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Want to leave your church?

Filed under Anger, Church, Fellowship, Forgiveness, Unity by Jerry Nelson on March 28, 2012 at 10:09 pm {2 comments}

Are you frustrated, fed-up, disappointed, and maybe even angry with your church? Unrealized expectations lead many of us to finally look somewhere else to find what we are looking for in a church. It is true that false teaching, unchallenged immorality, or even unethical/illegal actions may force us to leave a church but usually our “beef” is with people, even leaders. We encounter people who are so arrogant, obstinate and self-serving that we are ready for a new church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his very short book, Life Together, reminds us of some truths that my not sit well with our current frustrations but are, nonetheless, hugely beneficial to our souls. The emphases and parenthetical comments below are mine.

“When God’s Son took on flesh, he truly and bodily took on…our being, our nature, ourselves…Now we are in him. Where he is, there we are too, in the incarnation, on the cross and in his resurrection. We belong to him because we are in him. That is why the Scriptures call us the Body of Christ.” (What is true of us is also true of those arrogant, obstinate and self-serving Christians who are in our church. We are all “in Christ” and thus part of the same “body.”) “He who looks upon his brother should know that he will be eternally united with him in Jesus Christ. Christian community means community through and in Jesus Christ. On this presupposition rests everything that the Scriptures provide in the way of directions and precepts for the communal life of Christians.” “(It is) not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, (that) constitutes the basis of our community.” (It is not only “nice” Christians to whom we belong.) “What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. This is true not merely at the beginning, as though in the course of time something else were added to our community, it remains so for all the future and to all eternity. I have community with others and I shall continue to have it only through Jesus Christ.”

“The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and (he will expect to experience that). But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves… He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial… The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly… When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure.”

“Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ long before we entered into common life with them, we enter that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by his call, by his forgiveness, and his promise (even when they don’t act like it). We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what he does give us daily… Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary (healing), because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together – the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.”

“It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood, but (the solid and certain fact of) brotherhood that holds us together… We are bound together by faith (in the fact of our unity in Christ), not by experience.”

I believe Bonhoeffer sets forth accurately the biblical basis of Christian community. When we are born into a human family we are not part of the family by virtue of our personality or conduct but by virtue of our birth. Even weird uncles and cantankerous cousins are still part of the family. So it is with new birth; we are born into the family of God not by virtue of our personality or conduct but by virtue of our new birth by God’s grace. And even arrogant leaders and impossibly difficult Christians are still part of the family.

Bonhoeffer doesn’t address the still hard questions of how to live out our relationships with those who are difficult or even who have hurt us (and maybe still are hurting us) BUT I think he removes from consideration the idea of dismissing them or ourselves from the family. Again by comparison, I may have trouble knowing how to deal with a wayward child or an impossible aunt but they are still family.

Want to leave your church? After reading Bonhoeffer and especially after reading the New Testament, I’m less certain this is a legitimate question. Maybe the more important question is, “What does God desire to do in me and through me in the community where I now am?” Some days I don’t like this new question, I prefer justifying (rationalizing?) my answers to the first one. How about you?

The Prisoner in the Third Cell

Filed under Books, Church, Church History, Controversy, Forgiveness by Jerry Nelson on March 12, 2012 at 10:47 pm {no comments}

Gene Edwards, author of The Tale of Three Kings wrote a shorter but equally potent book entitled, The Prisoner in the Third Cell. The subtitle expresses the point of the book – “Will you follow a God who does not live up to your expectations?” This very “quick read” is a highly engaging story of John the Baptist illustrating the faith-stretching experiences of many Christians whose prayers are answered very differently than expected. The book is available at Amazon for under $10 and is well worth your investment.

The Public Reading of the Bible

Filed under Articles, Bible, Church, Worship by Jerry Nelson on January 10, 2012 at 6:25 pm {2 comments}

What happened to the public reading of God’s Word?

A visit to many “evangelical” churches will confirm how few give serious attention to this biblically mandated part of corporate worship. Maybe some would suggest that in a highly literate culture where most have access to printed Bibles, public reading of the Scriptures is not as necessary. But the real issue is not whether people can read but do they read the Bible.

But whether people do read the Bible on their own or not, the Bible illustrates and declares that public reading is to be part of God-directed and God-centered worship. Consider the following passages:

1 Timothy 4:13 “Until I come, devote your yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.” (ESV) Though the Greek word “public” is not in the manuscript, almost all major English translations insert the word because of the definite article (“the”) used with the word “reading” and the context of the public acts of “exhortation” and “teaching.”

Luke 4:16-17 “And he (Jesus) came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and he entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. ¹⁷ And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And he opened the book, and found the place where it was written (and he read)…” (NIV)

Ezra 8:2-3 “And Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month. ³ And he read therein before the broad place that was before the water gate from early morning until midday… (NIV)

It is important that we do not allow the sermon to become a substitute for the reading of the Bible. Both are necessary. Clay Schmit (author of The Public Reading of Scripture) points out that the sermon is really a secondary proclamation, God speaking through a preacher. “Reading the Word is God’s direct proclamation to us. You are called upon to be the human embodiment of the Word of God when you read Scripture publicly,” he says.

If you look again at the Ezra 8 passage you do have to ask yourself how practical it would be to read the Bible aloud each Sunday for 5-6 hours. And if you read further in that 8^th chapter you find that the people stood for the reading (for 5 hours?).

Some suggestions for making the public reading of Scripture a joy and not a burden for listeners:

Select readers whose voices are pleasant to the ear and easily understood and who are teachable as to public reading.
The reader should know the passage and context well to be able to accurately communicate the intention of the writer.
The reader should read the text with proper expression (the kind of expression that communicates the ideas accurately). A monotone reading or, conversely, an overly dramatic reading will detract.
Select carefully the number of verses to be included in the reading. The passage needs to be long enough to capture the main idea of the text selected but not so long as to be difficult for people to maintain attention.
Encourage people to follow along in their own Bibles (best) or with the text projected for all to see – what we see and hear is usually better comprehended.
Use variety in the reading – responsive readings, two or more readers if it is a narrative dialog, etc.
If the reader is visible to the listeners they should dress so as not to distract thus detract.
Practice, practice, practice.

For more information see:

Reading the Bible and Praying in Public by Stuart Olyott (Banner of Truth)

The Public Reading of Scripture Clay Schmit (Abingdon)

Church, Why Bother?

Filed under Backsliding, Church, Community, Fellowship by Jerry Nelson on February 27, 2011 at 1:41 pm {no comments}

Dr. Jerry Nelson

When he’s in town and his or his kids’ athletics don’t conflict, he usually attends church on Sundays. But if I pressed him as to why he attends I’m guessing he’d have a hard time coming up with something that sounded significant.

I might hear:

“Well, I’ve always gone to church.”
“Going to church is what Christians do.”
“Doesn’t the Bible say we are supposed to go to church?”
“I want my kids in church.”

Maybe you have a better answer than that, right now, but at times even for many of us we wonder, “Church, why bother?”

Or maybe it isn’t even thought – we just slowly, quietly disengage and we hardly notice it ourselves until we realize we don’t really miss it when we don’t go.
Church, why bother?

What I’m going to talk about this morning I think only few in this room know much about and I’m not one of the few. Read More