A Presentation for Good Friday

As you are planning for Holy Week and for Good Friday, or even for an Easter Vigil, this PowerPoint presentation – which I posted last year – might be helpful.

• A silent presentation of the Passion of Christ Jesus (English and Spanish)

It’s bilingual, but should be easily edited if you have PowerPoint (and if you don’t, and would like it edited, let me know) to make it appropriate for your church situation.

In His Peace,
Tom

A Penance

I am bummed.

I had one great last post all ready to urge people to reject the teachings of Frank Viola and George Barna.  I had commentary on their use of proof-texting to defend their entire book.  I even had given them a clever “celebrity couple” name.  And I was chomping at the bit to finish, polish and send it.

Then God the Holy Spirit convicted me.  That post will never be sent.

In the face of the onslaught of what I am calling the “New Stalinism”: attacks from the ridiculously far left (Bill Maher, Hitchens, Pullman, Dawkins and the like), I had to take a good, long look at my way of dealing with extremism within the Body of Christ.  Is it right for me to respond to divisive comments with (possibly more divisive) counter-attacks?

I had to conclude: nope.

The radical atheist movement, which would like to see the Body of Christ disappear from the face of the earth, are too unified in their one, simple piece of religious dogma – “God is not” – for us to afford to be divided.  And, when my efforts to counter division in the Church become ugly attacks on the very sources of division, the New Stalinists become even more powerful.

Fact is, Christ has one Bride, the Church.  She is a conflicted gal, to be sure.  She is simultaneously convinced of the efficacy and sufficiency of the Cross and the need for meritorious works; the surety of God’s sovereign choice and the freedom of the individual; the priesthood of all believers and the importance of the clergy; embracing at times Rome and at times the Reformation; holding icons in one hand and casting them away with the other…

The Sermon… Pagan?

Pagan Christianity doesn’t stop with church buildings and orderly worship.  Since much of this book nauseates me so, I’m going to hurry up a bit, so I can be done with it and – hopefully having convinced a few people to spend their money on better things – get on to more encouraging posts.

What can I say?  I’m a completist.

(Edit: I tried to be brief, but I just have so much to get off my chest about this book!  I was going to try and devote one post to four chapters, but I couldn’t; sorry!)

The sermon.  Here’s the deal: they argue that Paul and Peter and all the apostles’ preaching was not the same as your pastor’s Sunday morning sermon.  They were apostolic workers.  They came, they preached, they empowered the Church, and they left.  What happens on Sunday is derived from “pagan” philosophers who peddled their thoughts and their great whit and wisdom for a buck (PC, pp.89-91).  When pagan philosophers began to get converted to Christ, they just kept using the same oratory skills they had learned, and began using them for the work of Christ.  They became expert teachers who now had captive audiences on Sunday morning.

Balance Is Required…

A few last words on Chapter 2 of PC. Then, I promise, I will be less… yeah, I guess “wordy” is the correct term!… in the rest of the posts.

I think that Viola and Barna are teetering on the edge of (or have jumped headlong into) a legalism that could really go to further splitting the Church.  This book could be a whole lot more constructive and useful, were it not written in such combative, adversarial language.  This book’s tone doesn’t invite discussion – it squashes it.

A better book for looking at the need for getting the Body of Christ out of the sanctuary to take part in home-based worship is The Second Reformation by William A. Beckham.  While not a perfect book (I’ve only read one perfect Book!) it has a great sense for the balance of whole-Church formal worship and home-based fellowship; he refers to churches that only meet in one as a “one-winged church”; the “two-winged church” sees the need for recognizing the majesty of God in formal gatherings as the local Body of Christ in public settings, and also the need (and deep desire of Christians everywhere) to really share life with a small, consistently caring home-based fellowship.

Viola and Barna, Chapter 2 – The Red Flags

As you might have guessed if you read my previous post, I don’t think Viola and Barna’s chapter (in Pagan Christianity?) on church architecture is without its problems.  Here are a few (in my mind) glaring issues:

1. Frank and George seem to denigrate the visual arts in worship (though they do not think it worth devoting a chapter to).  Their basic argument seems to be that it originated with honoring dead saints.  Two problems with that: a) what’s wrong with honoring those who have gone before us?  Honoring that “great cloud of witnesses” is far from idolatry; b) the origin of the first Christian worship art is irrelevant – the question is, how do we use the arts in our worship?  Art can be used in so many edifying and God-honoring ways!

Viola and Barna: Pagan “Church” Buildings?

In Chapter 2 of Pagan Christianity (hereafter, PC), Viola and Barna take on both the history and value of the traditional church building. I’m going to go over some of the highlights of this chapter.

How I’d like to handle these chapters is to list what I call “Green Flags” (things that really ring true), “Red Flags” (things that don’t ring true or seem illogical) and neutral, interesting points (such as interesting facts, “so what?” statements and books cited that I just may want on my Christmas list – often from writers Viola doesn’t seem to like!).  If I get really wordy (like this post) I will divide Green and Red into two posts over two days.  Today: the Green Flags!

Green Flags:

1. “The New Testament always reserves the word church (ekklesia) for the people of God.  It never uses this word to refer to a building of any sort.” (14)  Amen to that!  The Church is the people of God.  No argument there.
2. “Meeting in homes was a conscious choice of the early Christians.” (15)  And it is a conscious choice of the organic fellowship groups we’ve been involved with for the past nine years!  Of course, this leads to a bit of a Red Flag (see below)!

I’m Less John Piper and More Lauren Winner

I’ve been reading Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner. She’s a convert from Judaism to Christianity, and a real brain. But, to boot, in this extremely open and honest memoir, she’s really got her heart on her sleeve. She shares about her journey through Orthodox Judaism to the Christian faith (in the Episcopal tradition), her failures and regrets along the way, her continual stumblings as she walks and grows, her struggles and even a few triumphs.

I’d recommend this book to everyone on planet earth.

Now, while, by my (extremely slow) standards, I have been racing through this book, I find that I have never, after several tries, been able to make it through a John Piper book. “Why?” I ask myself.

I’ve decided that theology comes best when it’s personal. Girl Meets God is jammed full with the theological and philosophical. In the midst of the threads of story-lines from Lauren’s slightly tragic/slightly joyous life, you find her teaching – teaching about how one converts to Judaism, teaching about the theology of the Resurrection, teaching about the sacraments of Communion and Confession, teaching about how Ruth relates to the Jew and the Christian and how the Jewish festival of Pentecost relates to the Christian celebration of the same name on the same day in history. It’s a theologically and historically rich little book.

But when I read Piper, I feel that – where Lauren Winner has sat me down to show me this cool thing she learned about God or religion – Piper comes to me, whips out his entire collection of Calvin’s writings, and slaps me in the face with them, saying, “I’m sorry; I’m doing this because I love you.” He’s heavy-handed, and harsh and sorely lacking in nuance.

Why am I writing this? What’s it got to do with worship? Plenty, I think.

Worship Is Whatever You Do.

Today, at church, singing was uncharacteristically solemn for the second Sunday in Easter.

Stuff’s been going on with Pablo and Christy, the leaders. God’s been working on them.

Today, Pablo shared from several passages, discussing the idea that our “reasonable service” is to do whatever unto Jesus. Our worship continues beyond the church doors on Sunday morning.

Nothing new, but don’t we just need to keep hearing that truth over and over again?

So, Amen, Pablo.

I’ve got a few thoughts on this topic. A couple of vignettes:

And Jesus Prayed… (part 1)

I am on a unity kick. This is not new for me, nor is it an original thought. But there it is: unity kick.

The good – and frightening – thing is, I think it’s never going away.

Just like my love for guacamole (all thanks tom my buddy Kerri who makes the best in the world) and my belief that old Petra is better than new Petra (there, I’ve dated myself), here to stay is my belief that unity in the body of Christ is, perhaps, one of the most-neglected essentials of the faith. I said the E word, and I’ll say it again: Essential.

As the first of what will be a series of thoughts (read, if you like: ramblings) I want to start with the Expert Himself. Jesus actually took a great deal of time praying for this one thing in John’s account:

17:20 “I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, 17:21 that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. 17:22 The glory you gave to me I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one – 17:23 I in them and you in me – that they may be completely one, so that the world will know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me. (NET – emphasis mine)

Nope, He didn’t pray that we’d all have the exact right view on baptism, communion, free-will or predestination. He didn’t pray that they would believe in objective facts about the faith or be convinced that we have a handle on absolute truth. He didn’t pray that we would all like the same kinda music.

He prayed that we would all be one.

Why? Oh, no big reason: only so that the world would believe in Jesus.

[Ranting and raving here has been censored by my own sense of decorum. No need to make too many enemies!]. Folks (and I will get into more detail in a future post): it’s Easter. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Or, as they say in another liturgy: We have died with Christ, we live with Christ, we will reign with Christ. Lay off each other.

Please.

More soon.

By the way, the NET Bible can be found at www.bible.org.