Boys, Beach, Creation, and the Image of God

Yesterday, I spent a day at Pike Lake beach with my boys.  They had a wonderful time.  It was a beautiful day--warm in the sun and nice in the shade (I was sitting in the shade).  As I watched I couldn't help but think about God, his creation, and my boys being made in his image.   While I was watching them, I was struck with the fact that humanity is happiest when they are reflecting our Creator God.  Keegan was all smiles as he was creating his sand angels (think snow angel).  All three of the boys were laughing and giggling and carrying on as they were creating castles, and motes, and houses, and mountains, and sand soup.  Additionally, all three of the boys were playing with new and old friends (friends from the t-ball team) on the beach.  (Isn't it amazing with young kids there is no in and out group--they just enjoy each other's company.)  It is no surprise that these our some of my happiest memories of childhood as well.  Why?  I believe it is because we are created and in God's image and derive the most joy out of life when we are reflecting that image.  God is a God of relationship.  He is in perfect relationship with the members of the God-head.  What's more, God created humankind to have a relationship with them.  My boys were just reflect the image of our relationship God.  The weren't old enough to have the many things that encumber adult relationships.  Even more, my boys were reflecting our Creative God.  Just think of everything God created.  My boys, it seems, were creating hundreds of things there on the beach with their friends.  Oh to be like kids!  Not to be stilted and rejected in relationships that keep us or makes us slow to develop relationships.  I am sure this is why there are so many adults in and outside the church that have a hard time establishing and maintaining their relationship with God.  And shouldn't we all be stoked about creating things (lines in our yard as we mow, our gardens and landscaping, woodworking (I made a corn hole board a year ago), and. ...etc.  Sometimes I see these things as work, but most of the time I enjoy them like my boys liked creating at the beach--because I am made in the image of a creative God that likes to create.

Home Showing

Our realtor called today to tell us he has set up an appointment for Noon on Friday.  It is for a couple that went through our home at our open house on last Sunday.  The realtor said the couple seemed very interested, is working on a pre-approval letter, and could likely make an offer.  It will be a contingent offer however.  Please continue to pray that we sell our home quickly.  Maybe this will be the one, cause we can't wait to be back in Lockport.  I will keep you all updated with what is happening.

Letter to First Baptist Lockport

Dear Friends:

It is a beautiful morning in Warsaw, Indiana and the weather has caused me pause to reflect on being called as your pastor at FBC Lockport. It is sunny and the temperature is perfect as I sit on my front porch and watch my youngest son Keegan ride his bike up and down our driveway and street. Everything seems right--picture perfect!

This is how Paula and I feel about being called to First Baptist. It was a slow process but in God’s wisdom and timing—perfect. As we got to know the church, first through Doug Meye and Transformation Ministries, then through the search team, over the phone, we became increasingly aware of the solid foundation and heart for ministry that has been laid by many members and by the congregational leadership. Indeed, we learned that there is a solid foundation to be built upon to Grow God’s Kingdom. As we learned these things, Paula and I became increasingly optimistic that this may be the ministry God was calling us to.

As we visited with the search team in Lockport we instantly fell in love with the people we were meeting, your beautiful city, and the church. This love only grew as we began to meet the members of the congregation, answered your questions, and worshiped together. Lockport instantly became home and First Baptist instantly became family!

Paula, the boys, and I can’t wait to finally be home with our new Family at FBC! August 2nd in all likelihood will be my start date can’t come soon enough. Our home has been on the market for nearly three weeks. Please pray that it sells quickly. We have put a contingent offer on a home in the city and we can’t wait to begin having our new friends and family at FBC over. I know many of you can’t wait to get to know us better. Feel free to “friend” us on Facebook. I will try to frequently update my status—to let you know how the process of getting ready to move is going.
 
We look forward to seeing what God has in store for my family and FBC. Indeed we are all embarking on a new adventure full of possibilities and wonder as we await the awesome way He will work in us and thru us to Grow His Kingdom in Lockport. God is good!!

Trinity, Hierarchy and Subodrindation

I just learned that early Christians understood person in a much different way than we do. Their word for person--persona--means mask worn by an actor. Bruce Shelley in his Church History in Plain Language writes, "In Trinitarian thought the "mask" is not worn by God to hide but to reveal his true character. It is clear that when we think of the Trinity, we should not try to think of three persons in our sense of the term, but three personal disclosures of God that correspond to what he is really like."

Now this is messing with my mind as I am wrestling with the quesitons of hierarchy and subordination in the Godhead.

Bruce Shelley is pretty conservative so I am surprised he discusses the trinity like he does.  Are there any Theology Proper people out there that have some thoughts and insights.  Did Shelley take things a little too far or is he on the money?

Why Do They Hate Us--From Mikle Spencer's Blog (AKA Internetmonk)

Mike Spencer a Southern Baptist Lists Reason's the World Dislikes (Evangelicals) Christians So Much. It's rough--true of me in many areas--and true of many churches I have been a part of. What do you think?

1. We endorse a high standard of conduct for others and then largely excuse ourselves from a serious persuit of such a life.

2. Our piety is mostly public. We love others to see what God is doing in our lives.

3. Many of us relate to others with and obvious--or thinly disguised--agenda. In other words, those who work with us or go to school with us think we are "up to something."

4. Many of us are bizarrely shallow and legalistic about minute matters. We are not as healthy and happy as we portray ourselves.

5. We may deny that we have made God into a political, financial or cultural commodity, but the world knows better.

6. We are too slow to seperate ourselves from what's wrong. It's clear to many that we no longer have the cutting-edge moral sense of Martin Luther King Jr. or William Wilberforce.

7. We take ourselves far to seriously and appear to be opposed to normal life. What normal, healthy people find laughable, we find threatening and often labe with the ridiculous label "of the devil."

What do you think--is he right?

The Shack, Church History, and The World

A quote from The Shack--Jesus talking to Mack:


"Mack, the world system is what it is. Institutions, systems, ideologies, and all the vain, futile efforts of humanity that go with them are everywhere, and interaction with all of it is unavoidable. But, I can give you freedom to overcome a system of power in which you find yourself, be it religious, economic, social, or political. You will grow in the freedom to be inside or outside all kinds of systems and to move freely between and among them. Together, you and I can be in it and not of it."

There are many people that are knocking this book because the way it represents God's disdain for worldly institutions including the church that developed power structures for institutional gain. I wonder if these critics are so caught up in these institutions and power structures because they use them for personal gain. In Wiliston Walker's A History of the Christian Church, he writes:

"...Christian writers from Hermas to Origen and Tertullian, make it plain that the churches of the second and third centuries continued to see themselves as a society some how "set apart"--governed by a Spirit other than the spirits that ruled the world at large. The original source of this attitude can no doubt be sought in the world-view of the Jewish apocalyptic [The Jewish Prophets]. Repudiating the political, moral, and religious corruption of a world trapped in the nets of evil, the apocalyptist had looked to the future for that world's overthrow--to a new age when God would punish evil, reward suffering for righteousness, and so set the creation right [looked forward to Jesus]. Since, however, those who had believed the message of Jesus' resurrection and had entered, by baptism, upon his new life knew themselves to have a share even now in the good things of the age to come, they also knew that it was their business to live as people "crucified...to the world."

It seems to be me The Shack is calling the church back to its original perspective and Christ's directive to be in the world and not of it. Are we so much a part of our world's institutions that we can't see we are a part of them? Do we not see that God has called us out from them? I grew up in Baptist circles and my extremely conservative Baptist church emphasized being different from the world. The problem: They only wanted us to be different in our private morality--don't drink, don't chew, don't go to movies, don't have sex out of marriage...etc. Granted they were right about some things in which we are a called to be different--sex out of marriage. They were legalists about others--don't go to movies. INSTEAD of focusing on private morality the church must focus on being different from corporate morality as well, it must be different from the world's systems and institutions, it and its members must act differently from them. We, the church, have to look at ourselves, both individually and corporately, to see how presuppositions are are based upon this world's understanding and way of doing things and not God's way revealed in Scripture. We have to know that we are so a part of these systems and institutions a part of us that we will have to work extremely hard not to twist the Bible to support our way of doing these, but rather use the Bible to examine how we have been co-opted by these institutions.

Slavery, The Politics of Power, and The Risk of Grace

The following is a great quote from a New Testament scholar regarding his reflections on the message of Philemon:

"All societies rest upon inequities--some concealed, others noticed--that make brotherhood impossible. Every age and locale has its particular and familiar slaveries. What heightens injustice is that all believers--exploiters or exploited--are equally nearsighted about the oppressions we have unwittingly learned to live with. No one cries out: the strong because they need not, the weak for they dare not. Or perhaps this unfair: it might seem that slaves would sense injustice that owners ignor. But even slaves must have their eyes and their feelings dulled; you cannot long entertain hope for what is unattainable. So, rather than live in perpetual frustration, the enslaved man generally will not allow his conscience to become too sensitive...Yet there is no social order, no revision of the economy, no advance in politics, no possible world situation that adequaetely conforms to the gospel or even makes room for its full realization, no revolution that does not eventually redistribute injustice."

This is the whole point of Paul not commanding Philemone to emancipate Onesimous; rather, tries to persuade Philemon in love and relationship. He (Paul) is trying to live out the Gospel that restores creation with Shalom or peace and he courageously keeps his "power" as an apostle under control--so he will not become an oppressor or exploiter and operate by the same world system that Christ came to redeem, and calls his church to redeem by operating Christ's way (love and self-sacrifice, power under not power over)--not the world's way.  Further, we have the Hope that God, when he returns, will finally correct all injustices--1 Samuel 2 is an example of this Hope/Faith in the life of Hannah.

I have a lot to learn from Paul and this letter to Philemon. I dare say the church in general has a lot to learn as well.

The quote above is from J. T. Burtchaell as quoted by Ben Worthington the III in his Socio-rhetorical Commentary on The Prison Epistles.