Independence Day

Last night, we enjoyed the town fireworks which are set off in the field right across the highway from the church in celebration of the 4th of July. Perhaps more than the fireworks themselves , we enjoyed watching Hannah's reaction to her first experience with fireworks. We wondered if the loud noises would scare her but she did very well. She was thoroughly mezmorized by the bright lights... for about five minutes. However, she eventually became so unimpressed that she even let out a yawn at one point. The grand finale seemed to recapture her attention for its brief duration shortly after which we fought through the most traffic you'll ever seen in Clinton and made our way home.

Of course, watching fireworks to celebrate our nation's independence from the lawn of our church leads a theological type like myself to ponder the ever difficult and challenging relationship of church and state. The relationship is often discussed ad naseum by the cable news networks in the middle of an election year like we find ourselves in currently. However, these discussions are almost exclusively given from the perspective of the state side of the equation. In other words, Americans ask again and again how much religion should be allowed in the public square. How much should faith be allowed to guide policy in a democracy where the majority of citizens are Christian (at least in title, although even this title means very different things to different people who give themselves this title) but there are other significant minorities whose rights must be defended under the Constitution?

In contrast to this, it seems that more Christians should be considering the other side of this question. How much of the state should be allowed in the Church? This is a difficult question for us since the United States has been influenced by Christianity more than any other religion throughout it existence. As a result, the United States has generally served Christianity well, carving out the political space for a freedom of worship without threat of political interference. Certainly, that is something worth celebrating and for which we should be thankful. American democracy is truly a thing to be valued and admired.

However, as I will talk about to some extent in my sermon this Sunday, often some of God's greatest gifts carry the most potential for idolatry. This is the case precisely because they are such good things and therefore, we are tempted to regard them as greater than they really are, greater even than the God who gave them to us. Rarely, if ever, are people drawn to things that are just entirely bad or purely destructive. We are drawn to things because of their good qualities and they then become destructive because we give them an inordinate amount of space and importance in our lives.

The same is true of our patriotism. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with valuing the great political progress represented by our government. However, we must not make the mistake of imagining that our government is perfect or that anything and everything the United States does is "Christian" just because the majority of its citizens go by that name. The United States is not and will never be the kingdom of God. We, as Christians, must seriously reconsider the amount of allegiance we are willing to pledge to our nation and we must be certain that this level of allegiance is always subservient to our allegiance to Christ and his kingdom. The United States of America engages in and encourages all kinds of practices that are by no means Christian and it is part of our duty as the Church to continually bear witness to the ways our world fails to conform to God's kingdom. We must be certain that we are Christian long before we are American.

Some Perspective On My Education After One Year of Ministry

This week marks one full year that I have been the pastor at Clinton First Church of the Nazarene. Jess and I arrived at our apartment during the last week of June a year ago and our first Sunday here was July 1, 2007. Of course, it is somewhat cliche to comment on how quickly this year has gone by and how much I have learned but both things are true. It is hard to believe that we have been here a year already and of course, I have learned many, many things about pastoral ministry over the course of this past year.

Some of these things were obvious learning experiences like how to run a board meeting or an annual election and I am thankful that I am the pastor of a church that has been gracious towards me as I have stumbled through learning how to lead in these administrative tasks. A large portion of what I have learned, as would be expected in a profession like the ministry, has been interpersonal and relational in nature. I continue to learn how to relate to others, how to share in their joy and their pain. I have even learned quite a bit about myself. I have experienced what a struggle it can be to comprehend your own pastoral identity when you have become a part of an entirely new community.

As I have reflected on this past year of ministry, I think the area of learning and growth that I have found most interesting has been at the intersection of my theological education and the practical life of a congregation. Of couse, in many ways this is not at all unexpected since that intersection represents one of the major transitions in my life over the past year. The whole point of my education is to enable me to better serve Christ and his Church by providing a theologically coherent vision of God and the Church for this local congregation. Most of the learning experiences that I mentioned in the paragraph above are really just subsets of this one larger learning project of coming to understand how the things I learned in the classroom apply to the lived reality of church life.

What is somewhat unexpected is exactly how I have come to regard my time at NTS and ENC in relation to my experience here. Over the past year, I have come to regard my education less and less as an academic endeavor or even as training for the ministry and more as an extended period of intense spiritual formation. I have come to realize recently that more than anything else, my time in school was about shaping me to be a certain kind of person. It was not just about increasing a certain body of knowledge which would then enable me to provide more theologically consistent leadership as a pastor, as important as that might be. It was not just about learning how to preach, how to teach, how to counsel, and how to console although it includes those things. It was not about better understanding what the Bible says so that I might pass that knowledge on to others or learning what others have said about God in the past so that we might speak more truthfully about God in the present, though that is certainly something the Church needs. No, it must run even deeper than all of that, although those things already run pretty deep. My education had to do more than just inform me, it had to change me, shape me, mold me, transform me and fortuntely, I believe it did just that.

What experience as a pastor has led me to this understanding of my educational experience? Primarily, that when you speak as a pastor you must, (in fact, most of the time you will inevitably, whether you want to or not) speak from your heart, from your inner most being, from what you really believe. When you speak as a pastor, whether it be in a sermon or to someone who is grieving or to your church board as you attempt to make a difficult decision most of the time you will not have the time to carefully sort through the issues and address them as thoroughly as you would like to. Of course, you are as thorough as you possibly can be in the time that you have but most often you have to think on your feet and address issues on the fly. Most of the time you have to trust that the way the Spirit has already prepared you up to this point will be sufficient to guide you through this crises for which you feel completely unprepared. So many times I have thought to myself "If only I had known she was going to show up unannounced at my office with that question, I would have been better prepared" or "If only I had a little more time to research this biblical theme..." But most of the time you do not get to consult Wesley or Augustine, Paul or Matthew. Instead, you have to rely on the way that the Holy Spirit has already used Wesley, Augustine, Paul, or Matthew to shape you in the past long before you ever knew you would need their wisdom at this particular moment in this peculiar situation.

This in no way lessens the importance of the academic nature of seminary or our liberal arts schools. Often, we act as if anything truly spiritual must be uncritical and unthinking. However, seeing this time of study as a matter of spiritual formation does not take away from the rigorous academic nature of it all. Just because it is a kind of spiritual discipline does not mean that we simply pray over Barth and Irenaeus and sing Amazing Grace instead of engaging these theologians in critical dialogue. In fact, viewing the academic life as a time of spiritual formation actually places greater importance on this critical interaction. This is the case because the interaction with these theologians and the biblical authors will not cease once one is familiar enough with them to get the desired grade in a course. Instead, it will continue well beyond the requirements of the course because you know that you are studying for more than a certain grade.

You are studying to be better prepared for a certain situation that you can not yet see. You are studying because you never know how Barth and Irenaeus might help you speak God's words of life when they need to be heard the most. You are studying so that you might become a more powerful tool in God's hands. You are studying, not so much to learn how to be a minister as you are to be transformed into the kind of person whom God can use most meaningfully as a minister. Even as you study something that causes you to wonder what practical value it could ever have for the life of the Chuch, you persevere trusting that God's Spirit is shaping you for your calling even in that moment. Even in thoroughly academic institutions like seminary and college, the life of the disciple is not so much about what we learn as it is about who we become.

God's Good Law and the Power of Sin

In this week's sermon text (Romans 7:15-25), Paul is once again dealing with thoroughly Jewish questions: Is the Law sin? (7:7) Did God's good gift become a cause of death for humanity? (7:13). Paul is asking these questions because over the last several chapters he has said that the Law was powerless against sin, that it led to more sin, and that believers are no longer under the Law. Therefore, one might conclude that Paul believes the Law to be a bad thing. However, this could not be further from the truth.

As a Jew, Paul believed that the Law was a means of grace to Israel. It was God's good gift to lead Israel in righteous obedience to God. Paul did not give up this belief upon becoming a follower of Christ. He continued to believe that the Law was good but he also began to see a new side of it. As a Pharisee, Paul believed that the Law identified sin so effectively that it could be avoided completely. However, upon becoming a disciple of Jesus, Paul begin to realize that he had been enslaved to sin even while he was following the Law. This was not because of some inability on Paul's part to keep the whole Law. After all, Paul says in Phillipians that he was blameless before the Law. Instead, Paul realized that he had sinned precisely in his keeping of the Law because sin's power was so great that it had used even God's good gift of the Law to produce more sin.

An example of this from Paul's own life is his persecution of Christians prior to his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus as recorded in the book of Acts. Paul was imprisoning and killing Christians not because he was just a mean, sinful guy who didn't care about God but because precisely because he did care about God and believed that God willed the death of these Christians since the Law spoke against false prophets. After his encounter with Christ, Paul began to realize that sin had used the Law to cause Paul to actually do the opposite of God's will.

So what of Paul's question about whether or not the Law is sin and a cause of death? Paul affirms in this passage that the Law is entirely good because it is not the law itself which leads to sin. It is sin's great power to twist and corrupt God's good gift which is at fault. Similarly Paul says it is not he who is guilty of the sin of his previous way of life but the sin which dwelt in him and caused him to do evil despite his best efforts and intentions. More importantly, Paul speaks here not only for himself but for all of humanity. We have all been enslaved to sin often without even knowing it precisely at those times that we thought we were being the most righteous. It is for that reason that our righteousness can not depend upon our own efforts and good intentions. The only way to genuine righteousness is in God revealing to us where we have been enslaved and then breaking the chains of that slavery for us. As Paul says "Who wil set me free from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

CAMA Pulpit Exchange

I won't be preaching from Romans this week since it is the week of the Clinton Area Minister's Association (CAMA) Pulpit Exchange. All of the ministers in the area that participate in CAMA will be preaching at a church other than their own this Sunday. I will be preaching at the Christian Church. Rev. Hunte, the pastor at the Presbyterian Church will be preaching here at our church.

I decided to use a sermon I have preached before since I am preaching somewhere else this Sunday. This not only frees up some time for me to work on some other important projects that needs to get done. It also gives me a chance to preach one of my favorite sermons again. I'll be preaching from Jeremiah 23:1-6 while also referencing Luke 23:33-43. In the Old Testament passage, Jeremiah speaks of a king who will restore justice and righteousness in the land. I use the imagery of an old western and a new sheriff coming to town to straighten things out to communicate this idea of a righteous king who restores justice in Judah.

Of course, as Christians we believe that this Messianic prophecy should be applied to Jesus but the crucifixion scene in Luke 23 shows just how oddly Jesus fits this description. The words of the scoffers at Jesus' crucifixion highlight this reality. They all point out that if Jesus was really the Messiah he claimed to be then he would be able to save himself from the cross he is on. But, of course, Jesus does not. He does not restore justice and righteousness by force. He does it through his own willing death and his trust in God to resurrect him. This resurrection is God's proclamation to the world that Jesus is indeed the new sheriff in town just as he claimed to be even though he does not look quite like the sheriff anyone expected.

Identity and Mission

Tonight, we are beginning a series of outreach and evangelism training sessions at our church. As I've worked on creating the lessons for these training sessions, one of the things that I have thought about a lot is how often a church's sense of mission can be disconnected and disjointed from its sense of identity. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that many churches have a vague sense of mission (what they should be doing as a church) while having basically no sense of identity (who they are as a church). As a result, many churches undergo a kind of indentity crisis as they go from program to program trying to figure out what "works" instead of doing the hard work of trying to understand who they are in Christ Jesus and then allowing their sense of mission to flow from that.

For example, it seems to me that nearly every church knows that its mission has something to do with reaching people for Jesus. This idea then quickly becomes equated with how many people attend your church service and is translated into the latest church growth program. Unfortunately, when getting as many people as we can into our church (especially people who look like us and have at least as much money as we do) becomes our goal, our whole reason for existence, then we start to look very unlike Jesus. If this is our goal, then service to the poor, helping the helpless, touching the outcast, caring for the sick, eating with those who are looked down on, and basically all of those things that Jesus did, are thrown aside because they certainly will not help our church grow in number.

What is more, when we do attract a certain group of people to our church by means of entertainment, nice buildings, and all the comforts and services a successful business would offer then we make it very difficult for those very people to know what the difference is between the Church and the services offered by the business world. If we attract people to our churches with the big, beautiful, and bountiful how then can they become Christ-like servants who will minister to the small, the ugly, and the destitute? Why would they ever even think they needed to? The way we carry out our mission says a lot about who we believe we are.

In contrast to such an approach, I believe a healthy church must begin by considering it's identity. Who are we? This question will also mean asking "Who is God?" since our own identity is rooted in the identity of the God who calls us to be the Church. Of course, these are not easy questions. They are not questions that are ever completely answered. They are questions that a church must continue to wrestle with Sunday after Sunday. But it is essential that the Church wrestle with it. And as the Church wrestles with these questions, it will have found that it has been wrestling with God himself and found its own identity in the process. It is then out of that identity that we proceed to act, fulfilling the mission that God has given us.

Dead to Sin but Alive to God

In order to understand why Paul is making the argument that he is in Romans 6, we must first remember the point he made in Romans 5. Paul has just finished talking about the tremendous love of God which was exhibited in the sacrificial obedience of Jesus Christ. Paul then contrasts and compares the results of Christ's faithfulness with the sinfulness of Adam. It is as if Paul envisions two spheres of existence. The old sphere, the way of life represented by Adam includes sin, unrighteousness, death, and the Law. On the other hand, the sphere of Christ includes righteouesness, life, freedom, and grace. Paul says that one can be transferred from one sphere of existence to the other by the free gift of God because of Christ's faithfulness. Paul even says that God's grace is so abundant that even when sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

With such a dichotomy in place, it is easy to see why Paul anticipates the question that he does in Romans 6:1. "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?" This is the logical conclusion of opposing the Law to grace. If breaking the Law leads to God providing more grace, then shouldn't we keep sinning so that God can be even more gracious? Paul wishes to make very clear that this is not at all what he intends to say and so he responds "May it never be!". Paul says that even though we have been given grace in spite of our sin we should not continue in sin because the very purpose of that grace was to deliver us from the sphere of sin's power. God has delivered us from slavery to sin through Jesus Christ. It would be foolish to willfully enslave ourselves once again.

Paul uses the imagery of baptism to make this point. He says that when we have been baptized into Christ Jesus we have been baptized into his death. As a result, we are dead to sin. It no longer holds us in its grasp. We are actually free to choose to do good. Why, then, would we ever choose to do evil? Or to put it another way, Paul does not expect Gentile Christians to follow the Law (meaning the Jewish Law regarding things like circumcision, food laws, or Sabbath observance) but neither does he expect them to be lawless. There is now another law which these believers must follow; the law of Christ (which Paul will elaborate on in Romans 8). Christians have been set free from slavery to sin but this is not a freedom to do whatever we want. It is a freedom to submit ourselves in service to another master, the one true Lord. It is freedom to follow the law that brings life rather than the Law that leads to death.

Hannah's Baptism

This Sunday, Jess and I “dedicated” our daughter to God through the sacrament of baptism. Of course, many of you who have been Nazarenes for a very long time probably know that the Nazarene Manual allows parents to choose between dedicating or baptizing their children. Parents can choose to dedicate their child as an infant and then allow them to make a decision for baptism when they are old enough to claim faith in Christ for themselves. Parents can also choose to baptize their infant and then the child can confirm or claim the baptism they have already received when they are older. Although our manual allows for both, infant dedication has been a more common practice in the Church of the Nazarene than has infant baptism. It is for that reason that I want to say a few words here about why Jess and I have chosen to baptize Hannah rather than dedicate her.


First, infant baptism symbolizes the reality that God chooses us before we ever choose God. Often, adult baptisms emphasize that the person being baptized is making a public proclamation of their faith in God. This is certainly an important part of the Christian journey and at some point when she is older, Hannah will have to make this decision for herself as well. However, as an infant or young child is baptized we are all reminded of the way in which each and every one of us came to God: weak, helpless, unknowledgeable, unskilled, and entirely dependent. Hannah’s baptism is a symbol of the ways that God is already working in her life no matter how unaware of it she might be.


Second, infant baptism reminds us that baptism is an initiation and entrance into a family and community that has a peculiar way of life. When parents choose baptism for their children, it is a reminder of the vital and essential role that other people play in our faith. If most of us were to recount the story of how we came to be Christian, that story would include a long list of people who were influential in bringing us to Christ and helping us to mature in the faith: parents, grandparents, friends, and church family. Most often, God does not just “zap” people with grace in order to transform them. God chooses to work through people, through families, through the community of faith. Hannah’s baptism is her entrance into Christ’s Church and our local church family. It is a reminder that, at some level, her salvation is dependent upon all of us; upon Jess and I as her parents, upon those who have influenced us, and upon her church family. Infant baptism is a reminder that our salvation is not individual but communal. We are all bound up together in this journey toward Jesus and his kingdom. Jess and I could not be happier that Hannah has began this journey as a part of this particular church family.