March 2008 Archives
From a book review by Katie Galli in the April 2008 issue of Christianity Today:
Yes, we're Americans. We multitask all day long. Efficiency is one of our top cultural values. I, too, am pragmatic. I'd like to use Sunday morning to worship God, to get a few pointers on how to improve my relationship with Jesus, and to reconnect with community. But every Sunday, the first words I hear are, "Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." And I'm reminded that we gather weekly not to hear a practical talk on how to better live out our faith or to provide a venue to tell our friends about Jesus. We gather to corporately worship God, to celebrate the redeeming work of Christ on the cross, and to remember that our lives are not about us.
A provocative post by Ruth Tucker that challenges our emphasis on leadership:
Leadership is a hot topic today. Colleges and universities and seminaries and churches and Christian organizations of all varieties are developing leadership programs...
It was not until I was teaching through the course a second time that I realized what a crock this whole topic is. It’s phony from beginning to end—especially as it relates to biblical models.
That Jesus was a failed leader both by example and by teaching is something we already know—at least unconsciously....Plain and simple, Jesus was a failed leader—though it’s critical to point out that Jesus did not aspire to leadership.
Read the entire post for the full context.
I just may have to read Tucker's upcoming book Leadership Reconsidered.
Rob Harrison with a helpful post that helps us see the usefulness of the institution, while also recognizing its limitations:
The institution is just a structure to organize our activities to help us function...The institution is a dead thing that protects and gives form to the live thing underneath. But that points us to the reality that the structure isn't going to do the work of the church, because the structure isn't the church; we together are the church, and the structure is there to enable us as we do the work of the church. To avoid facing that, though, we tend to pile those expectations on the institution instead, and then when it fails, we blame it, and denounce it, and set off to find a better way...
I also suspect that we object to the 'institutional church' because it gets in the way of us doing what we want; but in reality, that's part of its purpose. Yes, there is a tendency for institutions to become self-justifying and self-serving, and that's a bad thing; but is that the fault of institutions, or of the people in them? That's a human sin, and attacking institutions won't change it. If anything, doing that makes it worse, because the existence of the institution, for all its faults, reminds us that it has a purpose. We can still do all the touchy-feely 'spirituality' stuff that's all about us without any kind of formal structure, but a congregation that never really goes beyond that is about as self-justifying and self-serving as anything can be; what we need the institution for is to do the things that take us beyond ourselves, the things that actually require work and effort and need organization and structure to support them and keep them going.
C.S. Lewis on dying to ourselves:
Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him...The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
