derek vreeland's blog

Wesley's Game

2008-05-03T16:50:00.008-05:00

Wesley had a game this morning and I finally got around to bringing the camcorder. Wesley is playing in a 7 & 8 year old rec. league. They use a pitching machine, pitching the ball 35 MPH. There is no stealing and there is a five run per inning mercy rule. The games last five innings. Wesley normally plays second base, but he is the backup catcher and got called upon to play catcher today. He did really well. His team won.

I got about 13 minutes of video, which I am burning onto a DVD. Here are some clips.

Wesley catching--

Wesley hitting--

Wesley's commentary--

BTW, my Wesley was named after John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. John Wesley’s game wasn’t baseball, but preaching. During his ministry in the eighteenth century, John Wesley traveled over 250,000 miles preaching more than 42,000 sermons. [Source]

Wesley (the founder of Methodism and not my son) trained and sent out countless numbers of preachers and circuit riders to preach the gospel. He gave his preachers twelve rules. Some of them need updated, but as a whole it helpful to see Wesley’s passion for preaching in these rules. I don't think Wesley would like jokes in my sermons!

Wesley’s Rules for His Preachers
1) Be diligent. Never be unemployed. Never be triflingly employed. Never while away time, nor spend more time at any place than is strictly necessary.

2) Be serious. Let your motto be, “Holiness to the Lord.” Avoid all lightness, jesting, and foolish talking.

3) Converse sparingly and cautiously with women, particularly with young women.

4) Take no step towards marriage without solemn prayer to God and consulting with your brethren.

5) Believe evil of no one unless fully proved; take heed how you credit it. Put the best construction you can on everything. You know the judge is always sup¬posed to be on the prisoner’s side.

6) Speak evil of no one, else your word, especially, would eat as doth a canker; keep your thoughts within your own breast till you come to the person concerned.

7) Tell everyone what you think wrong in him, lovingly and plainly, and as soon as may be, else it will fester in your own heart. Make all haste to cast the fire out of your bosom.

8) Do not affect the gentleman. A preacher of the Gospel is the servant of all.

9) Be ashamed of nothing but sin; no, not of cleaning your own shoes when necessary.

10) Be punctual. Do everything exactly at the time. And do not mend our rules, but keep them, and that for conscience’ sake.

11) You have nothing to do but to save souls. There¬fore spend and be spent in this work. And go always, not only to those who want you, but to those who want you most.

12) Act in all things, not according to your own will, but as a son in the Gospel, and in union with your brethren. As such, it is your part to employ your time as our rules direct: partly in preaching and visiting from house to house, partly in reading, meditation, and prayer. Above all, if you labour with us in our Lord’s vineyard, it is needful you should do that part of the work which the Conference shall advise, at those times and places which they shall judge most for His glory.

I Hear the Woods A-Callin'

2008-04-25T22:15:00.002-05:00

I am packed and ready to go.

The woods are calling me.

Tomorrow I am going hiking in Pine Mountain, North of Columbus, Georgia with some guys from the church. I am giving up a Sunday morning at our church building to be with the guys and worship in the woods.

We are hiking in and camping overnight and hiking out Sunday around lunch time. I haven’t been hiking since I was in the Boy Scouts during middle school. I am looking forward to connecting with the guys and reconnecting with the Lord this weekend. There is something spiritually refreshing about engaging with God through nature.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not going to be totally disconnected. I am taking my cell phone, which will allow me to take pictures and upload them to my facebook account. I also signed up for ESPN Alerts, which will send a TXT message to me after each of the Kansas City Chiefs’ draft picks. It is NFL draft weekend and the Chiefs have 13 picks, 2 in the first round!

So I will keep one foot in the digital world and the other one will be in the woods.

God has made his invisible attributes known in creation (Romans 1:20).

The heavens declare the glory of God (Ps. 19:1).

Jesus often departed to a lonely place to pray (Luke 5:16). In Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord: Road to Cana, Jesus departs into a grove in order to reconnect to God the Father.

I will spend time in silence in solitude. I am taking my moleskine and a Gideon’s New Testament (NKJV). I am looking forward to a time of spiritual renewal. I am expecting God to show up in surprising ways. On Sunday morning, I am preaching a message entitled, “Finally Brothers,” from Philippians 4:4-9. I am going to challenge them to think through the Men’s Fraternity three-fold definition (reject passivity…accept responsibility…lead courageously). We will end our Sunday morning service with communion, receiving the bread and juice from a mess kit.

Pray for us!

The Catholic Church becomes media savvy

2008-04-20T17:13:00.003-05:00

Pope Benedict XVI is on his US tour.

He met with the President. Apparent President Bush said, “Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome Speech.” [Video] He said this after a papal address at the Whitehouse. I love the W. The Pope held an open air mass with 45,000 in attendance at the Nationals Baseball stadium in Washington D.C. He has visited with victims of clergy abuse and offered prayer and encouragement. He even visited a Jewish synagogue. He is now in New York. He addressed the UN and will pray at Ground Zero. The Pope’s visit to the US has come at a good time for Catholics in the US. The clergy abuse scandals over the last years have stirred resentment towards the Catholic Church. The scandals continue to fuel Protestant distained for the Catholics in general and the Catholic Church in particular.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is hoping the Pope’s visit will help in priest recruitment. The number of young men entering the priesthood is down in the US. For example, St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers outside of New York used to have hundreds of young men in preparation for the priesthood. Today there are only sixty in the seminary and only six will be ordained into the priesthood this year.

To bolster recruitment, the Catholic Church in New York has launched a website www.NYpriest.com . The Website includes video clips, moving pictures, and the slogan “The World Needs Heroes.” It looks like the uber-traditional Catholic Church is using the strategies of ultra-contemporary churches by partnering the Pope’s visit with cleaver marketing and high-quality media. When are they going to start a podcast? I wonder if the Pope has a facebook account???

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/19/wpope119.xml

facebook and blogging

2008-04-16T11:51:00.002-05:00

So a few weeks ago, I signed up for a facebook account to see a video posted by a friend on his facebook account. I signed on to facebook simply to see his video. I thought, "I blog and that is about all I can keep up with. I don't really want to enter the whole facebook world." And I am a bit like Jerry, the "character" on Seinfeld. I have three friends and I really don't have room for more. Yes, I am an introvert.

After setting up a facebook account, I began to receive emails from people who wanted to be my friend. Sounded pretty nice. (Thanks Santosh, you were my first facebook friend.) I put some time into my facebook account, added some profile info, added some applications, and started searching for friends. I was able to connect with some friends that I haven't talked to for years. So maybe I do have room for more than three friends. I am still new to the social networking scene, but I am increasingly becoming interested in growing my social network.

Now I am connecting my blog to my facebook account. I have been blogging at www.derekvreeland.com since March 2006. I originally set up the blog as an online journal to keep an account of a teaching trip to India. Now some 183 post later, I have found the blog to a great outlet for writing and connecting with others. Today, I am adding an application on my facebook account, so that my facebook friends can see what I am posting on the blog.

With a little tweaking, I hope to successfully interface the two.

Click here to go to my facebook profile.

Bob Dylan's Pulitzer Prize

2008-04-09T16:48:00.003-05:00

Bob Dylan was awarded an honorary Pulitzer Prize this week for his "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

Congrats Bob! Well deserved.

Whether you respect Dylan as a musician or not, you have to respect him as a poet. He has said, after all, that he is a poet first and a musician second.

I am reading Christopher Ricks' book Dylan's Visions of Sin.

Ricks, who is an English professor and literary critic, is quick to point out the power of Dylan's poetry. Dylan is better compared to T.S. Elliot, Thomas Hardy, and Samuel Coleridge than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

In one of the opening chapters, Ricks says Dylan was at his best when he wrote, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." This song is one of the examples of the power of Dylan's poetry.

To celebrate, watch this video that has nothing to to with Bob Dylan but this little girl is pretty adorable. How many of us adults have the Lord's Prayer memorized?

Blogging Tips from Seth Godin

2008-04-07T09:19:00.005-05:00

Internet-savvy marketing guru, Seth Godin has recently blogged on the the subject of blogging and sounding intelligent when speaking or blogging about the Internet. I have had a couple of people over the last few weeks (months?) ask me about blogging. Seth's suggestions are all good tips to follow.

If you are an experienced blogger, do you have any other tips?

Seth's Blogging Tips

1. Use headlines. I use them all the time now. Not just boring ones that announce your purpose but interesting or puzzling or engaging headlines. Headlines are perfect for engaging busy readers.

2. Realize that people have choices. With 80 million other blogs to choose from, I know you could leave at any moment (see, there goes someone now). So that makes blog writing shorter and faster and more exciting.

3. Drip, drip, drip. Bloggers don't have to say everything at once. We can add a new idea every day, piling on a thesis over time.

4. It's okay if you leave. Bloggers aren't afraid to include links or distractions in their writing, because we know you'll come back if what we had to say was interesting.

5. Interactivity is a great shortcut. Your readers care about someone's opinion even more than yours... their own. So reading your email or your comments or your trackbacks (your choice) makes it easy to stay relevant.

6. Gimmicks aren't as useful as insight. If you're going to blog successfully for months or years, sooner or later you need to actually say something. Same goes for your writing.

7. Don't be afraid of lists. People like lists.

8. Show up. Not writing is not a useful way of expressing your ideas. Waiting for perfect is a lousy strategy.

9. Say it. Don't hide, don't embellish.

Source: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/04/write-like-a-bl.html

A few more tips on speaking intelligently about blogging, the Internet, and social networking...

You don't have 'a facebook.' Facebook is a place, a network, not a page. You're 'on facebook,' or you 'use facebook.'

'Friend' is a verb. "I'll friend you," is a totally valid thing to say.

You don't look up things on 'the google'. It's just Google, no 'the.' 'Google' is also a verb, as in, 'Google me'.

Instant messaging refers to a wide range of software tools and communication channels. It's called 'IM' and it too is a verb.

A blog is something you have (unlike a Facebook). And blog is also a verb. As in, "I have a blog, this blog, which you probably found by googling me. I blogged about Facebook (which I'm on but don't use often). I don't IM, and I'm impossibly lax about friending people."

[Jackson chimes in that a blog is the whole, and that a post is just one article (like the one you're reading). So you don't say, "I wrote a blog about that," you say, "I just blogged about that," or "did you read my post on how to talk about the Internet?"]

Source: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/04/in-and-on-and-a.html

Book Review: Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana

2008-04-02T07:28:00.002-05:00

Anne Rice has done it again.

In her second book in the Christ the Lord series, Rice has again skillfully created a historical novel of the life of Jesus that is engaging, historically connected, and true to the image of Jesus in the Gospels. Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana captured my imagination and fueled my devotion with its earthy depiction of an adult Jesus (referred to in the book by his Hebrew name “Yeshua” or “Yeshua bar Joesph”). Rice has continued with her masterful way of balancing the true humanity and true divinity of Jesus in The Road to Cana with vivid description. With Jesus as the narrator, Rice gives the reader another look into Jesus’ inner life, his thoughts, his anxieties, and his longings.

(WARNING: The following may contain plot spoilers. If you don’t want me to ruin the plot then order the book here.)

Rice has wisely chosen not to fill in too many gaps between Jesus in the temple at age 12 and his baptism at approximately age 30. The Road to Cana begins during the winter before Jesus' baptism. We see less of his interaction between his mother, his father, and Uncle Cleopas and more of his interaction with his older brother James. There is a reference to his brother James being the son of another woman and not Mary, the mother of Jesus. Also there is a reference to Jesus calling his cousins his “brothers and sisters.” This classification is in harmony with the Catholic tradition that Mary remained a virgin and had no other children. Protestants may disagree, but this theological determination regarding Jesus’ family in no way takes away from the power of the story.

One of the triumphs of the book is Rice’s ability to portray Jesus’ romantic feelings in a pure, noble, and historically true way. Jesus’ temptation in this regard is completely free of the trashy, 20th century, sex-obsessed descriptions of his romantic feelings as seen in other contemporary stories of Jesus. Jesus is enraptured with a young woman named Avigail. She is a fictions character, but she could have very well been in Jesus' life in first century Israel. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but Avigail plays an import role in The Road to Cana. Jesus’ love for her is very holy and very real. Rice does a wonderful job describing the pressure Jesus was under to take Avigail as his bride. The temptation was not unbridled lust, but the temptation to marry according to cultural standards. Jesus longs to make Avigail his bride, but he knows this is not his call. The interactions between Jesus and Avigail are wonderfully written.

The first half of the book sets the historical and personal context of the life of Jesus leading up to the Gospel accounts of his baptism, his temptation, and the beginning of his miracle ministry, including the miracle at Cana. Rice describes Jesus' baptism and subsequent temptation in the wilderness with magical imagery and direct quotations from Scripture. She remains faithful to the gospel narrative and fills in the biblical text with wonderful color and texture.

In the front of the book she has a quote from Karl Rahner: The truth of faith can be preserved only by doing a theology of Jesus Christ, and by redoing it over and over again.

Anne Rice has used her gifts as a writer to do just that, redoing a theology of Jesus Christ on the canvass of biblical and historical orthodoxy...a historical-fiction-kind-of-theology that has great benefit for those of us on the journey of knowing, loving, and following Jesus.

Eighteen Years

2008-04-01T12:39:00.002-05:00

Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, and He will do it. Psalm 37:5 NASB

Eighteen years ago I read these words.

No joke.

I was no fool.

I read these words.

They became to me the very spoken words of God.

He said, "Commit your ways to me and I will do it."

I did and he did.

I committed my life to Christ.

God saved me.

These words utterly changed my life.

Changed my past.

Changed my future.

Everything I am doing now is rooted in that moment.

Eighteen years ago.

1990 doesn't seem that long ago.

Eighteen years?

Can't be true.

Time waits for no man.

Things are the same.

Things have changed.

Lot of water under the bridge, Lot of other stuff too
Don't get up gentlemen, I'm only passing through

People are crazy and times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

I've been walking forty miles of bad road
If the Bible is right, the world will explode

Bob Dylan, "Things Have Changed," 1999 [Video]

Concomitant Individualism

2008-03-31T16:00:00.004-05:00

Concomitant.

Now that is a good word.

Don't worry, I didn't know what this word meant either until I looked it up today, but it is a good word. Worth adding to your vocabulary.

Con-com-itant: (adj.) accompanying especially in a subordinate or incidental way [Dictionary]

The phrase "concomitant individualism" came from a quote from a book I was re-reading today-- Worship, Community, & The Triune God of Grace by J.B. Torrance (1996). JBT taught systematic theology at Aberdeen Scotland and he has done a lot of work on the Trinity. In this book he discusses the practical implications of the doctrine of the Trinity in our view of worship. I blogged on this book last year (click here).

Torrance uses the phrase "concomitant individualism" (go ahead and say "concomitant" out loud….it will be good practice for when you use it in a sentence and show off your intelligence to all your friends) when wrestling with shifting values in American culture and how the church should respond.

Individualism and concomitant individualism (go ahead and say it out loud again) is the unavoidable byproduct a over obsession with reason in Western culture. What so wrong with individualism you ask? Read JBT below:

But what happens in a secular culture where belief in the objectivity of God and of moral law recedes? Then, as Allan Bloom has argued so powerfully in The Closing of the American Mind, everything goes into flux (Heraclitus), and we witness a closing of the (American) mind, with a resultant collapse into narcissism, a preoccupation with the self—my rights, my life, my liberty, my pursuit of happiness. Religion then becomes a means toward self-realization. All the interest is in self-esteem, self-fulfillment, self-identity, the human potential movement and possibility thinking, leading either to nihilism of post-modernism or to the neo-gnosticism of the New Age movement which identifies the self with God. Know yourself. Realize your own identity. Then you will know God in the depths of your own spirituality…"
"What is the Christian answer? Is it to go back to Plato's Republic, as Allan Bloom suggests, to recover the objectivity of truth, beauty, goodness, justice. Is it to revive the older notions of natural law and moral law discerned by the kindly light of reason, with their concomitant individualism? Or is it not rather to return to "the forgotten Trinity"—to an understanding of the Holy Spirit, who delivers us from a narcissistic preoccupation with the self to find our true being in loving communion with God and one another – to hear God's call to us, in our day, to participate through the Spirit in Christ's communion with God and one another—to hear God's call to us, in our day, to participate through the Spirit in Christ's communion with the Father and his mission from the Father to the world—to create in our day A NEW HUMANITY of persons who find true fulfillment in other centered communion and service in the kingdom of God?"
J.B. Torrance, Worship, Community, & The Triune God of Grace, pg. 41

Concomitant individualism drives the consumerism that is eating away the soul of the Church in North America. I know that may sound like a pit of an overstatement, but I am NOT trying to exaggerate here. The "Me Church" is absolutely killing us. Check out this parody video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9dvVp0Nxjo

The idea that church exists to meet "my" needs distorts the church Jesus is working to build. Christians are good at dressing up their concomitant individualism in God-talk and Scripture verses ripped out of context. Think of how we often view worship in Christian community. We so often hear people talk about how worship made THEM feel. We hear about THEIR favorite songs and how the preacher gave THEM such wonderful insight on how to live THEIR life.

I am not becoming a cynic. I have my favorite worship songs. There are musical styles in church music that I like and some I don't like. I don't like old songs. And in our church we define old as anything written before 1991. Nothing from the 80s please! It isn't really old lyrics that bother me as much as old music. So I have things that fit my tastes when it comes to worship. There are certain Christian pastors and teachers that I like to listen to and there some I don't. The point is we cannot let these thoughts dominate our view of worship.

I found Torrance helpful in connecting the experiential significance of the Trinity to corporate worship. He describes the Trinity as a self-contained, self-sufficient, self-giving community of persons. God was intimately happy with the enjoyment of himself (Jonathan Edwards). He did not need anything to make him more God or more glorious.

We are standing on the outside like children in a crowded room of adults who are chatting passionately. We are jumping up to try to get a view into their conversation, but we are too little. Trinity community is just like that. God is a self-sufficient community. He does need anything. He certainly doesn't need us to add to him in any way. But because of this grace, he has opened himself up by the Son and the Spirit and invited us into to participate in this divine community. Now that will stick a dagger into the heart of consumer Christianity!

The new humanity (referred to by Torrance) is made up of persons wrapped up in Trinitarian life. We do not live for self like the old humanity. We do not live for self in any of its forms: self-actualization, self-ish pleasure, self promotion, etc. We live in Trinitarian community, a community focused on God himself and not us.

Anne Rice's New Book

2008-03-22T17:26:00.009-05:00

I just ordered Anne Rice's new book, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. This is the sequel to her 2005 work, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.

Read my review of Out of Egypt here.

I really enjoyed the first book and I am looking forward to reading the second in the series. Anne Rice, who is known for the Vampire Chronicles. A renewal of her faith in the late 90s and committed her writing career to the Lord. She has vowed to write books only for Jesus.

The following is an editorial she wrote in the Washington Post about her spiritual journey.

My Trust in My Lord
by Anne Rice
Look: I believe in Him. It’s that simple and that complex. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the God Man who came to earth, born as a tiny baby and then lived over thirty years in our midst. I believe in what we celebrate this week: the scandal of the cross and the miracle of the Resurrection. My belief is total. And I know that I cannot convince anyone of it by reason, anymore than an atheist can convince me, by reason, that there is no God.

A long life of historical study and biblical research led me to my belief, and when faith returned to me, the return was total. It transformed my existence completely; it changed the direction of the journey I was traveling through the world. Within a few years of my return to Christ, I dedicated my work to Him, vowing to write for Him and Him alone. My study of Scripture deepened; my study of New Testament scholarship became a daily commitment. My prayers and my meditation were centered on Christ.

And my writing for Him became a vocation that eclipsed my profession as a writer that had existed before.

Why did faith come back to me? I don’t claim to know the answer. But what I want to talk about right now is trust. Faith for me was intimately involved with love for God and trust in Him, and that trust in Him was as transformative as the love.

Right now as I write this, our nation seems to be in some sort of religious delirium. Anti-God books dominate the bestseller lists; people claim to deconstruct the Son of Man with facile historical treatments of what we know and don’t know about Jesus Christ who lived in First Century Judea. Candidates for public office have to declare their faith on television. Christians quarrel with one another publicly about the message of Christ.

Before my consecration to Christ, I became familiar with a whole range of arguments against the Savior to whom I committed my life. In the end I didn’t find the skeptics particularly convincing, while at the same time the power of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John swept me off my feet.

And above all, when I began to talk to Jesus Christ again it was with trust.

On the afternoon in 1998 when faith returned, I experienced a sense of the limitless power and majesty of God that left me convinced that He knew all the answers to the theological and sociological questions that had tormented me for years. I saw, in one enduring moment, that the God who could make the Double Helix and the snow flake, the God who could make the Black holes in space, and the lilies of the field, could do absolutely anything and must know everything --- even why good people suffer, why genocide and war plague our planet, and why Christians have lost, in America and in other lands, so much credibility as people who know how to love. I felt a trust in this all-knowing God; I felt a sudden release of all my doubts. Indeed, my questions became petty in the face of the greatness I beheld. I felt a deep and irreversible assurance that God knew and understood every single moment of every life that had ever been lived, or would be lived on Earth. I saw the universe as an immense and intricate tapestry, and I perceived that the Maker of the tapestry saw interwoven in that tapestry all our experiences in a way that we could not hope, on this Earth, to understand.

This was not a joyful moment for me. It wasn’t an easy moment. It was an admission that I loved and believed in God, and that my old atheism was a façade. I knew it was going to be difficult to return to the Maker, to give over my life to Him, and become a member of a huge quarreling religion that had broken into many denominations and factions and cults worldwide. But I knew that the Lord was going to help me with this return to Him. I trusted that He would help me. And that trust is what under girds my faith to this day.

Within days of my return to Christ, I also became aware of something very important: that the first temptation we face as returning Christians is to criticize another Christian and his or her way of approaching Jesus Christ. I perceived that I had to resist that temptation, that I had to seek in my faith and in my love for God a complete certainty that He knew all about these factions and disputes, and that He knew who was right or who was wrong, and He would handle how and when He approached every single soul.

Why do I talk so much about this trust now? Because I think perhaps that with many Christians it is lacking, and in saying this I’m yielding to the temptation I just described. But let me speak my peace not critically so much as with an exhortation. Trust in Him. If you believe in Him, then trust Him. Trust what He says in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and trust what He says about having conquered evil; trust that He has won.

Don’t ever succumb to the fear that evil is winning in this world, no matter how bad things may appear. Don’t ever succumb to the fear that He does not witness our struggles, that He is not with every single soul.

The Sermon on the Mount is the portion of the New Testament to which I return again and again. I return to the simple command: “Love your enemies.” And each day brings me closer to understanding that in this message lies the blueprint for bringing the Kingdom of God to Earth. The Sermon on the Mount is the full blueprint. And it is not impossible to love our enemies and our neighbors, but it may be the hardest thing we have ever been asked to do.

But we can’t doubt the possibility of it. We must return to Jesus Christ again and again, after our failures, and seek in Him --- in His awesome majesty and power -- the creative solutions to the problems we face. We must retain our commitment to Him, and our belief in a world in which, conceivably, human beings could lay down their arms, and stretch out their arms to one another, clasping hands, and bring about a total worldwide peace.

If this is not inconceivable, then it is possible. And perhaps we are, in our own broken and often blind fashion, moving towards such a moment. If we can conceive of it and dedicate ourselves to it, then this peace on earth, this peace in Christ, can come.

As we experience Easter week, we celebrate the crucifixion that changed the world. We celebrate the Resurrection that sent Christ’s apostles throughout the Roman Empire to declare the Good News. We celebrate one of the greatest love stories the world has ever known: that of a God who would come down here to live and breathe with us in a human body, who would experience human death for us, and then rise to remind us that He was, and is, both Human and Divine. We celebrate the greatest inversion the world has ever recorded: that of the Maker dying on a Roman cross.

Let us celebrate as well that throughout this troubled world in which we live, billions believe in this 2,000-year-old love story and in this great inversion -- and billions seek to trust the Maker to bring us to one another in love as He brings us to Himself.

Source: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/03/go_tell_it_on_the_mountain_aga.html

Good Friday 2008

2008-03-20T14:47:00.004-05:00

Today is Good Friday.

It is a day of prayer, fasting, confession, repentance, and reflection on the sorrow of the cross.
It is good, because of death, Jesus' death.
It is not a "happy-go-lucky" kind of "good."
It is a redemptive good.
It is a reflective good.
It is a soul-searching good.

It is good, because it prepares us for Easter Sunday. You cannot experience the JOY of the RESURRECTION without reflecting on the SORROW of the CROSS.

I am preparing for two services today. Our church will host a noon-time community worship service as a part of the SAMA's Holy Week services. (SAMA is the Sumter Area Ministerial Association based here in Americus.) We will then hold our annual Good Friday Service tonight at 6:30. I am humbled that a few pastor friends will be in attendance.

My message tonight grows out of reflections from this week. Here are my thoughts on the cross for this Good Friday.

Forsaken

The death of Jesus was a shock to his followers. His original twelve disciples left their families and gave up business to follow Jesus who they thought was their king.

Earlier, James and John, the Zebedee brothers, had asked Jesus to give them places of honor in the kingdom Jesus would build on earth. Jesus replied… “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:38 NIV)

“The cup” was not the sweet wine of victory, but the bitter cup of suffering.
“The baptism” was not with water, but with torture and ultimate death.

They just didn’t get it. They didn’t know what they were asking…

On the night when Jesus was arrested, the Bible says: "Then everyone deserted him and fled" (Mark 14:50 NIV).

When Jesus was arrested it was dark, not only because it was NIGHT, but because Jesus felt the coldness and darkness of abandonment and rejection.

We worship Jesus as God
And he is a God who understands human suffering.

Have you ever felt abandoned?
Have you ever felt rejected by someone you loved?
Have you been cheated on?
Have you been lied to by someone who said they loved you?
Have you felt betrayed by your friends?
Have you ever felt isolated?
Have you ever felt alone?

You are not alone, Jesus really and truly understands what you are going through. He doesn’t merely understand, because he is God and he knows everything. Jesus understands, because on the day of his death, he felt the same rejection, the same isolation, the same feeling of being forsaken.

After nails were driven into his hand and feet and he had suffered bleeding and dying on a Roman cross, he felt as if even his own Father had forsaken him. Out of his agony of body and soul, he screamed: My God, my God why have you forsaken me?!? (Mark 15:34)

I wonder…
At the cross, where were the crowds?
Where were the crowds of people celebrating his entry into Jerusalem?
The haters were there.
The soldiers were there.

Where were the ten lepers he touched?
Where were the crowds he fed?
Where were the people he healed?
Where was the woman with the issue of blood?

Pilate was there.
The criminals were there.
The religious leaders who felt threatened by him were there.
His mother was there weeping.

Where was Nicodemus?
Zacchaeus?
Bartimaeus?
Where was Peter’s mother-in-law?
Where was Peter for that matter?

In addition to the cruelty and excruciating physical pain of the cross, Jesus experienced the loneliness and agony of abandonment and rejection.

The English word “excruciating” comes from the Latin word excruciates, which has two Latin roots ex, meaning “from” and crux meaning “cross.”Excruciating literally means “from the cross.” It appeared in the English language in the sixteenth century to express the meaning of intense pain and anguish.

Jesus had a real human body and so he felt real physical pain, excruciating pain. But Jesus also had a real human soul and so he felt real emotional pain, the despair of a soul that had been forsaken and rejected.

He fulfilled his own prophecy:
The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. (Luke 9:22 NIV)

The death of Jesus is not the testimony of a revolutionary dying for a cause.
Many revolutionaries have come and gone.

His death is not a story of inspiration to motivate us to live a life of self-sacrifice. Many inspirational stories have come and gone.

The cross is the pinnacle of both human history and the climax of God’s salvation history.

Jesus suffered rejection at the cross for our sin.
He suffered the rejection and abandonment we deserve.
The penalty for sin is not just physical death, but the second death, a death after death. Jesus called this place hell.

What makes the wrath of hell so awful is not the flames and fire and heat, but the reality that God is not there.

God’s ultimate punishment for sin is not sadistically torturing people with fire, but completely abandoning us and turning us over to our sin if we choose not to repent.

The Bible uses a number of metaphors to describe hell:
o Fire and brimstone (Revelation 14:11)
o Lake of fire (Revelation 20:14)
o A place where not even worms die (Mark 9:46)
o Tormenting flame (Luke 16:24)

But maybe the best description of hell is simply “darkness.”
Jesus tells a story of a master who gave his servants a bunch of money and one of them did nothing with it. The Master called that servant “worthless.” Then the master said, "And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 25:30 NIV)

What makes hell horrible is that God is not there.

Currently, everyone experiences God’s common grace. He power and presence in sustaining all he created. It is hard for us to really understand God's common grace, because it is all around. It is by his grace we have air to breath, sunlight, rain, vegetation, gravity, relative social order, etc. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17 NIV).
In hell, God’s common grace is removed. It is an empty and lonely eternal existence of abandonment and rejection that will torment all who choose to remain in their sin.

At the cross, Jesus suffered the hellish wrath of abandonment for us. He became our substitute. His act of sacrifice became a way for us to be rescued from our sin.

Romans 5:6-9 NIV You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. [7] Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. [8] But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [9] Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!

Our response:
Prayer
Confession
Repentance
Communion

May your Good Friday be sorrowful and may your Easter Sunday be a celebration!

Tori Vreeland

2008-03-20T09:07:00.002-05:00

I am an uncle!

My sister-in-law, Jenny gave birth to Victoria Annette Vreeland yesterday at 1:36pm. The baby weighed 8 pounds 13 ounces and she was 20 inches long. My brother Jeff and sister-in-law Jenny (that's right, there are two Jenny/i Vreelands in the world) are going to call her Tori. What a great name!

Mom and baby are doing great. Dad is wondering what he has got himself in to! Ha! Seriously, they are going to be great parents.

Check out that beautiful Vreeland nose on that kid! Jeff, my son Wesley, and I all have that beautiful round, predominate nose. What a great looking girl...

Pentecostal Scholars

2008-03-13T16:42:00.003-05:00

I am at Duke University today.

I took this picture of the inside of the Duke Chapel with my cell phone. I can't believe I forgot a camera! The chapel is unbelievable.

I am delivering a paper tomorrow morning at the Society for Pentecostal Studies (SPS) meeting here at Duke university. Not in the Chapel, but in some tiny classroom.

My paper is entitled, "Rediscovering the Holy in the Spirit: Spiritual Transformation and Leadership Growth."

The SPS is made up of a group of Pentecostal/charismatic scholars (and scholar wannabes like me!). According to their website: The purpose of the society is to stimulate, encourage, recognize, and publicize the work of Pentecostal and charismatic scholars; to study the implications of Pentecostal theology in relation to other academic disciplines, seeking a Pentecostal world-and-life view…

I know that sounds like an oxymoron – "Pentecostal scholars" – but it is true. These are the good guys. These are the guys (and gals) who want to live an integrate life of the Scripture and the Spirit. See my blog post below. I am such a theological lightweight compared to the core group of scholars here, but they certainly challenge me.

I got here yesterday. Here is a brief rundown on the last 24 hours.

I spoke to a friend in Vancouver, BC last night over Skype, which allowed us to talk with video and audio over the Internet. Yeah, we were over 3,000 miles apart when we spoke.

This morning, I got a call from Richard Roberts (not the former president of ORU, but our missionary in Taiwan). He called my cell and we talked about the ministry in Taiwan.

You have to love technology.

I got four books from Baker Academic Books, which had all their books 50% off at the SPS conference. Oh my! I was like Jenni in a shoe store where all brown sandals had gone on sale.

Here is what I picked up:

John Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct?
I just had an email conversation about this book and then I go to the conference and there it was on the book table. Of course I had to buy it. You can't argue with providence like that!

James Wilhoit, Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered
This is hot off the press – February 2008. I am going to preach a series after Easter called "Inner Change." It will discuss my Trinitarian vision of spiritual transformation and I hope the sermons will be seeds for chapter in a book that I am writing on spiritual transformation. One of the messages (chapters) is one the role of Christian community in reflection of Trinitarian community in the process of transformation. This book will be helpful, I have already scanned through it.

Craig Keener, Gift and Giver
This book has been celebrated as a good discussion of charismatic theology. I have always had it on my list to add to my library. I got it for like 10 bucks today. Couldn't pass it up.

Graham Twelftree, In the Name of Jesus: Exorcism among Early Christians
I listened to a presentation by Twelftree today on this book. He teaches in the Ph.D. program at Regent University. He is a Vineyard guy from England. Interesting presentation today on the book. He researched exorcism (also known as deliverance or casting out demons.) His research revealed that there wasn't much talk of casting out demons in the early church. He also pointed out the gospel of John doesn't record Jesus casting out demons.

He ended his talk by saying that in the church we cannot make too much of "the power encounter" approach of dealing with demon spirits. The few records of exorcism in the early church was that they were very brief encounters, not long drawn out, and dramatic as portrayed in American pop culture (i.e. The Exorcist; The Exorcism of Emily Rose).

He ended his presentation with these words about the role of casting out demons (exorcism) in the local church: Although I do not wish to dispense with exorcism as part of the repertoire for contemporary ministry, I can no longer hold the view that, unless involved in exorcism, the church will fail to address all expressions of evil. The church is able to confront the demonic with an exorcist or with the Truth.

Wise words.

Tonight the keynote address is from Jugen Moltmann, a theological heavyweight. I have my moleskine ready...

Men who are influencing me

2008-03-05T16:23:00.002-05:00

Men need the influence of other men in their lives if they are going to continue to grow spiritually and mentally. I feel the weight and responsibility of that as a Dad of two boys. Last Saturday, Wesley (my oldest) and I were sitting outside. We had been burning brush all day and we had taken a break. As we sat on our outdoor swing, Wesley put his hand on my shoulder and said, "This is good father/son bonding time." Very astute for an eight year-old.

This did get me thinking about the men who are influencing me today. I only have a personal relationship with one of these men. The rest of them have been influencing me through some kind of media (books, music, podcasts, etc.) This list changes as influences change, but these are the men who are shaping my thinking today. These men have produced the voices, the one-liners, the paradigms of thinking that are rolling around in my head. (And no, I am not hearing voices!) These are the men who are speaking to me, the men who are challenging me. These are in no particular order.

Mark Driscoll
http://www.marshillchurch.org/

I listen to his weekly, one-hour-long sermons every week. I first discovered Mars Hill Church in the late 1990s in my research on postmodernism. They were held up as an example of the postmodern church. Today no one is really using the term "postmodern" and Driscoll and the church has ceased to be identified by that title. In Driscoll I have a great deal of comradery, because he is a good mix of theological depth and pop culture-infused humor. He is the most persuasive Calvinist I have ever heard. He has helped me reframe salvation in terms Reformed theology. Don't get me wrong. I am not a Calvinist, but Driscoll and others (including Bruce Ware and Mark Dever) have caused me to take a few theological steps in their direction. Or should I say, God preordained that by his grace I would shift in their direction!

Eugene Peterson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_H._Peterson

I continue to quote him and ask myself, "What would EP think?" He was a Presbyterian pastor for some thirty years, taught pastoral and spiritual theology, and translated (paraphrased?) the Bible into modern English in recent years. He has written a number of books on pastoral leadership and spirituality. His recent trilogy Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Eat This Book, and The Jesus Way have been extremely influential books. Peterson has a keen theological mind and a heart that is passionately in love with the local church. He is THE pastor of pastors.

Ignatius of Antioch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_of_Antioch

He has been dead for a long time. He died a martyrs death in Rome. He was thrown to the wild beasts. On his way from Antioch to Rome he was in chains, but wrote seven letters to seven churches. I read through them recently and they read much like the biblical epistles. He died in 110 AD and is one of the earliest church fathers. He was passionate about the establishment of orthodox Christian doctrine over the heresies of other groups, especially the Gnostics. I was reading one of his letters one morning and I was struck by the fact that here I was reading his writings some 1900 years after this man's death. I was able to do that, because he took the time to write. Ignatius has challenged me to continue writing.

Brian Zahnd
http://www.brianzahnd.com/

Brian is the only guy on my list that I know personally. He has been my pastor since I was in college and there was a time when I thought we were going in separate directions. Over the last three to four years he has been re-thinking, re-living, and re-preaching the Christian life in a way that is larger than any one Christian tradition. He continues to challenge me with his theological pursuits and his reading list. His teaching is dominated by five themes – cross, mystery, eclectic, community, and revolution. I listen to him weekly.

Bob Dylan
http://www.bobdylan.com/

I put Bob under Brian, because Brian gave me an introduction to Dylan back in 2005. At that time I had two of Dylan's gospel albums – Slow Train Coming and Saved. I was interested in Dylan's gospel albums, but I hadn't stepped into Dylan's world at that time. In December 2006, I got two Dylan albums for Christmas. Since that time, I have got deeper and deeper into the world of Bob Dylan. It is a strange and fascinating journey through the life of a poet. (Dylan says he has always been a poet first and a musician second.) I am now beginning to speak Dylan-ese, that is, inserting Dylan lyrics into my writing, speaking, thinking, and conversations. Many of Dylan's songs have become paradigms in which to sort things out. I know have 15 albums and a couple of bootlegs, and four DVDs. I have 185 songs to date. Dylan has released 44 albums, so I am only just beginning!

Wayne Grudem
http://www.phoenixseminary.edu/Default.aspx?tabid=155

Grudem is one of my favorite theologians. If I would ever do a Ph.D in systematic theology, I would study under him. I have found his abbreviated theology, Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith, to be a helpful resource. I turn to it time and time again. He comes from a Reformed background, but has done some good work in the area of charismatic theology. He is thoughtful and thorough in his theological treatments. This book is a scaled down version of his larger Systematic Theology and an easier read for pastors or Bible study leaders. I highly recommend it.

Robert Lewis
http://www.mensfraternity.com/

Last fall our church started a Men's Fraternity, a men's ministry pioneered by Robert Lewis at Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock. The book that we have been going through is The Quest for Authentic Manhood, written by Lewis. We are coming to the end of our course of study, but it has been good for me and then men at our church. I have become increasing passionate to reach men and connect men with Jesus and the Church. For so long the local church has been considered a woman's thing. One of the reasons is because we have failed to raise up strong, godly men in our church. MF has been a great way for us to do this, to raise up men who REJECT passivity, ACCEPT responsibility, and LEAD courageous. These three themes have been dominating my thinking recently.

These men are changing my way of thinking and, hopefully, changing my way of living.

Gonna change my way of thinking,
Make myself a different set of rules.
Gonna put my good foot forward,
And stop being influenced by fools.

Scripture and the Spirit

2008-03-04T21:08:00.002-05:00

After some reflection on my previous post "Theology and 'the Supernatural' in the Life of the Church," I feel compelled to attempt to restate my point in a much more simple way. Last Wednesday, I took my small group through a scaled down version of some of the weighty themes of theology and supernatural experience. It was a disaster. I tried to cover too much material with not enough time and I ended up confusing the issues more than clarifying them. I could kick myself. I will forever remember the blank looks and squinted-eyes when I made comments like "the activity of the Spirit is not irrational, but it is non-rational." I think I ended up sounding non-rational. Aghhh….

I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin' me insane.

A much more simple way to make my point would have been to say that we are going to be a church that is devoted to both the Scripture and the Spirit.

It seems like I have rubbed elbows over the last 18 years with Christians who tend to go to one extreme or the other. Either they embrace the Scripture to the exclusion of the Spirit or they embrace the Spirit to the exclusion of the Scripture. My point is that we need an integration of both the Scripture and the Spirit.

Furthermore our Christian life needs to be defined in terms of Scripture over the Spirit. Our understanding of the Scripture ought to guide and shape our spiritual experience and not the other way around. Christians who define their faith by mystical, spiritual experiences never end up in a good place. God has given us the Scripture as the vocabulary to define our spiritual experience.

I am not suggesting that Scripture can be understood and lived out in purely rational terms.
I am not suggesting that having all the right information from the Scripture about God is sufficient for the Christian life.
I am not suggesting that the work of theology is only done by the power of reason.
I am suggesting (and firmly stating) that Scripture, and not the Spirit, is our final authority. This position is the standard for Evangelicals and for most Pentecostal/charismatics who I include within the Evangelical stream. Traditionally, Pentecostals and charismatics have been "people of the book." Charismatics movements that desire experience over the teaching of Scripture typically burn out or dry up.

I know there are some who would say, "Are you saying that the Scripture is more reliable than God?" Of course not.

Here is the issue— I do not doubt the reliability of the Spirit's guidance, but I do doubt my ability to hear and understand him perfectly. Remember that the Scripture was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Only the biblical writers were so inspired by the Spirit that their writings are unquestionably reliable. I can trust Paul when he says, "The Lord told me," because God the Holy Spirit was using him to write Scripture. I cannot always trust some guy who says, "The Lord told me," even if he has big hair, tacky clothes, a big TV ministry, and the title "Prophet" in front of his name. The Holy Spirit does speak, guide, direct, counsel, convict, and prompt people today. He does, on occasion, grant Christians experiences which are mystical, other-worldly, and transcendent. I have cherished the spiritual experiences—the divine encounters—that I have had with the Holy Spirit over the years, but I cannot build my faith on these. Experiences with (in?) the Holy Spirit are signposts on my spiritual journey, but they are not the soil in which my faith is rooted. Scripture as watered by the Spirit is the only fertile ground in which I can grow.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV All Scripture is God‑breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

…I'm beginning to believe what the scriptures tell…

Theology and "the Supernatural" in the Life of the Church

2008-02-26T16:35:00.003-05:00

The local church is the mystical body of Christ made up of various people from various backgrounds. We are Jesus' body continuing the ministry he began. Throughout the gospel we see Jesus doing three things in one context. He was preaching, teaching, and healing in the context of a community-building mission. The ministry he started was an integration of these functions which are intellectual, supernatural, and social. Therefore the ministry we carry on today through the community of faith is an integration of theology (mind) and the supernatural (spirit). Leading people into an active life with Jesus requires teaching and healing. People who are walking with Jesus need both a new kind of thinking and a new kind of experiencing. Theology and the supernatural become two broad categories in which we look at the ministry of a local church. Both are vital. Both are necessary. We need an integration—and not a bifurcation—of theology and supernatural experience.

(We also need to integrate a new kind of being and a new kind of living. "Who we are" in relation to the God we worship and "what we do" in response to that relationship are just as vital as theology and supernatural experience. Without them Christian life is incomplete, but for the sake a simplicity I want to consider how theology and the supernatural intersect.)

The Value of Theology
Theology, also called "doctrine" or "teaching," is right thinking about God and reality. Theology is what you believe about God, relationships, the Church, morality, etc. The Scripture is the final authority in forming our theology and so we can rightly call it biblical theology. Our theology is shaped first and foremost by the Scripture, interpreting the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, which the early church called the "teaching of the apostles." Our theology is also shaped to a lesser degree by tradition (historic theology), reason (systematic theology), and experience (spiritual theology). All Christians have a theology and do theology even if they do not like the process. Typically Christians shy away from theological exploration, because they have seen theology done poorly. The answer to bad theology is not no theology, but good theology.

References to theology, doctrine, and teaching—
Matthew 28:18-20
John 8:31-32
1 Timothy 1:9-11; 6:3-5
2 Timothy 3:16-17
Timothy 4:2-3
Titus 1:9-11; 2:1

The Value of the Supernatural
The supernatural—also described as heavenly realms, spirituality, or spiritual realities—refers to the world of the Spirit. The supernatural includes miracles, signs and wonders, healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues, spiritual warfare, spiritual discernment, etc. Christian spirituality, the supernatural, is our lived experience in, with, and by the Holy Spirit. While supernatural experiences and supernatural ministry are not irrational, they are certainly non-rational in that it does not depend on the power of reason. Interaction with the supernatural is absolutely necessary, because the God we serve in not merely a historical figure to study, but a living, present-day being who is not material but spirit. Furthermore, he has sent his Holy Spirit to reside in those who belong to him.

References to the supernatural, signs and wonders, heavenly realms—
Mark 16:17-18
Acts 4:30-31; 5:12-16
1 Corinthians 2:4-5; 1 Corinthians 2:13-14; 14:1
Ephesians 1:3; 2:6-7; 5:18-20; 6:10
Colossians 1:8
2 Thessalonians 2:9-10

The Need for Integration of Theology and the Supernatural
Throughout Christian history, various groups have either chosen theology to the exclusion of the supernatural or chosen the supernatural to the exclusion of theology. Either path leads to a spiritual dead end. Our need is for an integration of both theology and the supernatural, an integration of good thinking and good experiencing, an integration of mind and spirit. God has not made us either a mind or a spirit, but a complex and integrated being of body, soul, creativity, conscience, emotions, relationships and indeed mind and spirit.

References to an integration of theology and the supernatural—
Matthew 4:23; 9:35
Acts 2:4, 42-43; 14:3
Romans 12:1-2
1 Corinthians 12:28; 14:14-15
1 Timothy 4:13-16
2 Timothy 1:13-14

Leading in the Integration
In the dance between theology and the supernatural, the leading partner must be a theology firmly grounded in the Scripture. The word "teaching" is in the NIV Bible people 88 times. The word "healing" appears 28 times.

(The phrase "signs and wonders" appears 18 times and the word "miracles" appears 37 times. We cannot make too much of the frequency of terms in the Bible. The virgin birth is mentioned only a few times in the New Testament and only once in the Old Testament and it is an extremely important doctrine. Nevertheless, it does seem to say something when we find "teaching" in the Bible more often than "healing.)

Theology, sound doctrine, and our reasonable understanding of the Scripture must guide us in the supernatural life. Our theology is shaped by spiritual experiences, but they must be subordinate to the teachings of Scripture. Certainly, there are facets to God's nature that we cannot understand. His ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts are infinitely higher than ours (Isaiah 55:9). We ought to embrace the mysteries of God and incorporate them into our theology. The unknowable aspects of God keep us humble; it keeps our faith living and active.

The primary problem with allowing the supernatural, especially spiritual knowledge, to be the leader is that supernatural experiences are subjective and are virtually unverifiable if allowed to dominate biblical theology. It is not that the Holy Spirit himself is unreliable or untrustworthy, but rather it is our subjective and fallen perceptibility of what the Holy Spirit may or may not be saying that is called into question. The Holy Spirit speaks perfectly, but I do not always hear him perfectly.

To allow the spirit to dominate the mind leads us down the road towards one of the early Christian heresies—Montanism (2^nd century AD). Montanus was a traveling Christian prophet who was given to visions and the gift of prophecy. His message included the soon return of Christ and the need to connect to apostolic Christianity. Montanus felt that the church had become institutionalized and needed renewal. He felt that he had a direct spiritual connection to the Apostles. He even declared that he himself was the promised paraklete Jesus talked about in the book of John (See John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7). He interpreted the Scripture according to his own spiritual interpretations, instead of subjecting his prophecies to biblical and historical theology. (For more information go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montanism)

Allowing the supernatural to lead, and ultimately trump, theology and reason can lead to a pragmatic hermeneutic--(i.e. interpreting Scripture in terms of what works). Often Christians do this when they feel the Holy Spirit is leading them in a direction that does not fit squarely within biblical revelation and historic Christianity, but they feel like it is God and they feel justified when they see results. A similar hermeneutic is used by Mormons. They tell people to read the book of Mormon and then pray, asking God to give them the "burning of bosom" – a spiritual confirmation of the truth of their book.

There is no room to discern the truth of a spiritual experience when the supernatural is valued over theology. Division is often the result. Paul urged the church in Rome to beware of those who cause division by not keeping with biblical teaching: I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them (Romans 16:17). The division begins with an argument that has been played and replayed throughout church history.

Person 1 proclaims, "God told me…."

Person 2 says, "That doesn't seem right."

Person 1, "Yes it is."

Person 2, "No it isn't."

And round and round they go. Without pointing to the objective truth in God's written word, there is no way to discern the supernatural. Division can certainly happen over different interpretations of Scripture, but without biblical theology we have no standard by which to discern any kind of spiritual experience.

Such a decline in biblical authority led in part to the 16^th century Reformation. One of the essential doctrines of the Reformation was sola scriptura, "by Scripture alone." Martin Luther and others promoted sola scriptura in a time when mysticism and superstitious had gnawed away at the heart of the Church. Sola scriptura is the first of five "solas" which form the cornerstone of evangelical faith:

1) Sola scriptura ("by Scripture alone")

2) Sola fide ("by faith alone")

3) Sola gratia ("by grace alone")

4) Solus Christus ("Christ alone")

5) Soli Deo gloria ("glory to God alone")

The Pentecostal/charismatic tradition would add Sola Spiritu, "by the Spirit alone." One of the weaknesses of the Protestant Reformation was their underdeveloped view of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, the 5 (or 6) "solas" reveal that Scripture is not the only means by which God communicates his truth, but it is the first, the foremost, and the leading partner in all other means of God's revelation.

Good references on an integrated approach to Christian life and ministry

Word and Power Church by David Banister

Bible Doctrine by Wayne Grudem

Spirit and Power: Foundations of Pentecostal Experience by William & Robert Menzies

Truth Aflame by Larry Hart

Surprised by the Power of the Spirit by Jack Deere

Steams of Living Water by Richard Foster

Spiritual Theology by Simon Chan

"The More Excellent Way" (Sermon 89) by John Wesley

A Tribute to Larry Norman (1947-2008)

2008-02-24T21:57:00.005-05:00

I was sad to hear of the passing of Larry Norman. He is known as the father of "contemporary Christian music." He grew in popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s with songs like "Why Should the Devil Have all the Good Music," "Sweet Sweet Song of Salvation," and "Why Don't You Look Into Jesus," and "I Wish We'd All Been Ready."

[Listen to audio clips here]

Larry was a rebel. A rocker. A zealot. An innovator in is day. He was not afraid of the either the Christian establishment on one side or the rock establishment on the other when he wrote these words:

There's nothing wrong with playing blues licks,
But if you got a reason tell me to my face
Why should the devil have all the good music.
There's nothing wrong with what I play
'Cause Jesus is the rock and he rolled my blues away.

I ain't knocking the hymns,
Just give me a song that has a beat.
I ain't knocking the hymns,
Just give me a song that moves my feet.
I don't like none of those funeral marches
I ain't dead yet!

Jesus told the truth, Jesus showed the way
There's one more thing I'd like to say.
They nailed him to the cross, they laid him in the ground,
But they shoulda known you can't keep a good man down.
From "Why Should the Devil Have all the Good Music" (1972) [YouTube]

Larry Norman has had health problems for a number of years, but during the Jesus Movement of the 1970s he was a major contributor to early Christian rock. There is also a Dylan connection with Norman. From Wikipedia:

Norman sought to help musicians who were struggling with drug problems in the 1970s. He began a Bible study called "The Vineyard" for actors and musicians, and as it grew Folk/rock performer Bob Dylan became one of the attendees. Dylan subsequently became familiar with Norman's records Only Visiting This Planet and So Long Ago the Garden. During this period, he released three albums that were stylistically similar to Norman's: Slow Train Coming (1979), Saved (1980), and Shot of Love (1981).

While Norman said in a 1984 interview that he didn't know Dylan very well, he remembered thinking "This is the greatest album I've ever heard"" when Slow Train Coming was released. He said of the album "I'll never write one as good as that, he'll never write one as good as that, - nobody will. It touched me in every area. You know men in conflict, like Dylan was when he was dying to self and becoming a Christian are very interesting...We were all afraid that he would be overly affected by the evangelical simplicity of American mindlessness and write an album that wasn't really worth his gift for poetry. That album is like a prayer, it's a beautiful prayer, a social communion. It's a communion for all the disenchanted people that are angry."

Larry died early this morning. The following was posted by Norman's brother Charles:

Hello everybody.
Our friend and my wonderful brother Larry passed away at 2:45 Sunday morning. Kristin and I were with him, holding his hands and sitting in bed with him when his heart finally slowed to a stop. We spent this past week laughing, singing, and praying with him, and all the while he had us taking notes on new song ideas and instructions on how to continue his ministry and art …
Yesterday afternoon he knew he was going to go home to God very soon and he dictated the following message to you while his friend Allen Fleming typed these words into Larry's computer:

I feel like a prize in a box of cracker jacks with God's hand reaching down to pick me up. I have been under medical care for months. My wounds are getting bigger. I have trouble breathing. I am ready to fly home.
My brother Charles is right, I won't be here much longer. I can't do anything about it. My heart is too weak. I want to say goodbye to everyone. In the past you have generously supported me with prayer and finance and we will probably still need financial help.
My plan is to be buried in a simple pine box with some flowers inside. But still it will be costly because of funeral arrangement, transportation to the gravesite, entombment, coordination, legal papers etc. However money is not really what I need, I want to say I love you.
I'd like to push back the darkness with my bravest effort. There will be a funeral posted here on the website, in case some of you want to attend. We are not sure of the date when I will die. Goodbye, farewell, we will meet again.
Goodbye, farewell, we'll meet again
Somewhere beyond the sky.
I pray that you will stay with God
Goodbye, my friends, goodbye.
Larry

Larry Norman, "Why Don't You Look Into Jesus," (1972)

Bainbridge Cemetery: A Poem

2008-02-17T14:45:00.002-05:00

In a rare moment of poetic inspiration, I wrote this after attending the funeral of Paul Ragan, the father of my friend Darrell Chatraw.

Bainbridge Cemetery
Spanish moss hung on mournful hearts,
Sunlight peeked through green pine needles.
Old family reunions,
New family introductions,
Folded flags,
Military salutes,
Loving laugher,
Smiling tears,
Stampering feet.
The book was opened under a blue tent.
Bainbridge cemetery—
Paul Ragan was buried there.
The end of a well-lived life.
The retelling of an ancient hope.
Eyes cannot see,
A heart cannot know,
Shuffling of feet cannot carry one
To the place where the breeze blows,
To the place where the faithful knows
Immortal hope
In the one to come
To Bainbridge cemetery.
In memory of Paul Ragan
May 12, 1921—February 11, 2008

Should a Christian listen to Bob Dylan?

2008-02-08T00:33:00.001-05:00

I recently received an email from a Christian who read a blog I wrote about a Dylan song. He was previously a Dylan fan, but he stopped listening to Dylan after he became a Christian. He felt that his new found faith in Christ was incompatible with Dylan. Here is a portion of his email:

As I wrote in the posting, I stopped listening to Bob Dylan after attending one of his concerts in Melbourne, Australia, when he unfurled a banner with the eye of Horus emblazoned on it - which he uses as part of his logo. Because I am a Christian, I really wrestled with the issue of whether or not I should continue listening to his music, as I was a huge fan of his music and the nature of his lyrics, although there was a disturbing element to many of the songs in his "psychedelic" period. I was also uneasy about his recent allusions to "selling his soul to the Devil" or making a bargain with ?the Devil although he never said anything concrete about Satan. Once I looked up the meaning of his logo on the Internet I felt that he had taken a decisive step to link himself with Satan, and looking at his ambiguous comments in that light, it would appear that he is quite comfortable to joke around with the possibility of being Satanic, something which I fiind quite disturbing! I therefore deleted the hundreds of Dylan songs from my collection which was a very difficult thing to do, and have resolved not to listen to his music until he makes a statement denouncing his logo and any possible ties with Satan. I really would like to listen to his music but can no longer do so in good conscience. I am fully aware that God is the ultimate judge and this issue is ultimately between Bob Dylan and God; however, I wanted to e-mail you because you are a pastor and I thought it would be important to warn you that Bob Dylan may not be all that he seems (and that the spiritual nature of his music may not actually be related to Christianity, at all).
Would be interested to hear what you think,
CT

Here is my response:

CT,

Thanks for the email. I am about fourteen months into my Dylan journey. I have been familiar with Dylan's gospel albums for years, but I have only recently dove deeper in the Dylan universe. Your questions have got me thinking and reflecting on a Christians' take on Dylan. The most important question for us Dylan fans who are Christian is whether or not Dylan himself is a fellow believer in Christ. Before I get to that one, let me answer some of your other questions.

You wrote in your email:
I am a Christian and would be very uneasy about promoting Bob Dylan as an artist whose music is suitable for use in the church. In recent times, if anything, he seems to have more of an affinity with Satan...! This is illustrated by —

(a) His use of a satanic emblem, the eye of Horus, as part of his logo.

(b) His seeking to identify with Robert Johnson (the bluesman who according to legend sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for musical ability).

(c) Following on from point (b), Bob Dylan was interviewed by Ed Bradley for '60 Minutes' in 2005 and said that he continued to make music in order to hold up his end of a bargain that he made "with the chief commander...on this earth and the world we can't see".

Here is my response:

(a) Dylan's logo
You claim that the eye of Horus is a satanic emblem, when actually it is a Egyptian symbol. You could make the case that it is a pagan symbol and it certainly isn't a Christian symbol, but I wouldn't necessarily call it "satanic." Furthermore, while Dylan's logo resembles the eye of Horus it isn't the exact same symbol. Compare the two here:

The use of the eye is not only a pagan symbol, but has been used by Christians. Historically, the eye on top of the pyramid on the back of the one dollar bill has been interpreted as the "eye of providence." The Latin phrase "Annuit Coeptis" means "He approves our undertakings." William Barton, the artist appointed by congress to design the symbol originally used the phrase "Deo Favente Perrenis" –meaning "Enduring by the Favor of God." So the eye could also be a Christian symbol. Nevertheless, I wouldn't worry too much about symbols anyway. The meanings of symbols change from age to age and culture to culture. Have you noticed that the Scripture makes no clear statement on what are appropriate symbols for the Christian faith?

(b) His identification with Robert Johnson
I don't know if you can make a case that Dylan is trying to identify with anyone. He refuses to work on "Maggie's farm" and he refuses to be classified by genre, style, or popular influences. His music reveals an identification with folk, blues, country, and rock. In terms of artists, Dylan identified with Johnny Cash [video] who was a Christian. And if you are going to claim that Dylan sought to be identified with Robert Johnson, you have to also admit that Dylan also admired Blues singer Blind Willie McTell. Blind Willie became a preacher at the end of his life and would only sing spirituals [video].

Here is the transcript from the end of Dylan's interview with Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes in 2004. [video]

Bradley: Why do you do it, why are you still out here?

Dylan: Well it goes back to the destiny thing. I made a bargin with it, you know, a long time ago, and I am holding up my end.

Bradley: What was your bargin?

Dylan: To get where I am now.

Bradley: Should I ask who you made the bargin with?

Dylan: (Laughs) With, you know, with the chief…the chief commander.

Bradley: On this earth?

Dylan: In this earth and the world we can't see.

I don't see anything here that makes this sound like a deal with the Devil. Dylan initially said he made a deal with "destiny." The "chief commander" could very well be God. Dylan had a powerful encounter with Jesus in 1979. Dylan refused to become a pious little church boy. He did call Jesus his hero in a 1987 concert in Boston. Before singing his gospel song "In the Garden," Dylan said, "I'm gonna sing a song about my hero. Everybody's got their own hero. I don't know who your hero is, maybe Mel Gibson . . . maybe for some people it's Michael Jackson . . . or Bruce Springsteen . . . Anyway I don't care nothing about none of those people. I have my own hero. I'm gonna sing about my hero now." [video]

So the big question is whether or not Dylan is still a Christian. Every religious, philosophical, and music lover wants to claim Dylan for their own. After reading Restless Pilgrim by Scott Marshall and Maria Ford, I became convinced that Dylan is a believer, but he will always be a mysterious one.

As a pastor, I do not incorporate Dylan into church life too often. I do quote from Dylan in my sermons from time to time, because after all Dylan is a poet. For me personally, my Dylan journey has been a part of my spiritual journey. Dylan has been influential in my thinking about God and life. My encouragement to you is to listen to your conscience. The Holy Spirit will reveal to you if listening to Dylan is acceptable or not. Romans 14:14 says, "Nothing is unclean in itself, but to him who it is a sin, it is a sin." If your conscience, empower by the Holy Spirit, will not let you listen to Dylan, then don't. If your conscience doesn't convict you then I would encourage you to listen Dylan and listen to him as a Christian. Listen to him through the filter of Scripture and Christian tradition.

In listening to Dylan as a Christian, this is a good opportunity to practice Reader Response Criticism, a popular postmodern kind of literary criticism. In reader response, the meaning of literature is created by the reader not the author. I don't suggest this for Bible reading, but for listening (and reading) Dylan it is perfectly acceptable.

For example, some people hear "Mr. Tambourine Man" and think that Bob is singing to his drug dealer, but for me when I here "Mr. Tambourine Man," I hear Dylan singing about Jesus. I am not saying that Dylan intended this to be a song about Jesus when he wrote it in 1965, but I hear it that way. And I don't think Dylan would I have a problem with it. When I hear "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" I hear a call to prayer. And on it goes…

I hope this helps!

Derek

Bonus: I didn't send this in my email, but here is a transcript of an interview, I heard recently where Dylan talks about God and art.

1981 Dylan Interview with David Herman, London, July 2, 1981

Dylan: Not to say though, that art is valueless. I think art can lead you to God.

Herman: It's that it's purpose?

Dylan: I think so. I think that's everything's purpose. I mean if it's not doing that it's leading you the other way. It's certainly not leading you nowhere. It's bringing you somewhere. It's bringing you that way or this way.

Herman: Well, if it expresses truth and beauty then it's leading you to God?

Dylan: Yeah? (laughs)

Herman: Well, wouldn't you say?

Dylan: If it's expressing truth I'd say it's leading you to God and beauty also.

Herman: I've always thought that those were the only two absolutes that there were.

Dylan: Well, beauty can be very *very* deceiving. It's not always of God.