What Hezekiah can teach us on Restoring Clinton

One of my favorite chapters in my favorite book (LOTR) is called “The Scouring of the Shire.” And recently I’ve been reading through the story of 1 Kings through 2 Chronicles. In both the Scouring of the Shire and the historical account of Israel’s kings, there is the theme of restoring the homeland. And more specifically, both stories show that the work of restoration follows a similar pattern, beginning with a good scrubbing. 

When the Hobbits come home after their long journey of saving Middle-earth, they find that their homeland, The Shire, is “gloomy and un-Shirelike.” It has become overrun with evil ruffians who are at the command of the defeated but still dangerous “Saruman.” Saruman, who in many ways typifies the biblical Satan, knows he is defeated and his days are numbered, and therefore causes as much damage to the Hobbits’ homeland as he can. So the entire story of the LOTR culminates with the Hobbits having to restore their desecrated and devastated homeland. 

We are like the Hobbits in a way. In the end, as the book of Revelation teaches, we will join Jesus as he scours the earth, restoring it to be our forever home. But in the meantime, in the here and now, we are faced with a similar kind of work. We are called to take dominion in the present, making this place as ‘Shirelike’ or as ‘New Jerusalemlike’ as we can make it. And like the hobbits, we have our own evil to banish and its stains to scour. 

And what I notice is that the biblical story of the kings gives us a basic pattern of restoration. One thing you will notice as you read Kings and Chronicles is that the main reason the promised land gets gloomy is that God’s people disobey the Lord. The idolatry of the people provokes the Lord to judge and discipline God’s people. Here’s how 1 Kings 9 puts it:

[6] But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, [7] then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples. [8] And this house will become a heap of ruins. Everyone passing by it will be astonished and will hiss, and they will say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land and to this house?’ [9] Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the LORD their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore the LORD has brought all this disaster on them.’” (ESV)

So this is what happens over and over again in the story of Israel and Judah. Because God deals with his people covenantally, he blesses obedience and curses disobedience. And so the ruin of the homeland is directly tied to he disobedience of the inhabitants. 

And there is a ton of disobedience in Kings and Chronicles. Most kings disobeyed the law of God. But every now and again, you’ll bump into a king who really loved the Lord and was eager to obey the law of God. And it’s those kings that demonstrate the pattern of restoration. 

Let’s take Hezekiah as an example. He was a king who “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord” (2 Chron 29:2). One of the first things Hezekiah did when he became king was to “carry out the filth from the Holy Place.” Jerusalem, and the temple specifically, was infested with idol worship. Previous kings had built other altars to the gods of the surrounding nations. And so the worship of the One True God was perverted. And as a result, the homeland of God’s people had become an abomination. So the first thing Hezekiah did in order to achieve restoration at home was to scour his home of idolatry. 

The next thing Hezekiah did was rededicate the temple to the right worship of God. So not only did Hezekiah remove the filth, but he brought in what was clean. Multiple chapters of the book of 2 Chronicles are devoted to showing how much attention Hezekiah devoted to restoring the right worship of God. 

And then just before Hezekiah dies and the narrative turns to the other kings that came after him, there is a little blurb about Hezekiah having other achievements, such as filling the storehouses of Jerusalem with more food and building a new supply of water to a portion of the city. What is clear is that Hezekiah’s reign was prosperous. He did work for the common good of the people by giving them greater material prosperity. But that is not what he focused his efforts on first, nor was it what he directed the majority of his energy toward. Rather, the work of turning the heart of he people toward God seems to have been his greatest focus, and certainly his greatest contribution. 

So here’s the pattern of restoration I think we can learn from. First, remove idolatry. Second, worship God correctly. Third, work to lift the everyday prosperity of the people.

I think living in a place like Clinton often provokes thoughts and desires toward seeking its restoration. We all wish that this place was a little less gloomy and a little less un-Shirelike. But in seeking Clinton’s restoration, we can’t think and act like unbelievers. We don’t start with the brick and mortar. We don’t start with job creation. We don’t focus on the economy. Those things are important. But what Hezekiah teaches us is that we must remove the spiritual filth first. That is the work we must throw our best effort toward. First, we must repent of our idolatry, then we must embrace the right worship of God through obeying his word, and then as our worship of God becomes straightened out, it will give us clear eyes and hearts to engage in the work of straightening out roads, vocations, schools, and the rest of the work we are called to do at home. 

Mr. Taufman’s Handplane

I consider myself a hand tool enthusiast as well as an amateur historian of local Clinton history. The other day, those two passions met in the form of an old hand plane. 

I was given an old Stanley #6 jointer plane. I believe it is a type-4. The manufacturing marks and design type indicate that it is a tool made in the late 1800s. 

The most interesting characteristic of this old tool is the signature that it bears. Engraved into the side of the plane’s body is the name “Taufman.” It was written in a handsome cursive font. And it seems that a punch was used, possibly a maker's mark. But it seems more likely that the signature was made by first signing the body with a pencil, and then tracing back over that pencil mark with a series of individual punches. The signature appears to have been made using a punch-by-punch ‘stipple’ technique. 

There is no doubt this signature was made by one of the original owners of this tool. I love old tools marked by their original owners. The reason I love these old signatures is that they communicate the personality and intentionality of the craftsmen. The signature itself is a mark of craftsmanship. Mr. Taufman was clearly proud to put his name on such a well-made tool, not just because he was proud to own it, but because he was proud to use it, and by extension, was proud of what he would make with that tool.

The tool was an extension of his personality as a maker. Putting his signature on that tool was a mark of ownership, his claim that it belonged to him, and it was also a mark of integrity, a sign that he understood whatever he would make would be a personal reflection of his own character. Whether his work was good work or bad work, his signature was a sign that he took full responsibility for it.

All of this got me thinking about the theology of Creation. Psalm 19 says that Creation proclaims the handiwork of God. In a sense, God put his signature on everything he made. It’s not a visible signature like an engraving on a cloud or a Sharpie on the side of a mountain. Rather, God’s signature is perceived in the hearts and consciences of mankind (Rom 1:20). 

Like Taufman’s plane, God’s signature communicates ownership and personal integrity. Psalm 24 says that the whole earth belongs to the Lord. All of creation is owned by God, and all creation bears the mark of his personality and his integrity. He is a good God who does good work.

God is the ultimate craftsman in this sense. God not only put his signature on everything he made, he was glad to do it because he stands behind his work. God was thorough and exact in his making. He did not take any shortcuts. God knew that what he made was good because he is good. His signature is a sign of confidence, a sign of knowing responsibility. God takes full responsibility for bringing everything into being because he knows that he did the job right, because he’s a righteous God. 

Now, let’s bring it back to Mr. Taufman. Whether he knew it or not, by signing his plane he was acting like God. Genesis 1:27 teaches that every human being is made in the image of God. One of the things that means is that who we are and what we do reflects who God is and what he does. For example, we are craftsmen because God is a craftsman. We sign our work because God signs his work. 

This is a biblical theology of ‘dominion.’ God has dominion over everything. He is in authority over the Creation because he made it. And he takes full responsibility for bringing it into being. God is not bashful to put his signature on the Creation because he is absolutely sure he did the job right the first time. 

This is how we are to think through work as humans. It is not automatically a sign of conceit or sinful pride to attach our name to what we make. Putting your signature on a painting, a dining room table, or a job permit communicates that you take full responsibility for the quality of the work you’re doing. And in today's world, this is so important. It is more common to shirk responsibility than to embrace it. The signature of the morally upright craftsmen preaches a needed sermon. When you sign your work, you are saying, “I’m responsible.” 

Let that be an encouragement to you today. Model your life after God. Following Jesus is following the ultimate craftsman. Be good like Jesus. Do good work like Jesus did. And sign your work with confidence. Take full responsibility for your creative actions, knowing they are a direct extension of your character.

Note, Mr. Taufman is buried at Oakland Cemetery here in Clinton. It’s not clear to me whether the owner of this plane was the elder Taufman or the younger.

Hope is Alive - An Advent Meditation

Did you know that there was a time when people around here thought of Clinton as a Christmas city? I learned this from a facebook group called Old Clinton Pictures. They posted an album of old scenes of the downtown all lit up. Von Maur and JC Penney were booming. Old cars parked on the streets with the parking meters just barely visible above mounds of white snow. 

Some of you have living memories of coming to downtown Clinton during Christmas when there were still department stores. People say it was like a wonderful life or a Christmas story. 

There’s a bitterness to those memories now, because of how far we’ve fallen. The old streets and buildings are still there. But they pale in comparison to their former glory. As one writer puts it, they send out echoes of a failed delight. Looking at those old pictures reminds us of a time when things seemed more wholesome, more family oriented, when the community was stable and times were good. 

Part of living in Clinton means living in the shadow of some older gloom. In this place there seems to be a record spinning some sad song reminding us that we have lost something. There is an inescapable sense of grief over what used to be. As the singer songwriter Noah Gundersen put, “this city was built on the back of a spirit that I can’t feel anymore.”

This mood. This condition. This malaise is what happens when a person lives in what the Bible calls a state of exile. And a person Living in Exile is prone to lose hope. 

Exile is a state of homelessness. A person living in exile is in a condition of separation and grief over the loss of a fuller and richer life. Think of a character from a Bruce Springsteen song sitting at the bar talking about the glory days. The exile reaches into their memories and longs backward in search of a home that is no more. The melancholy cloud of nostalgia follows the exile wherever they go.

The exile also longs forward for home. Deep in our guts we long for a return to our true far of home. We long like the sea sick elf Legolas in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings who cried, “The sea! Alas! I have not yet beheld it. But deep in the hearts of all my kindred lies the sea-longing, which is perilous to stir.” We long for our homes like the prophet Jeremiah who wrote, “Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored! Renew our days of old…” (Lam 5:21).

So the exile possesses a double longing. Both a nostalgic longing backwards and an aspirational longing forward to return to a place called home.

It’s not just Clintonians who feel the dread of exile. All people are born into spiritual exile. All humans have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God as the Bible says. All humans live in the aftermath of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from their Garden home. Since Adam and Eve were separated from Eden, the human race has wandered this earth in exile, longing to return to a home that has been lost.

What is that home? That home is first and foremost a Reconciled relationship with God. As the Psalmist wrote, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations” (Ps 90:1). God is our home. And therefore we will never return to a place of wholeness until we are reconciled to a right and personal relationship with God our creator. 

But in another sense, even those who have faith in Jesus are still exiles. Because we have not yet arrived at our final eternal home. We live in a cursed world. Things wither and die. Families break apart. 2x4’s rot. Concrete returns to dust. Iron rusts. Neighborhoods, cities and nations rise and fall. We have not yet arrived at our stable forever home. Our forever home will only be brought to us in the New Creation when Jesus returns for the second time. 

So one way or another we all live In the inescapable condition of Exile. and therefore all of us one way or another struggle with hope.

It is the struggle for hope that makes exile so difficult. But hope is exactly what Jesus brings. That's exactly what this time of year is meant to highlight. Advent, Christmas, the New Year's,  these traditions only have meaning because they point us to the person of Jesus who gives us hope.

The Bible is a story written for hopeless exiles. And the main problem, the main dragon, the thing keeping us on the edge of our seats is this: How will we ever get back home? The answer: Follow Jesus on the long adventure of faith. Jesus will lead you to your destination.

The season of advent is a perfect time for exiles to reflect on and long for the eternal home that we have been separated from. Advent is a season the church has traditionally observed as a time of waiting and expectation. The purpose of advent is to focus our deepest longings and expectations on the coming of Jesus. Because when he comes he will bring us home. 

But the Christian does not hope for the second coming of Jesus like a child hopes for presents. When a child says ‘I hope I get that for Christmas,’ he is expressing wishful thinking. Christian hope is not wishful thinking. Rather, Christian hope is anchored in the promise of God. God the Father promises a forever home. Jesus Christ unites us to this forever home by his death and resurrection. And we have access to claim the promise of God to unite us to our forever home through the work of Christ by faith.

This is what the apostle Peter communicated to the early church who struggled in a state of exile. He wrote to them that they were “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1 Pt 1:3-4).

What God does when he makes someone born again is change their destiny. Instead of a person living in the grief of exile, where their best days are in the past, a born again person has their best days ahead. God takes the old man of our soul, who’s bitter about all the glory days of Clinton gone by, and immediately makes him a young boy, and premises that in the future there will be a Christmas city where he will live forever that will be better than anything he could ever imagine. 

The Gospel of Jesus makes us alive with hope. And yet we cling to dead hopes.

A dead hope is hoping that JC PEnny will return to the main floor of the wilson building and that our great grandparents will return to take us shopping for red ryder bb guns and homemade candy. Yesterday’s visions of the good life are dead. They are gone and not going to come back. 

But the hope of the CHristian is alive because Jesus is alive. Grandma and grandpa’s generation is not coming back. But Jesus is. And this is what this advent season is all about. Despite what the commercials say this is not the holidays. It is Christmas. And it is Christ that makes this season come alive with hope. 

Hope means the future is good and the future is secure. The resurrection proves and secures our future hope.

Our future hope is what Peter calls our inheritance. There is a storehouse of gifts God is holding for you in safe keeping. One of those gifts is your forever home.

In the Bible the promised inheritance is described as the promised land, a stable home that flourishes. Our forever inheritance is described as the New Jerusalem, a city that is like the Garden of Eden but better. Our forever home is a real city, with real people, with real bodies, on God’s real earth. Your inheritance that Peter is speaking of is your destiny to live in the new creation. 

This is a city so utterly unlike Clinton, yet the memory of old Clinton faintly points to it. The City we are destined for does not dim with the passage of time. It does not flounder when industry changes. It does not wax or wane in its glory. It does not fall into complacency, apathy, or disrepair. It cannot be squandered by the mismanagement of city leaders. Because it’s leader is King Jesus forever. The city of God will be unblemished forever. It will be forever pristine because GOd is keeping it for you.

Peter writes that “by God’s power [your inheritance is] being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 

There is no threat to your future. Not when the power of God is keeping it safe. 

And to prove it to you, to give you assurance that you will receive what God has promised, God has made his home in you first. By faith in Jesus God first makes his home in you before he leads you to the eternal home in the New Creation.

Ephesians 1:13–14

[13] In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, [14] who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. (ESV)

Think of it this way. You hear news announced by the King that there is a perfect city. You hear this news and respond in faith. So you trust in this news and head on toward this better city. You leave the city you are in. God doesn’t just wait for you in the new city. He sends his spirit like a porter or a guide to help you on your journey. So that you MAKE IT. Your eternal destiny is preserved by God through your faith. 

So even though your New City Home will not be revealed until Jesus returns a second time, we don’t hope alone. We hope with the Spirit of the resurrected Jesus living inside us. And therefore, our hope is alive and well. 

Commending Joyful Men

“And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun” (Ecc 8:15).

This line from the book of Ecclesisastes was written by a wise King. This and a few other verses in the book of Ecclesiastes contain direct commendations by the King to be joyful. A wise King knows the importance of joy. It is therefore important that we commend joy in one another, especially commending joy in men. 

Men, you are called to be kings. You are called to rule. You are called to take up your God given responsibility and lead your spheres of influence. And biblical leadership means you are called to lead with joy. 

A big part of leadership is tone setting. If a leader is sulky and has RBF (let the reader understand), the culture around him will probably be sulky and brittle. But if a leader is merry and glad, the culture that builds around him will probably be joyful and resilient. 

This is quoted a ton but I’m going to quote it here again. In C.S. Lewis’s book The Horse and His Boy, King Lune says this about being a King: 

This is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there’s hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land. 

Joe Rigney has a great little article on Desiring God where he calls this “manly mirth.” The best leaders have a spirit of unconquerable joy. The happy leader in the face of great danger is the best leader. Because he demonstrates to everyone that there is indeed a source of joy that transcends difficult circumstances. And that’s really the essence of good leadership in a fallen world. A good leader shows everyone there is light at the end of the difficult tunnel. There is joy to be found despite what this present sorrow may suggest. 

The King of kings demonstes this the best. The Bible teaches that Christ endured the cross for the joy that was set before him (Heb 12:2). Christ endured the greatest trial and difficulty any human has ever endured (the cross), and he was motivated by joy. Christ had an indomitable joy. He had an unconquerable spirit of mirth. The Bible calls him the man of sorrows (Is 53:3), but he was also a man of joy. A joy that he carried with him even unto death. 

So men, Christ commends his joy to you. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full (Jn 15:3).” The joy innate in Christ is promised to you as a gift. But it’s a gift that you must claim by being obedient to Christ. Abiding in Christ is how you get the joy of Christ to fill you up.

Husbands, dads, pastors, men… abide in Christ and be joyful. This is important. It takes work. If you're like me this doesn’t come naturally. But joy is commended to us by God nonetheless. Because people depend on us. Our kids need us to work hard at cultivating an attitude of joy in the home. Our wives need us to be manly men of mirth. Our churches need us to model the unconquerable joy of Christ. Leadership is more than cultivating joy, but it is not less. Let’s strive to discover joy in Christ in our personal lives and then let us model this joy publicly to our people. And then let's see how they respond. 

Masculinity Snapshot

Disclaimer: This post is primarily for the men. 

Wendell Berry’s novel Jaybe Crow is one of my favorite stories. It’s a story about a man who is lost in the world. He has no purpose or place to root himself. That is until he moves back home to his small town to take a position as the town barber. And as the town barber he finds himself host to a particular kind of culture—a male culture. His barber shop, like all barber shops once were, is a bastion of masculinity. It is a culture led by and populated by men.

In our day there are still male dominated cultures. Wrestling, fantasy football leagues, prisons, just to name a few. But how about church? The Church isn’t typically thought of as a bastion of masculinity. But it should be. Because Jesus is masculine. And men are called to follow Jesus. And when you follow Jesus you become like Jesus (Rom 8:29). Therefore your average local church should be full of masculine men.  

What might biblical masculinity look like? Well, let me offer a snapshot from a biblical story. 

Genesis 14 is a story in the Bible that celebrates heroic masculinity. It is about a guy named Abram who rescues his nephew who was taken captive as a prisoner of war by an oppressive alliance of Eastern armies. Abram gathers 318 trained men and makes a 100 mile trek through harsh terrain to overtake the armies, defeats them in the middle of the night, and rescues his nephew, along with the captive women and children.

Abram is a father. He is a rescuer. He is a warrior. He is a man of virtue. All of these qualities point us to God who possesses them perfectly. 

So men, what I want to do is simply put in front of you a brief portrait of masculinity. This isn’t meant to be exhaustive. It’s simply meant to put steel in your spine and give you a shot of encouragement today. 

First, masculinity and manhood in general must be initiated. This is not happening in our broader culture. Instead of boys becoming men, boys transition into an eternal adolescent imbo that no one expects them to get out of. So fathers, mothers, initiate your young men into manhood. Teach them masculinity. Start by reading them stories that celebrate and illustrate Christ centered masculinity. Their future wives will thank you. Their future daughters will thank you. Their future congregations will thank you. 

Initiation happens through a time of testing. Hard times create strong men. Boys need crucible experiences to be refined in. And they need to be led through those crucible experiences under the loving guidance of a father. Like all Christians are led through hard times under the loving guidance of our Heavenly Father. This means you need to give your boys a safe environment to fail. They will need to experience suffering while still tethered to a stable and loving home. Because this will prepare them for the suffering that will happen to them when they are outside of the safety of the nest. 

Secondly, a man is someone who strives to embody masculine virtue. Part of being a man of faith is being a man who makes every effort to be virtuous (2 Pt 1:5). There are so many virtues to focus on so let me just point out a few from the Abram story. 

Virtue 1: A masculine man is a courageous man. Abram set his face toward hardened armies like a grim warrior king, determined to confront them in battle. He was fully aware of the danger, the risk, the potential for failure. He went for it anyway, full send, because that’s what men do. Courage is required in a man who sets his face to a just and noble cause. A man of courage faces danger because it's worth it. The weak and vulnerable of this world need protecting. Therefore the world needs men of courage. 

Virtue 2: A masculine man is a sacrificial man. Abram not only traveled over 100 miles to rescue his nephew. He went the grueling distance, depriving himself of sleep and comfort, putting himself in harm's way, to also bring back all of the stolen possessions the armies had been plundering. He demonstrated tremendous sacrifice. This was an extreme inconvenience for Abram. And yet that’s what he did. Masculine men intentionally inconvenience themselves for the sake of serving and securing other people’s flourishing. 

Virtue 3: A masculine man is a generous man. Abram not only rescued Lot and the plundered possessions, he gave the plundered possessions back to their owners. He generously relinquished the spoils of war. An extremely countercultural thing to do. Most conquering heroes keep the spoils of war. But not Abram. He gave back the treasures to Sodom and Gomorrah, who were wicked cities at that. So here’s a generous man. Not just generous toward his own kin, but generous to the wicked. Abram was a man who knew that all of the world belonged to the creator God, therefore he lived open handedly and generously with his possessions.

Virtue 4: A masculine man is a chivalrous man. This is old school. But notice how the text specifically says Abram rescued the women. Despite a feminist culture, it is still God’s design for men to be strong for the sake of the weaker vessel. A masculine man shows greater honor and care for the women in his life. In your family. In your church. Protect your ladies. Honor them. Keep them pure and undefiled. And that includes undefiled by you. Rule yourself and master your passions so that you don’t harm the daughters of God. 

All this talk of manhood and masculinity might poke at some of your own insecurities. Some of you did not have a dad. Some of you were not initiated. Some of you were never told how to love a woman, how to treat your kids, how to belong to a local church. That’s ok. Like Abram, your heavenly Father is your Father. And it's never too late for him to show you the ropes. God the Father invites you to start now. You just have to surrender to him. So what are you waiting for? Be a man. God will help. Others are counting on you. 

Christian Education Primer

Introduction

An old dead Presbyterian named John Witherspoon once wrote, on the subject of Christian education, that “there is no part of your duty, as a Christian, or a citizen, which will be of greater service to the public, or a source of greater comfort to yourself.” In other words, Christian education is a big deal. It was a big deal to that founding father, and it should be a big deal to the Christian church today. 

Defining Terms

When I say Christian education I mean is this: Teaching children to love the Lord God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength (Deut 6:5). In other words, Christian education is Christian discipleship. 

And discipleship involves all of life. That is why Paul instructed Christian fathers to bring their children up in the “discipline” of the Lord. The word for discipline used by Paul is the Greek word paideia, which means cultivating in a child an entire way of life that is distinctively Christian (Eph 6:4). So Christian education is essentially the formation of a human being who seeks the glory of God in all things (1 Cor 10:31). 

And to form an entire way of life that is oriented toward the glory of God, a child needs to be immersed in an environment that demonstrates this. That is why Deuteronomy 6 instructs parents to teach their children to obey God when “you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” This is that paideia thing. Christian education happens all the time in all different places. Christian education happens at breakfast. It happens at the playdate in the park. It happens at church. It happens after an argument between mom and dad. It happens in dad’s workshop when the kids ask questions. Overall Christian education happens when parents intentionally seek the glory of God in all things and teach their kids to do the same along the way.

So to summarize, Christian education is Christian discipleship. And the anchor point of Christian discipleship is the home. And the primary disciple makers of kids are their parents. And therefore Christian education is the responsibility of every Christian family. 

Christian Education in Practice

With the principles established, the subject of Christian education turns to practice. How do we get it done? 

First, both parents need to be on the same page about this. It takes mom and dad pulling in the same direction to do the hard work of educating their kids. If one is not on the same page it will be like a game of tug of war instead of a team pulling a sled. So first, mom and dad need to sit down and get on the same page. Both parents in the home need to first agree that educating their kids to know and love Christ is their joint responsibility, and that they should get to it.

Second, for Christian education to happen there needs to be habits established in the home. We are creatures of habit. And we are creatures who are shaped by habit. As James K.A. Smith often points out, we are liturgical creatures who have desires that are shaped by “thick practices.” Thick practices are those habits in life that powerfully shape our vision of the good life. Christian education happens within the framework of thick practices established in the home. 

Examples of these habits would be going through a simple Christian catechism in the morning before school and in the evening around supper time. Our family uses the New City Catechism. I’ve seen others use the Heidelberg. Just get yourself a good biblical catechism and start going through the questions at the same time with your kids every day.  

Another habit that I see parents get a lot of mileage out of is intentional bedtime routines. At bedtime try reading from a gospel centered story bible specifically designed for kids. We read The Biggest Story Bible by Kevin DeYoung. But don’t just read stories about the Bible. Read the Bible Bible. This is especially important with kids as they get older. Don’t always read stories that are predigested by someone else. Give it to them straight. 

And also just before the lights go out we sing benediction songs, like the Doxology, Jesus Loves Me, and Before the Ending of the Day. Once habits like these are established they become things your kids will look forward to. And they will provide the framework for Christian Education in the home. 

Once parents are in unity, and once discipleship habits are established in the home, you’ve won most of the battle. But there is still work to be done. Christian formation also involves teaching children the basic skills of ordinary vocational life. To use the language of Genesis, kids need to be taught how to take dominion over the creation. They need to be taught how to order the stuff of creation to the glory of God for the flourishing of the world. And that means our kids can’t just learn bible verses. They also have to learn subjects like math, science, history, language, and others. And then apply that knowledge to the glory of God in the world outside the home. 

Concerns About Public Schools

And here is where we bump into some practical considerations. The main place most children learn their subjects is at a public school. And this raises a concern for thoughtful Christian parents. In our current culture, the public schools are self-consciously secular. In other words they intentionally avoid relating all subjects to Christ. This raises a legitimate concern for the Christian. Because the bible clearly teaches that Christ is King. And all of creation was created through Him and for Him. And so all subjects properly understood should be understood in the way they relate to the glory of Christ. But the public schools intentionally avoid this association because they are not teaching just Christains. They are teaching non-Christains as well. And so they shoot for a position of neutrality in order to include as many people as possible. So if ideas were hats, they basically give kids a bunch of idea hats without a unifying worldview full of hat hooks to put them on.

If you're a Christian parent you need to recognize this. Your kids cannot live with free floating ideas. The ideas must find their hooks. They must have their ideas tethered. And they need to be able to trace the tether all the way to the anchor point. That anchor point is God’s word.

For example, instead of teaching scientific discoveries as man essentially finding stuff on his own, Christian education teaches kids that it is the glory of God to conceal things and the glory of man to search them out (Pr 25:2). God made a world where we can discover the raw materials and logic to make an internal combustion engine, silicon chips, and IPA’s. Teach them that we live in an ordered world created by God and that is why we have consistent grammar and math logic. Teach them that God is beautiful and creative and that is why art exists. There is so much in this world that we can point to and say God laid that there for us to discover, study, and use. And by discovering, studying, and using God’s creation according to his design we bring glory to God.

So the public schools are not unifying all knowledge they teach under the Lordship of Christ. Therefore you must be diligent to do so at home. If you send your kids to public school you will inevitably have some remedial work at home. As a secular institution, the public school will eventually teach some things contrary to the biblical worldview, such as evolution, liberal sexual ethics, and maybe some woke gender confusion if you get a particularly activist minded young teacher. Christian parents have to reject the myth of worldview neutrality and realize that not all ideas floating around the public school curriculum harmonize with the Lordship of Christ. 

So hear me right, The Gateway needs some version of publicly funded education so everyone has a shot at a good education. And Christian’s should not hesitate to take jobs as teachers at public schools. But Christian parents have a responsibility to give their kids a Christian education. And if a family decides that they can provide their kids with a more robust Christian education by giving their kids another schooling option then they should be free to do so. And fortunately in our country, it is still legal to give our kids a self consciously K-12 Christian education. 

Some Options

And if a parent decides to enroll their children in an explicitly Christian institution a parent usually picks one of two main options. Option number one is a private Christian K-12 institution. The other option is to home school. Homeschooling is a logical first step for parents seeking to explicitly teach how all subjects relate and submit to the Lordship of Christ. It anchors the learning of subjects where Christian education is anchored overall, which is in the home. And establishing a Christian k-12 school has historically been the next step if the goal is to achieve greater collaboration and greater division of labor. 

Homeschooling gives parents more control. Control over time, curriculum, and environment. And when this control is under the authority of godly, generous, and loving parents, children flourish. But some families experience a limitation to homeschooling. One limitation is the loss of the division of labor a larger institution can provide. What I mean by division of labor is that there are multiple teachers who specialize in particular age groups and subjects. So while every mom is a rock star and a hero for homeschooling. And some moms even have a background and degree in education. Moms have to be generalists. They have to be to survive. Especially homeschool moms who have littles. They necessarily have to be a jack of all and master of none. Because they have to cover so much ground they have to be broad in a lot of areas instead of deep in only one or two. 

Many Christian homeschool families overcome this limitation by joining a co-op. By banding together many homeschool families pool resources to hire tutors, collaborate on projects, and socially enrich the lives of their kids. These kinds of homeschool groups are growing in our area. This should be no surprise. It’s an effective and proven strategy for families to achieve the goal of Christian education. 

The other option parents take is enrolling their kids in a traditional k-12 private CHristian institution. This is a logical step for parents who desire the division of labor a public school provides but want the curriculum to be explicitly focused on Christian formation. Christian churches and missionary organizations have historically started Christian schools wherever they took the gospel. Christian schools have been a powerful tool in the toolbox of a Christian church community to make disciples and establish a generationally resilient Christian culture. 

So to reiterate. Christian education is the responsibility of every Christain family. And there is freedom in how to get the job done. But we are not free to decide whether we do the job. It really comes down to which option we choose. And execute that option with all the strength God provides. 

A Brief Theology of Baptism

We have some baptisms coming up this week at Hope City Church. That means this is a good time for our church to be reminded of what baptism is. So here is just a brief theology of baptism to refresh your memory.  

First of all, the practice of baptism was commanded by the Lord Jesus. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). King Jesus ordained the practice of baptism. That is why it has been traditionally called an ordinance by the church. So the first principle of baptism that I want to lay down is this: All followers of Jesus should be baptized because Jesus said so.

But what is it? Let’s start with the word baptize. The word baptize comes from a Greek word baptizo. It means to immerse in water, to wash, to cleanse. That is why the answer to question number 44 of the New City Catechism, “What is baptism”, says “baptism is the washing with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” 

So what are we washing? Well, we might be washing some eyeliner off, or some stank off your body. But that’s not what a Christain baptism is about. If you're physically dirty just go take a shower. You don’t need the church to help you with that. A Christain baptism does not do the washing so much as it demonstrates the washing that’s already happened. 

Baptism is primarily a symbol of the cleansing work of the Holy Spirit. Baptism demonstrates the spiritual washing of a person's heart. By faith in the gospel of Jesus a person's sin stained heart is washed clean by the power of the Holy Spirit, which makes it possible for a person to be brought into fellowship with a holy and pure God. That is why John the Baptist taught that he only baptized with water but Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit (Mk 1:8). And that is why the Apostle Paul wrote that we are saved by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5). And why Paul wrote in Romans that believers in the Gospel have been baptized into Christ Jesus, united to him in his death and his resurrection. That means when Jesus died on the cross our sin died with him. And when he resurrected from the dead, we too have been brought to new life. And so a person who has faith in the gospel, demonstrates their union with Christ by going under water, dramatically portraying their union with Jesus’s death and burial, and emerging out of the water to dramatically portray that they have been spiritually born again, and will one day experience a bodily resurrection like Jesus. 

So we baptize because Jesus said so. We baptize to symbolize the washing of the Holy Spirit that makes fellowship with God possible. And the last thing I want to point out is that baptism demonstrates repentance, which is a fruit of the Spirit’s work in the heart of a believer.

The story of the New Testament portrays baptism as a rite of initiation. That means that baptism is typically the first act of public obedience that a new believer engages in. It is a demonstration of loyalty to King Jesus. The story of Jesus’ ministry begins with John the Baptist preparing people to follow Jesus by baptizing them into a baptism of repentance, calling them to turn from their sins and turn to Jesus (Mk 1:4). Jesus announces his ministry by proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is at hand and that in light of that people ought to repent (Mk 1:15). And again, in Romans 6 Paul describes a believer who is united with Christ as someone who actively works to turn from their sin. He says, “present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.” And Peter when describing baptism calls it an appeal to God for a good conscience (1 Pt 3:21). So the act of baptism is not only a symbol of the saving work of God, but it is an active demonstration of repentance, that a disciple of Jesus has decided to no longer live in disobedience to God but live in obedience to God. 

So we baptize because we want to obey Jesus. We immerse in water to demonstrate union with Jesus. And we do it publicly to demonstrate our loyalty to Jesus. 

Christians Build Walls

First of all, I understand that the claim that Christians ought to build walls is going to be rebutted by a counterclaim that Christians are to be bridge builders. So I just want to humbly ask you from the beginning to imagine a beautiful and magical kingdom someplace where walls and bridges can coexist. Now, imagine just the walls, because that’s what I’m talking about at the moment. 

In the Old Testament, there is a story about a man named Nehemia. You can find that story in the book that bears his name. The basics of that story are as follows: Nehemia is a Jew living in foreign land under the rule of the King Artaxerxes of Persia. Nehemia receives news that his homeland city of Jerusalem is in shambles. This moves him deeply. This is the “place of my father’s graves”, he says (Neh 2:3). His native affections for his homeland are inflamed by news of its disarray. And so he petitions the king to allow him to go home and repair the city. The king consents and sends him off to lead a great project of city renewal. 

The great tension of the story is played out ‘on the walls.’ Nehemia leads his fellow citizens to repair the walls of the city. But this makes Jerusalem's neighbors mad. They passionately disagreed with Nehemiah’s vision for public life. The men on the wall were argued with. They were ridiculed. They were threatened. And so the men on the wall needed to be skilled builders, as well as prepared warriors.

The building project of Nehemia was not simply focused on renewing the physical defenses of Jerusaelm. He was more deeply concerned with renewing and reforming the total life of the people of God. The renewal project began with repentance. He confesses that he and his people have not kept the law of God (Neh 1:7). And after the wall was finished the people rededicated their life to obeying God’s law. 

Nehemia was leading a great renewal of public and private life. The wall building was about rebuilding and rededicated all of life in submission to God as their King. We are called to do the same. As Jesus taught, the Kingdom of God is at hand (Mk 1:15). Jesus is the risen King. We are members of his Kingdom now. And we are called to build the kind of lives, both public and private, that in everything we do we do explicitly for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31).

And in the process of building that kind of life you are going to ruffle some feathers just like it did in Nehemia’s day. Some will oppose Christians who live as if Jesus is really King. Some of our neighbors will hate us for what we preach. Some will call us oppressive toward women when we seek to preserve life in the womb. Some will call us transphobic when we challenge the lies of the transgender ideology, and oppose the genital mutilation of minors. Some will call us abusively patriarchal or toxically masculine when we advocate for the beauty if male and female gender roles that God designed to function in harmony. Some will call us Quanon conspiracy theorists or white supremacists for liking a movie that sheds light on the evils of human trafficking. Christians who live in total submission to Christ, and who seek to order the world around them according to God’s design, will have their building projects opposed by the world. 

But none of this should surprise us. Jesus told us to expect opposition. “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you” (Jn 15:18). This is why the symbol of sword and trowel is a relevant symbol today and not just an artifact of an old story. Just as in Nehemia’s day we need Christains who are willing to stand on the wall and build, armed for battle, and skillful in our brick laying. 

Being armed for battle first and foremost means being armed for the spiritual battle, that like it or not, is raging in our midst. As the Apostle Paul said, our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the demonic kingdom of darkness (Eph 6:12). Our scabbard, hanging ready at our side, is a deep knowledge of the Word of God (Eph 6:17). And our enemy is the devil and his lies. And his lies need to be assaulted and destroyed by the skillful wielding of the truth (2 Cor 10:5). 

Christians are also called to be skillful with the trowel. This means we build a life in obedience to Jesus. Brick by brick we build the wall of a renewed Christian culture by obeying the law of God. We share the gospel and baptize people into the faith. We join and support local churches. Men leave their parents basements and find wives to love for life. They have babies and train those babies in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. We do our jobs with excellence, providing abundantly for our families and having enough left over to give an inheritance to the next generation and share with those in need. We plant churches. We start non-profits, schools, homeschool co-ops. We run for school board, city council, and serve on various non profits. Overal we grab the trowel and seek the welfare of the Gateway community, because in its welfare is our welfare. 

So Christian, you are called to build the wall of a public Christiendom. Keep the sword of truth sharp and keep mortar on your trowel. 

The Two Headed Dragon of Religious Passivity

Introduction

One of the features of life in Clinton is that there is a lot of talk about city renewal. The conversation is pretty much always buzzing here like living under thick overhead power lines. The coffee shops, the factory floors, the offices all hum with conversations that begin with phrases like, “what this place needs is…”, or “what they really need to do is this…” 

City renewal is a Clintonian hobby horse. Whether we grumble, gossip, or dream while we rock back and forth, most of us have to admit that we love to ride this horse. But if we’re honest, most of our hobby horses are the plastic kind. You know, the kind that has the familiar quality of not being real. Our conversations tend to go around and around like that old carousel in the entryway of Paul’s discount store. 

The most popular way people relate to city renewal is the way we relate to the river. It’s always there. We like to look at it. But very few people actually want to do anything in it. 

I’m not saying there are no Clintonians who participate in the work of city renewal. Just as I would not say there are no people who swim in our river. There are people crazy enough to roll up their sleeves and attempt to do the noble work of city renewal, just as there are people crazy enough to swim in the Mississippi. And both have the smell of the protestant work ethic to prove it. I’m simply pointing out that it’s an observable fact to anyone who has lived any kind of life in this place with their eyes open that most people who talk about city renewal do not do the work of city renewal. 

But this should not be the Christian’s demeanor toward city renewal. We should not be mere talkers, but doers. No man should stand aloof to the rubble of this world. That is not a sign of virtue, but of vice. Instead, to pursue godliness, to act like Christ, is to roll up your sleeves and actively get to the work of repairing what’s broken. 

Active not Passive

Christians are called to be an active bunch. That’s because the way of Jesus is active. It is a going and doing, moving and shaking way of life. Jesus initiates with the invitation to come follow (Mt 4:19) and sends us with the command to go and make (Mt 28:19). 

But we don’t just make vague disciples who only think about God on Sunday morning. We are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation. As Colossians 1 says, Christ is reconciling all of the creation to himself. Therefore we are called to go and be active participants in this work of reconciliation, bringing all of life under the lordship of Christ. All of life means we are not just talking about what goes on on Sundays. We are called to other specific activities like training our children, making our jobs profitable to provide for our families and those in need, and sharing in the many particularities of ordinary life, like eating and drinking, to the glory of God.

So the people of God are called to be alert and productive in all of life, vigorously working for renewal in all places of our community. And this brings me to my chief concern as it relates to all of this. The American church at large, and the Gateway church in particular, is far too comfortable in passivity. We’ve been too content to live in liturgies of lethargy. 

Men Without Tools

For many years the pastors and church leaders in this area have been calling for renewal. And many congregants have answered the call by being emotionally involved and financially bought in. But most struggle with the actual implementation. For example, it’s easier to say we support the discipleship of children than it is to actually disciple them. It’s easier to give to a missions offering than it is to buy old homes in the urban core of Clinton, restore them for occupancy again, and make a profit while doing so. 

One of the reasons many church members fail to actively practice their faith in the particularities of everyday life is that they just don’t know how to do it. There have been many calls to build but very few people possess the tools or the skills necessary to build. Like C.S. Lewis’ illustration in his book The Abolition of Man, where he says that men are without chests, so many of our churches are filled with men without chests. Pastors too often demand the function of muscles in their church’s body that do not exist. Either because they have atrophied through the generations due to institutional complacency or because they were never there to begin with. Many church members desiring to build Christendom here in the Gateway just don’t have the toolkit to do so. They are men without tools.

This should trouble us because the New Testament vision of the church is a body (1 Cor 12:12), a body alive, limber, and vigorous.  And a body equipped with the tools necessary to get the job done (Eph 4:12).

But it’s not just that churchmen are without tools. They are often without active desire. And here I come to my attempt at pointing out the great Leviathan that blocks the way of city renewal. It is the twin headed dragon of religious passivity. This dragon is ultimately a dragon of the heart. It is the sin of sloth. But this sin throws flames and casts spells that poison our Sunday liturgies, which of course plays a big part in shaping our lives.

The Dragon in the Liturgies

Let me describe the first head. The first head of this monster is what I would call High Church Pageantry. I did not coin that phrase. You can find that phrase used by old dead puritans. What I mean by High Church Pageantry is this: it is a form of church where church members are complacent to have a priest or ‘man of the cloth’ mediate their entire relationship with God for them. People gripped by this dragon are content to simply sit in the pews as spectators to the liturgical drama being performed in front of them on Sunday mornings, and then live the rest of their lives as if they play no part in the story. A church community under this dragon’s spell will build nothing of lasting generational value specifically aimed at the Kingdom of God because they have been trained to think that only men in vestments can build the kingdom, and that Kingdom activity is limited to what happens at the church building.

The other head of this dragon is what we could call the Personality Driven Low Church. This kind of church tries very hard to distance itself from the High Church and all its forms. The traditional liturgies of the High Church are abandoned by the Low Church in an effort to be more “authentic” by being less formal. But by abandoning the ancient liturgies and traditions of the High Church the Low Church places the burden of leadership on charismatic personalities. And without realizing it the Low Church finds itself in the same position as the High Church, dependent on a few leaders to service the religious goods and services of passive religious consumers. 

Let me offer some examples of churchmen under the spell of this dragon. The High Church spell is seen when a congregant is led to believe they do not need to actively read their Bibles because the priest or pastor does it for them on Sundays. Or another example is a man who cannot answer why he has the hope of heaven other than by grunting out that he goes to church and is a good person. Because he is passive he has no understanding of an active life of faith, full of repentance, obedience, and blessing.

You can also observe a churchman under the spell of the Low Church dragon when they say things like, I can’t worship God if the music isn’t [fill in the blank style], or I’m not going to church unless pastor so and so is preaching. And because a congregant under this dragon's spell is not active in their faith in Jesus, they lazily place their faith in the pastor or the novel forms of worship they are surrounded by. And because their idols cannot fulfill their souls' deep need they become bitter critics. WHen the dragons poison takes full effect they become like sticky fingered arm chair movie critics with their church, pointing out all everyones faults and incessantly airing their grievances. 

Slay the Dragon

The dragon of religious passivity must be killed. Lopping off the heads of this monster is the only way to free up true spiritual energy that leads to bodily action, which leads to city renewal. And the only way to slay the dragon of religious passivity is to be devoted to the Word of God. 

Hebrews 4:12

[12] For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

John Calvin, somewhere in his Institutes, wrote that a sin sick laziness causes a person to become “fat around the heart.” Like a body that has accumulated fat deposits and becomes slow and useless, our hearts can accumulate fat and become dull and apathetic. The way to correct that is to allow God’s word to carve out the fat. God’s word does this because it won’t let you hide. God’s word will search your thoughts, convict you of sin, and call you to repentance and obedience to Christ, which will lead to action. 

God’s word is active and vigorous. And a man devoted to the Word will become active and vigorous. This is because by the power of the Holy Spirit the Word actually accomplishes what God says it accomplishes. The Word produces in a man what it requires. 

Isaiah 55:10–11

[10] “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven

and do not return there but water the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

[11] so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. 

The Word of God is active. The Word is alive. God’s word actually produces something. What does it do? The word actively builds men and women who become active members of the Kingdom of God who actively engage in building a total culture to the glory of God.  

This is why Christian worship must be shaped and centered by the Word. Because it is the word that equips the churchmen to actively do the work of renewal. 

2 Timothy 3:16–17

[16] All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, [17] that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (ESV)

Ancient liturgies, sermons, and music styles are like equipment. They are tools in the minister's toolbox in his effort to equip the saints. They are like training wheels. They are not the thing itself. Freeling riding the bike is the thing. Hearing, Knowing, and doing God’s Word is riding the bike.

Lazily trusting in the equipment of our Sunday mornings is like leaning on a pair of training wheels on a motorized bike. If that's the only way you travel you are going to get chubby around the heart. A person must look past the liturgies and into the Word of God that those liturgies point to, and hear from God himself, and commune with this God personally. When that happens, a person begins to truly ride the bike. 

The singular devotion to the word of God is the defining feature of a healthy body. A body that is devoted to the Word is a body actively engaged. Because that’s what the word produces. The word actively makes active people, who actively work for renewal. 

Building a Gateway Christendom

About a week ago I shared a piece I wrote called “The Walls of Christendom Continue to Fall.” The title is a bit moody, I know. But I genuinely believe we are living through an unprecedented time in church history here in the Gateway, and I want people to notice it. Decades of institutional rot have hollowed out many churches here in the community. And like old brittle ash trees they have been devoured by the ash borers of complacency and liberalism, and they are starting to fall in people’s backyards.

But I don’t just want people to notice. I don’t just want to give a walking tour of the neighborhood blight. Nor do I want to sulk in the corner and draw attention to HOW BIG MY EMOTIONS ARE. I actually want to do something about it.

That is why I am writing part two. What the Gateway needs more than ever is men and women who follow the Great Carpenter into his great Kingdom building project. We need local churches with people full of biblical vision and locally rooted passion to reach this community with the gospel of Christ. We need churches that believe Christ is the right now King and live as if that means something right now.  We need God to raise up ‘Men of Issachar’ (1 Chron 12:32), men who can discern the times, men who not only see but men who also do. We need builders. 

Now I’m bashful about what I’m about to write, because I know by writing it I’m attempting to be a man of Issachar. I do not pretend to be a prophet, or even a man who has extraordinary powers of insight. I’m just an average hometown guy who loves God, tries to take his word seriously, and who wants to see his community flourish. But I don’t want my bashfulness to be an excuse to shirk responsibility. I want to use the voice God has given me as a local church pastor, to call people to action. I don’t want to be known for being a critic. Nothing of any real value has been built by mere critics. I’d rather risk being criticized in an attempt to specifically call people to specific action. 

Let me say right up front what I want to build. It’s what I’m convinced Jesus is building. I think we should join Jesus in building a distinctly Christian culture—a total way of life where everything is done intentionally for the glory of Christ. As Paul wrote, whatever a Christain does, whether it’s eating or drinking, can and should be done to the glory of the King (1 Cor 10:31). 

Plumb Lines

Before I jump into some project recommendations I’d like to drop some plumb lines. 

First, the Bible teaches that all of creation was made through and for Christ Jesus (Col 1:16). That means everything from dirt, to doors, to diesel trucks are meant to bring glory to Jesus. Every patch of creation is rightfully his domain, which includes everything in the Gateway area. 

The next plumb line I’d like to drop is this: Sin has bent up all our building materials. Because of sin not everything in creation is fulfilling its God designed purpose. In other words, not everything in creation brings glory and honor to King Jesus. Sometimes dirt is used to grow drugs that destroy people's lives. Doorways don’t just lead to sanctuaries they also lead into brothels. And rather than joyfully grunting like ‘Tim the Toolman Taylor’,  in the spirit of gratitude, giving the glory to God for the raw power of a diesel engine, some people use their straight pipes to compensate for a bent up egos. As Kant said , “out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.”

But there is hope. Jesus came to straighten things out. The Bible teaches that Christ Jesus came to save the world (John 12:47). And he came to reconcile ALL things (1:20). And he commissioned His followers to be ambassadors of reconciliation. So whether it’s gardening, running the fork truck at the factory, or drawing up plans at city hall, Jesus desires his followers to bend every aspect of the world toward the explicit purpose of bringing Him glory.  He wants that work to start now. That’s why he told his followers to pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in Heaven (Mt 6:10), even though everything won’t be completely straightened out until Heaven. 

This leaves no area of life off limits. Politics, education, career, raising kids, making a marriage, working on your home, all of it. All areas of life are exciting job sites for building a Christian culture.

Now that I’ve marked a couple plumb lines you might pause and say, hey, what about non-Christains in the Gateway? They certainly don’t read the same blueprint. They might be on the same job site but they don’t have the same foreman. 

First, we need to recognize we don’t force others to build. The kingdom of Jesus does not expand by eminent domain. We spread Christian culture through persuasion, through evangelization, and by modeling the Christian virtues of love and forbearance. The goal is to build a culture that actually demonstrates to the non-Christian community that being in the Kingdom of Jesus is actually better than not. We are a city on a hill (Mt 5:14). We want people to see that there is more life in the city of God than in the city of man. We expand the tent pegs of Christian culture  by joyfully building a joyful culture that we invite people in to taste and see in our joy. We want to win non-Christains.

But no matter how winsomely we build, conflict is inevitable. Jesus clearly taught that there is a rival king and a counterfeit kingdom waging war with His. There will always be skirmishes on the borderlands. There will always be property line disputes. Jesus taught that Satan  is the ruler of this fallen world (John 14:30). It is Satan’s agenda to oppose the building projects of Christ. That is why the Bible teaches that we are in the midst of a spiritual conflict (Eph 6:12). We are to expect opposition. 

There is no neutrality in the world. There is no neutral ground in the Gateway. There are only people, places, and things that are claimed by Christ and counterclaimed by Satan. So confrontation is unavoidable. There are two opposing powers in this world that pull in different directions. And the more the Christian community presses their projects into the frontiers the more conflict the Christian community will experience. Satan wants the church to stay in its four walls. Satan is not threatened by our obsession with Sunday morning only Christianity. Satan does start to sweat and fidget when God’s people decisively seek to build explicitly Christian culture in the Monday-Saturday of everyday life  in the Gateway community. 

Some initial projects to focus on

Ok, now it’s time to grab the trowel. I don’t pretend to offer an exhaustive list of all the building projects Christains should engage in here in the Gateway. This blog would be endless if I tried to create an exhaustive list, and it would be a bit prideful on my part. So here’s just a few bricks I think need to be picked up and mortared into the broader project of building a Christain culture. These are the bricks that I think need to be picked up with a sense of urgency.

First, we must build a culture of evangelism. 

Our churches must build Christains who seek the conversion of their non-Christian neighbors. Transforming our neighborhoods, our cities, our area all starts  with personal faith in Christ. Personal transformation happens before cultural transformation. Personal renewal must happen before city renewal. Personal reform happens before community reform.

No matter how much influence Christians have, it won't matter at all unless the gospel is being proclaimed, and the Spirit is drawing people to the love of the Father. So if you want to reform this community you must evangelize it. If you want to save the soul of the Gateway then you must save the souls of your neighbors. 

That means we have to openly and honestly tell people what the Bible says. That people are lost and broken sinners destined for hell unless they repent and surrender their lives to King Jesus. Salvation and eternal life is available to sinners only by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. We must evangelize the lost by announcing the biblical gospel—the blood atonement of Christ. People have to be aware that our sin was so bad that Christ Jesus had to die for it, and that God’s love for us is so great that while we were still sinners God sent his own Son to die on a cross, freeing us from guilt, and providing us with his righteousness, and securing the resurrection of our bodies. We must never waver from the core of the Gospel—the substitutionary atoning death of Jesus on the cross. 

Second, we must build strong men. A Christain culture will never be potent unless we have virtuous men leading in the home and in the church. Everything rises and falls on male leadership. If you win the men you win everything. But if you lose the men, you lose everything.

I know that’s going to sit awkwardly with some of you. I realize women are fully capable of leading in many areas of life. But for the sake of clarity I am not going to try and nuance this point very much. I’m going to stay focused on calling the men to lead, because I really believe the flourishing of women and children is downstream from strong male leadership. And I also think the opposite is true. Weak men pour poison into their families, churches, and cities. 

The bible lays out a clear principle that authority flows to responsibility. It’s a principle established in the opening chapters of Genesis. God held Adam responsible for the wellbeing of his wife and creation in the Garden. And when things go wrong, when the serpent deceived Eve, and they both sinned by eating the fruit, who does God come after? Adam. God holds Adam responsible for the wellbeing of his family. Because that was his role. That was his responsibility. He was the leader. 

Paul echoes this principle in the New Testament. Within the context of a marriage relationship the husband is the head of the wife (Eph 5). Like Adam was the head of his wife, all husbands have the responsibility of leadership in the home. How are they to lead? They are to lead like Christ. They are to lay their lives down for the flourishing of their wives. Husbands are to spend their strength in such a way that deposits life into their wives’ accounts. A man is not to shirk this responsibility. As Genesis 3 teaches if a man shirks this responsibility the consequences will be grave, for both men and women.

We must also get out of our heads this corrupt idea that submission means accepting a position of lesser value. Jesus repeatedly submitted himself to the will of the Father, and yet that submission never devalued Jesus nor diminished Jesus’ opportunity to flourish. And so the biblical call for wives and congregants to submit to strong male leadership does not mean accepting a position of lesser opportunity. In fact, good men who take their responsibility of leadership seriously will lead their wives into more opportunities and will enhance the lives of those under their care rather than diminish it.  The emphasis here is not on telling women what they cannot do. The emphasis is on calling men to do what they are often not doing. 

Ask any wife who’s husband is using his authority to lead his wife into flourishing. He is like a King who rides out to battle with his men. He doesn’t stay behind the lines on a safe hill pointing directions from his lazy boy. A husband who truly leads is a husband who gets off his rump and makes his life harder so his wife can flourish like a well watered Garden. Show me a man who does this and I’ll show you a woman who gladly follows his leadership.

Let me try and sketch some features of strong men. Strong men lead spiritually. They nourish their wives' spiritual life by initiating Bible reading and prayer time together (Eph 5:26). Strong men live with a posture of deference and self-sacrifice. They put the needs of others before their own, especially the needs of their wives (Eph 5:28-29). Strong men work jobs that provide for their family’s needs (1 Tim 5:8). And strong men don’t just show up to work. Strong men work to excel at their jobs and seek to earn an abundance in order to have more to share with those entrusted to their care (Eph 4:28). And strong men, particularly fathers, take the initiative to ensure their children are receiving a Christian education, that they are being disciplined and instructed in the way of Jesus (Eph 6:4). 

And because the church is the household of God (Eph 2:19), this principle of male leadership is extended to the church community. In other words, the church needs strong men. This is why the elders of a church are to be male (1 Tim 2:12). Not because women aren’t capable. It's because it's not their responsibility. It’s the responsibility of godly men who lead their own household well to lead the household of God well. When that happens the level of flourishing for the entire community is lifted. 

So to summarize this point: Before a Christain community can build a flourishing Christian culture, men need to joyfully  accept the responsibility of household leadership. Men need to lead like Christ, intentionally making their lives more difficult so the people around them can thrive. Or to push off a negative way of putting it: A community of weak, passive men will not build anything. 

The third thing we must build is a distinctly Christian approach to work. Some call this the protestant work ethic or the Christian doctrine of vocation. Remember, Christ is King. That means he is the king of soil, corn, and all the things we make from corn. He is the King of diapers, milk, and changing tables. He is the King of hammers and nail guns. He is King of waiting tables and King of grinding coffee beans. Christ is the King of all forms of work.

So whether you're working at ADM or you're a stay at home mom making lunch for the kiddos, you have to see that there is dignity in that work. There is great purpose in that work. Not because there is a certain dollar amount attached to it, but because Christ is Lord of that work, and he wants it done well. And whatever Christ wants he supplies the grace to make happen. So there is grace available for you to be the best crain operator, nail driver, diaper changer you can be to the glory of God. The grace of God empowers you not to just survive at your job, but to truly thrive. You work in the presence of God. That means you do your work Corem Deo, in the face of God. 

If this is grasped by a community of people it will lift the spirits of the entire community. Instead of grumbling at work and throwing in your slipshod effort, you will begin to strive for excellence. Excellence of attitude, excellence of spirit, excellence of skill. All of these things God supplies the grace to make happen because he wants it to happen. If the Gateway had more joyful and skillful Christian workers leavened into every job sector it would lift the life of this whole place. And it would counter the narrative that this is just another hopeless and tired old river town. 

Fourth, we need to build and strengthen institutions of distinctly Christian education. 

Let me drop another plumb line here. The Bible teaches that the purpose of education is not to get our kids ready for college or even to make money. These can be fine goals. But they are not the main goal. The purpose of education is to teach our kids to know and love God (Eph 6:4; Deut 6). 

The institution that God has established for accomplishing this goal is the family. In particular, fathers are to lead in this effort. It is in the home that children will experience their most formative training in the things of God. But let’s be honest. The modern child spends a lot of their formative waking hours outside the home and away from their parents, who are their primary disciplers. That means they are being discipled by others a lot of the time. Which isn’t necessarily a problem. It just means that it matters what kind of discipleship our kids are receiving from these other institutions.

The modern public school is explicitly and officially secular. We just need to recognize that straightaway. It is the official policy of the public schools not to teach how all things relate to Christ. This creates a problem for the Christian. Because if Christ is King, and if we are called to glorify Christ in all things, then how will our kids know how to do that if when they learn about all things they are not told about the One who holds all things together (Col 1:17). For example, our kids are taught 2+2 is 4 but not told that it is because God created an ordered universe where 2+2 is always 4. Our kids learn about the natural world but are not told about the one who made the natural world. This is a problem, because it can shape a free floating worldview, where everything just exists without reference to the God who made everything exist. 

This doesn’t mean the Public Schools are completely off limits for Christian kids. Just like it’s not necessarily wrong to send your kids to the Y for swim lessons. Your 4 year old can learn how to doggy paddle in the water without the instructor reading the first chapter of Genesis beforehand. It is possible for a Christian child to learn in a secular learning environment and do just fine, assuming they are not being subjected to the habitual indoctrination of a worldview opposed to Christaintiy. A non-Christian can teach a kid how to do arithmetic as well as a Christian teacher. 

But what this means for public school families is that the institution of the home has to be firing on all cylinders. Knowing the public schools are not going to hang knowledge on the hook of the lordship of Christ means you will have to do that for your kids at home. Christian parents will need to be intentional and diligent about looking over homework assignments and helping their children see how God wants grammar to be used to his glory, how science is to be observed while exalting the Creator in wide-eyed wonder, how music is to be enjoyed in the worship of God.

This means Christain churches need to equip public school parents with knowledge and resources on how to discipline their children at bedtime, mealtime, and in all the margins of life. They need to know good bedtime bible story books, good catechisms to memorize with their children, and good songs to sing during family worship. Public school parents need to be equipped to disciple their kids at home.

So to reiterate, to build a potent Christain culture here in the Gateway we must build a strong culture of Christian education. And this building project starts in the home. 

But then this begs the question, what if a Christian family wants to try and build more for their kids. What if instead of sending our children to an institution that is intentionally secular we sent our kids to an institution that was intentionally Christain. This is the logic for building explicitly Christian schools. 

Christian homeschooling is a step in this direction. And it is a noble step. It does not invalidate other forms of education, such as k-12 public and private schools. But it is the logical outworking of a principle taken seriously, that our children need to be taught how to relate all subjects to Christ and worship Christ in all things. What better place to do that than in the home, where the kids see their teacher and parent as one, modeling what they teach, not just simply conveying information. As Jesus taught, a disciple becomes like their teacher (Lk 6:44). Parents who can do this well, who have the time to be present with their children, and have a conviction to do this, should be free to do so. And not only should they be free to do so. They should be strengthened to do this well. 

This means a potent Christain culture should have strong homeschooling support groups. Whether it’s a formal CC group, an enrichment co-op, or an informal group of homeschool moms getting together at a park, homeschool families need to be strengthened. And Christian communities should celebrate and equip homeschool families in their noble effort. By doing so they are equipping people on the front lines of forming a Christain culture. 

But even as virtuous as Christian homeschooling is, it has its limitations. What home school families gain in control and proximity to their kids they lose in the division of labor. A formal k-12 institution such as the public schools or a private Christian school has one massive potential advantage over homeschooling. It has the ability to hire multiple teachers who specialize in one or two areas of expertise. The homeschool mom by necessity is a generalist. She has to teach her 10 year old son algebra but also keep her 3 year old in potty training from peeing on the floor. Some homeschool moms thrive in this environment. And some homeschool families want nothing more than this way of doing things. But most Christian families, if presented with the option, would rather have the specialization and structure of a K-12 school, and the intentional Christian worldview formation of a Christian curriculum.  

This can be built. And it has been built. There are Christains institutions all over the nation that provide excellence in educational structure and accuracy in biblical truth. But there are not enough of these institutions. Just like there are not enough biblical churches. The need is great. 

As the public schools continue to flounder and become more self-consciously hostile to the Christian worldview, Christians parents will need to decide if it’s worth trying to reform the public schools or if it’s better to pull out and build explicitly Christian schools. This decision is up to the wisdom and discretion of the family. But passivity is not a luxury we have. Maybe in an era when bible study and catechism happened in the homerooms of Clinton High we could afford the luxury of not thinking too hard about all this. But times have changed. We do not have that luxury anymore. To build a strong Christian culture here in the Gateway you must either run for school board or pull your kids out. That’s a bit of an oversimplification but I’m trying to make a point here. We must self consciously build in a direction that is self consciously Chrsitian. Otherwise things will continue to progress as they are now—away from Christ, and away from a Christ centered culture.

So to summarize. Here’s my humble recommendations on what the Christian community in the Gateway should be laboring to build. 

1. A culture of personal evangelism. 

2. A culture of strong male leadership

3. A culture that has a distinctly Christian work ethic.

4. A culture of Christian education.

I’m sure there is more to be said. Always is. But this blog has to end somewhere. That somewhere is here.

A Brief Theology of Alcohol

I believe I’ve written about alcohol use before, but I still notice a lot of confusion around the subject. Some think drinking alcohol is incompatible with following Jesus. Others view it as a neutral issue, and shrug their shoulders as if it’s not really that important. Neither attitude really captures what the Bible has to say about it.

Biblically, alcohol is a good and useful gift from God. The Psalmist in Psalm 104 describes wine as a good gift from God that is intended to gladden our hearts.The Apostle Paul saw wine as useful. And so he instructed Timothy, the pastor, to drink wine to help with his stomach problems. Jesus of course turned water into wine at a wedding party. And Deuteronomy 14:25-26 actually instructs God’s people that there are appropriate occasions to buy food and strong drink, and enjoy both in God’s presence as an act of worship, thanking Him for creating a world where we can make good food and pour stiff drinks. 

And heaven itself is pictured in the Bible as a feast complete with wine. 

[6] On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples

a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,

of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. (Is 25:6)

Again. Biblically, alcohol can be a good and useful gift from God meant to heighten our joy in God and is meant to be enjoyed in the presence of God.

But like sex or any other strong pleasure God made, alcohol is a fire. Fire when it’s in the firebox serves a wonderful and delightful purpose. But when fire is brought out of the firebox it can burn the whole house down. When alcohol is used and abused outside of its intended design its effects are destructive. 

Therefore alcohol must be consumed with great care. Because like all of God’s good gifts, they can be turned into idols. Good things can become God things. 

Many people have fallen to the sickness of alcoholism. And because of that, the biblical principle of not causing the weaker brother to stumble applies (Rom 14:13). Some people just need to abstain from alcohol use. Whether it's because they were rescued from an alcohol addiction or whether it's because they have alcoholism in their past they need to stay away from it. But whatever the case may be, the Christian community has the responsibility to bear with the weaker brothers and sisters and be sensitive to the fact that alcohol can become a stumbling block for them. 

But there is also something called the ‘tyranny of the weaker brother.’ I’m not sure who coined that phrase but it means that sometimes in the name of not causing the weaker brother to stumble we create extra biblical law. No where in the bible does it say it’s an unqualified sin to drink alcohol. It is a good gift from God. And so it is wrong for a church community to make a blanket rule that states we will never drink, ever. 

At the end of the day God wants us to become Kings of Creation and exercise dominion over alcohol. We should put it in its proper place. We should master our pleasures and not let them master us. God wants us to be connoisseurs not drunks. 

The Walls of Clinton’s Christendom Continue to Crumble

The other week I sat down with my grandma and listened to her reminisce about living in Clinton as a little girl. She grew up in South Clinton; under the subway as she called it. In those days South Clinton was its own little community. It had handsome working class houses, a well kept park, and was filled with young families. Her father, like many other Clinton fathers, worked for Clinton Corn. She recounted how he would walk the tracks home after working the night shift, and how anxious she would be waiting for him to get home safe.

The house, the neighborhood, everything she knew in South Clinton is gone. The place she grew up in only exists in her mind. It can only be revisited by looking at scraps of photographs or by piecing together fragments of stories drawn from her fading memory. 

Wendell Berry wrote this in his book Jayber Crow: “This is one of the things I can tell you that I have learned: our life here is in some way marginal to our own doings, and our doings are marginal to the greater forces that are always at work. Our history is always returning to a little patch of weeds and saplings with an old chimney sticking up by itself” (35).

The Psalmist says it like this,

[3] You return man to dust

and say, “Return, O children of man!”

[4] For a thousand years in your sight

are but as yesterday when it is past,

or as a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:3-4)

And as Psalm 102 says, all created things will wear out like a garment. 

A greater force was at work in South Clinton. And it eventually reshaped its landscape. Changing economics, transportation habits, and other cultural shifts led to the disappearance of that neighborhood.  Likewise, there are forces at work reshaping the Christian landscape here in the Gateway. Churches are wearing out and transforming before our eyes. The walls of our grandparents' Christendom are crumbling. Fairly soon the old Christian culture of the Gateway will become like South Clinton—unrecognizable 

We are living through the most radical disruption the church in the Gateway has ever gone through. Don’t believe me. Look around. Things are happening that would have been unthinkable to previous generations.  Church buildings are being turned into event venues, a bar, and people's private homes. But most are underutilized, hulking monuments to a bygone era when there was broad community wide church participation.

Oak tree congregations are aging and disbanding. Neighborhood churches have become like neighborhood grocery stores, a thing of the past. Historic denominations are splintering and membership is bleeding. Ministers of dying denominations are living off diminishing endowments like captains at the helm of sinking ships. 

This is not pessimism. Nor is it alarmism. It is reality. These are simply observations that any person with eyes to see can make. People will look back at this period of religious change in our community like we look back at when the malls were built. We will look back like Sally from Cars looked at how the interstate rerouted traffic away from Radiator Springs.  Or the way we look at how modern farming methods have transformed rural communities. Entire landscapes of church history and Christian culture are being completely reshaped before our eyes. We are living through an inflection point in our communities' religious history. So what do we make of this observation?

Sometimes broad changes in our culture are hard to pinpoint. The undercurrents of cultural change are often invisible to the naked eye. But then sometimes something pops up from the current and bobs like a bright orange buoy, letting us know which way the current is flowing.

A good specific example of a broader cultural trend is the new brewery here in town that has gone into the old St. John’s Episcopal church building. This is a big change. And like all big changes, it brings mixed emotions.

I have no mixed emotions about supporting the brewery itself. Alcohol can be a good gift from the Lord, if used wisely, as Jesus’ first miracle demonstrated. As far as I can tell the Great Revivalist Brew Lab is a good brewery, led by good people. They did an unbelievably good job restoring the old church building and transforming it into one of the coolest spaces in our town.  I’d rather have a restored church building turned into a brewery, than an abandoned church building turned into a parking lot. There’s no doubt about that. 

But it is a sign of the times. And the times are what you would call “post-Christian.”

A writer named Mark Sayers defines post-Christian culture as “an attempt to move beyond Christianity while simultaneously feasting upon its fruit.” Over the past 200 years Christian families, rooted in Christian faith communities, driven by distinctly Christian convictions, built stuff in our town. The brick and mortar they built and the institutions they established were a reflection of what they believed about God. In particular, their gathering halls were consecrated and set apart for distinctly Christian worship. And now many of these historic Christian communities have faded away and yet their artifacts remain. And some of these artifacts are being picked up by new enterprising folks who are putting them to uses completely unthinkable to their original makers. 

Let’s back up for a second. What do I mean by culture? I prefer Henry Van Til’s definition. He wrote that “culture is religion externalized.” Everyone is religious in this sense. Everyone is driven by a desire to live the good life and so they build toward it. Everyone is driven by a desire to find meaning and fulfillment and so they build toward it. In other words, we are all worshipers and what we build is a reflection of what we worship. 

Christian culture is produced when Christians cultivate a life that is rooted in Christian hope. For example, Christians believe bodies matter to God. They matter so much that Jesus resurrected his own body and said that in the end we will all be given resurrected bodies like his. In heaven we will have restored bodies. And since Jesus taught that we ought to labor here and now to make earth look more like heaven, we ought to care about restoring bodies. Therefore Christains have historically been the forerunners of building hospitals.  

God also cares deeply about the mind. Because in the end God says that the knowledge of his glory will spread like the waters covering the sea. (Habakkuk 2:14). And it is through the mind that Christian teaching is transmitted to the next generation. And so Christains have always started schools to spread the knowledge of God. 

And one more example. God cares about his family. In the end God will gather his family to live together in one place to live in peace and wholeness in the New Creation. Therefore Christains have made gathering places where we meet together weekly to practice this gathering together with God to do what we will do forever in the New Creation.  This is why Christains build church buildings. 

The point of what I’m saying is that Christians built Christian culture. And that CHristian culture is cracking and crumbling like loose mortar in a limestone wall. 

Christian culture was the dominant cultural force in the Gateway up until very recently. But in other places of the world Christian culture has already lost its dominance decades ago. Looking to places like Europe, Canada, and our own Coasts, we catch a glimpse of the future. And the future is post-Christian. Cathedrals are empty, church participation is way down, and the administrative state has almost completely replaced the church in nearly every arena including education, healthcare, and social services.

And yet one interesting feature of a post-Christian culture is that it still retains the symbols and words of old Christendom. But they are being incorporated and swept into an entirely different cultural building project. That cultural project is called secularism. Which simply means building a culture untethered to the explicit worship of the God of the Bible and His law.

In many places it has become hip to repurpose old Christian words and symbols into secular building projects. Many church buildings have been converted into pubs and secular event venues across the west. Again, no problem with the pubs or the venues. I’m merely pointing out the conversion of these buildings from sacred to secular, reflects a broader shift in the religious landscape of the west. 

This is happening in Clinton. You can see it clearly. 

Now you might say, Nick, this is fine. It’s simply a crab walking out of its shell. The Christains are just reimagining their worship practices and leaving their old buildings for newer buildings. They are just leaving the old forms in favor of new forms. Well, that’s not entirely true.

As this Christianity today article points out, church growth has been a zero sum game in America as of late. Mainline protestant churches have hemorrhaged members over the past several decades while evangelical churches have grown. But the overall church membership across denominations is down. So essentially some of the crabs walked away from the shell and never found another one.

One of the things that have been going on in mainline protestant churches such as the Episcopalians, the Methodists, the Lutherans, and the Presbyterians is that many of these denominations have abandoned historic biblical christianity and are dying as a result. For example the Episcopalians have recently adopted resolutions to affirm gender transition surgeries and hormone treatments for minors with gender dysphoria. This would have been unthinkable to even Episcoplaians just a couple decades ago. But so would have been the ordination of gay clergy, the abandonment of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, and many other forms of biblical apostasy that happens in “progressive” mainline protestant churches. One of the trends we see is that the more liberal a church becomes in its theology the more members that church loses. 

This is because when churches lose their biblical backbone they cease to have any shape or definition. They become like a bowl of jelly. And it is the nature of jelly to take on the shape of its container. And progressive churches with no biblical backbone take the shape of the broader secular culture. And when a church takes the shape of the culture it loses its distinctive Christaian identity. So in other words, people have left the shell of biblical Chrisitanity and have abandoned building Christian culture altogether.

So the shells of Christendom sit here in the Gateway. More shells will be abandoned over the years. More shells will be picked up and converted into secular projects and for secular purposes. Old Christendom is dead, the walls are coming down here in the Gateway, and the living members of this community have a front row seat to the demolition. 

The inevitable question is why. Why is this happening? 

In one sense it’s not for us to know exactly. In general this is life under the sun in a fallen world. Bricks crumble, metal rusts, and institutions decline and fade away. Or as Gandalf said to Frodo, It “is not for [us] to [know]. All we have to [know] is what to do with the time that is given us.”

And yet history is not a random collection of accidents. We have arrived at this moment on purpose. There is a Lord of history. As Job chapter 12 says, “who among you does not know that the Lord has done this.” Like the rising and falling of nations, God is sovereign over the rise and fall of local churches and local Christian culture.

It has been a pattern in the history of God’s people. God saves people by his grace. God establishes his people in covenant with him. God’s people then build a society centered around God's word. But then people drift from God’s word, and break covenant with him, and what they built begins to break and decay.

God disciplines his people when they begin to drift from him. God often tears down our religious edifices to humble us back into right relationship with him, which is the main thing. God often disciplines his wayward children by tearing down their walls.

[12] Why then have you broken down its walls,

so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?

[13] The boar from the forest ravages it,

and all that move in the field feed on it. (Psalm 80:12-13)

We don’t fault the ones plucking Christendom’s fruit. We should instead recognize that spiritual complacency opens up the opportunity for the ax of the secularist to be laid to the trunk of Christendom.

Like a planter of a vineyard, the Lord establishes Christian congregations and expects them to bear fruit. And when they don’t he removes his protection. 

[5] And now I will tell you

what I will do to my vineyard.

I will remove its hedge,

and it shall be devoured;

I will break down its wall,

and it shall be trampled down.

[6] I will make it a waste;

it shall not be pruned or hoed,

and briers and thorns shall grow up;

I will also command the clouds

that they rain no rain upon it. (Isaiah 5:5-6)

This is ultimately what I’m most concerned with as a Christian pastor. I want people to look at the decaying walls of Christendom here in the Gateway and respond not with nostalgia, not with despair, not with anger. But with repentance.

It’s ok for you to respond as Nehemiah did and grieve the fact that the old city of our fathers graves lies in ruins. But we must also be like Nehemiah and do something about it. We ought to grab our hocks and trowels and lay some bricks. It’s right to desire the rebuilding of our walls. 

But what must come first is prayer and repentance. As Nehemia prayed, we have erred and strayed God has not. We have sinned and broken covenant, God has not. And our uprooting is a product of our uprooting from God’s word. 

So we must learn from Nehemia, and the whole history of God’s people. Now is a time for repentance, and a turning to God in humility. That is the only way our community will truly experience a great revival. 

God rebukes and corrects his children when they lose the main thing. It’s never been about the buildings, the programs, the outward stuff. The outward stuff is merely designed to reflect and demonstrate the inward worship of our hearts. The most important thing that God sees and judges is the heart (1 Sam 16:7).  It’s not how well we play our organs or our electric guitars. It's not how many people we pack into our auditoriums or sanctuaries. It’s not how well kept our property is. It's the heart that God sees. And it is the unseen posture of our hearts that God sees and judges.

And a true heart that God loves is a heart that is meek before the Lord. As Jesus taught, blessed are the meek (Matthew 5:5). The meek are those who have humbled themselves to God and have been trained by God to go wherever he leads. This includes the wilderness. And this is where God’s people get led to when the walls come down. We are driven into the wilderness.

God often disciplines spiritually lazy children by plucking them up from the familiar and leading them into the unfamiliar. God often does the deepest spiritual work in the most unrooted seasons of life. As the congregational life of the Gateway continues to be in flux, my prayer for us is that the church would depend on God alone. We would hear his voice and would be guided by his presence. And his presence would be enough. We don’t need the walls of Christendom as much as we need the Lord of Christendom. We need Christ. 

God promises that the meek will then be reestablished, and will flourish again. 

[11] But the meek shall inherit the land

and delight themselves in abundant peace. (Psalm 37:11). 

So take heart Christian. Even though the Christian church is headed into the wilderness, and in many ways is already there, take heart that God is training you to be meek. The question God is putting before you is this: Can you live without the stained glass. Can you live without the steeples? Can you live without the rock band or the charismatic preacher? Is the Lord enough? Can we live without our comfortable auditoriums, our hip branding, our endless pursuit of relevance. As the Lord takes the church’s cultural capital from us, will we humble ourselves before his face, and cry out for  clean hands and a pure heart. Or will we cling to our stuff like spoiled brat kids?

[23] Search me, O God, and know my heart!

Try me and know my thoughts!

[24] And see if there be any grievous way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139:23-24)

This is the posture of the hearts of a people God will use to build the new Christendom of the Gateway—meek and dependent on Jesus Christ, the King of kings. 

The Remnant Will Survive

God has been very kind to our church plant. A thousand words could not capture all the grace God has shown us. But one specific evidence of His grace is the amount of children we have in our church. It’s such a joy to see young families with littles running around on Sunday morning, to see groups of families meeting in the home, and to see the kids' tables filled. Children are indeed a blessing from the Lord (Ps 127). 

Having a church full of young families is a blessing in the general sense, but it is also a blessing in the specific covenant sense. All over scripture you discover that the presence of children is a strong indicator of God’s blessing on a people walking in obedience to His commands (Gen 1:28; Gen 15:5; Deut 28:4). So as a church family we are thankful for the fruit of the womb, and we are also desiring to be obedient stewards with the fruit we have been given. And that means we are committed to teaching our kids the way of Jesus (Eph 6:4). And as we teach our kids to be obedient to Jesus we believe God will continue to multiply our blessing. 

Our church is committed to coming alongside parents to help them with their responsibility to teach their children. One of the ways we serve young families in our church is by offering a Sunday morning kids program that seeks to saturate our kids with a knowledge of the scriptures and to show them that the scriptures point to the person of Christ. 

And because God is blessing our church family with children, we are filling up the kids room in our Sunday gathering space. And that has led me to search for a larger space to house our kids. And that has led me to have conversations with people who own spaces in our community that are available to rent or purchase. And because some of those available spaces are old church buildings, that has led me to have conversations with members of other local churches in the area who have either had to close their doors or who are nearing the end of their life as a congregation. 

The juxtaposition between their older congregation and our younger congregation is obvious and humbling for me. Listening to an elderly church member reminisce over bygone days can be heartbreaking. Listening to an older member of a local church that has seen a steady decline in membership for the past 10 years is difficult. The grief and loss is real. And one of the most obvious areas of heartbreak for a withering church is the absence of children. It really makes a group painfully aware of the fleeting nature of life. We are all dying men and women and it is only a matter of time before we all wither and pass on to be with the Lord. And after that we hope our children perpetuate what we have built and continue to worship our God. But sometimes that doesn’t happen. Life in a fallen world means that until Christ comes back everything we build is vulnerable to rust and rot as well as the destructive force of human flesh. This makes church groups and church buildings vulnerable to the volatile life cycles of growth and decay. Our church plant is not immune to this. 

I know that our church is in the season of planting. We are in a time of newness and of growth. But I also know that there is a time for everything under the sun (Ecc 3:1). More than likely the church we are planting will also enter into a season of decline and will wither like an aging and spent fruit tree. The lord will do what he pleases with the work of our hands. One day in my old age I may have to hand the keys to our future church building over to another wide eyed church planter.

But this does not lead me to despair. I was reading in 2 Kings this morning and I came across a familiar theme in the Bible. It is the theme of “remnant.” The passage I read was this: “And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward. For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the LORD will do this (19:30-31).”

The story of Israel’s Kings is full of highs and lows. From the heights of David and Solomon’s Temple, to the lows of Manassah’s idolatry and Israel's captivity, you see it all. Some moments of Israel’s life as a nation there was flourishing. Babies were born, the land produced plenty, and the people lived in peace and prosperity. But in other times there was famine and the children of Israel were stolen away by enemy nations. 

The pattern seen in Israel’s kingdom is similar to the pattern we see in the life of the church. The Lord gives and the Lord takes (Job 1:21). There are ebbs and flows of growth and decay. There are seasons of gathering building materials and seasons of gathering the rubble. But we do not lose hope because all the while, in the midst of it all, God is preserving a remnant for his own possession. 

Just like the nation of Israel, not every person in the church knows and loves the Lord Jesus. Like Jesus said, in every field there grows good crops and bad weeds (Mt 13:24-30). And like the reigns of individual Kings came and went, local churches come and go. But God has always preserved and blessed the remnant of people who stay faithful and keep their eyes on Him. 

This means it doesn’t matter how dead or dying an individual local congregation a remnant will always survive. Because the church is ultimately the people of God not the buildings and programs. Even when the building gets sold off and turned into a brewery, the church will remain the house of God. Even when the state no longer recognizes our 501(c)(3), God will keep the church incorporated for eternity because our founding member conquered death. Jesus promised to preserve a remnant from every family, from every local church, and from every nation on earth when he said “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18). 

So wherever you find yourself in the life cycle of growth and decay, know this. You will survive. You and all who have pledged their allegiance to Christ will be preserved through the remainder of your years on earth and into eternity. Any church member that has to bury their articles of incorporation and sell their building can walk away a survivor. Any church member who has been burned by a church leader and has had to walk away from the church they found Jesus in can walk away a survivor. Even if something man has built has crumbled around you and you find yourself an exile and a wanderer know this: The Lord will root you again. This is because you are not just walking away from the ruins of your past, you are walking toward Christ. And in Christ there is life and a future. 

Keep your life centered on Christ and your roots will grow deep. And as Jesus himself promised, you will bear much fruit (Jn 15:5). Abide in Christ in all things and no matter how hard the wind blows or how hard the storms rage. In Christ your roots will be deep and your fruit will grow high. This is a promise you can bank on because God himself promises to do it. 

So in all things look to Christ. And in all things you will bear much fruit, no matter the circumstances. 

My ideal church building daydream

Church planting creates a restless culture. Well, it doesn’t really create restlessness so much as it inflames an already restless heart. A church plant is fragile, mobile, sprouting and scrounging for sunlight so that it can grow and establish.  A church plant is always asking who are our people, and where will our people gather and live? Where are we going and what will it look like when we get there?

These are questions that every human being asks. Every person has a restless and hungry heart. As Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in God.” So it makes sense that when you get a bunch of restless people in a new church it's like carving out a channel for a river to flow into. The river wants to flow. But where will it end up? 

Our hope as Christians is that we will all end up in heaven in the presence of God. The Old Covenant believers called this the Promised Land. The New Covenant believers call this the New Creation. The resurrected Christ has gone before us to secure our final destination. And so we walk by faith, trusting that Christ is leading us to our inheritance. 

But what are we doing now? Knowing that we will not fully arrive as believers until death, or the final return of Christ, what do we do while we wait? 

We don’t just sit around. We think, we feel, we build, we love, we exist in relationship to God living for the glory of God. Jesus calls this seeking the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. So our job right now as Christians is to construct a life that looks like heaven, which is whatever life looks like when Jesus gets his way. 

There’s a lot of different ways we can go with this. We can explore many implications of this idea that we are called to seek heaven on earth. But let me focus on something that has practical concern for me as a church planter. My concern is this: What kind of space should a restless church family hungry for a home strive to create? 

Let me phrase it this way. If it is indeed our mission to seek God’s Kingdom (Mt 6:33), and if it is God’s will for His kingdom to be experienced on earth as it is in heaven, the church has an opportunity to create a place where people can experience a taste of heaven on earth when they gather with us. What would that look like? 

Let me suggest that the church has an opportunity to use its gathering space, its building, as a means to experience the Kingdom of God. I know the building is not the essence of the church. But just like your family, your house is not the essence of your household, but the building you live in plays an important role in everything your family does. The family home is where you nurture and educate your children. It is the space where you enjoy one another's company. It is a place for showing hospitality and for entertaining guests. And most importantly, since God is the center of the Christian family, the home is a place for experiencing the presence of God. 

So the church family has an opportunity with its gathering space to give people a taste in the Kingdom of God. Since the Kingdom will not be fully experienced until the New Creation, this experience is a foretaste. It is a nibble. But what a glorious nibbling it could be. 

Let me suggest an imaginary building. Indulge with me a dream. Since I am a pastor of a church plant without a “permanent home,” I daydream of gathering in a space that draws people into a beautiful vision for Kingdom life. 

Imagine first the sanctuary. The sanctuary is just a fancy name for the place that is set apart and dedicated for a special use. And in Christian worship it is a physical place that is consecrated for the worship of the holy God. The sanctuary is the room where the people of God come together to celebrate the glorious gift of God’s presence. As the Psalmist rejoices, “So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory (Psalm 63:2). And in the sanctuary he passionately praises God with hands lifted high because his steadfast love is better than life. The sanctuary is where we focus all of our attention on God.

All throughout the Bible God’s people have gathered in the holy sanctuary to praise the holy God. The physical details of that gathering space have varied over time. God’s people have gathered in mountain sanctuaries (Ex 15:17), tent sanctuaries (Ex 36:1), and temple sanctuaries (1 Kings 6). And God’s people have enjoyed the presence of God in gathered worship in home sanctuaries (Acts 2:46). And throughout church history believers have gathered in caves, warehouses, bars, schools, event centers, basements, pole barns, and pergolas. The list could go on. Honestly the whole earth is God’s sanctuary. As Acts 17:24 states, God is not limited to the temples made by human hands. The whole creation is the Creators. And yet he chooses to be present with the gathered church coming together as living stones (1 Peter 2:4). The local church is the temple of the living and holy God. So just about anywhere the people of God gather to worship the holy God is consecrated as a sanctuary. 

But back to my daydream. It is true that we can worship God anywhere. But if we had freedom what would we build? This is a fascinating question that forces us to reckon with our presuppositions about beauty and practicality. It forces us to deal with a lot of things related to the theology of place. But let me just narrow the focus and point out the obvious. While it is true that we are pilgrims and wanderers on earth (1 Pt 2:11), is it not also true that we desire a home? And while we know that we will never be truly at home in this world, don’t we want to live in a house that we can call a home? You see where I’m going with this. While it’s true that Christians in China worship with bags over their heads out of fear of persecution, and while it is true that the people of God enslaved to Egyptian masters had no temple, is that the ideal to strive for? If we have the means and the freedom, what would we build to the glory of God given the chance? 

The early church is often cited as the standard for Christian practice. And I agree with that for the most part. But the early church is not the completed church. It’s the early church. Give them time and see what they build. And you don’t have to wonder what they would build if the got the freedom and resources. In a few hundred years they built cathedrals.

Looking at a cathedral, or almost any church building built before the 1930’s, one thing you notice is that they expressed their theology through their architecture. Specifically their sanctuaries emphasized the holy and transcendent glory of God. The high ceilings, the cross shaped floor plan, the tall stained glass windows. Almost everything built and decorated in the ancient sanctuaries were an attempt to draw our hearts to the holiness of God. 

So back to my daydream. Imagine a room that draws your gaze upwards. Imagine a room that inspires awe. And imagine a room that carries the voices of the saints into the heavens. By helping people experience the vertical nature of worship we are helping people experience the kingdom of God. 

But the Kingdom of God is not just transcendent and vertical. It is immediate and horizontal. The almighty and holy God took on flesh and lived among us in the person of Jesus. God is not just distant in heaven. He is present in our ordinary and creaturely lives. He is Emmanuel, God with us. 

And because God is with us the Christian church celebrates the presence of God with convivial joy. Psalm 23 illustrates this well. Our God prepares a table for his people, anointing our heads with oil, and causing our cups to overflow. The Bible pictures God’s work of salvation as a great reconciling work that brings us into his family and gives us a seat at his table. And his table is laden with fat and rich food (Ps 63:5), bread to strengthen our hearts (Ps 104:15), and vintage wine that makes us glad (Ps 104:15; Is 25:6). These are just a few of the verses that describe the joy of being brought into the family of God. 

This leads me to imagine a second room in my ideal church building. That room is the banquet hall. This is a room for big meals, big laughter, and big joy. This gives people a taste of heaven, where we will all enjoy the marriage supper of the lamb (Rev 19:9). And so when we invite others as a church to our common table we are inviting people to experience the great glad joy of heaven. 

There is obviously so much more we could add to this imaginary church building. But this is what enchants my heart. An ideal church building draws our hearts upward to the holy God. And it also provides a place for our hearts to be knitted together horizontally by the Spirit of God as one big happy family around the table. This sounds like heaven to me. 

Reflections on Holiness

This morning I stumbled across the writings of an old dead guy named Irenaeus. He was an early leader of the Christian church. In fact his leadership goes so far back into church history that he was only a couple generations away from the Apostles themselves, and he wrote one of the very first summaries of Christian belief. That summary is called “On the Apostolic Preaching.”

In the first few pages of that little book, Irenaeus writes that a real Christian is a person of faith. As he puts it, the way of faith is “single and upward, illumined by the heavenly light, but the ways of those who do not see are many, dark and divergent; the one leads to the kingdom of heaven, uniting man to God, while the others lead down to death, separating man from God. This is necessary for you and for all who are concerned about their salvation to make your way by faith without deviation, surely and resolutely, lest, in slacking, you remain in gross desires, or, erring, wander far from the right path” (Irenaeus [1]). 

Irenaeus presents the life of faith as a journey upward to heaven. Which of course is how the Bible pictures faith. Abraham, the biblical father of faith, is told to pick up and leave his homeland and trust in God that he will be given a new homeland and that he will be made into a great nation. The disciples of Jesus are told to drop their nets and follow him. The life of faith is basically trusting in God and following his invitation to join him on a great adventure. 

So faith is active. It has movement. It leads you somewhere. Faith leads you to God himself. 

I also really like how Irenaeus points out that Christian faith is faith that is without deviation. It is the resolute, without slacking, obsessively singular pursuit of Christ. As Jesus himself said, the only way to find eternal life is to follow him (Jn 14:6). He is the doorway to the eternal Kingdom of God (Jn 10:7). There is only one way to heaven. As Jesus said, the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few (Mt 7:14). The way of the Christian is the way of faith in Christ. 

So faith is the active trust and pursuit of God alone. And in the end, faith will lead us to the presence of God. But there is one problem. God is holy. And to be in the presence of a holy God requires us to be holy ourselves. 

Holiness essentially means being consecrated and set apart. God is not like us. He is different and separate from his creation. He is infinitely more beautiful, good, loving, generous, creative, powerful, (and the list could go on), then anything else we could possibly compare him to. He is holy. 

Holiness also connotes purity. God is not stained with sin. He is not polluted by error. He is without fault. There is nothing ugly about God. There is nothing in him that distorts his goodness. But we are not pure. We as humans are full of impurities and faults. This presents a real problem for us. Because the infinite holy God cannot be united with what is unclean. 

But the Gospel is that it is by faith alone we can be made clean and united to God (Rm 6). It is by the blood of Jesus that we are made holy (Heb 10:10). Jesus took all of our unholiness on the cross and was killed with it. This cleans us of all that separates us from Christ. And because of this it is by faith alone in the cross of Christ that we are consecrated and brought into the presence of God.

Theologians call this instantaneous experience of being brought into right relationship with God justification. The moment a person places their full trust in Jesus they are consecrated. And this consecration makes it possible for the presence of God through his Holy Spirit to live inside that person. The person of faith literally becomes God’s temple, or his house, to put it another way. 

The Holy Spirit lives inside the person of faith. This happens at the moment of conversion. But the person's experience of the transforming effects of God’s presence is gradual. This is called sanctification. What I mean is that a body and soul that has been polluted by sin will need time to grow in holiness. The pollutants of the mind left by years of pornography use, the stains left by years of gossip, the wounds left by a person's former life will take time to heal. This is why the life of faith is described as a continual journey of growth in holiness. 

What’s beautiful about this is that as we grow in holiness we can grow in experiencing more of the presence of God. And in the presence of God there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Ps 16:11). Jesus promises that as we abide in him his joy will be in us and our joy will be made complete (John 15:11). The journey of faith is a journey toward holy joy. This is why Irenaeus urges every follower of Jesus to pursue a pure and holy faith. 

The way he describes the pursuit of holiness is fascinating to me. He says that the pursuit of holiness involves both the body and the soul. The holiness of the body requires that we abstain from all shameful things and lawless deeds, what Paul calls the works of the flesh. And the holiness of the soul is described as keeping truth continually in our minds. 

To summarize, a pure and holy faith leads us to the joyful presence of God. And a pure and holy faith involves living in such a way as to avoid the bodily works of the flesh. And it involves the embracing of truth. A pure faith that pursues holiness of soul and body, according to Irenaeus, is a faith where the soul and body of a person “rejoice together and join forces to lead man to the presence of God.”

So trust in Christ, obey his commands, and rejoice in his presence.  

Lazy Spirituality

A few years back I was working on a roof repair. And I was uncertain about how to flash the chimney so water did not leak into my house. And I remember asking someone who was knowledgeable, and they said this to me: “Just remember, water flows downhill.”

What sage advice... But he was right. It is water's nature to flow down hill. This is because water takes the path of least resistance. 

It is the same thing in our sin nature. As fallen human beings we desire the path of least resistance. In other words, we are prone to spiritual laziness. And because of sin we have grown fat around the heart (Ps 119:70).

This is important for us to recognize as a church plant. Because it is common for church plants to be full of hard work on the outside (moving tables and chairs and what-not). But that doesn’t necessarily mean people are working hard on the inside to burn that fat around the heart.

All the work going on in a church plant might just be a big struggle to find “what works.” Doing things simply because they “work” is called pragmatism. New churches are prone to pragmatism because in the early days they have to scrap just to survive. They work hard to discover what brings people in the door, what keeps them happy, what keeps their attention, what makes them give, what makes them serve. And as a result, many churches settle for programs, styles of music, buildings, or sermons simply because they “work.” 

But the real question is, by what standard do we judge what is working?I think the Apostle Paul would answer that question this way: Does what we are doing as a church train us for godliness? Does outside bodily work lead us to do any inward bodily work. Or are we settling for what seems to just be working on the outside.In Paul’s letter to Timothy he tells him to “train yourself for godliness” (1 Tim 4:7). The word “godliness” means an inner attitude toward God that is reverent and honoring to Him. So godliness is an interior disposition. It's what the old theologians called piety. It’s at the heart of the greatest command to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. A godly person submits their whole being to God in a way that pleases him and glorifies him. 

Timothy is told that he is to train himself for godliness. This word that is translated into train is the Greek word gymnazo, which is the word we get our English word gymnasium from. Timothy is to work out to strengthen his godliness like an athlete works out to strengthen a muscle or a skill.Churches are supposed to be gymnasiums for training in godliness and leaders are supposed to function as kind of personal trainers in this work. Every single thing we do should be strengthening our godliness. 

But many churches have settled and taken the path of least resistance. As Paul says in his second letter to Timothy, many believers and churches only have the form of godliness. Or as Jesus pointed out in the Religious leaders in his day, they were like white washed tombs. The outside looked good but the inside was festering. So it is a form of spiritual laziness that we settle for an outward religious form, what Paul generically calls bodily training, instead of digging deeper to burn that fat around the heart. 

In our own culture here in the Gateway area I see this play out in two main ways. One way is what I would call high church laziness. This is a church full of people who go through all the right motions. They say all the prayers. They kneel at the right time. They wear the right robes. They lift the elements just right.  All outward disciplines seem to be very godly. But on the inside so many people are simply going through the motions with ungodliness in their hearts. 

The spiritually lazy high church is like a gym culture that people go in and settle for just being there. They rack the same amount of weight. They do the same amount of reps. They never push themselves any further than the fundamentals and so they plateau. 

There is also a lazy low church. It’s the same problem as the high church, it's just the other side of the coin. These are churches that pride themselves in authenticity and passion. But they too can settle for the appearance of godliness. These churches are full of people that say they value a passionate and authentic spiritual life but they really are just happy to be entertained by others who seem to be passionate and authentic. This too is settling for mere bodily training because they are settling for external religion rather than inward godliness. 

And leaders in lazy low churches often neglect urging their people to godliness because they are pragmatists who settle for “what works.” As long as there are butts in the seats and dollars in the bank account people are not challenged to train for godliness. Because that might scare people away. They act like a gym that installs ice cream vending machines and holds hourly pizza parties because it brings people in. But all the while the gym owner is the only one working out. And everyone else is unhealthy but they are content just happy as a peach to be around the owner. This is what is happening in churches all over America who bow to the idol of church growth and pragmatism. 

The only way to be rescued from lazy spirituality is to receive the true godliness of Christ. Jesus Christ perfectly revered the Father. He perfectly submitted his every thought to the Father. Every single motivation of his heart was always in the right place. He alone resisted temptation and he alone was godly. Because he himself is God. 

By faith in Christ you receive a substitute godliness. On the cross Jesus exchanged his godliness for your ungodliness. On the cross your ungodliness died in Christ. And by faith in his resurrection his godliness lives in you. 

So for the Christian your godliness is like your righteousness. It is not native to you. No person natively or naturally reveres and honors Christ. And yet, by grace through faith you receive the gift of God’s Spirit. And it is through the Spirit of God that godliness begins to bloom in your life from the inside out. All godliness, from front to back, beginning to end is a work of grace.

But grace works through active submission and not passive laziness. Paul captures this elsewhere when he says he worked harder than any of the other apostles but it wasn’t him it was the grace of God working through him. This is what Christian training in godliness looks like. 

Make sure you catch this or the whole thing will run off the rails. You work hard because God saved you to work hard. You don’t work hard to get saved. God calls you to fan the flame of godliness that he put there, not to try and start the fire in your own heart. To try to manufacture godliness apart from the initiating grace of God would be like trying to start a fire with soggy wood with no spark. 

This is why describing Timothy’s upbringing as nurture was the perfect way of describing it. As Christians we are called not to create godliness. We are called to nurture it. And we are called to grow it through intentional training and cultivation. 

We should desire this above all things because to possess godliness is to possess fullness of life. Jesus himself said that abide in me and I in you. And it was Jesus who said that if we abide in Christ his joy will be in us and our joy will be complete. 

This is why Paul so confidently says to Timothy that this is the best way for him to spend his time. This is the best way for all Christians to spend their time. It’s to train for godliness. 

Hospitality Tension

I just fired up our espresso machine for the fall season. I drained the old water, rinsed the group heads with cafiza, and shined up the stainless steel. With the doors open the fall-ish morning breeze came into our house yesterday and I knew it was time to click the switch over to “on” and listen to the hiss of the steam boiler heat up to full pressure. 

In our house we have a La Marzocco Linea 3. It’s just stupid overkill for a home espresso machine. It’s a 3 group head for goodness sake. But… (brace yourself for the midwest ‘I got it on sale line’) I did indeed get a great deal on it. I bought it off my old employer because it needed a ton of work and I was willing to make that investment. It’s not something I’d run a coffee shop with but it’s great for in-home hospitality. 

This post really isn’t about my espresso machine. But I thought I’d start it off by telling you that my family and I love hospitality. And so we invest a lot of time, money, and tools into making the hospitality of our family excellent. The espresso machine is just one tool that we put in our family's hospitality tool box as we go about our work. 

I’m extremely grateful for all the ways in which we are able to welcome people into our home and help them enjoy food, drink, and relationships. God has graciously provided our family with a pretty large old home here in Clinton to fit people in, the skills to restore the home (it’s a fixer upper), and the desire to shape the home into a place of creative hospitality. And God has blessed our efforts. 

So far our home has been the anchor of our broader work of church planting. It has been the hub for relationship building. We began gathering our core team community group in our living room. We began our Sunday morning gathering in our living room. We drank coffee before the service in our kitchen. We host membership classes, counseling sessions, and leadership training. Our house has been the living room of the church for a couple years now. And it’s been pretty sweet to see the Spirit of God incubate our young church community right under our own roof. 

Our work has taught me some things. It has taught me that if God is truly present in our work of hospitality then he will attract people who are in need of hospitality. 

I know that sounds obvious. Biblical hospitality is literally the welcoming of strangers and loving them so much that they transform from strangers to friends. This is what God does with us spiritually. And it is what he is doing through the church physically. So when the church is physically creating hospitable places people will want to be at those places. And when the Spirit inspires excellent and creative hospitality more people will want to be a part of the hospitality experience.  It’s like in cartoons when a delicious, fresh baked pie is set on the window sill and the scent wafts over to a character and literally lifts them off the ground and draws them to the pie. This is what the Spirit is doing in the hearts of lonely and lost people when the scent of the Holy Spirit wafts from a hospitable church and is caught in their nostrils. 

You see this in the early church. Acts 2 gives us a pretty concrete picture of what the Spirit of God can do when biblical hospitality is put to practice. Deep fellowship between believers is experienced (2:42), new people are welcomed and added to the believing community (47), and a thick awareness (or aroma) of God saturates the church (2:43; 47). 

As a pastor it has been my goal to essentially invite people to “taste and see” Jesus. And I believe they have. I know I have. This has been rewarding. And it also has been exhausting. 

Our church plant is experiencing some growth. And this growth has taught me a big lesson in hospitality. The lesson is this: When hospitality is done right there will always be an uncomfortable tension in the community. It’s a tension you see on paper in Acts 2. But you don’t really know how uncomfortable it is until things tense up in your living room or kitchen. The tension is between fellowship and mission. 

Let me just illustrate this. At our church we have a solid crew of folks who have gathered together pretty consistently for a couple of years. They have become familiar with one another. Their intimacy is deepening. And so is their trust with one another. They are really becoming a community that truly belongs to one another. It’s special to watch. 

And also at our church we have new people entering into this community of belonging. New people who have never really known what it means to deeply belong to Christ or his church. And so they need to be invited in, welcomed, and shown love. There’s an awkward new kid in school phase. 

Do you see how these two groups of people can maybe experience tension? Do you see how they could have competing desires? Imagine a big rope with one end tied to the heart of the fellowship and the other to the heart of the stranger. The fellowship has a desire to go deep with one other. But the stranger just wants to belong. The fellowship has their attention on their own familiar needs, but for the stranger to be welcomed the fellowship needs to divert their attention to the stranger.  

Think of a small group setting. The fellowship wants to get beyond the surface and drill down into the deeper things of life. But for the fellowship to go deeper they need trust and stability. And when the stranger is welcomed into their midst the trust of the group is momentarily disrupted and the stability is shaken. It’s human nature for this to happen. It’s natural for people not to trust unfamiliar people. Who knows if they are a wolf or a sheep? For example, let’s say Betty Sue doesn’t know if she can talk about her marriage problems or questions she has about theology because she’s not sure if the new person that just arrived at the group will judge her for it. And the new person isn’t sure if the group will welcome him into what may turn out to be just another catty clique. And so the desires of the group as a whole are often in tension wherever hospitality is practiced. The desire of the fellowship to go deep pulls the rope one direction and the desire of the stranger to belong pulls the rope in another. The result is relational tension. And people, frankly, just aren’t that good at living in this tension. 

And so the temptation is to drop one side of the rope. It’s tempting for the fellowship to retreat into a ‘holy huddle’ and fence off their group from the awkwardness of new people. Because new people really do change the dynamic of the group. And people typically don’t like change. This is why it’s common for churches to stay the same for years. Folks just don’t want to deal with the uncomfortable experience of a revolving door of new and strange people. So they jam up the revolving door and seal off the group from outsiders.  

Tension can get let out from the other side as well. Sometimes deep fellowship can be dropped in an effort to prioritize new people. Taken to the extreme if an entire church culture is driven by the sole desire to reach new people then the culture is often experienced as superficial because the leadership is constantly catering to the lowest common denominator. And besides being superficial this culture can also feel unsafe to be in because no one has enough familiarity to build trust. And if there is no genuine trust between people, the reason for belonging to the group is almost always selfish and mercenary. For example, some people like coming to big church gatherings with high production because it feels very similar to shopping in a crowded mall. The mall is designed to make each customer feel individually welcomed as they shop, but ultimately the reason for that shopper to be in the mall is because they are shopping. So the mall caters to the experience of the individual as an individual. But the church has a different economy and a different goal. The church is full of individuals but they are not simply there to make a transaction. They are there to belong to another in this shared life with Jesus. And that’s why a mall community would make a poor church. And yet churches all over the country foolishly act like malls. 

Back to the tension. What I've learned, and am still currently learning, is that true biblical hospitality has to keep the tension. There’s no other way around it. If we are to be obedient to Christ our hospitality rope has to be taught. You see this plainly stated in Acts 2. The early church was a community of deep belonging, which was exemplified in their willingness to joyfully share with one another. And you also see this deep community radiating an attractive joy that draws in the strangers. But they didn’t stay strangers because it says they became believers and were added to their numbers. So the community was both deep and wide. 

It’s my conviction that modern day Christian hospitality should take this shape. The church should be both a deep well for believers and it should be wide in its invitation to non-believers. You see this in the metaphors the New Testament uses for the church. The church is both the body, which has to be deeply connected to function right, and it is to be a city on a hill, visible for travelers to see and accessible for them to visit. 

Christ himself perfectly demonstrates what it looks like to live in this tension. He had 12 disciples who were his closest companions. And while he cultivated a deep relationship with them he taught them to be “fishers of men.” They were constantly engaged in a lifestyle of evangelism and fellowship at the same time. 

This is really the heart of it all. A church community attempting to faithfully live out biblical hospitality will experience uncomfortable relational tension. But it is not an either or situation. It is both and. It is not a problem to solve but a tension to manage. A church that is faithful to the way of Jesus is both growing deep together while also seeking to bring others into that deep relationship. We are seeking to grow close to Jesus while also welcoming others to Jesus. We are seeking to grow close to our church community while also welcoming others to our church community. 

My encouragement to you is that the next time you're in community, and you sense the rope getting taught, instead of seeking to drop the rope, praise God. Rejoice! Because if the rope is tight that probably means Jesus is there pulling on it. 

Making Every Moment Delightfully Holy

Lately I've been chewing on the words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 4:4-5. He writes to Timothy that our good God created a good world, and has placed us in this world to enjoy the creation with a thankful heart. And he says creation is made holy “by the word of God and prayer.” It’s this last phrase that I’ve been chewing on. What he seems to be saying is that through the word and prayer the enjoyment of ordinary things seems to be consecrated by God. 

Now in this section of his letter he is speaking specifically about the gift of marriage and the gift of food. He is refuting the false teaching that it is more godly for a person to reject marriage and reject certain foods. It is false godliness because God made marriage and food to be enjoyed. There is a principle here that applies to us. It seems that this does not just apply to marriage and food. Through the practice of word and prayer every moment is made holy. 

What does word and prayer mean? I believe what Paul is getting at is this: Bring your personal relationship with Christ into everything you do. As a Christian the Holy Ghost lives inside you. You are a priest as God’s word says. You have the power of the living God residing in you and working through you. And as a priest you have the ability to bring the presence of Christ into all of life. Not that it’s your ability. The Spirit is not some impersonal force you wield like a jedi. No, the Spirit is God’s personal presence in your life. He’s present with you under his own volition. He’s choosing to be with you. And because he is with you he is able to make every moment holy as he is holy. 

God spoke this reality to Moses a long time ago on Mt Sinai. God told the community he had just saved that he had saved them for a purpose. That purpose was to be God’s possession among all the people of the earth, to be a Kingdom of priests, and a holy nation (Ex 19:6). 

This is a really powerful identity. And we know as New Testament believers we have this same identity because Peter told us we do (1 Pt 2:5,9). This is powerful because it means the separation between the spiritual realm and the physical realm is actually a lot thinner than you might think. Being a priest means that every ordinary physical moment in your life as a Christian is enchanted with spiritual significance.  

The old saints used to talk about thin places. A thin place described a moment in life when the barrier between the spiritual realm and the physical realm seemed thin. A thin place is wherever the Spirit of God seems extra present and palpable. The gathering of the local church on the Lord’s Day is a thin place. Like Peter says in chapter 2, we are like little houses of God’s Spirit brought together and made into a big house of God’s Spirit. When we intentionally worship Christ together he promises to make his presence known to us.

But Sunday mornings are not the only times we experience and taste in heaven come to earth. Paul told Timothy that the enjoyment of creation in general can be consecrated by the presence of God. Whether in eating a meal or enjoying the fruits of marriage we can experience those moments as filled with the presence of Christ. 

I think this all matters and builds a delightful theology of joy. If it is possible to bring the presence of Christ into all of life then it is possible to experience the joy of Christ in all of life. Because holiness enables us to be in the presence of God, and as the Psalmist says, in the presence of God is fullness of joy and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore (Ps 16:11). 

What this means practically is that in Christ every single thing we do in our life can be done with delight. Think of an easy example like the supper table. Applying the word of God and prayer to the supper table makes all the people at the table aware of the presence of Christ. And when we are drawn into the presence of Christ we experience joy. But it is not joy divorced from the physical experience. What I mean is this: You hold up a nice glass of wine and say thank you God for making grapes and making humans with the skill to produce wine from those grapes. And thank you that I have a job that enables me to buy this wine. You know this because the Word tells you this. And what you're doing in this prayer is becoming aware that Christ has made your enjoyment possible, which glorifies God, and heightens the pleasure of the experience. 

Apply this to all places in your life you wouldn’t expect the word of God and prayer to be applied. Maybe you wouldn’t think to make the marriage bed holy. But your sex life as a married couple is a perfect place for you to become God aware. You know from the first few chapters of Genesis that God made you male and female. He made you with the capacity for sexual fulfillment. And he made covenant of marriage to be the bedrock relationship where a healthy sex life can flourish. This is all a gift of God. So pray before sex and ask God to make that moment holy. Be grateful for his good gifts. 

What this all points to is the fact that all of life can be wonderfully enchanted by a vibrant spiritual life with God. The book Every Moment Holy is a great tool to help you with this. It is a book of liturgies, which are simply beautifully crafted prayers that focus on different aspects of everyday life. By using a tool like this book you can bring the word of God and prayer into every situation, and begin to make it holy. And when you make every moment holy you will experience the pleasure of God’s presence. 

Feast to Wipe Away the Gloom

I woke up this morning in a kind of haze. It was raining outside, dark at a time when the sun normally shines. It was one of those mornings that had the potential to leave a dark covering over me the rest of the day. But it didn’t. I had a good morning despite the clouds. After I scraped myself out of bed I got on my two wheeler and biked to Nora’s Cafe to have coffee with some friends. I like to think of it as an old timers prep group where we practice loafin’ around and solving the world's problems over 2 dollar cups of diner coffee. After I left Nora’s I felt ready to run through a brick wall. No rainy day blues for this guy, at least not today. 

But it wasn’t just the caffeine that boosted my mood. And it certainly wasn’t the scenery. If we’re all honest that portion of second street leaves a lot to be aesthetically desired. Not a lot of art down there unless you count the graffiti in the alley. But I came out of there inspired nonetheless. It was because the conversation was so good. 

At one point someone raised the question of whether or not we will eat and drink in heaven. Someone immediately said no. Why would we have the need? We will be in resurrected bodies that will last forever. We will not need to be sustained by food, they said. But then others pointed out the purpose of eating is not just to survive. We eat because food tastes good. We eat for the pleasure of eating. And because God made food and drink in the Garden before the curse of sin brought death to our bodies, it is therefore possible that God will have food for us in the New Creation. Maybe we will eat in heaven because it will be just plain joyful to eat.

Then someone was reminded of a passage in Isaiah 25 where it speaks of God’s people feasting on the mountain of the Lord. And on that mountain they were not just eating food. They were experiencing the pleasure of eating. Isaiah says that on that mountain, God, the Master Chef, will make for his people fat and rich food paired with well aged wine. It doesn’t just say it once. It says it twice. He says wine… really good wine. Not the kind of non-alcoholic juice that passes for wine sometimes at the store. I’m talking about that good good that sits in the King of Kings wine cellar. And you might say, eww I don’t like wine. Well, on this mountain your taste buds will be sanctified and you’ll actually know what’s good for ya. 

No this mountain is not the Denver Chick-fil-A. It’s the New Creation. (to some of you those might be the same thing). Isaiah’s mountain of the Lord is a poetic picture of when this world will be redeemed and restored, when the curse of sin is wiped away by God’s big terry cloth, where God’s people will finally rest easy with tummies full in the presence of the Lord. We know this because verse 7 says that on this mountain God will swallow up the covering that is cast over all peoples. It will be a place where all tears will be wiped and death itself will be no more. 

Referencing this beautiful verse at 6AM on a gloomy day in downtown Clinton over a plain cup of joe and some ham was exactly what I needed to hear. It was as if God spoke to me in that moment and said heaven will be like this. The black cloud hanging over my city, my family, my life, my soul, was cast away in that moment in Nora’s. It was a foreshadowing, a foretaste of the Mountain to come.    

These experiences teach me the importance of eating with friends. Eating does not simply nourish our bodies, it also nourishes our soul. There are people in the Gateway that live with a dark covering of gloom that have never experienced what it’s like to be out from under that. But as Christains we have. By faith in Christ we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. And it is entirely possible to bring others into that. We can literally invite others to taste and see in the life of Christ. By preparing a meal, setting the table, and inviting people to join you, you are helping lift the black covering of the curse from their life. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but fat and rich is best. It doesn’t have to be a meal with wine, but a bottle of well aged stuff helps if you got it. All you really need is a table full of friends, and some strangers that you are making into friends, and you have the makings of heaven. This can happen at your dinner table, a booth at Noras, or at a wedding reception. What matters is that your hearts are open and welcoming to one another and to Christ, most importantly to Christ. Because when Christ shows up, the bread of life is on the table. And that means it’s time to feast. 

Cynicism to Wisdom

In the opening chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes the Preacher makes this observation about the fallen world we live in: “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it.” 

You don’t have to be a theologian or a sociologist to see that the Preacher is right. There is weariness in our culture. People are tired. It’s a weariness that has got into the bones. 

This is especially true for those living in Clinton. Everyday I bike past old buildings with crooked window panes staring back at me like the tired eyes of old men. There is hardly a patch of concrete, a piece of siding, or a lump of limestone that does not moan a weary song. Citizens of this place are all, to some degree, like tenants of an old house with an endless to do list. At some point, even the most heroic among us get tired of patching the holes and filling the cracks. 

One way or another weariness always leads to cynicism. Weariness weakens the immune system of a person's heart making them susceptible to the infection of cynicism. And you know cynicism has caught root in your heart when you see a young effort to plow an old field, and your response is, “that’ll never work.” 

Cynicism expresses itself in situations when new laborers are introduced to a field that you have spent yourself plowing and have become weary. Often when a young man steps into a hard work, he may have some grand ambitions and big goals. And in response the older man may scoff or express his cynicism, because he knows all too well where the work will lead. His knowledge of just how hard the work is makes him skeptical, uncertain, cautious. 

But cynicism doesn't have to be a festering disease. Yes, cynicism is an inevitable infection in a world full of toil, pain, and sin. There are things we work for and just come up short sometimes. And therefore our optimism is always tempered by the hard facts of life. But cynicism does not have to turn us into bent creatures of hopeless mutter and grumble. Recognized early, cynicism can become the first step toward wisdom. 

As a church planter in a tired river town I often wrestle with how to contextualize the gospel of Jesus to a cynical culture. My wrestling with this starts with wrestling with my own cynicism. I grew up here after all. The broken windows and shuttered storefronts have been the wallpaper of my life. Anyone that knows me would never describe me as a happy clappy guy. And yet I refuse to be conquered and marked by naysaying. The gospel won’t allow me to become that. My own heart was dead and hopelessly beyond repair, and yet Jesus saved me. I have been saved by an eternally joyful Savior. I abide in a King that promises to make my joy complete. I wholeheartedly believe that the Spirit of Jesus is stronger than the disease of cynicism, and is daily reminding me that the “joy of the Lord will be my strength” (Neh 8:10). 

Remembering the gospel and fighting to believe its promises is hard enough for me. And yet, as a church planter I am attempting to tell others about this gospel. But not just other people, people like me—cynical people who’s instinct is to shrug off what I have to say because they’ve seen it all before, and they aren’t impressed.

And justifiably so. Places like Clinton—places that have big, obvious, and complex problems—seem to be a magnet for folks who make big promises but don’t follow through, people who write big checks that they can’t cash, people that want to be the hero. These are people who have a messiah complex. For countless years young men with ambition have thrown themselves headlong into the mess of this place and have attempted to sweep it clean with just a few urgent strokes of the push broom. But in many cases they have simply created dust. And the folks that they recruited to help them clean have been left to cough on the dust and pick dusty boogers. 

A messiah complex is obvious when a person has the gall to think they can save the world on their own. Or that it is their idea that will finally be the breakthrough this town needs. If only the naysayers would move over. Like if I pushed my chair back, tilted my head to the sky, and in a pontificating tone said, “YOU KNOW WHAT THIS TOWN NEEDS…” My cynical brethren would begin to tune out at the sound of my chair squeaking. 

But a messiah complex can express itself in more subtle ways. It can even look pretty holy. For example, when a missionary says, “We’re going to go to [so and so country] and bring Jesus to the poor dears. As if Jesus is a piece of luggage to grab and drop off. A Biblically literate person ought to pause, pucker his lips with his forefinger in the air, and say mmmm. And then he should offer Colossians 1. Jesus made all things, holds all things, and is reconciling all things to himself. Jesus is actually already there. It is you, the missionary, that Jesus is bringing there. 

I see this all the time in Clinton. I see it in my own heart if I'm honest. It is an arrogance that says I, the noble and savvy Nick Powell, hereby proclaim, after much meditation on the mountain top, that I know how to plant a true church and solve all the city's problems. Now when I’m in my right mind, which I hope to be more times than not, I do not think that. I try to kill the self-righteous Gaston that lives in my heart. Because that guy will hurt people in the name of fixing things. In God’s kindness his Spirit tempers my selfish ambition and helps me arrive at something that begins to resemble wisdom. But it’s a struggle for sure. 

One thing you might ask is why would a person question a young man’s desire to “bring Jesus to a place”? Cynicism, that’s what. How many church members have been stirred up and mobilized to charge a hill only to discover that they were led by a fool hearty pastor who was nothing more than a mercenary. How many new leaders pop up in churches promising a “new” way of doing things. At some point the older members realize that what passes for a holy ambition often ends up being baptized selfish ambition. And so some churchmen seek to remove themselves from the endless cycle of new leaders attempting to reinvent the wheel. They do it out of a desire to save themselves from senseless heartache. Cynicism is often a kind of safety mechanism. It helps preserve a memory of what caused the pain. But if left unchecked, cynicism can become cancerous and its malignant growth can cause hopelessness and apathy in a person. This is not of the Lord. That is why cynicism is only a first step. The next step is to move toward the wisdom of Jesus.

But this is the key, cynicism must be recognized early and must not be used as an excuse to tap out. There are no scrooges in the Kingdom of God. Following Jesus means joyful belonging to Jesus and his church. A cynical person who does not respond to their cynicism well is like a person who has been burned by the oven and now scowls at and refuses all ovens from here on out. This is foolish cynicism. And the fool misses the delight of pie because he refuses the wisdom and knowledge of baking without getting burned. 

I know so many people have been burned by a church, a pastor, a “movement,” a culture, etc… And so many of you are just flat out tired of it all. But even despite your weariness I urge you to “contend for the faith” (Jude 3). Not because I want to be your pastor who finally shows you how to do it all right. I’m not that stupid to believe that. I’m going to make some blunders along the way. No, I want you to pursue deep belonging to Jesus and the church not because I’m doing it right finally. I want you to contend for the faith because it’s worth it. 

What I want is for you to harness that cynicism, make it lead you to Christ. Go to the one who provides a strong joy and a vibrant Spirit that invigorates your tired bones. Move toward Jesus, in whose presence is fullness of joy and pleasures forever more (Ps 16:11).

The longer we live the more weariness will enter our hearts. We all get burned by the heat of a fallen world. But the fool indulges in cynicism. He lets it fester into a joyless disease. But the wise fights to look beyond the immediate weariness of this broken world. The wise see hope. Because the wise sees eternity with Christ.