Born in 1928 as the son of a high-ranking official in the Canadian government, Vanier traveled the world and served in the Royal Navy. Sensing that there must be something more to life, he resigned from his naval commission in 1950 to study theology and philosophy, eventually completing a Ph.D. at the Catholic University of Paris. Through his friendship with a Catholic priest, he renewed his faith in God and became deeply concerned about the plight of people with intellectual disabilities. In 1964, Vanier invited two disabled men to leave their institutions and move into his home. This led to the establishment of L’Arche (“The Ark”), a worldwide federation of residential communities where people with intellectual disabilities live, pray and worship together with caregivers in an atmosphere of friendship, mutuality and inclusion. Although L’Arche was founded as a Christian organization, the communities are open and welcoming to people of all religious beliefs. Vanier has studied, taught, and written extensively on topics related to faith, disability and community. He became a close friend and mentor to the late Christian author Henri Nouwen (1932-1996), who resided at a L’Arche community in Ontario, Canada for the last ten years of his life. In recognition of Vanier’s influence and achievements, he was awarded the Templeton Prize in 2015. (Previous winners of the Templeton Prize include Billy Graham and Mother Teresa of Calcutta.)

For decades, Vanier studied the inner workings of communities (especially religious ones) throughout the world. He learned what makes communities thrive and what causes them to fail. In his international bestseller Becoming Human (1998), he describes the enormous role that community plays in human development. Community is not the same thing as society. Society is where we earn a living, but community is where we experience belonging. Community is where we grow into full fledged human beings.

Belonging is important for our growth to independence; even further, it is important for our growth to inner freedom and maturity. It is only through belonging that we can break out of the shell of individualism and self-centeredness that both protects and isolates us…

(Becoming Human, Kindle edition, p. 35). If a community is healthy, it provides the structure and security that foster personal growth. But communities can also be unhealthy. They can appeal to the dark, egotistic parts of human nature and sow conflict and discord throughout the world. Vanier continues:

However, the human drive for belonging also has its pitfalls. There is an innate need in our hearts to identify with a group, both for protection and for security, to discover and affirm our identity, and to use the group to prove our worthiness and goodness, indeed, even to prove that we are better than others. It is my belief that it is not religion or culture at the root of human conflict but the way in which groups use religion or culture to dominate one another. Let me hasten to add that if it were not religion or culture that people used as a stick with which to beat others, they would just use something else (p. 36).

In Vanier’s understanding, the key difference between healthy and unhealthy community is this: An unhealthy community turns inward and develops a superiority complex. A healthy community recognizes that it is only a small part of the human race and fosters a sense of interdependence with the rest of humanity.

A group is the manifestation of this need to belong. A group can, however, close in on itself, believing that it is superior to others. But my vision is that belonging should be at the heart of a fundamental discovery: that we all belong to a common humanity, the human race. We may be rooted in a specific family and culture but we come to this earth to open up to others, to serve them and receive the gifts they bring to us, as well as to all of humanity (p. 36).

Vanier writes from an international perspective. He knows that Western people tend to be individualistic, and Easterners tend toward collectivism. Having seen the strengths and weaknesses of groups operating in diverse cultures, he is constantly aware of the delicate balance that must be struck between limiting personal freedom for the good of the community and preserving the dignity and uniqueness of the individual. He is also keenly attuned to the inequalities that exist in our fallen world, where the strong usually dominate the weak. In healthy community, each person knows he is both strong and weak; understanding and accepting their individual limitations is a key part of what gives community members a sense of belonging.

In Chapter II (“Belonging”) Vanier lists four signs of communities that are healthy. The first sign of a healthy community is that it treats all of its members, including the weakest and most vulnerable, with respect, seeing them all as equally important, and deliberately includes everyone in decisionmaking.

In healthy belonging, we have respect for one another. We work together, cooperate in a healthy way, listen to each other. We learn how to resolve the conflicts that arise when one person seeks to dominate another. In a true state of belonging, those who have less conventional knowledge, who are seemingly powerless, who have different capacities, are respected and listened to. In such a place of belonging, if it is a good place, power is not imposed from on high, but all members seek to work together as a body. The implication is that we see each other as persons and not just as cogs in a machine. We open up and interact with each other so that all can participate in the making of decisions (p. 58).

In Old Testament times, most of the Jewish people had a deep sense of belonging. But through the prophets, God rebuked them for ignoring the poor, weak and disadvantaged in their midst, for treating them as less-than-full members of God’s family (Isaiah 58:6-7).

The second sign of healthy community is that it values differences of opinion and promotes dialogue. Vanier has sharp words for communities that enforce and manipulate.

The second sign of healthy belonging is the way a group humbly lives its mission of service to others. It does not use or manipulate others for its own aggrandizement. It does not impose its vision on others but instead prefers to listen to what they are saying and living, to see in them all that is positive. It helps others to make their own decisions; it empowers them. When a community is closed and fearful of true dialogue where each person is respected, it is a sign of death not of life (p. 60).

A third sign of healthy community is acknowledgment that the group’s distinctive views and values are not always right, and that in the final analysis, maintaining these distinctives is less important than learning how to love.

As we begin to see others’ gifts, we move out from behind the walls of certitude that have closed us up… A few centuries ago, different Christian churches were fighting each other. Their theologies were calculated to prove that one was right and the other wrong. Today, instead of seeing what might separate us, whether as churches or cultures, we are instead seeing what unites us. We are beginning to see each other’s gifts and to appreciate them and to realize that the important thing for each one of us is to grow in love and give of ourselves (pp. 60-61).

Finally, the fourth sign of healthy community is openly admitting its mistakes and reforming itself with advice from the outside.

Fourth, it is a healthy sign when a group seeks to evolve and to recognize the errors of the past, to recognize its own flaws, and to seek the help of experienced people from outside the group in order to be more true and loving, more respectful of difference, more listening and open to the way authority is exercised. The group that refuses to admit its own errors or seek the wisdom of others risks closing itself up behind walls of “superiority” (p. 61).

In conclusion, healthy communities are where people experience God’s goodness and become well formed human beings.

Groups that develop with these four signs are, to my mind, healthy groups; they are helping their members to break free of the egotism inherent in us all and to grow towards greater maturity and inner freedom. They are discovering our common humanity, allowing us to be ourselves, intertwined with each other, receiving and giving life from one another. Do we not all share the same earth and sky? Are they not for us as we are for them? We all belong to each other, we are all for each other. God, too, is for us as we are for God. We are called to grow in order to become fully ourselves and fully alive, to receive from others, and to give to others, not being held back by fears, prejudices, or feelings of superiority or inferiority (p. 61).

Some of Lee’s tales seemed relatively harmless, but many of them were not. He often spoke of horrible things that happened to members who became disobedient or disloyal. People who left the organization were characterized as proud, deceived and greedy. They abandoned God’s calling and God’s mission to enjoy an easygoing comfortable life, and the result was always tragic.

We all listened to these stories, and no one bothered to check their validity. The people were never explicitly named. After leaving UBF, their lives may have been happy and productive. But we had no way of knowing, because once they ran away we had no contact with them. And even if we suspected that the stories were exaggerated or invented, we could never openly say so, because Lee’s authority and truthfulness could never be questioned.

Many of Samuel Lee’s horror stories are recorded in UBF Sunday message archives. Here are five examples that Brian Karcher dug up. Many more are out there; they are not hard to find.

Example 1: from “God is Pleased to Give Us the Kingdom of God” (10/29/1995)

A young man studied architecture. He made some money. Then he became proud. He abandoned God’s mission and bought a good house in the suburbs. As soon as he moved into an overly luxurious house for him, he was attacked by liver cancer and died after six months. His wife is in huge debt. She suffers from deep despair and nihilism.

Example 2: from “The Triumphal Entry” (4/18/1999)

[In the following passage, Samuel Lee talks about three Chicago missionaries who allegedly ran away because they didn’t want to suffer. SL calls himself “commander,” “leader” and “the servant of God”. He equates obedience to God with obedience to him, and he claims to have some special authority to bless people.]

To obey God or not to obey God’s word determines our fate. There were three medical doctors. They came as UBF missionaries to Chicago. But when their commander arrived, they all ran away so as not to suffer in doing the work of God. The leader was unhappy about them and did not bless them. Then soon one of the doctors, who was an anaesthesiologist, overdosed a patient for an operation and the patient died. So he lost his medical doctor’s license. Now he is running a grocery store very poorly. Another one, influenced by American relativism, cursed the servant of God. Then he left UBF. After several years, he was in a severe car accident. His body was totally crushed and his hands and feet were paralyzed. The third one got a proper job. But he has rheumatism in his right leg and in his left hand. He suffers day and night. All these events happened when they took God’s word lightly. This is to say that when we obey God’s word, God blesses us; when we disobey, God does not bless us.

Example 3: from “A Fieldwork Training” (7/2/2000)

[In 1989, SL expelled thirty members because they had attended a non-UBF charismatic gathering. He called them “hallelujah Christians,” accusing them of obeying feelings and emotions rather than the word of God. Over time, the stories told about them became more and more fantastic and absurd. Here he claimed that they were seduced by a “witch woman” and called their prayer circle a “witches’ dance.”]

It is very dangerous to hear the word with one’s feelings. Once a servant of God visited a mission field. The church members were going to see a witch woman’s clever demonstration. The witch woman told them that Jesus was coming after three months. She put some water on each one’s forehead and predicted that all kinds of the best blessings would come upon them. Next, she demanded, ‘If you are going to receive all the blessings I spoke of, pledge an offering and bring it to me.’ People like flattery. Sometimes they know that it is wrong, but they like flattery and the promise of success. This is sinful human nature. About thirty of the church members went there and received water baptism on their foreheads and the prediction of blessing and success. They gave all their money to the woman. After one month the woman disappeared. The church that invited her also disappeared. It had been on Western Avenue. Those who were ordained by the witch woman suddenly became self righteous. They began to dance in the darkness on the stage of our church. They looked like witch doctors. They were speaking what they did not know; some were foaming at the mouth; some acted like mental patients. So the servant of God drove them out, all thirty of them. Later, three young men from among them suddenly died of unknown diseases. One woman, who was asked to remain in the church as a prayer servant, ran away. One day, on her way home from work, she had a big car accident. Only her head has been alive for the last ten years.

Example 4: from “The Parable of the Tenants” (5/16/1999)

[In this paragraph, SL describes seven people who ran away. The situation of the medical doctors mentioned in the sermon one month earlier has changed. The first doctor has sunk into poverty and must work 17 hours a day. The second has not only been totally crippled in a car accident but has two “retarded” sons and subsists on welfare. The third, who formerly had rheumatism, now suffers from insomnia and stomach ulcers and is locked in a constant battle with his wife. The tragic case of the architect is mentioned again, but instead of having died from liver cancer after six months, he has died from kidney cancer after two months. Another two disobedient missionaries (strangely, all of them being medical doctors) lost their jobs in the hospital and cannot find work. The story of the missionary who became a “hallelujah Christian” and suffered a car accident so that only her head is living is mentioned again, but ten years has now become seven.]

Many Korean missionaries came to America. They worked hard for God’s vineyard. Soon they were blessed. They became rich and honorable. Then several of them ran away from God’s vineyard to use their wealth all by themselves. When they ran away from God’s mission, God did not bless them. He loved them and wanted them to repent. One of the medical doctor missionaries was an anaesthesiologist. He gave too much anaesthesia to a patient. As a result, the patient died. So he lost his physician’s license. Now he is running a small grocery store. He has to wake up at 4:30 a.m. and gather merchandise to sell during the daytime. His work finishes at 10:00 p.m. Another was a very proud medical doctor. When he was blessed by God, he ran away. Then God gave him two retarded sons. Later he had a severe car accident and is now totally crippled. He lives on government aid. A third one was blessed by God while carrying out God’s mission. But he ran away. Now he has insomnia and a stomach ulcer. He is existing. But his daily work is not medical work but a boxing match with his wife. Another of them finished his architecture study with much subsidy from God’s institution. As soon as he graduated he ran away. Then he got kidney cancer and died after two months. Two medical missionaries are as proud as Herod the Great. They were dismissed from their hospitals and are intensively looking for jobs. But they have had no success. One lady was greatly blessed by God when she was doing God’s work. But when she ran away with hallelujah Christians she had a car accident, and only her head has been alive for the last seven years.

Example 5: from “Preach the Gospel in this World” (4/22/2001)

[SL begins this paragraph with one of his favorite sayings, “There are two kinds of people.” Again he denounces the witch doctors and hallelujah Christians. He repeats the story of the woman who had a car accident and whose head is still alive, but interestingly, the woman has now become a man.]

There are two kinds of people. One kind is the people whose hearts are like flintstone. The other kind is very gentle and weak-minded. Brutal and strong people mask themselves as witch doctors and deceive weak people to empty their pockets. In 1998, I came from Korea after the World Mission Report. In the Chicago UBF, thirty of the members had contacted witch doctors. Witch doctors sprinkled water on their foreheads and told their fortunes. Even though it was lying, they felt good. When they thought about the witch doctor’s lying again and again, they began to feel that the lies were true. Then the thirty of them became useless to God’s world mission ministry. Soon after, they formed their own group and went out to make a hallelujah fellowship. Among them, one man who finished his Pharm.D. died suddenly at his desk, sitting in the chair. Another one died of a heart attack. One was sincerely asked to remain as a prayer servant. But he ignored the request and ran away. On the way he had an accident. Only his head is alive. After that they became very quiet and didn’t bother campus evangelism and world mission work in UBF.

Reading these horror stories today raises so many thoughts and questions.

Did we really believe that these stories were true? Why did we swallow them and even repeat them?

Did we really think that telling stories like these was good pastoral practice?

Did SL actually think that these stories were true? If so, what kind of person believes that the tales he tells about people are true merely because he says that they are?

By any reasonable standard, spreading stories like these constitutes gossip, hearsay and slander. Why was SL granted complete immunity to say whatever he wanted from the pulpit? (Why and how did our theology allow this?)

The audience always enjoyed these stories because SL made them strangely humorous. It was a twisted kind of black humor, because he was talking about human suffering and misfortune without any semblance of empathy. But the audience always laughed at these lines. Why did we laugh?

I believe that, at some level, most UBF members were smart enough to know that God wasn’t going to strike them down if they disobeyed SL or left the ministry. But we were very much afraid of being denounced by SL, because he had the power to shame us, marginalize us, cut us off from what we valued most. When your whole life is wrapped up in the UBF group identity, to suddenly be rejected and cast out of the group is horrible. The social and psychological implications of being denounced by SL were far more palpable and real than the punishments that God might rain down on us.

When SL denounced someone from the pulpit, I believe he was signaling to everyone that the person was no longer in a state of grace vis-à-vis him and this person needed to be shamed, shunned, or whatever until he or she repented and returned to the fold. It was one of SL’s regular tools of social management.

Some members of UBF probably did take SL’s horror stories at face value. But deep down, many others (especially the fellowship leaders) knew that those stories were full of crap. Sarah Barry knew this. Mark Yoon knew this. Joshua Hong knew this. James H Kim knew this. Augustine Sohn knew this. John Bird knew this. Teddy knew this. Ben Toh knew this. Mark Vucekovich knew this. Jim Rabchuk knew this. I knew this.

Yet the social realities of being in a place where everyone’s relationships to everyone were being managed and mediated by SL meant that you were always walking on eggshells. You always had to be careful to remain on SL’s good side, or stay safely out of his way, because with a few words spoken from the pulpit, he could turn your relationships and your life upside down.

An article appeared a few days ago in Relevant Magazine, titled What Not To Say To Someone Who Has Been Hurt By Church. The article is short, and I encourage everyone to read it. According to this article, the six things that should not be said are:

1. “No church is perfect.”
2. “Are you working toward reconciliation?”
3. “I don’t want to gossip.”
4. “What are non-believers going to think?”
5. “Stop being so bitter.”
6. “Is this worth dividing the church over?”

The author of this article has no apparent connection to UBF. He has no discernible anti-UBF bias. And he succinctly writes exactly what many of us have been trying to say to UBF leaders and members over and over.

Putting aside all discussion of UBF: Is this author correct?

Gary Webb broke the news in a series of articles that won him a Pulitzer Prize. But the stories he published made many people uncomfortable. Government agents retaliated against him, and major newspapers tried to discredit his work. Eventually the people closest to him, who had supported his efforts, succumbed to peer pressure and threw Webb under the bus.

As I watched this film, it brought up vivid memories of how an organization to which I belonged for many years treated members who brought up issues that the group found inconvenient. Someone wrote on a Facebook page, “Stop making UBF the scapegoat for your own problems and failures.” The person who wrote that took the accepted definition of a scapegoat and turned it upside down. Scapegoating is not something that a disgruntled individual does to a community; it is how a group treats a wayward member whom it perceives as a threat.

Scapegoating happens when a community senses shame and guilt that rightfully belongs to the group, a pattern of sin for which they are collectively responsible, and decides to take the easy way out. Instead of doing the self-examination and soul-searching that would lead to corporate repentance, they find a person who seems disposable, make that individual the problem, and throw him under the bus. The convenient choice for a scapegoat is a witness, a whistleblower, who sees wrongdoing and begins to call it out. His message would embarrass the powers-that-be, so a decision is made to isolate the messenger, to blame him for everything and drive him out of the camp. As the high priest and his attendants carry out the sentence, the rest of the community stands by and watches. Some heap criticism on the scapegoat. Others keep quiet, trembling in fear that someday they will suffer the same fate. The rest say, “This has nothing to do with me; it’s not my job to get involved.” Once the sacrifice has been made, the group stands in awkward silence. An unspoken pact is made to forget what happened and wipe the incident and the victim from memory. A moment later, life returns to normal, and everyone goes on with business as usual.

Scapegoating  happens in every tribe,  but it is most troubling and ironic when a group of Christians, those who proclaim that “Christ died for our sins,” gather up their guilt and shame and pile it on a brother or sister or son or daughter.  One example that is fresh in my mind is this testimony  of a young man who discovered sexual abuse happening in his UBF chapter, along with other unpleasantries such as drug dealing, racist remarks and ethnocentricism. He brought these things to the attention of leaders and pastors, trusting that they would take corrective action. Instead, this young man was criticized, marginalized, accused and blamed; the “loving environment” of this gospel community became so toxic that he had no choice but to leave.

That story hit close to home, because the people who apparently engaged in scapegoating included some whom I have known for decades, for whom I retain a degree of love and respect. People who scapegoat never do it consciously.  By definition, they cannot.  If they knew that they were doing it, they would be admitting that the blame they placed on the victim was rightfully theirs, and that admission would make the guilt-transfer impossible. Scapegoating requires the group to keep telling itself a story of its own innocence and goodness. The community must maintain a code of silence, never allowing sensitive and embarrassing issues that led to scapegoating to be talked about openly, because once these things are acknowledged, all the guilt that was heaped upon every scapegoat in the past comes rushing back like a torrent, engulfing the community in a flood of shame, and they can no longer maintain the collective lie.

Another heartbreaking story was recently told to me by someone who played in the Chicago UBF orchestra in the 1990’s. During one of their practices, Samuel Lee walked in. The room fell silent and everyone was on edge. Lee walked up to one of the orchestra members, a young man who was probably thought to be rebellious, and Lee repeatedly slapped him and punched him in the head. The young man wanted to leave, but the orchestra conductor urged him not to go. Then Lee told some members of the orchestra to stand up and punch one another. If they didn’t punch hard enough, he urged them to punch harder. The young man who had been assaulted by Lee was thoroughly disgusted and decided to walk out, and as he went, Lee followed him and said, “Thank me. Before you leave, you should thank me.”

My youngest son is now in 8th grade, about the same age of the orchestra members who witnessed these things. I am trying to imagine what it would be like for my son if I sent him to a church activity, believing that it would help him to grow in faith and experience the love of God, and instead he would be sitting in a room filled with terrified teenagers and college students as a pastor walked around the room and verbally and physically abused them. And then to have every authority figure in his life — his parents, the orchestra conductor, and all the adults in his church — praising this pastor and urging him to submit to this guy no matter what he does because he is “God’s servant,” and because everything he did was done with good intentions and love. I shudder to think about the long-lasting psychological damage this would do to a young man. That damage has been done. It is very real. It has not been acknowledged. Many of us experienced it, in varying ways and degrees. But the UBF community refuses to speak of it, except in whispers behind closed doors. A long list of people who had the clarity and courage to identify this behavior as what it was – physical, psychological, and spiritual abuse – was  tarred as rebellious, unthankful, unspiritual, a bad influence, full of ulterior motives, etc. and driven out of the camp, so that everyone could go on with business as usual and keep telling the story of how beautiful and glorious the community was.

What troubles me most about these stories is that they are about me. Yes, I have been scapegoated for breaking the code of silence and telling these stories in a public space. The scapegoating I experienced was painful, but not nearly as bad as what others have endured. The troubling part is that, for nearly three decades, I participated in the scapegoating. As brave individuals identified wrongdoing and spoke out, I was one of those who remained silent as the community labeled them as troublemakers, deflecting the corporate shame and guilt and heaping it on those who spoke up. I never stood by anyone who was being blamed or marginalized for simply telling the truth. If I had been in the orchestra that day, I am quite sure that I would have sat there in silence as that young man was slapped and punched. I would have thought that surely Samuel Lee had a reason to treat him that way, and it was not my place to get involved or to question the wisdom of God’s servant. Again and again, I swallowed and repeated tales of UBF-uprightness and scapegoat-sinfulness, not because I was completely unaware of the truth, but because I didn’t want to pay the price and become another scapegoat. And, to be honest, I benefitted a great deal from the indulgent praise that UBF heaped upon itself. Those stories gave me the illusion that I was a better person, better than all those halfhearted nominal Christians, because I belonged a better church than they, one that did not compromise in its message or mission. As one of a select few highly educated white Americans in the ministry, I got tons of attention, plenty of speaking roles, management perks, a place at the head table, invitations to travel. It was a good gig, and I didn’t want to mess it up by getting involved in matters that I reasoned were none of my business. So I stood by as one scapegoat after another was blamed for the corporate sin and driven away from the flock. When I finally decided to stand up and say “No more,” it was not because I suddenly became courageous and was willing to pay the unbearable price. No, it was only after I had the moral support of a loving wife and many godly and loyal friends willing to stand beside me so that, if the rest of UBF would throw me under the bus, it wouldn’t hurt nearly as bad. That is my story, a story of corporate guilt and shame that I deflected and channeled onto one scapegoat after another.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Jesuit order, encouraged his followers to meditate on scripture by using their powers of imagination. Evangelical Christians tend to approach Bible passages quasi-scientifically, as subject to be dissected and examined with tools of reason. In contrast, a well known Ignatian practice is to insert oneself into a story from Scripture, first as an observer, then as a participant. For example, with the birth of Jesus from Luke chapter 2, you could paint a mental picture of the manger, conjuring up its sights, sounds, and smells, and then imagine yourself to be one of the shepherds who has come to see Jesus, trying to think what he thinks and feel what he feels. Any good student of the Bible will tend to do this, but Ignatian spiritual practice takes it to a much higher level.

In the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions, Palm Sunday is sometimes called Passion Sunday. Worshipers at the Eucharistic liturgy are given palms to recall the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. However, the main passage of Scripture that day is the whole passion narrative from Matthew’s or Mark’s gospel covering the Last Supper, the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane, his arrest, trial, crucifixion, death and burial.  Most Sundays, the gospel reading is done by a single priest or deacon. On Passion Sunday, however, it becomes a dramatic presentation with multiple readers taking the roles the narrator, Jesus, the chief priests, and so on. A few lines are given to the congregation. A similar pattern is followed on Good Friday, and at that solemn service the passion narrative always comes from John.  Standing among the worshipers and listening can evoke powerful emotions, but at those few moments when the congregation reads its lines, the experience can be downright disturbing.

As you recall the story of the Passion, where do you insert yourself? If you come from an evangelical background, you might see yourself as an apostle. Maybe you are Peter, who loved Jesus but denied him in a moment of weakness.  You probably identify with Barabbas, who deserved to die for his sins, but by an act of divine mercy was set free as the innocent Jesus went to Calvary his place. Standing in the shoes of Barabbas encapsulates what many believe the gospel is all about. When we hear “Christ died for our sins” (1Co 15:3), we think of all the bad things we did as individuals, especially back in the days before we got saved, when we were monstrous men and wayward women, drinking and fornicating and never going to church. We thank God and breathe a sigh of relief that Jesus was nailed to the cross instead of us. Good Friday is when divine wrath was poured out on the Son of God so that we could get off scot-free. Many Christians understand the Passion that way, and I won’t claim that they are entirely wrong. But that is not how the story was told by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. In the four canonical accounts, the suffering and death of Jesus is never presented as the punishment of an angry God against people who were lustful and lazy, who drank too much, or who denied God’s existence. Last time I checked, Jesus wasn’t crucified by the Association of Atheists, the Federation of Fornicators, or the Society of Scofflaws. Many of those public sinners felt deeply loved and accepted by Jesus. In every account, the proximate cause of the crucifixion was the ire of a religious community upset by what Jesus said and did. Jesus was sent to his death by group that by all accounts was the most devout and Biblically literate society in the world, the very people who saw themselves as the champions of biblical values, who spent endless hours immersed in Scripture, memorizing Scripture, and teaching people to live by Scripture.

The Passion Sunday and Good Friday liturgies do not shy away from this fact. The lines assigned to the congregation are the shouts of the crowd, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Am I the only one who finds this strange? After all, the people in church on those occasions are precisely the ones who have gathered in the name of Christ to bear witness to his kingship. They are the ones who have supposedly gotten the gospel right, who have accepted Jesus’ message and who love him the most. And yet, on Passion Sunday and Good Friday, they are made to rise up with one voice, not to defend Jesus’ innocence, but to gather their collective shame and guilt and pile it all on top of him. These so-called people of God are to pat themselves on the back, extolling their own faith and piety, as they send their innocent scapegoat to a horrible and excruciating death.

As a lifelong churchgoer, I find this participation in the Passion liturgy to be poignant, subversive and profoundly unsettling. It probes my soul at a far deeper level than the standard and well trodden “I-am- Barabbas” way of presenting the gospel. I don’t find it hard to place my individual sins on the shoulders of Jesus, especially those sins that I committed in the distant past and which I have long ago disavowed. It is not costly to imagine the cross as solving an equation that balances out the principles of God’s justice and mercy. Those transactions happen somewhere else, in a spiritualized, abstract realm of theory that has little to do with here and now. It is much harder to accept my part in sending Jesus to the cross in the way portrayed in the four gospels, as part of a community that scapegoats and rejects God who is truly present in the flesh. But that is precisely what every community does.

Some of us imagine that if Jesus were to suddenly show up at church, we would wholeheartedly welcome him. If so, then we are not thinking hard, or we are hardly thinking. The Jesus of the gospels is a man who would sooner or later get kicked out of any Christian community. For example, suppose you had never heard the parable of the sheep and goats (Matthew 25). Imagine Jesus showing up and preaching that story from the pulpit. I can imagine someone from The Gospel Coalition writing an article denouncing that story as carrying a dangerous doctrine of salvation by works. Although I am not particularly fond of TGC, I am using them only as an example; I do not want to single them out, because the Jesus presented in the four gospels says and does things that, if we had not already known of them, would deeply offend any Christian of any denomination or tribe. No matter what church you attend, if Jesus Christ were to show up at your church, I have no doubt that eventually he would be scapegoated and kicked out.

In fact, this is not a hypothetical. Jesus Christ has shown up and your church, and Jesus Christ has been kicked out. In the mystery of the Incarnation, Jesus has made his home among us, living right here in this messy, sinful, creaturely world. Whenever we have met a believer in Christ, we have seen the face of Jesus. Whenever we have encountered someone in need, we have seen the face of Jesus. Whenever we have looked upon any man, woman or child, any person alive who is indelibly stamped with his divine image, we have seen the face of Jesus. We have encountered him again and again and failed to recognize him when he walked among us. We treated him badly because he made us uncomfortable, because he failed to show proper respect for our traditions, because he pointed out our hypocrisy, because he cleansed our temples and smashed our idols and disputed the fanciful stories that our group tells about itself.  It is hard for me to accept that my Christian community, where I dedicated so many years of my life, believing that we were the ones who had gotten the gospel right, is the same community that actually did stand up and shout, “Crucify!” To admit that would be to accept my culpability for the sins of the community, which I really don’t want to do. It’s so much easier to sit back and profess that Jesus died for my sins, but those horrible things that we did together, those things that I imagined were none of my business, they were not my responsibility, because I personally never abused anyone, and because it wasn’t my place to judge anyone, and besides we are better now and don’t do those things anymore…

An Open Letter to Jesus of Nazareth

Holy Thursday Evening 2015

Dear Jesus:

I am writing to let you know that I can no longer support you or your ministry. For a long time, I listened to you because I believed you were a man of God. Your words about God’s kingdom were music to my ears, balm to my wounds, chicken soup for my soul. I loved the way that you made the Scriptures so exciting, and the way you cared for the sick and served the needy. You were always the best speaker at our Bible conferences. Your messages made us laugh and moved our hearts.

But lately you have gone too far, doing things that a true servant of God would never do. When you criticize the teachers of the law, you sound so bitter. What has gotten into you? Your motives must be wrong, because no one with right motives would ever speak that way. Of course, there is some truth in what you say, but you did not say it correctly; you did not have the right tone of voice, so we cannot listen to you. No church is perfect, and our leaders always admit that they are not perfect. You should respect them for their dedication and sacrifice. But you embarrassed them and criticized them in front of young people who should not hear such things because it might damage their faith. You made yourself a bad influence and that bad influence is spreading. You are so young, just 33 years old, and yet you talk and act like you are so wise. If you know better than us how to do ministry, then you should stop criticizing and talking and do something constructive. Go off on your own and build a chapter and when you have raised many mature disciples you can come back and show us how it’s done and of course we will listen to you then. But your criticism of God’s servants now is beyond the pale. If everyone did as you do, all authority would break down and the next generation will lose their identity and become like worldly people.

For me, the last straw was when you entered the Bible house this week and became violent, turning over our tables and shouting “Get out of here!” Who do you think you are? Does that Bible house belong to you? Did you build it? Of course our ministry is not perfect. But there is no excuse for becoming angry and destructive. Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater! Your angry behavior demonstrates that your heart cannot be right with God. You need to go back to the Bible to solve your spiritual problem so that you will no longer be an angry and rebellious and impatient young man but have true wisdom and joy in your heart.

You have exceeded your position and broken spiritual order. Whatever happens to you, you should accept it as God’s discipline and training. I will pray for you. Please remember all the good things that God’s servants have done and all the people who have been blessed by their ministry and stop tearing down the community that God has built up.  Don’t tell lies or spread false rumors about anyone. Give thanks to God always so that no bitter root takes hold in your heart. Many of us still love you and we remember your hard work and service to the Lord.

I seal this letter with a holy kiss.

For the Church

Gracious Father, we pray for the holy Catholic Church. Fill it with with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it.; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it, for the sake of Jesus Christ your Son our Savior. Amen.

For Our Enemies

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For the Unity of the Church

O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may all be of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

And here is one more from The Paraclete Psalter:

Eternal and omnipotent God,

you have called us to be members of one body.

Join us with those who in all times and places have praised your name,

that with one heart and mind, we may show the unity of your church,

and bring honor to our Lord and Savior.

We ask this through the same Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, forever and ever. Amen.

The following is an open letter to Dr. Augustine Sohn, President of University Bible Fellowship, from Joseph L. Schafer, dated March 2, 2015.

Dear Augustine:

Thank you for contacting me yesterday about my status in University Bible Fellowship.

For approximately two years now, the only messages I have received from your organization were requests to attend various meetings and reminders to submit annual chapter reports. I decided to ignore those requests because, for more than five years now, leaders of UBF have been unresponsive to my repeated pleas for dialogue about important matters that affect the health of the organization and the credibility of its gospel witness. My nonresponse was not retaliation. It was an indication that I had no clue how to proceed in our relationship, because my pleas went unheeded and sometimes were not even acknowledged. Perhaps you have heard the humorous saying: “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot that I only exist when you need something.” I am sorry to say this, but that line accurately conveys my feelings toward UBF and its leaders right now.

By your message, I am once again being asked for something that UBF needs to continue its work, and nothing is being offered to me in return. We cannot continue in this fashion. The time has come to define our relationship.

You asked me to answer two questions:

1. Do you still regard yourself a member of UBF and an International Advisory Member?

2. If so, would you like to participate in voting for the next General Director?

Before I am able to answer these questions, I need you to clarify what you are asking, and I need to know the organization’s stance on several important matters. Therefore I now ask you, in your capacity as President, to answer four questions in an honest and straightforward manner. These answers may be as brief or as long as you wish, but I need to receive them in a timely fashion.

This letter to you is an open letter. I am publishing it on a public website, because I want it to be part of the public record. Many others been asking similar questions, and your answers will be of great interest to them. To promote honesty, openness and transparency, I will accept your response as an official statement by UBF and it will become part of the public record. As soon as I receive it, I will publish it in full, without editing, on the same public website.

The meaning of a question depends heavily on its context. For each of my four questions, I will explain the context so that you will know precisely what I mean.

Context for Question 1. Augustine, you asked if I regard myself as a member of UBF. The organization has a body called Members, a group of approximately 70 persons who meet annually in Chicago. I declined invitations to join that group, so I have never been a Member of UBF in that sense, and I assume you already know that. In my 30+ years of interacting with the organization, I never applied for membership or signed a membership pledge. In most organizations, the meaning of membership is explicit. It is a social contract between the individual and the group in which the person pledges to abide by certain rules and perform certain duties (for example, by paying annual dues). In return, the organization’s leaders grant him rights of membership, providing him with meaningful resources and services, representing his interests and becoming responsive to his concerns. Augustine, because you used the term member, you must have in mind some category of person or some condition of good standing with respect to the organization. I am not being coy when I say, I honestly do not know what you mean by member.

Question 1: What does it mean to be a member of UBF? If there is such a thing as being a member, please explain the duties, responsibilities, and rules of conduct expected of members, and describe what the organization and its leaders provide in return. Also explain whether leaders are obligated to make good-faith efforts to respond to members’ serious concerns in a timely fashion.

Context for Question 2. Before someone can rationally decide whether or not to join an organization, he needs to know whether the organization’s interests align with his own.  This requires the organization to state its positions on important matters within its spheres of activity. UBF presents itself as an organization dedicated to making disciples of Jesus, so the methods by which it teaches and trains disciples should be clarified. When I first became involved in UBF more that thirty years ago, I experienced the leadership of the late Samuel Lee, the organization’s founder and General Secretary. Lee was described as an exemplary disciplemaker, a role model for others to follow, and his influence on organizational culture was profound. Here are some of Lee’s activities that I observed firsthand or heard about through the testimony of credible witnesses.

• Lee reserved the right to change the name of anyone at any time. He reserved the right to name your children.
• Lee reserved the right to tell you to quit your job at a moment’s notice.
• Lee reserved the right to tell you at any time to change your clothing or hairstyle.
• No one could marry without his specific approval. He chose whom you could marry, and the wedding would be at a time and place of his choosing.
• In some cases, the length of time between when Lee introduced people to each other and the actual wedding was less than one week.
• When Lee married couples, he made up the wedding vows himself, frequently inserting promises that had nothing to do with marriage (e.g. promises by the couple that they would to go as missionaries to Russia). These vows were not agreed upon by the couple ahead of time.
• If you turned down a marriage candidate that Lee chose for you, you could be severely rebuked and trained for it.
• No one could miss a Monday night meeting or a Friday night meeting or Sunday worship service. If you missed a meeting without what Lee considered to be a valid excuse, you would get rebuked and trained.
• Lee would impose quotas on fellowship leaders to bring a certain number of people to weekly services and to conferences. Those who failed to do so would be shamed or punished in various ways.
• If Lee thought you did not offer enough money at the annual Christmas worship service, he might rebuke you in front of everyone.
• Sometimes Lee told missionaries and shepherds whose families were well off to ask their parents to give large sums of money to the organization.
• When Lee denounced or rebuked people, he often did so harshly, without warning, standing before the congregation. During these denunciations, some of the things that Lee said had little or no basis in fact.
• No one in Chicago who was considered a shepherd or missionary could travel outside the Chicago area for any reason without Lee’s approval. If you did travel, it was understood that you needed to be back in town for the next Sunday worship service, otherwise you could be rebuked and trained.
• If you lived outside of Chicago and you were selected to go on a “journey team” to Korea or elsewhere, you were told to buy an airline ticket to Chicago with an open return date, which could be very expensive. The reason for the open return date was that, once you were in Chicago, Lee reserved the right to keep you there indefinitely for training activities of his own choosing.
• Lee prescribe unorthodox diets and medical treatments and, in some cases, surgical procedures, and the doctors and nurses in Chicago would carry them out.
• If you objected to any of Lee’s practices, missionaries and shepherds would immediately counsel you to obey Lee because he was God’s servant. Failure to obey even in a small matter could result in training, monetary fines, public shaming and shunning.
• Lee sometimes urged missionaries to send their infant children back to Korea to be cared for by relatives so that the missionaries could focus on their ministry activities. In at least one case, he told a missionary couple to give one of their children to another couple who were childless.

Augustine, you and many UBF elders lived under Lee’s leadership; you had ample opportunity to witness his activities and hear about what he was doing.  If these statements are true, I believe UBF’s credibility as a disciplemaking ministry is deeply tarnished and will remain so until (a) the organization acknowledges that they happened and (b) takes a stand on whether these activities are appropriate. If they are inappropriate, leaders must then decide whether and how the organization’s culture can be rehabilitated, making a long-term commitment to identifying and rooting out residual forms of these practices that are present in varying degrees at UBF chapters worldwide.

Question 2. Do you confirm or deny that Samuel Lee, the founder of UBF, engaged in practices similar to those I listed above? If you confirm, does UBF regard these as appropriate methods of Christian discipleship? If  UBF does not consider them appropriate, will the organization issue a mea culpa, apologizing to everyone who received this kind of treatment from Lee and from other UBF leaders who did similar things, and will UBF take publicly visible, measurable and determined steps to root these practices out from its organizational culture? If so, give a timeline for these measures.

Background for Question 3. In recent years, I have heard multiple allegations of UBF members (however that is defined), shepherds and missionaries becoming aware of or being involved in the following:  domestic violence against women and children, sexual molestation, inappropriate physical contact between staff and disciples, and regrettably (in one prominent example) incest. In cases where laws may have been broken, no one made reports to law enforcement officials even when minors were involved. Training and policies on abuse, with mandatory reporting of allegations involving minors, are commonplace in American churches and campus ministries. As far as I can tell, UBF has no policies and does not train its staff on how to handle incidents like these, and the organization appears ill equipped to develop them on their own.

Question 3. Does UBF have any official policies or training on violence and sexual abuse? If not, what will the organization plan to do about this? Do your plans involve external consultants, and when will this be carried out? Give a timeline.

Background for Question 4. Augustine, you asked whether I consider myself to be an Intenational Advisory Member (IAM) and whether I will be voting for the next General Director. In most organizations, elections are a process by which voters select leaders from a pool of multiple candidates. To help voters make rational and informed choices, candidates will state their qualifications and accomplishments, describe their beliefs and lay out a vision for what they intend to do if they are elected. However, it is my understanding that, in the election of the next General Director, IAMs will be given one preselected candidate and will be asked to vote “Yes” or “No.” I find this confusing. I do not know what “Yes” or “No” means in an election with one candidate. Does the organization want my input to help it make a choice, or does it merely want my vote to lend an appearance of choice to a decision that has already been made? And whatever it means to vote “Yes” or “No,” I have no clue how to make an informed decision without knowing what the candidate stands for, what his beliefs are, and what he plans to do if he becomes General Director. I have heard through the grapevine that the preselection committee is now deciding between two candidates. I know one of these candidates well; I understand his values and his leadership style. But I have many questions about the other candidate; although we have been acquainted for many years, I lack an overall sense of what he believes and how he leads. One week ago, on February 25, I was surprised when this man used social media (his personal blog and his Facebook timeline) to promote an article from the website of an organization named The Berean Call (http://www.thebereancall.org/). I applaud this man’s use of social media; I have no qualms about that whatsoever. But I had never heard of this organization, and so I decided to poke around their website to see what they are about. What I found was astonishing: pages and pages filled with extreme views that bear no resemblance to my beliefs or those I heard preached in my 30+ years of involvement with UBF. That organization, which claims to promote discernment, declares that the Roman Catholic Church is a cult; the theory of evolution is demonic; the field of psychology is evil; so-called Christian psychology is godless humanism; the Alpha Course is unbiblical; World Vision and Rick Warren are helping to build the kingdom of the Antichrist; and The Message paraphrase of the Bible is wicked. I am not exaggerating one iota here; if you doubt me, visit the website and see for yourself. This set off sirens of alarm. Do the views of this candidate for General Director resemble the views I read on this website? The link from his personal blog and his Facebook timeline suggest there is some agreement and tacit endorsement going on. I bring this to your attention not only because it is disturbing, but to illustrate how uncomfortable it is for me to be asked to vote in an election with no understanding of what I might be voting for or against.

Question 4: In the upcoming election for General Director, what does it mean to vote “Yes” or “No” when there is one candidate who has been preselected? And what information am I expected to use to make a rational choice in this matter?

Thank you for contacting me and asking these timely questions. I will send you my answers soon after I receive yours. If you cannot respond within one week, please explain why, and tell me when the answers will come.

Very sincerely,

Joseph L. Schafer

P.S. I have copied this response to members of the Ethics Committee, so that they may be aware of this open conversation.

Oh, my, how the times have changed; so much has happened since then.

Be forewarned: this installment will be different.

And rejoice, for today is your lucky day! You are the winner of Wonka’s Golden Ticket. Reach out your hand. With this V.I.P. pass, we’ll descend into belly of the beast, to the inner sanctum, that secretive world of UBF leadership that has never before seen the light of day.

And this time, I will be naming names. Yes, today you will hear things that I have not yet shared with anyone, except for my wife and perhaps our dog.

Why am I doing this? Because I want to. And because I read an inspiring message from Washington UBF. This part of the message stuck in my heart.

How should we carry out this ministry? Look at verse 2. “Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” The gospel ministry is not like the worldly business or political campaign. It is a non-profit ministry. There should be no shameful secret agenda, no distortion, and no deception. Honesty, transparency, purity, and straight talk are the backbone of the gospel ministry.

I couldn’t agree more. Nothing promotes the gospel like honesty, transparency, purity and straight talk. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

‘Twas the middle of November, the week before Thanksgiving. From my perspective, morale in had fallen to be at an all time low, but the leaders didn’t seem to have a clue. What concerned me most was the lack of communication.  In private, a few leaders were becoming a wee bit honest, dropping some lines that sounded sincere. But no one had a grip on what I saw happening all around. Paul Hong was cheerfully chirping about his chapter, with that fancy new building and all. But I knew from firsthand reports that not all was well in Toledo, and dark clouds were looming on the horizon. Jacob Lee was crowing about all that love they were feeling in Washington, how he was so buddy-buddy with the younger generation. But Sharon and I had been to the Harvest Festival a few weeks earlier. We had seen for ourselves how the young people in the audience (virtually all second gens, almost no natives in sight) were rolling their eyes. Many had snuck out of the lectures because they were bored or offended. The title of that Harvest Festival was “Empowering the Next Generation,” but the ones who enjoyed it were the oldest Korean missionaries. The program was designed to tell the elders’ stories, to affirm their values and life-choices. But once again, a report had gone up on the UBF website telling how wonderful that Harvest Festival was, how the next generation had been empowered and accepted their mission and true identity. In most of the chapters that I knew well, members couldn’t be honest with their leaders; there was no safe space for people to express what they truly thought and felt. Leaders and members who saw each other daily had entirely different perceptions of reality, as if they were living in parallel universes.

On my own, I had decided to contact more than fifty UBF members whom I believed I could trust. I had collected their answers to five open-ended questions about the state and trajectory of UBF. I synthesized my findings in this report. That project occupied two weeks of my life. I worked day and night to finish it quickly, because I wanted the report in the hands of UBF leaders before a senior staff retreat. Sharon can testify how hard I worked, even when it was probably a stupid thing to do at a time when I should have been taking care of my health, my career, my finances and my family.

Dear everyone: You can say whatever you like about why I did this. Call me proud, foolish, inexperienced, know-it-all, untrained, too big for my britches, full of typical Ivy League mentality, blah blah blah. Whatever negatives you may say about me, I can give you more. All of those things are absolutely true. Yes, I am the proudest of sinners. But with God as my witness, I say this to you now.

To the leaders of UBF: When I put together this report, I did it on my own time, of my own initiative, without getting paid, knowing that it would probably land me in trouble, yet I did it anyway because I loved you and because I cared about the future of our ministry. I did it because I imagined that, as pastors, you just might be interested in how you were perceived by your flock.

To the Americans who were/are in UBF: When I put together this report, I also did it for you, because I am one of you. I did it because I loved you and because I cared about the future of our ministry. I did it because I hoped that someday you would be allowed to become who you really are, the people that God created you to be, American disciples who live in the American context, free to break out of the hyper-Korean evangelical mold into which you had been so awkwardly forced.

To all  the Korean-American second-gens: When I put together this report, I also did it for you. I was not one of you, but I loved you. I hoped to convey to your parents and your leaders some of the things that you wanted to express but could not say directly. I did it because I hoped that UBF could really become a unique multicultural community where the work of the Holy Spirit had broken down boundaries,  where unity in diversity was not some farfetched goal but our daily common experience.

On that snowy day in November 2010, I drove up to Camp Wonderland, Wisconsin to attend the senior staff retreat. I had emailed my report to the senior staff members two days earlier, but had not yet received any replies. I shared a ride with a member of the senior staff, and the conversation was fascinating. He was frustrated with the way UBF had been going, sick and tired of all the power plays, petty politics, all the people who couldn’t be trusted. In that car, he opened up and shared two stories that I had never heard before.

The first story was about all the political maneuvering that took place during the first reform movement in America (1989-92). He said that Samuel Lee had come within a hair’s breadth of being ousted. At one point, even Paul Hong and Sarah Barry knew that Lee was out of control, and they tentatively agreed to side with the reformers. But when this man  decided to stand with Lee, the tide turned back and some would-be reformers flipped. Paul Hong read the writing on the wall; he flipped back to support Lee, and was rewarded for his loyalty by being appointed director of Toledo after James Kim was forced out.

The second story he told was of his experiences with Samuel Lee. A member of this man’s chapter claimed that his Sunday messages were almost as good as the messages of Lee. When Lee heard about this, he became very upset. He demanded to see copies of this man’s Sunday messages. Those copies were returned to him, with every paragraph marked up with red ink, and the man was forced to make hundreds of corrections under the guise of “improving his English.” Those corrections were completely unnecessary, because the manuscripts had already been checked and edited by an English major from that chapter. Even worse, this man was ordered to come to the Chicago center for message training every Monday. Those trips were very costly, taxing his health, his finances, his family and his ministry. He said that those trips almost killed him. But for some reason, he decided to do it anyway. Finally, he spoke of one American shepherd who stood at Samuel Lee’s side in Chicago, supervising and carrying out this abusive training. Years later, he asked that American shepherd, “Why did you do that to me? Didn’t your conscience bother you?” The American said nothing; he shrugged his shoulders and smiled. That American is still in a place of leadership and, as far as I know, has no intention of ever allowing these issues of abuse to be freely discussed or admitted.

As he told these tales, I was taken aback. The stories themselves were not surprising; I had seen the harsh training since I first came to UBF, and I vaguely knew of the political wrangling in the late 80’s and early 90’s which ousted some chapter directors. What surprised me was his willingness to tell me straight up.  As I listened to the stories, I began to wonder: Are we on the verge of something? Are we reaching a tipping point where leaders will finally open their mouths and speak of those dark things that must never be spoken?

If anyone is interested in finding out what happened during the reform movement of 1989-92, I suggest you go and visit this man. Take him out to dinner, order a bottle of wine, and he just might be willing to tell you everything. Five years ago, he couldn’t care less about the reputation of UBF, and as far as I know, that hasn’t changed.

My memories of that Wisconsin retreat are a bit hazy, but I will share what I can recall.

When I saw the schedule for the retreat, I became upset, because it was not going to be a retreat at all. Little time had been set aside for open group discussion. The program was filled with Bible study, business items and committee reports. Still I hoped and prayed that our time would be productive.

The group Bible study was led by Sarah Barry, and the passage was from 2 Chronicles 20. The people of Judah were facing a national crisis. A vast, three-nation army approached from the desert, ready to attack at any moment. King Jehoshaphat had no idea what to do. He called a national assembly, and standing there before the men, women and children of Judah, he cried out to the Lord: “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

As we studied this passage, I was stunned. Kings are not accustomed to showing ignorance or weakness. Even if they have no clue what they are doing, they want to project an air of strength and confidence, so that their followers stay with them and do not lose heart. Indeed, that was the leadership stance I was given by UBF: remain strong, keep choongshim, never stop marching, and when you are clueless, pretend that everything is going according to plan. That’s what I thought it meant to “have faith.” But in this passage, the top leader made himself vulnerable. He became a sitting duck, an easy target for a political or military coup. But when he stood in vulnerability before his nation, and together they all cried out to God, the Lord’s answer came through a prophet, and their deliverance that day was truly miraculous.

I found this passage so appropriate, the perfect metaphor for what was happening in UBF. Problems were mounting, morale was low, strength had run out, and the leaders had no clue. During that Bible study, I remember asking two questions.

My first question was, “What would it look like for the leaders of a Christian organization to actually do what Jehoshaphat did? What if we admitted to ourselves and our members that we have no good plans or answers for our problems? What if we all stood together helplessly before the Lord with our eyes firmly fixed on him, so that we might be open to his answers and his deliverance?”

When I asked that question, the room became still. I waited and got no response.

My second question came a bit later, and it was something like this. “One of the big items on our agenda is to decide what to do at the national staff conference three months from now. As of today, none of us has a plan. There are some big problems in our ministry. Our chapter directors are tired, morale is low, and many of you have been saying that we are burned out. I hope you all read that report I sent to you. Those issues are real; I didn’t make them up. Is it an accident that we are studying this passage today? Or might God be speaking to us through his word, asking us to do something courageous that we have never done before – to openly admit to our chapter directors that have no answers, and to stand together with them as equals before the Lord, repenting together and seeking direction and help from God alone?”

Once again, the room was silent. I knew that my question would make some uncomfortable, but I never imagined they wouldn’t even acknowledge the question.

The Bible study moved on.

That moment was for me a real eye opener. For a long time, I had known that UBF leaders were deeply flawed. But even in the worst of times, I had always sensed in them a stance of openness toward Scripture, a desire to treat the Bible as the word of God being spoken to them, and a willingness to obey what they were hearing. But at that moment, I felt a strange physical sensation. It was as though we had suddenly swung around on a hinge. Instead of looking into the face of God intending to do what he was asking, we now seemed turned away with our backs to the Lord, ignoring his voice and deliberately walking away. That was a feeling that I will never forget. It’s a feeling that I never want to feel again.

Little time was reserved for open discussion. At one point, we were able to talk for maybe an hour or so. I have a few memories of what went on. I remember Jim Rabchuk telling the story of how he had gotten burned out. The demands that UBF had placed on him (and many related demands that he had placed on himself) became overwhelming, and he was learning the necessity of saying “No.”

Jim also began to talk about some of the problems in his ministry.

As he was talking, he was interrupted by Jacob Lee. Jacob said (my paraphrase, but I believe it is accurate): “We can’t keep talking about all these problems. Of course, there are problems, we always have problems. We talk and talk and talk and there is never any solution. We cannot solve all our problems. We must move on from these problems and do the work of God.”

Jim got visibly upset. He shot back, “Missionary Jacob, that is ridiculous!”

I had never seen an American openly confront an older missionary like that, certainly not in the presence of other leaders. I was shocked, and yet I felt strangely comforted. “Good for him,” I thought. “Good. for. him.”

And James H. Kim made a passionate speech about spiritual disciplines. He had begun to read Peter Scazzero’s books on spiritual formation, and was learning the importance of contemplative prayer. He said (again a paraphrase): “Our American staff shepherds are all burned out. They have no time to think, no time to recharge. They are just doing, doing, doing every day like machines. That is not a Christian life. That is not the way to be a leader. Leaders must reflect, must stay in the presence of God. Leaders should meditate with times of deep contemplation!”

I was ready to stand up and applaud.

John Jun didn’t like what he was hearing. He yelled, “Time over! Time over! Time for lunch!”

Then James H. Kim shouted over him: “Each one of our staff shepherds MUST spend THREE HOURS EVERY DAY in quiet study and contemplation!”

My heart sank like a stone. That was the last thing our burned-out staff needed to hear. Three hours a day? I couldn’t contain myself, so I blurted: “Missionary James, you said ‘three hours a day.’ Is that instead of some things they are currently doing, or in addition to everything they already do?”

The discussion was over. It was time for lunch.

Here are a few more things I remember from that staff retreat.

After that exchange with James H. Kim, John Jun started to clamp down. At our next meeting, he brought out a call bell, one of those metal contraptions you see on the front desk of a hotel. When he thought someone was talking too much – which was after about 60 or 90 seconds – he would ring the bell and say, “Time over! Time over!” As he did this, some of the missionaries laughed. To me, this was not a laughing matter. We desperately needed to get real about things that truly mattered, and I didn’t care how long it took. But the funny thing is, at that time I didn’t get upset about the bell. I had lived in UBF-land so long that I was accustomed to that kind of treatment. Months later, when I told some friends what John Jun had done, their jaws dropped. They couldn’t believe that the leader of a Christian organization would do that in a room full of adults, shutting people up by ringing a bell. In retrospect, I see that this was outrageous. But at the time, it felt almost normal.

The so-called retreat shifted into all-business mode. Ron Ward discussed plans for a new CME (Continuing Missionary Education) institute. That 30-minute presentation was the longest three hours of my life. It droned on and on and on. Then Jacob Lee laid out his vision for a UBF school  for the education of children, teaching them all subjects (reading, writing, math, etc.) from a standpoint of mission, so that we could pass on UBF core values to the next generation. Of course, we all knew what was really happening: these leaders were angling for pots of money from the UBF treasury to fund their pet projects. To say we were bored would be an understatement. The next item was conference planning. Mark Vucekovich talked about the 2013 International Summer Bible Conference, and it was decided that we would hold it at IUP. When Mark asked questions, he got essentially no response. My strength had been sapped, and I sensed that others were feeling the same way. (Later, some confirmed to me that, yes, they were bored out of their skulls.)

The last major item on the agenda was the North American Staff Conference to be held three months later. No plans had made, no theme was proposed. I spoke up and said something like this: “In light of what we learned from our group Bible study, why don’t we do what Jehoshaphat did, admitting that we really don’t know what we are doing, and stand together in prayer before the Lord to seek help and renewal for our ministry.”

My suggestion wasn’t acknowledged. They fidgeted for a brief moment and then moved on.

After hearing complaints that we needed to talk, John Jun made a small concession. He allowed everyone in the room to speak in turn, saying whatever was on their minds, within a limit of two minutes. Thankfully, he did not ring his bell. I cannot recall anyone’s remarks, except for the elder Daniel Yang, who said something like this: “My main concern is that we have no spirit. In the old days we had great spirit, because we used to study the Bible every day, 365 days a year, on Christmas, on New Year, no exception. It is my opinion that we must go back to intensive Bible study 365 days a year, so that our spirit may be revived. You might think differently, but that is my opinion.”

When my turn came, this is what I said. This is an exact quote. I wrote it down so I wouldn’t stumble over my words, and I saved it on my computer.

As I reflect back upon my life, I see five people who helped to shape my Christian faith. First, my mother, who raised me and my twelve siblings by faith in God alone. Second, a Catholic priest who befriended me and prayed for me during my freshman year at MIT; it was through his influence that I read a Christian book and committed my life to Christ. Third, Mother Barry, from whom I learned to respect and interact with Scripture. Fourth, John Armstrong, whose writings deeply challenged my sectarianism and opened my mind and heart to interact with the Body of Christ beyond UBF. Fifth, my wife, who has taught me countless things that other people could not; through her I am experiencing the love of God in new and wonderful ways.

Please forgive me, but I cannot identify Dr. Lee as my spiritual father, nor can I see myself as the fruit of UBF. I have drawn much spiritual nourishment from UBF, but I would not be the person I am today without those other influences. This is why I will never be just a UBF man, and why I cannot get excited about dedicating the rest of my life to promoting UBF-specific values. To do so would deny my roots and my heritage.

In feeling this way, I am not alone. America was a Christian nation long before UBF missionaries arrived, and a “typical” North American person in UBF will have significant spiritual influences in his or her life outside of UBF. To strongly press the principles of UBF upon us, to force us to claim that as our spiritual heritage, is to divide us from ourselves and from one another.

On the last day of the retreat, three senior staff members excused themselves and left early, saying that they needed to get to the airport. Later I learned that at least one of them deliberately changed to an earlier flight, because he concluded the retreat was a waste of time.

And now, we turn to the question that prompted this article.

What happened after I wrote that report?

Brian guessed this:

I suppose the ubf echelon kicked you out of the Well, and marginalized you in various ways…but I will let you tell the story.

Yes, that did happen eventually, but those events unfolded over a couple of years.

Ben said this:

My short guess is that you were called aside, basically reprimanded, told to “keep you place,” “mind your own business,” and basically asked, “who the heck do you think you are?” Well, probably not in those exact words.

Something like that sort of happened. At the beginning of the retreat, John Jun was not aware of my report. The guy who managed his email hadn’t told him about it. At the retreat, someone urged Jun to look at my report, and that first night, he did. The next day, just as we were heading to lunch, he poked me on the arm and said, “A leader should be humble! A leader should be humble!”

I took one step backward so that he could no longer touch me, looked him in the eye and said, “A leader should be honest.”

He replied, “Okay,” and then we went to lunch.

Reactions from the senior staff were muted. A couple of them said, “Thank you for your report,” and that was it. During the next week, I got feedback from a few more.

Brian’s and Ben’s answers aren’t wrong, but no one nailed it.

The answer to “What happened?” is so predictable, so typical of happenings in UBF-land, that when you hear it, you’ll slap yourself and say, “Duh!”

So obvious that it’s invisible, like that nose in front of your face.

This is what happened after that report.

(Drum roll, please.)

Joe Schafer humbled himself.

That’s right. I did exactly as UBF trained me to do. I sucked it up. I decided that once again, I needed to trust my leaders, believing that they would do what was right in God’s time. So I decided to pray and wait some more. I would lie low, not make waves, and keep following the leaders to God-knows-where.

And I urged everyone else to do the same.

After getting survey responses  from dozens of members, I feared that hopes were building that change would be imminent. I knew that nothing would happen for some time, so I wrote a letter and emailed it to everyone who had answered my survey. My key verse for the letter was Ephesians 4:3:

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

I did not ask anyone to keep quiet. I asked them to approach their leaders humbly and prayerfully, not with a spirit of division or complaint, but in a manner that was gentle and constructive, realizing that people from different generations and cultures will see things differently.

If you don’t believe that I actually did this, see for yourself. The letter is right here.

If you hear anyone say that I stirred up trouble, print a copy of this letter and place it in their hands.

As I waited for UBF leaders to do something about these issues, I didn’t sit down and do nothing (as several know-nothings have suggested). In the months ahead, I continued to study the Bible and preach Sunday messages. I prayed for our ministry, especially for those who were unhappy. We entertained UBF guests at our home, including Paul and Sarah Hong, who stayed with us overnight. I wrote dozens of positive articles for UBFriends, monitoring the website day and night to interact with everyone who cared to comment. I read dozens of books on various topics, especially the theology of mission.

And Sharon and I enrolled in John Armstrong’s first cohort on missional ecumenism. At a time when we really could not afford it, we paid from our own family budget (not with ministry funds) the full registration fees for the year-long course, for all the books, and for round-trip travel and accommodation in Chicago. We didn’t do this to become know-it-alls. We did it because we needed to understand what Christian unity is about. We were longing for someone, anyone, to please teach us how to relate to other Christians in our community. Most of all, we desperately wanted to know what the gospel required us to do in response to our fellow believers in UBF who, as the weeks and months went by, seemed ever more distant and different from us.

And with that, dear brothers and sisters, I bid you do widzenia.

P.S. – Some of you might say that I’ve gone too far, that it was unethical and unChristian to reveal what happened at that retreat. If so, I suggest that you lodge a complaint with Washington UBF.  Then please note that, during the many years that I served on the senior staff, no one ever suggested to me that the proceedings were to be kept secret.  In fact, at that Wisconsin retreat, I specifically recall some of the members (I could be wrong, but I think it was Henry Park and perhaps Paul Hong) saying that they are completely open and transparent about these things, and when they return home after a senior staff meeting, they meet with their members and inform them of what happened. And no one never said I should spin the events to make UBF leaders look better than they are. So I have done precisely what they said, explaining what happened as I experienced it.

If you were there and would like to tell it from a different perspective, send us your article, and we’ll publish it right away.

Before me lay a vast desert. How long it had been since that wilderness had last seen rain, I could not say. Three years perhaps, or four. Long fissures reached like fingers across the clay-baked expanse. A few sun-scorched crags were the jealous residents of that wasteland. Allowing no creatures, no living things to share their kingdom, they were disturbed only by a light sand, swept by a fiery wind.

As I watched, the silence was broken by a deliberate beat, amplified by the harsh serenity of that wilderness. A legion of men emerged in the distance, marching toward me. Fifty men abreast, they passed not a hundred feet from where I sat in the shade of a boulder. Heads bowed, they trudged by, hooded in dusty brown robes that covered them down to their disheveled sandals. There seemed no end to the column; it stretched for miles, as far as I could see.

I drew closer and fell in the line next to a broad-shouldered man with a plodding step. He did not look at me exactly, but cocked his head slightly, revealing a bronzed face with a gritty countenance. The grizzled strands that escaped from his brown hood matched the stippled growth on his cheeks. Beads of sweat clung to his upper lip, occasionally brushed away by a rough tongue. I greeted him warmly, and was rewarded with a husky grunt.

“Tell me, sir, what is this company?”

“We are marching,” he answered.

“To where?”

“To the End.”

“To the End of What?”

“To the End of Man.” He seemed well satisfied by his answer, and silently trudged on, ignoring my inquisitive glance.

Undaunted, I renewed my query. “Why do you march?”

“It is our duty.”

“To whom?”

“To ourselves.”

This line of questioning bearing even less fruit than the last, I asked him what would become of Them. “What will you do when you get to the End?”

He seemed surprised at this, and retorted, “The End is the End. There is Nothing Else.”

I persisted, “There must be Something at the End.”

For the first time, the traveler turned toward me with a scowl. “There is Nothing Else,” he repeated. “We are Man. It is Enough.”

As he turned back to the road, he pulled from his mouth a small stone, no more than a pebble. Inspecting it, he smacked his lips twice, than placed it back in his mouth, sucking furiously. As I glanced around, I noticed a similar bulge in the mouths of many of the other pilgrims. I inquired of my guide as to its purpose.

The answer was obvious enough to him. “It sustains me,” he retorted with an especially loud smack. “But it cannot avail much against this heat, even for an hour.”

He pulled the stone from his mouth only to glare at me once more. “It is Enough,” he snapped, and popped the stone back into his mouth.

At this, we trudged on in silence for some time. Presently, my eyes were drawn to a small party on the edge of the endless column. Their step was lighter, their heads higher, than their comrades. Some of them peered about restlessly, scanning the desert for… Something.

I inquired about them. “They are the Seekers. Fools, all of them.”

“Why fools?” I asked. “What do they seek?”

The traveler snorted. “They search for More. A waste of time.”

“A waste?”

“Tried it once myself, when I was young; they will never find It. We do not need More. We have Enough. It does not help our Progress.”

At once, a cry rang up from the Seekers.  As one, they rushed toward a boulder set apart from the path the men followed. Shading my eyes against the sun, I could make out the glimmer of a small creek running out from the base of the boulder, bubbling from some unseen spring deep in the ground.

One man collared a young Seeker as he ran by. “Where do you think you’re going, little halfwit?”

“Oh it is wonderful, sir! They have found More!”

His tormentor gave his arm a rude twist. “Bah! Do not waste yourself chasing such dreams! It is nothing but a mirage. You’ll stay right here. Don’t scorn your fellow Man; you’re no better than the rest of us.”

For one brief instant, the young man glared back defiantly. But in the next moment, his resolve seemed to crumple; with a final doleful glance at the other Seekers, he bowed his head and resumed his March.

I watched the other Seekers as they excitedly gathered the water, some drinking deeply, others filling a waterskin and running back to the column to share a fortune with their parched comrades. One returned ahead of the rest, not even pausing to quench his own thirst in his haste to give refreshment to another. He grabbed the first traveler he met and pressed the flask to the man’s lips. “Drink, brother!” he cried.

But his charity was unwelcome; I stared in disbelief as the man shoved the altruist to the ground, spilling his prize on the arid earth. “I am no brother of yours,” he returned. “And I have no need of your pity.”

The Seeker was aghast. “But only the water will fill you! What you have will never satisfy!”

“I daresay that’s as may be,” the man replied, as he drew his precious pebble from between his lips. “But this,” he gestured. “This, is Mine. Do whatever you like for yourself. But as for me, I have Enough.”

Disregarding the Seeker’s pleas and tears, he hurried toward the middle of the column, burying himself deep among his fellows.

By now, all of the other Seekers were returning with water. They ran to the front of the column, and shouted so fervently that the entire horde came to a halt. “We have found it!” they exclaimed. “Drink, and live!”

Their shouts were met with silence by the stoic pilgrims. Finally, one bolder than the rest came forward. Without a word, he accepted a flask from one of the Seekers and turned to face the column, raising it high. He paused briefly. Then, stone-faced, he slowly poured the water onto the ground. Turning to the Seekers, he growled, “Look here. We don’t need your new ideas.”

“No we don’t!” echoed the pilgrims.

“We can look out for ourselves. Man has always marched on, and so He will march to the End. If you are not with us, you are against us. Now stand aside. Do not hinder our Progress!”

A wave of fury rushed over the pilgrims, the first show of sentiment that I had seen from the masses. Once again, the swarm pressed forward.

The Seekers stood valiantly in the path, pleading with all those who rushed past, until, one by one, they all fell, pushed to the cracking clay by travelers who would not be turned aside from their goal. Row after row of pilgrims trudged on, heedless of the groans of their fallen comrades whom they now trampled into the dust.

As the last pairs of sandals pressed on, leaving behind scores of broken bodies, order was at last restored to the column.

One traveler turned to take one last glance at a shattered jug, its spilled prize still running along a small fault in the earth. Removing a pebble from his mouth, he licked his lips. A moment later, he replaced the pebble, turned, and was gone. Onward marched Man.

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” John 4:10

In these verses, Paul makes the surprising claim that the law – God’s law, which was given to Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai – created hostility between Jews and Gentiles and erected a wall, an insurmountable barrier, which had kept them apart. This is true. Because of their law, Jews were compelled to separate themselves from non-Jews. They had to avoid all physical contact. Jews could never have fellowship or eat with Gentiles, because Gentiles’ food and utensils and homes and bodies were defiled. For Jews, the mere thought of eating with Gentiles would have made them feel physically ill.

Neuropsychology has shown that most of the judgments that people make in regard to morality – deciding what behaviors are right or wrong – are not based on careful, rational thought. Rather, these decisions come from the gustatory cortex, the part of the brain that helps us to detect bad smells and warns us not to eat certain foods because they are unwholesome or contaminated. I learned about these findings through a fascinating book titled The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt.

When I first read about these things, I sensed that they might have enormous implications for how we understand the purity codes of the Old Testament law and the themes of “clean” and “unclean” running throughout the gospels, in Acts and the epistles of Paul. I thought, “Someone who knows the Bible and who understands psychology should really investigate this.”

As it turns out, someone did.

A few days ago, Sharon pointed me to the blogging site of Richard Beck, a professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University. She found a series of articles on “spiritual pollution,” or more formally, the theology of disgust. The first article in the series appears here.

The other thirteen articles in the series can be found by repeatedly hitting the “Next ->” link in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

As a Christian who cares about the interplay between modern science and Scripture, this is some of the most fascinating and thought provoking material I have ever read. I’m not kidding. It literally blew me away. As I read these articles, my mind was flooded with observations, ideas and questions. Here are some things that came to mind.

1. When we encounter passages about purity – for example, Psalm 119:9, “How can a young man keep his way pure?” – we instinctively apply this to sexual thoughts and behaviors, but rarely to any of the other vast areas of life that Jesus wants to redeem. Should we change our ways of thinking about this? Is it even possible to change our thinking?

2. If you bring up THE hot-button issue facing the western church today – the Christians stance toward homosexuality – before long, someone will say, “We have to hate the sin but love the sinner.” Why do I find that answer to be so trite and unhelpful? Can’t we do any better than that? Yes, I’m sure that we can. But to do better, we’ll need to ask whether “hating the sin but loving the sinner” is even possible without trivializing or changing the meaning of love.

3. Suppose a father never changes dirty diapers. Can he truly love his children, or will he always remain cold and distant?

4. Why were these images of Pope Francis embracing a disfigured man so deeply moving? Could these images carry a richer and more effective presentation of the gospel than a hundred evangelistic sermons?

5. If missionaries routinely experience “culture shock” – deep feelings of aversion toward the people they are trying to evangelize – what should they do? Would this be a minor issue? Or should this cause them to seriously think about whether they have what it takes to engage in cross-cultural witness?

6. If an evangelist imagines himself standing apart from the people whom he is trying to evangelize, because he imagines their lifestyles and behaviors to be detestable, can he faithfully communicate the gospel to them? Can he faithfully represent Jesus to them? Or is he just deluding himself?

Memo to Ben Toh: Please read these articles and then consider delivering a sermon “P is for Purity.”

Dear Readers:

We, the administrators of UBFriends, were deeply moved by this morning’s Daily Bread passage and accompanying commentary that appeared on ubf.org. Because of our laziness, pride and poor spiritual conditions, we had given up writing our Daily Bread reflections for a very long time. But today we repented because the DB page was so excellent! It seemed so  fresh, so relevant, as though the author was personally writing it for us and for all our readers! So we decided to reproduce the DB page here. And we invite you, as the Spirit leads, to share your thoughts and reflections in the Comments section below. Please meditate deeply on this and write about how it applies to you. We look forward to hearing from you.

THE ASSYRIAN ARMY THREATENS JERUSALEM

2 Kings 18:17-37

Key Verse: 18:36

But the people remained silent and said nothing in reply, because the king had commanded, “Do not answer him.”

Prayer: Lord, thank you for leaders who encourage us to stand strong in our faith. Help me to keep my faith when the devil is planting fear and tempting me to take the easy way.

One Word: Do not talk to the devil

Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became for them the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth by the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.

[Silence is kept for a time, all kneeling.]

Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth: Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

If you are interested in learning more about the history of Lent, and how and why it can be beneficial, take a look at this series of short articles by Mark Roberts.

As part of my observance of Lent this year, I have decided to go silent with respect to UBFriends. From tomorrow until Easter Sunday, I will refrain from reading or posting anything on this website.

This is going to be difficult for me because UBFriends is essentially my fifth child.  Since 2010, I have invested a great deal of time and energy to help create this website and keep it going. For better or worse, it has touched the lives of many. It has certainly changed me. UBFriends has been a source of fellowship, challenge, encouragement, rebuke and growth. Visiting this website each day has become part of my routine, something that would be difficult for me to live without.

Which is precisely why I am going to stay away. By going silent on UBFriends for the next 40 days, I hope to draw nearer to God so that he may work to clarify and sanctify my relationships.

The administrators of this website (Brian, Ben and I) have discussed the idea of shutting this website down during Lent, but we have not made any firm decision on that. It is possible that Brian might take the website down for a period of time to perform maintenance. If he decides to take UBFriends offline, it’s fine with me. On the other hand, I believe that how one chooses to observe Lent is a deeply personal matter, and I don’t want to forcibly impose my own decision of non-participation on anyone else.

Although I have decided to stop visiting UBFriends during Lent, others might want to make a Lenten practice of coming to UBFriends more often. Some people who find this website inconvenient, irritating, or infuriating. If anyone has anything negative to say about their organization, they would rather not hear about it. If so, then perhaps they might consider dropping their defenses, browsing through the articles and comments with an open mind and willingness to listen, as an act of loving their enemies as Jesus commanded.

(a sermon based loosely on Romans 1:18-32, delivered at Hyde Park on 9/22/13)

The topic for today is wrath. More specifically, the role of God’s punishment in understanding the gospel. This is a topical message, and I hope that you will bear with my ramblings, listen critically, and judge for yourselves whether or not I am being faithful to the witness of Scripture.

The gospel is summarized by John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16) The gospel is good news of love and life. But there’s a flipside to that in certain gospel presentations, that if you reject the good news, there will be “hell to pay.” Sometimes that flipside becomes the main story. As in that famous sermon by Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which depicts the non-believer dangling over a pit of hellfire, held up by only a spider’s web which can break at God’s whim. The message is that, unless and until we believe in Jesus, we are the objects of God’s wrath. ”For God was so ticked off at the world that he gave his one and only Son…” Now some people will say that the Church has gotten too soft, that we have become morally lax and ineffective in our witness because we’ve stopped confronting people with their sin and no longer warn them about God’s wrath. And others will say that we should stop up talking about wrath altogether, because it gives an ineffective and misleading picture of what the gospel is about.

Being raised as I was in the Roman Catholic Church, wrath and divine punishment were very much a part of my childhood education. I was taught that if I committed a mortal sin (such as missing Mass on Sunday) and then died before going to confession, my soul would go straight to hell. In the evangelical world, I heard that God is love, but he is also wrathful; he wants to forgive us of our sins, but he also has to punish every sin, so he decided to punish Jesus instead of us, which satisfied both his love and his wrath. Love and wrath were the opposing sides, the opposite poles of God’s character, as were grace and truth, and those opposing sides were brought together at the cross. Bingo! Problem solved.

That explanation sounded logical, and it was good enough to keep me from worrying about it for a long time. But after two decades of assuming that I had this gospel thing all figured out, I began to have doubts, and I started to notice some deeper contradictions. As I became more honest with myself, a terrible truth started to dawn on me. The truth was: I didn’t love God very much. All along, Christians had been telling me that the gospel brings people to “a personal relationship with God” and “a love relationship with God.” But I began to admit that I didn’t really have that. Don’t get me wrong; I was deeply involved in church activities, I was doing lots of things for God. I was carrying out my Christian duties. But I wasn’t in love with God in the sense that I wasn’t liking him. I wasn’t longing to be with him, to see him, to worship him, to know him. For the longest time, I had just assumed that the problem was me. I supposed that I had failed to grasp the deep truth of the message that was given, that I just hadn’t believed it enough, that I hadn’t tried hard enough, and so on. I put all the blame on myself, thinking that I, as an individual, was deficient. But as the years wore on, I began to notice that lots of other Christians – evangelical Christians, the ones who supposedly “knew the Bible” and had gotten the gospel “right” – were in essentially the same boat as I was. For all our talk about having a personal relationship with God, our experience of God was impersonal, driven by rules and principles and teachings; our worship was intellectual, abstract and sterile; all of that wonder and joy and heavenly sunshine that we promised people they would experience if they “just accepted Jesus as their personal savior” wasn’t fully there; it wasn’t being realized in our lives and in our community.

So I went back to fundamentals. I asked myself some basic questions like, “What is love?” and “Is it possible to love someone if you don’t actually like them?” I decided that the answer to that second question is “No.” If you claim to love someone but you don’t actually like them, then something is fundamentally broken; that love is retarded, it is stunted, and it can’t be fixed by reinforcing the status quo and doing more of the same. And I came to realize a truth I had never known before. That truth is that love requires freedom. If an expression of love isn’t given freely simply because the giver wants to give it, then it’s not love. Many of the gospel presentations that I’ve heard have more than a hint of coercion. “God loves you, and he has a wonderful plan for your life. And oh, by the way, if you don’t accept his offer, you’re gonna burn in hell for all eternity, so you might as well say, ‘Yes.’” Picture a man proposing to his girlfriend. He gets down on one knee, takes out a diamond ring, and says, “I love you more than anything in this world; I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me? And oh, by the way, if you say no, I’ll find ways to punish you and ruin your life.” Would that marriage be off to a great start? If the purpose of the gospel is to bring us into a loving relationship with Jesus the bridegroom, then how could such a relationship be established by threats or by force?

The understanding that love requires freedom has enormous implications for how we live out our faith. One of my spiritual breakthroughs, a real “Aha!” moment, came when I read the classic book True Spirituality by Francis Schaeffer. Early on in that book, he makes a point that is profoundly profound. He say that if you are a Christian, it is not good enough for you to simply do the right thing; you have to do the right thing in the right way and for the right reason. What he means is this. It is possible for any of us to generate good behaviors by our own human strength and willpower. But that isn’t how God’s kingdom operates. To a pragmatist, motives don’t matter. A pragmatist would say, “What does it matter why you do something? As long  as somebody is doing something good, there’s no need to worry about why.” (Some will even support this with Scripture, as Paul wrote in Philippians 1:18: “But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached.”)  But in Christianity, the why really does matter. In God’s kingdom, the good works that we do are of no value unless they are being brought forth through the living person of Jesus Christ who has made his home in us – or, in other words, by the active work of the Holy Spirit who is alive in us. The outward fruit that Christians bear must be the visible manifestation of the inner fruit that comes from the Holy Spirit, and according to Paul in Galatians 5:22, the most basic fruit of the Holy Spirit is love.

What I’m saying is this. Whatever we do as Christian life, the motive for doing it must be love. Not a sense of honor or duty. Not a sense of fear. Not peer pressure or groupthink or pleasing mommy or daddy. Not to make myself look like a leader and gain acceptance by people because I do what’s expected and follow the rules. My motive must be pure affection for God and pure affection for others, the pure affection of Jesus that flows like a river from the throne of God into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit. That kind of pure love is not generated by our efforts; it is simply a gift. If the reason why we do what we do is not love, then what we are doing is not gospel work. This isn’t rocket science. This is Christianity 101. This is the language of the new covenant (Jer 31:31-34). This is part of what Jesus meant when he said that all the law and prophets, in other words, the whole teaching of Scripture, hinges upon love for God and love for our neighbor (Mt 22:40). The authentic Christian life is motivated by love, powered by love, experienced in love, consummated in love. Love reigns supreme.

I used to think that love was one of the many excellent qualities of God. In western Christianity, there’s a tradition of defining God by listing his attributes. God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-sufficient, all-holy, and so on. Who is God? “Well, God is a being with all those attributes. If your walking down the street, and by chance you encounter a being with all those attributes, you have found God!” That understanding of God can be helpful up to a point. But it is impersonal and it falls short when we come to love. The Bible doesn’t merely say that God has love. Scripture says that God is love (1Jn 4:8). Love is not an abstract quality or attribute that a single person can have in isolation from other persons. Love manifests itself in relationships. Love is an other-centeredness that is realized only when others are present.  Unless multiple persons are involved, there is no love.

This is why it’s so important to understand that God is not a single person but a Trinity – three persons, distinct but co-equal, each one fully free and fully God, but living together in unity and dwelling in one another and delighting in one another. When some people imagine God, they picture him as one white haired guy sitting on a throne completely in love with himself and demanding that everyone love him too. But the God of the historic Christian faith is a Triune community of love. So when the Apostle John said, “God is love,” he really meant it.  God’s missional purpose, his plan for us and for the world, flows from who he is. His intention is to draw us into his loving community, to delight in Father Son and Spirit and be delighted in by them as they delight in one another, participating with them to the extent that we can as earthly human beings on in that amazing dance that has been going on in the heavenly realms since before time began. That was the reason why we were created. That is the reason why the kosmos  was created. That is the reason why God incarnated himself to become part of the kosmos to redeem us and all the kosmos. “For God so loved the kosmos that he sent his one and only Son…” (Jn 3:16)

If we want to explain the gospel well, we need to start in the right place. Some gospel tellings start with Romans 3:23, “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” Sin is a huge part of the story. But we won’t be able to understand sin unless we go father back to see what God was in the process of making before sin broke it. It’s hard to come up with a definition of sin that internally resonates with everyone because, although everyone has some sense of good versus bad, the way people understand good versus bad varies greatly from one culture to another. Western understandings focus on guilt: people sense they are bad when they as individuals break a rule or violate an objective moral standard. But Eastern understandings focus on shame: people sense they are bad when they fail to live up to the expectations of their group and bring dishonor to the family or community. In a guilt society, order is maintained by explicit rules and punishments for breaking the rules. In a shame society, order is maintained by marginalizing and ostracizing people who step out of line. These differences make it very hard for Easterners and Westerners to agree on how to deal with unethical behavior, or even on what constitutes unethical behavior.

The manner in which we understand sin will deeply affect our understanding of biblical terms like justification. Evangelical Protestants tend to explain the gospel in legal or forensic terms. We imagine a courtroom where God the Father is the judge, and we are on trial for everything we have ever done. The evidence is presented, and we are found guilty and sentenced to hell. But just before we are handed over for eternal punishment, Jesus bursts in and says, “I died for his sins! The price is paid!” and we are set free. In this framework, justification means that God declares us as individuals to be innocent of the crimes we have committed. Children of the Reformation tend to think in terms of law, because the Reformation was carried out by lawyers. Zinzendorf, Melanchthon, and Calvin all studied law. They inherited the Western tradition of Lex, Rex (“Law is King”) which supposes that people of all standing, even rulers and kings, must submit themselves to legal principles and be punished in a fair and impartial manner if they disobey.  Now if you take this western legal understanding of the gospel and bring it to eastern cultures which operate on a system of shame and honor, a great deal will be lost in translation. This is one of the issues that the UBF ministry has been wrestling with, and we need to better understand what is happening here if we are going to develop a workable ecclesiology, a system of church governance that sets the ground rules by which we operate. But I digress.

Kingdoms of the west maintain the social order by rules, guilt and punishment. Kingdoms of the east have developed elaborate systems of honor and shame. So what about God’s kingdom? How does it operate? If the kingdom of God is the realm of the Father, Son and Spirit, it must function as the persons of the Trinity relate to one another. Is the Father ever ticked off at the Son? Does the Father say to the Son, “Don’t ask questions, boy, just obey”? Do the Father and Son draw up rules for the Spirit and say , “Holy, we want you to go into the world and do this, because this is safe, but don’t ever work that way, because that way is too unpredictable”? In the first three centuries after Christ, the Church Fathers had passionate, heated debates about this, sometimes resulting in fistfights, because they sensed they needed to get it right. They were not arguing over esoteric abstractions. They were grappling with the most basic question, “How does the kingdom operate?” They looked carefully at the apostolic tradition, including the writings of Paul and the Upper Room discourse of John 13-17. They struggled to find just the right words to describe who the Father, Son and Spirit are and how they relate to one another. What they said, in essence, is that the persons of the Trinity never bind one another, never lord it over one another, never impose rules or obligations or guilt trips or manipulations of any kind. Their relationship is one of complete equality, complete freedom, complete openness and honesty, complete unity in the midst of creative diversity, to the point where they are not simply admiring one another from a distance but actually getting inside of one another and indwelling one another in an atmosphere that can only be described as pure joy.

The persons of the Trinity are doing the “happy dance.” As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Their delight in one another is so infectious that it bursts out of them in creative energy that produces new life. Think of what happens when a husband and wife who delight in one another and come together in freedom and just do what comes naturally; their passion leads to babies. Babies are amazing.  From the moment they come out of the womb, they are an explosion of joy and wonder. The are little autonomous beings who want nothing more than to just be with people and thrive on the receiving and giving of love.  We are the children of God, the babies of the Trinity. God’s whole purpose for us is to draw us into his everlasting happy dance and experience a baby’s pure love and joy and wonder.  The dance that God intends for us is not on some pie-in-the-sky heavenly cloud, but right here in this world, in this physical, natural environment that he created us for and that he created for us. Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

In light of this understanding of how the kingdom operates, we start to realize that the views of guilt and shame that dominate the cultures of west and east fail to describe the full scope and tragedy of what sin has done. Sin is something like a cancer which has metastasized, twisting and distorting and injecting hurt and pain into every aspect of that happy dance for which the children of God were created – our relationship with Father, Son and Spirit; our relationships with one another; our relationships to ourselves; and our relationships to this created world. In our fallen state, we come together and try to perform damage control in these various areas using the tools of social engineering that our parents handed down to us. Some of our solutions are quite creative and work better than others. But in the end, none of our treatments can cure us or truly heal our relationships. And may I suggest that many of our deficient understandings and outright misunderstandings of the gospel stem from taking our personal and cultural ideals of what a good, orderly human society or church ought to look like – all of our creative strategies for sin management — and forcibly projecting those views onto God’s kingdom, rather than stepping back and asking God with open hearts and minds, “Lord, how does your kingdom operate? Reveal yourself. Show me how you work.”

When we ask that question and go back to Scripture, we gain insight upon insight. There are so many ways to describe about how God brings his kingdom to us and us to his kingdom.  Those insights from the Bible tend to come not so much in the form of doctrinal statements that we are told to just accept, but as colorful stories, narratives and parables that we hear and chew on and discuss with one another until they take root in us. The key figure present in all those Scriptural stories and parables is a single character, a man named Jesus, who has been revealed as the Messiah by virtue of his suffering, death and resurrection. When we approach Scripture as Jesus and the apostles taught us – a method that can be described as “forward and backward” – when we read it prospectively in its original historical context, and then re-read it retrospectively in light of the historical experience of Jesus’ death and resurrection and ascension – then we gain glimpses of how that kingdom is already breaking into this world and into our experience if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

God’s kingdom is already fully realized and fully present in the person of Jesus. Jesus is fully divine and fully human. He is all God, all man, all the time, and two natures in one person, and the divine and human are always in harmony, never in conflict. Where Jesus is, there is the kingdom of God, insofar as human beings can experience it. Since Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, he is no longer here in bodily form. He has promised to return to us in the flesh, and when he does we will be together with him and experience the full reality of the kingdom in our spirits and our bodies. Until then, while we wait, we have his presence among us in the body of the Church through the activity of the Holy Spirit, whom Paul described as a seal, a downpayment , an arrabon (engagement ring), a foretaste and sure promise of the kingdom life that is to come (Eph 1:13-14).

Now when the Holy Spirit comes to us, his intention is not to throw us into a fog of guilt and shame. Nor does he want to terrorize us with fear. Nor does he come to us chains of slavery, with long lists of rules and conditions that we need to fulfill before we measure up to God’s standard. Scripture is very, very clear on that point. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Sonship, the polar opposite of fear, the one who unites us to Jesus and enables us to cry out, “Abba, Father” (Ro 8:15, Gal 4:6).

To conclude this sermon, I want to return to the subject of God’s wrath. That word, which basically means anger, appears in the Old Testament (NIV) 152 times, and in the New Testament 29 times. I believe Scripture is divinely inspired, and I believe that word is an accurate reflection of how human beings in our fallen state experience God as he works to reveal himself to us in our context. I find it extremely fascinating how often the psalmists use wrath in ways that, in light of the teachings of Jesus (for example, in the Sermon on the Mount) are distinctively unchristian. For example, in Psalm 79:6: “Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge you, on the kingdoms that do not call on your name.” And Psalm 69:24: “Pour out your wrath on them; let your fierce anger overtake them.” And Psalm 6:1: “Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.” The psalmists appear to be totally in favor of God pouring out his wrath, as long as God does it on other people and not them. This is often how we feel, and it is an accurate reflection of how fallen human beings sometimes pray. But this is not the teaching of Jesus; he commanded us to love our enemies. I have found a similar spirit at work in certain kinds of gospel preaching: the idea that God’s wrath is being poured out on other people, on people outside of the fold, on people who are not seen as God’s people by virtue of their beliefs and behaviors.

But when we turn to the New Testament, we see a distinct shift in the frequency and manner that wrath appears. In the NIV gospels, Jesus used the word only twice: Once in Luke 21:23 when he predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, and again in John 3:36, when he’s speaking to Nicodemus: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”  Colorful and intense preaching about God’s anger, the kind that appears in Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon, is very rare in Jesus’ proclamation of the gospel. In Jesus’ parables, he does occasionally speak of God’s judgment, but it tends to be against God’s people who refuse to forgive and reconcile with one another (Mt 18:34), those who claim to be Jesus’ followers but refuse to show love and mercy to people in need (Mt 25:46), and against hypocritical religious leaders who misuse their positions if authority and abuse people under their care (Mt 24:51). I have not yet found anyplace in Scripture where Jesus applies wrath and anger against nonbelievers, pagans, Samaritans, Gentiles, tax collectors, public sinners, or anyone who lies outside the boundary of those who were considered God’s people at that time.

The most systematic development of God’s wrath that I see in the New Testament appears in Romans 1:18-32, where Paul declares, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness…” I won’t take the time to go over the details of that passage, but I will comment on the big picture. Paul says that God’s wrath “is being revealed.” He uses the present perfect tense to indicate that it is going on now. How is God now revealing his wrath? Is he bombarding us with pestilence, famine, earthquakes and tsunamis? As the passage progresses, Paul explains how God is pouring out his wrath. Three times – in verses 24, 26, and 28 – Paul says that God “gave them over.” In response to human wrongdoing, God gave them over to sexual impurity, to shameful lusts, to a depraved mind. The response is not an active, willful punishment by God, but a removal of his protection that allows people to go out from his presence to experience the consequences of sin on their bodies, their minds, their families, their society. If God’s loving design is to draw fallen human beings into joyful relationship with him, with one another, with themselves, and with the created world – and if love requires actual freedom — then it makes sense that God’s wrath would be to give wayward people what they are asking for, to remove his hand of protection, and allow the forces of sin to metastasize in them and in the world, leading to horrendous and deadly consequences.

I believe this picture of God’s wrath, a wrath that is more like the passive flipside of love than the active retribution, is fairly consistent with how God dealt with sin throughout the Bible. [Note to self: I don’t think it explains everything in the Old Testament; there are still difficult problems in the OT that none of us seem to understand very well.] I can see this picture in the Levitical system of animal sacrifice. Animals offered for human sin as a picture of atonement, but the animals were simply killed; they weren’t tortured to death. Above all, our understanding of God’s love and wrath must be shaped by what happened at the crucifixion. At the cross, God allowed Jesus to experience the full cup of suffering, to taste God’s wrath and experience human death. At the cross, I do not see the Father actively meting out punishments against the Son. I do see a Father who has apparently forsaken the Son, removed his hand of protection from him, and allowed the forces of darkness to take their course, as sinful human beings do unspeakably cruel things to Jesus.

In conclusion, I do believe that a violent form of wrath that we perceive as punishment is sometimes part of our human experience. It is how fallen people often deal with one another. It is how we may perceive (or misunderstand) God’s working as he breaks in to our lives. I do believe that God gets angry, but his anger flows when things and people he loves dearly are being devalued and destroyed. God is love. He is not equal parts love and wrath. His wrath flows from his love.

Our tendency to think of God as equal parts love and wrath may also stem from our tendency to “flatten” the Bible, to read the Bible as though every part of Scripture is equally important, that every verse no matter where it is reveals God’s character to the same degree and with the same clarity. We tend to suppose that every psalm, every chapter in Leviticus and Numbers and Judges and Jeremiah, carries the same kind of surface-level revelation of God’s character as, say, Jesus’ teaching in the Upper Room.  The Old Testament passages about holy war and genocide are read the same way and given the same weight as Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount. But that is not the way that most Christians have always approached the Bible. Many Christians throughout history have understood the Bible as God’s progressive revelation of himself. As the story progresses, the portrait of God being painted through his written word becomes clearer and clearer, and culminates when he himself shows up as Jesus, the living Word.

And [I owe this insight to pastor Greg Boyd] we need to remember that the Bible is a story with a surprise ending. In a typical movie, the story marches along, and the plot takes various twists and turns. But some movies hit the audience with a big surprise at the end. A good example of this kind of movie is The Book of Eli. As you watch that movie, the plot unfolds, and there’s plenty of excitement and action. But in the final moments of the story, the last sixty seconds, something is revealed that is totally unexpected, and that revelation causes you to go back and reframe and reinterpret everything that came before.

The Bible is that kind of story. The Bible shows in human language how God works through the nation of Israel to reveal his salvation plan. But when the Messiah shows up, some things happen that are totally unexpected. First, he looks like a very ordinary man. Then he is rejected, he suffers and is put to death on a cross. Then he rises again; his body comes to life and bursts out of the tomb. He appears to his disciples and then ascends bodily into heaven. Then he sends the Holy Spirit upon the Church and the good news is spread to the Gentiles. All those happenings were totally unexpected, and what you then see in the epistles is the early church trying to make sense of what just happened; and  the authors of the New Testament go back and reframe the entire Old Testament in light of the historical realities of Jesus’ death, resurrection, ascension and Pentecost. If we stop flattening the Bible; if we stop treating all passages in the same way regardless of their historical setting and genre; if we realize that God’s ultimate revelation of himself is not in the written word of a document but in the living Word who is a person; and if we believe that the kind of love that characterizes God is defined by the cross; then God’s wrath and love start to come into proper focus.

In closing, I believe, as the Scripture testifies, that the death of Jesus is a substitution; he died for us (Ro 3:25-26). But that isn’t the whole picture. Scripture also testifies that it is a union; at the cross, he died with us, and we died with him; on Easter he rose with us, and we rose with him (Ro 6:1-14). The Christian rite of baptism, the initiation into the family of God, has always been seen as a baptism into his death and resurrection, an initiation into a relationship where we die with him and rise with him. The atonement is“for” us but it is also “with” us. So that we may be “in” Christ and Christ may be “in” us. So that we may join with one another in that everlasting union, that eternal happy dance, with the Father, Son and Spirit. Glory be to God.

The literal meaning of decadent is “a state of decline or decay.” It seems to me that, if we strip away all the mental baggage of hedonism and go back to that simple definition, then it’s accurate to say that American evangelicalism is a decadent culture.

One of the books we have been reading lately is The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything by Fred Sanders. Sanders claims that American evangelicalism is in a state of malaise because it has largely forgotten its Trinitarian roots. After a few generations of distilling the glorious and incomprehensible gospel of cosmic redemption to a revivalist sales pitch about what individuals must do to be saved, evangelical church leaders and members can no longer see how the pieces of the Christian-faith puzzle fit together.

Sanders writes:

All cultures and subcultures move through stages, and evangelicalism is, among other things, a distinct subculture of Christianity. In cultural terms, a classical period is a time when all the parts of a community’s life seem to hang together, mutually reinforce each other, and make intuitive sense. By contrast, a decadent period is marked by dissolution of all the most important unities, a sense that whatever initial force gave impetus and meaningful form to the culture has pretty much spent its power. Decadence is a falling off, a falling apart from a previous unity.

 

Inhabitants of a decadent culture feel themselves to be living among the scraps and fragments of something that must have made sense to a previous generation but which now seem more like a pile of unrelated items. Decadent cultures feel unable to articulate the reasons for connecting things to each other. They spend a lot of time staring at isolated fragments, unable to combine them into meaningful wholes. They start all their important speeches by quoting Yeats’s overused line, “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” Decadents either fetishize their tribal and party distinctions or mix absolutely everything together in one sloppy combination. Not everybody in a decadent culture even feels a need to work toward articulating unities, but those who do make the attempt face a baffling challenge. At best, the experience is somewhat like working a jigsaw puzzle without the guidance of the finished image from the box top; at worst, it is like undertaking that task while fighting back the slow horror of realization that what you have in front of you are pieces that come from several different puzzles, none of them complete or related. Evangelicalism in our lifetime seems to be in a decadent period. In some sectors of the evangelical subculture, there is not even a living cultural memory of a classical period or golden age; what we experience is decadence all the way back.

Under conditions of decadence, two types of reaction typically occur. Conservative temperaments tend to grab up all the fragments and insist on keeping them as they were found. They may be totally inert lumps that nobody knows how to make use of, but the conservative will faithfully preserve them as museum pieces. Liberal temperaments, on the other hand, tend to toss the fragments aside as rapidly as they stop proving useful. Imagine a conservative and a liberal in some future dark age, pondering an antique internal combustion engine that either can operate but neither could build. Bolted to the side of the engine is an inscrutable gadget that is not clearly adding anything to the function of the vehicle. The liberal would reason that since it cannot be shown to do anything for the motor’s function, it should be removed and discarded. The conservative would reason that since it cannot be shown to do anything, it must remain precisely where it is forever. Perhaps if we knew what it did, it could be removed, but as long as we do not understand it, it stays. Whatever the merits of their temperaments (and neither can be right in this case), under the condition of decadence liberals become streamliners and conservatives become pack rats. Evangelicals have long tended toward the pack rat temperament, even though there are some signs that we may currently be exchanging that temperament for its relatively less happy alternative. What it leaves us with is an impressive stock of soteriological bric-a-brac that we don’t know what to do with or how it originally went together.The inability to grasp the wholeness of salvation is actually one of the primary manifestations of our decadent theological culture.

 

Is Christian salvation forgiveness, a personal relationship with Jesus, power for moral transformation, or going to heaven? It is all of those and more, but a true account of the thing itself will have to start with the living whole if we ever hope to make sense of the parts. Just think how tricky it is to combine free forgiveness and moral transformation in an organic way if what you are starting with is the individual parts. A dreary back-and-forth between cheap grace and works-righteousness is one of the bedeviling distractions of evangelical experience under the conditions of decadence.

In my days of youthful arrogance, I used to imagine, “Yeah, those American churches are in a state of decline. But UBF has really got it together.” Does anyone out there still believe that? Seriously?

HE HIMSELF IS OUR PEACE

Based on Ephesians 2:11-22

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians makes me feel like an ant. Here I am, walking around on the earth, dealing with the countless pressures of my everyday life. Projects at work that are running late. Debts that need to be paid. Things around the house that need to be fixed. Paying attention to how my wife and children are doing. Worries about our aging parents. Worries about this church, managing the building and wanting this congregation to prosper. I’m like an ant in  rainstorm, getting pelted with huge raindrops. My little ant-world is flooding; I’m up to my neck in water, and I’m about to get swept away. When I try to pray, the only words that come to mind are:

God, what am I supposed to do?

My terror is mixed with nagging feelings of guilt, because many of these problems are of my own doing. I’ve been making a mess out of life. There are so many things that I should have done but didn’t do, and so many things I did that I shouldn’t have done. I wish I could go back in time 10, 20, or 30 years and fix up all the mistakes I made. But in this life, there are no do-overs. So I’m up to my neck in problems, and if God did nothing to help me, I suppose it would serve me right. And when I try to speak to God, again the only words that come out are:

God, what am I supposed to do? Help me out here. Please tell me what you want me to do to become the person that you want me to be.

If the Apostle Paul were a life coach, he might say: “Where do you want to be 5,10 or 15 years from now? Understand your passions, goals and ambitions. Figure out where you want to be and take some baby steps in that direction.  Go for it! Make it happen! And don’t forget to ask for God’s help because, as the Bible says, ‘God helps those who help themselves.’”

I’m joking, of course. The Bible doesn’t say, “God helps those who help themselves.” But it might as well say that, because that’s how many of us have been taught to think. We’ve learned to approach life with the attitude that “If anything good is going to happen here, I’ll have to make it happen. I’m only a little tiny ant, but doggone it, I’m going to be a hardworking and industrious ant!”

Of course,  God doesn’t want us to be lazy. He wants to bless the work of our hands. But all too often, we envision God sitting on the sidelines and assume it’s up to us to move the ball. This DIY mentality has seeped into the foundations of the church and our conceptions of church leadership. As a pastor, it often seemed to me that the members of my church weren’t doing enough, that the project was failing for lack of effort, and I needed to motivate people to get them more involved. One of my favorite authors, Eugene Peterson, put it this way (Practice Resurrection, p. 118):

Americans talk and write endlessly about what the church needs to become, what the church must do to be effective. The perceived failures of the church are analyzed and reforming strategies prescribed. The church is understood almost exclusively in terms of function – what we can see. If we can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Everything is viewed through the lens of pragmatism. Church is an instrument that we have been given to bring about whatever Christ commanded us to do. Church is a staging ground for getting people motivated to continue Christ’s work.

This way of thinking – church as 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. This is dead wrong.

Why is this view wrong? Because the Father, Son and Spirit are not sitting on the sidelines. They are with us on the field calling plays, moving the ball and running interference. They are engaged in many kinds of vigorous activity that we are usually unaware of, because we are engrossed in the detailed minutia of our ant-lives and ant-colonies; we have no idea what God is really up to.

That’s what Ephesians is about. In this amazing letter, Paul doesn’t say much about any of the specific problems in the Ephesian church. We know the church had problems; some are mentioned in Revelation chapter 2. But in this letter, Paul pulls back the curtain to show them what’s been going on invisibly behind the scenes. He brings them to a new place and a new perspective which he calls “the heavenly realms.” That phrase, “the heavenly realms,” appears in this book five times. It’s a signpost that points to a huge paradigm shift in our understanding of the Christian life. While we are crying out, “God, what am I supposed to do?” God wants to make the scales fall from our eyes to see what he has already done.  He wants to wake us up and shake us up to an amazing new awareness of who we already are and what we already have.

Listen to Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:18-19:

18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

Now I’m not saying that God doesn’t care about the details of our lives. Yes, he does. But God wants us to know that he’s up to something big. How big? So big that it cannot possibly get any bigger. The plan starts with our redemption. But then it extends to the whole church, to all of humanity, to the whole created world, and to the entire cosmos.

Listen to Paul’s words in 1:7-10:

7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, 9 he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

He’s talking about a great cosmic unification. Perhaps you think it sounds Hinduish and New Agey.  “We will we become one with God and plants and rocks and planets.” No, it’s not like that at all. We aren’t going to lose our personhood by getting dissolved into a nebulous pantheistic soup. I will still be me; you will still be you; and God will still be God. But we will be together in the kind of community that God intends, a human community where we have harmonious and loving relationships with one another, with the created world, and with God himself. God is a Trinity. That means he is three distinct persons – Father, Son and Spirit – with their own distinct individuality and personhood, tied together in bonds of love that are so tight that they are “indwelling” and actually living inside of one another. From everlasting to everlasting, the Father, Son and Spirit have been experiencing a deep, supernatural intimacy. As Christians, we are being drawn into that family, into those relationships, to participate in that indwelling to whatever extent we can as finite human creatures. And as human beings, we are being restored to our proper role, the purpose for which we were created, to be rulers over the earth. Not tyrants who exploit the world for selfish purposes. We are collectively being remade into the race that God always wanted us to be, to serve the world as his regents in his own image, managing with his character and his authority.

At the center of this cosmic unification, there stands one person whose name is Jesus Christ. He is fully God and fully man. He is both the Creator and a part of the creation. He is equally at home in heaven and on earth. By virtue of who he is and what he has done, he is the unique focal point of God’s big plan. In him, all people and all things in heaven and on earth are coming to head. And to a large extent, they already have (Col 1:15-20).

When we imagine the kingdom of God, we tend to think of what will happen in the future, in the end times, at the great apocalypse, at Jesus’ second coming. But the surprising thing about Ephesians is how rarely Paul uses the future tense. Most of what he writes is in the past and in the present. That word “apocalypse” doesn’t mean destruction. The literal meaning is revelation or unveiling. The apocalypse will not be a demolishing of the earth but a full unveiling of the reality that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords. Jesus has already become King. By virtue of his life, death, resurrection and ascension, he is already sitting at the right hand of the Father which means he is equal to the Father. He is ruling the heavens and the earth right now. But at present, his kingship is visible only to his followers, those who have eyes of faith. After the great apocalypse, when “faith becomes sight,” the reality of his kingdom will be seen by everyone.

But Jesus has already become King. And the glory of his coming kingdom is so powerful, so dynamic, that it’s bursting out of the future and breaking into now. It’s like a wrinkle in time, a time warp. That’s how we can understand the language of Paul when he writes about the future kingdom in the past and in the present. Through the resurrection of Jesus, a cosmic wormhole has opened up connecting the end-times to the present; the glorious future world is pouring into our world.

Now where in this world can we see the glorious future reality pouring in? The surprising answer, according to Paul, is in the church. The gathering believers in Jesus Christ is the kingdom “ground zero.” This is where the evidence of Christ’s rule becomes evident. From our perspective, that is extremely hard to believe. The church — any church – is full of ordinary people with ordinary problems.  But Paul tells us that in the church, there’s far more going on than meets the eye. Paul wants to pull back the curtain to show us that what goes on here in the church – more specifically, what goes on in the church in terms of our relationships – our relationships with one another – this is not just a preview of the kingdom of God; this is the actual future kingdom of God breaking into the present. By God’s help, we can see that, if he gives us eyes to see.

With that background, let’s listen to today’s passage, Ephesians 2:11-22:

11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

In this passage, Paul is saying: “Look at this amazing thing that has happened. Jews and Gentiles have come together in the church!” More specifically, it was the Jewish followers of Jesus Christ who opened their community to receive Gentiles without requiring them to become Jews first. If you think that’s a small matter, think again. To embrace Gentiles, the Jewish believers had to overcome their deeply ingrained tribalistic tendencies and their feelings of religious rightness. They had to put aside the customs that they cherished, the laws that defined their personal identity, and say to the Gentiles: “We welcome you as full members of our family, not on the basis of anything that you have done, but purely on the basis of what Christ has done for you.”

This surprising marriage of Jews and Gentiles didn’t just start a new tribe. Paul says that it created a new kind of humanity. A whole new way of being human. And even though the awkward and messy details of this cross-cultural marriage were still being worked out, Paul says that it had already taken place. The union took place in the flesh, in the physical body, of Jesus Christ, as he was nailed to the cross. Because it was on the cross that he put to death the requirements of the law.

In these verses, Paul makes the surprising claim that the law – God’s law, which was given to Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai – created hostility between Jews and Gentiles and erected a wall, an insurmountable barrier, which had kept them apart. This is true. Because of their law, Jews were compelled to separate themselves from non-Jews. They had to avoid all physical contact. Jews could never have fellowship or eat with Gentiles, because Gentiles’ food and utensils and homes and bodies were defiled. For Jews, the mere thought of eating with Gentiles would have made them feel physically ill.

Modern research in the fields of moral psychology and neuroscience has shown that there are actual physiological reasons for this. There’s a fascinating book on this subject by a psychologist from the University of Virginia (The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt). The book describes in scientific terms how human beings construct their belief systems, how we make moral and religious decisions, how we decide right from wrong. Most of us suffer from “the rationalist delusion.” We think that our moral judgments are well reasoned and thought out. We believe that, before arriving at a position, we carefully consider the arguments for and against and then come down on the side that has the better evidence. But that is not what people do. The vast majority of the time, we make moral decisions very quickly, in a split second, shooting from the hip. We make our choices based on emotion and gut instinct formed through our experiences, relational commitments and tribal affiliations. After we make our choice, the rational parts of our brains start working to construct arguments to reassure ourselves and to persuade others that our instinctive judgments are correct. It has been demonstrated over and over, through laboratory experiments and brain scans, that moral judgment and rational justification are two separate processes.

There’s a part of the brain called the gustatory cortex which is responsible for smell and taste. If an animal happens upon something that looks like food, the animal pokes around and smells it to decide whether it’s fresh or rotten, good or gross, yummy or yucky. The gustatory cortex is where that information is processed. And in human beings, that’s where most of our moral decisions are made. Judgments about whether a behavior is right or wrong are closely related to our sense of whether something is delicious or disgusting. And it’s related to our sense of personal cleanliness and hygiene. If we see a behavior that we think is wrong, it causes a physical sensation that tells us it feels wrong. When we see others do it, it makes us think that they are disgusting. And if we do something wrong, it makes us feel dirty. Under certain conditions, it’s possible to override the gustatory cortex and make judgments using the more rational portions of the brain, but that’s not easy. That kind of judgment is inherently risky; it takes enormous amounts of mental energy, so most of the time we just operate on instinct.

In fact, studies have shown that you can mess with people’s moral judgments by exposing them to bad smells. A researcher from Stanford performed experiments where he stood next to a garbage can and asked people to fill out questionnaires about morality. The garbage can was completely empty. But part of the time, he sprayed the can with fart spray to make it smell bad. People exposed to fart spray were harsher in their moral judgments than those who were not exposed.

You know those dispensers of hand sanitizer that you see in doctor’s offices and hospitals and supermarkets? In another set of experiments, subjects became temporarily more conservative just by standing next to hand sanitizer.

So how does this relate to the Bible? If you look at the Old Testament law – for example, all those regulations in the book of Leviticus – some of the laws are about what we would call ethical or moral behavior. Alongside of them are rules about what foods the Israelites should and should not eat. And rules about cleanliness, health, hygiene, sexual behavior, and so on. All these rules are mixed together; to the Jewish mind, they were all part of the same law. And when God spoke these commands, he didn’t give them high-level arguments to help them understand why. Much of the time, he said things like, “Don’t eat that; it’s detestable. Don’t do that; it’s foul and corrupt. Don’t pollute yourselves with that kind of behavior.”

In giving Israel the law, God knew what he was doing. God didn’t give them rationally consistent reasons why they should keep the law, because that’s not how human beings normally operate. He was planting instincts, deep gut-level reactions to help them keep the law automatically. And he was planting instincts to keep his chosen people together by keeping them apart from the other nations, so they would not fall into idol worship. When Jews saw how people from other nations lived, the foods they ate, and so on, the Jews instinctively felt the Gentiles were unclean and turned away from them in disgust. After being steeped in the law for many generations, that law became deeply embedded in the Jew’s national psyche. It continually reinforced their tribalism, their sense of collective rightness and purity and became an insurmountable barrier to forming relationships with Gentiles. That barrier, the one law that most clearly drew the dividing line, was the practice of circumcision. To the Jews, circumcision was not simply a custom. It was their identity card, their badge of citizenship that set a clear boundary who was in and who was out.

God’s law put up a wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles. But when Jesus arrived, that wall of hostility started to crumble. During his three-year earthly ministry, Jesus repeatedly violated the moral instincts that had marginalized lots of people (tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, etc.) and pushed them to the edges of society. These people were considered repulsive, but Jesus embraced them. He ate with them and welcomed them to his family, his circle of followers. By their fleshly experience and contact with Jesus, these people experienced the grace of God that washed them clean and returned them to the fold of God’s people. And according to Paul, when Jesus suffered on the cross, in his body he fulfilled and set aside  the requirements of the law. Paul says that, in a mysterious way that we don’t fully understand, Jesus on the cross subsumed into himself all Jews and non-Jews – in other words, all of humanity – and in his humanity made them one with him, and in his divinity brought them into fellowship with God. His death on the cross became a birth, the birth of a new race, a new kind of humanity, where the tribalistic tendencies and rules of the old humanity died and no longer apply.

This new humanity becomes visible starting in the book of Acts. The turning point comes in Acts chapter 10, when the Apostle Peter has a vision while he is praying on a roof. A sheet comes down from heaven, and on this sheet were all kinds of non-kosher animals which Peter instinctively regarded as offensive. A voice says to him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” Peter reacts with disgust: “No way! I have never eaten anything unclean.” Perhaps he thought that God was testing him to see if he would keep the law. Then God said to Peter: “Do not call anything unclean that I have made clean.” That message came to Peter loud and clear. Shortly thereafter, Peter was summoned to the home of a God-fearing Gentile named Cornelius. Peter preached the gospel to Cornelius, and all the members of his household were baptized, and Peter ate with them. By the leading of the Holy Spirit, Peter defied his deeply rooted instincts and made the startling decision to recognize Gentiles as God’s people without circumcision, by their faith in Jesus alone.

By the power of Jesus’ cross, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Jews and Gentiles dropped their tribalistic hostility and came together in a single body. In verse 19, Paul calls them fellow members of God’s household. What is God’s household? God’s household is the Trinity: Father, Son and Spirit. The second person of the Trinity, in his humanity, has now subsumed the Jews and Gentiles and brought them into the inner sanctum of the Trinity, to participate in that incredibly intimate everlasting fellowship.

And in verses 20-22, Paul switches to the imagery of architecture. We, the diverse people of God, are coming together like stones and bricks, forming a new building, with Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone. That building is a holy temple, the new dwelling of God, the place that God calls home and makes presence known on earth as he is in heaven.

Each of the three metaphors Paul uses for the church — the body of Christ, the household of God, and the temple of God – implies a very high level of unity, integration and interdependence. He is not talking about a congregation of Jewish Christians over here, and a separate congregation of Gentile Christians over there. He is talking about loving, intimate personal relationships forming between adversaries, people who otherwise would never in a million years be together. Wherever and whenever we allow Jesus to override our tribalistic instincts, to put aside our differences and come together to worship and fellowship in the person of Christ – wherever these intimate relationships are forming in the church – that  is where the glorious future is pouring into the present, and the kingdom of God is most clearly in our midst.

“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility…”

]]> http://www.ubfriends.org/2014/01/28/critique-my-ephesians-sermon/feed/ 72 http://www.ubfriends.org/2013/12/13/junk-food-from-the-pulpit/ http://www.ubfriends.org/2013/12/13/junk-food-from-the-pulpit/#comments Fri, 13 Dec 2013 21:32:27 +0000 http://www.ubfriends.org/?p=7278 In 1960, approximately 14% of adults in the United States could be classified as obese. By 2008, the prevalence of obesity had risen to one-third. Public-health researchers have estimated that, if the current trends continue, more than half of the American population will be obese in 2030.

Why have our waistlines been expanding so dramatically? Experts agree that there is no single reason; drivers of the obesity epidemic are multifactorial and complex. But one of the crucial factors is our increased consumption of foods that are energy-dense and nutrient-poor. Energy-dense, nutrient-poor is the technical descriptor for what we commonly call junk food: fare that delivers large amounts of calories (mainly from carbohydrates and fats) but little protein, fiber, vitamins and other nourishing substances that our bodies need to stay healthy. Examples of these foods include pizza, french fries, and the classic American donut.

We crave these foods because they taste good. They bring instant gratification to our mouths and stomachs. But over the long term, an energy-dense, nutrient-poor diet leaves us paunchy, sluggish and malnourished. If we want to live long, prosperous and healthy lives, we would do well to limit our consumption of these things in favor of fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats and whole grains.

Are there parallels to junk food in Christian discipleship? The answer is yes, according to Randal Rauser, a fortysomething associate professor of historical theology at Taylor Seminary in Edmonton, Alberta. In Chapter 2 of his 2009 book titled You’re Not As Crazy As I Think: Dialogue in a World of Loud Voices and Hardened Opinions, Rauser draws a powerful analogy between junk food and certain kinds of preaching that are popular in the evangelical world. The kind of preaching that can make a crowd of like-minded believers stand up and cheer, because the guy at the podium is “telling it like it is.” The kind of preaching that seems powerful because the speaker exudes a charismatic confidence.  The characteristics of this kind of preaching include

• passion – the speaker displays love for is beliefs;
• conviction –he shows  a high degree of certainty that what he is saying is correct; and
• simplicity – he makes his points in ways that are easy to understand, so that his message becomes as plain as day.

If a speaker displays these traits, many will instinctively think he is truthful and trustworthy. Indeed, these are some of the marks of Jesus Christ. All four of the gospels portray Jesus as a man who spoke with remarkable passion, conviction and simplicity.

If we are faithful followers of Jesus Christ, then shouldn’t we proclaim the truth as we see it with a Christlike degree of confidence? Not really, claims Rauser.  The reason is that we are not Jesus.  Although we should strive to be like him, we must do so recognizing that we are fundamentally different from him. Jesus is God and we are not. Jesus is sinless and we are not. Jesus had special knowledge that we do not have, a knowledge that came from his intimate relationship with his Father and his complete openness and submission to the Holy Spirit. There is a role for confidence in the Christian life, but it ought to be what Lesslie Newbigin called a “Proper Confidence” – a firm commitment to believing that Jesus Christ is the source of all truth, tempered by the recognition that because we are finite and fallen, we often cannot see that truth clearly.

As a primary illustration, Rauser uses the example of Billy Sunday  (1862-1935). Sunday was the most influential  American evangelist of the early 20th century. During the 1880’s, Sunday played professional baseball for the Chicago White Sox (then called the White Stockings) and the Pittsburgh Pirates (then called the Alleghenys). One day in Chicago, Sunday heard the gospel being preached at the Pacific Garden Mission and entrusted his life to Christ. A few years later, he sacrificed his career in baseball for full-time ministry and evangelism. By the early 1900’s, Sunday was crisscrossing the United States, preaching to large crowds at tent revival meetings.

Billy Sunday’s preaching was anything but boring. He combined the evangelistic zeal of Dwight Moody with the one-line zingers of comedian Rodney Dangerfield and the onstage antics of the rock band The Who. He would shout, leap from the piano, run up and down the aisles. Using the moves he learned in baseball, he would slide across the stage floor as if he were sliding into home plate. Sunday’s sermons were filled with memorable sound bytes, like this one which is still in circulation today:

Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.

Billy Sunday’s preaching was fervently evangelistic. At his urging, many people were converted to a living faith in Jesus Christ. From the pulpit, he also railed against the evils of theater, dancing, gambling and drinking. His opposition to alcohol was deeply personal. In early childhood, he suffered abuse at the hands of an alcoholic stepfather. Sunday became a crusader for Prohibition, leading the effort to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages in 1920. Even after the social experiment had clearly failed and Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Sunday remained a staunch opponent of legalized drinking and continued to lobby for Prohibition until his death.

Sunday never attended a seminary and had no sympathy for what he called “liberal scholarship.” With a broad brush, he painted the scholars of his day as enemies of the truth. He proclaimed,

When the word of God says one thing and scholarship says another, scholarship can go to hell.

He also adopted a hardline stance against the scientific theory of evolution, which he equated with atheism and godlessness. From the pulpit, he assured his audiences that Charles Darwin was burning in hell. Evolution, according to Sunday, was for “godless bastards and godless losers,” and those who wanted to teach it in schools were poisoning the minds of youth. He said:

I don’t believe the old bastard theory of evolution… If you believe your great, great grand-daddy was a monkey, then you can take your daddy and go to hell with him.

Although Billy Sunday had his critics, many more regarded him as a religious folkhero, a spiritual giant and champion for truth.

Is Sunday an exemplary preacher whom we ought to emulate? Randal Rauser doesn’t think so. Rauser writes (emphases mine):

As I have suggested, this way of identifying the seeker of truth – that is, by looking for blinding passion, unshakable conviction, and a simple clarity – is enormously tempting. It is like shopping for a restaurant by seeking the most caloric bang for your buck. Unfortunately, even if this method has its attractions, it is a very poor way to choose a nourishing meal: fast food may load you up with calories, but it offers very little by way of nourishing content. And so it is often for those who trumpet truth but have no appreciation for their own limitations of vision or fallibility, let alone the complexity of issues they address. Take in a Billy Sunday sermon, and you would get loaded up on a high caloric count of passion conviction and refreshing simplicity, but you would find a disappointingly low level of cognitive nutrition. In order to find a worthwhile meal, you cannot limit your criteria to the cheapest price and highest calorie count, for this is not sufficient for the body or mind. In the same way, when we are seeking truth, we cannot allow ourselves to be persuaded simply by passion, conviction and simplicity. The truthful person just may be the one whose passion is subtle, whose conviction is understated, and whose appreciation for clarity comes nuanced in qualifications that are necessary to capture an often messy reality.

I believe much of the truth passion that is currently gripping evangelicals… is but more of that Billy Sunday spirit that quashes critical distance, doubt and complexity by silencing it with passion, conviction and simplicity.

I strongly agree with Rauser. Passion, conviction and simplicity can be positive, but they are not necessarily the marks of good teaching, and in many cases they can mask immaturity and arrogance. If our goal is to become the kind of disciples who can make tough decisions and discern truth in a complicated and pluralistic world – the kind of Christians who can engage in thoughtful, open dialogue with people of different beliefs and live as winsome witnesses of Jesus Christ in diverse situations – then Billy Sunday-style preaching won’t get us there. Yes, that kind of preaching may reinforce our present beliefs and give us comfort and assurance that we are in the right. But it encourages us to disengage from and dismiss those with whom we disagree. It leaves little room for healthy doubt or self-criticism that are necessary for wisdom and maturity. It offers us the seductive illusion that we are God’s warriors, standing boldly for him on the side of truth, while discouraging us from developing the inner qualities of a person who actually seeks truth.

I have no reason to doubt that Billy Sunday was a sincere believer. I’m sure that God used him to draw many people to Christ. But that doesn’t make him a model for Christian discipleship. Nor does it imply that a steady diet of his teaching can bring anyone to spiritual maturity.

Consider this: If a person is literally starving, then giving him a box of donuts could save his life. But feeding him boxes of donuts day after day might eventually kill him.

Some centuries after Psalm 119 was composed, Yahweh burst through our back door. He entered our world to physically insert himself into our history and experience. Our understanding of Psalm 119 will be sub-Christian unless we hold in the forefront of our minds the fact that it was penned in the B.C. era. That was before the shockwave named Jesus started reverberating through the cosmos. That was before anyone could imagine that someone would write (Hebrews 1:1-3):

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

In the centuries before that momentous advent, Yahweh prepared some people for his coming. He communicated with them in their own language. He interacted with them in ways that were culturally appropriate and understandable to inhabitants of the Ancient Near East, through human mediators and laws and rituals (and sometimes even through wars). The most enduring product of this awkward divine-human interaction is a set of diverse literature that, down to this day, shows amazing depth and wisdom and ability to inspire people from all backgrounds and walks of life. By any fair measure, the writings of Scripture are remarkable. Yet they were only a foretaste, a shadow, of the future reality. So when the Apostle Paul was describing Old Testament writings, practices and rituals, he wrote (Colossians 2:17):

These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

As the Old Testament was being complied, the descendants of Judah were engaged in an intense struggle regarding their history and purpose. Yahweh had chosen them. The Creator had made his home with them in ways that no other nation could boast. Yet the narratives that shaped their identity – the stories of the patriarchs, of Egypt, Sinai and the wanderings in the desert, the conquest of Canaan, the war and social chaos of Judges, the brief glory of David and Solomon, the turbulent period of kings, the sacking of Northern Israel , the tragic fall of Jerusalem, the exile to Babylon, the anticlimactic return to Judea – were stories of dashed hopes, failure, humiliation and pain. The Psalms provide a remarkable window that into this centuries-long process of national introspection, the wrangling and haggling of a people trying to understand who they were in relation to God

Imagine that you had a radio that allowed you to tune in to the airwaves of Judaism in the centuries before Christ. As you turn the knobs and play with the buttons, you can’t pick up any talk, but you hear plenty of music. What you hear is a mixture of new tunes (new for that time), recent hits, alternative tracks, and golden oldies. One of the first things that you notice is that, unlike our broadcasting stations, theirs don’t classify themselves as religious or secular. There are no stations devoted just to politics, or just to entertainment, or just to news and current events, or just to popular music, or just to worship music. The spheres of human activity that the modern western world likes to keep strictly separate are all mixed up and running together, and the songs that you hear seem to be addressing all of these areas at once. The songs come in a wide variety of styles and genres by artists with various points of view. They are the songs that people sing at home and in public worship, the lyrics running through their heads, the tunes that they whistle as they go about their daily work, the soundtrack that captures the nation the ethos of those times.

That’s what we find in the Psalms.

As N.T. Wright notes in his recent book on the psalms, many of these songs celebrate God’s presence among his people in his Temple at Jerusalem. He writes (chapter 4):

The Temple turns out to be an advance foretaste of YHWH’s claim on the whole of creation. We are to see the Temple as establishing, so to speak, a bridgehead for God’s own presence within a world that has very determinedly gone its own way. It is a sign that the creator God is desiring not to provide a way to escape from the world (though it may sometimes feel like that) but to recreate the world from within, to set up a place within his creation where his glory will be revealed and his powerful judgments unveiled.

Other psalms express the dismay and agony of God’s people as they saw Solomon’s Temple sacked and destroyed. We cannot overstate how deeply the destruction of Jerusalem, and the subsequent exile to Babylon, was etched on their national psyche. These events shook them to the core and made them wonder if God had removed his presence from them. Although they returned after 70 years and rebuilt the city, the Second Temple was a mere shadow of the first, and foreign oppressors made it difficult to imagine that Israel could ever return to its former glory.

Jewish theological reflection in the Second Temple period led many to believe that God was setting up a different kind of presence that would accompany them wherever they went, whatever their political situation might be. That “portable temple” was the Torah. Wright continues:

By prayerful and obedient study of the Torah, the blessings that one might have had through the “sacred space” of the Temple could be obtained anywhere at all.

By study and practice of the law, the Jewish people themselves would become the sacred dwelling place of God in the fallen world. Songs inspired by this Torah-as-Temple tradition include Psalm 1 (“But his delight is in the law of the Lord…”), Psalm 19 (“The law of the Lord is perfect…”) and, of course, Psalm 119.

Psalm 119 expresses a Jewish person’s heartfelt affection for the Torah. When the psalmist embraced the written word as his lifeline to God, I have no doubt that he was heard by God and experienced genuine encounter with his Maker. By joining the psalmist in praying Psalm 119, we can honor and celebrate the One who, though sometimes distant, has never abandoned his people, but continues to reach out to them and interact with them in all sorts of circumstances.

However, if we stand Psalm 119 against the wider backdrop of biblical history, we cannot ignore all that has happened since then. We must not forget those revolutionary events that the psalmist could never have imagined: Jesus’ birth and life, the crucifixion, resurrection, ascension and Pentecost. Yahweh’s arrival and presence in this world have shifted our paradigm for interacting with God. If we continue to read Psalm 119 as though God hasn’t entered the room, he will stand awkwardly beside us, wondering why our eyes are still staring down at the written word instead of looking up into the beautiful, penetrating eyes of the incarnate Word.

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path

Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, has two prominent features. First, it is an acrostic poem. It has 22 stanzas corresponding to the 22 characters of the Hebrew alphabet, and each verse within a stanza begins with the appropriate character. Second, nearly every verse of this psalm contains a reference to Torah. The psalmist refers to Torah by various terms which, depending on the English translation, are rendered as God’s word(s), his law(s), precepts, commands, statutes, decrees and promises.

Among conservative evangelical Christians, Psalm 119 has two common and related interpretations. This psalm, together with other passages such as 2 Timothy 3:16 (“All Scripture is God-breathed…”), Isaiah 55:11 (“…so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire…”) and Psalm 19:7 (“The law of the Lord is perfect…”), are often used as proof-texts to establish doctrines of the Bible’s divine inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy. Second, this psalm is often used by pastors and teachers to exhort people to read, study, memorize and meditate on the Bible. The psalmist is held up as a positive role model for us to follow in our attitude and approach to Scripture. Psalm 119 is seen as a Christian love poem about the Bible.

Indeed, the psalmist’s relationship to the written word seems to be nothing short of infatuation. Consider verse 48:

I reach out I reach out for your commands, which I love, that I may meditate on your decrees.

Or verse 62:

At midnight I rise to give you thanks for your righteous laws.

Or verse 97:

Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.

Constant study and meditation on scripture is said to yield countless benefits in the life of a believer; it leads to purity, delight, wisdom, strength in the face of opposition, comfort in suffering and trial, the sure promise of salvation, and so on.

Before I continue, please allow me to say this. It is an excellent thing for Christians to read, study and meditate on Scripture. I believe that a life immersed in Scripture, when done in a sensible and proper way, is a truly blessed life. Regular Bible reading, Bible study, Bible-focused prayer, and Bible-focused worship are invaluable spiritual disciplines that draw us into fellowship with God. My intention is writing this article is not to discourage anyone from studying the Bible, but to promote a deeper understanding of Scripture and encourage Christians to approach the Bible with greater care, thoughtfulness, and respect.

Having said that, I will now raise some objections to the traditional understanding of Psalm 119 as a declaration of unbridled love for the Bible.

I have discovered that, as Christians read this Psalm, they often perform a mental substitution. When they encounter one of the synonyms for Torah – God’s word, his laws, commands, precepts and so on – they automatically replace each of those terms with “the Bible.” And without thinking too much about it, they simply assume that the author must be talking about same book that evangelicals refer to as “God’s instruction manual for our lives.” Reading “the Bible” into the verses of Psalm 119 can be helpful up to a point. But it distorts the poem and misrepresents how it would have been understood by the original hearers, because the Bible simply did not exist at that time. The Old Testament as we know it did not exist at that time. Scholars agree that the books of the Old Testament were not arranged into a fixed, authoritative canon until the final centuries before Christ. Even the Torah (i.e., the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible) may have undergone some editing during and after the period when this Psalm was composed. The process and timing by which the books of the Old Testament were compiled, edited and fixed is not fully understood. Regardless of how it happened, we may be certain that whenever the psalmist referred to God’s word, God’s commands, God’s law, and so on, he was not talking about the Scriptures that Christians have today. Inserting “the Bible” into each verse of Psalm 119 is an anachronism. It extrapolates beyond the author’s intent. It assumes that whatever role the Torah played in the spiritual life of the psalmist, the Bible should play an equivalent role in our Christian lives today. Whether or not that assumption is correct, it deserves to be recognized and examined.

I believe that the best guide to how Christians are to understand and apply the Old Testament is in the New Testament. Jesus taught his disciples that the Old Testament is all about him (Luke 24:27). The New Testament authors describe Jesus as the fulfillment of the Torah (Matthew 5:17), as the Word made flesh (John 1:14), and the exact representation of God’s being (Hebrews 1:3). I would argue that, if Christians are going to perform a mental substitution as they read Psalm 119, it would be more appropriate to insert “Jesus” rather than “the Bible” into every verse.

Another reason why I resist inserting “the Bible” into every verse of Psalm 119 is that it may promote unhealthy and unbalanced approaches to Christian discipleship. The greatest positive contribution of evangelical Protestantism to the larger Body of Christ has been its high regard for Scripture and its emphasis on Bible study and Bible teaching in community and individual life. But the movement’s strength can also be a weakness. If study of Scripture is emphasized to a degree where other spiritual disciplines and crucial aspects of the Christian life are neglected, believers can get stuck in an overly intellectualized, impersonal, principle-driven and non-experiential faith that substitutes abstract learning for personal transformation. The evangelical passion for Scripture can morph into a kind of Bible-worship that has been called biblicism, Bible-only-ism and bibliolotry.

Disciples of Christ are supposed to model their lives after Jesus, not after the Pharisees, scribes or teachers of the law. Jesus certainly knew the Scriptures. The Old Testament figured prominently in his childhood education, worship, prayer and teaching. But the gospels do not show Jesus or his disciples devoting endless hours to private or classroom-style exposition of the Bible. Jesus modeled a healthy Christian life that kept the necessary spheres of work, study, rest, worship, compassion for the poor and needy, contemplation, recreation, etc. in a healthy balance.

When we approach Psalm 119 – or any other chapter of Scripture – I think it is best to view the passage in light of the great themes of the Bible, in light of the whole sweep of God’s history from and the continuous experience of God’s people from Genesis to Revelation. When viewed in that way, Psalm 119 is much, much more than a love poem about the Bible and an exhortation to study Scripture. I will attempt to explain this in my next installment.

My personal opinion is this. Careful review and critique, if done in the right place and in the right way, can drastically improve the finished product. But having one’s own words scrutinized is painful and gut wrenching, even when great care is taken to keep the process fair, impartial and kind.

I have published many articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. In most cases, those articles have gone through “blind review,” meaning that the authors’ identities have been hidden from the referees. Nevertheless, when I submit an article and then get the editor’s report, I hesitate to open the report because a feeling of dread washes over my body. My eyes don’t want to look at it, because I am afraid of what I will see. Although I keep saying to myself, “Don’t take it personally,” I cannot stop taking it personally. Because, after all, I am a person. And my work is important to me. Even when the process is carefully managed and highly professional, the criticism can sting. And if the reviews were not anonymous, then it would be impossible not to feel resentment toward a reviewer who pans and rejects my work. And if the reviewer who criticized my work happened to be someone whom I knew well, someone whom I had been in close contact with and had strong differences of opinion and conflicts with in the past, then that would make it much, much worse. As a protective strategy, I would try to convince myself that the critic wasn’t being fair, that his assessment of my work was clouded by our personal history, and I would not take the criticism seriously.

My point is this: Critiquing someone’s message could in theory be a useful exercise, if the author agrees to it and if the process is carefully managed to inflict as little pain as possible. In the environment that we are in right now, I don’t think it will do much good. I believe it will make dialogue harder, not easier.

That’s my opinion. If you disagree, then please say so. But I might take your disagreement very personally, because I worked really, really hard on this article, and if you don’t just love what I said, I’m going to lock myself in the bathroom and cry!

Having said that, let me now say this.

If you find certain qualities of UBF messages objectionable, then you ought to be able to say so. You ought to be able to articulate your objections as clearly and kindly as you can, and offer concrete suggestions for improvement.

Rather than focusing on any particular messenger or message — and rather than asking for general impressions about whether UBF messages are wonderful or terrible — I would like to ask you to hone in on practices and list some specific do’s and don’ts.

Do’s: What are the specific things that a messenger should do to make the message good and effective? Things that, if you hear them in the message, will lead you to say in your best Austin Powers voice, “Yeah, Baby!!!”?

Don’ts: What are the specific things that a messenger should avoid at all costs? Things that, if you hear them in a message, make you wince in pain and say, “I can’t believe he just said that!!!”?

Many will disagree with me. “Stop exaggerating,” they’ll say. “Don’t worry, have faith! Focus on the positive. Remember what God has done. Great things happened at the ISBC. Many people accepted Christ. If even one lost sheep repents, there is great rejoicing in heaven.”

But for those who are willing to look, the situation looks grim. One major piece of evidence is that the attendance at the recent ISBC dropped by about 20% from Purdue ’08. UBF leaders have always assumed that their numbers would go up. They believed that if they just worked hard enough and prayed enough times and kept going and stayed with the program, then God would bless their faithfulness and the ministry would grow. But this time, the numbers went down, and they did so dramatically.

I’ve heard various explanations for the drop in attendance, and I have offered a few of my own. It is a symptom of malaise and low morale. Over the last three years, many natives have left the ministry, and the conflicts that led to their departure have not been addressed. Attendance at conferences can no longer be considered mandatory; chapter directors have realized that the days when they could simply command people to come are over.

None of these trends will be reversed by hope or wishful thinking. Praying more and praying harder isn’t going to work. “Just believe” won’t do. Tweaking the organization (e.g., appointing some new committees) won’t fix the problem either. Without major structural change, the decline is going to continue. UBF is in a downward spiral, and there’s a long way to go before it bottoms out.

I predict that most leaders will ignore this evidence. They will try to stay upbeat and apply positive spin. Some will point the finger of blame at Brian, Ben, me, and other infamous heretics and villains. They won’t take a long, hard look at what actually happened and why.

But suppose they do decide to take it seriously. Suppose they are stunned and begin to ask with real sincerity, “Brothers and sisters, what shall we do?”

If that happens, what would you tell them? What do you think the leaders need to focus on as their highest priority? What would you say are the top three action items (1, 2 and 3)? And what activities should they put aside to focus on those items?

I’ve been thinking about that question for a while. In the remainder of this article, I will give my answer.

In terms of high-priority items, I won’t list a 1, 2 and 3. I think there is only one. I believe that from now on, all the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly activities that take place (e.g., the work of the ethics committee, preparing Bible study material, staff training, meetings and conferences and workshops and retreats, etc.) need to be aligned toward one main goal. If a particular activity supports this goal, then we should proceed with it. If the activity delays, hampers or detracts from this goal, we should put it aside indefinitely.

In my opinion, the goal should be this:

Everyone needs to work together to revise the story of UBF. People must help one another to set aside propaganda and freshly discern what has happened in the community, to understand what God has done thus far, what he is doing now, and what he may want to do in the future.

This is not something that leaders can do in secret by themselves. The process must involve everyone. Leaders will have to stop talking about their own ideas, close their mouths, open their ears, and listen to all the current and ex-members. They will have to create space for honest, open-ended and freewheeling discussion of everything, no holds barred — including the kind of discussion that takes place on UBFriends, which they hate so much. They will have to engage in ethnographic listening for an extended period of time. If they are not capable of that (and, I’m sorry to say, many of them aren’t) then they need to just get out of the way and allow younger and more capable people to do it.

Why are listening and storytelling so important? Because the crisis in UBF is ultimately not one of shrinking numbers, falling income, criticism on UBFriends, bad relations between Americans and Koreans, unchecked power and authoritarian abuse, etc. Those things are all present, of course, and they are serious and troubling. But at the end of the day, those are symptoms of something more fundamental. Those problems could be handled if UBF was healthy. The fact that those problems are not yet solvable demonstrates that the community doesn’t understand what it is. Leaders and members don’t have coherent, credible and compelling reasons for why the organization should exist or why it should do the things it does.

The present crisis is an identity crisis. There is a large and growing disconnect between the story that loyal members have repeatedly told themselves and the evidence that has been accumulating year by year. The old UBF narrative is no longer believed, except perhaps by a small group of people who live in bunkers and cling to their convictions no matter what.

The old UBF narrative goes something like this. (I wrote the following paragraph for another article last year.)

In the early 1960’s, God began a great work in South Korea. A young female American missionary left her missionary compound and lived among the poor. Together with a young Korean pastor, they taught the Bible to university students. Instead of relying on outside funds, the movement became independent and self-supporting. Students overcame their “beggar mentality” and sacrificed everything to support this work. In absolute obedience to Jesus’ world mission command, they went overseas to preach the gospel. God blessed all their sacrifice, hard work, simple faith, etc. and transformed Korea from a nation that receives outside help to a nation that sends missionaries throughout the world. Unlike other churches and movements, this group raises highly committed disciples who are extremely disciplined in Bible study and prayer. They marry by faith, support themselves on the mission field, excel in their studies and become leading doctors, engineers, diplomats and professors. Although they seem highly intelligent, their success is not due to their intelligence but to their self-denial, their boldness in proclaiming the gospel, their absolute obedience and their uncomplicated, childlike faith. Their unique disciplines (Daily Bread, testimony writing, obedience training, marriage by faith, etc.) and their pure, inductive approach to Bible study are extremely potent, and other churches could learn a great deal from them. As they faithfully continue in this special calling, God will use them to send thousands more missionaries and raise countless disciples on university campuses throughout the world. And this is going to transform the nations. For example, it will turn the United States from corruption to its former glory as a nation of people who trust in God. As disciples are raised and missionaries are sent out, each nation will become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

That story is told over and over in UBF publications, at conferences, in Bible studies and private conversations. It was a nice story, and at one time it may have been somewhat believable. But today, the story has been debunked. There is such a huge body of contradicting evidence that very few people (if any) still believe the story, even though in UBF settings they might speak and act as though they do. The younger generation certainly does not, because they have very sensitive B.S. detectors, and because the internet gives them instant access to all the counternarratives.

There is overwhelming evidence that Samuel Lee abused his authority, routinely crossing the boundaries of what a pastor ought to do. SL collected, managed and used ministry funds with no oversight, deciding entirely on his own how to use those funds. He exercised undue influence over the personal lives of UBF members. The most obvious example of this is that he decided whom you could marry and when, but there are many more examples, some of them quite nauseating. Often SL did not tell the truth. Many of the stories and accounts about people that he told through his announcements, manuscripts, newsletters, personal letters to people, etc. contained exaggeration, distortion and fabrication. The list of SL’s questionable practices is very long and damning. Many ubf members will testify that they were deeply loved by him, but many others will testify that they were severely hurt and damaged by him. To trumpet the former without acknowledging the latter is blatantly hypocritical. Older Koreans can tolerate this contradiction, because they have a penchant for honoring their elders. But younger people cannot stand it. Americans cannot stand it. Above everything else, the present generation craves authenticity. If UBF doesn’t stop its mythologizing about the character and actions of SL, if it doesn’t stop presenting a one-sided and distorted picture of its own history, the organization in North America has no future.

There is undeniable evidence that UBF is not impacting society as the leaders imagined it would. UBF’s trademark brand of rigorous, high commitment, high loyalty, obey-at-all-costs discipleship training (what you might call martial-arts Christianity, Green Beret-ism, Just Obey-ism…) is not sweeping the world — not because people haven’t seen it, but because they have seen it and have rejected it. Perhaps it could have limited success in certain non-western cultures, but in North America and Europe it just doesn’t work. Where it has been tried, the disciples it produces do not look like healthy, happy, well adjusted, thoughtful, kind, attractive or loving human beings. They act strange and sound weird; they lose sight of who they are and become imitators of the Koreans who lorded over them, lending credence to the allegations that UBF is a cult. The traditional UBF discipleship program ignores too many aspects of spiritual formation. It damages family life. It keeps people from developing meaningful relationships with people outside of UBF. It prevents people from experiencing the full range of freedom that they have in Christ. It replaces the creative work of the Holy Spirit with principles, rules, behaviors and expectations. In a nutshell, it is too legalistic. If UBF doesn’t stop mythologizing its training methods, the organization in North America has no future.

There is undeniable evidence that UBF’s Bible study materials and messages are not nearly as great or effective or inspiring as UBF’s leaders have believed. The material published by UBF Press is not of sufficient quality to be accepted by any reputable publishing house; if it were, there would be no need for UBF Press. The format, content, language and style of UBF’s materials are peculiar to the community, reflecting parochial UBF customs and values, with little or no appeal to anyone on the outside. The messages delivered at UBF conferences (except for The Well) are designed to please the elder missionaries. They reflect what the elder missionaries want to hear, and what the elder missionaries think the younger generation needs to hear, but they are not connecting with and capturing the imagination of Americans. UBF leaders are proud of how many hours they spend preparing Bible study materials and messages, but based on the results, it is obvious that this time is not well spent. If UBF doesn’t stop mythologizing its Bible study materials, the organization in North America has no future.

I could go on and on about how UBF has been unsuccessful at raising indigenous leaders, about stubborn missionaries who should have ceded control decades ago but are still running the show, about the rogue chapter directors who are mistreating people, and so on. But I’ll stop here.

My point is not to prove that UBF is terrible. My point is that UBF has very serious problems, problems that threaten its existence but which leaders have never been willing to face. They seem to think that acknowledging these problems is akin to giving up or losing their faith. Some would rather die than let go of their illusions about UBF. This has been, and still is, the single biggest obstacle to healthy change. Leaders and longtime members do not want to lose face. They don’t anyone or anything to mess with their precious story about who they are and what they have done.

But the bitter irony is that, as long as they hold on to this narrative, they will continue to lose face and lose credibility. That story of UBF is fading away. Indeed, it has already expired. We need to just let it die. We must allow that kernel of wheat to fall to the ground and disappear, so that it can give birth to something new and vital and fruitful.

Members of this generation do not want leaders who appear to be strong and perfect. We don’t care if people make mistakes, as long as they fess up to their mistakes and learn from them. We want leaders of integrity, genuine human beings who have realistic opinions of themselves, who are upfront and honest about their shortcomings and fiascos.

The challenge that UBF faces is this: How do we come to our collective senses, admit our failures, and own those failures? How do we weave those failures into the fabric of the UBF story to make it into a new story, one that is honest and credible and inspiring and gospel-centered? How do we incorporate the stories of all the people who have been hurt by UBF and left UBF over the years, not demonizing or marginalizing them, but validating their experiences and making them an integral part of our understanding of what God wants to do in the UBF community?

Here are some things that I believe. Please read these carefully.

1. I believe that God loves UBF people very much. He always has, and always will.

2. God’s love for UBF people is not rooted in anything they have done for him. God’s love for UBF people is rooted in what Jesus has done for them.

3. God has plans for UBF people. Those plans are great and glorious. But God will never force his plans on UBF. If UBF acts in foolish ways, then God will adapt and revise his plans as often as necessary to make something good happen, something that glorifies Jesus and blesses the Church and all nations of the world.

4. For a while, I believed that God’s plan coincided with the “old ubf narrative” that I wrote above. It’s conceivable that God was willing to make something like that happen (minus all the tribalism and Korean cultural imperialism and triumphalism), But that plan has been neutered and derailed. That story is too self-aggrandizing and unrealistic. It ain’t happening, folks.

5. If UBF stubbornly clings to its old narrative, in the same way that the people of Israel clung to their own tribalistic narrative, then the organization will experience epic failure. That failure may come sooner rather than later.

6. If there is an epic failure, God will still have a plan to use the organization. He might allow UBF to go down in history as a textbook example of
* how not to do evangelism
* how not to raise disciples and train leaders
* how not to attempt cross-cultural ministry
* how not to study the Bible
* how not to interact with the Body of Christ
and so on. The epic failure of UBF may help other Christians to avoid our mistakes. It may bring mission-minded evangelicals to a new and deeper understanding of what the gospel is, and what the gospel is not.

7. If UBF lets go of its old narrative, allowing that story fall to the ground and die, then it may yet experience a resurrection. That death will be very painful to some, but ultimately it will bring new life.

8. If UBF experiences a rebirth, the story of New-BF may become a textbook example of
* how to listen to one’s critics and truly *hear* what they are saying
* how to apologize to people that you have hurt and reconcile with them
* how to corporately repent and join the rest of the Body of Christ
* how to build a loving church that ethnically diverse and truly multigenerational
* how to build a loving church that is theologically diverse, maintaining a foundation of orthodoxy while fully embracing people with different views on sacraments, miracles, gifts of the Spirit, inerrancy of Scripture, ..

9. The most likely scenario for what lies ahead is not a complete epic failure or a complete rebirth, but some mixture of the two. There will be mysteries and surprises.

10. If UBF and its leaders are slow to act, there will be many more people who, for valid reasons, cannot and should not hang around to wait for change. God will call them to go elsewhere. That has happened again and again. Many of the people who have left UBF over the years (in many cases, they were driven out) were the most gifted and qualified to lead the ministry. How many times have missionaries prayed for God to send them disciples who would become their ancestors of faith, their “Abraham” and “Sarah”? I believe that every single one of those prayers has been answered. I believe that God has sent countless Abrahams and Sarahs to all those UBF chapters across America. And the vast majority of those Abrahams and Sarahs were driven away by lack of love, bad ministry practices, and because those disciples would not or could not adapt to their shepherds’ ethnocentric expectations.

Thus beginneth the first sentence of the official report from the 2013 International Summer Bible Conference.

Except for one tiny detail. Between the year “2013” and the word “International,” I omitted three letters.

The letters are C, M and I.

They stand for Campus Mission International.

Campus Mission International is the present name of the group that split off from UBF in 2001. This is the dreaded “R-group.” The people who were said to be bitter, angry and godless, the ones who were motivated by pride and selfish ambition, who were hellbent on discrediting and destroying the beautiful things that God had done in UBF. As a UBF insider, I was told that everyone in the R-group was “absolutely wrong,” that I should avoid them at all costs and ignore everything that they had to say. I dutifully obeyed, and as a result, I never got to hear what happened from their perspective.

At the CMI website, you will find the conference program, a brief report and some videos from their ISBC which was held at exactly the same time as the one held by UBF.

Looking over that material, I see two major differences between the CMI and UBF conferences.

First, the CMI conference was much smaller. It had 277 attendees from 16 countries, making it about one tenth the size of UBF’s.

Second, the key lectures at the CMI conference were delivered by speakers from outside the organization. Rather than having messages that restated and recycled the group’s internal perspectives, they brought in fresh input and expertise from the outside. (A wise choice, in my opinion.) The presentations by the invited speakers were considered to be the main course on the conference menu, rather than a snack or dessert.

But in other respects, I see little substantive difference between the UBF and CMI events. Even the layout and content of the conference program looks so similar to any UBF conference that I cannot tell it is not a UBF document.

CMI began as a reaction against authoritarian practices by UBF’s leaders. Although I don’t know for sure, I would guess that the organization is run more transparently than UBF, with a less top-down and more collaborative style. It’s a good bet that many of the abuses that present and former UBF members have experienced, the kinds of things that have been discussed on this website, are not being practiced in CMI.

But when those abuses take place in UBF, they happen behind the scenes. They are hidden from view, and are certainly not put on display at UBF conferences.

Here’s an interesting thought-experiment for readers who attended the recent UBF conference at Indiana, Pennsylvania. Suppose that, in the middle of the conference, you were suddenly lifted from your seat and transported to Zion, Illinois and dropped into the CMI conference. Suppose that you didn’t notice how many people were present, but only paid attention to the words and behaviors on stage and reactions of people in the audience. How could you tell that you were no longer at a UBF event?

And if you couldn’t tell that you were no longer at a UBF event, what does it suggest about the split that occurred in UBF twelve years ago?

P.S. – A few months ago, we reached out to Paul Laska, the current President of CMI, and invited him to write an article for UBFriends and/or participate in this discussion to share his perspectives on what happened twelve years ago. He said that he might have time to do so after the ISBC. Paul, we’d love to hear from you, and we’d love to hear from anyone else in CMI who wishes to chime in.

Language is a powerful thing. It shapes the way communities think and act. Questions like these, which are being whispered in the corners at UBF chapters all over the world, are not value-free. They are so fraught with hidden assumptions and judgments that merely asking them,  one is (knowingly or not) defending the status quo and deflecting attention from very serious problems that affect everyone in the UBF community.

Today one of our Facebook friends posted a link to a 20-minute TED talk titled “Violence and Silence.” The speaker, Dr. Jackson Katz, gives a fascinating 20-minute presentation on cultures of abuse. Although he is speaking directly about violence against women, everything he says can be applied more broadly to any kind of systemic abuse within communities.

As Sharon and I listened to this talk, we were stunned by how relevant it was to the longstanding problems of authoritarianism and abusive leadership that so many have been discussing on UBFriends. Here are some of the points that really stood out.

• How communities use language to continually marginalize the abused and deflect attention from the abusers.

• How bystanders — those who are neither directly involved in the abuse nor victimized by it, but are enmeshed with them in a web of personal and family relationships — need to realize that remaining silent is not a neutral stance, but an act of support for the status quo. Those who remain silent bear real responsibility for the continuation of abuse.

• The continuation of abuse is a sign of failed leadership. Leaders who allocate resources and set priorities for the institution need to stop pretending to be helpless and take decisive action.

Please, please, watch this video and tell us what you think.

How many organizational leaders have gotten themselves and their followers into severe trouble because they failed to see their own limitations? Because they held on to their positions of authority for so long that they lost the ability to self-reflect? Because they failed to allow the next generation to take over in a timely manner? Because they imagined that they were the rightful owners of the organization and that it couldn’t survive without them?

Then, purely by chance, I happened to watch a video of a lecture by my friend John Armstrong. It was the fifth in a series of seven lectures on Spiritual Leadership that John presented to UBF leaders in the Chicago area.

 The video is over 50 minutes long. In the last 20 minutes, beginning roughly at 31:00, John weaves together several examples of leaders who did or did not know when to stop. He talks about:

• David Wraight, the International President of Youth for Christ, who realized that the organization was in deep trouble and approached its leaders with the question of whether they ought to disband. After conducting a top-to-bottom critical review of the entire organization, they concluded that their only hope for survival was for the elderly leaders to step back and give decisionmaking over to very young leaders, men and women in their 20’s.  They did so, and now Youth for Christ is thriving.
• Bill Hybels, the founding pastor of the Willow Creek megachurch, who commissioned a careful study of Willow Creek and concluded that their model for Christian discipleship was deeply flawed. Hybels publicly announced the findings and carried out a major overhaul of the entire organization.
• John Armstrong’s desire to turn over the reins of his own organization, ACT3, to a much younger person (someone in his or her 20’s) as soon as possible. John asked his board of directors to find such a person. If that plan doesn’t materialize, John is prepared to gradually shut the entire organization down so that it ceases to exist.
• John Gagliardi, the legendary football coach at St. John’s University in Minnesota, who led the football team from 1953 until 2012. For years, everyone assumed that Gagliardi’s successor would be his son, who had faithfully served at his father’s side as an assistant coach. But the father never stepped aside. He kept coaching well into his 80’s. When his finally retired, his son was already too old to coach the team, and the university appointed someone else.

At roughly 48:45, John turns to Sam A. Lee, the son of UBF’s founder, and asks a pointed question: “How old was Dr. Lee when he started UBF?”

Sam responds that his father was about 30 years old.

Then John asks everyone in the room, “Would you trust a 30 year-old man today to lead this ministry?”

As I listened to John’s lecture, I thought about all the UBF chapters which, after two or three decades, are still being led by Korean missionaries, many of whom are now in their 60’s and appear to have lost all ability to self-critique. About all the North Americans who, after devoting decades of their lives to UBF, are still considered too young and immature to lead even though their hair (if they have any left) has turned gray. About the countless natives who left — including the best and brightest, nearly anyone with independent ideas and leadership potential — because the missionaries treated them like babies who needed to be spoon-fed and ordered about year after year. About the handful of natives who have remained and been given leadership titles and yet are still submissive, apparently unwilling or incapable of making any decision that might upset the status quo. About the upcoming International SBC which, as far as I can tell, will be essentially no different from the UBF conferences that I went to 30 years ago.

I thought about UBF leaders who continue to say things like, “Change will take a long time,” and, “Maybe UBF can change within a decade.” A decade from now, I will be a grandfather in my 60’s.

Do UBF leaders actually think that they have another decade?

I just want to ask Joe if you have tried the second step enough.

Have you confronted this issue with two or three more people? especially with witnesses?

I know you have already brought this before the church.

But if you haven’t done the second step, you may follow Jesus’ instruction, which is to go as a group rather than only you.

In Matthew 18:15-17, it appears that Jesus was instructing his disciples on how to deal with interpersonal conflicts. It doesn’t give us a step-by-step guide for how to handle systemic problems in the church. Yet I believe we can generalize Jesus’ teaching to community-wide situations. For dealing with corporal sins, a reasonable implementation would be:

• Step 1. Bring up the matters as privately and gently as possible with community leaders who are in a position to do something about them. If they do not listen, then proceed to…
• Step 2. Involve some more people (witnesses) who can back up your claims and testify that what you are saying is credible. Give the leaders hard evidence. Offer to work with them toward reasonable solutions. Do so patiently and persistently. If after repeated attempts they still do not listen, after you have exhausted all the reasonable alternatives, then proceed to…
• Step 3. Tell it to the church.

In an organization like UBF, it’s very difficult even to begin Step 1. Opportunities for candid communication with leaders have been nonexistent. I’ve seen this countless times. If you bring up a serious concern about UBF with a leader, you are going to be told to stop worrying, be positive, be humble, devote yourself to Bible study and serving sheep, and so on. Questions about UBF culture and practices are considered off limits. There have never been any safe zones in UBF where you could talk about ministry-wide problems without getting shut down and labeled as a troublemaker. At best, you might find a leader who seems willing to listen to you with a sympathetic ear. But that person won’t ever do anything about the issues you have raised. Sooner or later, you discover that their “listening” is nothing more than a strategy to manage a person whom they believe has become difficult and needs to be cured of a spiritual disease.

So before even trying Step 1, I needed to work on

• Step 0. Create space where UBF members and leaders could raise awareness of community problems without being dismissed and without retribution.

About four years ago, I starting to work with like-minded people  to create opportunities to talk honestly about the state of the ministry. We had some limited success is the fall of 2009 when the General Director reluctantly agreed to have a no-agenda retreat where elders and senior staff could voice their concerns. That no-agenda discussion lasted for one day. It was helpful, but it was only a start. I felt that we had barely scratched the surface, and in the months following that retreat I tried to create more opportunities for open discussion. I assumed that the elders and senior staff were okay with this because, at the end of the retreat, everyone had agreed that “open communication” was a top priority. But my requests for open communication were not well received; the responses that I got were silence, indifference, condescension and, on a few occasions, rebuke.

During the summer of 2010, we created UBFriends, hoping that it would bring a spirit of glasnost. Prior to launching the website, I reached out to as many UBF members as I could, explaining what the website was about and inviting them to participate in the discussions. I repeatedly contacted the senior leaders and asked them to participate. Several promised that they would, and two senior staff members even told me that they would write articles. That never happened. (Except for the contributions of James Kim, who wrote an article last month. )

And that lack of participation wasn’t because this website was full of anti-UBF material. You can go into the archives and see for yourself the articles and comments that appeared in those early days. All of the discussions were extremely mild and very kind to the organization. This website was very pro-UBF. We thought the articles were relevant and thought-provoking.

But from the beginning, UBF leaders made no effort to participate in this website.

Why they chose to avoid UBFriends is still a mystery to me. Did they feel threatened by it? Did they think that it would make them look undignified? Were they afraid to speak in an environment that was not completely under their control? Were they unwilling to express personal opinions or take positions on issues without first getting someone’s approval? Did they even allow themselves to have their own personal thoughts and opinions? Did they think the articles and comments were rubbish? Did they simply not care?

Perhaps someday they will give me a truthful answer to why they have stayed away from UBFriends from the beginning. But I won’t hold my breath waiting. I’ve learned that UBF leaders operate within a very small comfort zone. If you try to bring them out of that zone, they will stubbornly refuse to go there. If you ask them a simple and direct question that makes them uncomfortable, they will dodge the question or lecture you about “keeping the spiritual order.”  And in most cases, they will simply remain silent.

Let me now return to the question that prompted this article. Have I brought my concerns to UBF leaders in the presence of witnesses?

Witnesses play a crucial role. Without witnesses, the leaders are going to say, “Well, ahem, I see you are concerned about something. But I don’t hear anyone else talking about this. These are your personal opinions. Everyone else here seems to think that UBF is working pretty well.”

Without presenting evidence through testimony of witnesses, my concerns about UBF were being ignored and dismissed.

But in the UBF cultural environment, gathering evidence and witnesses must be done very cautiously. It can backfire in so many ways. For example, if you bring your concerns to UBF leaders with a group of like-minded people, the leaders will say that you are starting another R-group to split UBF. They will say that you are manipulating people and tricking them into following you so that you can gain power. (Yes, I have been accused of this. People have said, “Joe Schafer is like Absalom.”)

And if you bring the testimony of a witness to the leaders, the first thing they will ask is, “Who has been saying that?” As soon as they find out who the person is, they begin the process of isolating, discrediting and dissecting. They concoct all kinds of reasons why the witness is disgruntled and should not be taken seriously. SL was very, very good at weaving elaborate tales about people, diagnosing their alleged spiritual problems, creating intricate theories about why they were unhappy that had nothing to do with the actual matter. UBF leaders have learned how to do this from SL’s example and have become very adept at it. Anyone who sticks his neck out to become a witness against UBF practices is going to be the subject of character defamation, rumor mongering and shunning. He will be deserted by many of his “friends.” For these reasons, many potential witnesses in UBF will not come forward, because they know what would happen to them. They know the price they will have to pay, and feel the price is too steep.

So the gathering of witnesses needs to be done carefully.

After the fall 2009 retreat, a whole year passed without any opportunities for dialogue. I repeatedly contacted leaders to discuss important issues. My appeals were ignored. I was told that discussions should not happen by email and must happen only in face-to-face meetings. But those hypothetical meetings weren’t happening. Meanwhile, I sensed that the environment in UBF was getting worse. People were growing more and more dispirited and sullen. Meetings and conferences were permeated with an overwhelming sense of malaise. In fact, it seemed that many the people showing up at UBF events were ashamed of the ministry and its leaders.

But the leaders of UBF seemed not to notice this. They were acting as though everything was fine. They seemed to be living in a bubble, surrounded by like-minded people who told them only what they wanted to hear.

In November of 2010, I urgently felt that I needed to do something to wake up the leaders to the seriousness of the situation. I contacted approximately fifty UBF members whom I trusted to give me honest feedback about their perceptions of the ministry and its leadership. I asked them to respond to these five questions.

Question 1: What are the messages – the vision, direction, prayer topics, values, attitudes, etc. – that are actually being presented to you by UBF senior leaders? What are they trying to get you to do?

Question 2: How do you feel about these messages? Do they inspire you?

Question 3: What kind of message coming from senior leaders would truly inspire you, making you enthusiastic, happy, and truly wanting to remain in UBF for the foreseeable future?

Question 4: What would it take to make UBF a place that you are proud of, a place to which you could enthusiastically invite Christian and non-Christian friends to come and see without hesitation, reservation or apology?

Question 5: If there were a message that you could communicate to UBF’s General Director and the leaders of North American UBF (or European UBF, or wherever you are), what would it be?

About half of the people I contacted gave me written responses that were very thoughtful and very thorough. I read everyone’s comments very carefully and searched for common themes. Then I synthesized everything into a lengthy report that I sent to the North American senior leaders in November, 2010. Much of the report consisted of direct quotes from the respondents, with identifying information removed to keep them anonymous. My findings were:

1. UBF messages do not inspire the members.

2. The gospel is being assumed more than it is being proclaimed.

3. UBF is self-absorbed and inwardly focused, lifting itself up while ignoring the greater message of God’s kingdom and unity with the larger Body of Christ.

4. Leaders place a heavy focus on increasing UBF numbers and participating in certain outward activities as the primary measure of fruitfulness and spiritual growth.

5. Obedience to human leaders in UBF is still expected and demanded, and discussion of problematic aspects of UBF is still not tolerated.

6. In many ways, UBF still operates as a Korean church, maintaining a cultural climate that makes Americans uncomfortable.

7. UBF leaders continue to expect members to press on with fishing, one-to-one Bible study, and campus ministry, ignoring the demographic realities of who the members actually are, and ignoring other important ways of serving God.

8. The older generation is now telling the younger generation what their spiritual heritage and vision are without consulting them and without seeking renewal from the Holy Spirit.

The situation was bad, much worse than I had thought. Morale among members was so low that I predicted an exodus within the coming year. I wrote:

It is impossible to predict how many people are going leave UBF, or when they are going to leave. My best guess is that, if members perceive little change when the next General Director is announced next year, an exodus will begin. When valued members leave us, there is real or perceived betrayal. Significant relationships are broken, producing a great deal of pain and conflict; morale drops further, which may lead to even more departures.

If you are interested in seeing the whole report, you can read the full text of the document here.

By now, you are probably wondering how the leaders responded to my efforts. Well, my friends, that’s a fascinating story. You will have to stay tuned…

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

There are many, many things that have happened in my church — some long ago, some recent — that are weighing heavily upon my conscience. They weigh heavily upon me because, as a leader and pastor, I believe that I am supposed to hold my fellow leaders and pastors accountable for what they do and what they fail to do, just as they are supposed to hold me accountable.

In these matters,  I believe that I have followed the instructions of Jesus using the channels of communication available to me. On numerous occasions I have communicated my concerns privately to the General Director. I have brought many specific issues to the attention of the North American senior staff. I have been in close communication with the Ethics Commitee. I have exhausted every avenue of private communication that is available.

No, I have not done so perfectly. I have not always spoken to UBF leaders in their preferred style of communication. At times I have been very blunt. At times I have revealed anger and frustration. I have not said things exactly as Jesus would because I am not Jesus. But those of you who know me well can testify that I have made a good faith effort to express these concerns to leaders on numerous occasions. At times, I was led to believe that something meaningful would be done. I patiently waited for something to be done. I waited and waited and waited. But now all the signs that I can see are showing that leaders are not willing to address these concerns in any serious way. Their lack of response tells me that they are just not listening, and that from now on they intend to listen to me even less.

Jesus said, “If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church.” So if you beling to UBF or are a concerned member of the wider church, I will now tell you what I am concerned about.

My concern is that UBF leaders are still unwilling to face the ministry’s history of abusive discipleship practices. These abuses did not just happen once in a while. They were a regular defining feature of UBF as far back as I can remember.

Here is a short list of some of the things I am talking about. I gave this list earlier today in a comment on this website. Comments tend to disappear from view after just a few hours. I don’t want this list to disappear from view. So I’m reposting it now as an article.

These are some of the things that I remember about being in Chicago UBF when SL was directing. These are the some practices that defined UBF style discipleship for me when I entered the ministry. The specific practices and bad theology that justified them were not limited to Chicago, nor have they disappeared. They still persist nearly everywhere that UBF operates in varying ways and degrees. Even if they didn’t persist, we still need to talk about them, because these things have a long lasting impact on individuals and the community as a whole. These experiences have shaped us in ways that we have never understood or admitted,

I will state these things as objectively as I can, without making any value judgments. Then you can judge for yourselves whether they are problematic.

* SL reserved the right to change the name of anyone at any time. He reserved the right to name your children.

* SL reserved the right to tell you to quit your job at a moment’s notice.

* He reserved the right to tell you at any time to change your clothing or hairstyle.

* No one could marry without his specific approval. He chose whom you could marry. The wedding would be at a time and place of his choosing.

* In many cases, the length of time between when he introduced people to each other and told them that they ought to marry and the actual wedding was less than one week.

* When he married couples, he made up the wedding vows and regularly inserted promises that had nothing to do with marriage (such as promising to go as missionaries to Russia etc.). These vows were not agreed upon by the couple ahead of time.

* If you turned down a marriage candidate that he chose for you, you could be severely rebuked and trained for it. One woman who didn’t want to marry a Korean missionary was told by him, “If you say no again, you will go to hell.”

* No one could miss a Monday night meeting or a Friday night meeting or SWS ever. If you missed a meeting without a good excuse (or even if you had an excuse) you would get rebuked and trained.

* SL would often impose quotas on fellowship leaders to bring a certain number of people to SWS and to conferences. Those who failed would be shamed or punished in various ways.

* If SL thought you did not offer enough money at Christmas worship service, he might rebuke you in front of everyone.

* Sometimes he told missionaries and sheperds whose parents were well off to ask their parents for large sums of money.

* When SL rebuked people, he often did so harshly. Many of his comments to people and about people were far more brazen and brutal than the comments that have appeared here on UBFriends. But no one objected to SL’s language because they got used to it. They believed he had a right to speak that way because he was “God’s servant.”

* No one could take a trip or travel outside the Chicago area for any reason without SL’s approval. And if you did travel, you had better be back in town for Sunday worship service, otherwise you would be severely rebuked and trained.

* If you were from another chapter (not Chicago) and you were selected to go on a “journey team” to Korea or elsewhere, you were told to buy an airline ticket to Chicago with an open return date (which was very expensive). The reason for the open return date is that once you were in Chicago, SL reserved the right to keep you there indefinitely for training. You were not allowed to leave Chicago until he told you that you could.

* SL would often prescribe unorthodox diets and medical treatments and in some cases surgical procedures and the doctors and nurses in Chicago UBF would carry them out.

* If you objected to any of these practices, all of the missionaries and shepherds would immediately counsel you to obey SL because he was God’s servant. Failure to obey even in a very small matter could result in Skokie training, monetary fines, public shaming, etc.

I could go on listing many more of these practices.

Perhaps some people will object that I have aired UBF’s dirty laundry on a public website. But this is not UBF’s dirty laundry. These were the standard operating procedures for the fellowship. They happened on a regular basis, and everyone knew about them. There are many, many more scandalous things that I could mention but won’t.

I stand as a witness to the church to tell you that these things actually happened. I am not saying that everything that UBF ever did was bad. I am not saying that all UBF ever did was to abuse people every day. UBF has done many things over the years. And the things I have listed above are a very real part of UBF’s history.

If you witnessed these things too, please say so.

If you think that I’m lying, that I’ve made these things up, please say so.

If you think that this article is just an immature rant and should not be taken seriously, please tell me why.

If you think that these practices are not a problem and that they are consistent with the gospel, please tell me why.

If you think that these practices have no adverse long-term impact on people, please tell me why.

If you think that UBF can just forget about this stuff and go on trying to preach the gospel and raise disciples without acknowledging its history, please tell me why.

If you think that it was wrong for me to write these things on UBFriends, please tell me when and where and how I could have handled these concerns.

For the Church

Gracious Father, we pray for the holy Catholic Church. Fill it with with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it.; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it, for the sake of Jesus Christ your Son our Savior. Amen.

For Our Enemies

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For the Unity of the Church

O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may all be of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

And here is one more from The Paraclete Psalter:

Eternal and omnipotent God,

you have called us to be members of one body.

Join us with those who in all times and places have praised your name,

that with one heart and mind, we may show the unity of your church,

and bring honor to our Lord and Savior.

We ask this through the same Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, forever and ever. Amen.

At times, this website has been criticized for being one-sided, unbalanced, unhelpful, overly critical, and so on. Some of that criticism is deserved. Yet from my perspective, it seems rather disingenuous for people stand at a distance, to listen to a conversation going on, to claim that the conversation is unhealthy because alternative points of view are not being represented, but then to do absolutely nothing to join in the conversation.

I understand that there are good reasons why some people feel uncomfortable discussing controversial issues on a public website. In all honesty, I believe that it would be better if these conversations that are now happening on UBFriends were taking place in another forum. But until that venue exists, I don’t see any viable alternative for those who feel that their voices haven’t been heard, except to continue to speak out with the hope and prayer that someone, somewhere will hear them and respond.

Over the weekend, I ran across a thought-provoking article titled How to Make Enemies and Offend People. The author, a Christian writer named Bill Blankschaen, describes the powerful negative impact that silence can have on interpersonal relationships. When a person should say something but doesn’t, the silence can speak volumes. Blankschaen writes:

Sometimes, we choose to be quiet when we should be talking. We choose silence and think that we’re not saying anything. Not true.

He goes on to describe the damage that silence can wreak. He makes three compelling points.

1. When we choose to be silent and not respond to someone, it can be very offensive when they find out later what we really think of them through back-channel communication.

2. When we choose to be silent and not respond to someone, they are likely to interpret our silence as meaning that we just don’t care.

3. Some people will be offended by what they thought you meant when you didn’t say anything to them.

This article is a followup to an earlier piece titled Silence Speaks: What You Say When You Say Nothing At All.

So if you read material on this website and become upset by it, and your response is to say and do nothing, please consider all the possible messages that you are sending. Your silence is speaking volumes.

And if you feel that your silence is being misinterpreted, please ask yourself: Whose fault is that?

That saying, “Go back to the Bible,” features the word back. But this juncture, we have no choice but to move forward. No matter how much we pine for familiar comforts, we press on to a future that is strange and uncertain.

In this climate of postmodernity, we hear questions that  a generation ago were unimaginable. In my undergraduate days, people were asking, “How can I know that Christianity is true?” The words know and true needed no explanation. But today, many are asking profound, unsettling questions about the foundations of truth and knowledge. If we cling to old ways of speaking about the Bible without understanding the ethos of the times, we risk alienating an entire generation, rendering ourselves and our message irrelevant.

Is going back to the Bible an appropriate direction for today? That depends on the context.

Imagine you are speaking to Christians who have little or no engagement with the Scriptures. Telling them to go back to the Bible might be the best advice that you could give, and if that advice were taken, it could lead to genuine renewal.

On the other hand, suppose you meet someone who spends so much time in “spiritual” (translation: church-related) activities that he becomes detached from reality, ignoring his wife and children and the emotional, relational or financial problems that may be ruining his life. Telling him to go back to the Bible might be the worst advice imaginable. It would only encourage him to retreat deeper into an abstract religious fantasyland where the people in his life are summarily dismissed and the conflicts in his life are spiritualized** away.

[**Spiritualize: the practice of minimizing, dismissing or avoiding problems based on the misguided idea that this is what Christians are supposed to do.]

Or suppose you find a community that invests a great deal of time in Bible study. And suppose the community has cultural, generational and ideological conflicts that threaten the community’s health and existence, but leaders don’t want to talk about those problems, because they find those conversations too awkward and uncomfortable. I imagine that if Jesus were standing before them, he wouldn’t be telling them to go back to the Bible. Rather, he would tell them to put the Bible down for a while and start to act on its teachings, especially the teachings about relationships and conflict. Problems in a community cannot be solved merely through personal Bible study; they need to be faced by the community.

A few years ago, I asked a ministry leader, “Is it possible to study the Bible too much?” The leader immediately responded, “No, I don’t think so.” Yet I have seen people study the Bible too much. I’ve watched them retreat to their comfort zones when, in my estimation, they really ought to be doing something else.

Bible study is important. Hearing God’s word is essential. But more of a good thing is not always a good thing. Sooner or later you cross a threshold where studying becomes a cheap substitute for doing. James 1:22 says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” If we are not careful, long hours of Bible study can become self-deception. It becomes what author Peter Scazzero has called, “Using God to run from God” (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Chapter 2).

I’ve spent a great deal of time studying the Bible over the last thirty years, and sometimes it’s been wonderful. The experience of sitting down to read and discuss the Bible with believers whom you love and respect can be exhilarating. But Bible study can also be boring. It can be depressing or even infuriating.

The outcome of Bible study depends on our attitudes toward Scripture. And it depends on the happenings of our lives and the drama of our interpersonal relationships. I have found that it’s very difficult – actually, it’s impossible – for Bible study to be effective among people who are in serious conflict. If participants do not openly acknowledge the conflicts and start to work them out beforehand, buried problems and suppressed emotions start to come out in inappropriate ways. Leaders start to use Scripture as a tool to suppress opposition. Pastors use the pulpit to stifle dissent and advance their agenda. I have watched people do this (including myself), and it gets very ugly.

Another set of problems arises when the entire community aspires to be Bible teachers. At times, we have placed such heavy emphasis on teaching that we spoke of spiritual leadership and Bible teaching as if they were identical. Not long ago, someone in our ministry noticed that, in Ephesians 4:11, the apostle Paul mentions five different kinds of leaders (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers). This young man asked his elders, “What is an apostle?” He was told, “An apostle is basically a Bible teacher.” Then he asked, “What is a prophet?” He was told, “A prophet is basically a Bible teacher.” Then he asked, “What is an evangelist?” Again he was told, “An evangelist is basically a Bible teacher.” Every type of leader was portrayed as a Bible teacher, despite the fact that Paul’s intention in that passage was to distinguish the offices and highlight the diversity of gifts.

We have at times artificially inserted this emphasis on Bible teaching into the Old and New Testaments. Some have claimed that Jesus, in his three-year ministry, spent the vast majority of his time teaching the Scriptures. And that Jesus’ top priority for his disciples was to train them to carry on his work of teaching the Scriptures. But in fact, very little of Jesus’ ministry was devoted to expository preaching from the Old Testament. Jesus engaged in fresh storytelling through parables and all kinds of imaginative discourse.

Throughout the four gospels, the followers of Jesus are referred to by the Greek word mathetes which we translate as “disciple.” A disciple is not primarily a student of books or writings but a follower of a living person. The distinction is important. Writers of the gospels do mention some who could be regarded as the Bible teachers of their day. They are called scribes, teachers of the law, and experts in the law, and the manner in which they are portrayed is usually negative. Despite all the time and energy they had spent on Scripture and all of the knowledge they had accumulated about God, they failed to recognize the Son of God when he walked among them. Jesus delivered to them a devastating critique in John 5:39-40: “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”

Is it possible to immerse oneself in the word of God while becoming disconnected from God? Not only is it possible, it is exceedingly common.

In a thought-provoking book titled What We Believe and Why, author George Byron Koch explains it this way (Chapter 22). Before us stand two doors. The first door is labeled, “The Way to God”; the second door is marked, “Lectures About God.” Going through the first is extremely frightening, so most of the time we opt for the second. In our study and in our worship, we talk about God, expounding on his attributes and discussing principles and doctrines. We speak of him in the third person as if he were not there. Rarely if ever do we address him directly. Encounter with God is buried under layer upon layer of abstract teachings. Over time, we cling to our ideas and imagine that they are the real thing, that in possessing them we have God himself, to the extent that we begin to worship our ideas. Without realizing it, our Christian faith mixes with religious idolatry which becomes extremely difficult to detect and root out. Our ideas, principles and doctrines may be good and correct. But by focusing on them rather than God himself, we become detached from him and from one another. And we begin to identify ourselves not by our common love for Christ, but by the unique teachings and practices that distinguish us from other groups.

When Samuel Lee advised people to go back to the Bible, I’m not entirely sure what he meant. But I have heard this motto used to reinforce practices which are thought to come directly from the Bible but are, in fact, just expressions of our local tradition. The misconception that we are purists who simply follow the Bible alone is common in the evangelical world. The New Testament scholar N.T. Wright wrote eloquently about this:

Most heirs of the Reformation, not least evangelicals, take if for granted that we are to give scripture the primary place and that everything else has to be lined up in relation to scripture. There is, indeed, an evangelical assumption, common in some circles, that evangelicals do not have any tradition. We simply open the scripture, read what it says, and take it as applying to ourselves: there the matter ends, and we do not have any ‘tradition’… But I still find two things to be the case, both of which give me some cause for concern. First, there is an implied, and quite unwarranted, positivism: we imagine that we are ‘reading the text, straight’, and that if somebody disagrees with us it must be because they, unlike we ourselves, are secretly using ‘presuppositions’ of this or that sort. This is simply naïve, and actually astonishingly arrogant and dangerous. It fuels the second point, which is that evangelicals often use the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ when they mean the authority of evangelical, or Protestant, theology, since the assumption is made that we (evangelicals, or Protestants) are the ones who know and believe what the Bible is saying. And, though there is more than a grain of truth in such claims, they are by no means the whole truth, and to imagine that they are is to move from theology to ideology. If we are not careful, the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ can, by such routes, come to mean simply ‘the authority of evangelical tradition…’

[Quotation from “How Can the Bible be Authoritative?” by N.T. Wright]

To go back to the Bible in the best sense could mean to put aside our notions, biases and traditions and approach Scripture as if for the first time to learn something new. Over the last three decades, I have frequently heard our leaders encouraging people to do this. I believe that we want to do this. But we overestimate our ability to put biases aside. Everyone who reads Scripture does so through lenses tinted by prior beliefs, experiences, traditions and commitments. It’s hard to take our lenses off because, most of the time, we are not even aware that we are wearing them. Despite our best intentions to read the Bible in a fresh way, our assumptions and habits are so deeply entrenched in our character that we can’t identify them anymore. At that point, it becomes impossible to get something out of Bible study that we haven’t gotten in the past. As the saying goes, if you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.

Let me say that again. If you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.

Which leads to a paradoxical truth. In order to really get back to the Bible, we sometimes need to get away from the Bible.

When I came into this church three decades ago, I was taught a particular style of Bible study, a style that, perhaps with a few minor changes here and there, is still practiced by most UBF chapters throughout the world. For the first ten years, that style of Bible study helped me to grow. After twenty years, I was no longer learning from it. And after 25 years, it was actually making me worse. Not everyone has experienced the same problems that I have in the same manner or degree. But I have been around long enough to see that there are indeed some common elements to the ways that we do things. There are good habits and bad habits that have spread throughout the community. And some of the bad habits that I picked up were hindering my spiritual growth. Whatever bad habits I acquired, it is ultimately my fault that I acquired them. But I did pick them up in our community, and I spread them to others, and the community reinforced (or at least did not discourage) them.

My Bible study had become self-focused and moralistic. I approached every passage with the intent of finding and extracting the right principles and then applying them to my life. The point of every Bible study became, “What am I supposed to do?” In every passage, I tried to locate the tasks God was directing me to do, the sins I was supposed to repent of, the bad habits I was supposed to avoid, the promises I was supposed to claim and believe, and so on.

Over time, this reduced my Christian life to a to-do list. That list became so long that I could never, ever fulfill it. I constantly felt like a failure, because I was never living up to the standards and expectations that I had set for myself and that our culture had set for me. So I did what I had been implicitly taught to do, what others had taught me to do: Keep choong-shim. Maintain soldier spirit. Keep up appearances as an exemplary servant of God at all costs. I hid my weaknesses in order to save face, so that I wouldn’t become a “bad influence” on others.

As I treated the Bible so mechanically and hid my weaknesses so effectively, my soul withered; prayer became ineffective and my personal relationship with God almost nonexistent. But as long as I continued to say things in my Bible studies, testimonies and messages that sounded good, people continued to praise me, and no one seemed to notice that I was adrift. We had put so much emphasis on mission and so little on friendship, relational honesty and intimacy that no one could tell that I had any serious problems. No one, that is, except my wife, who saw what was going on and was greatly concerned.

For me, the keys to coming out from this difficulty were: (a) opening myself up to Christian influences in the greater body of Christ by reading articles and books and by making friends with committed Christians outside of UBF; (b) becoming honest and revealing my weaknesses, allowing myself to express doubts and ask tough questions about the Bible — the kinds of questions that raise eyebrows and make people uncomfortable in traditional group Bible studies, because they are considered too volatile, controversial or off-topic; (c) taking time off from my habitual Bible study to read, think, contemplate and pray, and just to be with God, and to be with God’s people; (d) to stop beating myself up over the fact that I never pray enough, never study the Bible enough, never work hard enough, and am always falling short of standards and expectations; and (e) to take seriously what the Bible says about the person and work of the Holy Spirit, opening myself up to living by the Spirit’s power rather than by self effort.

And thus it was by getting away from the Bible – more precisely, by getting away from the only kind of Bible study that I knew – and taking time to read, meditate, pray, and interact with people in other settings, that my Bible study was greatly refreshed. Although I spent less time in the Bible than I had done before, I got more out of Scripture than ever before. I began to own my faith. I began to write and speak with genuine conviction. I became an honest student of the Bible rather than a role-player and imitator of someone else.

Getting away from the Bible in that way wasn’t easy. Rumors began circulating (and still circulate to this day) that I had gone off the rails, given up my mission, and denied God’s grace upon my life. The biggest obstacle was my own fear that, if I stopped doing Bible study and testimony writing in the usual way, that God would become very disappointed in me and I would lose his love and blessing. But those fears were unfounded. I discovered the basic truth that God does not love me any more or less based on anything I do. And, quite ironically, when I stopped trying to live up to the challenge of Psalm 1 to meditate on God’s word “day and night,” I suddenly found that without trying I was, in fact, ruminating on Scripture and spiritual issues a great deal of the time. By apparently doing less, I learned to depend on God’s grace and experienced his love and blessing all the more.

The article begins very abruptly:

You should know, first of all, that there’s no quick-fix here. There are not ten steps. There is no program that you can implement, no “Young Adult” class you can start.

This is not about your building or your music or your PowerPoint slides.

There is not a trendy foyer in the world with the power to bring us wandering back.

After all, there’s not much you can say to us that we haven’t already learned in some Sunday School classroom somewhere. We know the Bible stories. We heard them over and over, year after year until they became part of our blood, part of our bones.

Zierman explains that those people who left your chuch are not all the same. They left for many reasons and in many different circumstances of life:

We left quietly at age 14 when we joined the drama club, and it felt more like family than youth group ever did. We left in a huff at age 17, angry and rebellious, slamming the church door behind us. We left at 19 when we gave in to passion in some parked car somewhere – left after a dozen sermons and well-meaning Christian speakers told us that in surrendering our virginity, we had surrendered our worth. That we were broken beyond repair.

We stayed the course for a long time. We led the small groups, sang on the worship team, and you told us that we would change the world for Jesus. And then we went to Christian college, where people looked at us side-eyed and dared us to prove our faith. We turned inward, faded out, faded away.

We left after long hours praying for healing that never came. We left when the Christian Girls and the Mean Girls were the same girls. We disappeared into Depression. We walked out of a funeral service of someone too young, and we never stepped foot in a church again.

We left for a hundred different reasons, none less real or important than the other.

Each person who left UBF or any other church has his or her own reasons for leaving. Their testimonies are their own sacred property. Just as they cannot explain why I have stayed, I cannot explain why they have left. The stories must be told firsthand. Those stories should be received with reverent fear and should never, ever be dismissed. There is no guarantee that reconciliation will take place. But I can guarantee this: there will never be reconciliation without careful, patient and painful listening that draws the listener to a state of grief.

Zierman vividly describes what it is like to be an insider-turned-outsider:

So we sit, arms crossed at the edge of it, hypersensitive to your failures and your faults. We have spent the last several years honed in on our bullsh-t detectors, critical and cautious. We are constantly aware of the darkness: yours and ours. The whole wide world, broken and dying, hurling herself into the abyss.

We hear your bewildered conversations about how so many of us have left the church. You are head-scratching, writing books, trying to pinpoint the problem. You are feeling powerless to stop the mass exodus of a generation.

The article continues with some thought-provoking advice about how to approach the ex-member. Rather than spoiling it for you, I encourage you to read the full article here.

In the last few years, I have spent significant time talking to those who have left UBF. For reasons largely beyond my control, this website has become a place where current and ex-members talk to one another. Sometimes we do it pretty well. Sometimes we do it very poorly. Beautiful and ugly, it shall continue. We are all fumbling around, because of us has ever done this before.  But we want to do it better. I believe that we are in the process of doing it better.

If any current UBF members would like to join in the conversations with ex-members — either on this website or in private — I would like to suggest one thing that Zierman doesn’t mention.

Please don’t try to encourage them by talking about all the wonderful things that are now happening in your church. It will not encourage them. It’s as though you are suggesting that, now that they and those other bad apples have left, the problems have also gone away, and while you are inside reaping the benefits, they are left standing outside in the cold.

Imagine that you are attending a wedding reception. For whatever reason, an ugly fight breaks out that involves you or people close to you. Perhaps you get thrown out, or perhaps you decide that you have no choice but to leave. After you go, someone sends you a text message to say the party is going on merrily without you, and in fact has gotten better. How would that message make you feel?

Of course, Zierman’s whole article is built on the premise that the church reaches out to its ex-members. In the present climate, there are some who think that such outreach is unnecessary, that we ought to just forget about the ex-members and leave them behind because, after all, one day we will all be reconciled in heaven.

If you actually believe that, then please explain to me how it squares with Matthew 5:23-24 and Matthew 5:25-26. Seriously. I want to know.

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another”

At a recent breakfast with a group of Christian men, one person offered this verse as an illustration of how believers ought to have fellowship with one another. Real friendship, he suggested, is not merely for relaxing and enjoying one another’s company; it is also for holding one another accountable and telling one another the hard truths that we all need to hear.

Accountability is certainly needed. And who can dispute the importance of telling anyone the hard truths that they need to hear?

But as the friend was sharing this verse, I looked it up on my Kindle, and noticed the two verses immediately before it: “A quarrelsome wife is like the dripping of a leaky roof in a rainstorm; restraining her is like restraining the wind or grasping oil with the hand” (Pr 27:15-16).

And the verse immediately before that: “If anyone loudly blesses their neighbor early in the morning, it will be taken as a curse” (Pr 27:14).

As I read those verses, I started to chuckle. If Rodney Dangerfield had been transported back in time and inspired to become an author of Scripture, these are the kinds of things he might write. Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?

Some of the verses in Proverbs seem to be stand-alone sayings, but other verses appear to loosely cluster around common themes. If this is a thematic section, then the saying about the loudmouthed neighbor (the guy who, as your kindergarten teacher would say, needs to learn how to speak with an “inside voice”) and the verses about the cantankerous spouse might shed some light on how to read the “iron sharpens iron” verse. No intelligent person would interpret verse 14 as a positive example of how to be a good neighbor. Nor should we treat verses 15-16 as a picture of a healthy marriage. So why should we take verse 17 as positive advice for how friends ought to treat one another? If we read 17 in the same vein as 14 and 15-16, it becomes another negative example or perhaps even a summary statement. When fallen human beings live in community with one another, they grate, scratch and abrade. They expose one another’s rough edges and file them smooth. Verse 17 could be taken as descriptive rather than prescriptive, a statement of how things are rather than how they ought to be. Just by being together, friends will naturally do this to one another. Should we intentionally go out of our way to do this even more?

Yesterday, my wife sent me this gut-wrenching story of a Christian woman (a former missionary) whose husband had extramarital affairs and eventually divorced her. As she shared her struggles with a friend, the friend responded with a tough question: “Why do you think he had an affair?” Then the friend asked even more pointedly: “How do you think you contributed to his affair?”

Tears streamed down the woman’s face. Looking back on that encounter with her friend, she concluded: “That conversation was one of my lowest moments.”

I’m sure that the friend had good intentions. She wanted to be balanced. To see all sides of the complex issues. To rise above the messy, dirty details of dispute and see the whole thing from a higher plane where she could love the woman while also challenging her and leading her to repentance. While doing that, she didn’t realize how merciless she was, and how those questions were piercing her friend’s heart like poison-tipped arrows tearing into flesh.

Had the woman whose husband cheated on her ever thought about those questions before? Had she ever considered that her behavior as a less-than-perfect wife might have left her husband at times feeling disrespected, unloved and unfulfilled? Of course she had! She wrestled with those questions long before the friend brought them up. She describes herself as “introspective, self-analyzing, self-critical” almost to a fault. On her own, she had come to the conclusion that she did bear part of the blame for her failed marriage. And she had discerned that, despite her failings as a wife, the husband was entirely to blame for his extramarital affairs. The fact that he had run off with another woman was not her fault.

This story brings up some painful memories of how well meaning Christians have treated me — and embarassing memories of how I have treated others — in times of messy struggle and conflict. Somewhere along the line, we seem to have gotten the idea that to be a true friend to someone, we have to take it upon ourselves to listen to their side of a painful story and then rise above it all to be a source of enlightened wisdom. We can sympathize with their plight, but not too much, lest it fuel their hurt feelings and cause them to be bitter. A true friend, we think, is not merely a confidante or an ally, but someone who needs to give hard advice and tough love under the guise of leading them toward brokenhearted repentance before the truth.

Is that what friends are for?

Apparently, that’s what Job’s friends thought.

Why are well meaning Christian friends so quick to take it upon themselves to sharpen one another? Perhaps we don’t yet know the meaning of love.

Love is notoriously hard to define. In the famous poem of 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul ascribes numerous adjectives to love, but he doesn’t try to define it. One of the best definitions that I’ve ever seen appears in the book The Jesus Creed by (yes, you guessed it) Scot McKnight. I’m sorry for constantly referring to books by Scot McKnight these days. For some unknown reason, the things I’ve learned from his writings seem to come up again and again. That definition of love goes something like this (not an exact quote): Love is a rugged commitment to being WITH someone, for the sake of being FOR them, to divine ends.

To love someone who is going through a painful crisis does not require us to offer advice or render judgment. There are times when advice is called for, but those times are probably much rarer than we think. Love require us to listen and try to understand the person’s plight. Not to pretend that we understand. (If we are unable to understand, then it’s better to admit that than to pretend that we do.) And to stand with that person in support. And to love them unconditionally, as God loves them unconditionally.

Why is that so hard to do? Why do we so quickly lapse into the role of teaching others, shepherding others, giving them advice, and so on, instead of just standing with them and standing for them?

Let me offer a theory.

When someone tells us a painful story, very often it is about how they were damaged by someone else. Person A was hurt by Person B or by Faction C. By default, we tend to think that if we are going to stand with Person A, then we must necessarily stand against Person B or Faction C. That’s what human logic dictates.

But the gospel defies human logic. As Jesus hung from the cross, he suffered in the place of those who loved him. He also suffered in the place of those who hated him. He identified with his friends, with his enemies, with his friends’ friends, with his friends’ enemies, with his enemies’ friends, and with his enemies’ enemies. He took everyone’s infirmities upon himself and gave his life for all.

When you hear the painful story of how Person A was hurt by Person B or by Faction C, then human logic drives you to choose whether you are going to be loyal to Person A and stand against Person B or Faction C. If you are also a friend of Person B, or if you happen to belong to Faction C, then you are placed in an uncomfortable postion. You find yourself trying to walk the fine line, to thread the needle, to remain fair and balanced, to rise above it all and see things from God’s point of view (yeah, have fun with that). Under human logic, community life becomes characterized by endless shifting of alliances, balancing of opposing persons and perspectives, causing you to remain aloof from the suffering person before you who, being afraid to actually love them lest you drift too far into their camp and away from their enemies’ camp.

But gospel logic understands that the line between good and evil does not divide one person from another or one faction from another. The line that divides good from evil runs through every human heart. Every perpetrator is also a victim. And person who is oppressed by someone else will, at other times, act as an oppressor. Calvary love does not call us to stand for the victim and against the oppressor. It calls us to stand for the victim and for the oppressor.

Yes, there are times when a friend will need to offer another friend some hard-to-hear advice. But those times are few and far between. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us in Life Together, the first and foremost way that we are called to serve our friends is by a ministry of listening. Here is a quote from the chapter titled “Service”:

The first service one owes to others in the community involves listening to them. Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them. God’s love for us is shown by the fact that God not only gives us God’s Word, but also lends us God’s ear. We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them. So often Christians, especially preachers, think that their only service is always to have to “offer” something when they are together with other people. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking. Many people seek a sympathetic ear and do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking when they should be listening. But Christians who can no longer listen to one another will soon no longer be listening to God either; they will always be talking even in the presence of God. The death of spiritual life starts here, and in the end there is nothing left but empty spiritual chatter and clerical condescension which chokes on pious words. Those who cannot listen long and patiently will always be talking past others, and finally no longer will even notice it. Those who think their time is too precious to spend listening will never really have time for God and others, but only for themselves and their own words and plans.

I’ve heard people say that Lent is unbiblical because it is not mentioned in the Bible. The Apostle Paul tells us not to let anyone judge us by what we eat or drink or by the religious festivals and holidays that we keep (Col 2:16). Observing Lent is not a matter of right or wrong. However, Lenten practices go back to the earliest days of the Church, and many Christians throughout the ages have found them to be beneficial.

Lent is part of the annual church calendar which does have biblical roots. An annual cycle of religious feasts was established in the Old Testament. Jesus observed those feasts, and the main events of the gospel are embedded in them. Jesus died at feast of Passover; he rose from the dead on the feast of Firstfruits; and he sent his Holy Spirit on the feast of Pentecost. The church liturgical calendar is partly a Christian adaptation of the Jewish cycle of feasts.

The church calendar can keep us grounded in the facts of the gospel. The birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus took place in history; they are objective truths. Our understanding of God and relationship with him are subjective experiences. Responding to the liturgical calendar in prayer and worship can be an excellent way to connect our subjective experiences of faith to the objective truths of the gospel. It helps us to align our story with the Bible’s story. And it’s a practical way to be united with Christ in his baptism and ministry, and in his death and resurrection. In Philippians 3:10-11, Paul wrote: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Lent is a time when we can walk alongside Jesus and witness his suffering, experiencing the events that led to his betrayal, arrest and crucifixion. It is a somber time, a season of quiet reflection, repentance and self denial. Observing Lent can make the celebration of Easter all the more meaningful and joyful.

Christians have traditionally observed Lent by fasting and abstaining from things that give them pleasure. Practicing self-denial can be helpful, but it also may be unhealthy. Here are three things to keep in mind about fasting and related practices.

1. Healthy fasting is not an attempt to get something from God. It is not a tool to manipulate God (which won’t work anyway). And it is certainly not a method for earning God’s favor. If you are a child of God, then you already have God’s favor; he cannot love you any more than he already does. Fasting is not a means of earning grace. Spiritual disciplines should be understood as a means for drawing near to Christ and opening ourselves to receive the grace that he has already bestowed.

2. Healthy fasting is not primarily about me. Self-denial may lead a person to become self-absorbed. Jesus warns against this (Mt 6:16-18). In the Old Testament, righteous fasting is linked to concern and compassion for those who are less fortunate. Isaiah 58:6-7 says: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” By fasting, we can suffer with those who suffer and mourn with those who mourn. By fasting, we can live in solidarity with Jesus who went to the cross to bear sorrow and pain for the whole world.

3. Healthy fasting does not pit one part of a person against another, but brings the parts together into alignment. In a well integrated person, the mind, heart and body should be in sync. Sin causes them to become disconnected, and spiritual disciplines should help them to reconnect.

One of the biggest news stories earlier this month was the search for former Los Angeles police officer Chris Dorner who went on a shooting spree and then fled to the San Bernadino Mountains. While Dorner was in a standoff with police, his mother was reportedly spotted in a Mexican restaurant drinking wine and eating chips while watching the media coverage of her son on TV. I don’t know anything about Mrs. Dorner’s relationship with her son. But by any reasonable standard, this behavior is odd. When someone you love is in a crisis, a normal bodily response would be fasting, not feasting.

I once heard of a church that held a service on Good Friday. The pastor selected joyful hymns and delivered a happy message to “celebrate” Jesus’ victory at the cross. I understand his point, but a joyful Good Friday service is rather awkward. (I wonder how this pastor would officiate at a funeral for one of his parishioners.) There is a proper time to laugh and a proper time to weep (Ecc 3:4). Celebrating, lauging or joking at inappropriate times are symptoms of a human being in denial, one who is disconnected from his surroundings, from other people, and from himself.

In an excellent book titled Fasting: The Ancient Practices, author Scot McKnight argues that unhealthy fasting grows out of unbiblical views about the body. Many Christians have a Gnostic-like tendency to separate body from spirit. They tend think of the spiritual realm as being superior and holy, and the physical realm as being inferior or corrupt. With such a view, fasting can become an unhealthy battle to subdue the flesh by the power of the will. The behavior of some ascetic saints who practiced extreme forms of self-deprivation (e.g. Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena) may be related to anorexia nervosa and distorted body image. Spirit-body dualism is a key feature of Greek philosophy, but it is not consistent with the Hebrew understanding of human beings in the Old Testament. Nor is it consistent with the gospel. The Incarnation of the Son of God was meant to redeem our bodies, not to defeat them.

Biblical fasting, argues McKnight, allows the body to express the discomfort of the spirit: “Fasting is the natural, inevitable response of a person to a grievous, sacred moment in life.” A healthy person will naturally want to fast in times of crisis or in times of mourning, when loved ones are in danger or experiencing tragedy. As we recall the suffering of Jesus during the season of Lent, the normal response of an empathetic Christian is not to indulge in physical pleasures but to put them aside for a time with reverence and respect.

Fasting may have short-term and long-term benefits. Some Christians who fast will tell you that it helps them to pray. It may bring clarity and discernment. It may help to diminish temptations in other areas (e.g. sexual behavior). And it may help you to shed some extra pounds around your midsection. Fasting and other acts of self-denial may bring some positive results in your life. But those are not the primary motivations for fasting during the Lent. The best reason to fast is to experience in your body a palpable solidarity with Jesus Christ who bore in his body the sin, sorrow and suffering of the world.

In the near future, I hope to write more about the history of Lent and how Christians can benefit from Lenten practices. For now, I will share a traditional Lenten prayer that was composed in the fourth century A.D. by Saint Ephrem the Syrian.

O Lord and Master of my Life!

Take from me the spirit of sloth, faintheartedness, lust of power and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to your servant.

Yea, O Lord and King!

Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother; for you are blessed from all ages to all ages. Amen.

In his excellent book titled Ancient-Future Time, the late Dr. Robert Webber described how this prayer may be incorporated into devotional life during the Lenten season.  On pp. 115-116, Webber writes:

Through this prayer, we encounter four negative concerns aimed at spiritual struggles common to us all:

• Sloth — a laziness that prevents us from choosing a spiritual pilgrimage aimed at overcoming the powers of evil working against us.
• Faintheartedness — despondency, a negative and pessimistic attitude toward life.
• Lust of power — the assertion of self as lord of life expressed in the desire to subordinate other people under our power.
• Idle talk — a negative power of speech that puts others down and uses words in a destructive rather than constructive way.

These four negative characteristics deny us the fullness of life intended by God. They are balanced by four positive characteristics that bring us into greater experience with the fullness of life God intends for us:

• Chastity/wholeness — the word is most often used regarding sexuality. But its real meaning is the opposite of sloth and refers to wholeness. Broadly speaking it refers to the recovery of true values in every area of life.
• Humility — the fruit of wholeness is humility, the victory of God’s truth taking hold in our entire life. The humble person lives by the truth of God and sees life as God made it and intended it to be.
• Patience — patience sees the depth of life in all its complexity and does not demand instant change now, in this moment.
• Love — the opposite of pride. When wholeness, humility and patience are worked in us, the result is a person characterized by love. This kind of person can sincerely pray, “Grant me to see my own errors and not judge my brother.”

I suggest that you memorize this prayer and repeat it frequently during the days of Lent. In the morning meditate on the four powers from which you seek to be delivered — sloth, faintheartedness, lust of power, and idle talk. At noon meditate on the four virtues you desire to experience in your life — chastity/wholeness, humility, patience and love. During each day determine to find a specific situation in which you can exercise one or more of both the negative and positive disciplines. Then in the evening when you pray the prayer again, review the events of the day and identify the way in which you have fulfilled one or another of these spiritual goals. To be most effective this prayer and the form it takes in your life should be coupled with fasting from food (ascetical fast) and the giving of alms (preferably to the poor).

Dear Bibleman,

[Okay, I lied. The reader didn’t call me Bibleman. But please indulge my superhero vagaries.]

I was wondering if someone can write an article on UBFriends regarding John 15, specifically mentioning John 15:2. Do you mind explaining to me briefly the meaning behind Jesus’ words? I want to clarify what that verse actually means. I was told often to cut of certain things in my life that did not bear fruit. To a certain degree, I agree with that. For example if I habit of lying and end up hurting people, that does not produce in me Christlike character. At the same time, this verse is often used or implied as you need to get rid of your girlfriend, job, whatever, because it doesn’t bear fruit! If you don’t mind explaining that verse to me, I would appreciate it!

Dear Reader,

If I someone gave me a nickel for every time I have been asked that question, I would have five cents!

I’m sure that many of our readers have encountered that interpretation of John 15:2 before. Let’s call it the “We should prune ourselves” or WESHPRO interpretation.

Before going any father, let’s agree that, in many cases, pruning yourself may be a perfectly good thing to do. Suppose you are running a business, and some of your investments are failing to generate profits. Sooner or later you have to say, “Enough!” and cut your losses by eliminating the unprofitable ventures from your portfolio. WESHPRO is often a reasonable principle to follow in business and in your personal life, because it is good, common sense.

But WESHPRO is not found in John chapter 15. To claim that WESHPRO is being taught there, we have to ignore what Jesus actually says.

Here are the words of Jesus in John 15:1-4, quoted from the New International Version.

1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes* so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

* The Greek for he prunes also means he cleans.

The first thing to notice in this passage is that there’s a whole lotta prunin’ goin’ on. But who is being pruned? Jesus. And who is doing the pruning? The Father. To squeeze WESHPRO out of this passage, we would need to replace both Jesus and the Father with ourselves. Is that an accurate and responsible way to read the Bible?  Not on your life, or my name isn’t Bibleman!

The second thing to notice here are the instructions that Jesus gives to his disciples. If WESHPRO is an acceptable meaning, then I suppose that, somewhere in the passage, Jesus would actually tell his disciples to prune themselves. But that is not what Jesus does. There is only one command that Jesus gives to his disciples in this passage, and that command is: Remain in me.

The third thing to notice here is that the Greek verb translated as he prunes also means he cleans. In verse 3, Jesus brings his disciples into the metaphor, depicting them as branches attached to the true vine. The disciples are, in some sense, being pruned or cleaned. But Jesus says this action has already taken place. The disciples have already been pruned. From now on, their job is simply to remain in Jesus, to stay in a life-giving union with him as branches attached to a vine, and if they do, the fruit of the saving work of Jesus Christ will be borne through them.

To really understand what Jesus is saying, we need to carefully consider the context. Jesus is not speaking in a vacuum. This teaching, which is part of the Upper Room discourse (John chapters 13-17), must be understood in light of his imminent suffering and death. And this teaching is shaped by the historical context of first-century Judaism and the language of the Old Testament.

The Old Testament often depicts the nation of Israel as a vine. For example, consider Isaiah 5:7:

The vineyard of the Lord Almighty  is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah  are the vines he delighted in.

And consider this passage from Psalm 80:

7 Restore us, God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.

8 You transplanted a vine from Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.

9 You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land.

10 The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches.

11 Its branches reached as far as the Sea, its shoots as far as the River.

12 Why have you broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes?

13 Boars from the forest ravage it, and insects from the fields feed on it.

14 Return to us, God Almighty! Look down from heaven and see! Watch over this vine,

15  the root your right hand has planted, the son you have raised up for yourself.

16 Your vine is cut down, it is burned with fire; at your rebuke your people perish.

17 Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up for yourself.

18 Then we will not turn away from you; revive us, and we will call on your name.

19 Restore us, Lord God Almighty; make your face shine on us that we may be saved.

Psalm 80, which appears to have been composed during the Babylonian exile, is a collective cry by the Jewish captives for God to save them and restore their kingdom. Jews of the first century prayed the psalms every day. There is little doubt that the disciples. when they heard Jesus’ metaphor of vine and branches, would immediately connect it to this psalm. The disciples, who were raised in Jewish homes and steeped in rabbinical traditions, held great pride and confidence in their heritage as God’s chosen people. Their identity was defined by their historical connection to Israel, which they viewed as God’s true vine.

Against this backdrop, the teaching of Jesus in John 15 becomes profoundly shocking. Notice his claim at beginning of verse 1: “I am the true vine…” What Jesus is actually saying, in Bibleman’s paraphrase, goes something like this.

Hey guys. I know that, for all your lives, you have taken immense pride in your identity as Jews. That’s okay. I’m a Jew too, in case you haven’t noticed! But I’ve got something important to say, something that will rock your socks. From now on, I am the True Vine. I am the source of all life and all nourishment. My arrival is the fulfillment of the psalmist’s cry for redemption and restoration. In fact, Psalm 80 is actually about me, even though the psalmist probably didn’t realize it. Haven’t you noticed, for example, that in verses 15 and 17 of that psalm, it talks about the “son” and “the son of man”? Well, that’s me. God has worked powerfully through the nation of Israel. That work was preparation for my arrival. From now on, your primary identity will be shaped by your connection to me.

“But Bibleman,” you may ask, “what does Jesus mean by pruning?”

Bibleman thinks that pruning is a complex metaphor with multiple meanings. Your English teacher may have taught you to avoid mixed metaphors. But Jesus never took your English class. He used language in ways that were common in the first century, and the authors of the New Testament enjoyed mixing their metaphors.

Bibleman thinks that, in John 15:1-4, Jesus is trying to convey the following points.

• The Father is about to prune the Son. The Father will cut off the Son’s earthly life by sending him to the cross. But this pruning will create new life and new fruit after his resurrection.

• The death and resurrection of the Son will become a means of wrath and judgment against those who have rejected him. Those events will cause some branches — some parts of the Jewish nation and aspects of their traditional faith (for example, the sacrificial system and temple worship) — to be cut off and destroyed.

• The death and resurrection of the Son will clean the disciples (in fact, it already had!) and firmly establish their identity as branches of Jesus, the True Vine.

“But Bibleman,” you may ask, “what does this passage mean to me? What is this passage saying about what I’m supposed to do?”

Bibleman thinks that, whatever this passage meant to Jesus’ disciples in the first century, it means essentially the same thing to us today. Two millennia have passed, and our situation is somewhat different from that of the apostles. But Jesus is still the True Vine. He is still our source of life and nourishment. Our primary identity must still be grounded in him.

And regarding that last question, “What am I supposed to do?”, Jesus answered that himself. The command is clear: Remain in Jesus. Later in the chapter, Jesus clarifies what that means. It means to remain in his love. It means to love your brothers and sisters in Christ.

And that, says Bibleman, is enough.

The idea is elegant. Sit down at your computer and bring up Google or any search engine that has an autocomplete feature.  As you type a word or phrase, the search engine will predict what you are trying to type based on what other people have typed in the past. A small menu appears with suggested ways to complete your expression. This pop-up menu provides a window into public thoughts and perceptions.

When someone typed the words “Why are Christians so” into Google, this is what appeared.

These results ought to be sobering. The distinguishing characteristic of a disciple of Christ, the mark by which we are supposed to be known in the world, is love. In John 13:35, Jesus said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  This confirms what researcher David Kinnamon and others have been saying for a long time. Christians, especially evangelicals, have a serious image problem.

Actually, it’s far worse than an image problem. Calling it an image problem suggests that (a) the public has gotten us wrong, (b) that we are actually wonderful people after all, (c) that if people really knew us, they would see how wonderful we are, and (d) the solution to this problem is to correct people’s misperceptions by getting out the message of how wonderful we are. I don’t buy that analysis. If large numbers of people don’t feel loved by us, the primary reason is that we have failed to demonstrate Christ’s love in ways that they can understand. The solution is not to change people’s minds but to change the ways in which we interact with them and demonstrate love.

Someone repeated the procedure for other major religious groups and summarized the results with a Venn diagram.

In the realm of public image, Muslims and Jews don’t fare much better than Christians. The adjectives applied to Muslims and Jews (in many cases, no doubt, by people who identify themselves as Christians) include a laundry list of ugly stereotypes.

I found it ironic that the only adjective applied to Buddhists was happy. The Buddhist worldview is summarized by the so-called Four Noble Truths. Noble Truth #1 is usually stated as, “To live is to suffer.” The other truths explain that the root cause of suffering is human desire, and the way to escape from suffering is to purify your desires, adjust your expectations, and live wisely. In other words, Buddhism dedicates itself not to the pursuit of happiness, but to the acceptance of suffering. So why has Buddhism, in the marketplace of public opinion, become the purveyor of happiness? Why hasn’t Christianity been able to do that? (After love, the next mark of a Christian, according to Galatians 5:22, is supposed to be joy.) 

On a whim, I went to Google and typed, “Why are UBF members so.” Nothing came up. Apparently, so few people have typed those words that the search engine was unable to make a prediction.

A few years ago, however, I sat down with a group of young people to conduct an informal focus group. All the participants were in their late teens (about 18 years old) and had grown up in UBF in various western nations. I asked them, “When you think about UBF, what adjectives come to mind?”

They could think of only one.

Before I reveal what they said, allow me to tell a related story. A few months after that informal focus group, I attended a UBF staff conference and participated in a seminar on the topic of second-gen education. The audience included about 60 or 70 UBF chapter directors and leaders from North America. I told them about the focus group that I had held a few months earlier. I asked the audience to predict what adjectives the second-gens had used to describe UBF. They imagined that the second gens had said

• hard-working,
• dedicated,
• humble,
• zealous,
• disciplined,
• intense,

and so on. These answers reveal a great deal about how UBF leaders imagine themselves to be, but very little about how others (in this case, their own children) perceive them.

None of these UBF leaders — not a single one — was able to guess the one and only adjective that the second-gens had applied to UBF.

That adjective was (drum roll, please…): 

Korean.

Our friend Vitaly alerted us to a YouTube video called The Witnesses at Your Door which illustrates cognitive dissonance. Vitaly wrote:

I liked this video after I left ubf. There seems to be very many similarities especially in the leaving process.

Vitaly’s comment, and the interesting discussion that he started with Chris, can be found here.

The video is 37 minutes long, and I think it is well worth watching. So I made a unilateral decision (sorry, Vitaly, hope you don’t mind!) to pull the video out of his comment and place it here in an article of its own, so that it gets more attention.

Please note that by posting this video, we are not claiming that UBF is a cult. Readers of this website have expressed many varying opinions on that issue. Although that topic is worth considering and discussing, I would prefer that we keep the discussion here focused on cognitive dissonance — how we have personally experienced it, and how we have personally handled it. Your comments about UBF, cults and the like can continue at Ben’s recent article.

And please note that cognitive dissonance is not limited to members of cults. The phenomenon, in differing ways and degrees, is experienced by all human beings at various times in their lives. I’m quite sure that everyone who holds religious beliefs and commitments has experienced cognitive dissonance. In fact, I would argue that wrestling with cognitive dissonance lies at the heart of true, growing faith. If you’d like to see some examples of cognitive dissonance, check out Hebrews chapter 11.

With that in mind, please watch the video and tell us what you think.

Here are some questions to ponder.

• Which characters and situations in this video do you identify with?
• At what time(s) in your life did you experience intense cognitive dissonance? What coping mechanism(s) did you use?
• Are you experiencing any measure of cognitive dissonance now? How are you coping with it?

Religious leaders are often socialized to be better at speaking than at listening. It is understandable that preachers want to teach preach and lead with their voices and their carefully honed understanding of scripture and theology…..Being the resident religious expert gives you a kind of status and a feeling of control. On the downside of accepting this role, however, is that it may lead to what Yogi Berra called ‘talking too much’ (p. 141).

Listening requires a pastor to stop teaching:

Listening is difficult because it requires that we give up the role of expert and become a learner again (p 142).

And listening requires a pastor to give up control of the situation.

…listening also requires some floating, some willingness to tolerate the uncertainty of letting go and seeing what happens. When you really start to listen, people will know. They will start to speak more openly as soon as you communicate that you can stand to hear the truth (pp 142-143).

The meaning of letting go is illustrated in a powerful way by the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Near the end of the movie, there’s a brilliant piece of cinematography that lasts for about two minutes. Watch it for yourself.

The clip begins with the booming voice of the Wizard: “Why have you come back?” It’s an impressive display that evokes terror in Dorothy and her companions. (Moviegoers in 1939 were unaccustomed to special effects. Even color was a novelty. Can you imagine the impact this scene would have had on them?) But this display is the act of a circus performer, generated by the proverbial smoke and mirrors.

The Wizard commands them, “Go away and come back tomorrow!” He wants to get rid of them as soon as possible. He’s stalling for time, hiding the fact that he had no actual ability to keep the promises he had made to them earlier in the movie. But Dorothy and her companions are tenacious; they won’t allow themselves to be sent away.

Soon the Wizard loses control of the situation. He is unmasked by the actions of a curious dog. Dorothy and her companions finally encounter the real man behind the facade. The jig is up.

Disappointed and disillusioned, Dorothy exclaims, “You’re a very bad man!”

The Wizard replies, “Oh, no, my dear, I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad wizard.”

Ironically, through this episode, it is the Wizard who finds redemption. We sense in him a great sigh of relief. After many years of role-playing, he is finally free to be himself. He begins to experience grace, friendship, and love. And he discovers that he is not as impotent as he feared. He can offer Dorothy’s companions simple, ordinary but meaningful gifts of affirmation and recognition. And he is now in a position to give Dorothy what she needs: a ride back to Kansas. That discovery comes from the admission that the land of Oz doesn’t need his services; life in the community will go on just fine without him.

The scene of the Wizard’s unmasking deeply resonates with me. Two years ago, I went through a process of being unmasked before the members of my family and my church. The curtain was pulled back, my weaknesses were exposed, and I was forced to stop playing the role of wizard-pastor. The experience was painful and liberating. After some brief moments of embarrassment, I began to experience new dimensions of grace. (At some point in the future, I would be happy to share the details of that story on UBFriends. Doing so in this article would be a distraction.)

At this stage in my spiritual journey, I find it disturbing to encounter pastors who still need to play the role of  wizard. I feel truly sorry for them. Perhaps they imagine they can be more effective preachers of the gospel by projecting an aura of knowledge, strength, confidence and control.  And the prospect of being unmasked is terrifying. But I’m certain that if they came out from behind the curtain, the result would be a liberating experience of grace and love.

The Apostle Paul understood this. In fact, he saw self-unmasking as an essential part of his apostolic ministry. Paul never watched The Wizard of Oz, but he does make an insightful and creative use of a story from the Old Testament. In 2 Corinthians 3:13, Paul writes:

We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away.

In an oblique reference to Exodus 34:33-35, Paul recalls how Moses would enter the Tent of Meeting to stand in the presence of God. After those encounters, the face of Moses would radiate glory as he delivered God’s word to the people. After speaking to the people, Moses would cover his face with a veil to prevent them from seeing that the glory was fading away.

Why would Moses do such a thing? Perhaps he thought that if the Israelites saw the glory fade, his pastoral authority might be diminished. Perhaps he thought that the Israelites had grown accustomed to Oz-like displays of divine power, and to see his ordinariness might cause their faith to be shaken.

Paul doesn’t tell exactly why Moses covered himself up. But Paul says that “we” — meaning Paul and his apostolic companions — “are not like Moses” — meaning that they do not hide their ordinariness from anyone. Paul goes on to say in verses 16-18 that turning to Jesus and believing the gospel is akin to taking off a veil. It is putting off all pretense to reveal your failings, weakness, and cluelessness, so that the Holy Spirit may work to reveal the glory of Christ. Then, in Chapter 4, he continues to describe the implications of this unveiling in his apostolic ministry. It requires him to be absolutely honest, to renounce “secret and shameful ways”, to put aside deception, and to avoid distorting God’s word by making false claims and exaggerated promises of what  following him would bring people in this present life.

If pastors and church leaders came out from behind the curtain — if they put aside any false projection of authority, power, confidence and expertise — and if they stopped exaggerating about what they have experienced and stop making false promises about what others will experience if they choose to live as disciples of Christ — what do you think would happen? Would the faith of people be shaken? Or would everyone come to a deeper understanding and experience of the gospel?

Attentive listening should come naturally. Newborn babies easily gather and synthesize information, picking up words, facial expressions and other nonverbal cues from their parents and siblings, acquiring volumes of tacit knowledge about people and the world. But somewhere along the way, many of us lose the ability to listen to other people well. In the area of listening, we become socially challenged. Yet we are largely oblivious to our handicap. In fact, we develop sophisticated strategies to pretend that we are listening, and to convince ourselves that we are listening, when in reality we are not fully present with others nor hearing them out to the point of understanding.

Are you a good listener? Type that question into a search engine, and you will find dozens of quizzes that can help you gauge your interpersonal listening skills. Take one of these quizzes if you like. But if you really want to find out what kind of listener you are, give the quiz to a person close to you – your roommate, your spouse, or one of your teenage children – and have them answer the questions on your behalf. Go ahead. I dare you. I triple-dog-dare you.

Why do we stop being good listeners? Reasons vary from one person to another. But one common cause is that, deep down, we feel that no one has ever truly listened to us. Someone very significant in our lives, perhaps a parent, was too preoccupied to listen to us, or wouldn’t allow us to speak freely, or wouldn’t ever validate our opinions or emotions. From that time onward, a great deal of what we do in life, and how we interact with others in one-on-one and group settings, will be motivated by an unfulfilled desire to be heard.

I have a sneaking suspicion that within the church, many of these unlistened-to people gravitate toward leadership roles that involve preaching and teaching. I’m not saying that every pastor has a frustrated inner child crying out for people to listen. But no one is immune to that tendency. My unfulfilled desires to be heard always there, lurking in the shadows, impacting my work and relationships. It has taken me a long time to realize this painful truth about myself, and it is only within the last few years that I have started to understand how my childhood experiences and background (a) make it difficult for me to listen to others, and (b) make me easily hurt when people interrupt me, brush me off or otherwise refuse to hear me out.

It is not uncommon for two people to leave a conversation with very different impressions. One may think, “I listened to her very patiently,” while the other thinks, “He didn’t hear a word I said; talking to him was like bouncing off a brick wall!”

Listening doesn’t mean sitting there quietly and giving the other person a chance to talk, waiting until she has finished so that you can then make all of your points and correct her wrong thinking. A poor listener may allow others to get their words out. But he maintains a stoic posture, not allowing himself to be challenged or changed by those words except in a most superficial way. That stance was described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together: “This impatient, inattentive listening really despises the other Christian and finally is only waiting to get a chance to speak and thus to get rid of the other.” Ouch.

Scot McKnight said, “To love a person is to listen to them, and to let their voice speak. To listen to a person is to let that person’s world into our world.” Listening is much more than hearing another person out. It to share in the thoughts and feelings of another person, allowing them to penetrate your being and change you in discernible ways.

In fact, I would say that listening is the primal act of love. You have not loved a person if you have never listened to them to the point of being challenged by them and hurt by them and changed by them for the better. A parent may say to a grown child, “I’ve done everything for you. I’ve fed you, clothed you, and paid your college tuition. I’ve sacrificed so much out of my love for you. Why are you so ungrateful?” All that may be true. But if the child feels that she hasn’t been listened to, she will feel unloved.

Here is another painful quote from Life Together about listening to others in the Church.

The first service one owes to others in the community involves listening to them. Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them. God’s love for us is shown by the fact that God not only gives us God’s Word, but also lends us God’s ear. We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them. So often Christians, especially preachers, think that their only service is always to have to offer something when they are together with other people. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking. Many people seek a sympathetic ear and do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking even when they should be listening. But Christians who can no longer listen to one another will soon no longer be listening to God either; they will always be talking even in the presence of God. The death of the spiritual life starts here, and in the end there is nothing left but empty spiritual chatter and clerical condescension which chokes on pious words. Those who cannot listen long and patiently will always be talking past others, and finally no longer will even notice it. Those who think their time is too precious to spend listening will never really have time for God and others, but only for themselves and for their own words and plans.

The greatest strength of evangelical Christianity may be its emphasis on teaching and proclamation of the word. But that strength may also be its greatest weakness. If we produce disciples who can stand up and boldly announce what they believe but give short shrift to what others think, what have we done? Created an army of clanging cymbals?

Pastoral listening is not a kind of therapy in which the leader allows people to air grievances in order to feel better so that they become more teachable.  It is not a technique to help us achieve some other goal. Listening itself is the goal.  Let’s put it another way. We are not trying to give people the impression that they are being heard. We are trying to give them the privilege of actually being heard, a precious gift that many rarely experience it in their families or in their churches.

We don’t become better listeners by forgetting about ourselves. Ironically, good listening usually requires us to pay closer attention to ourselves. It requires us to become more aware of the overt and subtle ways that we shut others down when they try to speak. These include:

• Lapsing into evaluation and giving quick advice, comfort, rebuke or encouragement. (That is what Job’s friends were doing.)
• Coming up with theories about why people are saying something instead of asking them and taking their words seriously.
• Telling people that they need to be more balanced, that they need to remember the negative things as well as the positive things or vice-versa. (None of us is in a position to judge for someone else what is balanced for them.)
• Telling people that they ought to see things more objectively. (All human beings are limited and inherently subjective.)
• When someone shows weakness or pain, treating it as a spirit of sinful complaining or self-pity. (Job, by the end of the book, was complaining bitterly against God. And the Bible says that in doing so, Job did not sin. God prefers honesty to play-acting and spin.)
• Making dismissive comments such as, “We know that already,” “We learned that already,” “We’re doing that already,” and so on. Even if those things are true, it does not mean that you have a right to stop listening.
• Sending inappropriate verbal and nonverbal messages while others are speaking. Showing disapproval by frowning; making light of people’s stories by joking or laughing; remaining silent and stone-faced when someone expects and wants you to react; and so on.
• Thinking we can learn more about what a person thinks or feels by remembering some Bible passages or verses and applying them to him or her, rather than actually listening to what the person says.
• Telling someone “I hear you” or “I understand you” because you think you have experienced something similar. A good listener doesn’t need lots of sympathy or empathy, especially if it’s not genuine. Rather, he needs something called interpathy, which means that he pays close attention to the differences between his own experience and the experience of the speaker.

And here is one more that I have used frequently, to the chagrin of my wife and daughter:

• Telling someone that you won’t listen to her unless she stops being so angry, unless she stops whining and complaining and calms down and speaks to you in a more reasonable and respectful tone.

In other words, I was saying: “I refuse to interact with you until you adopt the language and communication style that I deserve.” Does anyone have the right to impose that requirement on another person? Not even God has claimed that right! Isn’t it interesting how, when you read the Psalms, so many of these prayers are full of anger, vitriol and other unpleasant and raw emotion? Yet God heard those prayers and accepted them and sanctified them. It’s not wise to hold other people to a higher standard than the one God holds them to.

And please, just one more, because I can’t resist. (Can’t you just hear my inner child crying out to be heard?)

• When someone begins to reveal sorrow and pain, quickly telling them that they need to pray and bring it to Jesus; advising them to first solve their spiritual problem before God, and then bring it up with people later.

Yes, Jesus wants to bear their infirmities and carry their sorrows. But until Jesus returns, we have been appointed to be the Body of Christ in this world. We are to be his hands and feet and mouths and especially his ears. To be “in Christ,” as the Apostle Paul so frequently described, is to share in the mystery of his suffering and death for the sake of all humanity. The gospel requires us to start listening, long and hard, to people’s stories of sin and sorrow and pain, rather than telling them to stop whining and soldier up.

That’s how management consultant Patrick Lencioni begins the first chapter of The Advantage. I learned of this book through a group of pastors in my town who meet regularly to pray and create opportunities for local churches to work together. These pastors recently read The Advantage and discussed it at a retreat, along with another book that has become a favorite of mine, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero. These two books complement each other nicely. One deals with the health of the individual, the other with the health of the group. The Advantage is not explicitly Christian – Lencioni doesn’t quote passages from the Bible – but many Christian leaders have found it helpful, and for the last two years Lencioni has been a featured speaker at Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit.

The Advantage resonates with Christians for two simple reasons. First, from an organizational standpoint, churches can be notoriously unhealthy, even more so than secular institutions. Second, the book is intensely practical, providing strategies to help leaders climb out of the morass.

Can Lencioni’s insights be helpful to churches? Some might claim that treating a church like a business is unspiritual. I’ve heard people say, “The church isn’t an organization; it’s a organism.” In the Bible, the church is never depicted as a profitmaking venture. And didn’t Jesus bring a whip into the temple and drive the moneychangers out? Yes, a church and a business ought to be different in many respects. But it is not unspiritual to acknowledge that, in the way that they operate, the two can be strikingly similar.

The Bible depicts the Church not as a human association but as the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, the family of God, and a spiritual house. But the church needs organizations in the same way that families need homes. A home provides the physical and social space that allows a family to operate. A family that becomes homeless is likely to fall apart. Similarly, without the environment provided by organizational structures, the life of a church would be impossible to sustain.

Organizations that are healthy have huge advantages over their competitors.

Once again, I can hear the objections. “Churches shouldn’t be competing with one another. We are all supposed to be on the same side.” I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. Competition among churches is distasteful.  But we need to face the cold, hard reality. After centuries of conflict – exacerbated, no doubt, by deficiencies in organizational health – the one, holy, catholic, apostolic church now presents itself through many different institutions, and believers have to choose among them. Belonging to a dysfunctional church is stressful.  If the organizational problems are too severe, sooner or later its members will depart for greener pastures. And eventually, the one who said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever” (Ge 6:3) may also bail out of an unhealthy church and choose to fulfill his purposes elsewhere.

Nursing an unhealthy organization back to health isn’t easy. It takes wisdom, intentionality and persistence. Lencioni’s book has loads of advice on how to do it. But organizational leaders often resist, because the work required may seem unglamorous. And it’s easier to ignore problems than to fess up to them.

 I suspect that many people don’t have a clue what organizational health means, because they’ve never actually seen a healthy organization up close. Lencioni offers a simple definition:

 “At its core, organizational health is about integrity, but not in the ethical or moral way that integrity is so often defined today. An organization has integrity – is healthy – when it is whole, consistent, and complete, that is, when its management, operations, strategy and culture fit together and make sense.”

A healthy organization understands and doesn’t hide its agenda. The purpose is clearly stated to insiders and outsiders. Its leaders and members behave in ways that are consistent with that purpose. Signs of a healthy organization include“minimal politics and confusion, high degrees of morale and productivity, and very low turnover among good employees.”

In contrast, an unhealthy organization is confused about its purpose. People aren’t sure what it’s about, because the leaders lack a unified direction and message. Human capital and resources are being wasted, with members devoting large amounts of time and energy to activities and projects that are unproductive. Over time, a high proportion of members leave.

A healthy organization isn’t perfect. It experiences conflict and makes plenty of mistakes. What sets the healthy organization apart is that its leaders look squarely at the problems, identify the sources, and respond with appropriate action. Healthy organizations cycle through problems and solutions more rapidly than unhealthy ones, and this gives them a competitive edge. Unhealthy organizations are unresponsive and slow to change, holding on to problematic practices without recognizing how counterproductive they are.

In essence, unhealthy organizations are collectively stupid. Lencioni doesn’t actually use that term. But he does explain that unhealthy organizations behave foolishly, and it’s not because the leaders lack intelligence. Individually, they may be capable and smart. But ingrained values, practices and culture prevent the organization from drawing upon the capacity of its members. Behaviors that would bring positive change are punished rather than rewarded. Leaders may have an average IQ of 130, but the group acts with a collective IQ of 70. Those who create and sustain problems are protected, and those who would solve problems are marginalized and pushed out.

People who remain in such organizations pay a heavy price. Lencioni writes:

“People who work in unhealthy organizations eventually come to see work as drudgery. They view success as being unlikely or, even worse, out of their control. This leads to a diminished sense of hope and even lower self-esteem, which leaks beyond the walls of the companies where they work, into their families where it often contributes to deep personal problems, the effects of which may be felt for years. This is nothing short of a tragedy, and a completely avoidable one.”

Perhaps you think that I’ve written this article as a backhanded way of criticizing UBF. Quite a few UBF leaders have been complaining about the negative tone of the articles and comments on UBFriends. “Don’t just criticize,” they say, “but provide constructive advice and real solutions.”

Well, Lencioni’s book gives plenty of constructive advice and solutions. In the weeks ahead, I’m willing to blog through this book, chapter by chapter, and dialogue about concrete steps that UBF leaders might consider to improve the health of the organization. But if there aren’t enough readers who will make a good-faith effort to participate in a constructive discussion, I fear it would just be a waste of time.

UBF in North America is in a state of crisis. In some places, it has been disintegrating rather quickly, and in other places the bleeding has been slow and steady, but signs are everywhere for those who have eyes to see. The most obvious sign is the large number of native leaders who have left the ministry, especially in the last couple of years, many of whom served alongside us for decades. They were (and still are) highly intelligent, creative and committed Christians, ready and willing to give and to serve. They include some of the best and brightest individuals I have ever known. Various circumstances caused them to leave, but no one can deny that, at the organizational level, UBF has failed to harness their talents and abilities in the service of Christ.

Some of you might say that I’m exaggerating. “We have problems, just as every church has problems. But don’t be so negative; God is still working among us.” Okay, God can and does still work, even in unhealthy churches. But that doesn’t absolve anyone of our God-given responsibility to identify and address the actual problems before us.

Perhaps I may never convince you that something is wrong. Perhaps you feel comfortable in UBF and would be happy for things to remain as they are indefinitely. Perhaps you think it’s wrong to be even having this discussion, and I should stop talking about it and get back to preaching the gospel and raising disciples. If so, then, God bless you. Perhaps God has given you other ways to serve in his kingdom, so go in peace and serve Christ wholeheartedly in the ways that he called you to serve. But don’t dismiss the possibility that some of us may have been called by God to identify and address the problems that you cannot or will not see.

Or perhaps you believe that discussing organizational matters is unspiritual.  You think that what the UBF really needs is a renewal of the gospel through massive corporate repentance. I hope and pray for repentance every day. But if and when repentance comes, people will begin to ask, “What should we do then?” (Lk 3:10) and someone needs to be ready with an answer. Repentance won’t erase years of history, nor will it instantly transform a community’s habits. Perhaps renewal is already taking place slowly and quietly in places that none of us have seen. But even if a moment of dramatic supernatural repentance arrives, I suspect that God will still ask those who are still around to do the difficult work of culturemaking and reconciliation. That work should be guided by knowledge, not intuition or guesswork.

Many Christians regard the psalms as divinely inspired model prayers that we ought to imitate. But if you actually try to use the psalms in your devotional life, you will find aspects of them that are puzzling. Some psalms are difficult to understand.  Others display attitudes that are  apparently  unChristlike. What should we do with the so-called cursing psalms that wish injury, violence and death on one’s enemies? And how should we handle verses like Psalm 131:1, “My heart is not proud, LORD, my eyes are not haughty…” It seems impossible to pray this without making yourself seem unbearably proud. Most English translations of the psalms maintain a style reminiscent of the King James Version, giving them a noble and churchy sound. But if you were to express the psalms in everyday language, they would appear so raw, unholy and unChristian that many congregations would think they are inappropriate for use in church.

Even the psalms that are gushing with praise toward God can be problematic. I find them hard to pray in an authentic manner because, frankly, the occasions when I feel that I can praise God like this are exceedingly rare. It’s not because God isn’t worthy of this kind of praise; he certainly is. But it’s a rare occasion when I can praise God without reservation. Life is stressful, full of disappointments, trials, hurts and defeats. Those psalms sound like they can be be uttered only by super-spiritual, high-level Christians, not by ordinary sinners like me. My renditions of these psalms seems to fall flat.

For the past several years, our church at Penn State has been trying to incorporate psalms into our Sunday worship service. And I have been using them in my own personal devotions and in times of family prayer. This experience has been partly rewarding and partly disappointing.  I’ve read a few books about the book of Psalms and learned some useful things. I believe that the psalms are important. Yet I still don’t feel that I deeply grasp how to use them in personal and corporate worship.

One of the reasons why modern Christians are puzzled by Psalms is that many of us tend to ignore their genre.  We approach them in the same manner as all the other parts of the Bible. We asked the usual questions: What is the message intended by the author? What are the principles and lessons that God is trying to teach me now?

It’s easy to forget that psalms are songs. More precisely, they are the lyrics to ancient songs in Hebrew whose original tunes have been forgotten. The psalms were designed for private singing and liturgical performance. They became the background music of the Jewish religious life.

Songs are different from historical narratives and logical discourse. They appeal to a whole person, to our heads, hearts and guts, and impact us in powerful and subtle ways that mere words cannot.

The effect that a song has on a person depends on how the song is performed. The same lyric sung to a different tune can produce drastically different results. Shifts in tempo and key can transform a song into something far from what the original composer or performer imagined.

Back in the early 1980’s, one of the most popular tunes in America was Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper. It was a squeaky, bouncy pop song about a young, working class woman who regularly stayed out late partying with her friends. The song was addressed to the girl’s disapproving parents, and she pleaded with them to understand her thrill-seeking lifestyle. In 2007, a male singer named Greg Laswell, recorded the same song in a different style. He sung it much slower to a different tune, and the effect on the listener is radically different.

A song can be sung in many different ways. But even if it’s always performed in exactly the same manner, it can evoke diverse emotions depending on who the listeners are and the context in which they are hearing it.

Consider the hymnbook that is used in UBF chapters throughout the United States. To younger people, many of the hymns in that book sound stodgy and dreary. But once upon a time, all those hymns were brand new. They reflected musical styles and tastes that were popular in their day. Some of the melodies were adapted from popular folk songs. When they were sung for the first time, some churchgoers thought they were inappropriate. After a while, congregations grew accustomed to them, and the songs began to seem churchy and devout. A few generations later, they began to sound dated.

Perceptions of songs change over time. And even when people are in the same place at the same time, they can perceive the same song very differently. Imagine a church where different generations are worshiping together. Imagine that they sing one of the old traditional hymns like The Old Rugged Cross. What is going through people’s minds? Chances are the older folks really like it. The song feels pious to them, and it evokes positive emotions and memories from their past. But the younger people who didn’t share those experiences may feel indifferent. To them, the hymn sounds boring. And perhaps some will find it offensive, because they sense a hidden message of intergenerational judgment and rebuke. Through that song, they hear a voice telling them that their youth culture is sinful and they ought to be getting back to the values of their elders, back to the supposedly purer and holier faith of the past.

A song is a complex form of art whose effects on people are diverse, subjective and malleable. It does not carry a unique message for all people at all times. The meaning of a song is hard to separate from the culture in which the song is embedded.

Last year, when my family was on vacation, we were listening to the car radio. We came across a show where they were talking about the comedian Jimmy Fallon. Fallon is a talented impersonator. They played a clip of Jimmy Fallon doing an impersonation of Neil Young singing the pop song Whip My Hair. And in the middle of the song, Bruce Springsteen walks out on stage and joins in. The performance was hilarious. What made it hilarious was the sound of Fallon’s voice, the strange mix of personalities and the complex crossing of intergenerational cultural references. Suppose you take that recording and bury it in a time capsule. Imagine that a hundred years from now, someone opens the time capsule and listens to the recording. Would they get it? Probably not. Would they laugh? Probably not. If they hear the howls of laughter coming from the audience, they would sense that it was very funny in its time. But unless they were experts who immersed themselves in our culture, they wouldn’t have a clue why it would be funny.

So what does this mean for us if we open the book of Psalms and try to use these song-prayers today? It’s tempting for us to try to understand a psalm on its own terms. We may want to get back to the meaning of the text as the composer and performers originally viewed it. But that will be nearly impossible. The original meanings were rooted in an ancient culture that we no longer understand.

Does this mean that using the psalms today is futile because the original meaning has been lost? Not at all. We just need to recognize that the feelings and messages evoked by a psalm will change with the context. Adaptation to context is normal and natural. I believe that this is part of what it means that Scripture is God-breathed, living and active (2Ti 3:16, Heb 4:12).

Many of the psalms appear to have been composed during the pre-exilic period (roughly 1000-586 BC) when Solomon’s temple was still standing. Other psalms (for example, Psalm 137) were written during the Babylonian exile or during the so-called Second Temple period after the exiles returned home. Imagine how a psalm from the First Temple period might sound to a Second Temple audience. A grand hymn that originally evoked solemnity and awe when it was performed in Solomon’s temple might, in the Second Temple period, bring out a mixture of confusion and tears. Was it wrong for the different audience to react differently? No, it wasn’t. In the years leading up to coming of Christ, when messianic fever was running high, the Jews must have read their nationalistic hopes and expectations into the psalms. Was it wrong for them to do so? No, it wasn’t. After the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, his disciples did some wholesale reinterpretation of the psalms in light of the events they had witnessed. Was it wrong for them to do so? No, it wasn’t. When Benedictine monks from the sixth century incorporated the psalms into their monastic life, their understanding of the psalms was shaped by their own unique experience and was somewhat different from what the early Christians thought of them. Was it wrong for them to interpret the psalms in light of their unique experiences? No, it wasn’t. And consider how the psalms were heard by 19th century African-American slaves longing for freedom. Their understanding may have been unlike that of anyone who came before.

As we read the psalms today, we shouldn’t just be looking at some words on the page and trying to discern their original intent. Original intent does matter, and if anyone can discern what the original intent was, then let me be the first to say, “Bravo.” But that original intent is only a small part of what these living, breathing song-prayers can bring to us today.  Each psalm can be a window through which we take in breathtaking views of the panorama of God’s history through the ages. It’s astounding to think of the variety of ways that God’s people interacted with him through the words of the psalms. They are not just ancient words on a page. They are divinely inspired songs that are lying dormant, waiting for creative and faithful believers to pick them up and allow the Holy Spirit to breathe new life into them at any moment.

Basically, I was taught to examine short portions of Scripture – a few verses or a chapter at a time – and then carefully notice the details, deduce the meaning, and strive for personal application. It was assumed that every passage had a self-contained message aimed directly at my situation today. I was supposed to ask myself: Are there promised to claim? Commands to obey? Sins to be repented of? The outcome of every Bible study was supposed to be some kind of revelatory, life-changing experience (accepting “one word”) that could be shared in a written testimony. If that experience didn’t happen, it was because something was wrong with me, because I hadn’t tried hard enough, gone deep enough, repented sincerely enough, and so on. To strive for anything less than a personal revelatory experience in each Bible study was to demonstrate a lack of faith in the Bible as the inspired word of God.

I don’t think this method is categorically wrong. It can sometimes produce useful results, especially when applied to portions of the New Testament. But it is not the sole, divinely-ordained and God honoring way to approach Scripture. This method has plenty of shortcomings. For example, it ignores the fact that Scripture was written as books, and focusing on short passages tends to obscure the message of the book. And the focus on personal interpretation tends to neglect the role of Christian tradition. In effect, it substitutes one’s local community tradition for the understanding and testimony of saints through the ages.

This method can be unhealthy when applied to parts of the Old Testament. When studying the OT, the temptation to treat every passage as timeless commands and principles must be resisted. No Christian can sensibly treat the OT as commands to be obeyed today. To do so would create a religious system full of legalism, nationalism (us-versus-them thinking) and violence. I was taught to interpret the OT commands allegorically, adapting them to my church’s understanding of its present mission in the world. For example, God’s commands to Israel to conquer the land of Canaan became a metaphor for conquering college campuses with the gospel and our church’s specific brand of discipleship. At the time, I thought this was a reasonable way to honor the OT as the inspired word of God while making it relevant to my immediate situation. But now I believe that there are much better ways to approach the OT that are more consistent with the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Now I am striving to read the OT not as a series of commands and principles, but as the colorful, beautiful and sometimes disturbing story of how God interacted with the nation of Israel. I try to remember that the OT story is a progressive revelation that reaches its fullness in Jesus. The religion of the OT is only a murky shadow of the reality of God revealed in Christ (Col 2:17, Heb 10:1). God’s full, authoritative self-revelation is not contained in written words of the OT but in the living person of Jesus Christ (Heb 1:1-3)

In the remainder of this article, I’d like to explore some ideas about how to read the Pauline epistles in a way that is both realistic and honoring of their central place in the theology and life of the church. Specifically, I want to ask these two questions.

First: Did Paul possess some kind of infallibility that came from his God-given position as an apostle? Or was he a sinful, fallible leader who often made mistakes?

Second: If we accept that Paul did make mistakes, how would that influence our approach to reading his Epistles and applying his apostolic teachings to modern life?

To me, that first question seems straightforward. Jesus Christ lived a sinless life, but his followers did not. The four gospels paint an honest, transparent and somewhat embarrassing portrait of the apostles during the three-year ministry of Jesus, highlighting their numerous mistakes and failures. After the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples (on all of the disciples, not merely the apostles) and empowered them to be living witnesses of the risen Christ. The Holy Spirit worked through them but did not wipe out their sinful nature. The apostles’ positions of leadership did not give them any special exemption, and throughout their lives they needed to learn and receive correction. One obvious example is described in Galatians 2:11-14, where Peter was distancing himself from Gentile Christians and Paul publicly rebuked him for it.

Paul too must have made mistakes. Despite his best efforts and intentions, he remained a sinful man living in sinful times. When God appointed him as an apostle, he did not magically wipe out Paul’s failings but worked powerfully through Paul despite his failings as a testament to grace.

The Roman Catholic church maintains a doctrine of papal infallibility. In that view, the pope’s pronouncements are considered reliable and true when he is making decisions in his official capacity as leader of the church. Protestants reject the notion of infallibility. However, it is worth pointing out that even in the Catholic view, infallibility pertains to only one person, the bishop of Rome, and only when he is speaking ex cathedra, in his official capacity as pope. Moreover, Catholics claim that the first bishop of Rome was Peter, not Paul. So even if one were to accept the Catholic view, Paul would not have any special infallibility.

The book of Acts presents Paul as a strict Pharisee who persecuted Christians but then underwent a profound conversion on the road to Damascus. Almost immediately, within a few days, he began to zealously preach in the name of Jesus, but is preaching stirred up a great deal of opposition. Paul retreated into a quiet period of personal growth. Some years later, Barnabas brought him to Antioch where he became a prominent teacher. From there, he and Barnabas received a special calling and commission from the Holy Spirit and were sent out on their first missionary journey. I believe that Paul’s walk with Christ was always a work in progress.  There was no point at which he magically became an infallible leader. Rather, he must have been actively growing throughout his life, seeking God’s guidance in his weakness and continually learning from his mistakes.

That first question was easy to answer, but the second one is more thorny. If we acknowledge that Paul was a sinful human leader who made mistakes, how should that influence our reading of the Epistles and their application to us today?

One possible answer is to ignore this and act as though the limitations of Paul didn’t impact his Epistles at all. For many conservative evangelicals, admitting Paul’s limitations would be a scary thing, as it would seem to undermine the authority of the Bible as the inerrant, infallible word of God.

For the record, please understand that I believe the Bible is authoritative and that it testifies to its own authority. Scripture says that it is Spirit-inspired, a God-breathed living system capable of dynamically speaking with Christian individuals and communities (2Ti 3:16, Heb 4:12). I believe that God continually breathes new life into us as we seek to hear his voice through Scripture.  I believe that if we approach the Bible in a reverent, careful and honest fashion, that what it can teach us is truthful and trustworthy. But I do not believe that Scripture claims that it is inerrant in the plain English meaning of that word. To plausibly argue that Scripture is inerrant requires a great deal of nuanced and careful explanation of what that word actually means.

To suggest that Paul’s sinfulness and human limitations did not make their way into the Epistles is, in my opinion, not a plausible stance. To believe this, we would have to think that Paul operated in two different states or modes. We would have to think that, most of the time, as Paul went about his daily business and spoke and interacted with people, he would exhibit the characteristics of a fallen sinner in need of God’s redemptive grace. But on the few occasions when (unbeknownst to him) he was composing a letter that would later become part of the canon of Scripture, God miraculously covered up all his sinful or mistaken tendencies and produced written works with no marks of human fallibility. In effect, there would be two versions of Paul: the fallible human Paul who lived in a fallen world serving in a fallen church,  and the infallible superhuman version of Paul who spoke through the Epistles.

If we imagine that Paul spoke through the Epistles without error, it would suggest that the all the teachings he gave to his readers were (unless he specifically stated so) coming directly from the mouth of God, as if they were spoken by Jesus himself. There would be no question that all his teachings were absolutely binding on the early church. Then the only question would be, “Are all of these teachings equally binding on us today?” To my knowledge, there is no sensible Christian who would answer yes and keep that with any degree of consistency. For example, I know Christians who believe, based on 1 Timothy 2:12, that women should never be allowed to teach men. But these same people do not insist, based on 1 Corinthians 11:13, that women must keep their hair long or cover their heads when they pray. Everyone who reads Paul’s instructions as God-given teachings makes judgments that some teachings are local, limited to Christians in specific times and places, whereas others are universal, meant to be obeyed by all Christians for all time. Many of these decisions appear to be subjective and haphazard. The impulses and standards by which they make these decisions are rarely explained and usually come down to gut instinct.

It seems to me that, if we imagine that when Paul is writing the Epistles that he is issuing instructions to his readers directly from the mouth of God, then we are immediately placing ourselves in the position of having to decide which instructions we are to keep and which ones we are allowed to discard. This is a position that I find awkward and uncomfortable.

Is there a way to read the Epistles that is less awkward and more realistic, a way that recognizes Paul is an imperfect man weakened by his own sinfulness and by the limitations of his culture, and yet still honors those writings as canonical and God-breathed?

I believe there is. I suggest that we can approach the Pauline epistles in a way that is not radically different from how we ought to be reading the narratives of the Old Testament. The Epistles are something like narratives. They are letters from an apostle to the churches of his day. These letters open for us a window into the life of the first-century Christian community. We can treat them as divinely inspired first-person accounts of how one man, who is a great apostle and yet a fallible sinner, is doing his best to faithfully shepherd the flock that God has entrusted to his care.  God is working powerfully through Paul, but he is never speaking through him in a way that overrides Paul’s humanity. In some respects, Paul is unique. As the first apostle to the Gentiles, God has given him special insight and a special task of helping to define many of the basic doctrines of the early church. But in other respects, Paul is not so different from other church leaders at other times. He makes mistakes. He has personal opinions, cultural biases and character flaws.  As we read the Epistles, we strive to keep in mind both his uniqueness and his ordinariness. The main question on our minds is not, “Do these God-given teachings apply only to Paul’s audience, or do they also apply to us?” Rather, we continually ask ourselves, “What do these dialogues between Paul and the first-century church teach us about the character of God, the nature of the gospel, and the purpose of the church?”

Maintaining a primary focus on God, the gospel and the church does not mean that we will never have to face tough questions about what the implications are for us today. Those questions will eventually have to be asked. But it seems to me that they are secondary and should be brought up later, after we meditate long and hard about the first things first.

This is my response to your report “How to Read and Study the Bible” which you gave at our 2005 summer conference. Please accept this as constructive criticism from an informed source. I know a great deal about you, more than you realize. And my existence and prosperity depend on you.

When you said those things in your report, you spoke with an air of certainty and conviction. You tried to sound as though you were declaring absolute truth directly from God’s mouth. Face it: those declarations were applause lines. To that audience, they made your message “powerful.” But none of them are absolutes. For each of those statements, an informed reader of the Bible could give counterexamples. Real life and the Bible are more complicated than you suggest.

Here’s something I’ve noticed about you, Joe-2005. Whenever you give a message, you talk about principles. You seem to think that the Christian life is about identifying biblical principles and mixing them together in just the right proportions. Don’t get me wrong. The Bible does contain principles. But a principle-based approach to Scripture grows tiresome and stale, because that’s not how people really think. The human mind is a processor of stories. That’s why most of the Bible is written as narrative. The Pentateuch is not a list of laws; it’s a story of how Israel was given the law, and that story is more important than the laws themselves.

I could go through your message and critique all your principles, but I won’t. Instead I will make some general observations about story.

Observation #1: Your message affirms your community’s story.

Why did the people in your audience like your message? Was it because you got your principles just right? Of course not. As they listened, they were reading between the lines. What they heard was a well educated American man validating and promoting a story that is very dear to them, a story for which they sacrificed their lives.

All your messages have this same basic quality. They are built on the story that’s told again and again at through UBF messages, testimonies and mission reports. The story is based on actual events, but it’s a selective and subjective shaping of those events. To longtime UBF members, that story sounds beautiful and exciting. It evokes powerful memories and makes them feel privileged to be a part of it. They see it as the great story of their lives, and they long to see others adopt the story and live in it too.

In a nutshell, the story goes like this. In the early 1960’s, God began a great work in South Korea. A young female American missionary left her missionary compound and lived among the poor. Together with a young Korean pastor, they taught the Bible to university students. Instead of relying on outside funds, the movement became independent and self-supporting. Students overcame their “beggar mentality” and sacrificed everything to support this work. In absolute obedience to Jesus’ world mission command, they went overseas to preach the gospel. God blessed all their sacrifice, hard work, simple faith, etc. and transformed Korea from a nation that receives outside help to a nation that sends missionaries throughout the world. Unlike other churches and movements, this group raises highly committed disciples who are extremely disciplined in Bible study and prayer. They marry by faith, support themselves on the mission field, excel in their studies and become leading doctors, engineers, diplomats and professors. Although they seem highly intelligent, their success is not due to their intelligence but to their self-denial, their boldness in proclaiming the gospel, their absolute obedience and their uncomplicated, childlike faith. Their unique disciplines (Daily Bread, testimony writing, obedience training, marriage by faith, etc.) and their pure, inductive approach to Bible study are extremely potent, and other churches could learn a great deal from them. As they faithfully continue in this special calling, God will use them to sent thousands more missionaries and raise countless disciples on university campuses throughout the world. And this is going to transform the nations. For example, it will turn the United States from corruption to its former glory as a nation of people who trust in God. As disciples are raised and missionaries are sent out, each nation will become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

This was the story told by Samuel Lee. When he spoke, he told stories that made people smile. Those stories were repeated over and over and became community folklore. The details of his stories were not always factual. He often stretched the truth to make his points. But people didn’t mind because, even if the details weren’t true, those stories supported the larger community that they believed. This, I think, is a key reason why the disciples he raised are so strongly committed. People won’t sacrifice their lives for a principle. But they will give anything to support a person whom they love and to advance a story that deeply inspires them.

And this, Joe-2005, is why you get invited to speak so often: because you affirm the community story and enhance its credibility. You are a feather in their cap. You are an anomaly, a white North American with a Ph.D. from Harvard who has remained in this Korean-led church to live within its story and advance it. Within UBF, you are a mythical hero who has done great things. Those stories don’t really reflect who you are and how you live. But you aren’t willing to reveal your true self yet. You still want to enjoy that recognition and acceptance.

Observation #2: That community story cannot explain the Bible.

When I say that your church’s members are living in a story, I’m not saying that they are deluded. They are just doing what human beings do. Every person has a story, and every community has a story. Those stories get shaped and revised over time. Stories are the means by which people make sense of their lives. Stories are the stuff of human culture.

The Bible is also a collection of stories about specific people in specific times. The Old Testament is about Israel and the Jews. The New Testament is about Jesus, the apostles and the Church. But taken together, they declare the Great Story, the metanarrative that tells all people what life is all about. It explains how we came to our present state, and it reveals where the world is headed. Protestants tend to describe this story into four great acts: Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration. Redemption was achieved through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Now we are living in the time of Restoration. It is the age of the Church and the Holy Spirit, bearing witness to Jesus until he returns to fully unveil his kingdom. To be a Christian is to accept that Great Story as true and to live within its context. Christian communities must maintain their own stories, but they need to understand how those stories fit into the Great Story. Their need to keep putting that Great Story in the front and center and make their own stories subservient to it.

In your approach to the Bible, Joe-2005, you haven’t been doing this. Here is a revealing quote from your message: “It is when we study the Bible within the context of our own purpose and mission that the application becomes relevant and the word of God really comes alive” [italics yours]. You are resting on your local community story and confusing it with the Great Story. When you read the Bible, you instinctively focus on elements that support your community’s activities and values. All the elements that don’t fit your paradigm are glossed over; your eyes don’t see them anymore.

You read into the Bible your community’s categories. Your community has a category called “Bible teacher.” This is an idealized person who finds sheep and engages in one-to-one Bible study, which means sitting down with a sheep, reading short passages of Scripture, and discussing those passages by responding to questions typed on a sheet of paper. That activity may work well in certain contexts. But none of the characters in the Bible did that. You said that Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David, the prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus and the apostles were all Bible teachers. Those men engaged the word of God and taught others. But none of them resembled your community’s category of Bible teacher. If you could travel back in time and ask them, “What is your mission?” none of them would have said, “I study the Bible with sheep and help them to do what the Bible teaches.” They couldn’t think in your terms. The Bible as you know it didn’t exist at that time. Bible teacher is your category, not theirs. Please hear me out. I’m not saying that becoming a Bible teacher is wrong. I’m saying that when your church members hear “Bible teacher,” they have a specific concept in mind. And when you state that characters in the Bible were Bible teachers, you treat that community concept as a divinely inspired principle that work for all people at all times. You state that with such conviction and certainty, even though there is not a single example of anyone in the Bible who fits your image of a Bible teacher.

And you insert into the Bible your community’s language. Here is another quote from your message: “Jesus was not merely a teacher; he was also a trainer.” That statement would be okay if you understood training as what Jesus did with his apostles. But that’s not how your church members use that word. For them, training is a loaded term. It includes all the methods that Samuel Lee used to fashion disciples, first in Korea and then in the United States. Whether you realize it or not, you are implicitly lumping together all those practices that your church members think of as training and then suggesting that Jesus did it all. But Jesus didn’t do many of those things. Is there any record of Jesus or the apostles acting as matchmakers and arranging marriages for anyone in the church? No, there isn’t. Matchmaking is not found in the New Testament. Nor is testimony writing, testimony sharing, and so on. When you state with conviction that Jesus was a trainer, you plant the idea that your church is doing exactly what Jesus did. You equate things that are not equal. Your message is full of sloppy language that results from sloppy thinking.

This is what you have done. You have canonized your community’s story and are reading the Bible in light of that story. It’s a provincial approach to Scripture that resonates with members of your church but sounds strange to outsiders. How would your message be received by Christians outside of UBF? They would sense that it is infused with the values of a small, insular community that they do not understand. They would sense that you think your community’s story is superior to theirs. You have gotten so wrapped up in your community’s story that you no longer critique it.

You’ve shrunk the Great Story into a handbook for how to be a successful campus evangelist. Nothing in the Bible surprises you anymore. Nothing in the Bible disturbs you anymore. You’ve stopped wrestling with fundamental questions because you’re convinced that you’ve got the big picture figured out.

How do you read those passages about the military conquest of Canaan? You treat them as allegories for living a victorious Christian life and conquering the fallen world with the gospel. Once upon a time, you didn’t know what to make of those passages. You were horrified that God’s people were apparently being commanded to engage in ethnic cleansing and genocide. You had no idea how to reconcile the cruelties of the Old Testament with the gentle image of Jesus and the apostles. For two thousand years, Christians have tried various ways to address these and other problematic aspects of Scripture, and they haven’t been able to agree on any single approach. In so many respects, the Bible remains enigmatic and elusive. But you’ve taken those difficult aspects of the Bible and allegorized and spiritualized them away. You’ve stopped asking tough questions about the Bible because others have suggested to you that raising those questions could weaken your faith and distract you from your mission.

In your allegorical reading of the Old Testament, you place yourself and your group and the Church in the position of God’s chosen people and identify the outsiders as Canaanites. Those are dangerous waters, Joe-2005, and you don’t have the experience or maturity to navigate them properly. Isn’t that the essence of what the Pharisees were doing? Isn’t that the fatal mistake of Constantine which eventually led to Crusades, colonialism, and missionary triumphalism?

Ideas have consequences in real life. Those ideas about how to approach the Bible are influencing you more than you realize.

Your approach affects how you relate to the people in your life. Based on your reading of the Old Testament, you’ve concluded that the ideal Christian is a courageous tough guy who always soldiers on, staying on task even if some people get hurt along the way. Broken relationships have become acceptable losses along the road to victory. You expect people in your fellowship to stay in line and keep marching no matter what. You treat them as fellow soldiers and coworkers but not as friends.

Your approach makes it hard for you to relate to other Christians. You’ve invested so much in your community’s story that you can’t understand people whose stories are different. Do their stories have the same validity as yours? Does yours supersede and override theirs? Those are tough questions, and you don’t know how to process them. For now, you avoid those people and the questions they raise.

And your approach shapes how you relate to God. You read promises into Scripture that aren’t really there. You think God has been saying to you, “Joe-2005, if you just stop being a wimp and live as a one-to-one Bible teacher and help me make America into a kingdom of priests and holy nation, then I will bring you into the promised land and make you prosper.” You assume that all the problems in your life stem from the fact that God is not pleased with you, because you’re failing to live out that idealized mission of your community’s story.

Your present approach to the Bible isn’t categorically wrong. It did help you for a while. But you’ve gotten stuck in this approach and, as a result, you’ve stopped growing. You’ve locked up Scripture into a box and aren’t experiencing its creative power. It’s been a long, long time since your reading of the Bible challenged your fundamental understanding of God and the gospel. That, my friend, needs to change.

Growth requires that we acknowledge this subjectivity.  A person who is emotionally and spiritually mature knows many of his own prejudices and understands where they came from.  He will allow his prejudices to be examined and challenged as he engages in respectful dialogue with those who see things differently from him.

For Christians who maintain a high view of Scripture, it is tempting to think that we are reading the Bible straight, that we are getting back to the original and plain meaning of the text. But everyone is reading through a lens. As Paul wrote, “For now we see through a glass, darkly” (1Co 13:12, KJV). From time to time, it’s helpful to stop looking at Scripture and consider the lens through which we read it.

Most of the time, we look through our glasses, not at them. But occasionally we need to take them off and examine them to see if they need to be cleaned or adjusted. And sometimes we need to get a new prescription. A single pair of eyeglasses doesn’t work for a lifetime. When you get a new pair of glasses, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the old glasses are inferior or flawed. You are simply admitting that time has passed, that you are older and more mature, and that he old pair just isn’t working anymore.

For some time now, I’ve been reading and thinking about hermeneutics. (For the normal people out there, “hermeneutics” is a fancy-pants term for processes of Scriptural interpretation.  It rhymes with “schmermeneutics.”) I’ve been examining the hermeneutic that I had been given by my church, a hermeneutic which seemed to work for me in the past but now is no longer working.  I’ve been trying to identify and critique my own biases by examining how various groups of Christians approach the Bible. The big question on my mind is, “How should I be approaching Scripture at this stage in my spiritual journey?” I’m not ready to answer that question yet.  But I do think that I can identify many of my own biases. That is, I can accurately describe the ways that my church taught me to approach Scripture, ways that I accepted, endorsed and promoted.

To see whether I really do understand how I was taught to approach Scripture, I conducted a thought experiment. I imagined myself as I was back in 2005. Someone has invited me to attend a UBF conference and give a special lecture on how to study the Bible. I imagined what I would have said back then and wrote it down. The report that I produced is not a satire. I deliberately tried to avoid caricature and sarcasm, because I didn’t want it to be perceived as mocking or demeaning. It my best attempt to describe what I once believed and taught, presenting it in the most charitable and positive light that I can, in the hope of generating respectful discussion and constructive criticism.

Please read this report and tell me what you think. For those of you who were discipled in UBF, is this an accurate description of what you were taught? For those of you who knew me in 2005, is this the kind of report that I would have given back then?

And please join my experiment in the following manner. Imagine that you – the person that you are today – are attending a conference and hearing me – Joe Schafer, as I was in 2005 – giving this lecture to a live audience. Imagine “Joe 2005” presenting it with positivity and enthusiasm. When the conference is over, you write a personal letter or email to Joe-2005 explaining what you thought of his lecture. Please be honest and tell him what you really think. What did he say that was good and true? Is anything wrong? Is anything missing? Do any of his points need counterbalance? Does Joe-2005 seem to have a mature outlook? If not, what issues does he need to think about? Where should he go to improve his perspective?

If you participate in this experiment, please address your comments to Joe-2005, and remember that he was (and still is) an actual person. Although Joe-2005 may hold views similar to those of members and leaders of his church, you are not writing to UBF in general, nor to any current or former leaders. You are personally communicating with Joe-2005. Remember that he has feelings and commitments. If you speak to him without sensitivity, he might not be able to process what you are saying. But if you feel the need to be brutally honest and say something that appears harsh, that’s okay. Use your best judgment.

At some point in the future, Joe-2012 may write a letter to Joe-2005 about his presentation. If so, I will share it with you. But I want to hear from you first. Please react to this presentation and begin your responses with “Dear Joe-2005.”

And if you address a comment to Joe-2005, you just might get a response from him.

HOW TO READ AND STUDY THE BIBLE

(hypothetical presentation by Joe Schafer in July 2005)

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22).

Part 1: We should approach the Bible as the word of God

Thank you for inviting me to come and speak on the all-important topic of we approach Scripture. How do we approach the Bible? How should we approach the Bible? These questions are so important. The condition of our souls and the trajectory of our lives is largely determined by how we approach the Bible.

The most important thing I will tell you tonight is this. We need to approach the Bible as the word of God. Sarah Barry, the General Director of UBF, has said that the turning point of her life was when she, as a young university student, decided to read and study the Bible as the word of God. She began to treat the words of Scripture not as the utterings of human beings, but as the God of the universe speaking directly to her. When she decided to approach the Bible as the word of God, her relationship with God suddenly came alive and the course of her life was altered forever.

The Bible needs to be read, and it needs to be studied. We shouldn’t approach the Bible as if it were a textbook. A textbook can be read informationally, but the Bible should be read formationally. The Bible does contains lots of information to understand and digest. But God didn’t give us the Bible to fill our heads with knowledge. He gave us the Bible to repair our character, to re-mold and remake us in the image of Jesus Christ.

The Bible should also be read frequently. I’m sure you are familiar with Psalm chapter 1. Psalm 1 declares that the person who is truly blessed is the person who meditates on God’s law day and night. Those words “day and night” are really daunting. Is that a hyperbole? Is it an exaggeration? Some statements in the Bible are hyperbole. But in this case, I think it’s accurate. Very few people have a lifestyle that allows them to spend long periods of time each day and night to read and study Scripture. But we all have the freedom to direct our thoughts toward God’s word anytime we choose. Throughout the day, as we go about our business, our minds go in all sorts of directions. We think, worry, calculate and daydream. But by practice and self discipline and with God’s help, we can successfully direct our attention back where it should be, focused on the words that God has given. But we can say with confidence that the person who does this will be blessed, and is life will fruitful in all sorts of ways; everything he does will prosper (Ps 1:3).

As a career academic, I live in a world of theories and ideas. It’s a great challenge for me to bring Bible study out of the realm of abstraction into real life. Yet the Bible is about all about real life. It contains real commands from God that need to be taken seriously and implemented in real life. For this reason, I suggest that any session of Bible study, wither individually or in a group, ought to end with a solid point, something concrete that we are actually going to do based on what we learned. It’s okay to muse about this and that, but at the end of the day, we need to let God’s word operate on the real issues of life.

And that is the essence of what it means to walk as Jesus’ disciple. We weren’t called to live as nominal Christians. We were called to be disciples of Jesus. Since Jesus died and rose and ascended to heaven, we no longer have him here to communicate with us. We now have the Bible as the primary means through which we communicate and interact with God. The word of God created the world, and the word of God breathes new life into us. 1 Peter 1:23 says, “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”

Part 2: We should read the Bible in light of our mission

It is when we study the Bible within the context of our own purpose and mission that the application becomes relevant and the word of God really comes alive.

The Bible begins with the book of Genesis. Genesis explains that God made everything for a purpose. He made human beings with a mission and purpose, which is to be rulers and stewards over the earth (Ge 1:28). After sin entered the world, the ground became cursed, and our lives were filled with meaningless toil (Ge 3:17-19). We lost the noble mission of ruling and our lives were reduced to struggle for survival. But soon God began to work to restore that mission. In Genesis chapter 12, God called Abraham to begin a new history by living a new kind of life, a life of faith in obedience to God’s word. God promised Abraham that he would bless him and make him a blessing (Ge 12:1-3). That blessing is a reversal of Adam’s curse. But it didn’t happen right away. It was a process that evolved over many generations.

Through Abraham and his descendants, God raised a new nation, the nation of Israel. He delivered them from slavery in Egypt (a vivid depiction of the life of curse) and brought them into the promised land. God’s hope and purpose for the Israelites is described in Exodus 19:5-6: he intended them to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” But God didn’t force them, and it didn’t go according to his plan. Once they came into the promised land of Canaan, that glorious purpose began to fade. Once they got a taste of milk and honey, they indulged themselves and forgot their mission. They fell into an easygoing lifestyle. They lost their thankfulness for God’s grace of deliverance and began to lust after foreign gods. Their walk of faith degenerated into superficial observance of traditions and rites of worship. God rebuked them through many prophets but they stubbornly refused to listen. Eventually God’s people were invaded by foreign armies; their temple was destroyed and the people were carried off into exile. When they their mission, they lost everything.

But God wasn’t finished with them. After 70 years of Babylonian captivity, God returned a remnant and rebuilt the nation through them. And a few centuries later, something remarkable happened. The New Testament opens with a man on a mission. His name is John the Baptist,  and he preached a new message of repentance and forgiveness. And he prepared the way for the coming of Jesus. Jesus was no ordinary prophet. He was God’s one and only Son. Jesus embarked on a three-year ministry. He took care of the needy crowds, healed the sick and cast out demons. Yet his focus was on teaching the word of God and raising a handful of disciples to become leaders and shepherds of the future church. At the end of his ministry, Jesus suffered and died on cross to pay price for our sins. He paid for all our sins – past, present and future. And his resurrection demonstrates that he achieved complete victory over sin and death.

The risen Jesus gave this command to his followers: “Go and make disciples of all nations…”(Mt 28:19). This so-called Great Commission is the mission statement for the Church of Jesus Christ. This is the grand purpose on which the church rises or falls. We were called by Jesus and saved by him not merely for ourselves, but to declare his saving truth to others. 1 Peter 2:9 says, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Note the similarity between this verse and Exodus 19:5-6. The two are really saying the same thing. God saves us and makes us his people in order to serve him by declaring his glories to the world.

And this leads me to my next point about the mission of Jesus’ disciples. Throughout the world, Christians are engaged in many acts of mercy. They are feeding the poor and clothing the naked. They are building orphanages, hospitals, and schools to improve people’s lives in this world. All these activities are good. But at the end of the day, there is no eternal benefit to people unless these activities happen within the context of preaching and teaching. Very early in the ministry of Jesus, he went into Capernaum to proclaim the word of God. He also healed the sick and cast out demons. As a result, many more needy people came to him to be healed. His disciples wanted him to stay there and establish an institutionalized system for social work. But Jesus refused to stay. “Jesus replied, ‘Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come’” (Mk 1:38). Jesus did take care of people’s human needs. But he gave first priority to teaching God’s word and raising disciples. He did teach the crowds, but his primary method was not mass evangelism. It was personal interaction with his disciples on an individual basis. It was a one-to-one ministry. When Jesus spent time with one disciple, he was not merely helping that disciple; he was helping all the other people that the disciple would help for the remainder of his life. And he was helping all the people that those people would help. This is a Biblical principle that goes back to God’s interaction with Abraham. One person is not just a person. One person is a nation. When you teaching one person, you may actually be influencing a whole nation for many generations to come.

Jesus was not merely a teacher; he was also a trainer. He gave his disciples on-the-job training to live a godly life and to take care of God’s flock. And he commanded them to do to same. In the Great Commission he said, “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Mt 28:20). It is very important that we do not lose this point. A Bible teacher is not merely an instructor; he is also a leader and a trainer. He is a shepherd. This emphasis on teaching and shepherding is one of the unifying themes of the whole Bible. The book of Genesis reaches a climax in the final chapters where Joseph became Bible teacher for his brothers, training them and leading them to repent and return to God. All of the great servants of the Bible — Moses,  Samuel, David, the prophets, and so on – were all Bible teachers. They declared God’s word to their generation and taught the Bible on the college campuses of their day. The same thing happens in the New Testament. John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and so on – they are all shepherds and Bible teachers.  Of course, the best example in this regard is Jesus, who is our Chief Shepherd and Bible teacher. The best methods and practices to follow are those of Jesus. Jesus shared a common life with his disciples in order to teach them the Bible by his own words and example. Through sharing a common life, the disciples overcame selfishness and learned love and compassion. Though they failed again and again, Jesus loved them just the same, restoring them from failure until they became the world’s best Bible teachers and shepherds and disciplemakers. Raising disciples who can teach and make other disciples is the way that the kingdom of God spreads.

Of course, Christians are not all the same. We have different talents and callings. We are not all called to preach Sunday worship messages or to lead fellowship meetings. But every Christian can be a Bible student and a Bible teacher. Every person can be a shepherd and a disciplemaker in his own life context. This is what the Great Commission demands. No matter what you say about Jesus, you can’t ignore the fact that all three of the synoptic gospels ends with a Great Commission. And the Gospel of John ends with a threefold command to feed Jesus’ sheep because we love him (John 21:15). Many people say they love Jesus, but they don’t necessarily feed his sheep. If they don’t feed sheep, do they love Jesus? Only God knows their hearts. But based on what the Bible says in John chapter 21, I believe that our love for Jesus is directly measurable by what we are doing to feed his sheep today.

Part 3: Concluding remarks

There are many more things that I could say about how to study the Bible. But I will finish up now with a few recommendations.

First, use the Bible as your primary source of spiritual food. Reading Christian books and commentaries is good. Listening Christian music is good. But we should spend the bulk of our time focusing on the words of the Bible itself. When you study a passage, do it prayerfully, noting all the details. Pray and ask God until the Holy Spirit reveals its meaning to you. It’s important to pray and receive the words of God first, before jumping to other books or commentaries. Think deeply about the passage and memorize most important verses. Then your Bible study will have depth and power.

Second, apply Scripture to yourself in concrete ways. Ask what God is saying to you. Are there promises to claim? Commands to obey? Sins to repent of? If you read the Bible it in context of your present life and mission, then every passage becomes deeply relevant, even the parts that appear difficult and obscure. For example, the Old Testament is filled with stories of warfare and conquest. How can we apply these to our life of faith today? Every Christian is engaged in warfare. Our enemies are not flesh and blood. It’s not a human battle, but a spiritual battle against Satan, the true enemy of gospel. We are under attack by a sinful culture. The postmodernist system of thought tells people that there is no absolute truth. We have to fight against these influences and declare God’s absolute truth today with conviction and confidence. The warfare passages in the Old Testament teach us how to keep our identity as God’s people in a hostile world, how to fight the forces of evil and win the victory through obedience and faith.

Third, combine Bible study with personal holiness and devotion. Be holy, as God is holy (Lev 19:2).  This is especially important for our mission as shepherds and Bible teachers, because God won’t bless our ministries if we indulge in sin. “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1Pe 2:12). Many of the most troubling sins are done in secret, when no one is looking. Many Christians engaged in ministry are secretly indulging in pornography. That kind of secret, double life makes us ineffective and miserable. God cannot bless us until we allow his word to cleanse us and make us holy.

Fourth, pay attention to what the Bible says about relationships. The Bible has a great deal to say about marriage, family, church and community. If we are having problems in our relationships, we need to seek out biblical answers. The Bible does have answers. Most of the time, the solution to relationship problems lies in our own personal transformation and repentance.  The word of God empowers us to overcome our individualistic, “I want to be my own man” mentality and, with spirit of humility and simple obedience, maintain the spiritual order in our relationships which is key to a harmonious Christian life.

Fifth, deal with questions, doubts and fears in a godly way. Sometimes our faith grows weak and we are not sure what to believe. If you have doubts about fundamental issues of faith and church practice, don’t speak about them too openly. Use godly wisdom. Speak confidentially to a spiritual elder or mentor who can encourage and counsel you. When Mary became pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit, she must have been filled with uncertainty and fear. What did she do? She hurried to visit her older cousin Elizabeth, who encouraged her faith and helped her to see what God was doing. If you bring your questions and fears to trusted elders and mentors who will pray for you and encourage you.

Sixth, put the Bible into practice by teaching and shepherding others. We have to boldly go and do what Jesus commands and feed his sheep in today’s world.  The idea of sharing your faith and inviting others to Bible study can be a very scary thing. What if you don’t feel ready? I know the feeling. At some level, none of us ever feels ready. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t actually matter how we feel about it. In the Great Commission, Jesus doesn’t talk about feelings; he tells us, “Go!” If we take this as the word of God and simply do it, we find that God helps us overcome our fears.

Imagine going to the beach on a hot summer day. The water is cold, and you are afraid of diving in. You hesitate. But then you gather up your courage and dive in. The cold water is a shock to your system. But after a few seconds, your body adjusts to the new temperature. You swim around, and you find it’s great fun. Your body and soul are refreshed.

So go ahead. Dive in! The Bible is an ocean. The life of mission as a Bible student and as a Bible teacher and shepherd is the most refreshing and satisfying life that you can imagine. Praise be to God!

Camp #1: Begin with God’s holiness and hatred of sin. Members of this camp will say that we need to focus, especially at the outset, on the fact that human beings are sinners under the wrath of God. We need to make people aware of their sinfulness so that they can repent and turn to God to and save themselves from judgment and hell. An example of this kind of preaching can be seen in the 8-minute video clip below by Mark Driscoll. At one point, starting about 4:30, he says, “Some of you — God hates you… God is sick of you. God is frustrated with you. God is wearied by you. God has suffered long enough with you. He doesn’t think you’re cute. He doesn’t think you’re funny. He doesn’t think your excuse is meritous. He doesn’t care if you compare yourself to someone worse than you; he hates them too. God hates, right now, objectively, personally, hates some of you.” This may be a very extreme example. And, in fairness, you ought to watch the whole clip in order to hear the context of those words. But Mark Driscoll does say it. He claims that, if you haven’t yet made a decision for Christ, God hates you, and he will continue to hate you until you repent.

Camp #2: Begin with God’s unconditional love for sinners. These people say that focusing on God’s hatred of sin is unnecessary, counterproductive, even inconsistent with the kind of gospeling done by Jesus, the apostles and the early church fathers. For an example of this perspective, watch the video presentation of The Gospel in Two Chairs by Pastor Brian Zahnd.

Interestingly, if you listen carefully to what these two pastors are saying, you will find that they have based their gospel presentations on different views regarding the character of God. 

I’m not interested in hearing arguments which of these two perspectives is more correct or biblically supported. It is easy for members of either camp to quote Bible passages to argue that their side is correct, and from experience I have found that proof-texting rarely changes anyone’s mind.

Nor do I want to hear arguments over which of these two methods is more effective among the various groups of people in today’s culture. That would be a very interesting topic, but let’s please save it for another day.

Today I want to approach this on a very personal level. So, Dear Reader, I am posing three personal questions for you. Feel free to answer any or all.

1. What style of gospel preaching, if any, initially helped you to put your faith in Christ? Why do you think it helped you at that time?

2. What style of gospel preaching resonates with you today? Why?

3. If you have a strong negative reaction toward one of these two styles of gospel preaching, why do you react negatively? How does it make you feel? When you hear someone preaching in that style, why do you think they are doing it that way? What do you suppose about their knowledge, background, character, motives, and so on?

Yes, I believe that this is what Jesus meant. In the Old Testament period, God worked out his special purposes within the nation of Israel. But the change from B.C. to A.D. was accompanied by a huge paradigm shift in the way God would continue his salvation plan. The good news of Jesus was to be proclaimed to the nations and take on a new life within each of those nations. A nation is not a collection of isolated individuals. It is an organism, a living system, with a unique God-given character and identity. When the gospel is implanted into a complex living system, it can be transformed into something new and beautiful without sacrificing its special identity and vitality. Implanting a gospel into a complex living system is tricky business. God knows exactly how to do it, but usually we do not.

Sociologist Rodney Stark, in his fascinating book The Rise of Christianity, describes how the faith of the apostles spread over three centuries to become the dominant religion in the western world. This growth wasn’t sustained by Christians locating single converts and training them to make more converts. Rather, Christianity spread through families and communities in unexpected ways, through strange confluences of social, biological, and political forces that defied all human expectation and planning.

In Chapter 4, Stark describes a horrible epidemic that swept through the Roman Empire in 165 A.D., killing approximately one fourth of the population. Some medical historians believe it was smallpox. The city of Alexandria was especially hard hit and lost up to one third of its population. Another disease, perhaps measles, appeared in 251 A.D. and the effects were just as devastating. Historians of religion tend to overlook these epidemics and fail to understand their impact on the church. But Stark believes that these outbreaks played a decisive role in shifting the balance of religious affiliation toward Christianity. He argues that, compared to followers of pagan religions, Christian communities were much better prepared to cope with these tragedies. Christian beliefs and practices resulted in dramatically higher rates of survival. When the epidemics had run their course, Christians comprised a substantially higher percentage of the population because fewer of them died, and the loving and heroic Christian response attracted new followers in the wake of tragedy.

The plagues of 165 and 251 A.D. infected Christians and non-Christians alike. But these groups had very different understanding of what was happening and responded in very different ways. Greek philosophy had no answers. And pagan religion could offer no explanation except, “The gods are angry.” Attempts to appease the gods through sacrifice were ineffective. Wherever an outbreak occurred, pagan priests (along with the doctors, civil authorities and wealthy people) would abandon the city and flee to the countryside, leaving the rest of the population to suffer and die alone. A letter written Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, from approximately the 260 A.D. describes this behavior (p. 83):

At the first onset of disease, [the heathen] pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease; but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape.

This callous treatment of the sick and dying in the ancient world is confirmed by non-Christian sources. The Greek historian Thucydides, describing a plague that struck Athens in 431 B.C., writes in gory detail (pp. 84-85):

The doctors were quite incapable of treating the disease because of their ignorance of the right methods… Equally useless were prayers made in the temples, consultation of the oracles, and so forth… they died with no one to look after them; indeed, there were many houses in which all the inhabitants perished through lack of any attention… The bodies of the dying were heaped one on top of the other, and half-dead creatures could be seen staggering about in the streets or flocking around the fountains in their desire for water. The temples in which they took up their quarters were full of the dead bodies of people who had died inside them. For the catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen to them next, became indifferent to every rule of religion or of law… No fear of God or law had a restraining influence. As for the gods, it seemed to be the same thing whether one worshipped them or not, when one saw the good and the bad dying indiscriminately.

In contrast, the Christian response to the epidemic was driven by an outlook of confidence and hope. Historian William McNeill, quoted by Stark (pp. 80-81), writes:

Another advantage Christians enjoyed over pagans was that the teaching of their faith made life meaningful even amid sudden and surprising death… Even a shattered remnant of survivors who had somehow made it through war or pestilence or both could find warm, immediate and healing consolation in the vision of a heavenly existence for those missing relatives and friends… Christianity was, therefore, a system of thought and feeling thoroughly adapted to a time of troubles in which hardship, disease and violent death commonly prevailed.

Instead of fleeing from the epidemic, Christians heroically stood their ground and remained in their communities to care for the sick and dying. Bishop Dionysius writes (p. 82):

Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and administering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains. Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead… The best of our brothers lost their lives in this manner, a number of presbyters, deacons, and laymen winning high commendation so that death in this form, the result of great piety and strong faith, seems in every way the equal of martyrdom.

No one in the ancient world, neither Christian nor pagan, understood how to treat or cure smallpox or measles. But simple nursing of the sick – for example, providing those with food and water who are too weak to feed themselves – can dramatically increase the chance of survival. “Modern medical experts believe that conscientious nursing without any medications could cut the mortality rate by two-thirds or even more” (Stark, p. 89). The differences in survival rates within Christian and non-Christian circles was noticed by ancient people and regarded as miraculous. Apart from any evangelistic effort, the differential rates of mortality during the great epidemics of 165 and 251 A.D. produced a quick and dramatic shift of population toward the Christian faith. And the loving witness and heroic self-sacrifice of Christians in the midst of tragedy improved their reputation in the Roman world, drawing more people to Christ.

The Great Commission given by Jesus in Matthew 28:18-20 is a call to participate in God’s work of transforming the nations through Christian discipleship. Discipleship may include attempts to convert nonbelievers to faith in Christ. But is that the main part of what Jesus is saying? If we try to interpret the Great Commission in the context of Matthew’s gospel, I believe the answer is no. Matthew’s gospel contains five extended sermons by Jesus. One of these, the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7), is focused on discipleship. Reading through the Sermon on the Mount, we find very little about direct evangelism. Jesus does, however, present radically new ways of seeing the world (e.g., as in the Beatitudes) and radically new ways of living and relating to God and to people (e.g., doing good to others without expecting an immediate reward). These teachings equip Christians to deal with the triumphs and tragedies of life in unique ways that set them apart them from their non-Christian neighbors when it really counts. The believers’ Christlike responses to the epidemics of 165 and 251 A.D. were not intended to increase the sizes of their congregations. But their congregations did grow as a result.

If multiplication through discipleship training is not the primary engine of church growth, then what is?

Jesus commanded his disciples, “Go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19). Yet the biblical record shows that after Jesus issued this command, the apostles did not intentionally implement a program to convert nonbelievers. The first thing they did was to join together in worship and prayer to await the coming of the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:52-53, Acts 1:14). On the day of Pentecost, the supernatural activity that accompanied the Spirit’s arrival caused a bewildered crowd to gather (Acts 2:6). In response to their questions, Peter stood up and began to preach the gospel (Acts 2:14). His listeners were cut to the heart and asked the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). Three thousand were baptized that day (Acts 2:41). This rapid expansion of the church was not produced by Peter’s superior evangelistic methods, personal courage, charismatic presence or persuasive words. It can only be explained as a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit.

In the days immediately following Pentecost, church members did not focus their energies on deliberate evangelism. Rather, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). They shared their belongings and gave freely to anyone in need. They worshiped and prayed in the temple courts and ate together in their homes (Acts 2:43-46). This joyful, faithful, exhuberant community life in the presence of Christ caused the church to grow organically: “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47).

On many occasions, the Holy Spirit led the apostles to preach to nonbelievers (Acts 3:11-26; 8:29; 10:1-48). The early Christians took advantage of God-given opportunities to proclaim Christ wherever they went (Acts 8:4). But a deliberate, systematic effort by the church to convert people to faith Christ seems noticeably absent until the Antioch church, under direct leading by the Holy Spirit, sent out Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey (Acts 13:2-3). The Apostle Paul proved to be a specially gifted evangelist and missionary, planting churches in key urban centers throughout the Roman Empire. Yet in none of his epistles does he ever issue a general call to any church to embark on evangelistic expansion or church planting. He recognized that God has called some individuals to be evangelists (Ephesians 4:11; 2 Timothy 4:5 ). But in his writings to various churches, his main concern is not that the congregations multiply their numbers, but that believers maintain their devotion to Christ, love one another, and live good, productive, godly and holy lives in their communities (1 Timothy 2:2, 1 Thessalonians 4:11, Titus 3:14).

In The Rise of Christianity (HarperOne: 1996), sociologist Rodney Stark attempts to answer this question: “How did the obscure, marginal Jesus movement grow to be the dominant religious force in the Western world in just a few centuries?” Drawing upon all available historical records, he estimates that in the first three hundred years after Christ, the church expanded at an average rate of about 40 percent per decade, or just under 4 percent per year. Compared to other religious movements, this rate is not exceptional. (For example, Mormonism grew at approximately the same pace during its first century.) What is remarkable is that the early church was able to maintain this steady growth for such an extended length of time. If the Jesus movement comprised just 1,000 members in the year 40 A.D., an increase of 40 percent per decade would produce nearly 34 million Christians (about 56 percent of the entire population of the Roman Empire) by 350 A.D. This same rate could not continue indefinitely; it had to slow during the second half of the fourth century as the pool of potential converts dwindled. Growth at 40 percent per decade to 400 A.D. and beyond would have been mathematically impossible, as the number of Christians would have soon exceeded the population of the world.

How was Christianity able to sustain this growth? Writing as a sociologist, Rodney Stark does not attempt to construct theological explanations. Rather, he describes the empirically observable social processes by which the numbers of Christians increased. The picture that he paints is not of one disciple making another disciple in his own image, who in turn makes another disciple in his own image, and so on. Conversion and discipling of individuals did happen, of course. But religious movements — and Christianity is no exception — can only grow if they learn how to inhabit the complex webs of social relationships that exist among members of families and communities. He writes (p. 20):

The basis for successful conversionist movements is growth through social networks, through a structure of direct and interpersonal attachments. Most new religious movements fail because they quickly become closed, or semiclosed networks. That is, they fail to keep forming and sustaining attachments to outsiders and thereby lose the capacity to grow. Successful movements discover techniques for remaining open networks, able to reach out and into new adjacent social networks. And herein lies the capacity of movements to sustain exponential rates of growth over a long period of time.

Imagine a fledgling, close-knit community of believers who, in sharing common life with one another, create such strong relationships with one another that their ties to the outside world become weakened. Suppose they develop their own cultural habits, speech patterns, standards of dress, etc. which clearly set them apart from the rest of society. As their community grows and develops, they build organizations and create their own institutions (e.g., schools) to perpetuate their beliefs and values. With vigorous and intentional effort, members reach out to non-members and attempt to bring them into the fold. But when the occasional newcomer arrives, he is trained and transformed so thoroughly that he can no longer strongly identify with his family or native community. Can such a movement succeed over the long term?

In short, the answer is, “No.” Social movements can sustain long-term growth only when they spread through preexisting social networks. Stark writes (p. 56):

Religious movements can grow because their members continue to form new relationships with outsiders. This is a frequent pattern observed in recruitment to religious movements in modern times, especially in large cities. Many new religions have become skilled in making attachments with newcomers and others deficient in interpersonal attachments… Movements can also recruit by spreading through preexisting social networks, as converts bring in their families and friends. This pattern has the potential for much faster growth than the one-by-one conversion of social isolates…

Sustained growth of Christianity over its first three centuries was possible because the living faith of the apostles was allowed to freely adapt and contextualize itself into the various people-groups of the Roman Empire. One description of how the early Christians lived is found in an ancient letter (Letter to Diognetus) written about the second century. It paints an amazing portrait of an incarnational people who live as citizens of God’s kingdom while remaining firmly grounded and connected to their native cultures:

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life… With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in… And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through… Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country… they live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven.

In the next installment, I will describe some other unexpected processes by which the early church grew.

Hamel’s main point is that our world is changing very quickly. The postmodern American culture has become increasingly hostile toward the church – not toward God and spirituality, but to organized religion in general and especially toward the attitudes and behaviors of evangelical Christians. This point has been made before by many others, and it is not really in dispute. If you have read the book UnChristian by David Kinnamon, you already know the spiel. Using quotes and statistics from Kinnamon and the Barna Institute, he shows that the church has a huge image problem today, especially among young people, and it’s getting worse.

How are churches responding to this sea of change? Drawing upon his own insights from management and organizational psychology, Hamel argues that the response of local churches and denominations is woefully inadequate or nonexistent. As a whole, our churches show all the unmistakable signs of a company that is doomed to fail because it is stuck in the past and clinging to an outmoded business model.

Hamel freely admits that a church is not the same thing as a business. The true Church, the Body of Christ, is going to survive one way or another. But the local congregations and organizational bodies in which Christians worship and serve are in a dangerous position, because they lack many of the self-correcting mechanisms found in the marketplace. If a business or corporation underperforms, it will eventually be forced to change by angry shareholders or be taken over by a more dynamic and vibrant company. But a church or ministry that refuses to change can keep chugging along for years, run by leaders who become increasingly out of touch but answer to no one, until the whole enterprise becomes socially irrelevant.

One sign of danger is the stunning disparity between how evangelical Christians are perceived by others and how they perceive themselves. Consider this statement:

Christian churches accept and love people unconditionally, regardless of how people look or what they do.

Nearly 80% of pastors agree with this statement, but only 20% of non-church members agree. That’s a ratio of 4:1, an enormous gulf that shows Christian leaders are truly out of sync with the people that they are supposedly trying to reach. We might rationalize this by saying, “If only those people knew us personally, if they could see who we are and what we do, they would like us.” But that is simply not true. Most non-believers in America do know who we are. The data indicate that they know us personally; they have come to our churches, have heard the gospel that we preach, have understood the message, and have rejected us. As David Kinnamon has said, “…outsiders’ perceptions of Christianity reflect a church infatuated with itself.”

Hamel argues that the greatest enemy of a church is not a hostile cutural environment but the organizational inertia that keeps it from adapting to a changing world. He predicts that the vast majority of churches in existence today will fail to reinvent themselves when necessary and will eventually wither and die. Yet pastors, church leaders and members will rarely acknowledge this. We live in denial, unwilling to admit that there is a problem until a crisis comes and it is too late.

I believe that Hamel’s analysis is spot-on. Change is difficult for any organization, but especially so for a church. In a church environment, we are much more prone to cast issues in terms of moral and spiritual principle (right versus wrong) than in pragmatic terms (what works). Now I am not arguing that Christians should be pragmatic. We follow a crucified Lord who often calls us to lose in this world and to count the loss as eternal gain. But I have seen firsthand how difficult it can be for Christian leaders, virtuous and faithful people whom I admire, to vigorously defend their local traditions and refuse to entertain the possibility that things are not going well.

Hamel says, “Every organization is a bundle of habits.” If you check in to a hotel room, you will inevitably find that the small bottle of shampoo has been placed by the sink, even though we do not wash our hair in the sink. Why do hotels do this? Just because. That’s how it’s done, and no one seems to question it. As Christians, there are certain timeless truths that we cannot change. But regarding how we “do church,” shouldn’t be willing to examine any of our local practices and change them as much as necessary to better serve God’s kingdom? All too often, we seem to be worshiping our local traditions when we should be worshiping the resurrected and living Christ. It is especially tragic when the attitudes and practices to which we cling are precisely those that offend people and drive them away.

How much should churches and ministries be willing to change? As much as is necessary to serve God’s kingdom. Here I believe it is critical for Christians to differentiate the timeless truths taught in Scripture from the extra baggage added by their own communities and cultures. Hamel does not attempt to do this because, as he freely admits, he has no pastoral or theological training. Personally, I believe that this is the point on which all of us — pastors, elders, and all members of a church — need to do some serious soul-searching, reflection and repentance. All too often, Christians have been willing to argue, divide, sacrifice our lives or even kill one another (figuratively or literally) over beliefs and practices which, when viewed from the standpoint of God’s eternal kingdom, are truly not important. As Mark Driscoll has said, we need to wisely and prayerfully distinguish between matters that we are willing to die for, matters that we are willing to part ways over, matters that we are willing to argue about, and matters in which we should just tolerate a diversity of opinion. Clinging to non-essentials can keep committed church members happy as their organization slowly withers and dies.

Did that happen? Of course not. In retrospect, the idea that consumers would, simply by viewing this commercial, be transformed into an aggressive and unpaid sales force was preposterous. This ad may have sold a few bottles of shampoo to desperate young women who were willing to try anything to have hair like Farah Fawcett and Heather Locklear. But the brand didn’t experience anything like the exponential growth in sales that this commercial envisions.

Ever since my college days, I have heard a similar idea promoted as the best, indeed the only truly effective, strategy for evangelizing the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The idea is that we can carry out the Great Commission (Mt 28:18-20) only if we put aside addition and intentionally strive for multiplication. Rather than trying to convert large numbers of people to become nominal Christians, we need to focus our efforts on making a small number of zealous disciples who will make more disciples, who will make more disciples, and so on. These disciples that we make cannot be those typical, average, low-level churchgoers (a.k.a. “cultural Christians” or
“Sunday Christians”) but an elite force of highly committed, well trained, well disciplined, self-replicating apostles. Then, in a few generations, voila! – the Great Commission has been fulfilled.

In his classic book The Master Plan of Evangelism (first printing in 1963), Robert E. Coleman makes a compelling case that this was the strategy envisioned by Jesus himself, his “master plan” for reaching the lost world. Over the course of Jesus’ three-year ministry, the gospel accounts show Jesus paying increasing attention to the twelve apostles. Among them, he places special emphasis on three (Peter, James and John), and among these three he shows special love and care to one (Peter). Jesus didn’t focus on a small number of apostles because he didn’t care about the world. Rather, he did it precisely because he loved the whole world and he knew that the strategy of multiplication was the surest and most effective way to evangelize the planet.

Yes, it is true that Jesus focused his efforts on a small number of highly committed disciples, and it was they who bore witness of his resurrection to the world. But does this fact canonize multiplication as the definitive, divinely mandated method by which Christ’s mission to the lost world will be accomplished?

A generation ago, many evangelicals would have said, “Yes.” Giving top priority to raising highly committed Christians who were passionate about sharing the gospel was the hallmark of 20th century parachurch ministries. The Navigators, for example, developed and practiced elaborate discipleship programs whose main purpose was to create self-replicating disciples. Dr. Samuel Lee, the founder of UBF (who credited the Navigators as one of his spiritual influences), emphasized one-to-one Bible study for the purpose of raising Bible teachers who would in turn raise more Bible teachers.

Ministries based on this idea did at first meet with some success. But most experienced a dramatic slowdown in growth during the 1980’s and 1990’s, and within the last decade those efforts virtually ground to a halt. Many disciples were made, and here and there a few still are being made. But the results have not come anywhere close to the wildly optimistic predictions of a generation ago.

Why didn’t the multiplication strategy pan out?

Here is one possible explanation: The present generation of Christians has lost its zeal. Ministry members became complacent, lazy, worldly, self-centered, and so on. If they just repent and recover the spirit of the ministry founders — their passion, dedication, boldness, and absolute obedience to Jesus’ world-mission command – then the multiplication strategy will surely succeed.

Perhaps that explanation has some merit. But many evangelicals are coming to believe that the basic idea of multiplication is unrealistic. My wife and I have been working through an excellent book published by NavPress called The Complete Book of Discipleship (2006). The author, Bill Hull, is a pastor and writer who was discipled by Navigators and Athletes in Action. Hull used to promote the multiplication doctrine. But on pp. 27-28, he writes:

As many writers and teachers have proclaimed, when all who become disciples make disciples through several spiritual generations, the result should not be reproduction (adding disciples one at a time) but multiplication (one disciple makes two, who make four, who make sixteen, and so on). I’ve heard sermons (in fact, I’ve preached a few) theorizing that if we just follow this multiplication plan, the entire world will be converted to Christianity in thirty years. That was more than thirty years ago.

In spite of how logical it sounds, this plan runs aground repeatedly on the rocks of human frailty and ignorance of how people really change. We must admit that this mathematical formula has never worked in any broad way. It might have limited success in controlled environments, but it would be wrong to claim that multiplication has worked to the extent of reaching whole cities, cultures or generations.

There’s nothing wrong with making disciples of Christ. In fact, Jesus commands us to do it. The key question is: What are these disciples supposed to be doing? Should they be singlemindedly devoted to making more disciples? Or should they be focused on something else?

In the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus said: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

A disciple must be taught to do everything that Jesus commands. And Jesus commands us to do a whole lot more than just making disciples. Hull notes (pp. 29-30) that the New Testament records 212 commands of Jesus. These commands can be summarized in three simple principles:
1. Love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
3. Love your enemies.

Faithfulness to the Great Commission requires a kind of discipleship whose primary goal is spiritual formation that produces the inner fruit of the Spirit manifested in loving relationships. When Christ and his love are present, the church sees growth that is natural and contagious. Hull writes (p. 28):

The principle behind discipleship does involve one person influencing another, which does result in a change in heart and mind. The success of discipleship doesn’t depend on soldiering forward in a mechanical strategy of reproduction and multiplication. And discipleship doesn’t involve developing a well-trained, elite sales force. Rather discipleship occurs when a transformed person radiates Christ to those around her. It happens when people so experience God’s love that they can do nothing other than affect those around them.

The heart of being a disciple involves living in intimate union and daily contact with Christ. Discipleship – the effort both to be a disciple and to make other disciples – is about the immense value of God at work in one individual’s life and the resulting impact on other lives.

In the next installment, I will describe some truly surprising, unexpected means by which the early church grew over the first three centuries. Stay tuned.

Formulaic presentations of the gospel — for example, the much celebrated and maligned Four Spiritual Laws — have never appealed to me. Not because they are wrong (they aren’t) but because they seem so reductionistic. The gospel is a living Word. It is like a beautiful multifaceted jewel that deserves to be examined and reexamined from every possible angle. When preaching of the gospel becomes stale, simplistic, habitual and tired, the spiritual life of a community is sapped and discipleship (if it exists at all) degenerates to rules, principles and practices that no longer capture the essence of what it means to follow a risen Savior.

Dallas Willard is a distinguished Professor of Philosophy at USC and one of the most influential Christian thinkers of our day. In the video clips below, he shares some of his insights into the gospel, the relationship between grace and works/human effort, the role of spiritual disciplines, and so on. Please take the time to watch these clips; you won’t be disappointed.

My question for you is: Has your understanding of the gospel recently been challenged, renewed or refreshed in any significant way? If so, how? If not, why not? And a related question: How does one get truly fresh insight into the gospel? Please don’t say, “Just go back to the Bible” or “Just pray.” We’ve heard those things before. Be more specific.

In recent days, there has been a great deal of discussion on this website about difficult issues and problems within UBF. Although these are important to all of us, it is easy to get so wrapped up in church matters that we lose sight of the big picture of what God has done. If possible, let’s put aside discussions of the rightness or wrongness of UBF teachings and practices for now and focus on the meaning and implications of the gospel message itself.

• absolute attitude
• absolute faith
• absolute commitment
• absolute obedience
• absolute command

If you use one of these phrases in a meeting, and you speak it with a loud and emphatic voice, you are almost guaranteed to evoke from your audience a hearty “Amen!”

But I cannot recall a single instance where I heard anyone talk about “absolute kindness” or “absolute love.” Nor can I recall ever hearing an exhortation to

• absolute honesty,
• absolute integrity, or
• absolute truthfulness.

Why not? To put it bluntly, it is because honesty, integrity and truthfulness have not been terribly important to us. We recognize them as virtues, of course, but we just don’t emphasize them enough to place them after that coveted modifier absolute.

Throughout our history, we have tended to wink at dishonesty and overlook those little white lies told by our members and leaders, especially when they seemed expedient for advancing our mission. This tendency can be traced directly back to our founding director, Samuel Lee. He exemplified an “absolute attitude” in many areas, but he did not display absolute truthfulness.

Lee was an imaginative storyteller. When he would give announcements at meetings, he would spin colorful tales about people and events that stretched and distorted the facts. I know that he did this because, from time to time, those stories were about me, and his version of what happened often differed markedly from what I had actually experienced. (I can give specific examples of this, but I won’t bother.) We can speculate about why he did this, but everyone who knew Dr. Lee knows that the details of his stories often stretched the boundaries of truth.

And, on at least a few occasions, he doctored photographs from our international summer Bible conferences and mission reports to make the audience look bigger than it was. Eyewitnesses saw him do this, and the physical evidence of these doctored photographs still exists in our old calendars and newsletters. It is common knowledge that he did this. Some of us thought it was humorous or cute. We didn’t make a big deal out of it. But some of our members and leaders were bothered by it.

As Lee continued to spin white lies and tell tall tales, those of us who were around him got used to it. We instinctively began to cover for him, apologize for him, and reinterpret all of his words and actions in the best possible light: “What he said was… but what he meant was…” (I know because I did this on many, many occasions.) We bore with his quirks and weaknesses because he was “God’s servant.” Putting up with his shortcomings, we thought, was a small price to pay for having such a wonderful leader. Perhaps it was.

My point here is not to denigrate Dr. Lee nor to apologize for him. I have mentioned him only to make a broader point about our ministry as a whole. He was a very influential figure among us, and part of the legacy that he passed on to us is a tendency to fall short of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That tendency persists in how we speak about ourselves and present ourselves to the outside world.

The statistics that we present about UBF’s achievements do not paint an unbiased picture of the state of our ministry. We tout the large number of missionaries that UBF has sent out during the last fifty years. But when we present that number, we offer no definitions or qualifications. Included in that count a significant number of persons who left Korea and went to other nations primarily to study or because they married a spouse living abroad. Members of UBF who leave Korea for almost any reason have been given missionary training and counted as missionaries. (I’m not saying that it’s wrong to call them missionaries. But it is different from what other mission organizations do, and that deserves to be noted.) And when we speak of the number of missionaries sent, we omit the fact that a significant number of them are longer serving as missionaries under the auspices of UBF. So even though the statistic may be technically correct, the picture conjured up in the mind of the one who hears it is not entirely accurate.

Nor do our news items and mission reports give an unbiased picture of what is going on. To us, every message is “powerful”; every life testimony is “heart-moving”; every conference is “historic”; and every wedding is “beautiful.” Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. Every one of those statements is highly subjective. But if we speak of every single event in superlative language, it cannot possibly be true. This is a clear example of what psychologists call cognitive bias or the Lake Wobegon effect. (Lake Wobegon is the imaginary childhood town of storyteller Garrison Keillor where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”) Over the years, we have taught ourselves to speak about ourselves in superlatives, believing that it glorifies God and promotes his work. But to outsiders it sounds very odd and self-aggrandizing

And we have taught one another by example to maintain a code of silence about negative events. When something good happens, it is considered virtuous to talk about it in public meetings and gatherings. But negative happenings (e.g., people leaving the ministry) are whispered in secret or never mentioned at all. One obvious example of this is the recent set of events in India, when longtime members and leaders left the ministry. This received no mention in public and, as far as I know, was not even openly acknowledged at the Asian continental director’s meeting shortly thereafter. Many of us only learned of it after Abraham Nial, one of the Indian leaders who left the ministry, wrote about it obliquely in a comment on UBFriends.

Our tendencies to hype all things positive and bury all things negative is more than a habit; it has become a de facto theology. We tell one another, “Be encouraging.” “Don’t complain.” “Talk about what God has done.” “Give a report that glorifies God.” “Don’t look at the situation not from a human point of view; see it from God’s point of view.” “Don’t become a bad influence.”

Recently, a missionary chided me for saying something candid and (only very slightly) unflattering about UBF in the presence of some Bible students. She pulled me aside and told me, “Don’t ever say that UBF is wrong. Young sheep need to be taken care of very preciously.” I believe she meant that, until disciples are fully and deeply committed to UBF, they should hear only 100% positive statements about UBF, because they are too immature and weak to handle anything else. I was taken aback and told her that, as a pastor and longtime member of this ministry, I found her attitude to be condescending. These “young sheep” of whom she was speaking were not preschool children. They were extremely intelligent, well spoken and mature 25-30 year olds attending a world class medical school! Moreover, those “young sheep” were not shaken by what I said. In fact, they were encouraged by my words and told me that my honesty was refreshing.

Young people, especially today, are seekers of truth. They are tired of fake images, deceptiveness, propaganda and spin. They long to hear a message that is honest. They want to be part of a community that is authentic. They want to see truthfulness modeled by the community, especially its leaders.

Many of us appear to hold this implicit belief: Any report that promotes our church or its members glorifies God, and anything that draws attention to our collective failure or weakness dishonors God. Presenting our church in a flattering light will ultimately advance the gospel.

I used to believe that, but I no longer do. This is what I now believe: Any report that glorifies God will be completely honest and utterly truthful, because our God is the God of truth. White lies, tall tales, exaggeration, spin and omission of embarassing facts inhibits the preaching of the gospel. The gospel is advanced whenever Christians tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Why do I believe this? Because unflattering truths, tragic events and apparent failures are deeply embedded in the gospel message itself. When we share the gospel, do we skip over Jesus’ betrayal, suffering and death and talk only about the resurrection? Of course not. If we did, the message would be robbed of its power. Nor do we gloss over the failures of Jesus’ disciples, such as Peter’s denial of Christ. The Bible is noteworthy for showing God’s people in an utterly realistic fashion, openly revealing their sins and weaknesses. Establishing the guilt and failure of all people, especially Christians, is prerequisite to the proclaiming the gospel of salvation by grace.

Proclaiming the gospel is telling the truth. On the day of Pentecost and thereafter, the apostles stood in the public square and testified to the facts of what happened: that their esteemed Teacher was arrested, condemned, nailed to a tree and died in the most horrible way, and then he rose from the dead and personally appeared to them. They didn’t need to embellish the story by exaggerating the number of miracles or post-resurrection appearances. If the risen Jesus didn’t appear to them on any given day, they didn’t pretend that he did. The apostles needed to be utterly honest in their testimony about Christ. Any exaggeration or distortion of any of these facts would have irreparably harmed the apostolic witness.

And the New Testament does not hide any of the problems or failings in the first-century Christians. In the book of Acts and the letters of Paul, Peter, James and John, the sins and internal problems of the church are on full display. Just glance at 1 Corinthians and you will see what I mean. These divinely inspired accounts of church life are painfully realistic. Despite all the apparent problems in the church, she is still Christ’s Body and Bride, the temple of the Holy Spirit.

When I see television coverage of Christian faith healers and ministers who preach a message of health and wealth, I instinctively question their credibility. God does sometimes bless people with health and wealth. Miraculous healing sometimes happens. But God doesn’t do it all the time, and he has his own reasons for not doing it. We don’t need to embellish the gospel with fantastic language or exaggerated stories of miracles, joy, blessing, etc. God doesn’t need our embellishment, nor does he want it. The gospel is fact, not spin.

If a Christian shares a selective testimony of God’s work in his life, reporting things that seem positive and omitting things that sound negative, does that testimony honor God? Can that testimony be effective? I don’t believe so, for the following reason. Everything that God chooses to do in our lives is significant. And everything that he chooses not to do is equally significant. God is the sovereign ruler over everything, including all our successes and all our failures. Jesus Christ will be ultimately glorified in exposing the problems, failures and sins of his people just as much as he is glorified in advertising their virtues, successes and victories. Positives and negatives both glorify him, as long as they are presented truthfully.

In Christ there is never a hint of dishonesty. God is light; in him there is no darkness at all (1Jn 1:5).

Many embarrassing things have happened in the history of our church. I was an eyewitness to some of them. Perhaps you were too. Unpleasant events lie hidden and buried. I understand the desire to hide these things from people in order to uphold the image of our ministry and protect our members, especially young disciples, from discouragement and doubt. But do disciples of Jesus ever need to be protected from the truth? No. Disciples do not ever need to be protected from the truth, because Jesus is the truth (Jn 14:6). They need to be protected from the bad influence of dishonesty, the spirit of the devil who is a liar and the father of lies (Jn 8:44). Lying and hiding will enslave, but the truth will set us free (Jn 8:32).

At the end of this month, there will be a big celebration in Korea to mark the 50^th anniversary of UBF. I imagine that there will be a lot of specific talk about the wonderful things that God has done, but only the most indirect and vague mention of our sins, shortcomings and failures. We are going to present what God has done. But are we going to paint a picture of our ministry that is utterly honest and truthful? Are we going to apply the high standards of accuracy and full disclosure that the writers of the New Testament followed when they reported on the early church? Many will say that the 50^th anniversary celebration is not the proper time or place to speak about negative things. Perhaps so. But then please tell me: When and where is the proper time and place?

No one ought to be casting himself as a conduit of God’s truth – a Bible teacher, a pastor, or a minister of the gospel — if he is not ready to face the truth about himself and those around him and confess his sins to those he is seeking to teach.

Confession cannot be general or vague. If it is not specific, then it is evasion. In an excellent book titled Dare to be True, author Mark D. Roberts writes (p. 66):

…sometimes we confess our sins so generally that miss the benefits that result from true confession. A rushed ‘Forgive me, Lord’ may reflect our desire to say the right words without honestly dealing with our behavior or the condition of our hearts… [Our] unwillingness to be specific in confession is a common failing that stands in direct opposition to the requirements of Scripture.

Effective confession requires full disclosure, not partial admissions of guilt. Roberts continues (p. 67):

Confession of sin also is a key component in helping us overcome deception so that we can live truthful lives. When examining our lives, many of us need to be specific in confessing our sins of deception. Some of these may be so common in our behavior and in our culture that we need the Spirit’s help to recognize them as sin. But we also may be fully aware of our dishonesty and perhaps have even resolved not to perpetuate it, yet we have never confessed it. Choosing not to confess recognized sin is the same as saying we aren’t yet fully committed to repenting of it. Jumping immediately into attempting to resolve sin neglects the biblical call to confess and keeps us from tapping into the very strength that helps us act on our resolve. Full disclosure in confessing sin is the truth that helps set us free from those sins.

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:1-2: “Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.”

And in Ephesians 4:25: “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.”

As a pastor and leader in this ministry, I want to personally commit myself to the following course of action.

1. To report the happenings in our ministry in a realistic way with no exaggeration, embellishment or spin, and to encourage others to do the same.

2. To no longer hide, gloss over, or minimize the problems and failures of myself and those around me. To face uncomfortable happenings of the present and past in a factual way, without any hint of defensiveness or spin, and encourage others to do the same. I will not defend wrongdoing by arguing that it was unintentional, done with noble intentions or rooted in misunderstanding. God is the one who will judge intentions. Our role is to ascertain and disclose the facts.

3. To confess my sins to friends and members of my community and to encourage others, especially our leaders, to do the same. Confession lies at the heart of the gospel and is necessary for forgiveness, reconciliation and healing. It cannot be limited to sins that are easy to admit, such as “I haven’t been faithful in studying the Bible and praying for my sheep.” It must include the events that are truly embarrassing, such as the times that I lied to save my own skin. The times I have engaged in ugly behavior in secret. The times that I have hurt people with angry words and actions. The times I have gossiped about people and undermined their reputation.

This doesn’t mean that I will air other people’s dirty laundry on the Internet. If is not my role to confess the sins of others, nor to cover them up. Each person needs to take responsibility for what he or she has done, not for the wrongdoings of others.

This is not going to be easy. Dear friends: Pease pray for me and hold me accountable.

Now I want to ask you a question. Are you willing to join me by placing your hand on the Bible and swear this same commitment “to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God”? If so, I’d love to hear about it. If not, I’d love to hear why.

This installment focuses on Chapter 1, where Schaeffer discusses rules of Christian behavior. When the implications of the gospel are reduced to outward behaviors, our relationship with God becomes superficial and trite. True spirituality is not found in any set of rules. Nor is it found in setting aside rules.

The starting point of the Christian life is regeneration. When we put our faith in Jesus and accept his atoning sacrifice for our sins, we are born again. In one sense, new birth is the most important fact of spiritual life. Unless a person is born, that person does not live. But in another sense, it is the least important fact, because once a person is born, that birth recedes into the past and he must get on with the actual business of living. Although we always remember our new birth and thank God for it, we should not keep returning to the new birth to make it the focus of our spirituality, because birth is just the beginning of what God intends for us.

After new birth, the believer will ask, “What now? What am I supposed to do?” At that point, the church will typically present him with a list of spiritual disciplines to be followed and sinful behaviors to be avoided. The intentions behind these lists may be good, and the rules may help the young believers to begin his walk of faith on solid footing. But sooner or later, he begins to question the rules. Did Christ redeem us just to make us rule-followers? Of course not.

In his discussions with young Christians at the L’Abri community, Schaeffer noticed a great deal of complaining about legalisms imposed by the church and Christian culture. They wanted to set aside rules in order to experience a deeper, more authentic spirituality. At first, he sympathized with them. But as Schaeffer listened to these young people, he began to sense that many of them wanted to set aside the rules simply because they wanted to do the things that were prohibited. Rules cannot be set aside and replaced by nothing. If we put aside the moralisms of any particular community and ask what God himself requires of us, we are faced with the Ten Commandments.

At first glance, the Ten Commandments may look like another list of prohibitions. Yet behind them lies the positive requirement to love God and to love one’s neighbor. The principle of love is not an invention of the New Testament era, but is found in the Commandments themselves, especially the final one, “Do not covet.” Coveting is a directing of internal desire toward things that others have. All the other commandments can be kept through outward behavior, but “Do not covet” cannot. It is no accident that the Apostle Paul, a highly disciplined external keeper of the law, found himself to be a sinner when he honestly faced this last commandment (Ro 7:7). The only way to avoid coveting is to possess a heart of thankfulness. Not coveting means loving God so much that I am genuinely satisfied with the life and circumstances he has given me. It means loving my neighbor so much that, when I see the good things that he has and I do not, I am truly happy for him and rejoice in his good fortune. It means that, when my neighbor suffers failure or loss, I do not derive any hint of pleasure whatsoever.

Love is an internal matter. It does produce external expressions in behavior, but those expressions (kind words, serving) are not the essence of love, because they can be motivated by something else. Real love is always internal, a matter of the heart, which cannot be faked or forced.

The essence of the Christian life is not found in adhering to any list of external behaviors, but in truly loving God and loving other people. Sinful people are not naturally filled with love. The kind of love needed to live the Christian life requires nothing short of a supernatural, miraculous transformation of the inner person. Anything short of that is not authentic Christian spirituality; it is playing games and trifling with God.

As I was reviewing chapter 1 and writing this summary, I was reminded once again of how difficult it is for Christians to grasp the relationship between grace and law. Many of us still don’t understand it even after decades of Bible study. The gospel that is presented in the New Testament is a gospel of pure grace, rooted in God’s unconditional acceptance of us apart from anything that we do. Yet we are hesitant to declare unconditional grace, because we fear it will lead to lawlessness. So when we talk about the gospel, we try to “strike a balance” between grace and law. We say, “Yes, God forgives us unconditionally and frees us from the law, but we must still obey the law.” Indeed, I find it very rare for any Christian in UBF or elsewhere to talk about grace without immediately inserting one or more of those “but” statements that include rules and regulations, because we fear that if we don’t, those who receive the message might get the wrong idea and become lawless. This notion that the truth is found somewhere in the middle, striking a careful balance between legalism and lawlessness, is a deeply flawed idea that misrepresents the gospel. Christian spirituality is not about finding a middle ground between legalism and lawlessness. It is about drinking deeply from the well of grace until we are transformed from the inside out. Yesterday, I happened to run across a great article on this by Tullian Tchividjian.

Some Protestants object to this statement. They remove it from the creed or remain silent during that part.

“He descended into Hades” is a teaching of the early Church that is traditionally called “the harrowing of hell.” It is the belief that Jesus, at some point between his death and resurrection, went to the abode of the dead, the place that the Old Testament writers call Sheol (Hebrew) and the New Testament writers call Hades (Greek). Hades has been rendered in many English translations as “hell.”

That word “hell” conjures up images of fiery eternal torment which are consistent with Gehenna, the other Greek word appearing in the gospels which is also translated as “hell.” Because of these associations, many are led to think that “He descended into hell” means that Jesus descended into a place of punishment where he continued to suffer even after his death. That would seem to contradict what Jesus said to the thief on the cross, ““I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23:43). So to many Protestants, the harrowing of hell is a teaching that seems, at best, puzzling and unnecessary, and at worst, unbiblical.

Not so for the Eastern Orthodox. For Orthodox believers, the harrowing of hell plays a key role in their understanding of what Christ accomplished through his death and resurrection.

In the Orthodox view, Jesus did not descend into hell to suffer the consequences of human sin. He entered hell as a triumphant conqueror to break the chains of those who, since the time of Adam, had been faithfully waiting and hoping for God’s promised salvation. The highlight of Orthodox Holy Week services is the Great Pascha or Vigil which begins very late Saturday night and extends into the wee hours of Sunday morning, witnessing the resurrection of Christ. The service culminates with the singing of a beautiful and very ancient hymn known as the Pascal Troparion:

There is a fascinating book that can tell you everything that you ever wanted to know about the harrowing of hell. The book is Christ the Conqueror of Hell: The Descent into Hades from an Orthodox Perspective by Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev. I have skimmed through this book but not yet read through it carefully, so I will not attempt to give a review. Nevertheless, I have learned a few things that may be of interest to those who are wondering how to deal with that puzzling statement in the Apostles’ Creed.

First, Christ’s descent into hell can be found in Scripture. When I say it can be found in Scripture, I am not saying that the Bible definitively proves that Christ descended into hell. Rather, I am merely stating the fact that Christians from various times and traditions have found evidence for it in Scripture. Perhaps the best known reference is that cryptic passage in 1 Peter 3:18-20:

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built.

Another reference is found in the Apostle Peter’s evangelistic message on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:25-28), in which he quotes from Psalm 16:8-11 and applies it to Jesus:

I saw the Lord always before me.
Because he is at my right hand,
I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest in hope,
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
you will not let your holy one see decay.
You have made known to me the paths of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence.

(Note that the old NIV says, “you will not abandon me to the grave.” The quotation above from the NIV 2011 says “you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead” seems to be a more accurate rendering, because the Hebrew word Sheol used by the psalmist does not merely refer to the grave, but to the underworld abode of the souls of the dead.)

Those two passages may be the most direct Scriptural evidence for a descent into hell, but there are many more passages which have been seen by some Christians to be related to it. Matthew 27:51-53 mentions some startling events that took place in the moments after Jesus’ death:

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

Some have understood this resurrection to be the result of Christ arriving in Hades and loosening the chains of the dead. Others have seen evidence in Isaiah 9:2:

The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
a light has dawned.

Second, a belief in the harrowing of hell apears to have been widespread in the early church. Church fathers held a variety of opinions about what Jesus accomplished by his descent into Hades, and they differed over many of its theological implications. But Archbishop Alfeyev quotes extensively from the fathers, Christian apocrypha, ancient poetry and hymnody to support the view that, as a whole, the early Christians did believe that Christ entered the underworld.

Did Jesus descend into Hades? Many in the early church believed that he did.

What did Jesus do down there? I really don’t know.

When I see Jesus face to face, this is one of the many questions I intend to ask him. Until then, I’m happy to let it remain a mystery as I recite those words from the Apostles’ Creed.

The Seder, the traditional meal eaten by Jews at sundown on the first day of Passover, recalls the events that brought God’s people out from slavery in Egypt. The Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples on the night before his death was a Seder. Jesus kept many of the traditions associated with this sacred meal. But he also made significant changes, introducing new elements to show his disciples that God was about to do something astounding. The disciples were on the verge of witnessing a new and greater exodus that would change them and their world forever.

If you have ever participated in a traditional Seder, you may have noticed that many details of this ceremonial meal are suggestive of the death of Christ. Indeed, Jews for Jesus and other communities of messianic Jews continue to celebrate the Seder, and they augment the ceremony to show how the Passover achieves its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus. If you ever have the chance to participate in a Seder, I would encourage you to do so; it can be a truly beautiful and meaningful addition to your celebration of Easter.

A new book that was just published this year, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist by Brant Pitre, explores the myriad connections between the Lord’s Supper, the Passover, and other events and teachings from the Old Testament. Even if you already know something about these connections, you will learn a great deal more from this book. The book is easy to read and brimming with details that will fascinate you and bring you to a deeper understanding of Communion and the gospel itself.

Pitre points out one very significant difference between the way Passover is observed in modern times and the way it was observed in the time of Jesus. The foods served in a modern Seder include unleavened bread (matzo) and bitter herbs (maror), but the roasted lamb is missing. Jews today do not follow the command given in Exodus 12:8 to eat the meat of a lamb because, ever since the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., there has been no temple and no priesthood.

The Seder as described in the Old Testament was not just a meal; it was a sacrifice. Because the Passover meal was a sacrifice, it had to be eaten in Jerusalem in the vicinity of the temple, where the animal could be killed by an authorized priest in the prescribed manner (Dt 16:5-7). Every year at Passover, the population of Jerusalem swelled by hundreds of thousands of Jews who poured in from the surrounding area and from every part of the Empire. The sacrifice took place in the temple on the Day of Preparation just before Passover began, at about 3 pm (note the hour of Jesus’ death). Pitre describes the scene of mass killing by quoting from The Mishnah (pp. 71-72):

The Passover-offering was slaughtered in three groups… When the first group entered in and the Temple Court was filled, the gates of the temple were closed… The priests stood in rows and in their hands were basins of silver and basins of gold… An Israelite slaughtered his offering and the priest caught the blood. The priest passed the basin to his fellow, and he to his fellow, each receiving a full basin and giving back an empty one. The priest nearest to the altar tossed the blood in one action to the base… When the first group went out, the second group came in; and when the second group went out the third group came in… [In the meantime] the Levites sang the Hallel.

(Hallel consists of Psalms 113-118, which played an important role in the Passover.)

This slaughter of tens of thousands of lambs must have been an unforgettable sight. Rivers of blood literally flowed through the temple. Perhaps this scene of pouring blood was in the mind of Jesus and his disciples when Jesus said at the Last Supper: “Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Mt 26:27-28).

Pitre comments (p. 72):

When we compare Jesus’ actions to these ancient Jewish traditions, it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out his point. By means of his words over bread and wine at the Last Supper, Jesus is saying in no uncertain terms, “I am the new Passover lamb of the new exodus. This is the Passover of the Messiah, and I am the new sacrifice.”

Pitre presents another little known but interesting fact: At the time of Jesus, the Passover lambs were not only sacrificed; they were also crucified.

After the slitting of the animal’s throat, a thin stave of wood was driven horizontally through the shoulders so that the animal could be hung and skinned. After skinning, another stave was driven vertically into the mouth, through the belly and through its buttocks. This incredible detail, which is found in the rabbinical literature, was confirmed in the writings of Justin Martyr in the second century (pp. 63-64):

For the lamb, which is roasted, is roasted and dressed up in the form of a cross. For one spit is transfixed right through from the lower parts up to the head, and one across the back, to which are attached the legs of the lamb.

If this description is accurate, then Jesus and his disciples would have witnessed the crucifixion of thousands of lambs each year at Passover. This detail is not mentioned in the modern Jewish Seder, but it confirms the powerful imagery found in the Passover that Jesus celebrated with his disciples on the night before his death.

“Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch — as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1Co 5:7).

Schaeffer studied under Reformed scholars Cornelius Van Til and J. Gresham Machen, and he developed strong convictions about biblical inerrancy and other doctrines upheld by conservative evangelicals. During the early 1950’s, however, Schaeffer experienced a personal spiritual crisis that led him to reexamine his faith. This crisis began when he honestly faced two problems he saw in Christian leaders who, like him, were strongly contending for biblical truth.

First, a lack of love in the midst of disagreement. The churches and church leaders he knew were racked by quarrels, divisions, petty ambition and politics. His wife Edith described it as follows: “How could people stand for God’s holiness and the purity of doctrine in the church, and in one’s personal life, and yet not have it turn out to be harsh and ugly?” Church leaders were very vocal about what they were “against,” but Schaeffer was often left wondering what they were “for.”

Second, a pervasive lack of reality. The New Testament is full of promises to those who accept its teachings: blessings of love, joy, peace, and fullness of life present in supernatural abundance. But when he examined his own faith and that of Christians he knew, he wondered: Where are these promised results? Why aren’t they more obvious?

This crisis led him to reevaluate all of the beliefs on which he had staked his career and his life. During that period, he paced back and forth for hours at a time, thinking and praying and thinking again. He returned to the most fundamental questions and asked whether the teachings of the Bible were actually true.

After several months, a breakthrough occurred. Schaeffer came to a new understanding of his faith. He found the answers he was seeking in the historical truths of the Bible. Joy and thankfulness toward God flooded his heart which he expressed through poetry and song.

Shortly after this spiritual reawakening, Schaeffer developed a series of lectures which became the foundation for the teaching and discipleship programs at L’Abri. This material was later gathered and published in 1971 under the title True Spirituality. That book, and the lecture series on which it is based, addressed the question that Schaeffer himself had wrestled with, the question that he heard over and over from young people who came to him looking for answers. That question was, “Why does my faith seem so unreal?”

As he spoke with these young people, many of whom were raised in Christian families and evangelical churches, he found a familiar pattern. In church, they were told, “Accept Christ as your Savior. Believe in his atoning death for your sins and receive his gift of forgiveness and eternal life.” So far, so good. That is solid biblical teaching. But then what? After accepting Jesus as their Savior, what were they supposed to do?

At that point, believers were typically presented with a list of things to do: Read the Bible. Pray daily. Worship God on Sunday. And avoid sins and behaviors that were sinful and ungodly. Those forbidden behaviors varied from place to place, but in general it included sexual immorality, drunkenness, lying, stealing, and swearing.

Sooner or later, these believers began to wonder, “Is that all there is to the Christian life? Am I just supposed to uphold some doctrines and try to be a good person?” The faith began to seem trite and unreal.

Schaeffer believed that their sense of unreality came from two sources. The first was the modern scientific worldview which limits the universe to a naturalistic system of cause and effect. The Bible presents our world as having two parallel realms: the natural, which we perceive with our bodily senses, and the supernatural, which is inhabited by God, angels and spiritual forces. The supernatural is not in a faraway place (e.g., heaven). It is present here and now and is just as real as everything we see, even more so. Yet, as a practical matter, many of us live as though the supernatural realm does not exist. “From the Christian viewpoint, no man has ever been so naïve, nor so ignorant of the universe, as twentieth-century man” (from True Spirituality, p. 57).

The second reason why faith becomes unreal is that many of us are trying to living the Christian life by our own effort and strength. To live the Christian life by your own effort is a contradiction. The Christian life is Jesus Christ coming alive in us and bringing forth God’s works in us through the Holy Spirit. Schaeffer taught that it is not enough for Christians to just do the right things. These things must be done in the right way, through the power of the Spirit, not through our own strength, otherwise they are worthless. Self-effort cannot bring our dead souls to life; God must do it. Similarly, self-effort cannot bear good fruit in our lives; God must do that as well. Just as we receive from God our justification from sin as a free gift of grace, we must also receive any good works that we do from God as a free gift of grace. This understanding of how to receive good works, rather than merely do good works, is notoriously difficult to describe. But it is not a minor issue. It is a fundamental principle of Christianity. Without it, the gospel isn’t really the gospel.

Until I read True Spirituality, I never really tried to distinguish between the work that I was doing and the work that God was doing through me. “What’s the difference?” I thought. “One way or another, the work’s gotta get done. Why should it matter if it happens this way or that way?” In my upbringing, personal initiative, hard work and effort were always praised as virtues. No one had ever told me that the work of faith had to be God’s work, not mine. And no one had ever clearly explained to me how this phenomenon of God working through a human being actually looks in practice. If this is such a fundamental part of Christianity, how could I have missed it? How could my Bible teachers and church leaders have failed to emphasize it?

But then I wondered, “Maybe that’s why my faith seems so abstract and unreal.”

Like Francis Schaeffer, I too had been experiencing a crisis of faith. For a long time, I had been growing increasingly aware of unreality in myself and in the Christians around me.

For example, once I attended a Bible conference where we were studying one of the familiar passages that are commonly found at UBF events. During the testimony-sharing time, one of the missionaries began to read his testimony, and I thought, “This sounds familiar.” As I listened, I recognized that it was the exact same testimony that he had shared on the same passage at an event a few years earlier. He was recycling his old written testimony and passing it off as something new.

Although this is a rather blatant example, that sort of thing was happening all the time. In every group Bible study, someone would say, “One thing I learned is…” and proceed to utter something that I had heard countless times before. If we had been speaking honestly, we would have admitted that we were not learning anything new; we were just reminding ourselves and one another of what had been taught long ago. When I first noticed this tendency, I was bemused by it. But as it continued unabated year after year, it became increasingly bothersome. “Everyone here is bored stiff,” I thought; “Why can’t we admit it?”

I have seen events that were tired and drab, yet church members spoke of them in unrealistically glowing terms, pawning them off as amazing and miraculous. Admit it. There is a fine line between (a) seeing God who is present and working in the ordinary affairs of life and (b) convincing ourselves that some very unremarkable work by human beings represents the genuine work of God. The former is authentic; the latter is counterfeit. But to the untrained eye, the two can look similar, especially to us who live in modern times and are chronically insensitive to the supernatural realm.

Does the Bible have anything to say about this sense of unreality?

I am reminded of a highly educated and well regarded religious leader who secretly approached Jesus. This man was wondering why there was so much miraculous work going on in the ministry of Jesus but not in his own life. Jesus responded by explaining to him that there are two fundamentally different kinds of work. Natural work arises from the flesh; supernatural work arises from the spirit. Human effort produces the former; only the Holy Spirit can create the latter. Supernatural work springs forth from the regeneration or new birth, which is the work of God alone.

To this man, the teaching of Jesus sounded like gibberish. “I’ve read the Bible from cover to cover,” he thought. “If this were true, why didn’t I see it before?”

Jesus concluded this meeting by challenging Nicodemus to intellectual honesty and integrity. Jesus urged him examine himself to see whether his achievements were natural or supernatural. The two are as different as night and day. “Whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God” (Jn 3:21).

Maybe this Schaeffer guy is on to something.

Editor’s note: This article was written and posted on another blog about one year ago. Given the discussions that have appeared on UBFriends in recent days, it seems like a good time to republish it.

Reforming the Social Security program has often been called “the third rail of American politics” because if you touch it, you will get burned. The issues involved are so divisive, affecting individuals and families at such a personal level, that most national political leaders will avoid this subject at all costs.

Similarly, there is an electrified third rail in discussions about Christian unity. Being the naïve/pompous/foolish person that I am, I will now climb down onto the subway tracks, bend over, reach out, and grab this third rail with both hands.

What is this third rail? It is the centuries-old split between Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church.

What I writing comes largely from personal experience. I was born into a Catholic family, baptized as an infant, and lived as a semi-devout Catholic for 18 years. As a college freshman I was evangelized by zealous Christians from a ministry that is technically non-denominational but clearly evangelical Protestant. In my newly found faith, I reacted against Catholicism and began to view it as an aberrant expression of pure, biblically sound Christianity. Over the years, as I grew into a position of ministry leadership, I carefully avoided discussing faith-related issues with family members who are still practicing Catholics. I never really questioned whether my anti-Catholic stance was justified, and it is only recently, the last five years or so, that my thinking has begun to change. Please understand that I have no inclination to return to the Catholic church. God has called and brought me to another place. But as I have read, thought and prayed about these things, my views on many issues relevant to the Protestant/Catholic divide have been shifting considerably.

The ministry in which I serve has no official position on Catholicism, and over the years I have heard individual members express a variety of opinions. The founder of my church spoke publicly with admiration of the late Pope John Paul II. Recently, someone in my ministry (another former Catholic) exclaimed to me, “Catholics are Christians too!” Others have characterized the Catholic church as a cult and portrayed Catholics as enemies of the gospel. But on most occasions when Catholicism is mentioned in conversation (which doesn’t happen very often), the usual response is a brief, unnatural silence, followed by an awkward attempt to change the subject. During that pregnant pause, the words that I imagine, the words that I sense are being thought but not spoken, are polite, cautious, and negative.

When an evangelical expresses a negative view of Catholicism, what does he really mean? That term, Catholicism, can mean so many different things in different contexts that to even speak of it as one thing, a single entity, that can be grasped and summarized and assessed as good, mediocre, or bad is almost absurd. It is like trying to render a summary judgment about mathematics or China or health care. But in many cases, the evangelical expressing the negative opinion is probably thinking more specifically along these lines.

“Catholics teach a false gospel of salvation by works.” There is a kernel of truth in that statement, but the kernel is smaller than most Protestants realize. If you begin to do any serious, evenhanded reading of modern discussions on this subject, you will see that it represents an oversimplification and caricature of Catholic soteriology. Catholics and Protestants speak of salvation and justification using different terms and concepts. But there is huge variation among Protestants as well (e.g., Calvinism versus Arminianism), and there are vast areas of consensus across these traditions. Thoughtful Catholics and Protestants should agree that we are saved neither by works nor by faith but by Jesus Christ. Faithful Catholics and Protestants should agree that the Bible is the inspired word of God and believe Romans 1:17, “The righteous will live by faith,” along with James 2:20, “Faith without deeds is useless.” Aren’t there plenty of Protestants who talk about justification “by grace alone, through faith alone” but are, in fact, teaching and practicing all kinds of legalism? Focusing on “what we must do” more than “what God has done” is the standard fallback position that all Christians, regardless of our denominations, are inclined to slip into whenever we lose sight of the living Savior. If I had a dollar for every time I heard an evangelical say that Catholics teach “salvation by works,” I would be a rich man. And I am quite sure that, in the vast majority of those occasions, the person voicing that opinion could not accurately describe what the RCC actually teaches about salvation today. Instructive and healthy criticism requires a thorough, nuanced understanding of the position being criticized. If you are interested in exploring the differences between Catholic and Protestant views of salvation, I suggest that you first identify the wide areas of agreement. A good place to start is to read the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification signed by Roman Catholic and Lutheran leaders in 1999.

“Catholics don’t have a personal relationship with God.” Before saying this, please get to know at least one sincere and devout Catholic. Pick up a book by Henri Nouwen. Enough said.

“Catholics practice idolatry because they worship Mary, saints, statues and paintings.” Really, there is very little truth to this. Catholic tradition holds elaborate and complex views of Mary (e.g., her so-called Immaculate Conception) and her relationship to Jesus that most Protestants find problematic. Prayer to saints is part of their understanding of the doctrine of “communion of saints” expressed in the Apostles’ Creed, a doctrine which Protestants largely ignore. There are some real differences in Catholic and Protestant views here. But knowledgeable Catholics do not worship Mary or the saints. They accept the Ten Commandments and understand that worship is reserved for God alone.

“Catholics blindly follow the Pope.” I agree, to an extent. Catholic teachings about St. Peter and papal succession seem extrabiblical and hard for Protestants (and plenty of Catholics as well) to swallow. Before casting stones, however, it would be wise to heed the words of the great evangelical preacher Dr. John Stott, who said about evangelicals, “There are too many gurus and too many autocrats who lay down the law in the local church in defiance of the teaching of Jesus… There are too many who behave as though they believe, not in the priesthood of all believers, but in the papacy of all pastors.”

“Catholics have wrong views about the sacraments. They practice infant baptism, which is unbiblical and invalid. And they superstitiously think that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ, which no sensible Protestant would ever believe.” Anyone who says this reveals ignorance of church history and Protestantism. Every major leader of the Protestant Reformation including Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, upheld and practiced paedobaptism. Luther and Calvin both believed and taught the “real presence” of Christ in Communion, albeit in different ways. The vast majority of Protestant churches today will accept a baptism practiced in any church, including Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, as valid as long as the baptism is Trinitarian, “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” as Jesus commanded in Matthew 28:19.

“The Reformation happened for good reasons, and we shouldn’t go back.” I agree. The Protestant Reformation was a reaction against real problems and abuses in the medieval church. Catholics do not want to return to problematic medieval beliefs and practices either. What happened in the 16th century is unchangeable, but it no longer accurately frames the doctrinal, cultural and practical issues that separate Protestants and Catholics today.

Please do not call me an apologist for the Roman Catholic church. If you have actually paid attention to my words, you will know that there are some Catholic positions that I do not agree with and many more that I simply do not understand. But I also do not agree with or understand many things that are taught and practiced in various Protestant churches either. And there are plenty things about my own church that I do not like. Church membership, denominational positions and historical events from centuries past do not control and define the character or faith of real flesh-and-blood people today. God cares about people, all of them, far more than he cares about institutions and labels.

Back when I was a young teenager, I stumbled across a column published in a conservative Catholic newspaper that my mother used to read. It was about hymns that were being sung at Catholic Mass. The author objected to How Great Thou Art because that hymn was written by a Protestant and was therefore suspect and impure. Even at that young age, I found his statement so appalling that I remember it to this day. But just a few years later, I began to think and speak of Catholicism and Catholics in precisely the same way. Having strong Protestant convictions is fine. But do those convictions require me to scrupulously avoid all things that vaguely appear to be Catholic because there are Catholics who presently do them?

Through interacting with today’s college students (the so-called postmoderns), I have been deeply impressed by their relational maturity. They love to engage in thoughtful, evenhanded, openminded, give-and-take discussion. They are not afraid to touch the third rail. They long to break down barriers and find common ground with people who are different from them. They instinctively understand that unity does not require uniformity. And they have no interest in perpetuating theological divisions, culture wars and us-versus-them mentalities of generations past. Do you want to impress young people, gain their respect and open their hearts to Christ? Then demonstrate a healthy spirit of criticism toward yourself and your own tradition. Reach out and communicate in a loving, Christlike way with those who are different from you. Show them that you are open to learning and revising your own opinions as God shows you new things. Do you want to offend young people and close their hearts? Then promote caricature, stereotype, and ignorance by continually praising your own group, church or culture while glibly criticizing those on the outside. And then brace yourself for others to treat you likewise. What goes around, comes around.

House churches are diverse and difficult to characterize. They tend to be small and informal, led by laypeople with no paid staff. They invoke simple, bare-bones Christianity without the trappings of organized religion. People seem to like them because they are the exact opposite of the megachurch, a symbol of what many find distasteful about present-day American culture. The megachurch is supposedly corporate, consumer-driven, and depersonalizing, whereas the house church is seen as authentic, organic, close-knit and personal, attractive to homeschoolers, do-it-yourselfers and others who like to swim against the prevailing tides. (Personally, I think that characterization of megachurches is unfair. But that’s another story.)

Since the early 1990’s, I have pastored a small UBF church. For the first 15 years, we held weekly worship services in our home. When the congregation outgrew our living room, we met in various temporary locations and eventually purchased our own building. Thus I can legitimately claim to be on the cutting edge of the house-church movement.

But for much of that time, we called this operation a “ministry” rather than a church. Three years ago, we incorporated in Pennsylvania and obtained federal 501 (c) (3) status as a church. So we are a now a legitimate church, at least in the view of the IRS. But are we legit in the sight of God?

This is an issue that we have not fully resolved. It is crucial one, because it affects our standing in the larger Christian community, how we present ourselves to those who have looked upon us with curiosity or suspicion and asked, “Why are you doing this?”

We are definitely making progress in understanding who we are. One important point to consider is the distinction between “a true church” and “the true Church.” The true Church consists of all people from all places and times who belong to Christ. It is not a visible organization with membership roster that we can see in this world; only God knows who truly belongs to him. But certainly this true Church includes people who attend churches of many flavors, shapes and sizes. I believe that I am a member of the true Church because I am a committed follower of Jesus. (I no longer doubt my salvation; God has given me assurance through the Holy Spirit that I belong to Christ. But even as I rest in God’s salvation, I need to be constantly persevering in my faith and putting my trust in Christ alone, rather than trusting my own past decisions and experiences.)

On the other hand, “a true church” is a concept that is more difficult to define. The Apostle Paul wrote letters to the saints in Corinth, Ephesus, Rome, and so on, and Revelation chapters 1-2 speak of seven churches in seven cities. But in any given city, the church did not necessarily function as a single congregation; more likely, it was a loosely organized network of believers who met in their homes.

All of the churches mentioned in the New Testament had strengths and weaknesses in their beliefs and behaviors. Some were commended, others were rebuked. For example, in Revelation 2:6, Jesus declared that he hated the practices of the Nicolatians who were leading believers astray. But I cannot find any example in Scripture where a whole community of people who baptized in the name of Jesus Christ – or “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” as Jesus commanded – is denounced as a false or illegitimate church.

Since the beginning, the Church has produced doctrinal statements like the Apostles Creed to define the essence of what Christians believe. These statements were originally used to catechize new believers and prepare them for baptism. They establish many of core teachings of the faith – the Trinity, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and so on. If someone is not willing to confess the Apostle’s Creed (except perhaps for that part “he descended into Hades,” which many find difficult to understand) then I would certainly wonder whether that person is a Christian. By this creedal standard, groups that claim to hold Jesus in high regard — Bahais, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc. — but are not distinctly Trinitarian are not calling people to the Christian faith. There may be some members of the true Church within these communities, but they are not systematically drawing people into the true Church.

Yet Christians have many more yardsticks that go far beyond the basic creeds by which they evaluate churches and declare them to be true or false, healthy or aberrant. Many of these yardsticks are based on theological or political leanings and personal experience. Sometimes they reflect stereotype, prejudice, and ignorance of other cultures and generational tribes. Sometimes they are rooted in tragic past hurts and unresolved conflicts.

There is a good Christian man whom I see and talk to regularly. Many years ago, someone close to him was sexually molested by a Roman Catholic priest, and has been strongly anti-Roman Catholic ever since. That horrible event has become the prism through which he sees and evaluates the whole Catholic church. He now identifies himself not as a “Christian” but as a “Protestant Christian” and would like to see other people abandon Catholicism. And who can blame him? But I do not believe that his stance – to be dismissive of a whole denomination of 1.2 billion people worldwide – is a logical response to the trauma he has suffered. One can certainly raise objections to specific teachings of Roman Catholicism. (As a former Catholic, there are many RC teachings with which I disagree.) But objecting to specific teachings is different from denouncing the whole with sweeping generalizations.

It is remarkable to me how quickly believers will denounce whole congregations and denominations that are clearly Trinitarian. They will cite Bible verses to prove their point, but in many cases, I find that the Scriptures are being used in ways that were never intended. For example, someone may say that a certain church is aberrant because “they don’t teach the Bible.” And he may cite 2 Timothy 4:2: “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.” This was the charge that Paul gave to Timothy to give him clear direction for his ministry. It is a charge that I take seriously, and I wish that all pastors did so. But Paul did not present this to Timothy as a yardstick to classify whole communities of Christians as unfaithful because the style, frequency or emphasis of their Bible study does not measure up to someone’s preferred standard.

Some make no clear distinction between the Body of Christ, “the true Church,” and their own congregation or denomination, which they presumably consider to be “a true church.” Perhaps they have not thought that such a distinction is necessary. But sooner or later, equating two things that are not equal will get you into trouble. In this case, the inevitable result is sectarianism, an air of superiority and distrust toward anyone outside of your group or theological tradition.

Sectarianism is passionately denounced by Apostle Paul (1Co 1:10-17; 1Co 3:1-23; 1Co 12:1-31). Paul’s pleas for unity and peaceful co-working in the church are no less strong than his warnings against sexual immorality (Gal 5:20; Eph 4:3-6; Php 4:2). Many of us would feel compelled to distance ourselves from a church member who openly and unrepentantly practiced a homosexual lifestyle. Would we act the same way toward someone who regularly speaks of his own group in unrealistically positive and glowing terms while denouncing other Christian groups and traditions in broad, sweeping terms?

I began this series by asking what happens when our understanding of Scripture is contradicted by the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is easy for us to convince ourselves that we are holding to “biblical” values and principles simply because we belong to a ministry that strongly emphasizes Bible study, and yet miss what God is saying to us here and now. The epistle to the Hebrews contains a vivid description of how the Holy Spirit works in conjunction with Scripture (Hebrews 4:12-13, NIV):

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

For the Bible to do its work, we must do more than just try to understand the meaning of the written word. We need to come in the presence the living Word and allow him to expose unpleasant truths about ourselves. In the King James Version, “laid bare” is rendered as “naked.” Studying the Bible while you are naked sounds rather uncomfortable. Unless our Bible study is somewhat uncomfortable, we are not approaching Scripture as we ought. In the next chapter, the author delivers a stinging rebuke to his readers (Hebrews 5:11, The Message):

I have a lot more to say about this, but it is hard to get it across to you since you’ve picked up this bad habit of not listening.

There are countless bad habits that keep us from listening to the voice of God. The bad habit of pulling verses and passages out of context to support our pre-existing positions. Using the Bible to affirm our identity and make us think we are better than others. Treating the Bible as a collection of timeless principles and moral examples rather than the great metanarrative of history culminating in the person and work of Jesus. From my own experience, I know how easy it is to fall into a pattern of bad habits which, while we are interacting with Scripture, allows us to remain distant from Jesus. As Jesus said in John 5:39-40:

You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

The Spirit wants to awaken us out of complacency into a dynamic, life-giving relationship with Christ. He wants to refresh our mission, giving us a renewed understanding of the gospel and how to participate in missio Dei.

As the 50^th anniversary of UBF approaches, I have mixed feelings about what has been happening in our ministry. I am grateful for what God has done among us thus far, but I am apprehensive about the talk about preserving our “spiritual heritage” and passing on “UBF principles” to the next generation. The reason I am apprehensive is that, when leaders articulate what the heritage and principles are, it sounds like a description of the fruit of the gospel work among the first generation of UBF members, not the seed that generated that fruit.

The seed is, of course, the gospel. The historical facts of the birth, death and resurrection of Christ, his ascension, lordship and Second Coming, are the universal message that must be proclaimed by the Church in every time and place. The call to believe this message and personally follow the risen Christ are the core of the universal Christian witness. The fruit is the renewal of persons and restoration of relationships seen among those who receive the gospel message, the visible work of the Holy Spirit who dwells in the fellowship of believers.

If someone has come to a saving faith in Christ, evidence of that faith must appear in the person’s life in the form of visible fruit (Heb 6:8; Jas 2:26). But that visible fruit may look very different from one person to another and from one community to another. Profound differences began to appear within the first generation after Christ. The first disciples of Jesus were Jews, and they expressed their gospel faith in visible ways within the context of distinctly Jewish lifestyle. But when Gentiles received the gospel message, they began to live out their faith differently. This led to a crisis around 50 A.D. culminating in the Jerusalem Council in Acts chapter 15, when distinctions between Jewish and Gentile Christians were openly acknowledged and blessed. If the apostles had decided to impose Jewish life-patterns upon Gentile Christians, the growth that the Church experienced in its first two decades would have been unsustainable. The key to continued growth was for the apostles to simultaneously hold on to the historic message of salvation through Christ alone and let go of their implicit, culture-bound notions and expectations about what the “ideal” Christian life should look like, allowing the Holy Spirit to work creatively among new converts.

Too many evangelistic movements have fallen into the trap of trying to sustain activities that are inherently unsustainable. When the Spirit works powerfully in a particular time and place, those who are changed by it may naturally begin to think that this is how it’s supposed to be in other times and places. There is a very fine line between (a) giving thanks to God for what he has done and faithfully building upon it, and (b) canonizing the formative experience of the evangelistic movement by constructing a system of theology, principles, and rules around it in an attempt to perpetuate it. Those who cross this line try to absolutize what is provisional and, despite good intentions, obscure the gospel message and stifle the work of the Spirit among those who would come after them.

The actual fruit of the gospel consists of inward qualities (love, joy, peace, etc.) which cannot be directly observed (Gal 5:22-23). These inward qualities are universal, but their outward manifestations are context-specific and culturally conditioned. During the last century, conservative evangelicals in the United States promoted “Christian” values by demanding that church members abstain from smoking, drinking, gambling and dancing. Interestingly, none of these activities is specifically prohibited in the Bible; Christians in the first century wrestled with a different set of moral issues and dilemmas. A personal decision to refrain from smoking, drinking, gambling or dancing may be an appropriate response to the gospel in some contexts, but these are not timeless laws, and treating them as such can produce unintended negative consequences for individuals, congregations and society at large. When standards like these are imposed as a matter of policy, disciples may adhere to them, but their adherence may not be the evidence of real inner transformation; rather, it will appear through self effort, relationship pressure, cultural expectations and church rules. It will be counterfeit fruit, not the result of genuine Christian spirituality, and its benefits will not last.

When missionaries bring the gospel message into a new culture, they also carry tacit notions of how an ideal Christian disciple should look and act. It is almost inevitable that missionaries will impose many culture-bound standards and expectations upon their disciples. As the disciples mature and begin to exercise independent faith and judgment, they begin to challenge the missionaries’ standards with ideas of their own, leading to tensions and conflicts within a ministry. Appeals to the Bible may not solve the problem, because each one can make a compelling case (in their own minds, at least) that the Bible is on their side. The fundamental question being raised is this: Who determines what the ethical implications of the gospel are in that specific time and place? Should the missionaries decide? Or should the native disciples decide?

The correct answer, I believe, is neither. In a genuine gospel ministry, the Holy Spirit must decide. Fruit-bearing is the prerogative of the Spirit who comes upon each believer in Christ, young and old, male and female, and upon the Church as a whole (Acts 2:16-18). The work of the Spirit is mysterious, unpredictable and surprising. He cannot be treated in a mechanical fashion or be reduced to rules, principles or methods, because he is a person. There is no greater need among us now than to become personally acquainted with Holy Spirit and discern what he doing in this present generation among missionaries’ children and among native disciples, so that this work may be encouraged and blessed.

In a nutshell, Paul says that God hardened the hearts of most first-century Jews to reject the gospel message of righteousness by faith. The remnant who accepted the gospel did so by the grace of God alone. And the Gentiles who accepted the message did so by the grace of God alone. Paul also expressed his hope that someday the Jews, seeing God’s work among the Gentiles, would be aroused to envy, believe the gospel and be saved.

Why did God choose to work this way? Paul’s analysis suggests the following.

• If most of the first-century Jews had accepted Christ, then Christianity would have been so closely bound to Jewish lifestyles and traditions that the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles would have been hindered, and the message of salvation by grace alone would have been watered down.
• If most of the first-century Jews had accepted Christ, then they could think it was their superior character, discipline, keeping of the law, etc. that allowed them to fulfill their purpose as the chosen people. The fact that only a remnant accepted Christ was a mark of shame upon the Jewish Christians which humbled them, making the remnant less arrogant and less likely to impose their own cultural standards upon the Gentiles (although some of them still tried).
• The Gentiles who received the gospel from the Jewish remnant also had to be extra careful not to think of themselves as superior in any way, because if God did not spare arrogant Jews, he would not spare arrogant Gentiles either.
• If and when the gospel ultimately flows from the Gentiles back to the Jews, it will again be an act of saving grace by God’s own choosing.

Another powerful description of election is found near the beginning of 1 Corinthians, where Paul notes that neither Jews nor Gentiles were naturally inclined to accept the gospel (1Co 1:22-24):

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Note the use of the word called. He uses the same term again a few verses later: “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called” (1Co 1:26). That term emphasizes that it was God who, by his divine sovereignty, selected and called the believers in Corinth out from their respective cultural groups to follow Christ. It was not their own choice, their own faith, their own character, their own anything. It was only because of him that they became Christians, and so they have absolutely no reason to boast (1Co 1:30-31). This sense of being called by Christ, and not approaching him by their own merit or choosing, was so pervasive among the early Christians that it is reflected in the name of their community. The Greek word ekklesia, which we translate as “church,” literally means, “ones who were called out.”

What does Paul’s teaching on election imply for the spread of the gospel and missionary work today? Here are three practical lessons that I draw from it.

First, it underscores the fact that evangelism is not driven by human planning, vision, or zeal, but is undertaken by God’s initiative and the work of the Holy Spirit.

There is a short passage in the middle of Romans chapter 10 where Paul writes (Ro 10:14-15):

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

This paragraph has often been interpreted as an exhortation to evangelism. Countless pastors have quoted these verses to urge their members to volunteer, go out, and carry the gospel to an unbelieving world so that they too can have “beautiful feet.” In the context of Romans 9-11, however, this is not an exhortation to evangelism. It is an explanation of why a remnant was chosen out of Israel to believe in Jesus. The original disciples of Jesus didn’t volunteer; they were called by Jesus and then sent by him and the Holy Spirit to the preach the gospel to the rest of Israel, who for the most part rejected the message because God had hardened their hearts. And the hardening of their hearts was part of God’s plan!

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that evangelism is unnecessary. It is necessary. But it is God who calls and sends some to evangelize, and it is God who manages the outcomes, either positive or negative, and uses them for his own mysterious salvation purpose. To think that we can decide to accept a vision and go out and evangelize, and that we will be successful if we only try hard enough, pray long enough, and use the correct methods, then we are deluding ourselves. God’s interest is to save the nations, not to expand our churches and ministries. He is more than willing to allow us to fail, to chasten us, to humble us, etc. if necessary to show us the world that no group is intrinsically privileged, that salvation comes to everyone by the grace of God alone. He is more than willing to use poor, ineffective, arrogant, or ethnocentric evangelism to reveal the weaknesses of evangelists, churches and Christians and show the world that everyone, including all missionaries and all religious leaders, are sinners not just in theory, but in actuality. He is not interested in helping unrepentant Christians to save face. He wants to show off the amazing grace of his Son, not to dazzle people by the greatness of us.

Second, it shows that God’s mission travels in all directions.

God did not intend for the gospel to travel just from Jews to Gentiles. His plan was for the gospel to start with a remnant of Israel, to flow out the Gentiles, and then ultimately come back to Israel. If the gospel were to flow in one direction only, then it would elevate certain persons and groups to privileged status over others. But the gospel flows in all directions. As missionaries evangelize disciples, they must allow themselves to be re-evangelized by the disciples. This makes the concept of a missionary-sending nation somewhat dubious. Rather than praying for any nation to be “a missionary-sending nation,” it would be more reasonable to envision “a gospel-proclaiming and a gospel-receiving nation.” A church that sends missionaries overseas should not imagine itself to be just a power-station for mission, always giving but never receiving, insulating itself and not allowing itself to be influenced by the Christianity of the converts. As the Church welcomes new believers into the fold, it must itself be transformed. God is always interested in using the various parts of the Body of Christ to evangelize, renew and reform other parts. If any part seeks to reform another, it had better be prepared to be reformed right back.

In part 4 of this series, I discussed the problems with the “mission-station” strategy in which foreigners enter a new culture, set up a church that resembles the one from back home, and attempt to raise disciples in their own image. Donald A. McGavran (1897-1990), the missionary and scholar who coined this term, criticized the mission-station strategy on the grounds that it is ineffective and inhibits church growth. Although I believe his arguments have merit, I do not consider slow growth to be the main reason why Christians must avoid establishing mission stations. We must avoid doing so because this approach conflicts with what the New Testament teaches about election and undermines the gospel of salvation by grace alone.

Third, it underscores the need for great humility – not a false modesty, but a true acknowledgement of our own spiritual poverty – in the way we do apologetics, evangelism and discipleship.

Paul’s teaching about election leads explicitly to the conclusion that at no point may any Christian individual or group think of themselves as superior to any believer or nonbeliever. This does not mean that there is not a proper time for some to teach and others to learn. Indeed, election means that some are called by God to positions of teaching. But the role of teacher carries a grave responsibility to examine himself to uncover the weaknesses of himself and the group from which he comes. As Paul warned in Romans 2:17-20:

Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God; if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself?

We have no business evangelizing others if we are not simultaneously allowing ourselves to be evangelized by the message we are preaching and by the work of the Holy Spirit among those we are attempting to reach. At no point does evangelism depend on our own effort, faithfulness, righteousness or obedience, because the gospel comes to all not because of our wonderful goodness, but only despite our horrible badness. And if our efforts do not produce the desired result, if the message we preach is rejected, what are we to conclude? Lesslie Newbigin (as quoted by Bosch in Transforming Mission, p. 413) wrote:

I can never be so confident of the purity and authenticity of my witness that I can know that the person who rejects my witness has rejected Jesus. I am witness to him who is both utterly holy and utterly gracious. His holiness and grace are as far above my comprehension as they are above that of my hearer.

In the next, and final, article of this series, I will pick up a question that was left unanswered at the end of part 4: Who decides the ethical implications of th gospel?

Reading Romans to learn about justification by faith is a useful exercise. But it is also helpful to take off those Reformation goggles to see what Paul was actually saying to Roman Christians in the first century. If we do so, then we may find that the central teaching of Romans is not justification by faith. Rather, I believe we will find that the key idea is divine election.

Allusions to election appear in the very first verse: “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God…” (Ro 1:1). Notice the terms “called” and “set apart.” Paul’s status as an apostle and servant of Christ were not attained by virtue, dedication, hard work, values, character, etc. but were given to him as a gift of pure grace. It was God who called him and set him apart from his fellow Jews to serve the gospel rather than promoting Jewish law, custom and tradition.

Paul was writing to a church that he did not personally found. His letter was intended to give them a rich theological and historical perspective on the gospel, to help them better understand their identity as a mixed congregation of Jewish and Gentile Christians. Comparisons and contrasts between Jews and Gentiles are made throughout the book, in virtually every chapter. Vast differences existed between these two groups with regard to history, culture, lifestyle and conscience. Paul did not want them to ignore those differences, but to pay attention to them, wrestle with them, and understand God’s purpose in bringing these polar opposites together in light of missio Dei.

The thesis of the first half of the book (Chapters 1-8) is that a divine message of salvation has now been revealed, a message that can save Jew and Gentile alike, and that both groups are saved in exactly the same way: through a righteousness that comes by faith (1:16-17). Both groups are sinful and deserving of God’s judgment, but in different ways and for different reasons. Gentiles have fallen into blatant godlessness evidenced by idolatry, sexual immorality, violence, and depravity (1:18-32). Jews have violated God’s covenant with them by breaking the laws that he gave them (2:17-29). Neither group has the right to point a finger of judgment at the other, because neither one is repentant (2:1-5). But Jesus Christ came to save both Jew and Gentile in the same way, granting them righteousness that comes by faith (3:21-26). God’s manner of salvation makes it impossible for anyone to boast (3:27). This gospel of righteousness is not new; it is found in the Old Testament, through the accounts of Abraham and David (chapter 4). Jesus is the new Adam who recreates the entire human race (chapter 5). Anyone who believes Christ is united with him in his death and resurrection, and the risen Christ comes alive in him, giving him a new life (chapter 6). Christians are not bound by law, but have been freed to live by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit accomplishes what the law was powerless to do: bring our dead souls to life, give us victory over sin (chapters 7-8).

Partway through this treatise on the gospel is a defense of the doctrine of election (3:1-8). Paul explains that even though the Jews failed to uphold their covenant, God’s purpose for them did not fail. He hints that human unfaithfulness is foreseen by God and is ultimately used for his glory, but that fact does not absolve anyone of genuine guilt. He picks up this theme again in chapters 9-11, where he wrestles with a subject that for him was intensely personal and painful: the Jews’ overwhelming rejection of the gospel.

If we look to Romans chapters 9-11 to answer all of our questions about Calvinism versus Arminianism, we will be disappointed. Paul was not constructing a theological system. His purpose was limited to making sense of what God had done, was doing, and will do with his chosen people, to help Jewish and Gentile Christians understand their respective positions in God’s redemptive history.

In chapter 9, Paul shares his deep anguish over the Israel’s rejection of the gospel. Despite their glorious spiritual heritage as God’s chosen people, they rejected God’s Messiah. They stumbled over the “stumbling stone,” because they pursued righteousness through the conditional, failed covenant of Mosaic law rather than the unconditional Abrahamic covenant of righteousness by faith. God foresaw all their failure and their future rejection of Christ, yet he patiently bore with them for many centuries because he had a different purpose for them. His purpose was to raise up through them a faithful remnant to carry the gospel to his elect among the Jews, and to use the Jews’ majority rejection of Christ to propel the gospel out to the Gentiles.

In the middle of chapter 9, Paul makes a startling claim. He says that underlying reason why the majority of Jews rejected the gospel is that God hardened their hearts. He compares the Israelites to Pharaoh, of whom it is said numerous times (I counted ten times in Exodus chapters 4-14) that God hardened his heart against the message of Moses. Paul repeats the claim in chapter 11, using references from Deuteronomy 29 and Isaiah 29 to show that “God gave them a spirit of stupor” so that they would reject the message.

Paul’s claim is difficult for us to swallow, because it deeply conflicts with our modernistic notions of fairness, freedom, and autonomy of the individual human person. It was also confusing for Christians in the first century, but for different reasons. It conflicted with their understanding of the Old Testament. How could they reconcile this reasoning with God’s numerous promises to Israel? Had God changed his mind and rejected those whom he had chosen? Paul offered some clarifications to help his readers, and it is useful to examine them even if they do not put to rest all the questions and concerns of 21^st century evangelicals. First, Paul notes that “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (9:6). It is not the physical descendents of Abraham who are reckoned as God’s children, but those among them who accepted his promise of blessing. Second, he says that even if God hardens someone’s heart, it does not absolve them of personal responsibility (9:19-21). Third, even though most of the Jews had at present rejected God’s offer, they had not stumbled beyond recovery (11:11). All of God’s promises throughout the Old Testament still stood; his gifts and promises were irrevocable, which led Paul to believe that the hardening of their hearts was temporary. He still hoped that at some point in the future, many of them would eventually come back into a saving relationship with God, because God’s desire was to show mercy to all (11:25-32). Realizing that this is still very difficult to understand, that we do not at present see exactly what God is doing but must trust his judgments, Paul consigns these teachings to the realm of mystery and exclaims, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” (11:33-36).

Editors of the NIV placed Romans 11:25-32 under a section title, “All Israel Will Be Saved.” Some evangelicals believe that all Jews will ultimately receive salvation, and this is tied to various beliefs about the future of the nation of Israel. Although I do not dismiss these theories, I remain skeptical because I do not know the extent to which Paul’s use of the term “Israel” relates to any modern-day ethnic or religious group or geopolitical entity. Like Paul, I am happy to place this in a file cabinet under “mysterious teachings of the Bible.” I don’t know what the future holds for Israel, but I suspect that however it pans out, everyone will be surprised. (That’s why I call myself a pan-millennialist.)

Although Paul doesn’t answer many of our questions about predestination, he does give us a definitive understanding of God’s overall purpose in election, and he does present a “practical application” of this teaching to his first-century readers. He tells them that, whether they are Jews or Gentiles, their acceptance of the gospel did not “depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy” (9:16). The historic covenant of law had to fail prior to the coming of the gospel; if it did not, it would have undermined God’s plan to grant people righteousness by faith alone (9:30-33). If the people of Israel had not rejected Christ, then Jewish missionaries who carried the gospel to the Gentiles could still claim ethnic or religious superiority over the people they were evangelizing. The rejection of the gospel by the Jews underscored the fact that the minority, the remnant who accepted the gospel, were chosen not because of their superior character or effort or achievements but by the grace of God alone (11:1-6). And the Gentiles who received the gospel from the Jewish remnant had no right to boast either, because they too were chosen by grace alone (11:13-21). At no point should anyone in Christ feel smug or self-assured in their salvation. No one in the church has achieved standing before God on the basis any decision they have made or any action that they have taken; their standing has always been by grace alone, and if they deny that, they themselves will be cut off (11:22).

The principle of election should foster in everyone a deep, heartfelt gratitude toward God and humility before other people, as Paul says in the next chapter: “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you” (12:3). Although we have been saved by faith, the faith itself is a gift from God. Whether we think of ourselves as having weak faith, strong faith, or no faith, no Christian individual or group at any time has any basis for pride over anyone else, because whatever faith they have was distributed to them by God as an undeserved gift.

This understanding of election leads us inevitably to a rule of love, not a rule of law, as the sole ethic of the Christian life. A Christian must not by driven by desire to achieve a superior status or blessing from God on the basis of anything he is or does; such motivations are incompatible with the gospel. The sole motivation for everything we do must be love for God, for our neighbor, and for our enemy (12:9-21). Love is the fulfillment of the law (13:8-10). Christians who understand election will not pass judgment on one another. Those who seem to be “strong” will never judge those who seem “weak,” or vice-versa, because God accepts all regardless of strength or weakness (14:1-22).

And in a stunning reversal of common sense, Paul uses the term “weak” in chapter 14 to refer to Jewish Christians who, because of their consciences, felt compelled to adhere to dietary and religious laws. I’ll bet that those believers did not consider themselves to be weak. From childhood, they had been trained to think of adhering to their laws (which, by the way, were biblically based) as a sign of holiness, discipline and purity. Paul characterized their reliance upon those disciplines as a weakness and freedom from those laws as strength. But he warned those who were free to be mindful of those who were not. He urged everyone not to impose their moral scruples upon one another, but to respect one another’s consciences, to love one another and live in peace as demonstrated by unity-in-diversity.

Historians have called the early Church “a sociological impossibility.” This description is very accurate. There was no human way for Jews and Gentiles, who in so many ways were polar opposites, to come together as friends and form a loving community. But it happened in the first century, and the reason why it happened is found in the book of Romans. Understanding the doctrine of divine election enabled the Jewish and Gentile Christians to embrace their differences and see why God had put them together in the same church.

Similarly, the world mission command of Acts 1:8 functions as an outline for Acts, and its true meaning cannot be discerned apart from the entire book. As I have previously noted, this verse is not a command but a promise. Jesus said to his apostles: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” What Jesus promised came to pass. The apostles became witnesses of the risen Christ, and the gospel did go out from them to Jerusalem, to all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. As I explained in part 5 of this series, this propagation of the gospel did not come about through the apostles’ visionary planning, effort and zeal. It happened just as Jesus said it would, through the power and initiative of the Holy Spirit.

The preeminent role of the Holy Spirit in missio Dei is one of the great underlying themes of the book of Acts through which we are to interpret the world mission “command” of Acts 1:8.

As I re-read the book of Acts last month, another underlying theme caught my attention. This theme was so obvious that I was shocked that I hadn’t noticed it before. In addition to the work of the Holy Spirit among the apostles, there was another powerful force at work that drove the gospel out from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Can you guess what it was?

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, here’s the answer: It was the rejection of Christ by the Jews.

Not all the Jews rejected Jesus, of course. All of the apostles were Jews. The original 120 disciples, and the 3,000 who were baptized on the day of Pentecost, were overwhelmingly if not exclusively Jewish. So it would be more correct to say that it was the acceptance of Christ by a minority of Jews, combined with the rejection of Christ by the majority, that carried the gospel to the Gentiles.

The author of Acts does not present the Jews’ rejection of Christ as an incidental detail, but as a key piece of the mysterious puzzle of missio Dei. Here is some evidence.

In Peter’s evangelistic message on the day of Pentecost, he told his audience, “This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross” (Acts 2:23). Peter did not absolve the people of their responsibility; he declared them to be culpable in Jesus’ death. But he also explained that God deliberately planned for this to happen. It was an integral part of his glorification, a necessary step for him to become our rejected, crucified, risen Messiah.

After the day of Pentecost, the Jewish authorities were not able to stop the apostles from preaching the resurrection of Christ; the apostles had become too popular, and the good works that God was doing through them were undeniable (chapter 4). But a fresh wave of Jewish opposition arose when Stephen, a Hellenistic Jew who had been appointed by the apostles to a position of leadership along with six other Hellenistic Jews, began to preach and perform miraculous signs. Stephen’s ministry (chapter 6) and speech before the Sanhedrin (chapter 7) infuriated the religious leaders and the populace of Jerusalem. In the middle of Stephen’s speech, they dragged him out of court and stoned him to death. The stoning of Stephen was a gross violation of civil and religious law; he had not been convicted of any crime.

Why did Stephen’s speech infuriate them so much? That is a truly interesting question. To answer it well would require a careful exegesis of his speech, which is beyond the scope of this article. But two features of the speech stand out. First, Stephen pointed out that God does not dwell in any building made by human hands (Acts 7:48). He greatly diminished the importance of the temple, inferring that Jerusalem was no longer (and, in truth, never had been) the focus of God’s redemptive history. Second, he declared that the Jews had failed all along to keep the covenant of law that God had given them. All along they been resisting the work of the Holy Spirit, and the crucifixion of Jesus was just the latest and most blatant example of their rejection of God’s purpose for them (Acts 7:51-53). To hear these words from the mouth Hellenistic Jew – and Hellenistic Jews were generally regarded by the Hebraic Jews as worldly, compromised, too liberal in their lifestyles, etc. – struck at the heart of their religious identity. It brought to the surface huge amount of conflict, anger and resentment.

After the murder of Stephen – and it is correctly called a murder, because due process was not followed – a wave of violent opposition broke out against the Jerusalem church, and everyone except the apostles was driven out of the city. As a direct consequence of this persecution, the gospel went out to Judea and Samaria. Philip, another one of the seven Hellenistic church leaders, was instrumental in the evangelization of Samaria (chapter 8). In a very ironic twist, it is Saul of Tarsus, the future Apostle Paul, who is a ringleader in the persecution effort. Even before Paul’s conversion, he was already being used as God’s a divinely elected instrument to drive the gospel toward the Gentiles.

When the Holy Spirit sent Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey, they traveled to Cyprus and regions of modern-day Turkey (chapters 13-14). They intentionally focused their efforts on the Jewish community, preaching in synagogues on the Sabbath. Paul believed that it was God’s plan for the Jews, God’s chosen people, to receive the gospel first (Romans 1:16). A few Jews would respond favorably, but most would reject it. However, the message would be received with great enthusiasm by the God-fearing Gentiles who had not taken the step of conversion to Judaism by being circumcised. This became a recurrent pattern throughout Paul’s missionary journeys.

In hindsight, we can say that the rejection of the gospel by a majority of the Jews was necessary for the Church to develop, both sociologically and theologically. If large numbers of Jews had embraced the message, then Christianity could never have become divorced from Jewish custom and tradition, and a Torah-free gospel could not have been preached throughout the world. The schism in the Jewish community created by the gospel forced the leaders of the early Church to take stock of their theology and clarify what the gospel is truly about (chapter 15). But this rift caused a great deal of personal angst, heartache and pain among the Jewish believers. The rejection of the gospel by the Jewish majority, and the tension between Jewish and Gentile elements in forging the identity of the Church, is one of the most salient issues on the minds of the writers of the New Testament. It strongly colors all four of the gospels and many of the epistles. Given the overwhelming hardness of the Jews toward the gospel, and the rapid spread of the faith among the Gentiles, what was God doing, and what should the Church leaders now be doing? What would the Church look like after one, two, or three generations? Was the apostolic mission to the Jews now finished?

Nowhere is this struggle to understand what God was doing more evident than in Paul’s epistle to the Romans. It is the focus of chapters 9-11, which are difficult to understand but regarded by many scholars as the heart of the book. We will discuss that in the next installment.

The word elect simply means “chosen.” In the Old Testament, God chose the people of Israel and made a special relationship with them. If we examine how this choice is portrayed, two aspects are emphasized. First, the Israelites were not chosen because of their inherent goodness; election came to them by grace alone. Second, election did not confer on them any claim of superior status before God. On the contrary, their election placed them in a position of responsibility and servantship toward other nations. Their failure to live up to God’s covenant led to captivity and humiliation, and that should have further prepared them to receive the gospel of salvation by grace.

Election is also a powerful theme throughout the New Testament. We see it in the interaction between Jesus and his disciples. First-century Jewish society had a well developed culture of discipleship. Young men would gather around popular rabbis to learn the Torah with hopes of becoming rabbis themselves. It was always the disciple who chose the rabbi and initiated the relationship. But Jesus turned the tables completely around. He approached young men of his own choosing and commanded them to follow him. Of course, the disciples had to willingly respond. But they were not the initiators. Jesus called, they followed.

When Jesus appointed the Twelve apostles, he chose the ones he wanted (Mark 3:13). Jesus said to the Twelve, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit…” (John 15:16). When others tried to follow Jesus as the apostles did, Jesus sometimes discouraged them from doing so (Mark 5:19).

Why did Jesus choose these particular men? They had no special education, pedigree or obvious qualifications that set them apart from the rest. They were just regular people from Galilee. It seems that they were chosen specifically because of their ordinariness, to show the world that their election was by grace alone. Even after they were chosen, they did not demonstrate great virtue or faithfulness. Throughout the gospel accounts, their weaknesses are continually laid bare. They abandoned and betrayed Jesus in his hour of need. Their status as apostles was truly undeserved. From start to finish, it was Jesus who bore with them, forgave them and upheld them by grace.

Jesus chose them to be with him and to observe him, and to ultimately become the witnesses of his death and resurrection (Mark 1:14, Acts 1:8). They were to preach the gospel to the whole world (Mark 16:15). Yet Peter, despite his interaction with Cornelius in Acts chapter 10, continued to minister almost exclusively to the Jews (Gal 2:7-8). Peter and the other apostles had great difficulty associating with Gentiles. They had been taught from childhood that Gentile ways were inherently unclean. The idea of preaching a Torah-free gospel seemed alien to them; they just couldn’t envision an authentic Gentile Christian lifestyle.

When the gospel finally broke through to the Gentiles, it happened through the most unlikely person. Saul of Tarsus had distinguished himself among the Pharisees for his ultra-strict keeping of the law (Philippians 3:4-6). He had zealously persecuted the Church because he considered the Christians to be a threat to Jewish religious supremacy. But the risen Christ personally appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus. Jesus chose him to be his instrument to carry his name to the Gentiles, a mission that Saul would never have chosen for himself (Acts 9:15). The calling of Saul, and his transformation into the Apostle Paul, is another powerful picture of God’s election. Once again, it appears that God chose Paul for this task to demonstrate that his gospel comes to all purely by grace.

Examining the flow of God’s salvation history throughout the Old and New Testaments, it becomes unmistakably clear that his salvation comes to individuals and nations not because of the efforts and virtues of God’s human accomplices but despite them. From start to finish, the mission belongs to God, not to people.

The early Christians knew this principle. The Latin word missio, from which we derive mission, was a theological term for the Father sending the Son into the world, and for the Father and Son sending the Holy Spirit. Mission is an intrinsic part of God’s character. In modern times, however, mission has come to be understood as activity that individuals and churches undertake by their own choosing and initiative. All too often, mission is now seen as a human effort to carry the gospel to the lost people of the world.

In the highly acclaimed book Transforming Mission, David Bosch described how Protestant missionary efforts over the last two centuries have been characterized by a spirit of “voluntarism.” This is exactly what one would expect in a historical period marked by industrialization, free enterprise and scientific positivism. Christians spoke of “the evangelization of the world in this generation!” That phrase became the motto of the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM) of the late 19^th century. SVM leaders appeared to be self-confident, singleminded, and triumphant. With great enthusiasm, they recruited and sent out thousands of missionaries throughout the world. This era of missionary activity peaked around the year 1900, when a huge missions conference was held in New York City with over two hundred thousand participants. Speakers at that conference included several Presidents of the United States. Church leaders spoke of mission in militaristic terms. They confidently predicted that within their lifetimes the forces of darkness would be vanquished and the whole world conquered with the gospel, paving the way for Jesus to return.

In the early decades of the 20^th century, however, SVM and other missionary agencies rapidly declined. A proper analysis of why this happened is beyond the scope of this article. To characterize SVM as a failure would be an overstatement. But the organization was not able to fulfill its ambitious goals, and clearly it was not for lack of effort. The heroism, vision and hard work of SVM and similar organizations masked a great deal of organizational weakness. Bosch wrote (p. 333):

People were challenged to go without any financial guarantees, simply trusting that the Lord of mission would provide… No time was left for timorous or carefully prepared advances into pagan territory, nor for the laborious building up of ‘autonomous’ churches on the ‘mission field.’ The gospel had to be proclaimed to all with the greatest speed, and for this there could never be enough missionaries. It also meant that there was neither time nor need for drawn-out preparation for missionary service. Many who went out had very little education or training…

The movement also suffered from theological deficiencies that were not recognized or corrected. Bosch continues:

The weaknesses of the faith mission movement are obvious: the romantic notion of the freedom of the individual to make his or her own choices. And almost convulsive preoccupation with saving people’s souls before Judgment Day, a limited knowledge of the cultures and religions of the people to whom the missionaries went, virtually no interest in the societal dimension of the Christian gospel, almost exclusive dependence on the charismatic personality of the founder, a very low view of the church, etc.

When mission is seen to flow from the personal choice of the missionary who, of his own volition and charitable nature, decides to carry the gospel to lost people, it places the missionary on a moral high ground relative to those he is trying to evangelize. Bosch concludes:

It spawned an enterprise in which the one party would do all the giving and the other all the receiving. This was so because one group was, in its own eyes, evidently privileged and the other, equally evidently, disadvantaged.

The biblical principle of election, however, declares that the one who carries the gospel is in no way superior to the one who receives it. Arrogance, hubris, overconfidence, and a sense of entitlement before God have no place in mission because they are incompatible with the gospel of grace.

In a voluntaristic missionary movement, participation in the mission is regarded as obedience. Of course, the Great Commission was given to the apostles in Matthew 28:18-20 in the form of a command. Shouldn’t we be obeying that command? This reasoning of obedience to Matthew 28:18-20 was applied by William Carey in his famous 1792 tract An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen. Since that time, Matthew 28:18-20 has maintained a prominent place in the Protestant missionary thinking. It is difficult to argue with this kind of logic. Jesus bids us, “Go,” therefore we must go! If we are not going as missionaries to make disciples of all nations, then aren’t we clearly disobeying Christ?

Bosch points out, however, that the command “go and make disciples” can be properly understood only within the greater context of Matthew’s gospel (Chap. 2). The meaning and requirements of discipleship are laid out by Jesus throughout the book, beginning with the Sermon on the Mount, progressing through many parables about the kingdom of heaven, and so on. If the Great Commission is lifted out of this context and made the sole motivation for missions, the movement that ensues becomes a reduction and distortion of what Jesus intended. Indeed, until the early part of the 19^th century, Protestant missionary literature never relied on obedience to Matthew 28:18-20 as the sole motivator; it was always connected to other biblical motifs. But movements of the SVM era applied the Great Commission with greater frequency and vigor, and by the 20^th century it was often presented as sufficient justification for everything that the movements were doing. “It became a kind of last line of defense, as if the protagonists of mission were saying, ‘How can you oppose mission to the heathen if Christ himself has commanded it?'” (pp. 340-341)

In addition to removing these verses from their proper context, Bosch (p. 341) notes two other problems with the Great Commission as the primary motivator for Christian missions. First, it is almost always used as a polemic. Individuals and churches who do not vigorously proselytize are denounced as watered-down, compromised and disobedient. Second, it takes mission out of the realm of gospel and places it in the realm of law. The Great Commission becomes a rule that must be obeyed if one is to be considered a faithful Christian. But mission in the New Testament did not begin with the apostles sitting down together and discussing how to obey the world mission command. Evangelism began with the “explosion of joy” (Newbigin’s term) emanating from the empty tomb. The apostles’ mission was sealed by their encounters with the risen Christ and empowered by the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Mission arrived as a gift, not a law. It came to the apostles by divine election through the grace of God alone.

God cares about relationships. When Jesus ascended to heaven, he didn’t leave behind a book of writings. He left behind a community of witnesses who were filled with the Holy Spirit and entrusted the preaching of the gospel to them (Acts 1:8). As members of this community proclaim the gospel, they invite others to become part of God’s family where their true personhood will be realized. That family is not equivalent to a church organization. It is the body of all people who belong to Christ, the “communion of saints” that is mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed. Evangelism that fails to call people to join this body is alien to the New Testament. Jesus never intended his disciples to be lone wolves. Nor did he intend them to live in small, isolated, parochial clans whose members remain suspicious of everyone on the outside (Mk 9:38-40). He prayed for all his followers to be one, to experience among themselves the loving oneness that has with his own Father in a highly visible way, so that the whole world would see that the gospel is true (John 17:20-23).

So the preaching of the gospel is not just passing a set of teachings from one person to another; it is knitting persons together in grace to heal them, their families, their communities, and the world of the relational brokenness caused by sin. The healing that we experience now through the work of the Holy Spirit is the downpayment, the foretaste, of the full restoration that will be enacted when Jesus returns in power and glory. The present signs of the kingdom, our miraculously restored relationships with God and with one another, are the evidence and the engine of true evangelism.

If God’s plan to restore relationships requires that the gospel be spread from one person to another, one community to another, and one nation to another, then someone has to begin that process. Certain persons, communities and nations must be chosen to receive the gospel and bear it to others. That is the key idea of election as described by Paul in Romans 9-11.

Election wasn’t invented by Paul. It is the storyline of the Old Testament. Out of all nations, God called one nation, the Israelites, for his special purpose. He shaped their history through divine intervention and revelation, preparing them to be the first ones to welcome the Messiah.

In chapter 7 of The Open Secret, Lesslie Newbigin starts his discussion of election by reminding us of how offensive it sounds to nonbelievers, especially today. The idea that certain individuals and cultures have received special, unique knowledge from the Creator — the one who is Maker of all, whose image is borne by every human being – seems ludicrous. It is especially hard to believe, given that the people who were chosen were not outstanding among the great civilizations of the world; they hardly distinguished themselves by their achievements, scholarship, or virtuous lives. If God cares for all, as we believers claim, then why would he heap special treatment on some, on a small minority of people who do not appear to deserve it?

Election is patently offensive to every generation and culture. If a stranger arrives from a foreign land claiming to have special knowledge of universal truth, that claim is enough to make natives cry, “Missionary, go home!” How do we handle with this thorny problem? First, we should openly acknowledge that it is a problem. Second, we must understand that God’s election was never intended to set one person above another, one group above another, one culture above another. Election does not confer any moral privilege or special standing before God. In fact, the manner in which election unfolds throughout history makes it absolutely clear that salvation comes by grace alone, not through the intrinsic goodness or special qualities of any person or group. Never at any point in God’s history do his elect have any claim to special treatment by him because of their obedience, effort or virtue. The blessings received by the elect never come to them because of their wonderful goodness, but only despite their horrible badness.

When God called Abraham, he said: “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing” (Gen 12:1-2). It is tempting to read this statement as conditional: “If you leave and go, then I will bless you. If you don’t, I will not bless you.” But the blessing is not conditioned on Abraham’s response. God simply announces that he will be blessed, and God invites him to go and see the evidence of that blessing. Abraham does not earn the promise; his obedience is the way that he receives the promise.

The author of Genesis makes it clear that Abraham had no intrinsic virtues that set him above other people. When he went down to Egypt, he acted dishonestly. He appears less honorable than Pharaoh, and yet God rescued and blessed him (Gen 12:10-20). Again, in chapter 20, Abraham is less righteous than Abimelech, but God chose to bless him anyway. This favoritism toward Abraham has a universal purpose: God intends to bless all nations on earth through him (Gen 12:3).

About 430 years later, God made a special agreement with the Israelites at Mount Sinai. This covenant is described in Exodus 19:5-6: “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Unlike the covenant of promise that God made to Abraham, this covenant of law is very conditional. If the Israelites obeyed God fully, then they would receive his special blessings. This covenant of law did not amend, change or supersede the covenant of promise that God gave earlier (Gal 3:17). God’s declarations to Abraham stood regardless of what the Israelites chose to do.

In an article posted last month, David L. correctly noted that Exodus 19:5-6 is a promise made to Israel, not to the Church. Christians who apply these verses to themselves are taking the passage out of context. The covenant described in Exodus 19:5-6 is a failed covenant and was doomed to fail from the start. Even before Moses came down from the mountain, the Israelites had already broken the agreement by worshipping the golden calf (Ex 32). A literal application of Exodus 19:5-6 to ourselves would lead us to believe that if we obey God’s commands, then God will bless us and our nation. If so, then we must not ignore the word fully. The obedience required by this covenant is complete obedience to the law of Moses, all 600 commands, because anyone who places himself under the law is obligated to obey it in its entirety (Gal 5:3).

The covenant of law failed because the Israelites willfully disobeyed. But God, in his sovereign purpose, used their disobedience to demonstrate that, though they were the chosen people, they were no better than anyone else. The division of their kingdom, the destruction of their temple, and their captivity in Babylon should have produced in them a deep humiliation that paved the way for the message of salvation by grace alone. This humiliation of failure, combined with the knowledge of God’s saving grace through Jesus, should have given them an openminded and generous spirit required of missionaries. God was preparing them to go to other nations and say, “We are no better than you. We are not coming with superior strength, wisdom, or moral standards. We were and still are deeply sinful and broken, and in many ways you are better than us. But God, for reasons that we do not understand, walked among our people and revealed to us something about his great salvation plan. We witnessed God’s redemption firsthand through the death and resurrection of his Son. Now we are experiencing his work of restoration. God wants to repair our relationship with you. We are your brothers and sisters, not your elders. We are not attempting to rule over you or change you into Jews like us. We will respect you, accept you and love you as you are, because that is what God has done for us; that is the essence of the gospel. We believe that the Holy Spirit is already hovering over you, working in mysterious ways that we cannot yet understand, and we hope to learn from you what God has been doing among you. We encourage you to respond to the Spirit’s invitation and become equal partners with us in this glorious work of restoration.”

That is the character that God wanted to instill in his chosen people. And, to an extent, that is what happened in the generations leading up to Christ, especially among the Hellenistic Jews scattered across the Empire. While they kept their laws and traditions, they also spoke Greek, and they began to mingle and develop meaningful relationships with the Gentiles around them. Their synagogues began to attract God-fearing Greeks who, for good reason, did not submit to circumcision but nevertheless loved the Lord. Many Hellenistic Jews developed an open and tolerant spirit as exemplified by Stephen and Philip in Acts chapters 6-8.

But in and around Jerusalem, the opposite was happening. In the years leading up to Christ, the rabbinical schools heightened the distinctions between clean and unclean, narrowing the popular conceptions of who was going to be saved. God’s salvation was no longer for all Israel; those were seen as worldly and compromised, such as the tax collectors and public sinners, were excluded. As Pharisees trended toward rigid interpretations and practices of the law, those considered to be elect became fewer and more distant from the rest. And the Essenes, who became so strict in their practices that they considered the Pharisees to be impure, formed monastic communities and withdrew to the caves at Qumran. They labeled everyone outside of their community as “Breakers of the Covenant.”

As these groups increasingly staked their identity and self-worth on the keeping of their traditions and laws, their expectations for the coming Messiah turned toward validation and reward for the elect, combined with punishment for anyone who oppressed or opposed them in any way. The enemies of the Jews were seen as the enemies of God, destined for enslavement or destruction. The late missiologist David J. Bosch (Transforming Mission, p. 19-20) explained:

As the political and social conditions of the people of the old covenant deteriorate, there increasingly develops the expectation that, one day, the Messiah will come to conquer the Gentile nations and restore Israel. This expectation is usually linked with fantastic ideas of world domination by Israel, to whom all the nations will be subject. It reaches its peak in the apocalyptic beliefs and attitudes of the Essene communities along the shores of the Dead Sea. The horizons of apocalyptic belief are cosmic: God will destroy the entire present world and usher in a new world according to a detailed and predetermined plan The present world, with all its inhabitants, is radically evil. The faithful have to separate themselves from it, keep themselves pure as the holy remnant, and wait for God’s intervention. In such a climate even the idea of a missionary attitude toward the Gentile world would be preposterous… At best God would, without any involvement on the part of Israel, by means of a divine act, save those Gentiles he had elected in advance.

Ironically, the religion of the Jews hardened into keeping of laws and traditions which, although apparently based on the Old Testament, ignored the actual flow of OT history. Their faith became increasingly focused on right principles and practices rather than on right relationships with God and other people. Bosch continues (p. 20):

To a large extent Jewish apocalyptic spells the end of the earlier dynamic understanding of history. Past salvific events are no longer celebrated as guarantees and anticipations of God’s future involvement with his people; they have become sacred traditions which have to be preserved unchanged. The Law becomes an absolute entity which Israel has to serve and obey. Greek metaphysical categories gradually begin to replace historical thinking. Faith becomes a matter of timeless metahistorical and carefully systematized teaching.

When Jesus arrived on the scene around 27 A.D., he overturned the popular understanding of election by declaring God’s unconditional saving grace to all Israel, especially those who were marginalized and considered impure. He elected the Twelve to represent pillars of a new chosen people who would embody the gospel and convey it to the nations. But just as the rest of Israel had difficulty embracing the Gentiles, so did the apostles and the early Church. As much as Peter and his fellow church members had to evangelize the nations, they themselves had to be re-evangelized by the nations, by seeing and fully accepting the work of Christ in Gentile believers who were different from them. God’s election does not give anyone a superior status. His election is designed to show the world that, from first to last, salvation comes to all by grace alone.

Here I want to focus on some aspects of election found in Romans chapters 9-11. Paul didn’t write those chapters to settle modern theological debates. He was expounding on the relationship between the Gentiles and Jews. He was trying to explain why the nation of Israel, which had been created and chosen by God to receive the gospel and carry it to the world, rejected Christ and failed to carry out its mission. And he was relating that explanation to his teaching that righteousness must always come by faith alone, not by observing the law. I imagine that if we could ask the Apostle Paul about the merits of Calvinism versus Arminianism, he would respond with a very puzzled look, not because he never heard of Calvin or Arminius, but because to him this debate would sound very odd.

As modern evangelicals, we tend to think of salvation in terms of the rescue of individuals. We imagine humanity as an endless parade of souls marching along on a highway to hell, and our mission is to pluck as many souls as we can off that road and set them on the path to heaven. If we follow this thinking to its logical conclusion, the most faithful Christian is the one who asks everyone he meets, “If you were to die this afternoon, do you think you would go to heaven?” The most effective missionary is the one with the highest number of converts. And the overarching goal of discipleship is to change each person into a lean, mean, soul-saving machine. Other aspects of gospel work — feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting the lonely, and so on — are just for the sake of good public relations, to open people’s hearts and prepare them for the “real” purpose of evangelism, which is to close the deal and get everyone converted and baptized before they die.

I am not saying that this individual-rescue idea of salvation is entirely wrong. I do believe that there is a great deal of truth in it. But this is not the way that the gospel is presented in the New Testament. It is the mindset of a 19^th-century tent revivalist, not the language of Jesus, Peter or Paul. One reason why the New Testament doesn’t present the gospel in those terms is that Hebrew people had radically different notions of what it means to be a person.

In our understanding, a person is an autonomous being, one who exercises independence in thought, decision and action. In debates about abortion, for example, one of the key questions is, “When should a fetus be considered a person?” Many have argued that a fetus should be considered a person when it becomes viable and has a reasonable chance of surviving outside the mother’s womb. This modernist notion of persons shows up in that famous statement by Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” His existence as a person is validated when he exercises his own rational thought.

But the Hebrews who wrote the Bible had different ideas about personhood. To the Jewish mind, a person was someone who was had significant relationships with others. At the beginning of Romans 9, Paul wishes that he could be cut off from Christ if only his fellow Israelites would be saved. To us, that desire seems very strange. Who among us would be willing to be condemned for all eternity to save other people, many of whom we have never met? But to Paul it made sense, because he never regarded himself as a lone wolf. He was a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee among Pharisees (Acts 23:6, Php 3:5). His personal identity was so closely bound to his people that he couldn’t imagine himself being separated from them. If being with Christ was going to cut him off from his community, he almost didn’t want to be with Christ.

The other apostles had similar feelings. Before Jesus ascended to heaven, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6) When we read this, we tend to scoff at the disciples: “How could they possibly think that way? Didn’t they realize that Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom, not a political one?” But their question was perfectly legitimate. They couldn’t imagine a gospel message that would personally save them without also restoring their nation. Given all the promises God made to Israel in the Old Testament, and given what Paul says in Romans 9-11, their question is defensible and biblically sound. The Hebrew God cares about individuals, but he also cares about the nations and especially about his chosen people. How often do the Old Testament prophets speak God’s word not to individuals but to the nations and to Israel?

In chapter 7 of The Open Secret, Lesslie Newbigin argues that the idea of persons as relational beings is consistent with Scripture and with orthodox Christian belief. It is rooted in the understanding of God as Father, Son and Spirit – three persons in one God. Human beings created in his image share in his relational nature. The first mention of human beings appears in Genesis 1:26-27:

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

The Trinitarian God spoke and created people as males and females, designed for relationships with one another. This longing for interpersonal relationship is expressed in sexuality. Sexual attraction, which is hardwired by God into our bodies, minds, emotions and personalities, is the magnetism and glue that creates families. The families produce children and become the building blocks of societies. In addition to these relationships with one another, we were also made to be in relationship with the rest of the created world. Our role in that relationship is to rule over the earth, serving as its stewards and managers (Gen 1:28).

When sin enters the world in Genesis chapter 3, it mars all the relationships that define us as persons. Man’s relationship with himself is broken and he experiences shame. He runs and hides, a sign of his broken relationship with God. Marital intimacy is cracked as the man blames his wife, and they cover themselves with fig leaves. Their relationship with the world is broken when the ground is cursed and rebels against them, producing thorns and thistles instead of food. When the destruction spreads through Adam’s family to his descendants and to all of society (chapters 4-6), God decides to scrub the world by a devastating flood. But the flood doesn’t solve the problem, because human beings remain evil from childhood (Gen 8:21). Human efforts to fix up the world are doomed to fail, as evidenced by the Tower of Babel, and the disunity, conflict and chaos continue (Gen 11:1-9).

If sin destroyed the relationships that make the world run as it should, then shouldn’t the gospel be about repairing relationships and restoring the world? Yes; that is how the Bible is structured. World history is a story with four great acts. Act 1 is creation: God made the world and everything in it; then he created people to love him, to love one another, and to take care of the earth. Act 2 is the Fall: sin entered the world and destroyed our relationships with God, with one another, and with the created world. Act 3 is redemption, which began with Abraham and ended at the cross. God paid the price for sin through the death of his son. Act 4 is restoration, when God remakes humanity and the earth. Restoration begins with the resurrection of Christ, his ascension to heaven, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. In this post-Pentecostal era, the Holy Spirit is working to restore our relationships with God, with one another and with the world. Act 4 will continue until Jesus returns to completely destroy sin and death, to raise our bodies and establish the new heaven and the new earth.

If we see God’s purpose as holistic restoration of mankind and the world, then our understanding of our mission must be broader than saving individual souls so they can go to heaven. The Church must be involved in the healing of relationships at all levels: our relationship with God (evangelism and worship), our relationships to ourselves (physical and psychological healing), our relationships with our spouses and children (healing of families), our relationships with our neighbors and with all society (healing of communities and nations), and even our relationships to the created world (environmental stewardship). No single individual can do all these things effectively, but the Church as a whole can do them by allowing different parts of the Body of Christ to perform their specialized functions. These activities of the Church will not transform the whole earth and usher in the kingdom of God; that will happen when Jesus returns. But the working of the Holy Spirit through the Church serves as a witness, a sign, and a foretaste of the kingdom that is already breaking into the world.

So what does all this have to do with election? That’s a good question…

Sending missionaries is a laudable goal. But a church cannot measure its success, or its degree of obedience to God, solely by the number of missionaries it sends. If we say, “Our mission is to send missionaries,” then we are merely running in circles. We need to clarify what the missionaries are supposed to do. If we say that the missionaries are supposed to make disciples, and those disciples are supposed to make more disciples, then we are again running in circles. The church cannot exist only to replicate itself.

Jesus Christ says to us, “Behold, I make all things new!” (Rev 21:5) The church, through its missionary outreach, should be bringing new believers into the fold. And the fresh working of the Spirit in those new believers, especially those from new generations and cultures, should be breathing vitality and renewal into the church. That is part of God’s grand design. A concept of mission is incomplete if it does not include the church being re-evangelized by its converts. Unfortunately, the way that churches have conceived and carried out foreign missions over the years has often prevented this backflow from happening. Consider the well known missionary hymn We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations by H. Ernest Nichol (1862-1928). The verses of this hymn begin as follows:

1. We’ve a story to tell to the nations…
2. We’ve a song to be sung to the nations…
3. We’ve a message to give to the nations…
4. We’ve a Savior to show to the nations…

The pattern here is unmistakable. From this perspective, mission is about exporting a message but never about importing. It’s giving but not receiving, serving but not being served. In The Open Secret, Lesslie Newbigin explains how this type of missionary activity, although well intentioned, ultimately quenches the Spirit’s fire (p. 139):

In this case the sending church is insulated from the correction it needs to receive from the new converts. Mission, as I have insisted, is not just church extension. It is an action in which the Holy Spirit does new things, brings into being new obedience. But the new gifts are for the whole body and not just for the new members. Mission involves learning as well as teaching, receiving as well as giving.

During the 20^th century, the flow of evangelizing missionaries from mainline churches, particularly those in western Europe, slowed down or stopped entirely. This coincided with the decline of church attendance and overall secularization of European society. Clearly these two trends are linked. A church that is shrinking and fighting for its survival can hardly be expected to send large numbers of missionaries overseas. Over the years, however, I have heard Christians claim that those churches shrank because they neglected foreign missions: “European churches didn’t keep their mission; they stopped sending missionaries, and that’s the reason why they declined.” If I had a penny for every time someone told me that, I would have many pennies. Is that a sensible or reasonable analysis?

Here is a common metaphor: “Water flows into the Dead Sea, but not out; that’s why the Dead Sea is lifeless.” By implication, a person or church that lives selfishly, continually receiving but never giving, cannot survive for long. Perhaps that is so. But what happens to a body of water that has streams flowing out but none flowing in? Sooner or later, that lake will run dry.

The gospel was never intended to flow just from proselytizer to proselyte, from evangelist to evangelee. (Is that a word? It ought to be.) If we think that it does, we miss one of the huge themes of the New Testament, a theme that addresses some of the deepest mysteries of the Bible:

• Why God chose Israel and covenanted her to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:5-6)
• Why Israel failed to keep this covenant and, in a sense, was destined to do so
• Why the Jewish nation as a whole rejected Christ and, in a sense, was destined to do so
• Why Jesus had to ascend to heaven and entrust the preaching of the gospel to his young disciples
• Why Jesus appeared to the most outrageously legalistic Jew and appointed him to carry the gospel to the Gentiles
• Why in the fullness of time the gospel will ultimately flow from Gentiles back to Jews

That theme is the doctrine of election. Stay tuned; there’s more to come.

Here I am using the terms “evangelized” and “conversion” in a broad sense. Peter was not receiving the gospel for the first time. He already was a genuine Christian in a personal relationship with Christ. But through his encounter with Cornelius, his character and faith were transformed again as he came to a new and deeper awareness of the gospel.

Before then, Peter had always assumed that belief in Christ should be accompanied by visible changes in lifestyle, changes that would turn people into devout, observant Jews like him. He had assumed that God’s mission was the same as bringing lost sheep into the church that he knew and loved, the merry band of Jewish disciples founded a decade earlier by Jesus himself. What Peter did not realize was that, as God was bringing sheep into the fold, he was also working powerfully to recreate the church. Peter’s previous knowledge of the gospel wasn’t wrong, but it was woefully incomplete.

In The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, missiologist Lesslie Newbigin writes about the meeting between Peter and Cornelius (pp. 59-60):

It is not as though the church opened its gates to admit a new person into its company, and then closed them again, remaining unchanged except for the addition of a name to its roll of members. Mission is not just church extension. It is something more costly and more revolutionary. It is the action of the Holy Spirit, who in his sovereign freedom both convicts the world (John 16:8-11) and leads the church toward the fullness of the truth that it has not yet grasped (John 16:12-15). Mission is not essentially an action by which the church puts forth its own power and wisdom to conquer the world around it; it is, rather, an action of God, putting forth the power of his Spirit to bring the universal work of Christ for the salvation of the world nearer to its completion. At the end of the story, which runs from Acts 10:1 to 11:18, the church itself became a kind of society different from what it was before Peter and Cornelius met. It had been a society enclosed within the cultural world of Israel; it became something radically different, a society that spanned the enormous gulf between Jew and pagan and was open to embrace all the nations that had been outside the covenant by which Israel lived.

This distinction between God’s mission and church extension is not a small matter. It has enormous implications for how we see and talk about ourselves and how we act toward others in a pluralistic and multicultural world. Before talking about that, however, we ought to first ask whether this view of mission is biblically supported. Do missionaries and converts truly evangelize one another? Or does the gospel flow in one direction as believers go out and make disciples, then those disciples go out and make more disciples, and the process continues ad infinitum until every nation has been reached and Jesus returns in power and glory?

In Acts 1:8, Jesus says to his apostles: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This verse is a mini-outline of the whole book of Acts. The apostolic witness began in Jerusalem (chapter 2), then it spread to Judea and Samaria (chapter 8), and eventually it went out to other nations (chapter 13). We see a linear progression as Jesus’ disciples made more disciples. But if we don’t pay close attention to how it actually happened, we will miss a key point that Luke is making throughout the book.

Many evangelicals think of Acts 1:8 as “the world mission command.” Indeed, in Matthew 28:18-20 and Mark 16:15, the Great Commission is given as a command. But Acts 1:8 presents it as a promise. Jesus states as a fact that it is going to happen, not by the volition of the apostles, but by the sovereign will and power of the Holy Spirit. And as we read through the book, that’s exactly how it happens. The apostles do not adopt Acts 1:8 as their mission statement and then formulate a strategy to carry the gospel to the nations. Rather, the entire movement is orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, it is the rushing wind-song of the Spirit that causes a great crowd to gather and makes them ask, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:1-12) The spread of the gospel to Judea and Samaria is precipitated not by an intentional decision by the apostles, but by persecution that broke out after the stoning of Stephen (Acts 8:1). And the commissioning of Paul and Barnabas as missionaries was a direct response to the command of the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:2).

The church portrayed in the book of Acts is not an army of well trained soldiers executing a military-style campaign to conquer unbelieving nations with the gospel. Nor is it a board of corporate executives launching an advertising blitz to market the gospel to consumers. The church in Acts never fully takes hold of the mission, nor does it ever really grasp the mission, because the mission is not theirs. Moment by moment, the apostles respond in obedience as the Holy Spirit leads. But they are never qualified to direct the mission because they do not understand everything it entails. What they fail to realize that the mission is not just about discipling the nations; it is also about transforming them. As the Spirit is bringing new sheep into the fold, he is also prying open the minds and hearts of church leaders and members to welcome newcomers unconditionally as Jesus welcomed them. This process of assimilation is painful and awkward. It tests the limits of their faith and dependence on God. But through these birthpains, the Spirit brings forth an amazing new community the likes of which the world had never before seen. It is a community of genuine unity-in-diversity. A place where Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, truly connect with one another and become one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28). A place of genuine, radical freedom, where ethical standards, laws and commands are replaced by love (Gal 5:14).

The mission is never the property of the church; it is always missio Dei, God’s mission. Newbigin writes (p. 61):

At this point the church has to keep silence. It is not in control of the mission. Another is in control, and his fresh works will repeatedly surprise the church, compelling it to stop talking and to listen. Because the Spirit himself is sovereign over the mission, the church can only be the attentive servant. In sober truth the Spirit is himself the witness who goes before the church in its missionary journey. The church’s witness is secondary and derivative. The church is witness insofar as it follows obediently where the Spirit leads.

That is exactly what happens in Acts chapter 10. Peter didn’t approach the home of Cornelius with the intention of giving him the gospel. The Spirit carried a hesitant Peter there to show him what he had already been doing, something which Peter never imagined. Peter’s job was to obediently share what he knew, to observe what the Spirit did, and to welcome the new Gentile believers as they were.

The distinction between church expansion and God’s mission is not a small matter. It is fundamental to grasping the nature of the gospel. The distinction is especially important as we reach out to the next generation. Young people have been taught to frame history, politics and religion in terms of power struggles between groups. They believe that racism, bigotry, and war result whenever one group believes it is superior to other groups. So if you approach a young person and talk about your faith, she does not see you as an individual person talking to her. She sees you as a member of one group – say, a religious conservative Christian – trying to bring her into your group in order to expand your group’s membership rolls to increase its prestige and power. That is why so many have grown skeptical and weary of all evangelists and of all “organized religion.”

And who can blame them? Throughout the centuries, Christians of many stripes have tried to carry the gospel throughout the world. And so often, those efforts were confounded with military campaigns, colonialism, economic opportunism and cultural imperialism. They were tainted by the desire to build up one church, organization or denomination at the expense of other groups while violating the dignity of individual persons (e.g., through conversion and baptism by force). When today’s young people hear us equate God’s mission with the expansion of our own church, they react against it strongly and viscerally. When they hear us speak of God’s mission in paramilitary terms as conquering the nations and religions of the world (e.g., Muslims) they will have none of it. When they hear us speak of evangelism and discipleship in terms of saving those who are poor, ignorant, blind and disobedient by transforming them into Christians who so conveniently happen to resemble ourselves, they will have none of it. They instinctively feel that it is not the gospel. And they are correct; it is not the gospel.

The gospel does not elevate Jew over Gentile or Gentile over Jew. It does not elevate a denomination that is better, purer or more faithful over another denomination that is liberal, worldly or compromised. It does not elevate a Christian over a Muslim, Hindu or atheist. The gospel brings everyone to the foot of the cross where the ground is absolutely level, where salvation comes to all by the grace of God alone.

What today’s postmoderns instinctively know is something that the church has too often forgotten: that God’s mission is not equivalent to church expansion. Yes, the mission does involve welcoming new sheep into the fold. But it is also about continually reforming and recreating the church into something new and more beautiful, a preview of God’s rule and of the glorious world to come. None of us knows exactly how that ought to look. If we try to invent that new community by ourselves, we build something that too closely resembles us, the creatures that we are right now rather than the creatures that Christ wants us to be. That is why we can never fully set the course of our own mission. Yes, we must remember what God has done and faithfully build upon the foundations laid in the past. But we must also be willing to put aside our current ideas and follow the Spirit wherever he leads, because the mission always belongs to him.

McGavran noticed that some agencies were successful at making converts, but others were stagnant and barely growing. He set out to discover why. After careful observation, he found that the stagnant agencies exhibited some common features. He called their strategy a “mission station” approach. A mission station resembled a North American or European church. Western values and customs were on display, giving the church a decidedly non-Indian look and feel. Converts of these missionaries had powerful conversion experiences, but the converts were few and far between. In The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, missiologist Lesslie Newbigin explains why (p. 122):

In the “mission station” approach, as McGavran sees it, converts are detached from the natural communities to which they belong, attached to the foreign missions and institutions, and required to conform to ethical and cultural standards that belong to the Christianity of the foreign missionary. The effect of this policy is twofold. On the one hand the convert, having been transplanted into an alien culture, is no longer in a position to influence non-Christian relatives and neighbors; on the other hand, the energies of the mission are exhausted in the effort to bring the converts, or more often their children, into conformity with the standards supposed by the missionaries to be required by the gospel. Both factors have the effect of stopping the growth of the church.

I’ll bet that the leaders of the “mission station” agencies didn’t like McGavran’s analysis. I can almost hear them saying, “We focus on quality rather than quantity.” They may have justified their approach by noting that their converts, though few, looked like outstanding examples of Christian discipleship because they had been so thoroughly transformed. Indeed, in the way that they spoke, dressed, and acted, they resembled miniature versions of the missionaries themselves! I suppose that these missionaries had the best of intentions. They were sincere, sacrificial, loving and devout, never imagining that they were imposing western cultural values. From their perspective, their standards were matters of biblical principle, right versus wrong. They imagined they were reading the Bible straight, interpreting Scripture just as it is. Whatever they taught the converts to do was just what they had done when they were converted and discipled.

McGavran concluded that the “mission station” approach was based on a faulty reading of the Great Commission. In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus said, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Based on those verses, McGavran said that the mission of the church has three aspects: discipling, baptizing, and perfecting. (Note that McGavran’s use of the term “discipling” is quite different from the way we use it in UBF. To us, “discipling” suggests discipleship training, helping converts to obey the teachings of the Bible. In McGavran’s terminology, that kind of training is called “perfecting”, and “discipling” means to help them make the initial commitment to identify themselves as followers of Christ.) McGavran believed that the order of the three activities in Matthew 28:19-20 is very significant, reflecting an order in time and priority. He thought that the missionary should focus on discipling and baptizing, and leave the task of perfecting to leaders of the indigenized church. The “mission station” agencies lose their effectiveness when they spend their time, resources and energy on perfecting rather than discipling and baptizing.

Personally, I disagree with some of McGavran’s conclusions. I am not convinced that Matthew 28:19-20 implies an order of priority, and the distinction between discipling and perfecting seems artificial. But McGavran’s basic observations are compelling. Lesslie Newbigin, who was also a missionary to India, agreed with McGavran’s assessment (p. 124):

The criticism of the “mission station” strategy has a great deal of force. It is also true that missions have, in McGavran’s phrase, tended to put perfecting before discipling and thereby fallen into the old legalist trap. They have become proponents of a new law rather than a liberating gospel. The church has been made to appear more like a school where examinations have to be passed than a place where the community meets to celebrate its freedom.

My purpose in writing this article is not to make hidden, indirect criticisms of UBF. To avoid any misunderstandings, I will tell you directly what I think. Speaking as a North American disciple of UBF missionaries, I have seen the missionaries’ dedication and sacrifice firsthand. I respect and love our missionaries. It is obvious that they have passed on many cultural influences to their converts. That is an inevitable result of cross-cultural witness, and it is not inherently bad. The fertilization of one culture with gospel seeds from another is, in my opinion, an essential part of God’s overall plan for the people and nations of the world. This cross-cultural aspect of UBF was very helpful in my own spiritual development.

Yet it is impossible to look at UBF chapters in North America and not see resemblances to the mission stations. Any North American who visits a UBF worship service for the first time instinctively feels that we are different, and we wear those differences as a badge of honor. Newcomers hear this message loud and clear: “You are very welcome here. But if you enter this fellowship, we expect you to become like us. Your standing in our community will rise and you will be rewarded as you accept and adopt our methods, manners, standards and traditions.” Of course, we never think of them as our traditions; we call them “God’s” mission,” “God’s” commands, and “Bible” principles. By the language that we use, we canonize and absolutize our ways of doing things. Use of that language is itself rewarded and taken as a sign of growing faith and commitment to Christ. But anyone who makes significant contact with Christ-loving people outside of UBF knows that many of the things that we hold dear are not absolutes but simply our own manners, methods and traditions.

When I came into UBF nearly three decades ago, I was, as McGavran observed, detached from my American Christian heritage and transplanted into an alien culture. I neglected and severed relationships with friends, family and neighbors. This detachment from my own people was a consequence of the way that Samuel Lee ran the ministry during the 1980’s and 1990’s. It drastically changed my life and brought me to Christ, but it left me emotionally isolated from people and confused about my identity, and it limited my influence and Christian witness to society outside of UBF. Now that I realize what has happened, I am trying to recover that lost identity and repair relationships with people whom I wrongly ignored.

And to me it seems undeniable that the factors cited by McGavran are stifling growth. It has just been reported that our average Sunday worship attendance in North America increased about 4% in 2010. I wonder what that figure would be if you remove the effect of inflow of missionaries from Korea and the natural increase from children born to UBF families coming of age. Regardless, we have not been seeing the growth that many had hoped for, and we have fallen far short of the target of doubling the ministry by 2010. To what do we attribute this slow growth? Reading through the yearly reports appearing on ubf.org, the top reasons cited by our missionaries for falling short are not praying enough, not studying the Bible enough, and so on. These ideas are reinforced by messages from leaders that exhort members to work harder, sacrifice more, recover zeal for the gospel, have an absolute attitude, etc. Everywhere I look, the assumption is that our mission strategy is impeccably sound, and all problems are due to individuals who did not get with the program and carry it out with enough intensity and sincerity. There is an elephant in the room, but no one seems willing to talk about it. That elephant is our overall mission strategy. This is the reason why I have been claiming that we lack a coherent theology of mission. We lack this theology because we trained ourselves not to discuss it, not even to think about it.

The mission station strategy is built on the assumption that the gospel message travels in just one direction, flowing from the missionaries to the converts. Sooner or later, as the community matures, there must be a backflow as the missionaries are re-evangelized by the converts. We see that happening in the early church beginning in Acts chapter 10. The passage that is often titled “The Conversion of Cornelius” could just as well be called “The Conversion of Peter.” The divinely arranged encounter between the centurion and the apostle shook Peter to the core. It challenged his lifelong assumptions about purity and righteousness and brought him to a new, deeper understanding of the gospel. Peter’s first reaction to the Holy Spirit’s vision was, “Surely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean” (Acts 10:14). That reaction reveals that, although he was a committed follower of Jesus, he still regarded his adherence to the law as a badge of honor, something that made him better than others in the sight of God. To see a non-law abiding Gentile be instantly accepted into God’s family made him realize that, even after being a Christian for many years, his own standing before God was still not based on anything he does but on what Christ has done for him. The gospel of Jesus Christ is, from first to last, a gospel of grace and faith alone.

The tensions in a cross-cultural ministry are inevitable. Eventually there must be a Jerusalem Council, an open dialogue between foreign missionaries and native converts, to inquire of God and enlarge their understanding of the gospel. I think we can all agree that the gospel must bring tangible, visible change to the lives of those who receive it. But what should the fruit of the gospel look like? Should the fruit of the gospel planted on Korean soil look just like the fruit on American soil? How different can they be?

The participants at the original Jerusalem Council thought hard about this and concluded that Jewish and Gentile Christians should look different. Yet they were also aware of the need for compromise to maintain friendships and spiritual unity. In the letter that James drafted to the Gentile Christians, he urged them “to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.” (Acts 15:29) That list of prohibitions includes behavior that we still regard as sinful (sexual immorality) and behavior that we now see as benign (eating of blood — Have you ever tried “black pudding”? It’s quite, um, interesting). So even the outcome of the Jerusalem Council was not an absolute ruling that could remain in place for all time. I take that as a meaningful principle. The ethical requirements of the gospel can never be fixed. Some aspects will remain constant over time, but other aspects will have to change.

And that raises another very important question. Who gets to decide what those ethical requirements are? That is not an easy one. So the series shall continue…

First, circumcision of males was the definitive sign of being counted among God’s people. Hebrews who refused to be circumcised were no longer Hebrew (Gen 17:4). And throughout the Old Testament, the term “uncircumcised” is used as a synonym for ungodly (see, for example, 1Sa 17:16). Uncircumcised men could not enter the temple, nor could they eat the Passover (Ex 12:48). The Passover depicts salvation and deliverance. The fact that the Passover lamb – a powerful symbol of the crucified Jesus – could not be eaten by uncircumcised men suggests that circumcision may still be applicable under the New Covenant.

Now some of you might be saying, “Circumcision is just a ceremony and an outward symbol; what God really wants is for people to circumcise their hearts.” Yes, that is true; the physical sign of circumcision should point to an inner reality. But the fact that circumcision has a deeper meaning does not mean that the physical sign should be abandoned. (The fact that baptism and the Lord’s Supper have deeper meaning does not mean that they are useless or unnecessary. On the contrary, it is precisely because these signs are deeply meaningful that Christians have practiced them from the beginning.) Although the Old Testament repeatedly mentions circumcision of the heart, the physical sign is still always present. For example, in Ezekiel 44:9, God commands, “No foreigner uncircumcised in heart and flesh is to enter my sanctuary.”

Others may say, “Christians are not bound by the law, because Jesus has fulfilled the law.” Perhaps. But let’s put aside the writings of Paul, because his letters had not yet been written at the time of the Jerusalem Council. (Galatians could have been written about that time. But even if it was, it would not yet have been accepted as authoritative, because the purpose of that Council was to decide whether Paul’s view of circumcision was correct.) What did Jesus say? Did Jesus overturn the law? In Matthew 5:17, he said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Does the fact that we live under a gospel of grace mean that we should ignore the law? Many Christians would say that we are bound to keep the Ten Commandments. The context of Matthew 5:17 is the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus actually strengthens the requirements of the law, holding Christians to an even higher standard.

In certain cases, Jesus did overturn laws. He nullified the dietary laws, declaring that all foods are clean (Mk 7:19). He modified our understanding of the Sabbath by declaring, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mk 2:27-28). But he didn’t say anything against circumcision. Even if we claim that Jesus overturned the whole law of Moses, that would still not settle the matter, because circumcision predates Moses by about 500 years.

And we cannot ignore the most obvious piece of evidence: Jesus was circumcised! His parents circumcised him in accordance with the law (Lk 2:21). If Jesus submitted himself to this requirement, shouldn’t his disciples follow his example?

The stance that some Christians adopt toward the Bible is reflected in the saying: “God says it, I believe it, that settles it!” They think it is best to approach the Bible without thinking too hard, without getting too complicated or too intellectual. If we read the text plainly and literally, just as it is, then shouldn’t the meaning and implications be obvious? If only it were that simple! The Bible is the inspired word of God, and it has an amazing capacity to speak to people of all ages and backgrounds. One does not need a Ph.D. in theology to receive understanding from the Bible and be transformed by it. But there is a flipside to that reality. If one does happen to have formal education, a background in theology, or a long history of personal experience and interaction with the Bible, then a plain, simple, uncomplicated reading of Scripture may not settle the matter at all; it may only raise deeper questions that should not be ignored, because they are the very questions that the Holy Spirit wants us to consider. The simple understanding that inspires and empowers early in our spiritual journey may be woefully inadequate later in life. That principle applies both to individuals and to communities. It is the very reason why we have to keep going back to the Bible, not just to reinforce what we already have learned, but to question it, to refresh and deepen our understanding and wrestle with the fundamental issues of faith.

Fortunately for us, the matter of circumcision was decided in Acts chapter 15 and was thoroughly explained by the apostle Paul, and those writings are now part of the Scripture record. At the Jerusalem Council, the widespread understanding of the Bible was overturned by the witness of the Spirit. The Apostle Peter stood up and recalled how, several years earlier, the Holy Spirit led him to Cornelius, a God-fearing uncircumcised Gentile. Against all of his Jewish sensibilities, he entered the home of Cornelius and explained the gospel. The Holy Spirit came upon Cornelius and his household, and they began to speak in tongues. Peter ordered that they be baptized, and Peter stayed with them for several days, eating Gentile food which was decidedly unclean (Acts 10:1-48). Peter’s mind was changed when he saw the undeniable work of the Holy Spirit among the uncircumcised. When Peter finished speaking, Paul and Barnabas told of “signs and wonders,” further evidence of the working of the Spirit among the uncircumcised (Acts 15:12). The decision was sealed when James, the brother of Jesus and highly respected leader of the church in Jerusalem, lent his support, drawing upon the prophetic words of Amos 9:11-12.

The Jerusalem Council is the high-water mark, the theological crescendo of the book of Acts. If the apostles’ decision had gone the opposite way, Christianity would never have broken out of the Jewish mold; it would have remained a sect of Judaism and could not have spread across the globe.

In a comment on Part 2 of this series, Henoch wondered if these situations still arise today. We now have the writings of Paul and the other apostles; the New Testament is complete, and the canon of Scripture is closed. Given what we now see in the whole Bible, is it still possible for the witness of the Holy Spirit to overturn the prevailing understanding of what Scripture means?

The answer to this clearly yes. The creative ministry of the Holy Spirit continues to breathe fresh understanding into the Church, sometimes contradicting the assumptions of the past. A great example of this is human slavery. For eighteen centuries, Christians persisted in believing that slavery was acceptable, or at least allowable. A plain reading of Scripture can easily support that view. Through the prophetic witness of William Wilberforce (1759-1833) and many others, the church finally came to believe that slavery is fundamentally incompatible with the gospel of Christ and the God-given dignity of human beings.

I am not arguing that we should throw away our Bibles and assume that whatever pops into our heads, or whatever seems to be happening in the church today, is a movement of the Holy Spirit. That is not what I mean, not by a long shot. We should never throw away our Bibles. What we should throw away is the notion that understanding and interpreting the Bible is easy. What we desperately need today is deeper, more thoughtful Bible study combined with greater sensitivity to the witness of the Spirit. We need this not merely as individuals, but as a community. Scripture was given to the Church as a whole, and the Holy Spirit was given to the Church as a whole. Interpreting the Bible and discerning the work of the Spirit are tasks to be undertaken by the Christian community. And that Christian community is not static. It expands and changes over time as the kingdom of God grows and spreads.

Which brings me to my next point. The early Christians would never have had to deal with circumcision if Paul and Barnabas had not obeyed the calling of the Holy Spirit to carry the gospel to the nations. It was not until the Church engaged in cross-cultural witness that it had to consider these fundamental issues of how the gospel relates to law. If Christians remain in isolated in sectarian, monocultural ghettos, they are easily lulled into thinking that they already know everything, and that their present understanding of the Bible is ultimate truth. But when they leave their ghettos and get out in the world – when they enter into relationships with sincere believers who look, act, speak and behave very differently from them – then the work of the Holy Spirit that they encounter begins to challenge their assumptions and their theology. When they encounter converts whose doctrines seem questionable, and whose lifestyles appear to be worldly, compromised, unholy, and wrong, and yet see that these people really love Jesus, the encounter can be deeply unsettling. It may lead to a Wall, a crisis of faith. But out of that crisis something beautiful can grow.

It is at the treacherous three-way intersection of hermeneutics, pneumatology and missiology — Word, Spirit and Mission — that the gospel really comes alive. This is where we begin to see how outrageous and scandalous are the teachings of Jesus, and how shocking are the implications of the gospel, both for the unconverted world and for the Church. This is why I think it is exciting to be in UBF today. The problems and tensions that we are experiencing should, in light of Acts chapter 15, be a prelude to exciting developments in our ministry and in the greater Body of Christ. But to allow those developments to come, we will need to carefully watch and listen to the witness of the Spirit. We must be openminded enough to see how the Spirit is working among young converts and disciples, the next generation whose experiences and perspectives are very different from the first.

In case you are wondering, I am not just making this stuff up in my head. This series of articles on Word, Spirit, Gospel and Mission is loosely based the insights of the missiologist Lesslie Newbigin, especially those in his book The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission.

In the next installments of this series, we will travel (virtually, of course) to India and to Africa and see what the triumphs and mistakes of western missionaries reveals about the nature of the gospel. Stay tuned…

To feel the full impact of what happened at the Jerusalem Council, we need to read history forward, not backward. From our present vantage point, we already know how it turned out. With twenty centuries of church history and theology behind us, the “correct” course of action seems perfectly obvious. But at that meeting, the outcome was far from certain. Church members were genuinely confused, and faithful servants of God had staked out positions on both sides. Try to put aside what you already know and stand in the shoes of those who were there. Weigh the arguments as fairly as you can, and honestly ask yourself the question, “If I were at the Jerusalem Council, what would I have been thinking, and what decision would I have made?”

About five years earlier, Paul and Barnabas were sent out from Antioch to carry the gospel to other places (Acts 13:1-3). Whenever they entered a city, they looked for a Jewish community and went to the synagogue. For them, this was not a matter of practicality but of theology. Paul understood that the Jews were God’s chosen people, those whom God had specially prepared to receive the gospel and bear it to the world. So Paul made it a point to always preach to the Jews first (Ro 1:16).

Diaspora Jews had settled throughout the world, and Greek-speaking Gentiles took notice of them. Quite a few Greeks were attracted to Judaism. They could see that it bred sincerity, piety and virtue. But Greeks found it extremely difficult to convert, and for good reason. To convert meant, first of all, that a man had to be circumcised. Circumcision was the sign of entering God’s family, and it was considered non-negotiable. To refuse circumcision was to be cut off from God’s people (Gen 17:14). Second, the new convert had to commit to keeping the law of Moses. Faithful keeping of the law would radically change every aspect of one’s personal and public life. Law-abiding Jews could not freely associate with non-Jews. They could not entire a Gentile’s house without becoming unclean, and to eat with a Gentile would become unthinkable (Acts 11:3). If a Gentile actually converted to Judaism, it would effectively cut him off from his friends and his family (unless they converted too), and it would pull him out of the community he had known all his life. For this reason, there were many Gentiles who were “sitting on the fence.” They were attracted to Judaism and loved the teachings of the Bible. But they found it impossible to take that final step of conversion; the personal, social cost was just too high. These Gentiles were called “God fearers” (e.g., Acts 13:26). Nearly every synagogue had at least some Gentile God-fearers who came regularly and sat in a place that had been specially reserved for them.

When Paul and Barnabas would enter a synagogue and speak about Jesus, the response of the Jews would be tepid and mixed. But to the God-fearing Gentiles, the message was sweet music in their ears. They were amazed to learn that God would accept them as they were. By grace alone they could be welcomed into his kingdom if they put their trust in Jesus Christ. Coming to Jesus did not require them to sever their relationships or give up their cultural identity. This teaching created such a stir among God-fearers that enormous crowds of Gentiles would show up at the synagogue to hear the Apostle Paul. When the Jews saw great hordes of Gentiles pouring into the synagogue, they felt terrified and threatened (Acts 13:44-45). They realized that if what Paul was saying was true — that the door of salvation was now open to anyone by faith in Jesus Christ alone — then their faith community would be overrun by people with lifestyles radically different from theirs. These new believers, with their worldly customs and lenient attitudes, might cause community standards of holiness to slip. The synagogue leaders knew they would lose control. It would spell the end of the synagogue as they knew it.

The predictable result was that, when Paul preached in a synagogue, most of the Jews and especially the leaders would reject the gospel message. But large numbers of Gentiles would receive it with joy. The new believers in Christ would have to leave the synagogue and meet somewhere else, setting up their own faith community nearby. Very soon after the new church was established, Paul would appoint leaders and elders and leave the matter of running the church to them. He would hug them and say goodbye and go on to a new place. But he would continue to pray for them and stay in touch through occasional letters and visits.

After Paul’s departure, however, many questions would arise. At the heart of them all was one huge question: What were the ethical implications of the gospel? The gospel placed everyone under the Lordship of Christ. To follow Christ was to be called out from the old ways of sin to a new life of holiness and obedience in love. (The Greek word ekklesia, which we translate as “church,” literally means “called out.”) Everyone could agree on that in principle. But what was the new community supposed to look like? How were Christians actually supposed to live? The converts who knew the Scriptures best were the Jewish Christians who had studied the Bible all their lives. They had strong notions about what constituted a holy and pious life. With their strong cultural identity and superior knowledge of the Bible, it was inevitable that Jewish expressions of devotion and piety would begin to emerge as the multicultural church struggled to define itself. Those expressions would be reinforced by church leaders who visited from Jerusalem, the birthplace of the gospel and the center of Jewish Christianity.

So within just a few years, or even a few months, this idea began to take hold: The Gentile converts ought to be circumcised.

This idea was opposed by Paul from the beginning. But other leaders were not so sure. No one had worked out a coherent theology of how the gospel was supposed to interact with human culture. Friendships and loyalties were severely tested as different opinions swirled about. Even the Apostle Peter and Barnabas had been pressured and swayed by those who claimed that uncircumcised believers were not full members of the Christian fellowship (Gal 2:11-14).

As the tensions and tempers began to flare, I have no doubt that believers began to ask, “What does the Bible have to say?” Perhaps the wisest among them were saying, “Let’s go back to the Bible.” And others would have appealed to WWJD: “What would Jesus do?” Or better yet, “What would Jesus have us do?” Surely they were asking the apostles, “Did Jesus ever say anything about this?” It is likely that none of the gospels and none of the epistles, except possibly Paul’s letter to the Galatians, had been written by this time. Believers must have combed through the Old Testament and the oral traditions of Jesus with great sincerity, looking for clues and divine guidance. As they did so, what would they have found?

Try to put yourself in their shoes. Try to erase from your mind — and from your Bible — everything that comes after Acts chapter 14. Suppose you had been asked to render an opinion on what the biblically correct position is. Suppose that you were chosen for this task because you have extensive knowledge of the Scriptures. Therefore it is likely that you are a Jewish Christian, a circumcised male and keeper of the law. You place great value on spiritual disciplines such as daily prayer and Bible reading, because those disciplines have kept you grounded in faith since you were a child. Factor in your personality and how you have approached similar situations in your own life thus far. Factor in your beliefs about the authority of Scripture, how you feel about your own group’s religious traditions and spiritual heritage, your ideas about holiness (remember: holy can mean “separate”), the need to maintain ethical and moral principles and standards, and your understanding of the Great Commission (Mt 28:18-20).

Be honest, and don’t peek at Acts chapter 15. What do you think you would have done?

Personally, I believe that statement. And I’ll venture to guess that you do as well.

But now consider this one: “The Holy Spirit is fully God. Refusing to follow the leading of the Spirit is an act of disobedience against God.”

That second statement is undoubtedly true; its logic is unassailable. But if you are like me, that second one makes you more nervous than the first. It makes me nervous because I know far less about the Spirit than I do about the Word. I can open a Bible anytime I want. The words of Scripture are always visible and accessible. If I don’t understand the meaning of a passage, I can ask knowledgeable people and see what commentaries have to say. But the Holy Spirit is invisible and mysterious. I know he is there, because the Bible says so, but my experience of him is far more tenuous. Over the years, I have acquired habits and methods for interacting with the Bible. But where are my methods for interacting with the Spirit? If the Spirit was leading me to go this way or that way, how could I test it to know that it was real? How could I avoid being deceived?

In a church that strongly emphasizes Bible study, it’s common to think of biblical teachings as objective, clear truth but to see the Spirit’s leading as subjective and ambiguous. The Word seems hard, a matter of fact, but the Spirit seems soft, a matter of opinion. If that is our perception, then we may think that disobeying the Bible is very serious, but disobeying the Spirit is not too bad. After all, who among us can really say when or how the Spirit is leading? Bible teachers are everywhere in UBF, but Spirit teachers are rather difficult to find.

Yet the logic of the second statement is still incontrovertible. To refuse to follow the Holy Spirit is a act of rebellion against God. If you need some Bible references on that, check out Mark 3:29, Acts 5:3-5 and Acts 7:51.

Now allow me to pose a tricky question. Suppose that the Bible is pointing you in one direction, but the Holy Spirit is pointing you in the opposite way. The Word says “Yes,” but the Spirit says, “No.” If there is a tension or discrepancy between the two, then which one should you follow, the Word or the Spirit?

“Impossible!” you say. “This question is a false choice. The Bible is the authoritative word of God, and its words were inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit will never contradict the Word, because God will never oppose himself.”

Yes, that is correct. In reality, the Spirit always agrees with the Word. But one may contradict our perception of the other. The Bible may contradict our understanding of what the Spirit is doing. And the Spirit may contradict our understanding of what the Bible teaches. Discrepancies like that do. And when they do, we are faced with a difficult choice: Should we stick to our present understanding of the Bible? Or should we bend our biblical convictions and follow the apparent lead of the Spirit?

Let me guess. You are inclined to say, “If there appears to be a contradiction between the two, then I will stand by what the Bible says.” I’m guessing this because, if you are in a church or ministry like mine, you tend to think of the Scripture as hard and the Spirit as soft. This is a common understanding of the principle of sola scriptura: The Bible is our final authority in matters of faith and practice.

Yet the Bible itself sheds light on how to answer this question. And the answer that the Bible gives might surprise you. There are examples in Scripture where the Spirit speaks loudly, and he is contradicting the community’s understanding of what Scripture says. It happens in both the Old and New Testaments. In the New Testament, there is a situation where faithful, exemplary Christians were convinced that the Bible was commanding them to do something. The biblical case for their opinion was airtight, or so it appeared at that time. But the Holy Spirit was pointing them in the opposite direction. If they made the choice that looked safe, sticking with what they believed the Bible said, they would have appeared to be God-fearing and righteous. But they would have begun to lose their mission as the Church and endangered their understanding of the gospel itself.

When Word and Spirit appear to conflict, it is not a given that Word must win. Spirit will occasionally have to trump Word. This realization can make us uncomfortable. But if the Holy Spirit is fully God as we profess, then he is a creative person who may lead us in directions that we do not expect. If we never allow the creative power of the Spirit to challenge our deeply held assumptions about what the Bible says and means, then we are not showing proper reverence to the Word or to the Spirit, and sooner or later we will become… disobedient.

I’ll say more about this in Part 2. Stay tuned.

These are genuine questions for which I do not yet have answers. I hope that these do not sound like leading questions. A leading question is a question that presupposes what the correct answer should be. Of course, I do have some opinions of my own about how I would answer them. But I am willing to keep an open mind, and I am ready to hear the opinions of others and be swayed by them. I do not think that any of these questions has a single, correct answer, and I don’t expect everyone to agree with one another or with me. But I believe that the leaders of an organization like ours ought to be willing to consider and discuss hard questions like these. Or at least let us know where they stand.

1. On our official website, UBF is described as “a non-denominational, evangelistic campus organization.” But in most places, it has taken on the characteristics of a church. Members stay involved beyond their student years; they tithe; they do not attend other churches; they marry, have children, and bring their children to UBF; and so on. Yet campus ministry is at the front and center of our meetings, worship services, conferences, etc. to the extent that many members feel that, if they are not students or actively serving in campus ministry, UBF is not the right place for them. Is that the message that we should continue to send our members? Should that message be refined or modified in any way?

2. On a related theme: The sign above the main Chicago center says that UBF is “A Missionary Church.” It seems to me that this might be a reasonable way to describe who and what we are. But if so, what exactly does it mean? Does this mean that we are

a) a church planted by missionaries and run by missionaries?

b) a church that serves missionaries and their children?

c) a church in which many or most of the members are expected to become missionaries?

d) a church whose purpose is to train and send missionaries to other places?

If the answer is c), then is that a reasonable expectation? If the answer is d), then what is the relationship of the church to the community in which it sits? Does the church mainly draw resources (people, funds, etc.) out of the local community and use them for mission somewhere else? If so, will the attention of the church ever be focused on serving the local community, or will it always be looking elsewhere?

3. Consider a campus ministry started by Christians in their own country, and then consider a campus ministry started by missionaries in a foreign land. Should there be any significant differences between these two types of campus ministries? If so, what are the differences, and how should those differences be reflected in the qualifications and training expected of ministry leaders?

4. If missionaries plant a church in a foreign land, should the missionaries automatically become the leaders and managers of that church? If so, for how long?

5. If missionaries raise disciples in a foreign land whose culture is significantly different from their own, to what extent should the disciples be expected to adopt the lifestyle, attitudes, and values of the missionaries? For example, should they be expected to speak, dress and act as the missionaries do? Evangelize as they do? Marry as they do? Raise children as they do? Relate to the broader culture as they do? Attend meetings and events whose time, format and agenda are determined by the missionaries? Who should decide such issues, and how should they get decided?

6. If missionaries come to a nation, community, or campus that already has a Christian heritage and a significant number of Christian churches and organizations, what should the missionaries be doing? Should they be setting up their own independent ministries? If so, how should the leaders of existing churches and organizations feel about this? What is the benefit of having a ministry run by foreign missionaries operating independently of domestic churches rather than partnering with them?

7. Is it reasonable to expect that most or all of the committed members of a UBF chapter will be actively engaged in campus evangelism, fishing, Bible teaching, etc.? If so, then how can that be reconciled with the teachings of the New Testament about the variety of roles and spiritual gifts within the Body of Christ? If not, then what should our members be doing, and how will the value of their work be acknowledged?

8. UBF in Uganda has been operating a medical mission. Lately, some have been suggesting that UBF take new initiatives to build schools, training institutes, and so on. How does that work fit in to our understanding of the Great Commission? Are works of compassion to serve the local community something that we want to encourage because they have intrinsic value? Are they important only if they somehow contribute to our work of campus evangelism? Or are they seen as a potential distraction and hindrance to campus evangelism?

9. Most UBF chapters are financially self-supporting and autonomous; major decisions are often made by a single chapter director. How should a chapter director be held accountable to his members and to the larger organization? When conflicts arise between members and their director, how should those conflicts be resolved? When conflicts arise between local chapters, or between a local chapter and a national or regional director, how should those conflicts be resolved?

10. Does UBF have any accountability to the greater Body of Christ? If so, how should that accountability be implemented and realized?

11. What are the criteria by which the success of a ministry is judged? Are we mostly concerned about size and growth in numbers? What metrics should we use to evaluate the health of a UBF chapter?

12. What are we to conclude from the recent painful events in India? Were mistakes made? Are there lessons to be learned about leadership, conflict resolution, etc.?

13. Six years ago, we were given the prayer topic to double the ministry by 2010. With few exceptions, that has not happened in our North American chapters. Should this be regarded as a failure? If so, is it a failue of the leadership or the membership? Is it a sign that God is no longer blessing us? A sign that we need to rethink and retool? Or should we just ignore the fact and move on? (Memo to the next General Director: Ignoring this and moving on might be the easiest course of action. But it has a significant cost. It sends the message that the General Director’s prayer topics are just suggestions and don’t have to be taken seriously.)

14. As UBF approaches the 50 year mark, our attention has been turned to raising the next generation of leaders. Many have been talking about how to pass on the heritage, legacy and vision of UBF to the next generation. The term “pass on” suggests that the legacy is already fully understood, and the task is merely to educate, train and inspire the next generation with that legacy. Is it reasonable for one generation to decide what the direction and vision of the next generation ought to be? When, how and by whom should the direction of any given generation be decided?

15. UBF in Korea was not controlled, managed or funded by western missionaries. It was a self-supporting, independent and indigenous student gospel movement whose message and vision inspired Korean students. If we are to be faithful to the roots and heritage of UBF, shouldn’t we be making it our top priority to indigenize the UBF ministry in each nation, allowing the native leaders to find and develop the unique message that will inspire students? If so, what steps can be taken to move decisively in that direction?

16. If this is not the correct time, place or manner to raise difficult questions like these, then exactly when, where and how should they be raised?

Those are my questions for the next General Director. What are yours?

If you have read my previous articles, then I hope you are becoming convinced that what Christians think about the Holy Spirit really does matter.

But perhaps you are wondering, “What’s all this fuss about the Holy Spirit?” We do, after all, identify ourselves as Christ-ians or followers of Christ. Shouldn’t our attention be focused on Jesus, on trusting, following and imitating him?

The Bible tells us a whole lot about Jesus. The story of his life is told four times by four different gospel writers, and the events of the gospels are thoroughly interpreted and explained in the Epistles.

By comparison, the Bible says much less about the Holy Spirit, and he is difficult to pin down. The Spirit is mysterious, unpredictable, and beyond our human understanding.

If we call ourselves Christians, then shouldn’t we just concentrate on Jesus and let the Holy Spirit do what he wants? Shouldn’t we mainly focus on the gospels and work on our “personal relationship with Christ”?

In certain respects, that’s not a bad idea. The kingdom of God is centered on Jesus. We (the Church) are his bride, and he is our true husband, the subject of our love and desire and worship.

On the other hand, we are not living in the age of the four gospels. We are living in the biblical period between Jesus’ ascension and second coming. When Jesus ascended into heaven, he relinquished control of his earthly ministry to the Holy Spirit. In effect, Jesus looked to the Holy Spirit and said, “Hey bro, it’s your turn now. Take care of things until I come back.” Okay, Jesus probably didn’t call him bro. But that’s beside the point.

The point is that we are now living in the age of the Holy Spirit. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Church is the major fact of this period that defines who we are and how we relate to God.

One reason why some Christians are hesitant to say much about the Holy Spirit is this: Some of what people claim to be the Spirit’s guidance and work is not genuine and really doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. For example, consider the practice of publicly speaking in tongues where the speech (which is a string of nonsense syllables – and I don’t mean to be pejorative here) is regarded as a divinely inspired message, and then one or more “interpreters” translate what is being said. If this message-from-God claim were true, then shouldn’t different interpreters come up with the same translation? Experiments have been performed where audio recordings of glossolalia (the technical term for speaking in tongues) are independently presented to multiple interpreters, and the translations they offer are not even close.

J.I. Packer, in his excellent book Keep in Step With the Spirit, describes an Ethiopian priest who went to a multicultural prayer meeting and heard people speaking in tongues. He assumed that these people were praying in their own native languages. Deciding to join in, he stood up and recited Psalm 23 in an archaic Coptic language of his native church. Interpreters immediately translated what he said, and he walked away in bewilderment, saying, “It was all wrong.”

Please do not misunderstand. I am not claiming that glossolalia and all other charismatic phenomena are fake or wrong. Personally, I have never prayed in tongues and have not desired to do so. But many faithful Christians (including some UBF members) do. From what I have heard, it is rarely an experience in which people are seized by an external force and made to do something that is completely outside of their control. In most cases, it is more like a technique of “letting go” that can be learned and practiced, and the person who is doing it can start and stop at will. People who do this claim that it heightens their awareness of God and helps them to pray in a deeper way for longer periods of time. In that sense, it is not entirely different from other practices of meditation and divine contemplation that have appeared in Christian communities throughout the ages. I believe that whenever and wherever Christians draw near to God and pray in the name of Jesus Christ, then the Holy Spirit is working among them. So in that sense, I would say that most charismatic prayer and tongue-speaking does represent the authentic work of the Holy Spirit. But I do not believe that this Spirit-work among charismatics is unusually miraculous or fundamentally different from what happens among non-charismatic Christians when they worship and pray. (This is what I think: Prayer is extremely hard. Whenever a Christian is able to deeply and effectively pray, then that in itself is a great miracle.)

So although I think that many charismatic phenomena do represent genuine work of the Holy Spirit, I also think that they are often misunderstood and misinterpreted by those who participate in them and those who observe them.

When evidence or claims about the Holy Spirit are being presented, we should not automatically become dismissive or overly skeptical or critical. The Holy Spirit is real and works among Christians in surprising and sometime miraculous ways. The Body of Christ is diverse, and the Spirit’s work in some parts of the Body may look very strange to other parts of the Body. But we also need to test these claims and separate the wheat from the chaff. Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22:

Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.

So how can we test an activity to see whether it is the genuine work of the Spirit? The criteria that some Christians apply are rooted in sectarianism, prejudice and competition. We may be quick to assume that the Holy Spirit is with us in everything we do simply because our church is “biblically correct.” At the same time, we may dismiss what is happening in other communities because it doesn’t jibe with our own experiences and violates our assumptions about what the work of the Holy Spirit should look like.

Here is a criterion that some have offered: The Holy Spirit will never do anything that is contrary to Scripture. I do believe that this is true. But notions of what constitutes “scriptural” and “unscriptural” vary widely from one community to another. The disputes over glossolalia are a good example of this; Christians hold different positions on speaking in tongues, and they all support their positions with Bible verses. Although Christians widely agree on the big issues regarding the Holy Spirit (he is a person; he is God), there is plenty of disagreement about when he comes, how he works, etc., and part of Scripture that speak to these issues are truly difficult to understand.

In Keep in Step with the Spirit, J.I. Packer notes that evangelical Christians have many good and biblically supportable ideas about the Holy Spirit, but we seem to lack the big picture, the overarching theme of his ministry that clearly states what he came to do. So Packer offers a solution. Focusing in what Jesus said John 16:13-15, he states that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is centered on Jesus Christ. The Spirit never promotes himself or draws people to himself. His purpose is to further the Father’s pleasure by glorifying the Son. While the ascended Jesus is enthroned in heaven, the Spirit will work to proclaim the gospel of Jesus, to draw people to faith in Jesus, to help us to obey Jesus, to promote the knowledge, adoration and love of Jesus – in short, to make it possible for us to have a vital relationship with Jesus until he returns in power and glory. Wherever Jesus Christ is being followed, proclaimed, worshiped and glorified, the Holy Spirit is present to actively direct and support that work.

If what Packer says is correct, then the major test that we should apply is this: In this particular gathering or activity, is the reputation, purpose, and love of Jesus Christ being promoted? If so, then it is an authentic work of the Holy Spirit.

In this article, I will try to uncover some of these assumptions and demonstrate that they really do matter. Try asking yourself the following questions.

1. How does the Holy Spirit bring about personal holiness? Does he usually (a) take away our inclination to sin and make us want to obey God, or (b) expect us to struggle against the sinful nature, perhaps helping us out from time to time, until we overcome temptation and experience victory?

If you instinctively answer (a), you might develop a casual or passive attitude toward sin, waiting around until you are “healed” instead of gritting your teeth and waging war against the enemy within. On the other hand, if your answer is (b), you might end up trying to depend on yourself and live out your faith by your own effort, which is in general a losing proposition. And you might interpret others’ weaknesses as failure due to lack of effort without really knowing how hard they are trying. I don’t think there is a correct answer here. It is easy to find Bible verses to “prove” either one. Sometimes the Spirit does (a) and sometimes he does (b). But how often does he do (a) versus (b)? It seems to me that, whichever position you gravitate toward, there will be long-term implications for how you interact with God on a daily basis and how you view yourself and others.

2. How does the Holy Spirit work in evangelism? Does he usually (a) seek people and draw them into encounters with believers who can present the gospel message to them, or (b) commission disciples and send them out to vigorously declare the gospel message to an unbelieving world?

Once again, I believe that the Spirit does both. But which one does he do more often? If you tend to think (a), then your participation in evangelism (if you participate at all) might be halfhearted and passive. If you ascribe to (b), then you might look and act like a gung-ho soldier of Christ, but to what effect? In the evangelical world, there are many self-styled evangelists whose efforts prove unfruitful and even counterproductive because they preach Christ at inappropriate times and in inappropriate ways with little understanding or sensitivity.

3. How does the Holy Spirit act within the organizational structure of a church? Does he primarily (a) direct the body though its leaders and elders, whom we can safely assume are being led by the Holy Spirit by virtue of their seniority and their elected or appointed offices? Or does he (b) offer no special consideration to elders and leaders and frequently bypass them to accomplish his purposes?

The answers to this question could vary enormously across denominations and cultures. In my opinion, the most correct and healthy response is to say that the Holy Spirit does both on a regular basis. For this reason, leaders and members need real discernment to understand how the Spirit is working among them at any given time. And whether you or your church leans toward (a) or (b), I hope that you maintain an open mind and humbly allow the Holy Spirit to continually challenge your view .

4. Do the gifts given by the Holy Spirit to individual people for service in the church usually (a) coincide with their natural talents, abilities and desires or (b) represent an out-of-the-ordinary or even supernatural display, allowing them to perform in ways that they would never otherwise want to do or be able to do?

By now, you probably know what I am going to say. I think that the Holy Spirit does both. And whether you lean toward (a) or (b), there can be positive and negative implications either way.

5. What is the Holy Spirit’s relationship to Scripture? Did he (a) inspire the human authors to write the original manuscripts in the Hebrew and Greek languages and then essentially stop working? Or did he (b) continue to work down through the ages through the entire process by which the teachings in the Bible were spoken, written down, collected, canonized, preserved, translated and retranslated, studied and restudied, interpreted and reinterpreted?

In the past, I would have probably answered (a), but I hadn’t seriously thought about it. There are many who claim to hold a “high view” of Scripture who tend toward (a) because they don’t know much about the process by which the canon was established, or because they do know something about that process and it looks embarrassingly messy, controversial, and downright human. Some would like to imagine that the Bible was simply handed down to us from heaven with no human input, just as God handed the stone tablets to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Any hint of subjective human judgment in the process by which the Bible came to exist would open a huge can of worms and appear to undermine biblical authority. But even if we ignore that process and just look at the text itself, we find that the Bible is a rather messy book. Some events are described multiple times from different points of view, and the details of these accounts do not always agree. If the Bible is a perfect and infallible text, then it can only be so by definitions of perfection and infallibility that are different from what we mean when we use those terms in ordinary language. (For example, the Bible contains a fair amount of poetry. What does it mean for a poem to be infallible?)

If you answer (a), then your main goal in Bible study may be to get back to the “original intent” and understand it from the author’s point of view. There is a lot of merit to that approach. Understanding the author’s intent is part of any serious study of Scripture. But original intent can only take us so far, and Christians do need to go beyond that, especially when we look at the Old Testament. The Old Testament is full of events, commandments, ceremonies, and imagery that we believe were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. When Christians study Old Testament passages, we find ourselves departing substantially from the author’s original intent; if we do not, then it becomes difficult or impossible to make the passages relevant to what we now believe and do. Reinterpreting the Old Testament in light of the gospel is something that Jesus and the apostles did on a regular basis.

Now when we come to the New Testament, can we continue to apply that same approach? Are we free to depart from the author’s original intent and apply the scriptures in new ways to modern-day situations that the apostles never envisioned? Once again, I think that we must do so, but with greater caution. If we refuse to try, we may find ourselves attempting to “get back to the first century” and live just like those early Christians did, which in the present world is truly impossible. And even if it were possible, it would be unwise, because the Holy Spirit is not stuck in the first century; he continues to move on and work in new ways in every generation. Yet if we do this carelessly, we might begin to tolerate beliefs and practices that depart from God’s will and are truly unorthodox. The present debate in mainline churches about homosexuality is a good example. There are many sincere (and, I think, wrongheaded) Christians who believe that the Holy Spirit is leading the Church to bless same-sex relationships.

There are dangers that should not be ignored if we take position (b). But if we lean too heavily toward (a), we may stifle real work of the Holy Spirit and make ourselves and our churches irrelevant.

Whatever you think about the questions raised – and I do not claim to know all the answers – you have to admit that they are important. Our assumptions about the Holy Spirit shape what we think the authentic work of God looks like, how we think a church should operate, how we pray, how we worship, how we speak of our faith and how we evangelize. The earthly ministry of the Son is thoroughly described in the four gospels. But the earthly ministry of the Holy Spirit which began in Acts is still going on; new chapters are continually being written.

Does what we know about the Holy Spirit matter? Yes, it does. A healthy relationship to the Holy Spirit — and we cannot have a meaningful relationship with someone whom we know nothing about — enables us to grow in faith and be useful instruments of God in this world. But ideas about him that are sloppy, off-balance or wrong may prevent individuals and churches from growing to maturity and stifle the Spirit’s work among them. Make no mistake: the Holy Spirit can be quenched (1Th 5:19). The Spirit can be lied to, sinned against, and blasphemed, and the consequences of doing so can be dire (Ac 5:3; Mk 3:29; Lk 12:10).

Amy Chua, a professor at Yale University and mother of two daughters, ignited a firestorm with her opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.” Chua uses the term “Chinese mothers” to describe an ultra-strict parenting style which is prevalent among Asian-American immigrants. She described how she never allows her daughters to attend sleepovers, have playdates with other children, watch TV or play computer games. She does not allow them to get any grade less than an A. She expects them to be the number 1 student in every class, except gym and drama. She forces them — using physical restraint if necessary — to put in long hours of practicing piano and violin. Any sign of disrespect toward their parents is met with swift and severe punishment. She described how her own father once became angry at her and called her “garbage” in his Chinese dialect, and she has done this to her own daughters as well. While western parents are horrified by this, thinking that it damages the child’s self-esteem, she believes that it can be healthy, productive and useful. She regards this parenting style as superior because it leads to achievement and success, ultimately allowing the children to experience the joys of accomplishment. She defends her practices as an expression of motherly love.

As I was reading Chua’s essay, this is what went through my head.

1. She’s got to be joking. This piece is tongue-in-cheek.
2. No, she’s serious.
3. She believes what she’s saying, but only to a degree; the piece is full of comic exaggeration.
4. No, she’s completely serious. Lord have mercy!

Later I discovered that the truth is closer to #3. It seems that Chua was exaggerating. It wasn’t really comic exaggeration, because she appears to have little or no sense of humor. But she intentionally crafted the piece to be controversial, because she was hoping to generate publicity for her new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which was going to be released a few days later. Her plan worked. The internet lit up with chatter about Chua’s piece, and heated discussions are continuing today.

Here is my own take on it. I think Chua is being disingenuous when she claims that this parenting style is motivated by pure, selfless love for her daughters. Surely it has something to do with the her desire to avoid shame and bring honor to the family. And I didn’t buy her view of what a successful person is. One doesn’t need to be a doctor, a professor, or a famous concert pianist to live a happy and fruitful life. Achievement is good, but at what cost? It will be very hard to convince me that this kind of parenting does not do psychological damage and impair the children’s ability to have loving relationships with other people and with God.

Sharon and I have four children — two of whom have significant learning disabilities — and we do not apply these kinds of practices in our home. Our parenting style is much, much looser. Undisciplined and chaotic, some would say. And we can’t help but wonder. “Are we doing something wrong? Shouldn’t we be getting tough and pushing our kids more?” We live in a university town that is full of high-achieving youngsters. We serve in a ministry filled with high-achieving second gens. It’s impossible not to compare our children to them and agonize over whether we are doing a good job.

Later I ran across a wonderful series of articles on this by a Christian blogger named Tim Dalrymple. He seems to know what he is talking about, because he married into an Asian family and has for many years been deeply involved with Asian-American Christian ministries. (And, I found out, he has a small UBF connection: He was a college friend of Dr. John Yoon of University of Chicago.) Tim unpacks and analyzes Chua’s article from many different angles. He talks about what western and Asian parents can learn from one another. He makes many valuable observations, too many to mention here. But after reading his posts, I felt much better about what has gone on in the Schafer household. I received much comfort and food for thought. And I learned something about how parenting style can help children experience the gospel of grace.

I’m sure that many of you have encountered this debate over Tiger Moms and the alleged superiority/inferiority of that strict parenting style. What were your reactions? What are you thinking now?

And you ought to agree that the Holy Spirit is God. On that point, Scripture is very clear. For example, in Acts 5:3, Peter said, “Ananias,… you have lied to the Holy Spirit.” One verse later, Peter adds, “You have not lied to men but to God.”

Many sincere and devout believers talk about “the secret of living a Spirit-filled life.” We want to experience the Spirit’s power. We want our pastors to deliver Spirit-filled messages. We want to have Spirit-filled worship, Spirit-filled Bible studies, Spirit-filled prayer, and so on. All of this is well and good. But overuse of this language can depersonalize and disrespect the third Person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is not a quality or condiment that enhances our efforts and activities. The Holy Spirit is God himself. Instead of looking for that secret ingredient, we ought to be asking, “Where is the Holy Spirit moving, and how can I walk in step with him? How can I relinquish control of my activities and life to him?”

How we speak of the Holy Spirit really does matter. John Wesley was an eminent preacher and theologian of the 18^th century, a man who was greatly used by God during the first Great Awakening. He developed a teaching of “scriptural holiness” that was not well received during his lifetime. A century later, a small group of Christian preachers and writers latched on to this teaching and vigorously promoted it as “the secret” of the victorious Christian life. Wesley occasionally spoke of a “second blessing” that comes upon some believers. One of his successors, John Fletcher, developed this idea further and equated it with baptism by the Holy Spirit. Fletcher began to speak of conversion as a two-step process. In the first step, the person believes in Jesus Christ and receives from God the full remission of sin. In the second step – which may happen some time later or perhaps not at all – the person receives the second blessing of the Holy Spirit which brings him to a fuller and more perfect state of purity. This thinking contributed to a number of movements in Britain and the United States –the Keswick “Higher Life” movement, the Holiness movement, and Pentecostalism – and God used the men and women involved to bring about genuine spiritual growth and revival.

But the modern-day legacy and fruit of the Wesleyan/Fletcher teaching on the Holy Spirit is mixed. Scholars of the Reformed tradition have criticized this thinking as imprecise, sloppy and unscriptural, and it seems to me that those criticisms are valid. It is true that the apostles experienced the blessing of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, which came some time after they believed in the risen Christ. A temporal separation between faith in Jesus and the arrival of the Holy Spirit is also mentioned in the “Samaritan Pentecost” of Acts 8:17. But these appear to be unique events that are not repeated later, and the two-stage view of conversion is not supported in the Epistles. In Paul’s presentation of the gospel, the state of belonging to Christ is equivalent to being indwelt by the Holy Spirit (Ro 8:9).

I know that God sometimes pours out the Holy Spirit on disciples of Christ. He can fill them with the Holy Spirit anytime he chooses (Ac 4:31). He can send a second blessing, a third blessing, a fourth blessing and so on, but he doesn’t have to. On the other hand, Scripture is quite clear that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a general promise given to everyone who follows Jesus (Jn 7:37-39; Ac 2:39). Understanding this does have implications for your personal walk of faith. If you think of conversion as a two-stage process, then you may hunger for that “second blessing” and wonder why it doesn’t come. Two-stage thinking will inevitably set up a two-tiered hierarchy within a church in which some believers are considered to be Level-1 Christians, inferior to their brothers and sisters who have achieved the coveted Level-2 status. I find no support for this anywhere in Scripture, and the potentially harmful effects seem obvious.

Basically, this is what I think happened. John Wesley witnessed authentic outpourings of the Holy Spirit at various times and places. But he and his followers did not accurately reconcile those experiences with the teachings of Scripture; they misunderstood what was happening and generalized from those experiences in inappropriate ways.

At one time or another, I think we have all been guilty of that. Someone may experience God’s transforming work (e.g., a healing) in his own life. Because that experience is so genuine and powerful, he begins to think that this experience is normative – what “should happen” in other times and places – and wants this work to be reproduced elsewhere. So he begins to tell other Christians that they too can experience just what he did if they only believe, if they only ask God in prayer, and so on. Scriptures do promise that miraculous things will happen in the lives of believers (Mk 16:18), but nowhere does the Bible say that the Holy Spirit must do exactly what we want or expect at any given moment. To teach this is to disrespect the personhood and freedom of the Holy Spirit. To teach this is to give in to temptation to put God to the test (Mt 4:5-7).

Or suppose that a ministry experiences dramatic growth through an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a particular place and time. Leaders of the movement may conclude that similar things ought to happen on a regular basis. Worse yet, they may begin to believe that they are somehow better, purer, holier, more prayerful than other churches and ministries that did not share the experience. They may take it as “proof” that their particular ministry methods (which may have been appropriate in the original setting) are inherently superior, and then press forward in uncritically applying those same methods in other cultural settings where the Spirit wants to work differently. The temptation for organizations to do this can be overwhelming. But it is not scriptural. Eventually it may become a negation of the gospel. Salvation comes to everyone by the sovereignty of God and by his grace alone, not by the inherent specialness of any evangelists’ practices, methods or style. The gospel does not need adornment. The message, the reality, of Jesus Christ and his kingdom is sufficient to bring revival whenever, wherever, through whomever, and by whatever means the Spirit chooses to work.

An honest study of the history of Christian revivals will show that every outpouring of the Holy Spirit was also accompanied by mistakes, excesses and problems in the church that needed to be addressed and corrected by future generations. The fact that this is so does not devalue the message or the work that was done. If it were not so, then it would be a contradiction of the truth that at the foot of the cross, the ground is level. All of us, without exception, stand on the same plane. We are all sinners before God, and salvation comes to all by grace alone, not by grace plus some special, secret ingredient.

The paths and circumstances by which people come to faith in Christ and grow in Christ are truly varied. The Holy Spirit works differently in different people and in the life of a person at different times. He works differently across churches, cultures and generations. Whenever we try to put him in a box and say that this is how he must work, he seems to go out of his way to prove us wrong. We ought to recognize, welcome and applaud the genuine work of the Holy Spirit whenever and wherever we see it. But we should also be extra careful before we claim that any particular work of the Spirit is how it’s always supposed to be.

In the next article, I will describe some other ways that our beliefs and assumptions about the Holy Spirit will profoundly impact our lives of faith. Stay tuned…

One defining moment in Christian history came in 1054 A.D. in an event known as the Great Schism, when the Church split into Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Roman Catholic) branches. The tension between these camps had been building for some time. It was exacerbated by poor communication between leaders from the East who spoke Greek and those from the West who spoke Latin. But the immediate issue that caused these tensions to flare was a seemingly obscure argument about the Holy Spirit known as the filioque controversy.

Filioque is a Latin word meaning “and the Son.” The Nicene Creed, which was written in 325 and expanded in 381, declared:

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, and who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified…

Two centuries later, the Latin-speaking churches of western Europe began to recite:

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son…

Eastern leaders objected to this addition, calling it a heresy. (Interestingly, the Roman Catholic Church later agreed that the implications of this small addition would be heretical in the Greek language version of the Creed, but insists that it is acceptable in the Latin version. But I digress.) The East also objected to the process by which filioque was inserted, saying that the Western bishops broke communion with the East by acting unilaterally. In 1054, leaders from Rome and Constantinople excommunicated each other. The dispute erupted into grotesque violence in 1182 when Latin residents of Constantinople were ethnically cleansed. The Roman church returned the favor in 1204 by sacking Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.

Some of you are probably thinking, “That is incredibly stupid. Why would Christians kill each other over a single word about the Holy Spirit?” Of course, there were many social and political factors that contributed to these terrible events. But there were also sincere believers who were defendjng what they considered to be essential truths of the Christian faith. In hindsight, it does seem ridiculous and horrible. But before jumping to conclusions, isn’t it worth asking why an issue that seems so trivial to us would be so important to them? Is it possible for us to reject their violence but still learn something from them about the seriousness of how we understand and think about God?

Now let’s jump ahead to the present time. What has been the single most important development in Christianity over the last century? Many would say that it is the Pentecostal/charismatic movement. For the most part, Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals are not killing each other. We generally respect and recognize one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. But the differences in how we talk about and practice our faith are quite profound. Charismatic Christians give prominence to supernatural signs and displays, prophetic utterings, miraculous healings, and spiritual warfare (fighting demons) that to skeptical outsiders seem off-balance and out of control. And non-charismatics may be seen by their charismatic counterparts as dull, repressed, spiritually asleep, or even hostile and disobedient to the Holy Spirit.

My purpose in bringing up these two developments in the history of the Church – the Great Schism and the growth of Pentecostalism – is not to take sides in these disputes. I mention them only to provide evidence that what we think about the Holy Spirit actually matters.

In the next two articles in this series, I will get very practical and give examples of how our understanding of the Holy Spirit impacts our spiritual lives.

Since my college days, I have belonged to a non-denominational church that emphasizes textual Bible study, prayer and evangelism. Over the years, we have constantly spoken of God and Jesus, and in passing we have often mentioned the Holy Spirit. We formally uphold the doctrine of the Trinity. But in-depth discussion of the Holy Spirit has been rare.

As far as I can tell, my experience is common among evangelical Christians, especially those of the non-Pentecostal variety. The implicit message seems to be: If you believe that Christ died for your sins, that is enough to make you a real Christian. But is it enough?

Discerning who is a real Christian is not something that I will attempt. That task is best left up to God.

However, I am now convinced that “Christ died for our sins” is an incomplete presentation of the gospel. It is a necessary part of the message for sure. It is a genuine, true message through which God has worked to bring many to faith in Christ. But it falls far short of the message proclaimed by the apostles and recorded in the New Testament. And I do not think it is not an adequate long-term basis for a healthy, growing Christian faith.

The gospel message is rooted in historical events that unfolded over a sequence of five days: Christmas, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, the day of Ascension, and Pentecost. Each of those days was anticipated in the Old Testament. Each of those days is necessary to understand what God has done through Jesus Christ.

Christmas Day (or, more accurately, the moment that Jesus Christ was conceived) was the day when the Word became flesh. The mystery of the Incanation, the declaration that the second person of the Trinity became a human being, is the startling news flash that opens the New Testament.

The next startling headline came on Good Friday, when this God-man died on the cross for our sins. The death of Jesus Christ is another great mystery. The cross is, quite correctly, the kernel of most modern evangelical presentations of the gospel.

But Good Friday would be meaningless without Easter Sunday. It is not nearly enough to say that Christ died for our sins. A Christian must also believe that Christ was raised from the dead. If he was not raised from the dead, our faith is futile, and we are still in our sins (1Co 15:17).

And is not enough to believe that Christ was raised from the dead. The message that energized the early Church, which spread like wildfire and transformed the lives of those who accepted it, was encapsulated in three words: Jesus is Lord. That was the punchline of the apostles’ first evangelistic message (Acts 2:36). The Lordship of Christ was sealed on Ascension Thursday, when the risen Jesus ascended to heaven and was seated at the right hand of the Father (Ac 2:34-35; Ps 110:1).

And that message that Jesus is Lord would have fallen on deaf ears had it not been for the new work of the Holy Spirit that began on Pentecost. The gift of the Holy Spirit was repeatedly promised by Jesus (Jn 7:37-39, 14:16). It is the Holy Spirit who brings our dead souls to life, who enables us to believe in Christ and be regenerated (born again) into God’s family (Jn 3:5). It is the presence of the Holy Spirit, the resurrected Jesus living within his disciples, that makes the Church the Body of Christ in the world today. If we are real Christians, then we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit; if the Holy Spirit is not in us, then we do not belong to Christ (Ro 8:9-11).

We urge people, “Accept Jesus as your personal Savior.” But one cannot accept Jesus as Savior without also accepting the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not an accessory to the gospel. He is a lead actor in the gospel and an essential part of who Jesus is.

The two major titles that we apply to Jesus, Christ (Greek) and Messiah (Hebrew), are equivalent; both mean “the Anointed One.” That word, anointed, refers to a ceremonial application of oil. It was the divinely commanded act by which the nation of Israel ordained her High Priest (Lev 8:12) and designated her King (1Sa 16:13). The anointing oil is an Old Testament image or picture of the Holy Spirit, whom God the Father poured out on Jesus to designate him as our High Priest and King.

The Jesus depicted in the four gospels is a human being — a truly ordinary person — who was anointed and filled with the Holy Spirit at every stage of his life and ministry. He was conceived in the womb of his mother, the virgin Mary, by the power of the Holy Spirit (Lk 1:35). When he was baptized in the Jordan River, the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove, and that is how John the Baptist recognized him as the Messiah (Lk 3:21; Jn 1:33). When Jesus preached his first sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth, he quoted from the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Lk 4:18-19). When Jesus taught, he did so by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (Mt 12:18). When he healed the sick and cast our demons, he did so by the power of the Holy Spirit (Mt 12:28).

The unbreakable connection between Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit is found in the earliest presentations of the gospel. When the Apostle Peter preached his first gospel message to the Gentiles, he said, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit” (Ac 13:16). When Peter preached his first message to the Jews, he said that the risen Jesus ascended into heaven, received from the Father the gift of the Holy Spirit, and poured out this gift on his disciples on the day of Pentecost (Ac 2:33).

Does any of this really matter? Is knowing about, believing in and understanding the Holy Spirit relevant to our practical lives and to our experience of God today? Or is all of this stuff just abstract theologizing that should be left to those pointy-headed scholars in their seminaries, which, as we all know, are little better than cemeteries?

Sorry, that’s a badly worn-out joke. If you understand where I am going, you will realize that I do not think that seminaries are cemeteries. On the contrary, I am becoming convinced that our theology of the Holy Spirit is critically important to our faith and practice. If it were not, then why did Peter take time to present it to non-believers and seekers in his evangelistic messages?

Surely the Holy Spirit is present among many people who do not know or understand him. But that is not a good reason to delight in ignorance. Many have believed in Jesus and experienced the authentic work of the Holy Spirit with little or no theological understanding. But without clear understanding, Christians tend to misinterpret what is happening to them. If we fail to compare our experiences to Scripture, we tend to draw incorrect conclusions and make inaccurate generalizations about the Holy Spirit which, over time, keep us from maturing and lead to unhealthy beliefs and practices. Sooner or later, the chickens of Spirit-ignorance will come home to roost.

That’s my opinion. But what do you think? Was the Holy Spirit an indispensible part of the gospel that you accepted and believed? Have you been experiencing the work of the Holy Spirit in your personal life and in your church? If so, how? If not, why? On a scale of 1=total ignorance to 5=deep understanding, how well do you think you know the Holy Spirit, and is your present knowledge going to be enough to sustain your spiritual health and growth in the years ahead?

The tensions between these groups surfaced at the beginning of Acts chapter 6, when Hellenistic Jews pointed out that Hebraic widows were being taken care of by the church, but the Hellenistic widows were not. Acts 6:1 (NIV 2010) reads:

In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.

Notice what this verse actually says. The matter raised by the Hellenistic Jews was not an idle or godless complaint. Their grievance was genuine, because their widows actually were being discriminated against. We don’t know how this happened, but it displays a lack of sensitivity and fairness on the part of the church leadership. Wagner believes that this issue, the inequitable distribution of food, was merely a symptom of a deeper and more serious problem. Hellenistic Jews comprised a very large part of the early church, and their donations of cash and property were keeping the church financially solvent. Yet their interests and views were not being represented among the church’s leaders, because all twelve of the apostles were Hebraic Jews. At the beginning, it had to be so, because these were the men handpicked by Jesus to be witnesses to the world. But as the demographic character of the church changed, the style and composition of its leadership needed to change.

Wagner makes a statement that is profoundly challenging and provocative: Even the twelve apostles were ethnocentric.

This statement should not be taken as criticism of the apostles. They were men of exemplary faith and character. Yet it is an undeniable fact that, because of their upbringing and historical situation, they lacked cross-cultural and missiological sensitivity. The apostles were born and raised as Hebraic Jews, and their identity was closely bound to keeping the details of Mosaic law. They had been taught, quite correctly, that the Jews were God’s chosen people, and that God’s revelation and salvation came through Israel (Ps 147:20). The notion that the doors of salvation had suddenly been thrown open to the whole world – that God was now ready to accept people of any tribe, tongue and nation without precondition through faith in Christ alone – was truly a radical departure from their Old Testament sensibilities. It was going to take them quite a few years to adjust to the new work of the Holy Spirit that was going on around them in the post-Pentecost era. Meanwhile, it was very natural and understandable for them to exhibit ethnocentric attitudes, believing that the Hebraic Jewish lifestyle to which they (and even Jesus) conformed represented the purest, best, and most biblically correct way of life on the planet.

But the Hellenistic Jews thought differently. As they grew in faith and maturity, they could not remain as sheep, sitting under the apostles’ authority forever. Indeed, the Holy Spirit would not allow them to remain comfortable there. They needed to share in the blessings and responsibilities of leadership as full partners in the gospel which they had inherited. God had prepared a special mission for them, to become a bridge between the Jewish and Gentile worlds.

To the apostles’ credit, they recognized that a real problem had arisen in the church, and they dealt with it in a reasonable manner. They convened a meeting of the disciples and appointed seven new leaders, giving them responsibility for handling the matter. It appears that all seven of them (traditionally called deacons, from the Greek diakonos, which means “servant”) were Hellenistic Jews, because all seven had Greek names.

The role that these seven men played in the leadership of the church is a matter of dispute. Some commentators believe that they remained subservient to the apostles, carrying out menial and practical tasks (“waiting on tables”, as mentioned in verse 2) so that the apostles could remain focused on prayer and ministry of the word. But Wagner believes that these seven were not merely assistants. Indeed, the account by Luke emphasizes their high degree of spiritual qualification. They were known to be full of wisdom, faith and the Holy Spirit. The next two and a half chapters of Acts are devoted to the influence of two of these men: Stephen, who because of his powerful preaching became the first Christian martyr, and Philip, who carried the gospel to Samaria and to the Ethiopian eunuch.

Wagner believes that these seven newly appointed leaders stood alongside the apostles, sharing apostolic authority by ministering to the Hellenistic Jews as the original apostles continued to minister to the Hebraic Jews. He characterizes this event as a division in governance, an amicable split that eased the ethnic tensions in the church, helping the Christian message to break out from the shackles of Hebraic culture so that the gospel could spread beyond Jerusalem and Judea.

After the appointing of seven Hellenistic leaders, the church entered a period of rapid growth. Luke remarks in Acts 6:7:

So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.

If the leadership of the early church had not been diversified, would this dramatic growth have still happened? Not likely, says Wagner. As a specialist in the study of church growth, Wagner pays close attention to Acts 6:7 and similar verses which are scattered throughout the book of Acts. One lesson that he draws from this passage, and from his study of worldwide missions, is that the cultural backgrounds and attitudes of church leaders really do matter. In a more perfect world, Christians of different cultures should be able to serve the Lord side by side without any disagreements or conflicts, fully understanding and accepting one another without any discrimination or judgment whatsoever. Multicultural ministry is an ideal to which we ought to aspire, and when it happens it is indeed a beautiful thing. But two thousand years of history have shown that this tends to be the exception rather than the rule. Cultural differences and misunderstandings between people-groups abound, even within the church. Realistically, it not always possible or desirable for groups that are culturally divergent to remain under the same ecclesiastical authority, especially if the composition of church leadership does not reflect the diversity of its members or the society that the church is seeking to evangelize. No group of believers can sit comfortably under the leadership of foreign missionaries indefinitely, and missionaries who ignore this fact will inadvertently prevent their own ministries from growing. Wagner writes:

One of the most difficult lessons for cross-cultural missionaries to learn is that when they plant a church in a culture different from their own, the leadership of the new church must come from those rooted in the second culture or else the church will not grow and develop as it should. Missionaries may understandably assume that because they have been Christians longer and know the Bible better and pray more and adhere more rigidly to norms of Christian behavior than do their new converts, they therefore can, and should, assume leadership of the new church. They do so, however, to their own detriment and they inadvertently hinder the spread of the gospel over the long haul (pp 142-143).

The Apostle Paul seems to have understood this principle. Whenever Paul planted the gospel in a new place, he made it a high priority to raise native leaders and turn decision-making over to them as soon as possible. When Paul did so, the churches that he planted experienced difficulties and growing pains, as his letters to these churches attest. But Paul’s quick handing over of leadership freed him to continue to use his unique missionary gift to carry the gospel to new places, while allowing the new churches to develop organically into faith communities that could dramatically impact the societies around them. Cross-cultural missionaries are gifted at carrying the gospel from one people-group to another. But natives will instinctively know better than the missionaries how to contextualize that gospel in their own culture.

Wagner’s book is a chapter-by-chapter commentary on the book of Acts with two special twists. First, he places strong emphasis on the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, discussing the extent to which these gifts are present in the Church today. Second, he deals extensively with issues of contextualization – the challenges faced by missionaries as they bring the good news of Jesus Christ into human cultures radically different from their own.

With respect to the Holy Spirit, Wagner began his academic career as a cessationist. That is, he believed that miraculous gifts of tongues, prophesy and healing ceased to be part of normal Christian experience after the age of the apostles. During his tenure at Fuller, however, he revised his views and became a continuationist, believing that many modern-day displays of miraculous gifts are authentic.

The tension between cessationism and continuationism is a fascinating and important subject, but we will leave that to another day. Here I will summarize some of Wagner’s comments on evangelism and culture.

Wagner describes three different kinds of evangelism, which he designates E-1, E-2, and E-3.

• E-1 evangelism is monocultural. An E-1 evangelist shares his faith with other people within his own people group. No significant barriers of language or culture are crossed.
• E-2 evangelism crosses mild cultural barriers. An example of E-2 evangelism would be an Anglo-American preaching the gospel in Australia.
• E-3 evangelism means carrying the gospel to radically different culture. For example, a Canadian missionary serving in China. Or a British pastor reaching out to Hindus and Muslims in London.

This classification as E-1, E-2 and E-3 is a fairly standard terminology not invented by the author. But he does make two major points which I found interesting and compelling.

His first point is that most converts to Christianity have been made through E-1 evangelism; this has always been the case, and it always will. E-2 and E-3 evangelism are necessary to sow the seeds of the gospel in a new place, but dramatic church growth will rarely take place until the message of Christ takes root among native leaders who begin to evangelize their own.

Examples of this are easy to find. For example, Protestant missionaries successfully brought the gospel to Korea in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, but mass conversion of large numbers of South Koreans did not take place until indigenous Korean Christian movements (including UBF) sprang up in the 1960’s.

Another example is the rapid spread of Christianity in modern-day China. Missionaries to China are playing only a minor role in this; most of the growth is taking place through the multiplication of indigenous house churches.

Wagner argues that the gospel spreads more effectively and naturally through E-1 evangelism than through E-2 and E-3. When E-1 evangelism is happening, conversion to Christianity does not require newcomers to cross significant racial, linguistic or cultural barriers. They will not need to disavow their current ways of life to adopt radically new patterns of behavior presented by foreign missionaries. Most of their relationships with family members, friends and neighbors can remain intact. Wherever true E-1 evangelism is going on, as opposed to E-2 and E-3, the decision to accept Christ remains a religious decision to join the family of God, rather than a cultural or social decision to leave one people group and join another.

Wagner’s second point is that E-1 evangelism is a general mission given to everyone in the Church, but E-2 and E-3 evangelism is a special calling that only certain individuals have. There is little excuse for Christians not to engage in E-1 evangelism; in one way or another, every believer ought to be sharing his faith in Christ with the people around him. Therefore, a healthy church will usually be growing in numbers, because E-1 evangelism will be naturally taking place day in and day out.

But E-2 and E-3 evangelism are another matter. These are a specific ministry which require a specific gift. Wagner calls it the gift of missionary, and he defines it as follows: “The gift of missionary is a special ability that God gives to certain believers to use whatever other spiritual gifts they have in a different culture.”

Wagner estimates that only about 1% of Christians have this gift. He admits that this is just a rough guess, based on his own experiences and impressions. The figure of 1% is unimportant. His major point is that, while everyone in the church should be sharing his or her faith within the immediate community, E-2 and E-3 evangelism are a special mission to which only a few are called.

Interestingly, Jesus was an E-1 evangelist. He did not seem to have the gift of missionary. Or, if he had it, he chose not to use it during his three-year public ministry, because as he said in Matthew 15:24, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

And his twelve apostles were also E-1 evangelists. They ministered primarily to Hebraic Jews like themselves. On a few special occasions, God did use them to evangelize beyond their culture. For example, on the day of Pentecost, they received supernatural ability to communicate the gospel to Grecian Jews from many parts of the Roman Empire in their own native tongues. Another example occurs in Acts chapter 10, when God calls on Peter to evangelize the Roman centurion Cornelius, who was a Gentile. This was a special event, and Peter was prompted to do it by a special vision from heaven. Afterward, however, Peter seemed to return to his usual ministry to the Jews, and wholesale evangelization of Gentiles did not begin until the commissioning of Paul and Barnabas as missionaries in Acts chapter 13.

Although we would like to think that the message of Christ breaks down barriers and creates unity in the human race, Christian history has shown — and the book of Acts also testifies to this — that differences among people-groups are stark, and significant hurdles must be overcome whenever Christians from one group attempt to evangelize another.

This is the fundamental problem of missiology. When E-2 and E-3 missionaries carry the gospel to another place, how do they contextualize the message and implement it there? Which of their own beliefs and practices are non-negotiable and must be carried into the new context, and which must be sacrificed to give the native peoples freedom to develop their unique identity in Christ so that the spread of the gospel is not hindered? There are no easy answers to these questions. The Bride of Christ has always wrestled with these issues, and until Christ returns, she always will.

The most significant example of this in the early church occurred when some Jewish Christians from Judea began to teach that circumcision was necessary for salvation and church membership. In their minds, this was a non-negotiable practice that defined them as God’s people. “If a new Gentile believer accepts Christ, why shouldn’t he be willing to be circumcised?” they thought. The influence of these Judaizers was so strong that even the Apostle Peter began to waver, until Paul personally rebuked him on this matter (Gal 2:14). The battle over circumcision reached a climax in Acts chapter 15, when Paul and Barnabas arrived in Jerusalem to present their views to the Jewish believers. At this so-called Jerusalem Council, Peter played the pivotal role; he strongly urged the church to accept Gentiles as full members on the merits of their faith in Christ alone.

Most people are simply unaware of how deeply they have been shaped by their own cultural upbringing, by their own national and ethnic identity. This is why the missionary calling is a special gift. A missionary needs an unusual kind of discernment and willingness to sacrifice many values (even good ones) that he holds dear. Even the twelve apostles who were personally trained by Jesus had great difficulty with this. It was hard for them not to impose additional requirements on new believers from other cultures to make them resemble their own culturally influenced notions of spiritual maturity and piety. Therefore, it is perfectly understandable and natural to expect similar difficulties to be going on in our midst today.

In the middle of the talk, he presented statistics reported by a New York missionary in 2005. At the beginning of the fall semester, 300 students were contacted to see if they would be interested in Bible study. Three students (1.0%) actually came to a Bible study, and one student (0.3%) eventually participated in discipleship training.

Statistics don’t lie, but they can be interpreted in many different ways. Here are two opposing narratives that can be built around that figure of 0.3 percent.

Narrative #1: God rewards discipline, hard work, and dedication. This missionary had to work incredibly hard to raise one disciple. We should work as hard as he did, or even harder, so that God will bless us and so that we too can raise disciples of Jesus.

Narrative #2: Fishing – the practice of contacting complete strangers and inviting them to Bible study – is a difficult way to make disciples in our current environment. Although it may have worked well in other times and places, God is not blessing our fishing and one-to-one ministry right now. Instead of kicking against the goads, perhaps we should step back and prayerfully think about why so few students are responding to our invitation. What might it tell us about our methods? About the culture in which we live? About ourselves and the way we are perceived? About God and how he wants to use the church?

A few years ago, I would have simply accepted Narrative #1 and not allowed myself to consider anything else. But my understanding of Scripture and my personal experiences are now pressing me toward Narrative #2.

My mentors in UBF have always challenged me to put aside cultural presuppositions and preconceived ideas when I study the Bible. So I applied this principle and read through the New Testament to see what it says about church growth in the days of the apostles. I discovered three things.

1. The early church did not grow through intensive fishing, evangelistic outreach and membership drives. In the days immediately following Pentecost, Christians devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship (kononia), breaking of bread, and prayer. They cared for one another’s needs and opened their homes to one another. They were not aggressively trying to bring strangers into the group, but they did meet openly in public where people could see what they were doing. They formed a genuine, loving, welcoming, Christ-centered community. Then the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved (Ac 2:42-47).

2. The mandate for carrying the gospel to the world in Acts 1:8, which we often call “the world mission command,” is not a command but a promise. Jesus states that his disciples will be empowered by the Holy Spirit, and then they will become his witnesses. The only command that Jesus actually gives in that passage is to remain in Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit (Ac 1:4). The disciples obeyed this command by waiting, joining together constantly in prayer, and working together under the leadership of Peter to heal the relational wounds in their fellowship caused by Judas’ betrayal (Ac 1:12-26).

3. The apostle Paul never counseled an entire church to go out and work hard to evangelize the non-believing world. He did carry out his own personal calling to preach and to teach. He encouraged individuals in the church with similar callings to diligently carry them out. For example, he exhorted Timothy to preach the Word in season and out of season (2Ti 4:2). But in his writings and advice to whole churches, he counseled them to deeply understand and believe a gospel message of salvation through Christ alone (Galatians and Romans); to praise God, purify themselves of sin, solve moral and interpersonal problems, put aside divisions, practice unity, and be conformed to the character of Christ (Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Thessalonians); and so on. The big themes in Paul’s writings are holding fast to the gospel and faithfully being the Body of Christ. Increasing membership through intensive ministry-wide outreach is not found in the writings of Paul nor, to my knowledge, anywhere in the New Testament.

[Am I misreading and mischaracterizing the New Testament here? If so, please take this opportunity to show me where and how I am wrong. I have been wrong many times before. I am eager to hear counterarguments and will publicly correct myself if I am wrong.]

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that evangelism, discipling, sending missionaries, etc. are unbiblical or unnecessary. I believe they are essential and should be carried out in a wise, biblically defensible and culturally appropriate manner by those who have been truly called by God to do them. But Scriptures do not show the early church engaging in intensive, regular fishing to increase their numbers.

Despite this lack of regular fishing, the early church exhibited steady and dramatic growth. Sociologist and historian Rodney Stark (The Rise of Christianity) estimates that Christianity grew by about 40% in each decade during the first three centuries after Christ.

If the early did not aggressively pursue nonbelievers to bring them into the fold, then how did the number of disciples grow?

I believe it was not brought about by human efforts to grow the numbers. Rather, growth in numbers was a byproduct of the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit within the church.

On the day of Pentecost, the crowd’s willingness to listen to Peter was a direct response to their observation of the Spirit’s activity (Ac 2:14-21). In the days after Pentecost, the presence of the Holy Spirit in the church was evident in wonders and signs that went far beyond the apostles’ own works and efforts (Ac 2:43).

After 3,000 converts were baptized on Pentecost (Ac 2:41), statistics on numbers of disciples are scarce. Health and vitality in the church seems to be measured not by the numbers of new members, by but by the quality of believers’ character and the inward fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23).

Now some of you may object to what I am saying. Here is one possible counterargument: “The fact that fishing was fruitful in earlier days of UBF proves that it is a God-approved method. If we redouble our efforts and vigorously go fishing with absolute faith, then God will bless us once again as he did in the past.”

Perhaps so. But doesn’t that argument put the cart before the horse? In my opinion, it was not fishing (nor any other method) that caused the Holy Spirit to bless UBF and produce fruit in our ministry. Rather, fishing and other activities that took place were a response to the work of the Holy Spirit that was already going on. If today’s UBF members are not fishing, some would call them disobedient and lazy. But perhaps they are simply uninspired. Inspiration (in-Spir[it]-ation) is what the Holy Spirit does.

The Spirit works in different ways at different times. Incorrect notions about him may arise when Christians experience the powerful work of the Spirit in a particular time and place (as in a revival) and then assume that it is normative; they begin to think that this is what the Spirit’s work should look like in other places and times. This is why we need to carefully compare our own experiences with what the Bible says.

This reminds me of a great little video called The Big Red Tractor and the Little Village which is narrated by Christian author and pastor Francis Chan. If you haven’t seen this video yet, I would encourage you to watch it now.

Contacting 300 students to find one disciple seems analogous to what the townspeople were doing when they pushed and pulled the tractor through the field. Perhaps such Herculean efforts are inspired by the Holy Spirit. But from a distance, doesn’t it look like an attempt to do by our own strength, diligence and hard work the things that the Holy Spirit ought to be doing?

At his point in my life, I simply cannot engage in an intensive fishing and discipleship ministry. Working full time, taking care of my family (including two special-needs children) and pastoring a church was already more than I could handle. Through a painful process of acknowledging my failures and limitations, I have been forced to make significant changes to my lifestyle to improve my physical, mental and emotional health. I discovered that I need more time for personal reading, contemplation, and writing. I need to focus on building healthy, loving relationships with my wife, my children, and members of my church and community. I need to spend quality time with God and people whom he has already placed in my life. Intensive fishing at this stage of my life would be unnatural and cause me to burn out. Unlike my wife, I have never been good at it and have always disliked it. For me, it would be sheer drudgery and pain. In fact, I think it would actually be disobedient, because I would be neglecting the personal gifts, talents, opportunities and vision that God has given me and forcing myself to wear clothing that doesn’t fit.

Moreover, at this moment, I cannot in good conscience tell the people in my church that they are required to do it either. Most of the members of Penn State UBF are no longer students. While engaging in busy lives of full-time work, taking care of young children, etc. they are also serving our church in many valuable ways. For example, tomorrow (Saturday) morning they will be gathering at our church building to rake leaves, make building repairs, and so on. They tithe. They practice and perform praise music. They teach the Bible to our children and teenagers. They come to our weekly leaders’ meeting on Thursday night. They maintain good relationships with their neighbors and serve the State College community by participating in service projects and organizations. They are truly good people. I want to love and respect all of them just as they are and give thanks to God for what they are already doing. If they are going to do more, I want them to be motivated by love and personal faith, and not by guilt, relationship pressures, or my own ambitions or expectations. Pushing them to engage in vigorous programs of evangelism and discipleship – especially when I myself cannot do it now — would offend them, and rightly so, because at this stage in their lives God may indeed be calling them to serve him in other ways.

But if members of a church do not want to get back into the trenches and “fight the one-to-one battle,” then aren’t we going to become extinct? If we don’t go fishing, then how could our church ever grow?

Perhaps we can adopt some of the strategies of the early church.

Here are just a few ideas. Perhaps we can focus on building our relationships with God, so that we deeply experience his presence and gain new understanding of how to walk in step with the Holy Spirit rather than supplant him. Perhaps we can build better relationships with one another so that we become a Christ-centered community of love, so that fewer people will leave our ministry, and so that when newcomers stop by they will be strongly attracted by the presence of Christ. Perhaps we can take a long, hard look at the sociocultural and spiritual climate within our church that tends to turn away a very large portion (some 99.7 percent?) of the people we contact, and then make intentional, prayerful, and biblically sound changes that will not drive them away.

And as our current members grow in their love for Christ, perhaps they will see new opportunities to bring Christ into their existing non-church relationships and social networks.

According to Rodney Stark, the early Christians did not create their own institutions, but joined and transformed existing ones: “Social networks grow much faster when they spread through preexisting networks” (The Rise of Christianity, p. 55).

A vivid description of how the early Christians lived is found in an ancient letter (Letter to Diognetus) written about the 2^nd century. It says:

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life… With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in… And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through… Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country… They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven.

For the last three decades, UBF in America has remained a distinct subculture. Our idiosyncrasies, our UBFishness, is displayed powerfully to the world in how we look, speak, and act. In our methods of evangelizing and raising disciples, we have been attempting to draw young Americans out of their natural (often Christian) habitats and into our own idiosyncratic subculture. Our second gens know how to navigate that subculture, but most American students do not; it makes them uncomfortable.

Instead of assuming that it’s okay to sift through massive numbers of students to find the 0.3 percent that can remain among us, perhaps it’s time to stop, reflect upon ourselves, and consider how to reach at least some portion of the other 99.7 percent.

Or we can stay the present course. We can joyfully thank God for our 0.3 percent, train them to do exactly as we do, and send them out fishing to find that next 0.3 percent.

But putting on my statistician’s hat, I need to tell you this. If we stay the present course, the prognosis is not good. I fear that the present course is a road to extinction, because 0.3 percent is not enough.

In an excellent little book titled Dare to Be True, Mark D. Roberts makes a convincing case that most people are not very honest in their thoughts, words, or actions. It is extremely difficult to be truthful in today’s world. Most of us routinely give in to the temptation to exaggerate, spin, obscure, or misrepresent. By this dishonesty we injure ourselves, damage our relationships with people around us, and keep a safe distance from God.

Research by psychologist Robert Feldman at the University of Massachusetts has shown that lying is surprisingly frequent. By videotaping ordinary conversations between people and playing them back, study participants were surprised at how often they said things that weren’t true. “We didn’t expect lying to be such a common part of daily life,” Feldman confessed.

If we begin to pay close attention to what we say, we may discover that our interactions with one another are filled with misrepresentation and deception. According to Roberts, of the most common lies that church members say to one another is, “I’ve been praying for you.” We lie to make others feel good. We lie to build ourselves up in their eyes, exaggerating our successes and minimizing our problems. We also hide the truth by what we do not say. When conflict arises, many of us keep quiet and fail to speak what is really on our minds. We become like false prophets who dress people’s wounds as if they are not serious, crying “Peace, peace” when there is no peace (Jer 6:14, 8:11)

People tell lies to cover up their shortcomings and to hide their true thoughts and feelings. When we arrive late to a meeting, we say, “The traffic was really bad today,” when the truth is that the traffic was no worse than usual. We say, “This food is delicious,” when it actually tastes bad. We say, “No problem, it’s okay” when we are actually angry or upset.

Many lies are told for self-protection and self-promotion. We don’t want to hurt other people or make them uncomfortable. We want to save face, maintain honor, avoid exposing weakness in order to “set a good example” or to “have a good influence.” In many cases, we have convinced ourselves that lies are acceptable because they are small and well intentioned. We believe that the ends justify the means.

But what does the Bible say? Our Heavenly Father is true; the Son is the embodiement of Truth; and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth (Jn 3:33, 14:6, 16:13). True worshipers of God are those who worship him in spirit and in truth (Jn 4:23). Jesus Christ, as depicted in the four gospels, was maddeningly honest; he always spoke the truth regardless of the cost. The Apostle Paul sought to always conduct himself with integrity and sincerity (2Co 1:12). Plain reading of Scripture leads us to the inescapable conclusion that what God desires for us is a life of complete honesty. (Roberts does concede that there may be situations of extreme danger where lying is necessary to preserve life. One example of this is found in Joshua chapter 2, where Rahab the prostitute hid Israelite spies on her roof and told the king of Jericho that the two men had left. But those situations are so rare that most Christians will never actually encounter them in their own experience.)

Dishonesty wreaks havoc in our relationships with one another. Once we detect that a person has not been forthcoming, it becomes difficult to believe anything he says. A culture of dishonesty makes us look at others with suspicion, searching for hidden meanings and motivations behind what they say and do, leading us to misunderstand and judge one another based on false impressions and incorrect assumptions.

How many of us have been hurt when we discover that someone has been talking about us to other people, saying things that he would never say to us directly? When he speaks to us, he smiles and acts as though nothing is wrong. Later we hear through the grapevine that he was upset and angry with us. This kind of deception undermines trust and destroys fellowship. When people no longer speak to one another directly and honestly, communication doesn’t cease; it goes underground, proceeding in unhealthy ways through murky back-channels of rumor and gossip.

As dishonesty accumulates in our lives, it becomes harder and harder to know what is true. As we continue to hide our true thoughts, feelings and actions, we tend to become disconnected from ourselves and from reality. This leads to problem minimization, denial, depression, and all kinds of unhealthy and destructive behaviors.

During the late 1990’s, Americans endured the spectacle of a President looking directly into a television camera, pounding his finger on a podium, and brazenly lying about his relationship with a young intern. Later, when the truth could no longer be hidden, the same President spoke to the nation to admit what he had done. One of the most tragic aspects of in this story is that the man appeared more confident and comfortable when he was lying than when he was telling the truth. He lied so effortlessly that it seemed that he actually believed his own falsehoods. It is easy to point a finger at President Clinton and judge him negatively. But what about us? How many of us are willing to be forthcoming and speak frankly about our worst sins and failures?

Telling the truth may cause some hurt. But being honest does not mean that we hurt people unnecessarily, trampling on their feelings by speaking to them without sensitivity and discretion. Truth must always be combined with grace and love. And all the Biblical injunctions against gossip still stand. Gossiping about others, even when the information being spread is true, is abhorrent (Ro 1:29).

As we become aware of how deceitful we really are, the decision to start living in honesty can be awkward, difficult and painful. But the rewards are immense. Dare To Be True is filled with inspiring anecdotes of how honesty, especially about one’s weaknesses and failures, produces abundant good fruit. It opens the door to forgiveness, reconciliation, and friendship. It allows us to experience true gospel love.

The truth will set you free (Jn 8:32).

Some have said that Christians should fight against this trend by upholding and preaching a Biblical message of absolute truth.

Although I don’t disagree with that statement, I think that it is needs some clarification. Unless we understand what has happened in our culture and why, our response to this trend of moral relativism may be ineffective or counterproductive.

People today still value truth. But the manner in which they think about truth has radically changed.

In previous generations, a statement would be regarded as true if it agreed with conditions of external reality. Suppose you tell me, “It is raining.” If I open a window, put my hand outside and feel raindrops, then I would conclude that your statement is true, because your statement corresponds to what my senses tell me is happening in the real world.

That basic understanding of truth – as a correspondence to external reality – has been a hallmark of Western thought since the Scientific Revolution. And it greatly influenced how Christians shared their faith with nonbelievers. Methods of evangelism that were popular in America a generation ago, and which some Christians are still using, focused on helping people to accept key doctrines and teachings of the faith. By appealing to logic and evidence, the Christian would argue that belief in Christ is reasonable. If the nonbeliever did not think that Jesus rose from the dead, then the Christian might respond by presenting evidence for the resurrection as found, for example, in the excellent books written by Josh McDowell or Lee Strobel. If the nonbeliever did not think that Jesus could be the Son of God, the Christian might present some version of the C.S. Lewis “Liar, Lunatic, Lord” trilemma. Francis Schaeffer, one of the great Christian thinkers of the 20^th century, led many young people to faith in Jesus by showing them that their non-Christian beliefs were inconsistent with their own values, feelings and actions.

Evangelism in UBF has followed a different model. In our ministry, the “shepherd” would engage the nonbeliever in spiritual conversation through one-to-one Bible study. Through this personal interaction with the word of God, the nonbeliever would begin to understand the Bible’s grand story of salvation, and he would begin to see his own life in the context of that story. Along the way, he would develop personal faith and be drawn into a relationship with God and with the church.

Although these methods of evangelism are somewhat different, they both rely heavily on the notion of truth as a correspondence to external reality – that the Bible and the tenets of Christianity are true because they explain the way things really are. But with the rise of postmodernism, that notion of truth has been greatly weakened. An overwhelming majority of westerners no longer accept that truth is absolute.

“Everything is relative,” someone will say. But what does he mean? When a postmodernist says this, he is not claiming that ultimate reality does not exist. Rather, he is saying that ultimate reality is unknowable, because human beings are subjective and perceive truth differently. In essence, he is saying, “You see things your way, I see things my way. We are both flawed. Neither of us should claim to possess moral certainty.” This popular statement that “truth is relative” is actually a statement about persons. It is about the limitations and imperfection of human beings and our inability to grasp truth in an objective fashion.

Interestingly, when the Bible speaks about truth, it is also making statements about persons. In the Old Testament, truth is expressed through the Hebrew word ’emet. This word has complex overtones and is sometimes translated into the English language as “faithfulness.” For example, this word appears in a phrase in Deuteronomy 32:4 as a description of Elohim. The King James Version translates this phrase as “a God of truth and without iniquity,” but the New International Version says, “A faithful God who does no wrong.” In the Hebrew understanding, a statement may be judged to be true because it corresponds to an external reality. But a statement may also be true because the one who said it is trustworthy. Accepting that a statement is true is not just agreeing in your mind that the idea is correct. It is also putting your trust in the person who said it, believing that his character is reliable.

This personal aspect of truth is also found in the New Testament. In John 14:6, Jesus claims that he is the embodiment of truth: “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life” (Jn 14:6). And in John 18:37, Jesus says to Pilate: “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” The authors of the New Testament did not view the acceptance of absolute truth in terms of mental agreement with doctrinal propositions, but as a commitment and trusting relationship with the person of Jesus Christ.

In this respect, a postmodern view of truth is quite consistent with what we find in the Bible. Many people today do not see truth as an abstract quality of propositional statements, but as a character trait of the people who make those statements. Today’s battle for truth is not just war over the correctness of ideas, but over the reliability and trustworthiness of persons.

This shift in the notion of truth has enormous implications for evangelism and discipleship.

Suppose that a Bible teacher says to me, “We are not justified by works, but by faith in Christ alone.” How would I come to believe such a statement? That statement is a claim about an invisible spiritual reality that we cannot see. The Bible teacher says that the evidence comes from the Bible, citing passages such as Romans 3:28 and Ephesians 2:8. But I respond, “Who actually wrote the Bible? How do we know that they were telling the truth?” And then I say, “How do we know that your understanding of the Bible is correct?” After all, the Bible can be used to ‘prove’ contradictory things. For example, James 2:24 says: “You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.” Understanding the Bible is not easy. It requires study of Hebrew and Greek and considerable amount of expertise that most persons simply do not have. Ultimately, most of us have to bow to tradition and trust the judgments and wisdom of those who have gone before us.

When evangelizing and discipling in this current cultural climate, it rarely works to tell people to “just believe,” because coming to faith involves wrestling with the trustworthiness of many people: Those who wrote the books of the Bible. Those who collected them and judged them to be canonical. Various persons and organizations who lived out the teachings of Christianity for the last two millennia. Those who are promoting and teaching these ideas today. The postmodern is wondering, “Are these people good? Why should I trust them?”

And perhaps the most fundamental question of all this: “Can I trust you, the person who is telling this to me now? Why should I listen to you?”

It has now become virtually impossible to separate issues of faith from personal trustworthiness. Jesus Christ is alive, and he is absolutely trustworthy. But he has ascended into heaven and has left his mission in the hands of the Holy Spirit who works through the visible Body of Christ (the Church). Those whom we evangelize and disciple do not see Jesus in the flesh. They only see us. Through the culture and their own personal experience, they have learned to be deeply skeptical of all human beings. It will be very difficult for them to believe unless we show ourselves to be exceptionally trustworthy, developing credibility through transparency and complete honesty in our relationships with them and with one another.

As Christians, we may reject the idea that truth is relative and proclaim a worldview that upholds absolute truth. But unless we also become authentic human beings – people who are honest with ourselves and with one another about what we truly think and feel – our witness to this postmodern generation will become less and less effective.

In a shepherd-sheep relationship, who sacrifices more: the shepherd or the sheep?

For clarity, let’s define the terms. A shepherd, in our UBF lingo, is a believer who attempts to evangelize and disciple someone else in the Christian faith. A sheep is the target of his or her efforts, the one who is being actively evangelized and discipled. The main vehicle for this discipleship is one-to-one Bible study, so shepherd and sheep are sometimes called “Bible teacher” and “Bible student,” respectively.

When asked the question “Who sacrifices more?”, many would instinctively respond, “The shepherd.” UBF messages, testimonies and reports are filled with anecdotes of exemplary shepherds who go the extra mile to serve others at great personal cost. And our metaphorical language of shepherds and sheep is rooted in Bible verses that emphasize the sacrificial life and death of Christ: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Because Jesus, our Good Shepherd, gave himself so completely for us, we ought to follow his example and do the same for others.

This common understanding of the shepherd as the one who gives, and the sheep as the one who receives, influences our reactions when someone decides to leave our fellowship. When a person leaves, the one who shepherded him often feels betrayed. “How can he do that to me now, after all I’ve done for him?” Those feelings of hurt run especially deep if the person who is leaving criticizes us as he goes. The pain of rejection and broken relationship, combined with our dashed hopes and expectations, is almost unbearable. Many of you know that feeling. I know it too; I have experienced it multiple times. It may produce antipathy and hardness toward that person. It may lead to bitterness toward God who, despite our best efforts and intentions, did not answer our prayers to transform that sheep into someone who would pay back the love and service he received from us by doing the same for others.

But this conventional wisdom – the idea that the shepherd sacrifices more – deserves to be scrutinized. In many respects, I believe that we have underestimated what it truly costs for someone to become a sheep in a ministry like ours.

The shepherd-sheep relationship is asymmetric. Is there ever any doubt about who is in charge? The shepherd is the person who is considered older, wiser, more mature in his faith, or more committed to the UBF ministry. He is the one who initiates the relationship, proposes the agenda, and leads the Bible study. The sheep is the one who follows his lead. Outside of this discipleship process – in “real life,” as one might say – these same two persons might relate to each other in other ways. Perhaps they are friends or classmates. Perhaps they are husband and wife. Some UBF members have become Bible teachers to their own parents, a very interesting situation with unusual personal dynamics. Nevertheless, once that process of discipleship begins, the one being discipled very quickly figures out that within that context he is the passenger, not the driver, and the spiritual journey will continue only if he continues to yield control to the other person.

Thus, from the very beginning, the sheep has sacrificed something of immense value: He has swallowed his pride and allowed himself to be led and instructed by someone else.

And that’s not all. Here are some other sacrifices made by the sheep.

The sheep allows his worldview, spiritual practices, lifestyle, character and culture to be probed, questioned and challenged by the shepherd. To allow these aspects of his personal identity to be critiqued by someone else – by someone whom he may have just recently met and still barely knows – requires a remarkable combination of courage and humility.

Very early in the relationship, the sheep understands that the shepherd has hopes and expectations for him that he may not share. If the sheep is not yet a professing Christian, he realizes that the shepherd would like to convert him. If the sheep is a believer, he realizes that the shepherd wants him to join the UBF ministry and become a shepherd too. In many cases, those hopes and expectations are not openly discussed, but they are communicated implicitly through the shepherd’s actions and prayers. When the sheep realizes that the shepherd has an agenda for him that he does not yet agree with, he finds himself in a very awkward and uncomfortable position. Yet the sheep endures this discomfort and continues the relationship anyway.

And as the discipleship process continues, the sheep begins to expose to the shepherd his true self: his feelings, problems, inadequacies and sins. He makes himself vulnerable, providing information that could hurt him if the shepherd indiscriminately shares it with other people.

Now consider the sacrifices made by the shepherd. The shepherd spends considerable time, effort and resources to be with the sheep, to pray for him, to show him love and care through Bible study and sharing meals, conversation and recreational activities. These sacrifices are real and important. However, when we compare them to the sacrifices made by the sheep, they are of a completely different nature. These sacrifices made by the shepherd are not intensely personal. They do not place him in a position of weakness, undermine his beliefs and values, or threaten his sense of self. Rather, the sacrifices made by the shepherd tend to reinforce his own faith and values and strengthen his identity as a Christian worker and disciplemaker.

Consider the UBF shepherds and Bible teachers that you know, and ask yourself the following questions.

1. Does the shepherd ever assume the role of the learner? Does he ever allow himself to be instructed by the sheep, to learn something of lasting value from the sheep, to the point where it may visibly change his own life?
2. Does the shepherd ever allow his own beliefs about God, his church, his lifestyle, his character, or his culture to be probed and challenged by the sheep to the extent that it actually becomes uncomfortable and causes him to seriously wonder whether he is correct?
3. Is the shepherd truly upfront and honest about the hopes and expectations that he has for the sheep? Does he make this agenda explicit, or does he keep it completely or partially hidden?
4. Does the shepherd expose his true feelings, current problems, inadequacies or present-day struggles with the sheep? Does the shepherd openly reveal any weakness or doubt? Or does he merely wear a mask of joy, confidence and strength, sharing only good things about himself to be a “good influence” and uphold himself as a good example for the disciple to follow?
5. Does the shepherd ever allow the sheep to serve him, to do something of value for him that he cannot do for himself? Does the shepherd give the sheep any opportunities to occupy the moral high ground by becoming the giver, allowing him to experience the joy of serving in real, non-symbolic or non-token ways?
6. Does the shepherd ever entrust the sheep with confidential information about himself, information which makes him vulnerable and would hurt him if it became the subject of gossip?

If the answers to these questions are “Rarely,” “No,” or “Never!”, then how can we honestly claim that the shepherd sacrifices more?

• Sooner or later, fellow Christians are going to hurt one another. Often it is unintentional, but sometimes it is intentional.
• Jesus gives us very clear instructions on what to do when a brother or sister in Christ — someone who is truly close to us — sins against us.
• Christians routinely disobey Jesus’ instructions. In fact, these commands that Jesus gave are among the most frequently ignored commands in all of Scripture.

The primary text to which he refers is Matthew 18:15-17:

“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

Dr. Roberts, a genuine New Testament scholar, carefully unpacks the meaning of this passage in its broader context. He explains the importance of discerning when someone has actually sinned against you. Then he discusses the necessity of (a) recognizing that you have been legitimately hurt and (b) carefully following Jesus’ instructions to confront this hurt and repair the personal relationship. He concludes today’s installment with the following observation:

If you’re a person who tends to overreact and accuse others of wrongdoing, you may want to be sure you’re not misusing Matthew 18 by confronting those who haven’t done anything wrong to you. On the contrary, if you’re someone who tends to avoid conflict at all costs – someone like, me, for instance – watch out for your own denial and rationalization. The health of the church, not to mention your own ultimate well being, may very well require that you do the risky thing and talk directly to the one who has hurt you.

Thinking about myself and the Christian brothers and sisters in my life, I do believe that some of us are prone to overreact and accuse others needlessly. But many more of us seem to fall into that second trap of denying or avoiding conflict, thinking that by doing so we are being “mature,” “spiritual” or “godly.”

Here are some more of my own thoughts on the matter.

1. The hardest part of obeying Jesus’ command is taking that first step of privately approaching that person who hurt us. All too often, we try to replace that painful step with something else. Common substitutes are:

• Suppressing our hurt feelings. In our desire to make the conflict go away, we intellectualize/spiritualize the problem, and in doing so we try to make ourselves believe that we are doing right. We tell ourselves that we are ‘repenting” of our hurt feelings, “forgiving” the other person, or ‘turning the other cheek.” But in reality, we are stuffing our emotions into a box, hoping that they will eventually go away.
• Talking to other people about the person. Approaching a spouse or trusted confidante for advice may be necessary to gain clarity on whether or not we have truly been sinned against. But all too often, when we talk to other people, we are not actually seeking their advice. Rather, we are venting our own anger and frustration about the person who hurt us, gossiping about them, criticizing them, and seeking to undermine their reputation. Talking to others may be a useful prelude to speaking to the person who hurt us, but it should never be a substitute.
• Blaming the church/organization. When someone hurts us, it is easy to say, “UBF should do something about this.” Yes, there is a time and place for us to honestly examine our churchwide practices and culture. But systematic problems in a church (and every church has them) do not absolve Christians of their duty to first address their conflicts with other Christians at the individual level.

2. Ignoring the conflict may be the worst strategy of all. Setting aside our interpersonal problems may, in the short term, appear to preserve unity and peace. But that peace is a false peace. Over the long term, unresolved conflicts will undermine and destroy a Christian fellowship and make individuals very unhealthy.

3. Following Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 18:15-17 is especially difficult when the person who hurt us is a church leader or pastor. Depending on the leader’s level of emotional maturity, he may become defensive, using his position of authority to avoid and suppress the problem. In his desire to save face, he may rationalize what he is doing by saying that the problem should be sidestepped for the sake of the organization and its mission. When that happens, Jesus commands us to get other witnesses and church leaders involved. That process, I suppose, could proceed in various ways, depending on the organizational culture, but it should involve a genuine, impartial inquiry that takes the matter seriously and does not simply try to put a band-aid on it. If that process fails, then to literally follow Jesus’ instructions and “treat him as you would a pagan or tax collector” will be extremely difficult, to say the least. However, I do not see anything in Matthew chapter 18 that would exempt a church leader or pastor or give him any special treatment to help him save face when conflicts arise. The work of a pastor, by its very nature, virtually guarantees that sooner or later he will hurt people unintentionally or intentionally. It seems to me that, if you accept God’s calling to be a pastor, you must be emotionally prepared to be on the receiving end of Jesus’ commands in Matthew 18:15-17, so that when it happens you can handle it without an angry or defensive reflex and be prepared to lose face when you have done wrong.

Those are my thoughts. Now I would like to hear yours.

What do you think about Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 18:15-17? Is this the strategy that you would use to handle interpersonal conflict?

This is the third article in a three-part series. These articles were meant to be read in their proper sequence. Please do not look at this article this until you have read parts 1 and 2. No peeking!

Now I’m going to get very personal. Not because I’m eager to talk about myself. On the contrary, what I’m going to say is uncomfortable, and it would be far easier to keep quiet. But I will go ahead and tell this story, because it may be helpful for some of you to hear it. (By revealing these things, I am making myself vulnerable. There is plenty of ammunition here for anyone who wants to gossip about my family. Honestly, when I hear some of the rumors that have been circulating about us, it is remarkable how wrong they are. Instead of listening to rumors, you can now hear it directly from me.)

In the first article of this series, I mentioned that for several years I had been languishing in a state of spiritual malaise. When I had seen other UBF members experiencing similar things, it was usually said that they were “becoming difficult.” It was diagnosed as a personal problem, a failure to live up to the ideals and disciplines that they had been taught, and it was supposed to be curable by personal repentance, prayer and Bible study. Sometimes the blame was placed on a spouse: “He’s acting that way because his wife didn’t do such-and-such.” Knowing full well the kind of things that people could say about me, and not wanting to subject my wife to this kind of gossip, I was reluctant to talk about what I was experiencing.

And, truthfully, I did not know what I was experiencing. For a long time I had been denying and suppressing my emotions to the point where I could no longer identify what I was feeling or why. Gradually, I succumbed to emotional deadness which could easily have been diagnosed as clinical depression. In public I tried to maintain a cheerful appearance, but in private I became irritable, moody, hypersensitive and despondent. Trying to carry out my duties as a teacher, researcher, chapter director, husband, and father, and trying to live up to the overwhelming expectations placed on me in each of these areas, I felt as though the whole world had turned against me. The slightest criticism from my wife would set me into a downward spiral to the point where I no longer wanted to live, and several times I literally prayed that God would take my life.

Despite all this, I refused to acknowledge what had become painfully obvious to Sharon and to others around me: Something had gone terribly wrong in my life. I was a very broken person.

My turnaround, which is still in progress, began during the spring of 2009. God began to work in my life in new, unexpected ways to help me break through this particular instance of The Wall. My breakthrough started in the following manner.

First, I began to read Christian books. Although my wife has always been an avid reader, I had essentially stopped reading. If you know me, you understand that I am introverted (nerdy?) and intellectual. My vocation as a scientist is to observe, think, understand, and synthesize. But in the hectic business of life, I stopped thinking about God. I continued to study the Bible and prepare Sunday messages as part of my ministerial duties, but this interaction with scripture had become mechanical and formulaic. I no longer spent any significant time contemplating and reexamining the fundamental issues of life and faith. My life had become an endless whirlwind of activity with no pauses to reflect, and the intellectual components of my faith had been withering away.

However, after I became a regular reader of the daily blog of John Armstrong, my intellectual curiosity was gradually rekindled. During Spring Break of 2009, Sharon and I got into a car, drove to a Christian bookstore in York, Pennsylvania, and returned to State College with several armfuls of books. For the rest of the week, I sat motionless on our living room couch, soaking in new perspectives on things that I had never really considered before. Worship. Trinity. Ancient Church traditions. Relational apologetics. The person and work of the Holy Spirit. Experiencing the presence of God. None of the books made a deep, instant impression on me. There was never a moment when I shouted, “Eureka! That’s exactly what I have been missing.” On the contrary, I tried to keep an open mind, approaching every book with a mixture of hope and skepticism. I was not so naive as to think that any of these authors, who came from diverse Christian backgrounds and denominations, had all the answers. But neither did UBF have all the answers. The collective wisdom and disciplines that I had learned from nearly three decades in this ministry were insufficient to sustain my long-term spiritual growth, and I desperately needed fresh input from other parts of the Body of Christ. The insights I gained from reading these books greatly refreshed my own personal Bible study. My Sunday messages began to improve, and the members of Penn State UBF could see it.

Second, I began to acknowledge that a great deal of emotional pain and stress had been accumulating in my life. This stress came from three sources. (a) The pressure of being a faculty member at a high-powered university where tenure and promotion literally requires you to be an international leader in your field of research. (b) The difficulties in caring for our eldest son, who is autistic and borderline mentally retarded, along with three other children whose needs were often neglected because of him and because of our ministry. (c) The internal and external expectations placed on me as a UBF senior staff member and lay chapter director. Now this may well get me into trouble, because UBFers have always been reluctant to speak publicly about problems in our ministry. But it is undeniable that we place very high expectations on ourselves and one another, “encouraging” one another in ways that can be crushing. Rather than try to write about this now, I will quote from report that I wrote and distributed to North American UBF leaders last year:

UBF chapter directors tend to be disciplined, hard working, high achieving people. And we hold up as our ideal the person who is successful at everything, the person who can “do it all.” Let’s face it: the ideal UBF leader is a man of steel. He gets up by 5 am and always attends early morning prayer, never missing a single day of Daily Bread. He has a Ph.D. from a top university and is highly successful in his career. He has mastered numerous books of the Bible and has dozens of binders of Bible study notes arranged perfectly on his shelf. He exercises and plays tennis every day. He is not “family centered,” yet he pays close attention to his family. He never argues with his wife and always praises her as “the most beautiful woman in the world.” His children are well behaved, get excellent grades in school and play musical instruments. He himself takes lessons to play a musical instrument. He stays well informed about current events and reads many books each year. He keeps close watch over each of his chapter members, knows about their problems and struggles and helps them with personal spiritual counsel and 1:1 Bible study. He maintains close ties with UBF chapters in his region. He sends regular reports to UBF headquarters along with generous tithes and offerings. Although he takes good care of his chapter, he knows what is going on in UBF chapters all around the world. And he does all of these things with gladness in his heart because, apart from all his outward activities, he prays intensely and maintains a close personal relationship with God.

Yes, that is the UBF ideal. But an actual UBF chapter director is made of flesh. Because he cannot live up to these implicit expectations, he feels like a chronic failure. He is reluctant to attend national staff conferences because his chapter has not grown over the last ten years and he feels ashamed. He doesn’t want to hear any more reports, panel discussions or presentations by “exemplary shepherds” whose ministries are growing, because he does not share their talents and feels that he will never be able to do what they do. He does not want to hear prayer topics like “every chapter director should maintain five 1:1 Bible studies each week and master one book of the Bible” because he feels it is hard enough just to finish his Sunday message on time. Expanding his chapter does not seem realistic; his only goal is to survive.

When I wrote this, I was using comic exaggeration. You may disagree with what I wrote, and that’s fine; I don’t claim that this has been the experience of everyone. But in my case, the expectations that others placed upon me, and which I also placed upon myself, were very strongly felt, and my failure to live up to them has been a major source of tension in my inner life. Honestly, I have no regrets or bitterness toward God or anyone else about the way that I have been living. I feel truly blessed to be where I am. But honesty also requires me to admit that this was my experience. Without becoming honest about this, it would be impossible for me to move forward.

I publicly shared some of this pain and stress in February 2010 when I delivered a message on Acts chapter 2 at the North American staff conference. While preparing that message, I vowed to myself and to God that I would put aside all pretense and strive to be utterly honest. Some who attended that conference liked my message, and others did not. Ironically, it was about that time that people began asking, “What’s wrong with Joe Schafer?” When I was truly at my lowest point, languishing in spiritual depression, no one in our ministry (except my wife) saw it. But when God began to lift me out of that dreadful state, as I was becoming more honest about myself, wrestling with God and experiencing his work and presence in my life in new and exciting ways, it was then that rumors began to circulate that I had a “spiritual problem” and that I was “becoming difficult.” (Now I do not want to hold anything against anyone. But I would like to point out that our ability to diagnose one another’s spiritual problems is very limited. Please understand that things are not always as they seem. When someone appears to start “becoming difficult,” they could actually be getting better.)

Third, my wife became honest with me about the mistakes and trauma of her past. Before we were married, Sharon had hinted to me about some of the things she had done in high school and college. But she hadn’t told me the full story. In fact, her shepherds had explicitly advised her not to, saying that if she did it could “ruin” our marriage. I believe that the advice was well intentioned, and perhaps it was even appropriate at the time. But keeping those things bottled up for many years prevented her from addressing the pain and guilt that were a very real part of her inner life. And it was driving a wedge between us, keeping us from knowing and accepting one another at the most intimate levels as a husband and wife should. Subconsciously I knew that she had not been open and transparent with me, and I was not open and transparent with her.

So Sharon finally told me the truth: While she was in college, she had immoral relationships with men, and the consequences were devastating.

(Now if anyone who reads this has the urge to start gossiping about my wife, I have just one thing to say: Shame on you. Gossip — even if it is true — is hurtful and terribly wrong. If you have the perverse desire to start wagging your tongue about this, then at least do the right thing. Instead of telling others what I just said, urge them to come to this website and read my articles, all three of them, so they can hear it from me, not from you. )

Now for the surpising part. After Sharon opened up and told me the painful details, it did not damage our relationship at all. Quite the opposite. Suddenly I began to understand her, know her, and empathize with her in ways that I never had before. In fact, something amazing took place inside of me. An emotional floodgate was opened, and I began to feel an overpowering affection for her at every level: physically, emotionally, and intellectually. Again, don’t get me wrong. I have always been attracted to Sharon. Ever since we met, I have liked her and felt so fortunate to have married her. But because of my own emotional immaturity, I could not properly feel, process or express the love that a husband should have for his wife. For example, I could never look directly in her eyes and say “I love you” without a great deal of self-consciousness or embarassment. But things are truly different now. After twenty years of marriage and four children — and actually for the very first time in my life — I can honestly say that I have fallen in love. Not a superficial hormone-driven crush, but full-blown, electrically charged, head-over-heels love. And not with some fictitious woman of my imagination, but with an actual flesh-and-blood person who stands before me, whose merits and flaws I already know.

Do you have any idea how wonderful it is to suddenly fall in love with the one woman who happens to be your wife?

For the first time, I think I am beginning to understand something of what God intends a marriage to be. I think I am beginning to taste something of the affinity that God has for the people he created in his image, the love that Christ has for his church. This understanding is not doctrinal but experiential. Because of this precious gift that God has given me — the gift of an amazing woman — I know that God loves me, and I want to thank and praise him from the depths of my heart.

Don’t think that people haven’t noticed. Earlier this month, when we visited Sharon’s parents, her father took me aside and told me that something very different, and very good, was happening in our family. When Sharon’s mother saw the two of us sitting together at the dinner table, noticing how affectionate we had become, her eyes lit up and her face started beaming.

Something significant is happening in my life. I am starting to become a normal, healthy person who is capable of feeling and expressing love.

This story is just beginning. While God has been bringing me through this crisis, I am not so naive as to think that there will be no more crises ahead. We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22). But one thing I have learned is this. There is much more to spiritual maturity than self-denial, discipline, effort, and perseverance. There is life on the other side of The Wall. There is real joy. There is unmerited grace. And there is true love.

Certainly Jesus did not enjoy facing the physical pain of crucifixion, nor the emotional and spiritual agony of bearing our sins and being cut off from the love of his Father. But the overall picture of Jesus found in the New Testament, and our understanding of the Godhead in the doctrine of the Trinity, is that Jesus and his Father are distinct persons united in a perfect love. The obedience of Jesus to his Father was never forced, but flowed from his perfect affinity for the Father carried in his heart, soul, mind and body. When Jesus served his Father, he was doing what he truly wanted. When Jesus served other people, he was doing what he truly wanted. And when Jesus was deeply conflicted, as human beings often are, he did not hide his feelings by putting on a stoic face; he exposed his anguish to those around him in a very transparent way.

If this understanding of Jesus is correct, then spiritual maturity will be measured by how transparent we are, and by much we actually want to serve God and other people. The good works of a mature, healthy Christian should spring forth from genuine love that is not unnaturally forced; they should be acts of self-fulfillment, not merely self-denial. Spiritual immaturity, on the other hand, will be characterized by emotional disconnectedness: a tendency to hide one’s feelings and a consistent, long-term discrepancy between what we want to do and what we are actually doing.

It is possible for us to deny what we feel for short periods of time. But sooner or later, even the most highly disciplined and strongest among us will succumb to feelings. Torn between what we have believed to be true and acted upon, versus what our emotions are actually saying, we eventually hit The Wall.

The Wall is not simply a time of difficulty. The Wall is a true crisis of faith. Becoming aware that we are at The Wall requires an honest admission that our belief systems have been consistently and severely challenged by our experiences.

Dr. Francis Schaeffer, the great Christian philosopher of the 20th century, hit The Wall shortly after he moved to Switzerland. Until that time, he had spent a great deal of energy fighting to uphold conservative theology within his denomination. He had been utterly convinced of the rightness of his doctrinal positions. But while he was contending for the faith, he could not help but notice that many church leaders who were fighting to uphold correct teachings and moral values were acting in ways that were harsh and ugly. Men who claimed to be fighting for Christian truth seemed utterly devoid of Christian love. By 1951, Schaeffer’s intellectual honesty forced him to return to agnosticism and re-examine the foundations of his faith. He went back to the Bible to investigate whether the gospel that he had embraced many years earlier was in fact true. What he found was startling. He discovered once again that God’s word was true and developed a new confidence in Scripture. And he experienced a genuine personal rebirth. Prayer became much more real to him. An inexplicable flood of joy, thanks and praise overflowed from his heart, which he expressed in poetry and song. This experience of passing through The Wall, and what he learned from it, inspired a Christian lecture series that brought numerous young people to Christ during the turbulent 1950’s and 1960’s, and these lectures were eventually published in 1971 in his classic book True Spirituality.

The Wall is also described in the recent book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero. He describes his own painful experience as an apparently successful pastor whose ministry and life began to crumble because of his inability to recognize his emotional immaturity. Scazzero explains that we cannot break through The Wall by self-effort. Only God can bring us through The Wall, and he will do so in his own way and time if we allow it. That process will require us to become very honest about our feelings, experiences, and current situation. It may bring up painful events that happened in the past in our lives and families, mistakes and sins that have never been acknowledged, wounds that have never healed, and so on. As these painful things are brought to light, we will have to lay them before God and allow the grace of Jesus to cover and heal them.

If you are going through The Wall, it may appear to people around you that you have become spiritually weak or unfaithful. You may be misunderstood or criticized by well-meaning Christians (think of Job’s friends). People may whisper about you and say that you are “becoming difficult.” But in this stage of apparent weakness, you are actually getting stronger. God is working to bring you to a better understanding of who you are, so that you can understand him better and experience a more authentic personal relationship with him.

(Read parts 1 and 3 of this three-part series.)

Or is it? My own personal experience contradicts this pattern. After many years of living in that servant phase, I stopped growing and began to regress. Serving ceased to be a joy and became a burden. I had little desire to worship God and was not intrinsically interested in people. Outside the boundaries of formal ministry activity, I had almost no personal interaction with God. In my heart there was little love, only a deadness that I did not want to reveal. The answer to spiritual malaise, as far as I knew, was to repent, pray more and study the Bible more – to do exactly what I had been discipled to do, but more often and with greater intensity. That answer – which was based on the assumption that any spiritual problem that I had was purely my own fault – was unbearable. And revealing my personal weakness was not acceptable behavior for a “spiritual leader.” So I refused to be honest about what was going on inside of me. As long as I continued to do what was expected of me without making waves, everyone assumed that I was fine. No one in the church ever asked the kind of penetrating personal questions that would have revealed my true state. The only one who did so was my wife, and when she did so I became defensive and brushed her concerns aside. I assured her that I was okay. But I was not. I had hit a wall in my spiritual life, and she knew it.

My story is not unusual. In the book The Critical Journey, Stages in the Life of Faith, authors Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich report that many Christians throughout history have hit this wall. The experience seems especially common among pastors and church leaders. Realization that we are at The Wall is often accompanied by illness, family crisis, spiritual dryness, burnout, and loss of joy. If the Christian is honest, he admits that his faith doesn’t appear to “work” anymore. Pat answers that used to sound spiritual now seem inadequate. He may become so disillusioned with himself, his spouse, God, and the church that the very foundations of life appear to be crumbling. If he is not honest, he may continue to soldier on, serving in an almost mechanical way.

Fortunately, there is life on the other side of The Wall. But in order to get there, we need to start paying attention to our own inner condition and emotions. We need to understand what we are feeling and why. For many of us, this journey inward will be uncomfortable, because it will bring us to some painful realizations about who we are. If we examine our emotions – especially how we react under stress — we are likely to find that we are self-centered, fearful, easily upset, defensive, jealous of others, closed-minded, unwilling to listen or learn from all but a few select people or sources, driven by the need to save face and bolster our own self-image, and so on. We will discover that we are emotionally immature. And it is a plain fact that no one can become spiritually mature if he remains emotionally immature.

I suspect that some of you will object to what I have just said. You might respond, “How we feel is not important. We must not pay attention to or be driven by our feelings. We live by faith in the word of God, not by what we feel.” Until recently, I would have said the same thing. I would have said that the mark of spiritual maturity is to deny yourself and obey God regardless of how you feel. Indeed, this is a common theme in modern evangelism and discipleship. For example, one Christian website says this:

Do not depend upon feelings. Tied as they are to your ever-changing circumstances, feelings are unreliable in evaluating your relationship with God. The unchanging promises of God’s Word, not your feelings, are your authority. The Christian is to live by faith, trusting in the trustworthiness of God Himself and His Word. A train is a good illustration of the relationship between fact, faith and feeling:

Feelings are like the caboose – they are important but are designed to follow a life of faith and obedience… But you should never depend on feelings or seek after an emotional experience. The very act of looking for an emotional experience is a denial of the concept of faith, and whatever is not of faith is sin.

This de-emphasizing of emotion and experience in favor of objective fact and propositional truth is a hallmark of modernistic evangelical Christianity. (The term modernistic refers to patterns of western thought that were heavily influenced by the period of Enlightment and Scientific Revolution that began in the late 18^th century.) And it is easy to find Bible verses that support this idea. For example, Jesus said in Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

We all need to put aside our feelings from time to time. But to consistently ignore our emotions over the long term is neither sensible nor healthy nor biblically supportable. Human beings are persons, and persons have emotions. When we examine the whole Bible, we cannot deny that emotions play a major role in the spiritual life. Turn to any page in the book of Psalms, for example, and you will find a wide range of human emotions expressed directly and honestly.

Moreover, it is impossible to truly obey the two greatest commandments – to love God and to love other people – apart from feeling. Of course, love is not merely an emotion. Love involves commitment and self-sacrifice. But if love has no emotional component, is it truly love? Love without feeling is unnatural, forced, stunted and unhealthy. Jesus said in Mark 12:30, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart…” And the Apostle Peter wrote, “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart” (1Pe 1:22).

Can you imagine Jesus obeying and serving his Father without feeling any love toward him? Can you imagine Jesus taking care of people without ever liking them, without affection or compassion? No, I cannot. Whatever Jesus did for his Father and for the people around him was never insincere or forced. All of his actions sprung naturally from a heart overflowing with love.

Early in our Christian lives, many of us have learned to put aside our feelings, thinking that if we simply believe and do as we should, then right emotions will follow automatically. But what if they don’t? What if, after many years of following Christ and living by faith, we remain unchanged on the inside? What if, instead of experiencing the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, etc.) we are filled with worry, anxiety, anger, jealousy, despair? Or what if we are just dead inside, not feeling much of anything? After many years of denying my emotions, I became dead inside and no longer knew what I felt. I denied myself and went on, trying to persist on that “soldier spirit.” But the ideal Christian is not merely a soldier. A soldier is trained to obey without question and kill without remorse. He is a robot, a machine, not a whole person.

Someone whose will, decisions, actions are consistently inconsistent with his feelings is disconnected and broken. One who has little or no emotional component to his spiritual life – who is driven primarily by obligation, duty, loyalty to doctrines, principles and organizations rather than by real affinity toward God and the human beings who bear his image – is not a mature Christian. He is a conflicted, unhealthy person who desperately needs to be healed.

That is who I was. That is who I still largely am. But over the last two years, God has been working in my life to heal me in ways that I did not expect. He has been slowly bringing me through The Wall.

(Read parts 2 and 3 of this three-part series.)

In a nutshell, the difference is this: Individualists believe that a group exists for the benefit of individuals, whereas collectivists believe that individuals exist for the benefit of the group.

Notice that “group” appears in both of these statements. Individualists come together to form groups, just as collectivists do. But the interpersonal dynamics within a group of individualists is very different from what goes on within a group of collectivists. Individualists value free expression. Decisions are likely to be made by consensus or democratic vote, and dissenting opinions are not seen as threatening. In a group of collectivists, on the other hand, decisions are more likely to be made by a single leader or small group of leaders. Agreeing with leaders’ decisions for the sake of unity is seen as a virtue. Putting aside personal interests for the benefit of the group is praised. The bottom line is that individualists and collectivists have radically different notions about how a group should operate. And they have radically different notions about what constitutes good leadership and decision-making.

It is natural for the members of one culture to observe the practices of another and think, “Our way is better.” An individualist may look down on a group of collectivists, seeing their leaders as authoritarian and the followers as lemmings or mind-numbed robots. A collectivist may think that individualists are self-absorbed, undisciplined, arrogant, or rebellious. In our ignorance and pride, we tend to see cultural differences in terms if good versus bad, right versus wrong. But I think we need to resist this tendency, because no culture has a monopoly on Christian virtue. Neither individualism nor collectivism is inherently better. Both exist in the Bible and in the kingdom of God. A good example of collectivism appears in Deuteronomy chapter 3, where the Lord commanded the able-bodied men of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh to cross the Jordan River and fight alongside the other tribes of Israel, even though God had already given them their land. A teaching that upholds the value of the individual appears in Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep in Luke chapter 15, where the shepherd leaves ninety-nine animals in the open field to chase after one who wandered away.

One of the most individualistic cultures on earth is found in the United States. The seeds of America’s individualism are evident in the writings of our founding fathers, which emphasize the sacred nature of personal liberty. And one of the most collectivist cultures in the world is found in South Korea. That is not surprising, given the country’s demographic composition (monocultural) and its religious, political and military history. In our UBF ministry in the United States, God has brought together these polar opposites to build a new community to advance his kingdom. The same could be said of UBF in Canada, the UK, Western Europe, and Australia.

Differences between people with collectivistic and individualistic mindsets have led to misunderstandings and conflicts within UBF, and also between our ministry and other parts of the Body of Christ. In the early 1980’s, when I first started to attend UBF fellowship and leaders’ meetings, I was struck by the apparently high level of conformity. As people shared their testimonies on Friday night, they sounded eerily similar. They repeated many of the same points and even used the same words and expressions that appeared in the published manuscript of the Sunday message. The Korean missionaries seemed to have a high degree of tolerance, even a fondness, for uniformity. As an American, I was perturbed by this, thinking it was unholy and dangerous. When I began to write and share my own testimonies, I deliberately tried to make mine sound different from the rest, just for the sake of being different. I was determined to always assert my individuality. For the record, no one ever pressured me to write my testimony in any particular way. UBF members really did accept me as I was. But I’m sure that some Koreans saw my American tendencies toward individualism as a weakness, just as I saw their tendencies toward collectivism as a weakness.

Isn’t it funny how God called people from such diametrically opposed cultures and united them for the sake of the gospel? In high school chemistry class, my friends used to wonder what would happen if we mixed francium with fluorine to create “francium fluoride.” Those two elements lie at opposite corners of the periodic table, and the exothermic reaction that would result if they were brought together would be explosive. UBF seems to be one of God’s most explosive experiments. What an overwhelming challenge it has been for Korean missionaries to understand and disciple individualistic Americans. And what a challenge it has been for Americans to accept and respect collectivistic Koreans. There have been so many mistakes and misunderstandings on all sides. The clash between the collectivist Korean and individualistic American cultures has surely been an obstacle to ministry growth. Many Americans who came in those early years, and even some who came more recently, found the cultural differences so uncomfortable that they could not remain in the ministry. But for myself and others, the discomfort and disorientation that I experienced was actually helpful; it opened my spiritual eyes to see beyond my American-ness and accept the universal message of the gospel.

In retrospect, many of the cultural conflicts within UBF over the years might have been avoided. But we cannot remake the past. As President George W. Bush once said, “Hindsight is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy.” We need to move forward. But we also need to learn from the past if we are to grow, both as individuals and as an organization. I believe that learning about and discussing these cultural differences in a non-judgmental way is going to be crucial to the future of UBF as our ministry becomes more international and multicultural. Management styles and practices that worked in Korea will not necessarily be effective in other contexts. American styles and practices may also not generalize well to non-Western settings.

Here is North America, the next generation of UBF leaders will be American. They must help us to do a better job of discipling Americans. But they should not simply try to Americanize the ministry, because as the gospel embraces every culture, it also challenges every culture. As Jesus Christ welcomes people of every nation, he continually challenges all of us to stretch ourselves beyond what is comfortable.

Now I don’t want to be a party pooper. But in case you haven’t noticed, I believe that how we talk about ourselves is significant and worthy of examination. People really do notice our terminology and wonder what it means. So I would like to raise a question. Is it okay to equate a house church with a family?

There are certainly some positive aspects to this. It promotes the idea that mission is a crucial element of marriage, which is one of the core aspects of our marriage theology. It helps us to see the home as a place where Jesus Christ is honored and where his gospel is preached. When Jesus lies at center of a family, the distinction between what happens at church and what happens at home – the barriers between a family’s religious life and private life which promote hypocrisy – begin to dissolve.

On the other hand, there are three difficulties that I see with this language.

First, it waters down the historical and theological meaning of church. What exactly is a church? That is a tough question. Different traditions will answer it differently. One reasonable definition appears in the Belgic Confession, one of the core documents of Protestantism from the 16^th century. The Belgic Confession asserts that a true Christian church will possess three marks: faithful preaching of the Word, faithful ministration of the Sacraments, and discipline. (The Sacraments include baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and discipline refers to formal lines of authority to uphold true doctrine and to correct false teachings and practices.) These three marks represent the bare minimum of what a Christian community ought to provide to support the spiritual health of its members.

By this definition, the vast majority of UBF families do not qualify as churches. Many of us do bring our ministry into our homes. Welcoming disciples into your family life is great. Having Bible studies in your home is wonderful. Family devotions and prayer in the home are awesome. But Bible studies and family devotions does not make your house into a church. A church, in the standard historical understanding, is an established fellowship of believers, a faith community that can serve as a lifelong spiritual home for the people who belong to it. It may be possible for one family to fulfill the necessary functions for a church, but it is certainly not easy, and it is certainly not normative.

The second difficulty that I see with this language is that it places on young families an expectation which may be unstated but is nonetheless very strongly felt. The expectation is that if a family for whatever reason moves to a city or town where no UBF ministry currently exists, the family is expected to establish its own UBF chapter and operate independently of other non-UBF churches in the community. At a bare minimum, the family is supposed to evangelize and disciple students and hold its own Sunday worship service. The husband is expected to write and deliver an expositional Bible message every week, and the wife is expected to participate by inviting students and helping to create the environment for this fledgling ministry. And this is supposed to take place while one or both are supporting themselves financially by working full time, often in highly demanding professional careers, and while taking care of children.

In broader Christian circles, an operation like this is called a church plant. Church planting is a highly regarded strategy for carrying out the Great Commission. But everyone knows that it is not easy. The majority (by some estimates, 80-85%) of church plants ultimately fail. Organizations that have been most successful at planting churches do not do so haphazardly. Rarely do they allow single families to try it; usually a core group of 3-6 families is involved. Successful church planters are subject to rigorous examinations and training, not just in Scriptures but in theology and practical aspects of pastoring. And most church-planters receive financial support from their parent organization. In contrast, many single-family UBF chapters in North America have been established by happenstance; chapter directors are rarely ordained, and training they receive has not been standardized.

I am not suggesting here that our method of church-planting is inferior. But it is certainly unusual, at least by comparison to what others are doing. My point is that establishing a single-family church is extraordinarily difficult. I have the greatest respect for those who are doing it, and I deeply understand from personal experience that this is not something that should be attempted by a husband and wife without extensive spiritual preparedness. It is an extraordinary calling not suitable for every couple.

The third difficulty I have with the family-equals-house-church lingo is that it may unnecessarily and unwisely diminish the non-ministerial aspects of family life. Every married couple needs time apart from church duties to be husband and wife. They need to stay emotionally healthy and maintain good relationships with one another and with their children regardless of what is happening in the ministry. An active focus on evangelism and discipleship is not a cure for marital and family problems but often compounds them.

Beautiful things happen when family life and church life intersect. But family and church are not the same; the Bible doesn’t use the terms interchangeably, and neither should we.

But that’s my opinion. What do you think? Is it a good idea to routinely refer to married couples as house churches? Or should we be careful to differentiate the two? Does it even matter, or is it a non-issue?

I have posed this question to several longtime members of UBF, and without exception, they immediately answered, “No.” Many committed evangelical Christians in other churches will instinctively react in the same way. We have always regarded Bible study as a good thing, and more of a good thing is always better. Or is it?

Before asking for your reaction, I will provide some background and explain why, in certain respects, I think the answer could be: Yes, it is possible for Christians to emphasize the Bible — or a particular approach to the Bible — too much.

During the Protestant Reformation of the 16^th century, Martin Luther and other Reformers taught that final authority in all matters of faith should rest in Scripture. In modern times, this principle of sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”) is still proclaimed, but it is also widely misunderstood. Luther’s concept of sola scriptura led him to reject the authority of church leaders in his day. But it was not a blanket rejection of all tradition and authority outside of the Bible. For example, he did not reject the authority of the early church fathers and the ancient councils and creeds.

In reality, none of us can approach the Scripture as a blank slate and build our faith upon our own personal reading of the text with no external influences. John Wesley, who stood solidly in the Protestant tradition, taught that Christians actually build their faith on Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. These four authorities – which theologians now call the Wesleyan quadrilateral – do not have equal weight. Among the four, Scripture should have a position of preeminence. But trying to rest your faith solely on the Bible is like trying to sit on a chair with one leg. (You can sit on a chair with one leg, at least for a while. But the only way you can do it is by exerting a great deal of your own effort, keeping both feet firmly planted on the floor and using your legs as a substitute for the missing chair legs.)

Here are two specific ways in which I think it is possible to emphasize the Bible too much.

First, we can emphasize the Bible too much in the way that we talk about ourselves. Although many of us claim to be following the Bible alone, we read the Bible through lenses colored by our own culture, history and tradition. Everyone does that; it is inevitable. And I think we should openly admit it. N.T. Wright, a renowned New Testament scholar, says it very well:

Most heirs of the Reformation, not least evangelicals, take it for granted that we are to give scripture the primary place and that everything else has to be lined up in relation to scripture. There is, indeed, an evangelical assumption, common in some circles, that evangelicals do not have any tradition. We simply open the scripture, read what it says, and take it as applying to ourselves: there the matter ends, and we do not have any ‘tradition’… But I still find two things to be the case, both of which give me some cause for concern. First, there is an implied, and quite unwarranted, positivism: we imagine that we are ‘reading the text, straight’, and that if somebody disagrees with us it must be because they, unlike we ourselves, are secretly using ‘presuppositions’ of this or that sort. This is simply naïve, and actually astonishingly arrogant and dangerous. It fuels the second point, which is that evangelicals often use the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ when they mean the authority of evangelical, or Protestant, theology, since the assumption is made that we (evangelicals, or Protestants) are the ones who know and believe what the Bible is saying. And, though there is more than a grain of truth in such claims, they are by no means the whole truth, and to imagine that they are is to move from theology to ideology. If we are not careful, the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ can, by such routes, come to mean simply ‘the authority of evangelical tradition, as opposed to Catholic or rationalist ones.’

(from Wright, 1989, How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?)

Second, I think we can emphasize the Bible too much in how we use our time together. The first UBF conference that I attended was the 1982 Niagara Falls Summer Bible Conference held at at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. Since then I have attended numerous (maybe 100?) conferences of various types and sizes. The main activities at these conferences were group Bible study, expository messages and testimony writing. Although these conferences have been helpful to me, I have also felt that many of our programs were too heavily laden with pre-organized, highly scripted activities and staged presentations, leaving too little time for honest personal interaction. If the primary goal of a group Bible study is get through all of the written questions in time to move on to the next activity, discussion is going to be stifled. There are many questions on people’s minds that simply cannot be raised in these contexts without being seen as going off-topic. There are many other things that Christians need to learn and do, things that have a solid scriptural basis, which cannot easily fit into the paradigm of a group Bible study, expository message and testimony writing/sharing. The Scriptures themselves testify to this. For example, Acts 2:42 states that in the days and weeks after Pentecost, the early Christians devoted themselves to four activities: the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer. I believe it is possible to emphasize the study of Scripture – or one particular method or approach to studying the Scripture – so much that our faith becomes provincial and abstract, and we become disconnected from real community life and from God himself. Jesus himself hinted at this when he said, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39-40). And here is a saying that I recently heard which often rings true: “The last thing that most Christians need is another Bible study.”

What do you think? Is it possible for Christians to emphasize the Bible, or their particular way of approaching the Bible, to an extent that it becomes a hindrance to spiritual growth?

Some UBFisms reflect our ministry’s Korean origins. Think about how we attach titles (Missionary, Shepherd, Doctor, …) to peoples’ names. This was an attempt by Korean missionaries to implement in the English language the polite honorifics of spoken Korean that acknowledge differences in seniority between a speaker and listener. Many North Americans in UBF have grown accustomed to this, but to newcomers it can be disconcerting. In Korea it may be helpful to refer to a newcomer as a sheep. A sheep is someone to be treasured, treated with deference and love. For students in Korea who value group loyalty and sense of belonging, being called a sheep could make them feel special. But for students in America steeped in free expression and individuality, being called a sheep can be humiliating.

Other UBFisms function as theological terms: “manger ministry,” “common life,” “life-giving spirit.” You are unlikely to find these terms in any theology text. But they are real theological terms, because they represent significant spiritual ideals that we try to implement. I’m sure that we can find better names for them. American evangelicals are always coming up with cool names like “seeker-friendly,” “incarnational ministry,” and so on. By comparison, some of our UBF terms sound lame, but I don’t think the ideas behind them are lame. In fact, I think we ought to take these terms more seriously. If we believe in something and practice it, we should know what it means and be able to explain it. Lack of explanation can give the wrong impression and mislead our own members and people who don’t know us well. If we don’t clearly define our terms, then other people may define them for us in a way that distorts what we actually believe and do.

The quintessential example of this is “marriage by faith.” The term expresses our belief that marriage is ordained by God and that Christians should earnestly seek God’s will in deciding whom to marry and when. It also expresses our belief that marriage is not purely a personal matter, and it is good and proper for godly parents, pastors and spiritual elders to take a prayerful and proactive role in counseling young people throughout the courtship and marriage process. When UBF leaders neglected to define this term, critics seized upon it and mischaracterized it, claiming that we force people to marry whomever we want. “Marriage by faith” is a wonderful ideal to which we ascribe, even though in practice we fall short of the ideal. When discussing “marriage by faith,” we needn’t fall into the trap of trying to defend everything that everyone in UBF has ever done. Helping real individuals and couples with tough decisions is a messy business, and plenty of mistakes have been made all around. But we should be ready to define the ideal and discuss it intelligently, because this ideal is biblically sound and defensible, and because on this specific topic we have much to teach and much to learn.

UBFisms also crop up when messages and reports are translated from Korean into English. Following the 2008 Purdue conference, our UBF headquarters website posted an article from a Korean publication containing an interview of Dr. John Jun. Here’s one sentence from that interview:

We focus on digging out the words of God, making new living water rather than having a new technique so that we can receive God’s grace and feed sheep.

I have no idea how this sounds in Korean, and I certainly don’t want to pick on my good friend Dr. John Jun. But the direct translation into English has so much jargon and mixed metaphors that an uninitiated reader is left scratching his head and wondering, “What the heck does that mean?”

There are some UBFisms that I’d really like to abolish. How about this one: “marriage problem.” This expression is usually applied to an unmarried person, as in “She has a marriage problem.” Translation: She wants to get married but has no prospects that are currently viable. Tossing around terms like this can be a cheap substitute for really empathizing with people and trying to understand what they are going through.

Many UBFisms are local Scripture-based idioms that have gone stale. Here’s an example. A few years ago, I delivered a Sunday message on John chapter 9, in which Jesus heals the man who was born blind. In one part of the message, which was subtitled, “Jesus makes mud,” I discussed how Jesus spit on the ground, made mud with his saliva, put it on the man’s eyes and told him to wash. This was an example of how Jesus carried out his ministry by creatively using the resources that God gave him. I encouraged our members to look around, find the resources that they have, and apply them to God’s work in new and creative ways. The punch-line was, “Let’s make some mud!” That week, as our members shared written testimonies about this passage, they used the term “mud-making ministry” and described how we could put this idea into practice. Because of our shared experience, the term held a rich meaning for us at that time. Using an idiom derived from our Bible study is appropriate in these small group settings. But as days and weeks pass, the meaning of the idiom starts to wear thin. Outside of our immediate circle, how could anyone know what a “mud-making ministry” is? Clinging to stale idioms may eventually become a symptom of laziness and superficiality in our study of Scripture when we encounter the same passage again in the future. Here is a principle that I have found helpful: When you approach a passage from the Bible that you have studied before, throw away the cute expressions and sayings that you have used or heard in the past, and ask the Holy Spirit to give you fresh new insight.

Finally, there are some UBFisms which at the surface seem grammatically correct and normal, but on a deeper level reveal a carelessness that can be disconcerting. One example is, “From God’s point of view…” This came up recently when someone drafted a report on UBF missions in Latin America. The report included a few lines about the history of Spanish conquest, when Roman Catholicism was spread to the region by forced conversion and sword. This is indeed a dark spot in the history of the Church. The pivoting sentence in the report was, “But from God’s point of view, this happened so that…” It was just an innocent attempt to express how God may have been working through an apparently bad situation to further his redemptive work, and to explain that despite this dark history God has still prepared the region as a mission field ripe for the gospel. But if you stop and think about this expression for just a moment, it reveals a disturbing degree of hubris.How can we claim to see from God’s point of view? How can anyone, on this side of eternity, declare that that he truly knows what God was doing? Perhaps it’s unfair to call this a UBFism, because everyone at times is guilty of sloppy and uncritical thinking. But if expressions like this appear too often in our discussions and writings, it reflects poorly on us.

Should we be trying to purge UBFisms from our writing and speech? For the most part, I would say, “Yes.” As I write and speak, I consciously try to get rid of UBFisms for the following reasons.

1. UBFisms can be irritating to our young people. When they hear us say these things, they roll their eyes and think, “Omigod, I can’t believe he said that.” They want to identify with our ministry, but they also don’t want to be feel stigmatized by going to a church where people talk strangely.
2. UBFisms do violence to the English language and reflect a poor and lazy style of communication. By and large, we are a ministry of college educated and highly credentialed people. We take pride in the quality of our Bible study preparation, our musical and dramatic performances, and so on. So why should we tolerate and promote substandard English? Why would we place material laced with undefined terms, stale idioms, etc. on our websites, which are the highly visible public face of our ministry?
3. UBFisms make it difficult for us to connect to other parts of the Body of Christ. When other Christians come to our meetings or browse through our material, they have trouble understanding who we are and what we actually do.
4. UBFisms run counter to our missionary calling. A missionary who goes to a foreign land cannot expect the natives to learn his language; he should adapt to their language and find a way to communicate the gospel in their culture. Similarly, we who are longtime members of UBF should learn how to clearly express our faith to those who don’t speak UBF.

Please don’t misunderstand. I do not want to stigmatize our missionaries who are struggling with the English language. My comments here are aimed primarily at native English speakers in North American UBF chapters. I believe that we have a duty to help our brothers and sisters from Korea to assimilate and become more effective witnesses for Jesus. We ought to make it easier for them to write and speak standard English, not hinder them by perpetuating a peculiar dialect.

Perhaps those of us who have been in UBF for a long time are no longer aware of how our language sounds to those on the outside. Could this be a symptom of a deeper problem? In Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary (Zondervan, 1993, p.15), Lee Strobel wrote:

You may have found that since you’ve become a Christian, your unbelieving friends have drifted away as you’ve become increasingly involved in the social network of the church. It has been said that within two years of becoming a Christian, the average person has already lost the significant relationships he once had with people outside the faith. Without frequent heart-to-heart conversations with unchurched people, it’s easy to forget how they think.

Excessive use of our own local jargon could be a sign that we are losing touch with the very people we are supposedly trying to reach.

Here are some oft-quoted Bible verses about communication.

Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing (Proverbs 12:18).

He who answers before listening – that is his folly and his shame (Proverbs 18:13).

The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks (Luke 6:45).

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires (James 1:19-20).

It is easy to wreak havoc by speaking carelessly and thoughtlessly. But the tendency to be forever silent – failing to express oneself in appropriate ways at appropriate times – can be just as dangerous.

Consider the history of Korean Air. Between 1970 and 1999, KAL lost 16 aircraft due to accidents, resulting in the deaths of 700 passengers and crew members. The last fatal accident occurred in 1997, when KAL flight 801 crashed into a hillside in Guam, killing 228 persons.

In the recent book Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), journalist Malcolm Gladwell devotes a chapter to the story of this airline’s safety record and the tragic demise of KAL801. The quality of the airline’s equipment and the training of its staff were among the best in the world. The accident was caused by poor communication in the cockpit. The captain was held in such high esteem that the other crew members were reluctant to say anything when they noticed him making errors. When they finally did speak up, the language that they used was so indirect that the captain had no idea what they actually meant.

As KAL801 approached Guam in the middle of the night, the first officer turned to the captain and said, “Don’t you think that it rains more in this area here?” What he meant was something like this: We are headed for a mountain range in pitch-black skies and pouring rain, and you are relying on a visual approach with no backup plan! But what he actually said sounded like small-talk about weather.

A few minutes later, the flight engineer said, “Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot.” What he meant was: There’s trouble ahead! This isn’t a night when you can rely on your eyes to land the plane! But what came out of his mouth was a platitude about the generic benefits of technology.

After the tragic loss of KAL801, the airline came under intense pressure from international authorities and began an extensive review of its operating procedures. Flight crews were retrained to enable members to communicate more openly across boundaries of age, rank and gender. Within a decade, Korean Air’s safety record dramatically improved, and its standing among international carriers was restored.

For nearly three decades, I have interacted closely with members and leaders of UBF. In general, I have found that we are quite good at restraining our speech to avoid controversy and division. We are well aware of Paul’s injunction in Philippians 2:14: “Do everything without complaining or arguing.” And 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19: “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” But on balance, we often neglect to mention that Jesus was plain-spoken; he taught his disciples to say what they mean and to mean what they say: “Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your “No’ be ‘No'” (Mt 5:37). Indeed, the style of speech that some have upheld as the epitome of the Christian character seems more like the KAL801 cockpit than the lively and frank conversations that Jesus shared with his apostles.

Before launching this website, I discussed the idea with many UBF friends. The vast majority were very supportive. Some expressed reservations, warning me that it could degenerate into a forum for complaining and arguing. (Although that is certainly possible, we have enacted policies to guard against that.) And a few people suggested that if people want to talk freely among themselves, it would be better to do it privately in person or by telephone. Internet blogging is a different mode of communication – not inherently better or worse than private conversation, but different. The great advantage of blogging is that an unlimited number of people can join in the conversation wherever they are, whenever they choose. But you cannot hear a person’s tone of voice or see their facial expressions or body language. You cannot tell if someone is keeping silent to indicate displeasure. To communicate effectively on a website, we must write clearly and weigh our words cautiously, to say what we mean and mean what we say. To avoid misunderstandings, we must read what others have written very carefully and take them at their word rather than ascribing hidden motives.

UBF is a multigenerational and multicultural. Whenever people of different ages, backgrounds and personality types get together to discuss things that truly matter, there are bound to be misunderstandings. But I believe that if our relationships are mediated by Jesus Christ in the presence of the Holy Spirit, we can learn to understand one another and respect one another even if we do not always agree. We can achieve real Christian unity in the midst of diversity.

We dedicate this website with Psalm 19:4: May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.