A Real Live Preacher Questions Hell

Hell has been a big topic lately. There's an informal group of guys that tend to talk about the scriptural idea of hell on Wednesday evenings at the FroPo. It was a message topic a few weeks ago.

And now one of my favorite bloggers, Real Live Preacher, is coming out and asking the public for help in his comprehensive New Testament study of hell.

He is looking for all those who believe in hell to give him solid New Testament evidence to back up their beliefs. He's not being patronizing, or antagonistic. He is honestly and respectfully seeking out those who can make a good case.

Go read his post, and perhaps be one of those who can help round out the discussion in a meaningful way. I don't have to explain why this topic is so important.

UPDATE 8-14-08 I think it would be best not to end this post without a few vague personal thoughts about hell. So here it is:

In order for God to be consistent with himself, and for Scripture to maintain its integrity, I think the deal with hell has got to be one of two things:

1) Perhaps it is not what the traditionalists have made it out to be. Maybe it's not eternal. Maybe the punishment is heavily graded, depending on how much truth and righteousness you rejected, and how much falsehood and evil you embraced, making possible a portion of "hell" that is actually not unspeakably terrible. Or maybe hell is allegorical in some other way I haven't thought of. Or...

2) Perhaps the nature of God's judgment of people is not what traditionalists have made it out to be. It doesn't work in my mind for hell to be populated simply with all "non-Christians". That makes Christianity sound like a cult, and it is far to superficial to be God's true measure of judgment. This is not just a sentiment, this is Scriptural... God judges the heart, not the outward appearance. If there is indeed an eternal, horrible place called hell, it will not be for the people who failed to join a certain group, but for those who have rejected God, by way of rejecting Jesus. And we can't necessarily assume that never hearing about Jesus is the same as rejecting him.

My current leaning is toward number 2, as vague as it is. If we're really going to be known as a people who trust God, we have to trust his knowledge of every person's heart, and remember that he doesn't desire that any should perish. If we don't trust that God will give each person a solid opportunity to find him, and receive his mercy, then I don't really think we trust God.

Not Alone

Despite the apparent uniqueness of the Front Porch, it is great to see that there are others out there dreaming and doing the Way of Jesus in ways we can relate to.

Back in December I wrote about one example of this located in Hamilton, Ontario, called The Freeway.

And just now I read a post on Kingdom Grace called "My Secret Fantasy" that reminded me again that we are not alone in this vision. There really is a movement afoot, and one that seems to have the stamp of Jesus on it.

It's hard not to become giddy when I read the way this vision takes on myriad variations in every cultural context, and in every impassioned heart to create a space of radical hospitality, and authentic community.

If you're reading this, and you know of any others, please speak up. It's really exciting to see continuity among so many who don't even know each other.

Peace.


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12/16/07 - Second Anniversary of The Core Blog

Wow... two years. I can't keep a day planner, I can't keep a journal, but apparently I can keep a blog. Go me.

Although I must admit to a smidgen of procrastination on this very post. I started it two days early, and now I'm finishing it two days late. Does that count as being on time?

One year ago I summed up the first year of The Core Blog, and included links to some of my favorites: 12/16/06 - First Anniversary of The Core Blog

Now I'd like to do it again, for the second year's worth of posts. Some of this I enjoyed writing because of the humor, some because the transparency, or the creativity, or because I thought God had just showed me something really ground-breaking. I'll leave it up to you to figure out which is which.

January 11 - "OK, God, this is the part where you tell me what you want me to do."
February 9 - First United Church of Aloe & Watermelon
March 16 - No More Sissy Jesus
April 19 - The All New G-Rated Bible!
May 6 - Church of the Open Mic
June 7 - Third Place
June 21 - A Study in Contrasts
July 4 - So Here I Am
July 18 - The Inclusive Jesus
August 1 - League Leader in Total Conversions
August 14 - Death of a Salesman
August 18 - Evangelism's Code of Conduct
August 29 - Short Skirt/Long Jacket and Proverbs 31
September 27 - Perelandra and the Front Porch
October 4 - Sometimes I Wish I Were a Smoker
October 16 - I Got Soul But I'm Not a Soldier
October 18 - Area Church Makes Its Home In the Clouds
November 7 - A Fashionable Faith

Maybe it's the busyness of the holidays, but my posts since November 7 have not been as memorable. But let me throw one more thing at you, if you're the type that enjoys a good debate. Here are the posts that received 20 or more comments:

February 15 - However and Ever, Amen
February 22 - Publicity Anonymity (or, Stuck in the Middle with You)
April 11 - We Worship You... Almighty Book
June 28 - The Cross and the Bench
October 19 - Turn Your Head and Quaff

You'll notice there's no intersection between these two lists of posts. From what I understand talking to other bloggers, there never is.

Thanks to all of you for reading... even though I can't see you, and usually don't know who you are, your interest in this blog is the reason why it has far outlasted every planner or journal I've ever owned.

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.

Missio Dei

Lately my conversations have been peppered largely with talk about mission... God's mission, our mission... and the Latin phrase Missio Dei, which means "Mission of God".
I love that this phrase has become so popular, because it reminds us that, although we do have a mission, it doesn't actually belong to us. We so often act like it does. We say things like, "You're not evangelized until we evangelize you," and pretend that God has retained no authority over the growth of his Kingdom, content to simply sit back to consult and assist.

I've enjoyed thinking a lot lately about the way God calls us, instead, to assist him. Here is how I described it in a July 2007 post entitled "So Here I Am":

It's as if [God] were the captain of a pick-up basketball team, and he picks all the short heavy kids, just to prove that he can beat the other team all by himself. But then he manages to win the game as a team, just to prove he's not a ball-hog.

And here is the same point, illuminated through a cute personal story by Doug Peters in a comment on Scot McKnight's blog, Jesus Creed.

In the autumn that my son was five, he came outside with his plastic rake to “help” me rake the leaves. I was extremely proud of him as he kept at it for almost two hours. Toward the end of that time, his elder sister came to the door to remonstrate with Nathanael.

“You’re doing it wrong!” she shouted.

And, indeed, he was: he was holding the rake “incorrectly”; he was often raking the leaves at cross-purposes to his father; he wasn’t particularly efficient in his coverage. In fact, it is quite possible that I could have completed the task more quickly without his help.

But that wasn’t the point. A father and his child were working together. Love was being developed. Great enjoyment was being had on both sides. And this father was particularly pleased with his son, “doing it wrong” and all.

“Oh!” squealed Nathanael’s sister, “It is cold out here.” And she slammed the door, and went back to watching television.

Folks who would rather call out those “doing it wrong” than actually do the work deserve to be warned, and deserve to be challenged (as Jay Kelly suggests above) to “bless the world”.

When we came in, Nathanael happily announced to his mother that “we” had raked the leaves. Indeed. I gave him all the credit he deserved. And perhaps a bit more than that…

Oikosthemen

Last night I discovered that The Core website has been linked by a German-language emerging church blog called "oikosthemen" which means, as far as I can tell, in English, "OK". Makes sense. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that it takes Germans 11 letters to say what English-speakers can express in 2. :-)~

Anyway... thanks to oikosthemen for the props. I would link to their site, but I imagine most of the readers of this blog don't understand German anyway. Buy you're welcome to try. Or you can read it in broken English.

Follow Me, and I Will Make You Fishers of... Snakes?

Turns out my brain is too scattered right now for a unified field theory of... anything, so here's a hodge podge consisting of unfinished past posts (time to clean up the "drafts" box,) and what happened last night.

Fishers of Snakes

Last night at the Front Porch my new buddy Richard the Sound Guy and I were trying like heck to get a 16-channel snake through a 50-foot long sub-floor PVC pipe that surfaces at one end on stage, and at the other end where our soundboard will be. For those even more uninitiated than myself, a snake is a long, thick cable that connects the soundboard to the stage, and ours has to be threaded through this pipe. Richard is quite a guy... very knowledgeable, but nevertheless he and I were having some trouble. We started by running a long aluminum wire through, but it kept getting stuck in the middle. So I had the idea to get out the Shop Vac and suck it through from the opposite end. So Richard put a ball of duct tape on the end of the wire and stuck it in his end of the pipe, and I pressed the hose down onto my end, and slowly but surely it started to move. Then... twhop! I snagged it. Unfortunately this story does not end quite so happily, because we ended up snapping the wire in our attempt to pull the snake through. Not to worry, though, Plan B looks promising, if a tad bit more expensive.

Pastor Po-Mo and the SpringMo Lib-Cons

I just liked this title. Couldn't think of how to write a post for it, though. Add a comment if you think you can figure out what it means.

Multi-Site Church and the Emerging Televangelists

I decided not to write a full-out post on this because most Springfieldians have never heard of a Multi-Site Church. It is, however, all the rage among large "emerging" churches such as Mars Hill in Seattle, Journey in St. Louis, or Life Church in Oklahoma City. It's like a church that has multiple services, except those services are often happening in different places at the same time, instead of in the same place at different times. It is common for there to be a "mother" site, and "daughter" sites, each featuring a different worship team and an entirely different group of people, but all featuring the same sermon by the same Senior Pastor, only he's on a screen at the daughter sites, and not in preaching in person.

It baffles me a little how the people who go to these types of churches are often the last in the world to watch a preacher on television, and yet that's essentially what they're doing at the daughter sites. Can you call a guy your "pastor" if you're never even in the same room with him?

I know I'm in no position to say what a pastor ought or ought not to be, but I'm going to do it anyway. If you're pastoring a church, and it grows, and decides to become a multi-site church, and has to spend tens of thousands of dollars on technology to make sure that YOU and your thoughts are the centerpiece of every worship experience, no matter how far away, then I think you've lost some of what it means to be a pastor. Hopefully, throughout all that you still manage to actually shepherd a few people, but haven't you just become a televangelist to the rest?

The Nooma Sessions

I'm terrible with serieses. I guess I'm just not the type. I did a post about the first Nooma video, "Rain" thinking I would blog about all of them. Except that 1/4 of the time I'm not even in on the discussion, since I'm watching the kids. Also the fact that I'm terrible with serieses.

Church Marketing

Months ago, I typed the title "marketing" into blogger, and saved it in order to remind me to write a post about marketing. But it turns out all I have is feelings about marketing, and no actual thoughts. My gut says it's sick... that marketing is just an extension of sales, and salesmanship has no place in the Kingdom of God. I know that church marketing and its goons have turned a lot of people off to the Church entirely, but I'm not sure where to draw the line. Should a church list their phone number in the yellow pages? Sure. Should they pay for a little extra space for added visibility? I don't know. Should they have a full-page color ad? Personally, I don't think so. But there's a lot of leeway in there. Obviously, I think websites are great. Billboards, not so much. But what is the essential difference? How do we know when we've gone too far in trying to get the word out? How do we know when we've developed a competitive nature, or a success syndrome? Anyone?

Publicity Anonymity (or, Stuck in the Middle with You...)

UPDATE 2/23/07: A lot of people have been coming to this blog post from "SBC OUTPOST" since yesterday. But I think most of those people would actually be more interested in reading the post that Roger Moran quoted in his diatribe: The Sound of the Underground. One other thing... although The Core is not SBC affiliated, it is something we are exploring. So it's not as if this controversy has no bearing on us whatsoever. Thank you.

On the blog SBC OUTPOST, Marty Duren writes about a steaming rampage by Missouri Baptist Convention layman and resident hot-head, Roger Moran. You can read it here (it's received 98 comments so far.)

As you'll see if you read all of Mr. Moran's statement, quoted within the post, The Core is being anonymously indicted for a number of things that he himself finds theologically reprehensible. I will reproduce that portion of his statement which is about us below. I am inserting bracketed numbers in order to make comments about specific assertions of his.

One of our [1] new pro-alcohol [2] emerging [3] church plants in Springfield, MO recently offered to those making a contribution to their church a copy of Brian McLaren [4], the undisputed leader of the far-left wing of the emerging church movement. [5] McLaren is best known for his statements calling for a 5 to 10 year “moratorium” on any “pronouncements” against homosexuality and his statement rejecting the substitutionary atonement of Christ. [6]

On the website [7] of this new church plant in Missouri, the pastor bashes the name “Christian” [8] stating that he doesn’t want to become “known as a bad tipper, judgmental jerk, or a nationalist warmonger.” He concludes by stating:

"By that token, I believe Jesus would be a terrible Christian. I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if he chose never to show up in church on Sunday, or had a beer at a frat party, or frequented a gay bookstore. And you know what the Christians would say? 'This man doesn’t honor the Sabbath' or 'This man hangs out with sinners.'” [9]

[1] The word "our" is incorrect, asserting that The Core is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, or Missouri Baptist Convention, which it clearly is not.
[2] The Core is not pro-alcohol, and has made no statement to that effect. My comments that he quotes further on down, about Jesus and alcohol, do not advocate drinking. And even if they did, a sentence in a blog does not an official position make.
[3] I have used the word "emerging" occasionally, but never in direct reference to The Core. It is not entirely unfair to characterize us this way, but it is far from objective, or official, and is essentially meaningless.
[4] If we were able to give out "copies of Brian McLaren" we would certainly be deserving of rebuke for having cloned a human being. Incidentally, you'll notice that Mr. Moran is deliberately omitting specific references, leaving out my name, the name of my blog, the name of our church, and the title of Brian McLaren's book in question, in order to avoid accountability for his rhetoric. The title of the book is "More Ready Than You Realize." I have to confess that I am aware of McLaren's reputation, and have only read this one book of his. But I can imagine very few mentally stable Christians who would object to anything contained therein.
[5] This whole statement is silly. It is impossible to tell what he means by "far left wing of the emerging church movement" and even if it wasn't, there is no way McLaren is the "undisputed leader" of it.
[6] McLaren has since apologized for the homosexuality comment, and the substitutionary atonement comment is unsubstantiated. (I am not trying to defend McLaren; I am just striving for accuracy.)
[7] Moran is not quoting from our website, he is quoting from my blog. This distinction may seem trivial, but it is not. Statements on a church's official website are much more authoritative about the character of that church, whereas a pastor's blog is often used as a sounding board to create dialog (at least that's what mine is for.)
[8] I am not "bashing the name 'Christian'" in the blog post in question (The Sound of the Underground.) I am "bashing" (if that word must be used) what we Christians have made of it.
[9] I stand by this statement of mine. The key phrase is "I would not be one bit surprised if..." By that I mean that I am not confident that Jesus would do these things, but I am confident that it's possible. In regards to the gay bookstore, a reading of the comments following said blog post will reveal that I don't believe Jesus would be their best customer, or start slapping people on the back and congratulating them for their gayness. But I am convinced that Jesus would be where the "people" are. And by "people" I mean, those who are most open to Him. This would preclude the legalists who have decided in advance that the Messiah is going to look and act just like them.

I was going to say more about all this, but I think that'll have to do for now. Let me just finish this off by recognizing that Mr. Moran does not speak for the SBC or the MBC as a whole, and I would frankly be a little surprised (and saddened) if they take him seriously.

12/16/06 - First Anniversary of The Core Blog

Today is the first anniversary of The Core Blog! I want to sincerely thank everyone who has encouraged my foray into the blogosphere by reading, commenting, and e-mailing. There have been low points, where I became better acquainted with my own brokenness, and high points, where I... well... became better acquainted with my own brokenness.

Although it seems cheesy to me now, I still think the flagship post (Round 1: The Core vs. The Edge) laid a good foundation for the coming year of blogging.

Out of these last 40 posts, here are a few of my favorites, which have tended not to get a lot of comments. I've learned that this is the case for most bloggers' personal favorites. Enjoy!

Radical Grace (April 11)
The Parachute (August 27)
TV, Duct Tape, Churchaholism and a Puppy (September 20)
Do-It-Yourself Attack Ad Kit (October 19)

And here are a few of the most popular blogs I've written, judging by the number of comments I know that's not really a reliable criterion, but it at least measures how much discussion was generated, which is really my primary motivation anyway.

Man-Shaped God (March 31) - 45 comments
Part 3: Ancient-Future Church (February 19) - 43 comments
3 Promises (June 2) - 30 comments
Roe v. Wade, Love v. Power (September 28) - 30 comments

So thanks again, and keep reading! If you want to be on The Core e-mail list, just e-mail me.

Have a happy Khanukah (Jesus celebrated it,) and a merry Christmas!

Rounds 2 & 3: Law vs. Love and Head vs. Heart

I'm going to take a break from the current series to continue the celebrity death match I began with my original post.

This post was inspired by two things: a thread from The Reach, (primarily comment #75, by Jody Bilyeu) and a book called "This Little Church Went to Market," by Gary Gilley.

When a member of our species is passionate about anything, he or she tends to want to turn it into some sort of battle. It's not good enough to be crazy about what I like, I also have to try my best to defy whatever is the opposite.

But to say "Love trumps Law," (as Jody Bilyeu did) or to claim like Gary Gilley that God designed Christianity to be a Thinking Faith, not a Feeling Faith, is like arguing about who's going to win the Super Bowl, the Cubs or the Canucks.

Granted, I don't accuse Jody of hating the Law, or denying its importance. But the battle between love and law only exists in people's heads.

And contrary to Jody's perception, even Jesus never actually broke the law. If Jesus' love was stronger than His law, all He had to do was say in a big voice so the whole world could hear "YOU'RE ALL FORGIVEN!" But what did He really do? He spent His ministry helping people understand what the law really means, before dying for all of us to fulfill the law. A sacrifice was required, and His great love and His perfect righteousness were the only powers strong enough to give us grace within the confines of His law. The fact is, it doesn't make any sense to pit Jesus' law against His love, because neither can be broken by the other.

What does that mean for us? It means that grace is not cheap, and showing God's love for people doesn't consist of standing in the midst of sin and shouting "I'm OK, You're OK!" Never once in scripture does God instruct us to ignore sin, either in ourselves or in others. There are plenty of times He expects us to mind our own business, but we are also called at times to rebuke and reproof. These times must be chosen carefully, however, and must be done with the utmost love. The lifestyle of leaving others' sin between themselves and God, yet lovingly holding them accountable when it's appropriate is a perfect example of Law and Love in concert.

In other words, if your obedience to the Law and to Love is turning into a boxing match, then you're failing at one or both.

Now to Round 3: "Head vs. Heart."

I don't recommend the book, "This Little Church Went to Market." Gary Gilley is a pastor that obviously has an ax to grind, and apparently believes that the church was okey-dokey 100 years ago, before the entertainment industry's hostile takeover.

It is true that the Church has digressed from a thinking institution to a feeling instutution. I won't go into all this, it would take 20 pages. (Even though it only took Gilley 115.) But I think most of us could look around and see that this is generally true.

And as the giant pendulum ceaselessly swings from one irrelevant extreme to the other, there are plenty of those who believe that a return to the glorious intellectualism of yore would take care of the now rampant experientialism. To keep a long story short: It is true that emotion does not lead us a true relationship with God. But neither does the intellect.

100 & 200 years ago the Church was competing with, and is a product of, a worldly paradigm, just as it is today. The 1700s and 1800s was the Age of Reason. Naturally then, the Church would try to be the Church of Reason. Were a lot of thoughtful commentaries written? Sure. Were a lot of great Thinker's Hymns composed? You bet. Did people understand the Bible better and have a firmer grasp on Christian apologetics? Probably. Are these all things we should strive for today? Absolutely.

But did all these things actually result in real faith, in surrendered lives? No. I am so bold because I believe firmly that it is that third component of our selves, apart from head and heart, that brings us to the cross: our Will. Each of us must willingly empty ourselves of all our IQ and EQ in order to be filled with the realness of God. Then he invariably proceeds to use our heads and our hearts for his glory.

And once again, to find that the great thoughts of the Faith and the great experiences of the Faith are colliding in battle, is to discover that we are failing at one or both.