffolding that you need to be working on the building,” Wright said. “The scaffolding isn’t the reality.”

The General Synod, the Church of England’s legislative body, for example, is basically like plumbing, Wright said: “When you go into a friend’s house, you don’t expect to see the plumbing, but you need to know that it’s working, because if it’s not, fairly soon there’ll be a bad smell in the house.”

That is, the church’s institutions have to work well, or things can go wrong. People can get hurt, Wright said. Church leaders may sometimes feel like they’re working on scaffolding all day rather than living in the house, but “somebody has got to do that stuff so that the mission of the church can go forward.”

What we are building is part of the institution.  We're building a structure, a part of the institutional church. And it's a beautiful part of it.  Thanks be to God, we're going to have a beautiful facility--the walls, the roof-line, the office space, and, (thank you, Jesus!) the bathrooms.  But that structure is there merely to shape the underlying reality which is a church body that is growing closer to God and each other in community.

That building we're building, that debt we're taking on, all of the energy that we're putting forward...well...it's all so the mission of the church can go forward.  We're not building a building, even though it may look that way.  We're supporting and expanding a ministry.  We're not constructing walls.  We're building a place to construct disciples.  And while I do hope, unlike Wright's metaphor for the institutional church, that people "see" our plumbing and the heavy timbers in the sanctuary and our beautiful front entrance, I hope what they come here for is the life of community that springs up from this place.

So, should we have constructed a church building at all?  Yes.  For this ministry.   For this town.

Ministering in Community: Loving When You're Not Loved Back

Image via WikipediaThis is my 11th year in Girdwood.  We've loved it here.  The church has been challenging and fun.  The construction project has been long and a valuable learning experience.  I think I've grown a lot here…as a person and a pastor.  We know this is the place that our kids (at least the three older ones) have grown up.  I often say that, as persons grow older, I think there's always some place that they think of as "home" to themselves…even if they may have lived in several different towns or states.  I may have been born in Massachusetts, I may have graduated high school in Indiana, I may have gone to seminary in North Carolina, and I may have lived in Alaska for the last 13 years, but I'm always clear that I "grew up in New York."  That's where I had my formative childhood years, from age 5-15,  Well, my kids will, maybe forever, say they grew up in Girdwood, Alaska.  How awesome is that?

Plus, Girdwood is just strikingly beautiful.  The mountains creep right in on you.  You can ski and watch the tide roll in.  And while we get a lot of rain, being that we're in the most northern temperate rain forest in the world, the beautiful days make up for it.  I still remember the first visit my parents made to Girdwood after our three years in Kenai.  I stood with my dad on the porch of our new home we were renting and he said, "You know, Jim, don't take this for granted.  You may never live in a more beautiful place than this."  And he's right.  There are a lot of beautiful places in the world and I've seen several of them.  But, I may never live in a more beautiful place than this.

I know that faith up in Alaska, in the realm of "rugged individualism," can be a difficult thing.  Persons here tend not to be "joiners" and many of them have been burned by churches in the Lower-48 where they used to live and are really hoping to stay as far away from church as they can.  Therefore, I have worked very hard to carry myself in such a way that I'd be seen as non-threatening in the community.  I've participated in the life of the community.  I've served on boards and attended meetings.  I've raised my kids, fully engaging the activities of the community for them.  And our congregation has worked very hard at being seen as a source of good in the community…we've painted and cleaned and shoveled and given and helped etc.  We want to be seen as a place that emanates the love of God, but in a way that works alongside those not in the church to bring about change for the common good.  The difference, we hope, between us and the non-Christians, is that we do it all out of a response to the justification by faith offered by Christ.  We live out out faith by being a people working on behalf of others in the community.  And it's made a difference.  It is easier to be me…a pastor…today than it was ten years ago.  I've been around long enough that persons, I don't think, feel like they have to be on their guard when they see me.

However…

I've been surprised, along the way, by the level of animosity expressed by some (not all) members of the community.  And sometimes I have to catch myself, recognizing that it's not about me but about the church.  And it's really probably not about Jesus, but about the experiences some have had of the church.

My first, sort of, tangible expression of the "us/them" mentality was early on as our congregation's event flyers were taken down from the post office.  Girdwood is a community that communicates through posted notices at the Post Office.  If you want to find out what band is playing where, who has skis for sale, who's hiring, and what meeting is coming up, that's the place to look.  It's also the place you'd look to find out what the times of Christmas worship services are.  However, more frequently in my early years here, it was the Girdwood Chapel posters that kept getting taken down.  I'd put up a flyer.  The next day it was gone.  I'd keep extra flyers in my car just so I could keep replacing the ones that had been removed.  At one point I had congregational members with flyers so they could put them up as well…just to keep up with those who were removing the flyers.

Another expression of this animosity really hit me on on a spiritual level.  One day as I showed up to our new construction, probably in 2007 and opened up the construction door only to find feces…yes, poop…on the handle.  Someone had deliberately put poop on the door so that a person going in would grab on to it.  There was also garbage and beer bottles left at the front door that day as well.  I remember, looking back, the feelings of anger…I'll go so far to say "righteous anger"…welling up inside of me.  I felt violated.  I felt that the Holy Ground of our church had been violated, that there was a spiritual offense launched against it.  I didn't know what to do and I ran off to the home of one of our members to pray.  I needed someone to pray for me.   I wanted to pray for the community…perhaps for "the horrible sinners who did this"...even if the prayer ended up being mostly for me.

There have been others. But the latest comes just a couple of weeks ago as we're getting ready for our big Building Consecration.   Every week we have about 70-100 persons come to the church to pick up boxes of organic vegetables.  We've been doing this for a few years, providing space and leaving the church unlocked for 2.5 days a week.  Plus, we're left to work around the vegetables every once in a while and donate unclaimed boxes after a couple days.  This has been a service to the community…just because we love the community and believe that, even if we don't agree on many spiritual issues, we can agree that eating organic, more locally-produced, food is a good thing for the world and for the world's peoples.  I wanted to make sure that all these good folks who picked up vegetable boxes knew about our Consecration and I wanted to let them know that, as we've been helping them for a couple years with the vegetable pick-up, it would be helpful to our church if they came to our Consecration.  It would help us celebrate and would help the conversation we were planning to have about ways our new building could be used in the future.  It might be a little crass to call it a "quid pro quo" arrangement, but I was hoping that the gift of presence and space that we had been offering could come back to us a gift of their presence at our Consecration.   That was my hope.  So, to encourage this, I put what I thought was a very non-threatening and non-religious note on the vegetable boxes, inviting those who picked them up to attend our Consecration.

Perhaps my note wasn't non-threatening enough.  A couple days later I got a call from the distributor of the boxes saying that they had receive a call from on of the recipients who was extremely upset at the note from the church and I received a verbal hand-slap for trying to mix anything remotely churchy with the boxes.  My emotions were already running high because of the build up to the dedication.  Here I was trying to do something that would further our participation in the life of the community and I had someone from the community who was "extremely upset" with the church.  I don't do well when I have people extremely upset we me.

My emotions welled up inside of me again and what I wanted to say to the person on the phone is that…OK, I wouldn't put anything on the boxes anymore but they need to realize the gift that I/We have been giving their company over these past years and put that into perspective.  And I wanted to get the name of the person who complained and tell him or her that they can certainly make arrangements to pick up their box in Anchorage at one of the non-church sites.

I didn't do either of these.

I kept my mouth shut.

And I realized that this was just one person in the grand scheme of things and the majority of the community around us, I think, appreciates how we try to love them…whether or not they appreciate that we try to love them with the love of God.

It can be hard to love when you're not loved back.  That's just the way it is.  I think the animosity has subsided some over the last several years as we've tried to embrace our role as a Good Samaritan in the community.  But the answer when faced with this is never to withhold your love, to lessen your grace, to stop doing good works…no matter how little love you are shown in return.

All you can do is keep on loving with the love of Jesus.

After all, that's what Jesus did.

And it got far worse for him.

"Amazing Grace" -- A Calvinist vs. Arminian Smackdown

Image via WikipediaRichard Hall, over at Connexions, in Britain, recalls a version of "Amazing Grace" if it were composed by Arminians and finds one as if it were composed by Calvinists -- in a satirical way.  He remembered part of it and then found the whole thing over at Challies. 

Arminianism, for those a little rusty, really stood apart from the Calvinists in believing that grace was resistible and that persons are not predestined to believe but believers are predestined to be with God.  (It's amazing what a little refresher in Wikipedia will bring).  People fought long and hard about this, with the Calvinists saying Arminians (including John Wesley) bordered on "works righteousness."  I recall a story of someone pointing out to Wesley the words of "Rock of Ages" saying, "NOTHING in my hand I bring, only to the cross I cling."  And I recall Wesley's critique of a traditional understanding of predestination, saying, "If predestination is really true, then why do I stand here preaching if it doesn't matter and it's all predetermined who will believe.  It was really Wesley's understanding of prevenient grace that stood at the border of these two theological perspectives.

As said above, there were a lot of heated arguments about these differences and you can still find them today.  So, it was with great interest and much giggling that I read Richard Hall's post at Connexions today which includes a theological smackdown between Arminiansm and Calvinism through parodies of "Amazing Grace."  These are funny.  But more, they get at theological critiques each side had/has of the others.

So, the (satirical) Amazing Grace for Arminians (found at Challies.com) is:

Arminian “grace!” How strange the sound,
Salvation hinged on me.
I once was lost then turned around,
Was blind then chose to see.

What “grace” is it that calls for choice,
Made from some good within?
That part that wills to heed God’s voice,
Proved stronger than my sin.

Thru many ardent gospel pleas,
I sat with heart of stone.
But then some hidden good in me,
Propelled me toward my home.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Because of what we’ve done,
We’ve no less days to sing our praise,
Than when we first begun.

Nice, huh.  And while us good Arminian Methodist may say that this "works righteousness" version of "Amazing Grace" is a long way from how we really understand grace, I think it's imperative on us to hear the critiques and reaffirm that it is God who saves us and not something we do ourselves...and how it happens.

Richard Hall,  comes up with his own parody, poking fun at extreme Calvinism which often appears to make grace anything but "amazing" or "graceful."  In an extreme form, Calvinism can appear to put forth a distant and cantankerous God who randomly assign persons to heaven or hell on a whim.  There's no room for works, clearly, with this perspective, but it seems to remove all of life and faith from the equation as well. 

Here's Richard Hall's Calvinist rendition, with tongue firmly planted in cheek:

Amazing thought! You call it “grace”
That saves and damns at whim?
That blinds the lost, condemns a host
And turns them into toast?

Tis “grace” like this that makes me fear
This “grace” my fear inspires:
Whatever I may think or do
I’m fuel for his fires.

The dangers, trials and snares I see
Are all illusory:
I’m either picked before I’m born
Or else, I’m history!

The Lord has promised naught to me
If I’m not on his list
If this is grace, how bad’s the curse?
I’m going to get drunk. 

Richard Hall makes me think and has one of the more accessible and theological Wesleyan blogs out there.  He's a Methodist minister in Wales.  Well worth your time.

Consecration and Incarnation -- Salvation and Our Skin -- Christ and Community

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Clearly I have no idea how to title this blog post.  Perhaps I have way too much going on here.  But my heart and head are still spinning with the events of yesterday at our consecration.  I'm still a little raw.  I'm still moved and touched by all the show of support we had.  I'm still thinking ahead to all the ways this building is going to be used once we're in a position to use it.

As stated, we had our Consecration of our new church yesterday.  I had looked at all sorts of stuff online to help me shape the service.  A pastor friend gave me his services he had used at a consecration nearly 20 years ago.  I had never had to plan one of these and felt great pressure.  After all, the Bishop was going to be here. 

The problem with so much of the stuff I was looking at was that it was so "high church" and formal.  "Process with Bible and Cross."  Tons of ritual.  Lots of formal language.  It looked great for the right setting.  Our church is a lot more informal than this.  None of this was going to feel particularly "Girdwoodian."

This is not to say we don't have important rituals in our church.  No, rituals are very important.  We have communion every week and go through the full liturgy.  We have the kids come down for children's time.  We do the creeds often.  It all just seems to have a more informal feel to it.  It seems "common."  It seems "colloquial." 

Granted, this reflects me, personally.  However, from a theological perspective, I don't pretend to have some religious "realm" or state of being and some "secular" realm.  I really don't have a style of language I use in church and one I use at home.  Or at least I try not to. Because I don't think these two things can truly ever be separated.  When Christ became incarnate he, as Petersons' The Message says, "moved into the neighborhood" (John 1).  He entered this real world with its real people and the salvation he offered was for the real world...with our own language and culture and problems.  Yes, we need to be in awe of God.  We should fear God.  We should offer God reverence.  But we can do so by offering who we are here and now.  We stand before God, with all of our quirks and baggage and problems, and are redeemed in the real world and we offer that salvation to those around us in the real world.


One of the illustrations I use frequently in church to talk about the very worldly salvation that Christ offers is the problem of slavery in the US in the 1700s to 1800s where slaveowners would tell their slaves that they had to keep being slaves but that Christ had set them free IN THEIR HEARTS.  It was a disembodied salvation.  It was gnostic.  It only "seemed" like salvation.  And it's wrong.

Likewise, a church that says it believes in a Christ that saves, but isn't trying to transform its community is practicing the same kind of gnostic salvation -- a salvation that doesn't really transform anything at all.

Just as our salvation is one that is intimately connected with our skin, so the salvation the church offers is intimately connected with the community and the culture.  Our faith is about changing how we live and how the world operates.  I remember a preacher at Duke Divinity School that "God not only wants to save us in the 'Sweet By and By' but in the 'Nasty Here and Now.'"  The only religion worth its salt is one that is tranformational--of the individual and the world.  (Remember our mission statement here at Girdwood Chapel:  "Love God.  Love others.  Change the world.")

That's the understanding of salvation and faith I've tried to live and to teach and is why, yesterday at our dedication, we tried to connect with where our people are and why we had a question and answer time to include the community members in asking how we can, together, work to transform our community for the better.  There is not a separate life for my faith, apart from how I live and experience the world.  There is not a separate world of the church, apart from the community in which it finds itself.

I found the following quote from Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio that gets at the theological underpinnings here:

Much of modern culture, with its Gnostic undertones, alienates us from creation and its givenness. Theologian Colin Gunton sees the affirmation of the Incarnation as essential to our enthusiastic participation in creation and therefore in cultural life. "A world that owes its origin to a God who makes it with direct reference to one who was to become incarnate -- part of the world -- is a world that is a proper place for human beings to use their senses, minds and imaginations, and to expect that they will not be wholly deceived in doing so."

Christians have the only account of human and natural origins that can give cultural life meaning. But even after 2,000 years of opportunity to reflect on the Incarnation, many contemporary Christians persist in believing in a Gnostic salvation, a salvation that has no cultural consequences. In such a dualistic understanding, our souls are saved, the essential immaterial aspect of our being is made right with God, but the actions of our bodies -- what we actually do in space and time -- are a matter of indifference if not futility. Salvation is an inward matter only. It affects our attitudes and some of our ideas. But insofar as our cultural activities have any Christian significance it is as mere marketing efforts -- things we do to attract others to our essentially Gnostic salvation.

Believing in a gospel that has few earthly consequences is, ironically, just the sort of state our secularist neighbors would wish us to sustain. They, too, are dualists, believing that religion may be a fine thing for people, so long as they keep it private. Their secularism isn't threatened by Christians as long as they aren't too "Incarnational." As long as the cultural lives of Christians aren't significantly different from those of materialists and pagans, secularism is safe. Christians may pray "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," but as long as they don't actually do anything that demonstrates how such a petition should affect their political, economic, and cultural activities, the Enlightenment legacy is safe.

That's a great quote.

The Root & Branches of the Church

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“The Christian community ‘has its roots in the future and its branches in the present.,’ writes John D. Zizioulas. The ecclesia (church, community) of Jesus finds its origins in the future. And that future is bright, certain and unshakeable because of Jesus and his finished work. Hope is the bridge from the future into the the present, and the branches of that hope are faith and love.

“N. T. Wright says that ‘a mission-shaped church must have its mission shaped by hope; that the genuine Christian hope, rooted in Jesus’ resurrection, is the hope for God’s renewal of all things, for his overcoming of corruption, decay, and death, for his filling of the whole cosmos with his love and grace, his power and glory.’ Roots in the future, roots in the resurrection, roots in the eternal victory of Jesus, roots that are firmly planted in eternal life, roots that nourish the trunk and branches, and ultimately produce the fruit that draws others into the story. Wright concludes, ‘To be truly effective in this kind of mission, one must be genuinely and cheerfully rooted in God’s renewal.’ We have a real reason to cheer. The more we know the story, the more we rejoice.’”

From “The Good and Beautiful Community,” (2010) James Bryan Smith by way of NextReformation.com

Loving the Congregation

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Jared C. Wilson's posts feed my soul.  I love his words on "gospel wakefulness" and, frankly, sometimes I feel as if I'm so asleep to what God--the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Jesus, and Mary, and Peter, and Paul--is saying to me. 

And, I must also confess that sometimes this whole pastoring thing is a lonely job.  I can feel like I have all of the answers and I have the one true vision for the church, and we'd get to God's preferred future for us if everyone would just get their own opinions out of the way and listen to me.  It can be easy to get frustrated with congregations.  After all, why won't more people step up to teach or to lead or to even attend?  Where is the help when you need it?  Why won't persons give more than a measly 2% or their income or 3% or whatever it is?  In my own head, I can hold myself up as a an example of a saint that my congregation should aspire to become more like in their own lives--occasionally forgetting just how sinful this fallen pastor has been and remains.

But, I must also confess that the above is somewhat of an exaggeration right now.  I have found more support among the people of Girdwood Chapel than I have at other places in my life.  God oftentimes moves more slowly than I wish he would, but it has seemed like we've been moving forward.  That "preferred reality" is still a long ways off, but step by step we're getting there.  Perhaps some of this is not what God is doing through the congregation, but what God is doing through me.  Perhaps, more than at the two other stops along my ministry journey, I am loving my people more fully, more completely, in a more godly way.  Perhaps.

Jared Wilson writes about what it means to love a congregation, taking words from Ray Ortlund in The Gospel Coalition's Themelios Journal:

When the risen Lord of the church sends you to a people as their pastor, he is not sending you to them as their critic but as their friend. They may be immature. They may be bogged down in tradition or dazzled by neomania. But they are yours by the gracious appointment of Christ, and you will know them forever. If you hope for the gospel to work in their hearts with power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction, as of course you do, then don’t just preach to them; desire them. Desire not what they can do for you but what you can do for them. Love them, enjoy them, delight in them, honor them. When other pastors gripe about their churches, you set another tone. Lift your people up. Be their champion and defender. They are your glory and joy at the Second Coming.

I will continue, at Girdwood Chapel, to "love them, enjoy them, delight in them, honor them."  I am and will continue to be "their champion and defender."