20/20

Consider ophthalmology - the field of medicine that focuses on the health of the eye. Practitioners of this medicine are Ophthalmologists. Their concern is on the health of your eye and often making sure that you can see well. When my daughter’s school flagged her vision at a standard eye test it was an Ophthalmologist who recommended that she get glasses to correct her vision so that she could see the board in the front of the classroom. Up to that point, though my five year old daughter couldn’t describe it, she wasn’t able to see things clearly that were far away.

Scholar Pete Enns describes the Bible as a text that God allows God’s children to write about Him. I’ve always appreciated this description because it allows for the obvious growth in God’s peoples understanding of God as they write about Him over the course of the Old Testament. When we look at the Old Testament we also find varying places where writers understanding of God seems to disagree with one another. Consider the question of who killed Goliath. Consider whether the massacre of Jezreel was God ordained or not. Consider whether some non-canonical writings are scriptural or not as they’re quoted in canonized scripture but not canonized by the church. But, when we consider the Bible as a text written by God’s children we can allow for a bit more elasticity in the text because a child’s understanding of their parent changes as they grow.

Here is where ophthalmology enters the equation: what if this is the reason why God sends Christ? Remember that the field’s main concern is with the health of the eye, right? Also remember that the bread and butter of the field is correcting vision. Christ’s sermon on the mount spend’s considerable time correcting Old Testament teaching: murder isn’t just physical murder but is also hatred, adultery isn’t just physical adultery but also lust…oaths, eye for an eye, enemy love, divorce, giving, prayer, fasting, treasures, worry….do you see what I mean? Go back and read the sermon on the mount - Christ isn’t just teaching the crowds, He is providing correction to long held beliefs about all these areas. He is correcting their vision! Whether it was the prophets or the teachers of the law or the Judges that provided these things to Israel - the people had come to long held conclusions about who God was and what God expected that were wrong. They could not see the board in the front of the room correctly. But now they can.

When Christ corrects the vision the people of Israel start to have better eye health too. Because now they can start to treat one another better. With a better picture of God they can learn to love God better because they understand that God actually loves them. God loves them so much that He is fulfilling His long held promises to them by sending the long awaited Christ. Christ is clearly speaking these things : For God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son…. But the job isn’t done. Promoting good eye health isn’t just going to happen with glasses, Christ is going to promote it by going to the cross for every single conviction that he has been teaching the people of Israel. He doesn’t just teach these things - He believes in them to the point that He will die for them. There is an atonement theory that spells this out called Moral Influence Theory. Christ’s life and death serve as a supreme example of self sacrificial love and inspires others to live in a similar way.

Does this spell out the entirety of the story? Of course not. Does it give us one more perspective on the story itself - absolutely. Personally, I subscribe to a kaleidoscopic view of atonement (finding truth in many theories) but I do think that a big reason for the incarnation was to correct our understanding of God. God’s children have a habit of getting off track in our understanding of who He is, what He cares about and how much He loves all His children. Periodically, this needs to be revisited and reconsidered. If Christ returned today how would our prescriptions be changed?

Love is for Everyone

What does it mean to be loving in our witness? Wow, what a loaded question in our world today, right? Loving has come to mean so many things. It’s become fairly common to say that we love our spouse and we love chocolate. Same word. Same expression and yet we mean something quite different. Hopefully.

Love has come be heavy with a lot of expectation. If I walked down the street with a camera and a microphone and asked people to tell me what it means to love others, I would probably get so many different responses and peoples responses would have extra things added into them to make sure that I knew that they were on certain sides of certain issues that are present in our cultural or political moment. So those extra things get tossed into the definition of love and sort of complicate and weigh down love. It’s hard to strip all that away and just get…at…love.

This is where scripture can be such a grounding rod for us. In John 15 Jesus says Just as the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; remain in My love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love.

If you’ve spent enough time in church and you’ve heard enough sermons you’ll know that there is a difference between our modern English and the original language of the Bible especially around the word love – in Greek there is more than one word for love. Here, Jesus uses the word agapē which describes the love that God has for Jesus. It is a selfless love, it describes a sacrificial love, it describes a love that doesn’t expect anything in return, it describes a love that comes from a choice not an obligation and a love that is concerned with the greatest good of the other. Jesus says, that this is how God loved Him. This is how Jesus loved His disciples and this is Jesus expectation of how his disciples will love others.

Nick, does it really say that? Aren’t you stretching that original verse that you quoted? Sure, that’s how God loved Jesus and Jesus loved the disciples but is it really the expectation of how the disciples of Jesus should love others? Yes. John 15:12 – This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Must be one of those other “love” words, right? Nope, same word: agapē. Selflessly, sacrificially, don’t expect something in return, not out of obligation but because you want to. And that verse couldn’t make the expectation more clear.

Why should we do this? Why would Jesus want us to do this? Why would it be important for our witness to be agape love? Let’s allow scripture to be the grounding rod once more. John 13:35 – By this all people will know that you are My disciples: if you have love for one another.Agapē. That is bearing witness. That is bearing a loving witness. That is bearing a loving, active witness.

We can add all our extra adjectives into loving that are rife with our cultural and political moments. We can fall prey to the powers and principalities of this world. We can decide that we’re tired of being peacemakers and loving our enemies and turning the other cheek. We can give our tithe so that all can see how giving we are. We can pray on the temple steps so that all can see how pious we are. We can speak in tongues and have faith that move mountains. But without love our witness is bankrupt. Without love we cannot claim to be a disciple. Without love we cannot claim to even begin to understand the relationship between Jesus and the Father. A LOVING WITNESS IS ESSENTIAL. 

We have to remember that the job of Jesus is to sort our the wheat and the weeds - not ours. Our job is to witness and that witness needs to be loving or it is not a witness of Jesus.

Prodigal Son Homily II

About 1000 years after the birth of Christ the unified historical Christian Church split into two parts: the East and the West or as they are more well known - the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. The reasons for this split are not as important to this homily as the knowledge that this split occurred. From the Western half of Christendom (Roman Catholic) came the Protestant Reformation (Lutherans) about 500 years later and then the innumerable denominations over the last 500 years that include evangelicalism, the pentecostal church, independent churches and the general religious landscape that we know today. Most of us that have lived our lives in places with significant Roman Catholic influence in their founding or settling don’t question or think about the religious influence of the church.

But the West only represents one half of the church’s historical influence.

Interestingly, in the western world that we know, we find ourselves troubled by certain theological problems that the eastern world never encountered. One of those problems is the atonement theory called penal substitutionary atonement. This atonement theory in its simplest form says humanity is full of sin and cannot be reconciled to God on its own; God’s wrath needs to be appeased regarding humanities sin; the only thing that can appease God’s wrath is blood ergo a sacrifice or death; Jesus, having no sin but being fully human is able to be sacrificed for our sin, on our behalf or in our place and this appeases God’s wrath.

This is exactly what I grew up hearing. What’s worse is that this is what I grew up hearing was THE GOSPEL. Ugh…this was the “good news?” The good news was that God was angry and because I was so bad I needed to die but thank God that Jesus was willing to be murdered by his father in my place so that God would forgive me? This is definitely NOT the gospel. And this is definitely NOT true.

Why can’t God just forgive sin?

Oh, wait…He can. To believe in Penal Substitutionary Atonement is to believe that God’s wrath is somehow more powerful than God’s forgiveness. That God is somehow subject to sin and its effects are stronger than the effects of God’s forgiveness and mercy. To believe in PSA makes God subject to a process of filicide to obtain forgiveness rather than just forgiving. Which is silly. How silly? To show how silly lets just retell the story of the prodigal son and overlay PSA on top of it.

Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’

“But while he was still a long way off Jesus met him on the road and said to him, I know what an angry man your father is so let me go home with you and speak to him on your behalf. Jesus led the son into the fathers house where the father demanded a life be taken to satiate his anger. Jesus willingly laid down his life so that the son and father could be reconciled to one another. Once the father saw that Jesus was dead he called out to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

Now go to Luke 15 and read the real version. Does the father just forgive the son or does the father have to go through a whole process? Does the father appear wrathful? Is there even a Jesus/Christ figure as an intermediary in the story? Does the twisted tale that PSA weaves make even a hint of an appearance in this story?

Perhaps a better question is - why doesn’t the church in the east have to wrestle with this?

Prodigal Son Homily I

In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 15, we find record of Jesus telling a story about a man with two sons who lives on a farm. At the outset of the story one may think that life on the farm is going just fine. But the younger of the two sons asks his father to give him his inheritance early. This is like the son saying, “Dad, I’d be better off if you were dead, because rather than have you alive and in my life, I’d like the money I’ll get when you die.”

How might you, the parent, react? This father says, “ok.” He gives his son the money and it isn’t surprising to the listener or the father or the brother when the young man leaves and heads to a distant land. There, we learn, he wastes the money. When he has no money left a famine strikes the land in which he is living. Food and water become scarce and he takes a job on a farm - because farming is what he knows. And while doing the menial task of feeding the pigs, this young man becomes jealous of the pig’s food. He is so hungry that he longs to eat what the pigs are eating.

Which makes him pause. He thinks – my father is wealthy and has his own servants on the farm and the servants eat better food than what I’m looking at…better food than what I’m jealous of. After all that I have done, I’ll never be worthy to be a son again but I could return to my fathers house and at least be a servant. And being a servant would be better than this. A servant would eat better than this.

So, the youngest son goes home. The thought echos on repeat in his mind: I’ll never be a son again but at least I could be a servant. I’ll never be a son again but at least I’ll be a servant.

The young man in our story is prepared for a transaction. He is offering his apology, his pride, his brokenness in return for being a servant. He’s probably thinking – I was tested and I failed. It’s called a transactional relationship.

When you go to the store, you give the store money and they give you a product.
You go to work, the work gives you a paycheck.
You get advice from the doctor, the doctor bills your insurance. Your insurance bills you. You give them money.

These are transactions. Transactions are simple. Two parties just have to do the expected thing. And if one party doesn’t then there are laws and consequences to keep people in line. Transactions are simple. If I know what good…what product…what action…will earn me your favor…your love…then I know what to repeat. And so our young man, our younger brother returns home. He’s ready for his transaction. He has resigned himself to being a failure, a dropout. He’ll never be a son again. I’ll never be a son again but at least I’ll be a servant.

Because all of us, like the young man, tend to think that the fathers love and reaction depends on our apology.

But it doesn’t. And that may be one of the most beautiful things about this story. Because long before the son ever got his speech out, debased himself, apologized or anything - but when he was still a long way off - the father saw him and THE FATHER RAN TO HIM! Not to condemn him or make him a servant but to embrace him, clothe him, put a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet and throw him a feast…to restore him as a son. And allow me to point out one more thing of vital importance: the father never stopped seeing his son as a son! When he restores him to sonship he does so for the sake of the son who no longer saw himself as worthy to be son. He does so for the son who had reduced is paternal relationship to a transaction rather than one of love.

30 Years of Church Planting Failure?

I live in America. It’s 2022 and around me medium to small churches are closing their doors at an unprecedented rate. At another unprecedented rate, though not as great as. the first one, new churches are being planted. Additionally the churches being planted are often much smaller than the ones that are closing their doors. A 2021 Lifeway Research Study concluded that 4,500 churches closed their doors in 2019, while only 3,000 opened their doors. Here is another alarming fact from a 2021 Faith Communities Study - the average church attendance has dropped from 137 to 65 over the past two decades. Which means that it isn’t a sudden problem. It isn’t like a pipe burst in your home and caused lots of damage. Rather it’s been slow. It’s like a water pipe has been leaking for two decades and your house has been sinking into the mud inch by inch and you’re finally realizing that your two story house is now only one story.

So…what’s the problem? Which pipe do we fix?

Well, the issue is that it isn’t one pipe that has been leaking that has caused your house to settle. It’s almost all the pipes that have been leaking. Drip by drip they have eroded a foundation that was laid brick by brick over two millennia. Since the casting of The Great Commission our Apostolic Fathers crafted an expression of the Bride of Christ that we have inherited. Each subsequent generation has laid it’s row of bricks. We added indoor plumbing and electricity as technology advanced. We made grave mistakes and sinned against God in our expression of Him to the world around us. Various generations have apologized and torn down aspects of the house in order to rebuild differently. It has been quite the process. Purchased with blood and sweat and risk and through painstaking discernment.

And now…God’s house has been placed in our hands to steward.

Here is some good news, I think: the church has been in worse shape in its history. The members of this house were hunted to near extinction. They were martyred and persecuted and made to fear retribution so much that the church had to go underground for a time. This violence from outside the church was solved when the government of the day sanctioned a form of the church: state approved. Yay. But then there was violence from within. A great need for theological correctness led to accusations of heresy, excommunications and executions. Further violence from within led to various factions, families and people grappling for supreme power (the Papacy). For a time the halls of the western headquarters of the church were full of troublingly immoral actions and lifestyles. And then the church became violent towards the world and attempted to covert those, outside of itself, with the sword. Yes, the church has been in worse positions than 2022.

In certain places in the world they have moved into a post-Christian, post-Church location in society. Being truly post-Christian means being several generations removed from the societal influence to be a part of church. Portions of Europe and Canada are in this place. There are vague recollections of grandparents attending church but no core memories of parents or children attending. We may mourn such a loss of Christian influence in these areas but with more hopeful eyes we may see that the slate has been cleared for a new work of the Holy Spirit.

Regardless, let us turn our eyes back to the church in America with leaky pipes and a sinking foundation. We can conclude that the church has been worse than it is now. We can observe that we are not in a truly post-Church, post-Christian societal location. Which may lead us to ask: “what is our issue?” And while there are many leaky pipes that we could pick on and admittedly some more easy than others to call out there is one that sticks out to me that may difficult for others to observe or be willing to grapple with: church growth.

When I was growing up we had church growth dinners. As a teenager I was living in the glory days of the church growth movement. Mega-churches had gone from just these things on television to cropping up in people’s backyards all over the America. Mars Hill, Saddleback, Willow Creek and many more were producing technologically savvy services with pastors who held near celebrity status and writing books telling all of us in 100 person churches how to grow our own mini-mega-churches. Money was raised and spent on church plants. New technology, video series, curriculum and discipleship processes were purchased. All to create the exact same, totally unique church plant feel in a gymnasium/movie theatre/coffee shope/renovated grocery store near you. Or all of that in your standard renovated traditional church building. From the outside it looks like an old church but on the inside … did I walk into a hipster-coffee-warehouse-church?

“Welcome to Something or Other Community Fellowship.” (It’s almost always community and it’s almost always fellowship. I think Christian’s like them because they’re church words and the non-churched are okay with them because they’re sort of non-threatening, unassuming words. Someone probably spent a lot of money testing these words with a focus group somewhere and they came back as being welcoming and friendly. So the church growth movement stamped those words on most rebranded churches out there.) “We’re the church for people who don’t like church.” (Which is slang, non-church people talk for … bro, we’re cool.)

Now, it’s been 30 years since the church planting movement. How’d we do?

Well, Willow Creek Church is probably the biggest propagator of the materials that we all used back then. Willow made the assumption that the more programs that you created and the busier church life that a person was involved in the deeper they would grow in their faith. Essentially this was the general model that many of us followed - youth group, VBS, drama ministry, worship team, mens ministry, womens ministry, Bible Studies, etc. Willow did an extensive study called The Reveal Study where they shared publicly that their hypothesis was a failure. Inundating your life with programs did NOT lead to increased spiritual growth. Rather, it led to busier lives. It led to burn out.

As I look back at the various church plants that our denomination planted 30 years ago some of them died for one reason or another. They certainly saw growth in their heyday - some of them reaching sizes of a couple hundred people. Almost of none of them were able to figure out how to make the jump from the founding pastor to a succeeding pastor without a major hit to the attendance. Some struggled to figure out how to stop being a church plant and become a church. When your identity is so wrapped up in being a church plant but you’ve been a plant for ten years … are you really still a plant? Still others still exist today. They made the jump to a brick and mortar building, they left the church plant identity behind and became established, they grew, the founding pastor left and a plan of succession was put into place so that today the community is still thriving.

What you have is an incredible mixed bag of results and quite honestly all that I can report is biased observation speculation. I posit that the 90s church planting boom was no more and no less successful than church planting normally is. For instance, if you were to gather the statistical data on the success and failure of church planting in the 90 years prior to the church planting boom and compare it to the statistical data on the success and failure of the 90s church planting boom, I believe that within a reasonable standard deviation, the success and failure rate would be quite similar. Simply put, we feel the success and failure of the 90s boom much more than the 90 years prior because it came all at once. It is the difference between filling a five gallon bucket of water, with a pin hole in the bottom, and walking underneath it - you barely feel the water hitting you on the head. But walk under that same bucket while someone flips it over and releases the entire contents upon you and there can be no doubt that you will feel it. The amount in the bucket never changed and the hole never changed. The only thing that changed was how much water you were exposed to and how fast.

Paramount is the lessons that we learn from this experience. The 90 years prior to the boom are spread across 4-5 generations. Compiling and passing all that experience along is an impressive feat let alone the lessons learned from it. The 90s church planting boom is a gift because it came across 2-3 generations all exposed simultaneously. Compiling and passing along the experience and lessons are possible and necessary for us to do so that we can help set the stage for our children to create a better version than we did without getting stuck in the mistakes that we made. They don’t have to get lost in an endless number of programs. They don’t have to get burned out by church schedules that never end. They don’t have to start a church without a vision to create a healthy succession plan. These are important lessons that we can hand them so that they can create solutions that will fit the expression of church they creation to honor God. We don’t have to create the solutions, we don’t have to fix it … we need to show them that they are capable of doing that themselves by depending on the Holy Spirit and partnering with God. We just need to teach them what God has been showing us … and then get out of the way because God is at work.

The Importance of Deconstruction

We live in an era where the largest and most mainstream churches in the Evangelical world (and outside of it) are taking the time to beat up the idea of deconstructionism. Recently, Pastor Matt Chandler went viral accusing those who would be going through the process of deconstruction of doing so out of a desire to adopt the latest in faith fashion. Those are my words, not his. Essentially, he said it was the latest fad and he warned that it would lead to deconversion. Lead singer of the band Skillet, John Cooper, made a public call for Christian’s to declare war on the ideology of deconstruction as it walks a fine line towards deconversion. It would appear that there is a generalized fear towards whatever deconstruction is … leading you away from the faith you currently espouse.

The cultural understanding of deconstruction is a dismantling of your faith. If construction is the process of building something, then deconstruction is the process of taking something apart. Construction builds a structure piece by piece. Deconstruction takes it apart piece by piece. It seems that if you are a spiritual leader then that is something that you may fear your flock or constituency doing.

But, that isn’t deconstruction.

Deconstruction is a real ideology. It’s actually a philosophical idea proposed by a philosopher named Derrida. It may surprise you to know that the idea was actually centered around literature and words and binary meanings. Derrida proposed that words don’t mean anything without a word that means something contrary to them. For instance, consider the old question: to be or not to be? This question is the interplay of two contrary or opposing ideas. “To be” can be summed up with one word: being. “Not to be” can be summed up with “not being” or in a single word: nothing. The single word or idea “being” really doesn’t mean anything without an opposing idea: “nothing.” The single word or idea “nothing” really doesn’t mean anything without an opposing idea “being.” The two, totally opposing, ideas depend on one another to give the original question “to be or not to be” any meaning whatsoever. The process of recognizing this and breaking this down is what Derrida referred to as deconstruction. He pushed it further than allowing the concept to solely reside in literature. He said these same opposing forces exist in society and society depends on them as well. Within the philosophical idea of deconstruction there is both a literary component and a societal component.

Does that sound like the process that so many Christian’s are going through as they question their faith? Does the recognition of the contrary forces in literature as necessary to the meaning of words sound dangerous to folks staying on the “straight and narrow?” Nope. Because we’re not talking about deconstruction.

What many Christian leaders don’t want people doing is quite simple but terribly distressing. Many Christian leaders don’t want Christian’s asking questions about their faith, their church, their leaders, their theology or the interpretation of scripture that they have been handed. When you sit in a sermon or a Sunday School class with a gifted teacher you can be fed a prepared question and a prepared answer. A gifted teacher can even make it seem as though it isn’t prepared. If you sit through an apologetics class (apologetics is the process of learning how to defend the Christian faith and scriptures with well prepared arguments/answers) you will learn that there are many trends of questions and arguments that get made and many answers and arguments that can be memorized in preparation. And all of this comes across as discipleship, shepherding and leadership but in reality, is simply the intentional stagnating of someone’s growth. It’s foot-binding. It’s deliberately refusing to teach a person to fish, all the while preparing for them seven-day old cod in lots of butter and breading.

I promise you it is the opposite of what Jesus would do.

A philosopher named Descartes proposed an idea called Cartesian Doubt. It was a process of slowly questioning all that you held as beliefs and it was based, largely, upon where those beliefs were rooted. Could you prove that they were true? Did you know they were true or were you told that they were true? It was a slow form of reduction that was meant to leave you with a foundation of beliefs that you could trust and upon this foundation you could rebuild. This is the process that I took my faith through two decades ago when I nearly walked away from God. It was a painful process that left my faith reduced to a single idea that I knew for a fact was true – not because I read it in the Bible or sang it in a song, but because I had experienced beyond a shadow of a doubt: God is love. I knew this to be true. It helped then that scripture agreed. Upon this idea I could rebuild my faith. It was a slow process and this process continues today. But even today when I encounter a new idea I use the process of Cartesian Doubt to measure it against what has come before it. Does this new idea or proposition line up with what I knew to be true: God is love (and everything that has now been built upon it)? If it doesn’t then this idea may not belong in my spiritual house. Or I may need to spend some more time with it.

Here is why asking questions is so important – Jesus asked questions. Every prophet asked questions. The reformers asked questions. Each movement in our theological history has begun with a question. If we are not free to ask questions, then we are not free. God demands this kind of freedom for his people for God is bigger than any question we could ever propose and God is small enough to sit with us in the waiting as we pursue an answer to it.

Seven Mountain Mandate

I’d rather call this Seven Mountains Madness because I think that’s what this is.

Perhaps you’ve never heard of the Seven Mountains Mandate. Here’s a quick explanation:

The Seven Mountains Mandate is a theological ideology that is based off of a single verse in the book of Revelation which defines seven mountains. The ideology was conceived by several powerful Evangelical male leaders but gained traction when Bill Johnson, the influential pastor of the Bethel megachurch in California, wrote a book called Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate. The mandate states that Christian’s should seek to control the following seven areas of society: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government. When these areas are brought under control the followers of this ideology believe that it will bring about the “end times.”

I don’t have a lot to say about this ideology except in official statements, speeches and documents that are written by proponents of this line of thinking they commonly use the word “dominion.” As in to take dominion over or to have control over. Perhaps that doesn’t set off the red flags for you that it does for me. The only place that I can think that scripture uses this sort of command is in Genesis when the recently formed mankind is given dominion over fish, fowl, cattle and the earth. Beyond that - not a whole lot of dominion or taking control comes to my mind. In fact, if we consider that Jesus is the perfect ambassador of God (yes, that is an unashamedly Anabaptist approach to scripture called christo-centricism) we could make a pretty good argument that His approach is the opposite of dominion.

Dominion and the 7 mountain mandate involves taking control of society by taking control of seven specific areas of society. This is explicitly a “power over” concept. However, the Apostle Paul, in Philippians 2, writing about Jesus urges followers of Jesus to imitate the mindset of Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

Notice that Christ humbles himself in His approach to ministry among mankind. Jesus doesn’t take control over or have dominion over seven areas of society. He enters into society in the lowest of possible places - a baby born to a poor family provided for by a carpenter. If that wasn’t low enough he took on the role of servant in many cases and allowed himself to be arrested as a criminal and even killed on the cursed cross. And, yes, I do mean cursed. Because in Biblical times it was though that anyone who died on the cross was cursed.

This is the opposite of dominion. This is the opposite of control over.

In fact, if we really want to consider how Jesus is exalted over others it is when God exalts him to the highest of places. Jesus doesn’t exalt himself. He doesn’t lift himself up. He doesn’t capture seven areas of society. He isn’t taking dominion. Jesus humbles himself and allows God to do all the lifting up and exalting. Which is an important thing to note when considering the Seven Mountain Mandate because followers of the ideology believe that they can bring about the end times that they believe that Revelation speaks about. Which puts proponents of this theology in a position of power over God.

Any theology that gives proponents of it power or position over God is a formal heresy. Any theology that is based off of a single verse from the book of Revelation should be questioned. Any theology that is said to have been “given by God” to a bunch of Evangelical male leaders should be placed in the same category as the visions given to Joseph Smith outlined in the Book of Mormon (the only difference in the delivery is the amount of people that it was delivered to) until somehow proven otherwise. Any theology that takes the life and work of Jesus Christ and solicits a response that is the exact opposite of Christ’s life - should not be followed.

This says nothing of the fact that the movement blessed and anointed the presidency of Donald Trump. It says nothing of the prophecies of Paula White, another proponent of the movement, or the political ties of many of these leaders to the Christian Nationalism movement. I’ll leave all of that out of this but I will say that the deeper you dig, the more you reasons you can have for denying that this has any legitimate basis as theology and calling it what it is - political strategy.

Modern Evangelicalism Denies Anabaptism

In recent years the Brethren in Christ (an Anabaptist denomination) has referred to itself as having four historical streams of influence. Not officially, of course. Not in any of the annals of its nearly 250 year history. The reference, however, is there on the website, in courses offered within the denomination and in conversation. The Brethren in Christ has called itself “a ______ with a difference.” Wesleyan with a difference;  Anabaptist with a difference; etc. I’ve been reflecting on the Evangelical stream of influence and the idea of being an “evangelical with a difference.”

Until the 1950’s Evangelicalism’s impact on the Brethren in Christ was a secondary or tertiary impact. That is, some of the historical waves of Evangelicalism had impact upon ministers such as John and Charles Wesley and those ministers (the Wesley’s) had an impact on the historical Brethren in Christ. As Evangelicalism began to redefine itself in the 20th century it became more and more common to define it by what it wasn’t. Or to define itself against another movement that it wasn’t – such as fundamentalism.

On one hand the Evangelical movement sought unity between believers by avoiding many of the contentious issue that had caused much of Christianity to become characterized as narrow. The Evangelicals became a sort of middle ground between fundamentalism and modernism. It had a best of both worlds approach, an almost safe place to land in a theological sense since, at its core, Evangelicalism desired to be invitational, grow as a movement and engage in social concerns. On cursory review Evangelicalism seemed to hold onto some core fundamentalist ideologies without denying some of the new and more scholarly approach of the modernist.

On the other hand, the Evangelical movement began to try to create a subculture that would permeate mainstream culture by providing religious alternatives to mainstream activities. Bob Jones founded Bob Jones University as a place free from modernism and evolution. Fuller Seminary was founded in response to the fundamentalist teaching at Bob Jones University. Christianity Today became an Evangelical household publication to combat the The Christian Century. The Scopes Monkey Trial may have been won by William Jennings Bryan but it was conservative Christianity that was resoundingly rebuffed by society at large. Conservative Christianity would need a spokesperson and it couldn’t be Bryan.

Billy Graham would become that spokesperson and easily is remembered as the figure most associated with Evangelicalism. Graham came into the spotlight in a very sudden and charismatic way. He attended the seminary founded by the National Association of Evangelical’s (Fuller Seminary), after a very short stint at Bob Jones University, and almost immediately upon graduation he became a nationally renown speaker with Youth for Christ and then as an Evangelist for a wider audience. How did Graham go from seminary graduate to renown status so quickly without climbing the proverbial ministry ladder? News coverage from William Randolph Hearst and Time Magazine. And why were these non-religious publications drawn to Graham? Charisma? Yes. Anything else? His political views. Which lays an important block in the foundation of Evangelicalism that will later prove to be more of a cornerstone than even Jesus.

In 1966 Billy Graham was declared a heretic by Bob Jones Jr. Less than 10 years later they would end up in the same camp. Why? How? Though much of the North American Evangelical world would like to think that its political foundation was laid upon the good Christian fight of being pro-life the truth is a bit less obvious than that. Certainly, there was some gathering of people around this ideology but in truth the lines between Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism would become blurred because of race. Which, of course, Evangelicalism has spent much of its history not wanting to talk about. In 1974 the U.S. Government threatened to sue all universities that remained segregated after revoking the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University. Fundamentalist leader Jerry Falwell, who had his own segregated university, began to gather people bent on a conservative political view. In 1976 Jimmy Carter, a self-proclaimed “born again believer” won the United States Presidential Election and suddenly we needed a name for this growing conservative voting bloc – Evangelical.

Which gets a little confusing, right? Bob Jones University and Wheaton College were at odds. Billy Graham and Bob Jones Jr were at odds. Billy Graham was against segregation and Jerry Falwell was for segregation, right? I thought the NAE was founded to counter the FCC. Christianity Today was created to combat the modernist teachings of The Christian Century, I was told. Now they’re all Evangelical? Not because of the life changing work of Jesus Christ? Not because they peaceably sat around a table and worked out their theological differences? Because combining the two diametrically opposed camps gained political leaders a larger voting bloc of conservative voters?

Tell me that doesn’t sound like the villainous plot twist in the latest movie where two parties are at odds with one another over moral issues but are eventually unified under a third party who doesn’t actually care for the moral issues but simply desires the power of the other two? Is this a Marvel movie? Is this a Bond movie? Unfortunately, we don’t see this plot quite so clearly.

At this point – what does Evangelical really mean? Because it doesn’t mean what Wheaton College and Billy Graham stood for. That has been diluted with Bob Jones University, Jerry Falwell, racism and conservative politics. Whatever Evangelicalism once stood for it has become clear, especially in the last ten years, that it is no longer a group rejecting fundamentalism while proclaiming the Bible as the inspired word of God and the importance of being “born again.” No, theology has been replaced with political theory in this group; christocentricity with nation-centricity.

Now, I want to give the Evangelical impact on the Brethren in Christ a fair shake. Historically, I can see the positive contribution of the American Evangelical stream that encouraged us to move our “separateness” from society away from distinctions in plain dress, movie attendance and card games and into something that was more directly an overall distinction in lifestyle. This opened us up to a larger and more missional call towards the evangelism of our neighbors rather than separation from them. Personally, I see this as a very positive contribution that may not have come to the Brethren in Christ without the Evangelical movement and the call of teachers like Billy Graham.

Indeed, this is the very thing that the Brethren in Christ website promotes as the contribution of the Evangelical movement of the 1950s to the theology of the Brethren in Christ. I would be willing to split hairs and say that the only purely Evangelical contribution was the embrace of culture rather than the separation from it but the denominational website seems to believe that a desire to engage others with the transformative message of the gospel is also a contribution. I think the argument can be made that the Brethren in Christ already did this to an extent and would have more fully embraced this mentality over time as some of their other theological roots did as well. Regardless – the Brethren in Christ denomination recognizes the positive contribution of Evangelicalism to its theological roots.

The problem is that I, as a current Pastor, parent, husband, community volunteer, business owner, avid reader, seminary grad, informed individual, am struggling to see positive contributions beyond this singular one by the American Evangelical stream of influence. So much so that I’m struggled not to put stream of influence in quotations as a way to illicit to the reader the very depth of my struggle.

It would seem to me that many current American Evangelical values are in direct contradiction to our other streams of influence.

In 2015 Jerry Falwell Jr, who had taken over the reins of one of those southern segregationist schools (Lynchburg Christian Academy) from his father Jerry Falwell Sr, now president of Liberty University said, “I’ve always thought if more good people had concealed-carry permits we could end those Muslims before they walk in and kill…” Granted, Liberty University is a private institution but the Falwell name has come to mean a great deal to the Evangelical world and Liberty University has become, arguably, the largest Christian university in the world and the most influential Evangelical university in the country. I’ll also grant that in 2020 Falwell Jr resigned from Liberty in the midst of multiple scandal, but it does not change the assistance Falwell Jr provided in helping to build the current structure we know as Evangelicalism nor the politicizing of it. It should go without saying that Falwell’s violence pandering commentary from 2015 has more in common with the Münster Rebellion than with any Anabaptist peace position or the historical Anabaptist call for young men to choose a form of voluntary service over military service. This is to say nothing of the clearly racially insensitive portion of Falwell’s 2015 commentary that flies in the face of any Brethren in Christ missions work done in portions of the world where Muslim persons are engaged with respect to them, their culture and their religion.

As we previously mentioned the diametrically opposed portions of Protestant American Christianity were combined, not because of sudden theological agreement but because powerful men saw the opportunity to gain even more power through the establishment of a massive Evangelical voting bloc. Evangelical leaders, Evangelical media, conservative media, Evangelical Churches have all continued to attempt to convince the public that there are simply two methods at looking at any one political problem in an effort to continue to draw people to their ever-enlarging political base. By convincing the evangelical voting bloc that “if you aren’t with us than you are against God” regarding abortion, gun control, military spending, government oversight, financial accountability, socialism and more they all but guarantee voters to fall into the false lines they create. The problem with this isn’t necessarily the creation of the base itself – it is the false pretense with which it is created. First, I’m going to purposefully ignore the historical Anabaptist position of staying out of politics and instead point out one of the terms buried deep within the Anabaptist DNA: third-way. It represents the Anabaptist’s desire to find a new or different option when presented with a dualistic way of thinking that doesn’t strike the believer with a viable option in following Jesus. A situation that many politically minded believers find themselves in. Unlike an Anabaptist approach and rather than embracing the use of our God-given mind, as some of the branches of Protestant American Christianity have done in the past, we’ve lobotomized the believer by turning situations into predictable dualistic outcomes rather than training the believer to embrace the praiseworthy actions of the citizens of Issachar who understood the times and knew what to do.

We continue to hear about Evangelical churches, pastors and leaders who espouse personal armament, cries for state secession following the 2020 election results or most recently when a video from Cornerstone Church, a San Antonio based Evangelical Church led by Pastor John Hagee, went viral depicting the people in the sanctuary chanting “Let’s go, Brandon.” While you may be aware of the popularized chant because of the t-shirts and yard signs around you may not be aware that the chant is actually a euphemism that means : “F-you, Biden.” Which might be surprising since you’ve seen politicians who ran on a conservative Christian platform saying this at political rallies and events. Or, perhaps, that doesn’t surprise you. Does it surprise you to see your conservative Christian neighbors purporting this saying with their yard signs and t-shirts? Regardless of your answer, what should surprise us all and more than that, disappoint and concern us is when a video goes viral of an event at an influential, 22,000 member Evangelical Christian Church where participants begins to chant it. It doesn’t even matter that, days later, Pastor Matt Hagee offered an apology because while the apology went largely unnoticed various articles titled “Texas mega-church breaks out into chants of ‘Let’s Go Brandon’” went viral. I don’t think I have to try to place the antithesis of this action within one of the historical streams of influence of the Brethren in Christ Church to point out to you, the reader, that this event and these actions simply stand in opposition to the way Christ would have talked to or treated anyone, including the religious elite of His day.

On January 6, 2021 a political rally led by former President Donald Trump turned into an insurrection aimed at overthrowing the government but settled for the vandalism of the capitol and to threaten the life of law makers and other capitol personnel. In the midst of the violence of that day we saw the prominence of Christian symbols and messages. It was confusing. It was not subtle. Although many have fought against the rise of Christian nationalism for numerous years some denied its very existence by calling it patriotism. It wasn’t until January 6, in a grossly unpatriotic display that many realized how serious the issue of Christian nationalism had become. The belief that America is blessed beyond other nations is a theological statement proposed by many Evangelical Pastors over the years and is punctuated by the overtly nationalistic displays in sanctuaries across the country that tout red, white and blue bunting and American flags while congregants sing “God Bless America.” And while you might ask what’s wrong with patriotism, I must tell you that Christian nationalism is not patriotism. Christian nationalism, patriotism and Evangelicalism are terms that go hand in hand with regularity and ease. The issue is that Brethren in Christ should not easily slip from the tongue and into that list but more and more often I find it less and less clear that those very things are distinct. The pedestalling of the American flag in Evangelical congregations, including those that are Brethren in Christ, shows a myopic focus rather than the global focus of the Great Commission of Christ or the adopted values of Brethren in Christ World Missions.

What might be most concerning is that it feels to me that we, the Brethren in Christ, do not have anything close to a balanced ship between these historical streams of influence. Our ship of values seems to be listing towards American Evangelicalism in a way that not only favors it but allows our other streams of influence to often go voiceless.  

And I do not mean on paper. I mean in our praxis.

Unlike our other streams of influence the current positive contributions of the American Evangelical stream seems far outweighed by its negative cost and ongoing conflict with the values of our other streams. Which has made me wonder if this particular stream has outlived its usefulness as anything more than a historical influence. Anabaptism, Pietism and Wesleyanism contribute to who we are in a positive, ongoing and most importantly a collaborative manner. American Evangelicalism was the influential catalyst that freed us up to share the particular values of the Brethren in Christ with the world around us. If American Evangelicalism had truly remained the movement that it was prior to the creation of the Evangelical voting bloc by collapsing opposing theological camps into a singular stream I believe it would be possible to retain it as a stream of influence. However, I believe that the current expression of American Evangelicalism has given up its place in influencing the Brethren in Christ Church because it cannot do so in a collaborative manner with the other streams. Moreover, I believe the current expression of American Evangelicalism has very little to do with following Jesus and is almost solely aimed at influencing the American church in an agenda that shares very little with a Christocentric hermeneutic or Christocentric orthopraxy.

In summation I posit to you that the American Evangelical stream would better fit our Anabaptist identity, specifically the Brethren in Christ Church, as a historical catalyst rather than a current stream of influence on the same level of guidance as the Anabaptist, Pietistic or Wesleyan streams of Christianity.