Praise the Lord, Punch in Your PIN

January 28, 2007

The Orlando Sentinel had a story yesterday about Stevens Creek Community Church in Augusta, Georgia, where “God takes credit cards.  Debit cards, too.”

Two “giving kiosks” sit just outside the church’s chapel, next-generation collection plates that allow churchgoers to swipe their credit or debit cards and instantly send donations to the church.  . . .  Pastor Marty Baker has renamed the black terminals “automatic tithe machines.”  “We’re just trying to connect with the culture,” Baker says. “And that’s how the culture does business. It’s more than an ATM for Jesus. It’s about erasing barriers.”

The giving kiosks do seem to have erased some barriers to giving.  Since their installation in early 2005, Stevens Creek has experienced an 18% increase in donations.  And they are, in some sense, helping the church “connect with the culture.”  One woman “says she knew the church was the right fit for her the first time she saw the kiosks. ‘This church gets how I live,’ she says.” 

As a Christian committed to helping others understand the joy of giving, I’m intrigued by Pastor Baker’s success in leading his flock to a higher plane of generosity.  As a Christian trying to help the Church and the wider society understand each other, I’m encouraged that Stevens Creek is looking for ways to connect with the culture.  Yet, I wonder whether there is reason for the Christian mind to be concerned with Pastor Baker’s giving kiosks.

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Worldview Theater: The Shawshank Redemption

January 20, 2007

Servants Quarters 2007 is in full swing.  We convened last night for the third time to continue our year-long dialogue exploring the implications of biblical stewardship principles for living in a culture captive to materialistic ideals.  During this latest gathering, we planned to discuss the worldview perspectives reflected in a specific product of American culture:  the critically-acclaimed and highly popular film, The Shawshank Redemption.  God had other plans. 

I hope and trust we were following His lead, as we shelved our Shawshank examination in favor of a spirited discussion concerning the crisis facing The Episcopal Church (TEC).  In particular, we explored what it means for The Falls Church (and other parishes who only recently disaffiliated from TEC) to be wise and faithful stewards of the property with which they have been blessed – as the Diocese of Virginia and TEC press headlong into litigation aimed at reclaiming that property.

Given the dynamic and volatile nature of the situation, I abstain, at this time, from sharing my specific thoughts on the matter.  What I will say is that we are striving to approach the situation with not just a Christian ethic and Christian spirituality (which no doubt are important) but also a Christian mind.  We are striving to help each other “think christianly” – “to accept all things with the mind as related, directly or indirectly, to man’s eternal destiny as the redeemed and chosen child of God” (Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind:  How Should a Christian Think? p.44).  We are striving to “set[ ] all earthly issues within the context of the eternal, . . . see[ing] all things here below in terms of God’s supremacy and earth’s transitoriness, in terms of Heaven and Hell” (id. at 4).  In one sense, that’s the primary business of Servants Quarters.

Because of that fruitful detour, we’ve decided to hold our Shawshank discussion here in this forum.  All are welcome to pose questions, share observations or take issue with what I’ve written previously.  (In short, I observed that (1) Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) reflected in important ways the biblical notion of how important it is to maintain an eternal perspective, while living here and now;  and (2) the redemption of Andy’s best friend, Red Redding (Morgan Freeman) was suggestive of a Christian-like process of repentance.) 

If you prefer specific to open-ended questions, let’s begin the discussion with the subject of beauty.  What is attractive in the film?  What people, places, behavior or ideas?  To whom?  How is it made attractive?

How Far Is Too Far: When Is It Time To Leave A Church?

January 19, 2007

John Yates and Os Guinness discuss the decision of The Falls Church to disaffiliate from The Episcopal Church on the Albert Mohler Radio Program last Friday.

Bishop Schori on Evangelism: Let’s Assume for the Moment that She Does Believe that Jesus Is “the” Way

January 12, 2007

In a brief New Year’s Day essay, Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, shares her perspective on how Christians ought to “reach the unchurched.”  As a Christian, I think it’s great that Bishop Schori is seeking to teach the importance of not just evangelism but effective methods for it.  I agree that “to begin in listening” can be effective.  And I agree more generally, to some extent, that “we must learn new words and ways to tell our story” to “reach the unchurched” in this postmodern culture.  That said, Bishop Schori’s essay begs the question:  what exactly is “our story?”  Moreover, it raises the question:  might some “new words” that we use to reach the unchurched actually undermine “our story?”

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Bigotry or Obedience?

January 11, 2007

Not surprisingly, Chuck Colson can grasp why I and many others have left the Episcopal Church.  

This is not front-page news because the New York Times editors are concerned about church splits. I doubt they would have covered Martin Luther if the Reformation were going on today. This is front-page news because the Times can use it to make Christians look bigoted.  . . .  What I . . .  take issue with is the Times and other critics telling us we are bigots. I have been in those prisons and seen our people ministering to AIDS victims over the years. I don’t see these critics there. I see our people doing this day in and day out.

In any event, it’s telling that the Times would choose to draw attention to something like this rather telling you what is really behind it. In leaving the Episcopal Church, many of these congregations are enduring public scorn and potentially devastating financial loss—including the loss of their church buildings, pastors’ pensions, and so forth. Why? Because, in conscience, they must remain true to Scripture and their convictions. The issue is orthodoxy, not homosexuality.

Read it all.

Why We Left the Episcopal Church

January 08, 2007

Today’s Washington Post carries an essay by The Rev. Dr. John Yates, rector of The Falls Church (TFC), and Os Guinness, Christian author, speaker, apologist and sociologist and TFC parishioner.  In it they explain why they left the Episcopal Church.

Fundamental to a liberal view of freedom is the right of a person or group to define themselves, to speak for themselves and to not be dehumanized by the definitions and distortions of others. This right we request even of those who differ from us.  . . .  The core issue for us is theological: the intellectual integrity of faith in the modern world.  It is thus a matter of faithfulness to the lordship of Jesus, whom we worship and follow.  The American Episcopal Church no longer believes the historic, orthodox Christian faith common to all believers.  Some leaders expressly deny the central articles of the faith -- saying that traditional theism is “dead,” the incarnation is “nonsense,” the resurrection of Jesus is a fiction, the understanding of the cross is “a barbarous idea,” the Bible is “pure propaganda” and so on.  Others simply say the creed as poetry or with their fingers crossed.

Read it all.

Apostles Creed

January 01, 2007

A video demonstration of the Apostles Creed

Full of Grace and Truth

January 01, 2007

In an uncommonly great Christmas sermon, Bishop N.T. Wright addresses the arrival of grace and truth in the incarnation. 

The great revolution of thought which happened in Europe over three centuries ago, associated with Descartes in particular, was the attempt to grasp truth as it were from scratch: by doubting everything, we would see what we could be sure of and build out from there. We would know the facts, and the facts would set us free – free from God, free from any responsibility except to our own self-interest. There’s a straight line from Descartes to Dawkins: we can doubt God, but we can’t doubt the facts, the empirical evidence. And the results of that arrogant attempt to possess truth are all around us, etched in the horrors of the twentieth century and now already the multiple follies of the twenty-first, as we in the West blunder blindly on . . . .  And meanwhile the worm in the apple has hollowed it out more or less completely: the ‘truth’ which we thought we knew has been eaten away not just in theology and philosophy but in its heartland of physics, by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and in its deeper heartland of the human being, where Descartes began. We have become a society paranoid about truth: so we make each other fill in more and more forms, and set up more cameras to spy on each other, to check up on one another because we want the truth, we want an audit trail, we want more and more Enquiries and Judicial Reviews and Investigations, but we can’t get at truth because Descartes’ experiment has itself made it impossible, has generated a world of suspicion and smear and spin.

But if the world has tried to have truth without grace, the church has often been tempted towards grace without truth – as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, ‘cheap grace’. God has become a benevolent old softie, ready to tolerate everything, to include everyone, to throw away all those unpleasant old moral standards and say it’s all right, do your own thing, if it feels good it must be OK.

Read the entire sermon.