Faith...

Three weeks ago, we had a worship team retreat and I shared on the topic of faith as an encouragement and area of building us up in God. This is the text from my talk

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Is God good and can he be permanently trusted with our lives?

As people that call ourselves Christ-followers, we like to think and speak of ourselves as “people of faith” and yet more often than not, we do not necessarily count the cost of what it means to be people of faith. One of the things that I have had to struggle through and learn for myself is that there is in fact a risk that we take by being people of faith and placing the fate of our lives in the hands of somebody else other than ourselves. I think that part of the reason why Christianity is such a stumbling block to many is because of the charge to put one’s life in somebody else’s hands.

Society today is very self centered and the great deception of self centeredness is the notion that you can be self sufficient that you are therefore completely in charge of the events of your life. It is laughable to even think that there is a God up there silently behind the scenes orchestrating the events of the world. And so as Christ-followers we have to learn to buck the commonly held school of thought and hand the purpose and direction of our lives over to somebody other than ourselves.

This, I think, is part of what describes the so-called “leap of faith” - a paradigm shift in the understanding of who is in control of your life and for some people, that leap is too daunting.

If putting your faith and trust in God is a risk, therefore, then persons of faith take a huge risk. Not only do they take the risk of trusting in him, they take the risk of obeying him when he comes at them with outrageous requests and in the times that they call out to him, they take the risk of waiting for him in the hopes that he will do the right thing at the right time. Unfortunately, the more we become professional Christians, the less in tune we are to the risk of faith and the greater the tendency to take our lives back into our own hands.

The thoughts I shared earlier about the descent of a believer into a place of mistrust also have the propensity to wear away at our faith in the fact that God is in charge of our lives and his plan for us is good. The less convinced we are about our faith, the more we take back the control of our lives and instead of laying down our lives in risky faith - the kind that God calls us to - we start to do things the way we originally did and play things safe.

As believers in God, we have to bring ourselves to the point where we are certain that we can trust Jesus with our lives and with our futures even without the guarantee of success. In his word, he guarantees it, but our faith and trust in him has to grow to the point that we can say with confidence “Even if he slay me, yet will I still trust him”.

This is obviously easier said than done and in truth, the journey to this place of certainty about God’s character and plan for our lives is not an easy one.

In chapter 11 of hebrews, the writer makes mention of a bunch of people of faith. What the writer does not mention, however, is their transformational journey to the place of complete faith in God. The character that I love investigating and thinking about the most is Abraham and I would like to read the remarks that the writer makes about the faith of Abraham in this chapter of the book.

Please follow along with me from verse 8 of Chapter 11.

By faith Abraham, even though he was past age—and Sarah herself was barren—was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

Listen also to what Paul writes about Abraham when he is speaking about his walk of faith to the Romans in chapter 4 of his letter.

The story of Abraham, his journey of faith and his interaction with God can be better seen in its context in Genesis and I would like to pick out just a few of those moments of interaction to give you a little bit of a snapshot into the life of this man of faith. So walk with me through Genesis and let’s start at chapter 12 of the book.

Genesis 12: 1 - 8

The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.

"I will make you into a great nation

and I will bless you;

I will make your name great,

and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,

and whoever curses you I will curse;

and all peoples on earth

will be blessed through you."

So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring [a] I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.

This is the first account of God’s interaction with Abraham. They MUST have had other interactions in the past and the only way I am able to hypothesize this is from Abraham’s reaction to God’s word to him. He obeyed.

But then something happens. All of a sudden, this man of faith who just left his home and moved far away under the presupposition that God was going to take care of him and bless him was suddenly scared when he got to Egypt. We read about this from verse 10 of the same chapter

Genesis 12: 10 - 20

Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, "I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife.' Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you."

When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that she was a very beautiful woman. And when Pharaoh's officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants, and camels.

But the LORD inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram's wife Sarai. So Pharaoh summoned Abram. "What have you done to me?" he said. "Why didn't you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!" Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.

What happened to this magnificent faith that the New Testament writers were talking about?

Lets take a look at another interaction between Abraham and God

Genesis 17: 1 - 8, 15 - 17

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, "I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers."

Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, "As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God."

God also said to Abraham, "As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her."

Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, "Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?"

By this time, Abraham had been walking mostly in obedience to God and even though he had had a few slip ups, God ups the ante and makes a covenant with him which is the covenant that we look to as gentiles grafted into the family of God. God even takes it several ridiculous steps further and promises that he shall reverse the effect of aging in both 100 year old Abraham and his 90 year old wife to the point that they shall have a child of their own. It is so ridiculous that Abraham falls to the ground laughing.

If he were instant messaging God, he would have typed the acronym ROTFLMBO!

The writers of Romans and Hebrews make Abraham out to seem like he was a person of incredible faith, but even he struggled through moments of unbelief, disobedience, and dishonesty and yet somehow he was able to come out on the other side and really trust God to do the impossible in his life. By the pretentious standards of many in the church, his unbelief would have been intolerable and his seeming lack of answers would have been attributed to his dishonesty. However, I am persuaded that the fact that he was able to move from a place of a lack of total trust in God and move to a place where he could trust him to give him a son at over 100 years of age truly is a leap of faith and perhaps this is why his story still lives on.

You see, while your personal circumstances may seem to invalidate the promises of God, Abraham’s life tells another story. It is so easy to get people fired up with a message about God’s promises over one’s life, but the truth of the matter is that the excitement quickly wanes when the journey from promise to answer takes a little more than a few years and countless hours of prayer.

Talking in abstracts sometimes makes it seem like the lessons are not applicable, so I would like to share with you a story from my own life.

When I first moved to Ottawa, I was on FIRE for the Lord. I had been commissioned by my home church in Uganda to come to North America and be planted as a catalyst for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. I also moved to Canada to further my education in computer science, and for a little bit of adventure, but primarily because I had responded to the call that had been made from the pulpit of our church to be a part of bringing the Gospel back to the continents that brought it to Africa. However when I got here, I found that the church - in particular the church leaders - were not willing to even let this overly presumptive Ugandan man serve in any capacity on one of their teams. I will readily admit that I thought I had all the answers to all the problems besetting the church and I needed to go through a period of having the hot air removed from my balloon, but it was incredibly crushing to be told time and time again that I would not even be allowed to play the keyboard in the church that I belonged to.

When I look around me, I see congregations emptying, churches being decimated by pride and power grabbing and I can honestly say that what I see with my eyes is not encouraging. I pray weekly that we would have a service that is not a duplicate of services that we may have had in the past and even though the songs and sermon titles change, there seems to be a nagging sense of sameness that is, frankly, discouraging. All these things around be have the paralyzing effect of invalidating the promise of God to me that I would be a part of his work of transforming his church.

I have spoken about my transition to Canada quite frequently and so it is no secret that the adjustment that I had to make to my life by moving here and the dreams I had for what I wanted to do with my life had to take a back seat to what God is still taking me through. I do not say these things in order that I set myself up as the example that you should look to and pattern your lives after... I’m not the greatest role model for faith, but what I do know is that every time I have chosen to walk by faith, I have had to take the risk of placing my life, my plans and my future in God’s hands and sometimes, his plans differ greatly from mine. However, even if his plans drastically change my life, I do so because I choose to have faith in God and my faith - being sure of what I hope for and certain of what I cannot see - can only be anchored in God’s character as a good and trustworthy master.

The toughest lesson that I have had to learn and work through which is clearly mirrored in the life of Abraham is that I will never know what God can truly do until I come to the end of myself. For as long as I have the power to control the events in my life, there is always a sense in which I do not have complete hope and faith in God’s ability to work in me because I can always fall back on my own ability. I find, therefore, that God brings us periodically through situations in our life that are beyond our control to glorify himself through our lives. His glory is truly manifest when we trust him and he comes through in the stuff that only he could have done in us and our circumstances.

I’ll be the first to admit that this is a TOUGH lesson to learn because nobody wants to go to the place where total trust in God is no longer a cerebral concept, but a day-in and day-out final and only resort.

Without divulging too much detail, I will just let you know that even right now I am walking through a situation that is going to require a miracle to reach the other side of. I have tried everything that conventional wisdom says I should do and I have come up empty and so the real test of my faith is on - the test that I can be certain that God will pull me through even though I cannot see how in the world he is going to pull it off.

When I was thinking over what I should bring as a word of encouragement and refreshing to this incredible team of people, I felt increasingly that we should talk about the question of faith and seriously pose this to us this morning:

Have you settled the question that you can trust God with your business?

The reason for this question is this: the way you live your life, the choices that you make and your personal willingness to follow God, put your trust in him and cling to him even without the guarantee of success is a very telling starting point of an honest personal dialogue. More to that, in order that your faith may grow, it WILL be continually tested and therefore you have to settle the question within yourself. This testing is not because God is insecure about his place in our lives; rather it is that our faith will grow and that we shall become more firmly established in our relationship with almighty God. Listen to what James says about the trying of our faith:

James 1: 2 - 8

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.

Friends, God CAN be trusted with our lives and even though I started out this sharing by talking about our walk of faith as if it is risky business, the truth of the matter is that there is no risk when we choose to follow God wholeheartedly. We may not always understand what he is doing, how he plans to do it or how he is going to work things out, but we can always rest in the assurance that what he promises, he will do. Just like his promises to Abraham continued to be fulfilled even long after Abraham had passed on into glory, we who serve him can rest assured that he shall work in and through our lives whether we walk this earth or whether we pass on into our rest.

Following at a distance

This is the text from the teaching I gave three weeks ago at the worship team retreat... for those of you that were not there, and for those that might want it as a recap.

Blessings!

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My family moved from St Catherine's Ontario back to Uganda in the 80’s and the country was plunged into civil war for most of the early to mid 80’s. Talk about a great time to move back home! One of the main insurgency groups - the National Resistance Movement - moved from being a rag-tag bunch of dissidents to a major military force that contained many people that defected from the army and government. Their leader was the former minister of Defense Yoweri (the Ugandan translation of the name Joel) Museveni who has been the president of Uganda since 1986 - first as a military dictator and then as an elected president.

1986 was the year when the National Resistance Movement finally overrun a major defense post about 70 km outside the capital city that then led to the quick fall of the government that had only come to power 18 months before through a military coup. During the days that followed, there was the sound of heavy shelling and gunfire throughout the city and all the schools and businesses were closed and we hunkered down in our small house and ate crackers and soup for weeks on end.

One morning, we were woken up suddenly by the sound of a huge explosion unusually close to our house and the crescendo of explosions that followed for the next 30 minutes kept building. One of my uncles who lived close to us burst into the house and yelled out, “They are going from house to house and bombing them!!”

My mother decided almost instantly that we were going to grab a few clothes and leave the house and my father, who had only recently recovered from major reconstructive surgery on his hip and leg decided that he was going to remain in his house. His exact words were, “If I die, I die!”

We were all too terrified to stay with my dad and so we left the house with my mother and found all our neighbors hastily leaving their homes - probably because of my uncle - and running to safety. I did not know where we were really going, but I assumed that it would be somewhere safe out of the range of the mortars and explosions that seemed like they were almost upon us at the time.

After about 15 minutes of running through people’s compounds and ducking under fences, trying to follow my siblings and my mother, I realized that I had been separated from them. So I tried running faster thinking that they were only a few meters ahead, but I could never seem to catch up to them and eventually realized that while I was still with a group of about 10 people, I had been separated from my family. I decided that I would stay with the people I found myself with and we ended up finding a well hidden spot in some bushes where we stayed in silence and hunger till late in the afternoon when the sound of gunfire and explosions reduced.

The people I was with did not really know my family and so were only partially helpful with me finding my way home, but I eventually did and got there at about 8.00 in the evening. Our house was still standing... in fact EVERYBODY’s house was still standing and my family was home terrified out of their minds wondering what could have happened to me. It turns out that unbeknownst to our community, the army had set up a storehouse for arms in our neighborhood that comprised mostly of families that worked for the church of Uganda, and the explosions we were hearing all day were from a stray bullet having found its way into the house and igniting the explosives. My uncle and his big mouth!

While I was relieved to learn that the situation was not more serious and that we still had a home, I was never able to get past the knowledge that I had been separated from my family and in my mind, I did not think that they had done enough to find me. Because I was not able at the time to see my separation from the family as an honest mistake, I began to see myself as an outsider - unwanted - and this continually fractured my relationship with my parents. I began to increasingly see everything that they did through the dark colored lenses of the betrayal I perceived and even though I was going along with my family, I was following at a great distance unable to bring myself back into a close relationship with them.

A few weeks ago I was studying scripture trying to put together the passion week series that we shall be having during the week leading up to Easter and as I was reading through Luke 22, I began to see part of the story in a different light. Perhaps it is because I had resurfaced the memory of my 1986 experience or something… but I felt that I saw something in the passage that I had not seen before. Let’s read through the verses that I am talking about and then I shall share some thoughts with you.

Luke 22: 47 – 62

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a crowd showed up, Judas, the one from the Twelve, in the lead. He came right up to Jesus to kiss him. Jesus said, "Judas, you would betray the Son of Man with a kiss?"

When those with him saw what was happening, they said, "Master, shall we fight?" One of them took a swing at the Chief Priest's servant and cut off his right ear.

Jesus said, "Let them be. Even in this." Then, touching the servant's ear, he healed him.

Jesus spoke to those who had come—high priests, Temple police, religion leaders: "What is this, jumping me with swords and clubs as if I were a dangerous criminal? Day after day I've been with you in the Temple and you've not so much as lifted a hand against me. But do it your way—it's a dark night, a dark hour."

Arresting Jesus, they marched him off and took him into the house of the Chief Priest. Peter followed, but at a distance. In the middle of the courtyard some people had started a fire and were sitting around it, trying to keep warm. One of the serving maids sitting at the fire noticed him, then took a second look and said, "This man was with him!"

He denied it, "Woman, I don't even know him."

A short time later, someone else noticed him and said, "You're one of them."

But Peter denied it: "Man, I am not."

About an hour later, someone else spoke up, really adamant: "He's got to have been with him! He's got 'Galilean' written all over him."

Peter said, "Man, I don't know what you're talking about." At that very moment, the last word hardly off his lips, a rooster crowed. Just then, the Master turned and looked at Peter. Peter remembered what the Master had said to him: "Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times." He went out and cried and cried and cried.

We all know who Peter was and from the accounts in scripture, he tends to be viewed as a passionate and borderline impulsive person. When he saw Jesus walking on water, he jumped out of the boat and gave it a try. When they ran to the tomb, even though John was faster and got there before him, John was too afraid to walk into the tomb, but Peter charged right in… and similarly in this account of the events surrounding Jesus’ arrest, Peter sprung to action and tried to defend his buddy and in the process chopped off the ear of the high priests servants.

Passionate people are often perceived as being unfeeling perhaps because they are relentless in the pursuit of their passion and yet many are actually very sensitive and so they are just as quick to get discouraged as they are to get fired up about anything especially if the object or focus of their passion shuts them down or ignores their work.

Instead of Jesus using Peter’s actions as a distraction and making a swift getaway, he instead rebukes Peter and heals one of the people that were there in the first place to arrest Jesus. If Peter was as passionate AND sensitive as we think he could have been, it makes sense that the rejection of his display of fearlessness in the face of obvious danger and arrest must have felt like humiliation.

As Jesus was led away Peter followed, but this time not in close proximity as he had been doing in the past – partly because of the guards that were taking Jesus away, but I also think because he could have been taken back by the perceived rejection from Jesus.

The more I read over this passage and thought about my own life and the betrayal I had conjured up in my mind, the more I began to see Peter’s denial of Jesus in a different light. Most commentaries I have heard about this particular part of scripture say that Peter’s denial of Jesus was rooted in his fear of being discovered. I can understand why this would be the consensus among the commentaries I have heard, but would I be wrong to hypothesize that perhaps his denial was rooted in the hurt that he felt because of how Jesus had treated him?

Put yourself in Peter’s shoes. Wouldn’t you have said, “Woman, I do not know him!” just like he did after innocently trying to defend somebody you had spent the last three years hanging out with only to be shut down? I know I would!

My experience with my family bears some resemblance to this series of events because the more I allowed the hurt that accumulated over the years to fester, the more disconnected I got from them to the point that I was ready to disown them and I ran away from home. While I never once said out loud “That is not my father, I do not know him!” I certainly thought it!

My experience with my family is no different from my experience in my Christian walk and just like Peter, there are things that have happened in my life that cause me to move from being a passionate follower of Jesus to being a distant follower disillusioned by the hurt that I may still hold over events in the past. It could be anything from the way people in the church have treated me to the petitions that I feel were ignored or even the fact that it seems like I am stuck in a situation that will not change and I am frustrated that God knows I am powerless to change anything and yet he still does not step in as I think he should. I have found myself sitting through many worship services and being both amused and annoyed at the same time at the display of affection for Jesus that is fleeting in my life because I have been following at a distance for so long. So I may continue to follow – but at an increasing distance till I finally reach the place where my previous persuasions are on such shaky ground that I am unwilling to be associated with the Savior that I may still love.

In my many journeys, I have come to discover that there are many more leaders in the church that are struggling with disillusionment than those that actually confess that it is real for them. The reason for this is because we have built our churches to revolve around personalities and so if the conviction of the leader wavers, it tends to have drastic effects on the people that are being led and so even though the leader may be struggling in their walk with God, they would be greatly loathe to admit that they in fact are no longer following closely but rather at a distance.

When I first changed career paths from Information Technologies to working as a music minister, I joined a small church that was struggling with the fact that one of their prominent and influential members was dying. Our pastor felt, at the time that we needed to have a 24-hour period dedicated to praying for him and so for 24 hours people went to his home or showed up at the church to pray for him. One week later, however, he died and everybody went into a spin… but none more than my pastor because this prayer-for-healing-thing in such a grandiose manner was not really done in the history of this conservative Baptist church. I was privy to the private struggle of a great pastor working through the discouragement and disappointment of the unanswered prayer and I know that what must have hurt the most for him is that he had felt led by God to pray for healing and then God did not heal the person we were praying for.

Just like Peter, I would not be surprised if he began to hang back and follow at a distance instead of continuing in a close and intimate relationship with Jesus.

What is your story this morning?

As ministers in Woodvale, there is an unspoken assumption that we are expected to be in a place of close intimacy with God and yet just as I am sure that there are people here in this room that are in a place of closeness, excitement and sensing God’s presence, there are those that have been hanging back for so long that the whole Christian walk is dry and meaningless. I do not know where you are in the spectrum, but this morning I felt that we should start by encouraging those who like myself have been hanging back.

I have been to enough worship team retreats to know that asking people to really admit where they are at in their walk with God is a tough thing to ask. Conventional thinking says that if you gather people together in the same place that share the same kind of experiences, they shall be more open to talking frankly about them... but instead what happens, is that there seems to be a competition to see who is the first among equals and there is little-to-no meaningful dialogue about anything. I have seen worship team retreats deteriorate in the same manner and so I want to caution against it during the times that we get to respond to the thoughts that I feel God would like us to share today. This is why I will be the first to say here in front of all of you that there are challenges in my life that I am struggling through - challenges that have caused me to follow Jesus at a distance and not as closely as I could. While I am still in this Christ walk, I openly admit that it has been a trudge and not a race as is described by Paul

So what encouragement is there for people like myself? How do we find our way back to a place of intimacy with Jesus in the face of great adversity and disappointment?

I’ll show you where I started to turn a corner and find encouragement. Turn with me to John 21 and lets read from verse 15

After breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?"

"Yes, Master, you know I love you."

Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."

He then asked a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"

"Yes, Master, you know I love you."

Jesus said, "Shepherd my sheep."

Then he said it a third time: "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"

Peter was upset that he asked for the third time, "Do you love me?" so he answered, "Master, you know everything there is to know. You've got to know that I love you."

Jesus said, "Feed my sheep. I'm telling you the very truth now: When you were young you dressed yourself and went wherever you wished, but when you get old you'll have to stretch out your hands while someone else dresses you and takes you where you don't want to go." He said this to hint at the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. And then he commanded, "Follow me."

This is probably one of the most touching stories of Jesus’ interaction with his disciples because it shows how Jesus reached out and restored Peter. Not only had Peter’s relationship with Jesus suffered the blow of possible humiliation, but I think he was also eventually wracked with guilt from the memory of his denial of Jesus. I can identify with Peter when he says “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you” - you were there when I tried to defend you and even when you shut me down and I subsequently denied you, I am still here... conflicted, but still here because I love you. I may have followed at a distance, but I still followed because I love you... Yes, Lord, you KNOW that I love you!

Just like he did with Peter, I believe that Jesus calls out to us today: “my servants at woodvale, do you love me?” I do not believe that he asks this as a redundant question... rather that he may draw us to himself through our own acknowledgment of our love for him in spite of our disappointment over previous events. As we are drawn back to him, he affirms our restoration with the renewed charge to feed his sheep.

So I must ask again: What is your story this morning?

Cult Following - An Appropriate Response? (Part 3)

My third and final submission to the discussion that ensued from the article I circulated a while back and the continual thinking I have done on the matter is going to be what I call “the wild card”

 

Too often our debate about our corporate worship experience between those who are for it and those who are against it happens within the context of a predominantly Canadian-thinking culture. I use “Canadian-thinking” with reference to 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and so on, generations of Canadians that are representative of the dominant social culture regardless (somewhat) of the individual ethnic heritage.

 

However as a person that identifies more with immigrants because I myself am one and has become very much aware of the changing demographics of society, I think that our debate has to take into account the fact that with the sustained and continued increase of immigrants in Canada, the debate about who we seek to influence as a church has to take on a completely different tone.

 

Pastor Mark will tell you that a significant portion of the growth of Woodvale has been through people that have recently immigrated to Canada. Woodvale is not just multi-generational; it is a truly multicultural church and even though we have had a historically homogeneous sound and worship experience, we have to, in humility, recognize that the various cultures and ethnic groups in our church have been gracious in their expression of appreciation for what we do to facilitate worship… but if you talk to them and get below the gracious expression of appreciation, you’ll find that for the most part they seek an even more passionate and exuberant worship experience than what we currently offer.

 

You’ll find that they seek a worship encounter that pays tribute to more than one cultural heritage… but most of all, you’ll be surprised to find that the ones that come through our doors that are not even Christian are not freaked out by our worship services as we might think they are. The dancing grandma at the front of the church does not bother them because many come from a culture where dance is part of worship. The babbling in strange languages does not bother them because there are many languages of this world that sound like unintelligible babbling and exposure to many languages makes you less prone to being freaked out when somebody starts doing it seated next to you. Most English speakers do not realize that English sounds absolutely strange (meaningless bable if you will) to somebody that does not speak or understand it. Because I have made it my business to seek this information out, I can say with growing certainty that you will find just as I have found that they are more open to debate, explanation and even a second visit.

 

Consider also, that the student enrolment (in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions) has an ever-increasing population of immigrants or children of immigrants living in a largely immigrant community in the city. Or that the recent explosion of growth in the suburbs is driven partly by the demand for houses by recently immigrated families.

 

Last summer, I got to visit a church called “The Meeting House” that is a growing church in the GTA and recently planted a location in Ottawa. Instead of having their usual speaker Bruxy give the message, they had an interview with a gentleman called Jay Smith who lives and works in London UK and has a specific ministry to Muslims. During the question and answer session, somebody asked him why he chose to have such an aggressive approach (He basically stands on a soap box at the speakers corner and challenges anybody within earshot to a debate… he’s been assaulted several times while doing this, by the way) when reaching out to the Muslim people in his area and his answer was an unbelievable eye opener for me.

 

He said that many Muslims have lost their respect for Christianity because of the pussy-footed approach that Christians have when dealing with culture and other religions. They say that Islam is for MEN and Christianity is for women… meaning that Islam is powerful and Christianity is gutless.

 

He said that many – especially the growing number of radicals – are unresponsive to us because they cannot respect a spineless religion. He said that in trying to reach out to these new immigrant cultures, the church was forgetting that you do not reach out to them the way you would do for a post-Christian European. The tactics would have to dramatically change if you were to even get them to listen to you.

 

He basically picked the words out of my mouth when he said that the church has to be less Canadian and be more Christian. The church should not find its identity first in its ethnic heritage, but rather in Christ so that like Paul, you can become all things to all men – speak with relevant authority to a multiplicity of cultures – so that some may be saved.

 

This spoke deeply to me because one of the fundamental questions I have had lingering in my mind for the modern church in North America is what they are doing to reach out to the growing population of immigrants in their neighborhoods. Most of these people are not afraid to have discussions about spiritual issues because many of them come from cultures that are deeply religious. Most of them are not threatened by passionate expressions of worship because they come from cultures that are comfortable with passion and expression. Most of them do not need the bible to be overly explained because their native languages share a lot in common with the symbolism with which much of scripture was written. This, therefore, means that the ways you would craft your services or gatherings to meet the needs of a primarily Canadian-thinking (defined above) group of people would have to be altered if you said you really cared about making your worship moments accessible to more than just one culture.

 

It is a tough cookie to swallow, but the truth of the matter is that for many churches like ours that are situated in communities like the one we are in, there is a significant number of songs, worship tools and methods of communication that have to be abandoned in the pursuit of an increasingly multicultural church. These changes have to be systemic and not just a re-dressing of a community that remains at heart fundamentally homogeneous because a culture clash is inevitable and the leaders and facilitators of worship have to be prepared to navigate these treacherous waters. This is the wildcard in the discussion that has come out of the article that I shared because Mr. Holock represents a post-modern, post-Christian Canadian. However both of these are terms that are irrelevant when you try to speak about sociological, cultural and spiritual shifts in countries/continents that are not Europe or North America (US and Canada specifically) and therefore represented by the growing immigrant populations in our churches and communities.

 

 I once sat under the teaching of a gentleman I consider to be a great visionary and a deep thinker about matters concerning the church. He said that Canada is rapidly approaching a tipping point where demographically, we shall have moved from the concept of being a mosaic to actually living it out and this is going to affect politics (because of the immigrant representation and voting power), suburban culture (because of the increasing wealth and growing population of recent immigrants in the suburbs), and cultural and financial trends (because of the shift in dominant representation from a largely Caucasian representation to a multi ethnic first and second generation of Canadians not familiar with previous trends). His charge to us was that we had to stop being a reactionary church and recognize that this tipping point is imminent and therefore make changes within our corporate worship encounters and general church business with this in mind. From the kind of examples he was giving, it was clear that there would have to be a re-writing of pretty much every program in the church (children, youth, young adults, adult and seniors ministries… in evangelism, discipleship, worship and fellowship). But not just the programs, but the DNA (NOT doctrine!!) of the churches.

 

Most churches are forced to change their modus operandi when it is undeniable that contemporary culture has moved on and that their current tools are useless in connecting to it because they were afraid to rock the boat when change SHOULD have been made. Many churches sadly do not survive this (either because they refuse to change or because they change too late) and the shrinking of the evangelical church in Canada is a testament to this unfortunate truth.

 

I am therefore convinced that the discussion about improvements or alterations to our worship service/corporate worship moments cannot happen within the bubble of a culture that is ethnically homogeneous because that bubble is not truly representative of the multiplicity of cultures in which we exist. One culture might be reserved, while another is expressive. One might have deep spiritual roots, while another may have forgotten its spiritual heritage. One culture may embrace moral relativism more freely than another and one culture may have a totally opposite take on social justice than another. In one culture, women may be the heads of society while in another, men dominate the women.

 

Try as we might, the truth of the matter is that we all interact with Christianity, matters of faith, and general spirituality through the paradigm of the culture that we represent. As facilitators of worship at Woodvale, therefore, we have to be wise in our pursuit to create moments that more than just one cultural or ethnic group can feel comfortable in. Part of the reason I am increasingly selective about the advice that I receive about how things should be done at Woodvale is because I have started to see that most times, the so-called “advice” I am receiving is based on a preference that might alienate a significant section of our congregation or visitors. As such, I have started to ask these advice givers about how they think their suggestions might affect the worship experience of more than one cultural group in an attempt to show them that the family to which we belong is no longer homogeneous.

 

So I would like to invite more discussion about how things could improve here, but I would like all responses from this point on to take into account the real and present multicultural situation we find ourselves in – not just as a congregation that represents over 60 nations, but as a church existing in a community that is increasingly representative of the nations of the world. You have to ask yourself whether the things you think should be altered, discarded, improved, or changed shall be relevant in a multicultural Woodvale or not. One last thing… I am looking for discussion that goes beyond tokenism and novelty.

 

Let’s talk! 

Cult Following - An Appropriate Response? (Part 2)

Part of the reason that this article has proved to be a hot-button issue is because of the spiritually-seeking people that many have claimed to be concerned about. There are 2 main schools of thought that I have heard on this issue

 

1. We should not change who we are because spiritually seeking people need to know what we are like. This sometimes does not take into account the fact that the methods of communication and the general corporate worship experience may or may not be relevant (need improvement, etc…) in contemporary culture
   
   
2. We should change, remove, mask or hide everything that would make a spiritually seeking person uncomfortable in our corporate worship gathering and in the event that we are not able do remove everything (like singing a bunch of songs, praying or giving an offering), we shall apologize profusely for it in the hope that our apology will be accepted and that the seeker shall overlook these shortcomings

 

 This second entry is going to be about a couple of things that I have been forced to increasingly wrestle with over the past few years as I have sought to find ways to relate to the culture in which I now live.

 

The expression that I have heard – an expression that I think accurately describes the cultural state of affairs with relation to Christianity in our country – is that Canada is a post-modern, post-Christian society. If post-modernism and post-Christianity mean nothing to you, please google both terms and you’ll find a plethora of information on both topics.

 

While the church may have had a large part to play in the formation of contemporary society, the truth is that over the years Canadians have turned their back on the church and in large part become suspicious of it. This is obviously not without the help of the church, the misuse of its (the church) power and influence and the growing disconnect with contemporary culture because of a refusal to recognize the times and adapt to them. Obviously there is more to it than this and I have read literally HUNDREDS of articles and books on this movement of culture into a post-modern, post-Christian state. You should too!

 

My personal experience has shown me three predominant groups of people that belong to the mission field that we seek to reach out to and that we hope would walk through our doors.

 

1. The indifferent and disinterested group (with or without prior experience with the church)
2. The cynical, hostile and suspicious group (with or without prior experience with the church)
3. The group that are on a search for an authentic spiritual experience (with or without prior experience with the church)

 

I am sure that we could add to these groups a host of other groups, but these are the ones I will choose to speak about from this point on.

 

Groups 1 and 2 mentioned above will most likely not darken the doorpost of a church unless they are dragged or somehow forcefully coerced. Heh! We all know this, don’t we? It is even more unlikely that they will walk into a worship space like ours because of the pre-conceived negative connotations that the word “Pentecostal” has.

 

Because these groups (1 and 2) of people are highly unlikely to come to our worship services, even when they do they view everything through the tainted lens of cynicism. This means that just about every experience in the church is going to look staged or reek with a lack of authenticity. The corporate singing is going to look like mindless chanting and the message and ministry times are going to look like hypnotic suggestion more than an authentic take on spiritual and contemporary issues. I believe that this is the category to which Mr. Holock who wrote the article that I circulated belongs. If we try to make changes to our corporate worship gatherings with these 2 groups of people in mind, we are wasting our time.

 

My personal belief is that these 2 groups of people can only change their attitude about the church when they become convinced that our walk matches our talk. Our worship services are a mockery to them because our high-flying rhetoric about being the change in the world we want to see and other such stuff is just that… empty words. Our songs are meaningless and repetitive because we are singing about being salt and light and yet in the world today, the salt and light are severely lacking. 

 

Outside of a personal miraculous intervention from God, such people will only change their mind about the church and about Christianity in general when they see a sustained, different approach by the church to issues OUTSIDE of the four walls of the church. Not one that seeks to forcefully influence contemporary culture and speaks down to it from a higher moral vantage point, but one that becomes a true advocate for justice and mercy down in the trenches in a world that severely lacks it. As I said earlier, there is nothing that our corporate worship gathering can change to influence these 2 groups because who we are inside the church is not who they see outside it and so everything that happens inside – from the greeters, to the guy with dreads, to the oh-so-enthusiastic pastor Mark looks extremely ridiculous.

 

The third group of people, who are on a journey seeking an authentic spiritual experience and connection with God (regardless of the definition they might have of who that God is at the time) are the ones who may wander into our doors uninvited, or accept our invitation to church. These are the ones that I have found are more willing to come again even after a less-than-perfect first encounter with the corporate worship experience because they may sense and even experience something more than just a staged weekly gathering.

 

We are therefore faced with a dilemma when they walk in. Do we hide who we really are so that they are not put off by the strangeness WE THINK they may have a problem with when they first encounter us? Do we hide the things we ourselves are personally wrestling over assuming that these spiritually seeking people shall experience the same battle? However, if we adjust our corporate gathering so that it is less “scary” what authentic, passionate, transcendent experience are we left with? We have to assume that we are going to be one of many stops (both denominational and religious) in this person’s quest to find a meaningful encounter with God (ambiguous definition at this point of course). How will we make the experience memorable and not bland then? We also must ask whether what we are currently doing actually DOES NOT harm us in the eyes of a true seeker… because we who are on the worship team are not really seekers in that sense. 

 

This, I think, is where the real debate lies because there are 3 key things all going on at the same time in our worship services

 

1. Communion with God – which has to take first priority in our service and so everything, from a worship facilitator’s standpoint, has to be done with this as priority number 1 and so we cannot strip away the things, the moments, the churchisms that facilitate this.
   
   
2. Communion with each other – because the second most important purpose of the corporate worship gathering as we have defined it in this community is actually NOT evangelism – even though it can serve that purpose – but rather fellowship as we find extensively through the psalms and a poignant piece of scripture in Hebrews 10: 25. Our thinking is that evangelism should actually happen OUTSIDE the corporate worship gathering… the act of bringing people into the family does not happen AT the family gatherings, but rather outside the family gatherings. This therefore is priority number 2 of worship facilitators and so we have to walk the tight rope between keeping the things that enhance this “communion with each other” and ensuring that we are not making relics out of things that were useful in the past, but not relevant to the growing fellowship with ever-changing generations and ethnicities
   
   
3. Connection with the previously churched/un-churched spiritually seeking person.

 

What, therefore, is the way forward?

 

In order to have any meaningful dialogue about this, we have to step out of the kind of thinking that makes our viewpoint right and all other opposing or differing opinions wrong. I would like to hear your thoughts about adjustments, changes, improvements to the corporate worship experience… not just things that PASTOR PAULO AND PASTOR MARK SHOULD DO, but also things that affect more than just the paid staff.

 

While this conversation should include comments about stylistic elements – vintage VS contemporary, old VS new, exuberance VS quiet meditation, one form of communication VS another, etc – I would like to hear some thoughts that are more than just re-dressing, because no matter how many times you change my clothes, I am still fundamentally the same person… the same goes for our corporate worship gatherings. Our continued discussion about improvements/adjustments to the worship gatherings has to go deeper than the dressing of the gathering. It has to be more than what the pastors should do and include what we who are part of the worship facilitation team can all do together.

 

Lets talk!