Book Review: The Irresistible Church

I’m suspicious of formulas. Having spent the first part of my ministry looking for the “magic pill” that will make my church grow, which, by extension would make my ministry “successful,” I’ve encountered tons of books written by pastors of large churches offering strategies and tactics that will bring both bigger numbers and greater faithfulness to my congregation.

And I’ve found myself so frustrated by my lack of “results” that when a book that promises massive growth to my church in a few easy steps, some red flags pop up.

Wayne Cordeiro’s new book “The Irresistible Church” is a book that raised some of these rouge banners. In fact, his promise is that, using his model of church, your congregation will be irresistible to heaven, not just people. If you follow his blueprints, then God can’t help but bless your church.

His premise was where he lost me. While he has some good (but not particularly new) ideas, I was most troubled by the notion that God is simply waiting for Christians to do the “right” things before God will bless them. That we need to catch God’s attention by engaging in certain practices and behaviours.

Are we blessed because we are faithful? Or are we faithful because we are blessed? If we do all the right things would we not receive a “reward” rather than a “blessing”?

It’s not that Corderio is offering anything wrong or bad for the church, he has some wonderfully practical ideas. But by framing his method in a way that puts people in control of the human-divine relationship, he creates not a gospel church, but one of human activity.

This book was useful in that it provided some good ideas, but I had trouble getting past his original premise.

(NB: Book has been provided courtesy of the author and Graf-Martin Communications Inc. Available now at your favourite bookseller)

Sermon: Day of Pentecost

What I find troubling about the Christian church is that we too often seem to be facing in the wrong direction. We look backwards in history rather than forward in hope. We look to the past for inspiration rather than to the future with expectation.

This is especially true when we talk about our beliefs. We trip over ourselves trying to prove that what we believe is the same thing as what people believed 2000 years ago, or even longer.

We say that God is unchanging, which may be true, but we don’t know the whole of who God is. So we take our thoughts about God, freeze them in time, and present them as if by their very nature, their un-embodied truths will speak to all people in every time and every place.

It’s as if we think that the glory days of the church were “back then” when the faith was fresh and the Spirit spoke with awesome clarity. It’s as if we believe that today’s expression of church is a pale imitation of what God has done in previous generations.

I hear this all the time. People wax poetic about the primitive church, and how the early Christians were filled with fiery zeal, upon which we have...(whole thing here)

Sermon: Lent 5A: A service of Prayer and Healing

“What bible readings do you suggest, pastor?” she asked as we sat across the table from the funeral director.

“How about Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...’”? I asked

“Perfect. Mother loved that psalm. She had a copy of it on her bedroom wall.”

“Also, what about Romans chapter 8, ‘Neither death nor life...nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“Lovely. I think she would have appreciated that message.”

“For a gospel reading, how about John 11?”

“Which one is that?”

“‘I am the resurrection and the life, those who believe in me shall not perish, but whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.’ It’s the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.”

“Absolutely NOT! No one is raising mother from the dead. She is NOT coming back to life. How dare you suggest that story!”

She looked at me as if she couldn’t tell if I were a monster or moron. Or just some religious nut spewing biblical nonsense.

I was shocked by her vehemence, but could see her point. She was still trying to come to grips with the fact that her mother had died. She was drowning in details and trying to just get through the next couple of days. She didn’t have time to reconcile the Christian proclamation with her own secular scientific perspective.

“No one is raising mother from the dead. She is NOT coming back to life!”

They probably said the...(whole thing here)

Sermon: Lent 4A

“He put some mud on my eyes. I washed. And now I see.”

Simple. To the point.

But that wasn’t enough. They wanted a fuller explanation. The religious types couldn’t accept his version of the story. There had to be more to it.

Jesus meets this blind man who has been blind from birth. With some spit and dust Jesus heals him. Praise be to God! A man who was blind can now see.

But not so fast. A controversy breaks out. Was this man really healed? How was he healed? If Jesus healed him, what does that say about Jesus?

Fortunately, a bunch of...(whole thing here)

Sermon: Lent 3A

Last week, Jesus encountered Nicodemus. This week, he meets the woman at the well. And the two encounters couldn’t be more different.

Nicodemus is a man. She’s a woman. Nicodemus arrives at midnight. Jesus meet the woman at noon. Nicodemus is a highly educated, a greatly respected moral and religious leader.

The woman is an outcast, forced to retrieve her water from the well under the hot sun, instead of during the cool morning breeze, with the rest of the women.

He’s received honours throughout his life. She’s been rejected by most people who knew her.

I’m more like Nicodemus than I am like the woman at the well. I think most of us here are as well. We may have our fair share of rejection in our lives, but we managed to get through it with the help of friends, family, and fellow church members.

While the woman at the well has been the victim of her circumstance, she was also a survivor. She lived in a culture that placed woman in the same category as livestock. She observed a religion on the fringes of her world.

She was a member of a race that was met with hostility by the surrounding peoples. Her family was held together by the flimsiest of strings. She bounced from one bed to another, just to secure food and shelter for another night for herself and her children.

We know his name. We don’t know hers.

Like I said, I have no idea who this woman is. I can’t imagine what her life is like.

Despite the pain I’ve experienced in my years, I can’t measure it against her suffering. I can’t put myself in her dusty sandals. I don’t see my face in hers. She’s a stranger to me.

I’m guessing it’s the same...(whole thing here)

Sermon: Lent 2A

“Ask me what I know,” he told me, “don’t ask me what I believe.”

This was from a well-known bible scholar, who, in a moment personal honesty, confessed that what he knew intellectually after a lifetime of dissecting ancient texts, was different than what he believed personally.

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe the Christian faith to be false, or that what he learned from studying the bible all those years turned out to be a fabrication or delusion. He had no malicious intent.

“Ask me what I know. Don’t ask me what I believe....Because,” he said, “I don’t know what I believe. I’m still searching.”

I appreciated his openness. It couldn’t have been easy for him to share his personal faith crisis with some young punk who had more answers than there were questions.

Sharing his doubts was his way of saying that a lifetime of searching doesn’t necessarily mean a lifetime of finding.

Just ask...(whole thing here)

Sermon: Lent 1A

In a sermon a few months ago I asked you, “How would you recognize God’s voice if you heard it? And how would you know it was God’s?”

Today, I want to adjust the question a little, and ask, “How would you know the Devil’s voice if you heard it? What does the voice of evil sound like? How would you know evil if it was sitting across the table from you?”

On the surface, the answer may sound obvious. Just listen for the sound of the guttural voice, growling under your bed at night.

Or you look for the goateed fellow in the red pajamas and pitch fork standing on your shoulder, whispering naughty suggestions in your ear.

Or the guy with horns growing out of his forehead, laughing at you while you try to follow the bible’s moral guidance.

Is that what you hear when you listen for the voice of evil?

Or maybe you’re not so fanciful. You know that there’s evil in the world and it bears no resemblance to a cartoon character. You’ve seen it. Heard it. And felt it.

Maybe for you, the voice of evil is...(whole thing here)

Ash Wednesday

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.

Today is about death. Your death. My death. There’s no sugar-coating or watering it down. We are dust and to dust we WILL return.

And you came to hear this message. Many of you were here last year as well, so it’s not as if this was a case of bait-and-switch. You knew what you were getting into when you laced up your boots, put on your coats, and negotiated the dirty streets to get here.

You arrived expecting to hear that “you are dust and to dust you will return.” And if you didn't hear that message, you might just turn around and walk out.

And it’s not as if you didn’t have other options. Especially when we’ve had the first beautiful day in months and an evening walking might have been mighty tempting

But something drew you to this place to hear this specific message, a message that you probably wouldn’t hear anywhere else: “remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.”

Maybe you’ve come because...(whole thing here)

Sermon: Epiphany 8A

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Jesus makes it seem so easy; so cut and dried.

No doubt Jesus was right. Serving God and wealth is impossible because they demand two very different things from us. God puts us on a mission for the healing of the nations, for justice, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness.

What does money ask us to do? I think it’s different for everyone. God puts us in a common mission. Money pulls us inward.

What is money to you? What’s your relationship with it?

For some, it’s...(whole thing here)

Sermon: Epiphany 7A

Those of us who’ve been around the church long enough have probably forgotten the punch that this passage from the gospel packs. Some of these phrases have made their way into peoples’ everyday language.

“Turn the other cheek.”

“Go the extra mile.”

“Love your enemy.”

But if we take Jesus’ commands seriously, we might worry that we’d become a first class doormat.

If someone punches me in the face, I’d probably hit them right back. I wouldn’t point to the other side of my face and say, “missed a spot.”

If someone hijacked my car, I wouldn’t drive them to the border. I

f someone sues me, they better have a good lawyer because I’m going to protect what is mine.

And I have enemies for a reason. Loving them is not one of them. Especially since they don’t have my best interest in mind.

And then comes the command that puts all the others in their place...(whole thing here)

Sermon: Epiphany 6A

I was tempted, to acknowledge the difficulty of this text, then move on to preach from the easier Old Testament reading. This is one of the harder passages of scripture to bundle our brains around. It seems like Jesus is more interested in placing barbed-wire fences around our moral behaviour than setting us free with the good news of the Kingdom of God.

After reading this passage, I can only say with irony that “This is the good news of Jesus Christ” because I don’t find any gospel relief for my anxiously sinful soul. All I find is burden piled upon burden, rather than grace heaped upon grace, as the bible promises.

I would guess the same is for you. Who HASN’T committed at least one of the sins that Jesus identifies? Who HASN’T perpetrated one of these crimes?

Gotten angry? Burnt your bridges with someone close to you? Killed a friendship? Then have the temerity to come to church without repairing the relationship? Then, sorry, no...(whole thing here)

Book Review: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy; Righteous Gentile vs The Third Reich
 By Eric Metaxas
Thomas Nelson, Inc

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a theological Rorschach test. We read into him what we want to see. I’ve encountered preachers who saw him as a Martin Luther King Jr figure, a theologian who believed that Bonhoeffer was a so-called “pro-family conservative," a colleague who says that Bonhoeffer would be a crusader for gay rights if he were living today, and a writer who said that Bonhoeffer was simply a tweedy academic who was in over his political head.

If there is anything resembling a Lutheran saint, Bonhoeffer is it. And as a Lutheran myself, I know that Bonhoeffer’s shadow looms large over our collective identity. Most Lutherans see Bonhoeffer as a righteous martyr, bearing witness to God’s vision of justice during one of the most unjust regimes in history.

Noting that Eric Metaxas’ massive treatment of Bonhoeffer was published by Thomas Nelson, I worried that the author would turn the theologian into an American-style evangelical. My fears weren’t soothed when I read the preface by Timothy Keller:

In talking about Bonhoeffer’s famous distinction between 'cheap grace' and 'costly grace' Keller writes:

“We still have a lot of legalism and moralism in our churches. In reaction to that, many Christians want to talk only about God’s love and acceptance. They don’t like talking about Jesus’ death on the cross to satisfy divine wrath and justice. Some even call it 'divine child abuse.' Yet if they are not careful, they run the risk of falling into the belief in 'cheap grace' - a non-costly love from a non-holy God who just loves and accepts us as we are. That will never change anyone’s life.

“So it looks like we still need to listen to Bonhoeffer and others who go deep into discussing the nature of the gospel.”

Keller hasn’t done his homework. Bonhoeffer, as a Lutheran, wouldn’t have been terribly enthralled with the “divine satisfaction” and “penal substitution” atonement theories that Keller has combined and presented as normative for orthodox protestant theology. Bonhoeffer knew his historical theology too well to be swallowed up by simplistic theological explanations of Jesus’ saving work.

And Keller’s observation set the tone for this book. There was an attempt by Metaxas to turn Bonhoeffer into a theological conservative because of his rejection of Harnack and nineteenth century (and it’s 20th century incarnation at Union Seminary), and by his connection to Karl Barth.

But Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran, which defies the categories of liberal and conservative. At least the way they’re presently understood.

Bonhoeffer reached back to the Reformation and its re-emphasis of scripture as the “norm for faith and life” to find God’s activity in the world. And not in a simple “the bible says it, I believe it, that settles it...” childish hermeneutic. But a nuanced exploration into the proclamation of salvation through Jesus, which he believed - as a Lutheran - was the purpose of scripture; what Luther called “The Living Word.”

What I liked most about this book was that Metaxas let Bonhoeffer speak for himself. The book is loaded with quotes from his books, letters, and sermons, and the author expertly navigates the reader through Bonhoeffer’s life using the theologian's words to put his experiences in context.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy; Righteous Gentile vs The Third Reich is a useful, if flaed and limited addition to Bonhoeffer studies. This book should be read along side other treatments to help get a fuller view of the man.

(NB: Book has been provided courtesy of the author and Graf-Martin Communications Inc. Available now at your favourite bookseller)

UPDATE: Sojourners has a much more thorough review of this book. (free registration required)