Look for parts 2, 3, and 4 on Fridays from now through July.

Today, I’ll be laying the groundwork and defining some terms for the rest of the conversation.

Introduction

When I was first working as a worship pastor, I would sometimes find myself in a creative rut. It would feel like our worship gatherings were going through the motions. I would start asking myself why we are doing what we are doing. At the time, I hadn’t developed the theological tools to help me integrate my theology and creativity in ways that kept our worship gatherings fresh and dynamic, living and fruitful.

I have always enjoyed studying, so those connections did end up coming naturally to me. But I recognize that for some, it can be intimidating or even feel restrictive to be asked: “How does our theology speak to our creativity?” I know many creatives who might feel very restricted by that question. Or intimidated because it isn’t something they naturally gravitate towards thinking about.

So what I’ve done here is try to condense some ideas into three theological “tools” or frameworks to help you (the creative, the worship leader, service planner) think through what it means to bring theology and creativity into harmony. I believe when we do this, our worship gatherings become more effective spaces for the formation of faithful witness to the gospel message.

Over the next few posts, I’ll lay out each of these tools, but for today, I just want to define a few terms I’ll be using.

Defining our Terms

Before we get to our three theological tools, I should briefly define some terms so you understand how I’m using them here.

What Is Theology?

Theology comes from the Greek words theos (God) and logos (word, speech). To put it in its most basic form, theology is “God Speech” or how we speak about God. Beth Felker-Jones defines theology as “the discipline of learning from the Word of God and learning to use words faithfully when we speak about God.”1

This is important because if we do not speak well about who God is, it can change the way we respond to God and live in the world. Indeed, if we do not learn how to be disciplined with our speech about who God is, we can “…fly off into empty speculations. [We won’t] apprehend God as he offers himself but imagine him as [we] have fashioned him in [our] own presumptions.”2

All kinds of dysfunctional behavior and ways of thinking result from not rightly learning who God is and being careful to speak about God well. In the words of a well-known C&MA Pastor, A.W. Tozer, “What you think about God is the most important thing about you.”3 It will shape how we live in the world, and we want to live in this world to the fullest extent that God created us to.

What Is Worship?

There are many ways we could define worship, especially in our own day, when worship tends to describe not just music in general, but a genre of music. Listening to “worship” music has, in some ways, actually distorted our view of what worship is.

We attend “worship nights” and “worship conferences” to inspire us and help us get better at “worship,” but sometimes forget that “worship” has an embodied context that extends beyond the music and production elements that dominate most evangelical, pentecostal/charismatic, and non-denominational churches in North America today.

Constance Cherry calls these other kinds of worship “para-worship” because they are all derivative of the real thing: a local gathering of believers, submitted to Jesus, taking communion, and proclaiming the gospel through the Scriptures.

This simple definition is what I would describe as our “worship practice”. Just like we have practices of fasting, service, prayer, etc. Worship, in this corporate definition I just provided, is a spiritual and social practice that we as a church must participate in regularly to be faithfully formed as followers of Jesus. Since that is the case, the content and form of that worship practice matter a great deal. Which is why we want to think and speak well about God in that space.

What is Creativity?

That’s sort of the wrong question, at least in this case. When we ask “what” creativity is, it forces us to think about what we do instead of who we are. For the purposes of what we’re learning about today, I think it is more important to ask…

Who is a Creative?

A creative is a human made by the Creator. Because you and I are made in the image of God, the one who creates, we all have creative impulses and abilities. They may not all translate into the fine arts, but anyone who crafts, shapes, designs, plans, creates, or implements any aspect of a worship gathering in our local churches can be considered a creative.

You might be very logistically minded and able to help plan how a video, a poem, a song, a scripture reading, and a testimony all fit well together over the course of a worship gathering, or you may be someone who writes a lot of simple prayers. Both of these skills can be used creatively to aid the local church worship gathering. So we want to think about creativity beyond the songwriters, musicians, sound engineers, and visual artists that tend to be the focus of these conversations.

To pull all these definitions together…

As we explore theology and creativity, what we are trying to do is be human beings who use our various skills, talents, craft, and wisdom to speak well of God in our worship practice so we can shape our churches to live faithfully towards God.

With that said, we need some theological tools to help us think about how all this can and should work together creatively in our worship gatherings.

So here are three theological “tools” you can use to help you think through the creativity you bring to your gatherings.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll unpack each of them.

Tool 1: Triunally Focused

Tool 2: Incarnationally Shaped

Tool 3: Liturgically Informed

As I post about each of these, I’m interested to hear how these support things you are already doing in your churches or if any of this series opens up something new for you.

Leave a like or a comment to let me know!

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We began a summer series through the book of Genesis, where we are tracing the theme of God’s blessing, how it works and functions amid the dysfunction of human life. God is more faithful than our unfaithfulness, and I hope this word encourages you to receive God’s blessing.

Today, I offer the transcript of my sermon as we kicked it all off today. You can listen to the sermon here when it is published in the next day or two.

Text: Genesis 1:1-2:4

My girls have loved the original Mary Poppins movie for a couple of years now. They especially love Julie Andrews singing, and we play the soundtrack in the car all the time.

Since they love her singing, I recently introduced them to the soundtrack for The Sound of Music and, of course, the “Do-Re-Mi” song. The children Andrews character nannies do not know anything about music and singing, and so she begins to teach them by singing (of course) “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.”

In order to understand things well, it is important to start at the beginning. Not just to understand what happened first, but to learn and remember what is of first importance.

We cannot understand how to live well in the world without knowing the most important things about our beginning. How it all started, and what everything else is truly built upon.

We may look around our world today and think, our world is built on conflict. Our world is built on greed or violence. Our world is built on lying, or chaos, or exhaustion.

Or that our world is built on trying to keep up and survive.

It feels sometimes that this is what life is. These things are surely happening, but is this what life is built on? Is this what is at the very beginning? What is intended?

As we look to the Scriptures, we find something else threaded into the story of our daily lives, something so foundational to who we are as people, and it is that God has blessed us.

We’re going to explore what being blessed means in the first book of the bible, Genesis.

The book of Genesis that we will be journeying through this Summer is about beginnings. In fact, the word Genesis literally means “beginning.”

It is important to remember that what we are coming to in Genesis, this summer, is not everything the Scriptures say about who God is and who we are, but it will begin introducing every major theme in scripture.

Two very significant themes in particular emerge from our text this morning that will help us as we journey through Genesis.

One of those themes is the word “Image” or “likeness,” and the other is “blessing.”

First God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.”

Now this word “man” is the Hebrew word “adam,” it doesn’t mean male, it means Humanity.

So, when God makes humanity, both men and women together, they are made in God’s image.

That means we are made in God’s image.

There are a couple of things about the “image of God” that are important to know.

One is that in the ancient world, only the kings of a particular kingdom would be referred to as “God’s image” or representative. To bear God’s image was to be a royal representative of a particular deity on earth.

In our Scriptures here in Genesis, however, we see that the royal attribute of being God’s image is given to all humanity, both male and female, in stark contrast with the rest of the cultures around the Hebrew people.

Our text is saying something very radical about the God-given dignity of every woman and man, but also about our status as all together being God’s royal representatives on earth.

The other thing that is significant about being God’s image is that it is not something you have more or less of. It isn’t something you carry or you can lose.

When reflecting upon what the image of God might be exactly, Old Testament Scholar Victor Hamilton says,

“Innumerable definitions have been suggested: conscience, the soul, original righteousness, reason, the capacity for fellowship with God through prayer, posture, etc…Any approach that focuses on one aspect of [humanity]—be that physical, spiritual, or intellectual—to the neglect of the rest of [humanity’s] constituent features seems doomed to failure. [Our text] is simply saying that to be human is to bear the image of God. This understanding emphasizes [humanity] as a unity. No part of [humanity], no function of [humanity] is subordinated to some other, higher part or activity.”

To summarize what Hamilton says, it is not in doing something specific that you and I bear God’s image. But simply because you exist, you bear God’s image.

Now that is particularly powerful and significant as we think about the messes of our lives.

You could be medically incapacitated and in a vegetative state in a hospital and still be in no way lacking the fullness of being the image of God.

You can be disobeying God and walking away from the life God has called you to, and you are still fully and completely bearing the image of God.

You may not be functioning in your calling very well, but you do not have less of the Image of God because of something you do or do not do.

God is the originator of this imaging that humans do.

Our ability to be the image of God is not something dependent on us in any way, shape, or form. It is entirely and completely possible only because of who God is.

Being God’s image is a complete and utter gift.

This is what we call grace.

You and I received God’s grace simply by being brought into existence, and by being brought into existence, we are God’s image. God’s royal representatives alongside all of humanity.

You and I are recipients of grace simply by existing out of the life-giving love of the Triune God.

So receive God’s grace this morning.

Receive God’s grace and God’s commitment to your life, existing as being made in God’s image.

Whatever hardship, whatever struggle, whatever challenge or conflict you face today. Receive God’s grace, the gift of being made in God’s image.

If you have been running from God and avoiding things in your life. Receive God’s grace, the gift of being made in God’s image.

Let’s now take this realization of being made in God’s image as a received grace, and let us consider how God is the one who is making this image-bearing happen.

God is naming humanity as his collective representative in the created world.

In other words, God has made us responsible for all of creation.

While we are always God’s image, whether we act in accordance with our created purpose or not, is an open question, especially since sin has entered the world.

The reality is, we do have a responsibility connected with being the image of God.

The text says we ‘rule’ over creation.

We are to be compassionate caretakers of the world God has made. Does that seem like an overwhelming job?

Are you a compassionate caretaker of the things you are responsible for?

• The work you are responsible for?

• The relationships you are responsible to?

• The children you have a responsibility to raise?

• The homes you live in, whether you own or rent?

• What about responsibilities to neighbors, as Jesus teaches us?

• Or responsibilities to serve the world?

Do you go about your day as a compassionate caretaker? Or an impatient overlord?

This is difficult to do well, isn’t it?

It is often the cause of our problems in life. We sometimes shirk our work responsibilities. We harbor unforgiveness towards others. We isolate ourselves or do not tend to the material responsibilities we have. We do not consider other people to be our neighbors.

It is difficult to live out our humanity together as the image of God, as a compassionate caretaker.

To help us bear this responsibility, God does something I see as quite profound, and it is the main theme that will follow us throughout the book of Genesis.

It is what enables us to walk out what God has created us for in God’s power and in God’s strength.

What is it you ask?

It’s God’s blessing.

God blesses humanity.

I want to draw your attention to how significant it is that God blesses humanity right from the beginning.

Blessing - the word “barak” - in Hebrew is very significant and will continue to be expanded through the biblical story, but here in Genesis, we find its basic meaning in seed form.

God, the giver of life, says, “Be fruitful and multiply.”

God blesses his image bearers to continue to create life so we can be responsible for all of creation together.

This is why Christians think children are so important. Not because they are the future. Not because they are cute. Children are first and foremost important because they are a direct result of God’s blessing to create life.

But even more, creating life creates new human relationships for us to compassionately care for. And God sees this as a good blessing and function of his image bearers.

There is a practice in my generation of cutting off one’s parents for being “too much” or “toxic.” This sad practice is a result of not recognizing this first blessing of God, who says be fruitful and multiply.

Create life. Foster healthy relationships. Continue to flourish together in community, not separately.

God further blesses their ability to “subdue the earth” - a reference to tilling and working the soil, which is quite interesting considering the ancient worldview of the biblical world.

There is an ancient Mesopotamian creation story called the Enuma Elish in which, after a great conflict, the world is created. The losing gods in the conflict are all forced to farm and work the earth. But they complain, and so the high god creates humans not as the image of God but as slaves to do the work for the gods and the kings who carry the image of God.

In this account of humanity, we are an afterthought. Not important or significant to the created world. We’re an accident of much more powerful forces.

Yet that is not the case in the Scriptures. Humanity is created with purpose as the image of God, and blessed to receive the gift of creating more human life and to work.

The blessing of being human is actually to have community and work together.

We often think of being blessed as something we receive, like financial comfort or security.

Being able to put our feet up and not have to work as hard.

But God shows us what blessing really is. It is not just something we receive. Blessing is intimately tied together with being human, with being the image of God, and doing something with others in the world.

“To bless,” writes Derek Kidner, “is to bestow not only a gift but a function,”

Being blessed is not only what we get, but it is also what we do.

To be blessed implies that we have the responsibility of doing something as God’s representatives on earth.

To share life together and work together.

But it is God’s blessing upon us that enables this to happen. It is not something we can do apart from God. It is God-initiated, and God sustained.

God’s blessing is so powerful that it is the driving force behind all of human existence and activity, still to this day.

God didn’t just bless humanity then; God is blessing humanity now.

God is committed to blessing humanity to function in the way God created us, no matter what.

Now that might seem a little odd because much of what we see today is troubling to us. We might wonder, is God really blessing all of this?

That’s where recognizing the significance of God’s blessing becomes even more powerful.

We see that God blesses humanity to represent him, yet within one page of the biblical story, humanity will reject God, distort their blessing as image bearers, and they will not only bear God’s blessing, but they will also bear the curses of rejecting God.

This is quite a big mess. We will see this play out throughout Genesis. As we do in our world today.

Adam and Eve’s two children, Cain and Abel, will seek God’s favor through their sacrifices. Abel’s sacrifice will be received, Cain’s sacrifice will be rejected because it was not given rightly to God.

Cain, in his jealousy, will murder his brother. Evil, murder, and theft will begin to fill the whole earth.

Eventually, the evil will get so bad that the earth will be wiped out. God hopes to get rid of humans entirely because humanity has become so corrupt.

But God, so true to God’s nature, will always find humans ready to walk in his blessing, no matter what.

God will find favor in humanity through Noah and his family. They will receive his blessing after the flood, but things will still go horribly wrong in the following generations.

Empires will enslave others, imagine themselves to be gods, and they’ll force their enslaved population to build a tower to reach heaven.

God will still choose humanity and bless Abraham and Sarah to be a blessing to all the peoples of the world.

Abram and Sarah will conspire to force God’s blessing on their own terms by forcing a servant of theirs named Hagar to have sex with Abraham to produce an heir.

What does God do? God allows both Hagar’s child by force and Sarah’s child by promise to be blessed.

Isaac, the promised offspring of Abraham and Sarah, asks for God’s blessing.

He and his wife Rebekah’s sons, Jacob and Esau, will end up in a messy conflict over that blessing. There is favoritism between the parents with each child. What a mess! But God still blesses both Jacob and Esau.

Jacob has 12 sons from two different wives, and it’s rife with conflict.

The second youngest son, Joseph, ends up being the clear favorite. Again with the generational favoritism!

The mess gets deeper as the young son Joseph is sold into slavery by his jealous older brothers, they make it look like he was killed by a wild animal, and lie to their father about it.

Joseph is enslaved by powerful Egyptians, escapes a forced sexual relationship, is framed and imprisoned for it all, as if it were his fault. It’s again, a huge mess.

But God’s blessing is still working.

God puts Joseph in charge of all of Egypt to save his family from famine!

Joseph’s insight and wisdom not only saved his own family, but through him, many nations are blessed because they can get food during the famine.

We could go on beyond the story of Genesis throughout the history of Israel in the Old Testament.

Mess after mess was made, and yet still God did not waver in his commitment to Israel and to Humanity as a whole.

All of this culminated in God becoming human in Jesus. The ultimate solution to God’s initial blessing for humanity!

What I want you to notice in all of this is that all through human history, God is still blessing humanity.

And that blessing is to be taken seriously. It is meant to shape us to live in such a way that takes being made in God’s image as a grace to be lived out.

We are blessed in such a way that we are to be responsible to each other and to the world we live in.

I want to be clear. Blessing does not mean that God approves of all that we do. Just like the account of Genesis I just gave you, the messes are still terribly messy, and sin still plagues our world.

But God is so committed to humanity, and the blessing God has given us is to continue to be lived out.

Even though there is mess after mess after mess, God never waivers.

Let me say this Good News very plainly: God never has a plan B, only plan A.

God demonstrates his commitment to humanity by continuing to bless in the middle of the mess.

Because God’s work is stronger than our sin and stronger than our mess. God’s blessing ultimately will always overcome sin, brokenness, and evil.

Because you and I are blessed, we can trust that God will move in the mess.

All of this is to say that the God who made you in his image. The God who blessed you with being a part of the human family to work together with compassionate care.

This God is fully committed to your life.

That question is, are you?

If we can trust that God is that committed to us, even in our mistakes and in our messes.

How might that change how we live out our identity as being made in God’s image and living under God’s blessing?

If we knew that God was more committed to our lives than we are committed to our own lives, what might we do differently to receive God’s blessing?

Would we perhaps invite God into the messes of life? Into the complicated layers of responsibility, conflict, sin, uncertainty, pain, and brokenness?

Would we perhaps be better able to receive this all as a grace that we could never earn?

You cannot stop God’s blessing that he has put on your life and the life of every human being. Will you take that seriously this summer?

This leads me to two final questions, and these are the questions I’d love for you to join me in reflecting on this summer in prayer, in your life groups, in conversations, and in scripture reading as we journey through Genesis together.

The question is this:

If God is really that committed to your life…

What mess would you invite God to move through this summer?

How is God calling you to live out the blessing of being fully human?

Thank you for reading. If you’d like to read more, feel free to subscribe!

As a worship pastor and now pastoring a church, I have felt the pressure to produce at a certain “level” on Sunday morning.

I have had conversations with teams about “every Sunday being Easter Sunday” as we prepare for rehearsal.

I have carried a sense of obligation to take my visual and sonic cues from the latest worship song that’s been released on YouTube.

I have felt overwhelmed by yet another new song coming out that is an absolute “banger,” and wondering how in the world we can fit it into the rotation.

And now, having almost two decades of experience as a worship leader, I find myself having conversations with worship leaders, pastors, and teams in which they share a similar sense of pressure to reproduce what they see and hear coming out of Nashville or popular mega churches.

I notice as I scroll through my social media feed, small to medium-sized churches trying (no offense intended, but usually badly) to make their churches look like the worship video or mega church livestream they’ve been watching.

Does this resonate with you?

If so, I’d like to help us all see more clearly what we’re doing: the Church is trying to imitate the Worship Industry instead of being the Church.

What Is the Church? What Is the Worship Industry?

The Church is where worship happens. The church is the baptized and redeemed body of Christ that comes together, submitted to Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit, to proclaim good news. It is where, through singing, scripture, communion, and prayer, we are a living witness to God’s work in the world.

The Worship Industry - by which I mean the complex socio-economic network of artists, musicians, producers, studios, management, labels, mega churches, conferences, and church resourcing companies and institutions - would not exist if it were not for the local church.

All of these other places where we find “worship” are what Constance Cherry calls “para-worship.”1

In other words, the Worship Industry is supposed to be derivative of the actual worship practice of the local church; it is not what worship is.

Yet many local churches do not understand that and take their cues for what worship should be from this complex network of socio-economic associations.

I contend that the Worship Industry should instead take its cues from the local Church and, more particularly, from the Church’s historic practice of worship.

But here’s why it won’t. Or rather, why it can’t, even if all parties wished it to be so. (And, by the way, I do believe that so many people in this industry are incredibly sincere!)

The Worship Industry cannot because it is not built as a community of people baptized into the name of Jesus Christ, where all are equal at the feet of Jesus. In fact, the Worship Industry is not a community that anyone can belong to in Jesus’ name.

Not to go all “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” on you, but if I could spell it out plainly…

• The Worship Industry is an industry.

• An industry is a place where people are associated with each other through the process of making money.

• Making money means decisions have to be made about the bottom line in order to keep staff at a label or management firm employed, and to keep the corporate entity going.

• To keep support staff on, they need a song that sells.

• Songs that sell need artists to write songs that appeal to consumer taste.

• Appealing to consumer tastes means limiting what is produced, sonically, visually, and lyrically to what is enjoyable, easy to take in, and comfortable for the consumer.

When this process succeeds with a hit song, it reinforces the entire framework.

The Worship Industry is a giant feedback loop of consumer preference. Not a model for shaping true and proper worship.

To drill down a little further.

Almost all of the major worship/CCM labels are now subsidiaries of massive global corporations like Sony and Universal.2 They’ve been purchased and consolidated by these big corporations because they make money, not because they proclaim the gospel.3

Because the economics at work require catering to a specific preference, the market naturally favors certain proclivities and marginalizes others. Many of us assume that any song that is good enough will make it because our understanding of how free market economies function is that they are completely objective. The best stuff naturally rises to the surface.

In reality, that isn’t how neo-liberal economics work. Rather, the theologian Daniela Augustine tells us that,

“the all comprehensive ‘objectivity’ of the market is blind to the creation of non-marketable populace which is alienated from the cycle of production and consumption, by virtue of lacking market value.”4

In simple terms, Augustine is saying that businesses only cater to those who have the money to pay for the product. They aren’t interested in creating a product that people can’t buy.

If you’re poor, culturally alienated, or your life experience does not line up with the triumphal nature of the music, then you are not going to be catered to in the kinds of songs and frames of reference that are being used.

To say it yet another way, the worship industry is shaped and built on a middle to upper-middle-class consumer worldview because it has to be in order to be economically viable.

This may be fine for one’s employment because they need a job, but it becomes problematic when the Church is taking its cues for what worship is from this framework.

The Church is to be an alternative society where all is being submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It is not a community in which we do whatever “sells” or a community in which we cater to those who can pay. It is a community ultimately focused on faithfulness, not finances.5

This means that churches cannot imitate the worship industry. To do so requires us to take on a consumption mentality and build our associations with each other in pecuniary terms instead of baptismal terms.

We may see more people flock to our churches. We may be fooled into thinking we’re onto something. We may even see people really “loving the worship” and coming back. Yet, in doing so, middle-class consumer worldviews take priority, and we lose track of “the least of these” (Matt 25:40-45) among us.

Consumer Songs and Consecrated Psalms

Sadly, I’ve seen the above process happen in many churches. The poor become a project for the well off instead of those with whom we share life.

There are many reasons this can happen, but one reason is that the content of the songs we sing, while true, good, and worth singing, embodies content that fits comfortably with middle-class economic and cultural values (i.e. consumer values).

I want to be clear here: I do not think it is helpful to try to argue that these songs are theologically shallow or unorthodox. Some perhaps have phrases we could theologically nit-pick, but by and large, the songs are true, and declaring this truth is effective and powerful!

I do not even have a problem with these songs being part of our worshipping communities’ rotation to a certain degree. Hear me clearly, we should incorporate some of these songs!

Yet, the kinds of songs that sell, and therefore become prominent in our churches, focus on too narrow a subject matter to be considered what worship is.

We sing songs about victory and triumph in Jesus. This is true and good. But we often do not mention the shape of that victorious life as being derived from suffering, like in 1 Peter 2:21. Here Peter is referring to being beaten and experiencing economic marginalization, and then writes, “to this you have been called.” (Yikes!)

We don’t have a lot of songs in the CCLI top 100 sung from this perspective, do we?

How could one write a song about social and economic marginalization that is economically viable? You guessed it, you can’t.

As long as the church takes its cues from the Industry it will only produce more of the same.

Yet the scriptures, especially the Psalms, show us the kinds of cues to which our churches should be looking.

Yes, there is victory, but themes of grief, lament, and repentance from sin are quite prevalent as well. Declaration of God’s justice for the poor features quite often, as does our need to give to the poor because God is with them.

Those who are sick, physically impaired, extremely poor, about to be killed, and many other forms of economic and social marginalization are heavily featured in the Psalms.

My friend, James MacKnight (who is working on his PhD in the Psalms), said to me recently, “The Psalms teach us that our worship music needs to give space to the people who are on the margins.”

I think James is right.

The Psalms were not crafted for Consumers. They were crafted for the Consecrated. They were crafted for a people joined by baptism, not the bottom line. This is precisely why the Church cannot take its cues from the Worship Industry.

To be honest, I’ve had to learn this the hard way through over 20 years of serving and leading on worship teams.

I was captivated by the possibilities of economic success that may have been attainable through continued imitation of the Industry. Yet as I tried to serve the local church, tension and dissonance kept occurring that I couldn’t put my finger on.

I would speak with wiser heads and hear from them about serving the church, but it was confusing because of the implicit conversation every one of us was engaged in with the Worship Industry’s ubiquitous presence: “you too could write a ‘hit’ song with your local church.”6

When I began to untangle the difference between the Church being the Church formed in our baptism, and the Industry being a corporate entity shaped by profit, I started to see that what was called “worship” in these two spaces was not the same thing.

This insight has helped me take what might be useful for my congregation’s worship practice without depending on the Industry to shape my imagination for what worship is. And I hope this differentiation I’ve described is helpful for you, too.

A Few Possibilities

So where do we go from here? Throw out all our Hillsong albums and return to Gregorian Chant? Probably not.

We’re so culturally removed from those spaces that it would be neither pastorally wise nor contextually appropriate for us to be the church in our day and age.

Here are a couple of practical thoughts that may help, though:

1. Use what works

By all means, use songs that are helpful to shape the worship life of your church from well-known artists and churches. Some of those songs have become part of the Church’s practice of worship because they are so helpful for forming our worship. Don’t lose those songs! But also…

2. Give voice to the margins

You will also need to work hard to find songs that shape your singing more holistically. You may even ask those in your church on the margins: "What kind of songs do you find helpful?”

You usually won’t find those songs in the CCLI Top 100. They don’t get featured on Apple Music and Spotify worship playlists. They don’t find their way into your social media algorithms. You may find some alternative, independent artists or churches who are trying to write other kinds of music. You’ll have to dig for the gold.

3. Be a local psalmist

You may find people in your own church who want to help write songs just for your church. They may never get recorded, they may never reach another church. But they would be significant if they shaped the worshipping life of your church community in a way the Industry never could.

What might it be like to write a song with someone about their journey with God through a sickness that they don’t get healed from? Someone who is living under financial pressure? Someone who has experienced racial profiling? What might it be like to write songs from the bottom? This is not so we can create something fresh that can sell, but so we can ensure the songs of our local church look like the Psalms.

Conclusion

There are obviously other considerations beyond songs that need to be considered in this complex relationship between the Worship Industry and the Church. We certainly have other pressures we could examine in the future. But songs seem to be one crucial piece we wrestle with frequently as worship leaders that needs to be talked about more.

So don’t imitate the Industry. Be the Church.

Keep the conversation going. Let me know what you think, how these distinctions are helpful or not. Or share this article with someone who would benefit from it.

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Today I’m following up from our All Ages Worship Gathering we had for Palm Sunday with a couple of additional encouragements for my church as we enter Holy Week.

Why Is it Called “Holy Week”?

For most of us, “holy” isn’t a word we think about or use too often. We may imagine it has something to do with being very serious or pious about our faith. Some of us may associate it with an impossible moral standard or set of practices. In reality, the word holy simply means to be “set apart” or that something is “other.” There is something about its nature or character that is simply different from everything else in existence.

So why do we call this week “holy”? What is “set apart” about it?

There’s nothing special about the days in themselves, but what happened on these days that makes them holy.

So what did happen?

Traditionally, there is something that happens each day leading up to Easter, and there are scriptures that are usually read on those days to help us enter the story again.

Palm Sunday (Matthew 21:1-11): Yesterday, we entered into the story of Jesus’ entrance into the city as the children marched around the room, and we all waved palm branches to celebrate Jesus coming into Jerusalem.

Holy Monday (John 12:1-11): While Jesus is eating a meal, his friend Mary weeps and anoints his feet in preparation for his death and burial.

Holy Tuesday (John 12:20-36): Jesus reflects on his impending death, letting his disciples know he will not be with them much longer.

Holy Wednesday (John 13:21-32): Jesus tells his disciples that one of them will betray him by handing him over to his enemies.

Holy Thursday (John 13:1-17; 31b-35): Jesus serves his disciples at their last meal together by washing their feet.

Good Friday (18:1-19:42): Jesus is arrested, put on trial, beaten, crucified, and dies. This is known as Jesus’ “Passion”.

Holy Saturday (John 19:38-42): Jesus is buried and lies dead in a tomb.

So what makes all of this tragedy and death so holy? There doesn’t seem to be anything “set apart” about it. Jesus was betrayed by a friend and ended up dying. This happens to people all the time in one way or another, doesn’t it? We have conflicts, we deal with loss and betrayal, and every human eventually dies one way or another. What makes this so different?

We must remember that Jesus is human, but also God. God, who created everything in the world, including you and me, loves this world even though it has become corrupted and broken. God, just like any loving parent would long to care for, or a skilled craftsman would desire to heal his creation. So God entered creation to restore it.

God in Jesus suffered horribly this week on purpose so that we could be restored. As 1 Peter 2:24 puts it, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds, you have been healed.”

God chose self-sacrificing love to restore and heal the world. It is the self-sacrificing, self-giving nature of God’s love during this week that makes it holy.

So to be “set apart” isn’t about being better than everyone else and keeping to ourselves; holiness is self-sacrificing love for a broken and hurting world. To be holy is to show perfect love as God does in Jesus.

This means through every bit of suffering and sorrow, every betrayal and false accusation, every whip lash and nail hole in his body, we are seeing what real love is like. That is what makes this week “Holy”.

I’d love to encourage you to follow along with the scripture passages for each day of this week. Take time to consider what Jesus was experiencing at that moment of the story, and ask for the Holy Spirit to help you follow Jesus’ example of self-giving love.

May we enter into the story together this Holy Week.

Thank you for reading. This section of my Substack picks up on themes from sermons in my local church. In my main Substack space, I write about the places where Church, Worship, Theology, and Culture meet. If that’s interesting to you, I’d love to invite you to subscribe!

In preparation for writing my Master’s Thesis, I recently read Dr. Leah Payne’s God Gave Rock and Roll to You.

Payne provides a significant contribution towards understanding the phenomenon called “Contemporary Christian Music” by charting its historical roots in the church through to its growth within the political economy and ideology of the United States. (at least that is how I would describe it).

Additionally (and most significant for my research interests), one sees how CCM has slowly morphed into the Worship Industry over the last 25 years.

This won’t be a complete review of the book, but I wanted to make a few observations on the relationships between the Industry, the Church, power, and capitalism that I noticed while reading.

So here in no particular order…

1. CCM/Worship Industry has always been a tool for cultural influence in place of the church

After emerging from the revival tents of the Holiness movement, publishing houses for songs quickly developed. By the mid-20th century, evangelical conservatives recognized the power of music and media through radio, recordings, and later television and film, to mobilize a political and ideological base. This mobilization would have an overlap with Christian Holiness denominational convictions, but would most especially be in lock step with white, middle-class, suburban values (Chapters 1 & 2). In Payne’s narrative, one can see from the early days that the history of CCM is a particularly “white” demographic phenomenon and not necessarily representative of other cultures within the church in the United States.

CCM artists would frequently be involved in Republican party politics, RNC events, Presidential inaugurations, and other lobbying efforts. This can easily lead, and perhaps did lead, to many average churchgoers equating Christianity with Republican politics and politicians equating the church with the Worship Industry. For better or for worse, these CCM and Worship industry artists have become de facto ecclesial representatives. “When CCM stars appeared on Capitol Hill to urge lawmakers to forgive African debt,” Payne writes, “elected officials assumed they represented the thousands of fans who turned out to see them on the festival circuit” (154).

Like many others, I grew up in this milieu, and it took me quite a long time not only to recognize that there were Christians voting for both parties, but perhaps more accurately, that Christianity did not belong to any party. As a result, it might be safe to say that CCM has probably contributed quite a lot to the current political climate in the United States, and especially, the climate of conflict within evangelical Christianity.

2. Using partisan ideology and values as a business model was/is very lucrative

The use of CCM as a tool for cultural change also meant that the industry needed to cater to a particular ideological perspective. Catering to this base, especially in the 80s, 90s, and early 00s, was not difficult because it was extremely lucrative (130). A niche had been found among white, suburban moms (called “Beckys” by industry executives) who they could count on to purchase ideologically “safe” music for their kids. Into the peak CCM years, Disney and other huge corporations began to take notice and were tapping into this same base. Payne argues that Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson were cut from the same cloth as many CCM female pop stars in their Disney Channel days (141-145).

For all the Swifties out there, this meant that when Taylor Swift first came on the scene, it spelled certain doom for the CCM female pop-star who was writing similar tween/teen innocent lyrics that Christian moms felt were just as safe and friendly as CCM artists (145).

This raises questions for me. Does this mean that the CCM industry leaders were committed to the specific values their music seemed to promote, or did they, like Disney, see a market to make money? It seems like both might be true to a lesser or greater degree. Many were passionate about promoting various conservative causes, and others were cautious and less enthusiastic but knew where their bread was buttered. I wonder if there was less money in it, if the passionate promoters would have been quite as enthusiastic.

3. The noticeable absence of traditional Northeast cultural/power centers from the conversation

Being a New Englander now living in the NY/NJ region, I have always noticed the absence of “major” worship groups or movements coming from this region. I was pleased as punch that Payne explained why!

It seems to stem back to the early roots of CCM in the holiness revival meetings in mostly southern regions of the United States. These regions were without access to the publishing centers of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, where hymnals and other material were printed. This led to the creation of Christian centers of publishing, first in Nashville and then later on the West Coast. The rather late comers on the West Coast were tied to the Jesus Movement, but Nashville, in particular, was and still is the hub for most of CCM and Worship music.1

On the practical side, this is simply where the work is, and if you are a musician, you go where the work is. But when it is music that is supposed to be for the church, generating all or most of what the church around the United States uses for its worship practice from one location might inadvertently promote a universalizing and homogenous version of Christian worship practice.

I’d argue it already has.

4. The Blurry Line Between Mammon and Mission

This observation alone probably deserves a post of its own. But here are three sub-point observations about this blurry distinction for now.

First, some artists and bands have done a better job than others of naming the distinction and ensuring they stay distinct, but most have not. And often those Christians in large middle-class, white majority churches are the ones driving the market of the industry and the ones who tend not to pay attention to the distinction between Industry and Church. One notable incident in the early days of CCM, Payne notes, is when Amy Grant’s Heart in Motion, a crossover album marketed to a secular audience, became a success. “Evangelical mass-media makers interpreted the success of Heart in Motion as a major victory in the war to win the nation for God” (90). Market success equaled mission success.

This leads directly into a second point: The Industry’s increasingly homogenous, white, male-dominated makeup is not a bug; it’s a feature of utilizing an unexamined political economy (145, 148-150). By political economy, I mean the way in which the economic structures of a nation-state give or restrict political power and agency to its inhabitants. The nature of CCM exists the way it does because it has taken up the unexamined music industry structures of a capitalist society that have existed in Europe and the United States for centuries. This political economic structure is highly racialized and patriarchal, meaning it has been set up to keep wealth (and therefore power) in the hands of white male European descendants.2

Because CCM/Worship Industry has taken this unexamined political economy as a given, it will automatically stratify and homogenize who runs it, influences it, and serves as its primary operators. This also means that it will homogenize its sound, ideology, and ethos, with token outliers (117-118).

Third, the universal claims come from the assumptions of a particular group of people holding all of the financial power/capital, which creates a feedback loop where more of the same kinds of people are drawn into the hierarchy of the industry and become the influential voices of that industry. This, in turn, draws more of the same kinds of people into the industry. To keep the industry financially viable, it can never shift too much in order to maintain its primary financial base, which now, in the “Worship age”, comes through CCLI income based on predominantly white, middle-class, Mega churches (82).

Finally, the financial gains (and losses) over the years to keep the industry afloat have meant a continual distancing of local churches and Christians from being in control of the actual CCM and Worship Labels they once helped launch. They’ve been sold and consolidated over the years into huge global corporate labels like Universal and Sony. To my knowledge, Integrity (owned by non-profit David C. Cook) is the only major worship label not owned by a secular corporation. This means that the Industry producing the music for the practice of worship in the local church is in some ways more distant from local churches than ever before (162).

5. The Cartesian Assumptions in the Industry’s Success Metrics

René Descartes’ famous claim, “I think, therefore I am,” brought about a mind-body disconnect where one needs only think or say something for it to be so. It is not necessarily tied to action or embodied living.

The confluence of culture wars, activism, and political economy that is subsumed within the framework of CCM/Worship Industry music and its artists is perhaps illustrated most succinctly in phrases such as “The name of Jesus was lifted up,” and “God was glorified.” Or as one industry executive put it, “We sold 700,000 copies of one record…700,000 souls reached for Christ” (90).

Throughout Payne’s book, there is a distinct sense that if one got a stadium full of people to say or sing the right words, to commit in a solemn moment, to raise their hand, to buy or listen to that worship song, then the gathering was authorized as “Christian.” If you got very influential political or cultural celebrities to be in that room or arena, or have these CCM and Worship artists visit halls of government, you were providing a Christian influence just by using the right words and having the right people in the same space.

From Billy Graham’s early recognition of the role music could play in his stadium events, to visits in the White House of multiple (primarily Republican) administrations, the entire Industry’s project was legitimized theologically and ecclesiologically simply by saying (or selling) the right words. Or as one Christian band explained, “‘Our yelling unintelligible lyrics was suddenly holy work,’ he remembered, ‘because the lyrics were Christian’” (1).

This approach to Christian mission assumes a Cartesian framework for how giving witness to Jesus’ Lordship works. If one gives intellectual assent to the name of Jesus or sings the name of Jesus in a song, or consumes media with Christian words, stories, or narratives, then God has been given the glory. It means we don’t actually need the church to embody the way of Jesus in the world as a witness of the Kingdom of God. (I’ll come back to this problem for the church in my conclusion).

This rationale, while extremely prevalent, is baffling to me. Jesus himself said:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name? Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers' (Mt 7:21–23., NRSV).

Yet within this Cartesian framework, one understands words in themselves to carry the entirety of action.

Many find it impressive when well-known worship artists “lift up the name of Jesus” in rooms filled with well-known political and cultural influencers. I am less impressed. While I don’t doubt the sincerity of some people in those spaces, the entire exercise serves as a kind of “Christ-washing” that allows for a mix of partisan politics and ideology to be involved with the cross of Jesus Christ. This emerges for me as one of the giant challenges from Payne’s book.

Conclusion

One takeaway that I find implicit in much of Payne’s narrative is that, functionally speaking, American Christians don’t believe in the church. It seems that many Christians believe in leveraging outside organizations, businesses, lobbying groups, and independent artists and ministries to leverage power in society. The church seems to function as little more than a consumer base for Christian media and a voting bloc to whom politicians appeal.3

Yet, Constance Cherry describes any kind of “worship” taking place outside of the context of a local congregation’s practice of gathering together weekly for communion, word, singing, prayer, and service, to be what she calls “para-worship” and thus derivative of the real thing.

I’m struck by how much the American Church has accepted feeding off of para-worship as if it were the real thing and as a result looks to para-worship (i.e., the Worship Industry) for its cues on what worship is, what the church is, and how they should or should not play a role in influencing culture/society. This is evident in the rise of the worship artist who could “deliver a worship experience with or without a specific congregation or preacher or any other trappings of liturgy” (128).

In ‘After Virtue’, the ethicist and philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre, says that practices in a community contain “goods within themselves” that do not need any kind of external validity or verification in order to be legitimate and good. Yet what we see in Payne’s account is a church seeking validity for its worship practice in an outside entity (the Industry) in hopes of leveraging cultural influence. This grieves me. The American church is as confused as ever about its own ecclesial consciousness. We do not know where to turn for our self-understanding, and for some, this Industry and its artists have helped alleviate that problem.

I realize this feels like a bit of a gloom and doom ending. But it is not. It is only the beginning. A doctor cannot treat a patient until they diagnose the ailment. The same is true for the church in the United States. We must first diagnose our own ecclesial and liturgical history before we can rightly and faithfully course correct. Leah Payne offers us tools to do just that.

If you read this, thank you! This article, and more to follow, are feeding into my thinking as I write my Master’s Thesis. I want to continue to refine and craft my arguments, so please push back if you see things I’ve missed or have additional insight. I welcome your comments!

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This is a space for me to either explain more than I have time to do on a Sunday morning or expound more on a specific aspect of the message that isn’t entirely relevant to my main point. I’m writing this mainly for those in my congregation who find these extra resources helpful, so thank you to those from my church for being here!

Waiting is hard. I just ordered something last night on Amazon that will get here this morning! No wonder we have a hard time waiting when we can get things that quickly!

The Advent season teaches us all about waiting, especially with its principal character: John the Baptist. John knew how to wait. He was the last in a long line of “waiters”, looking for God to come into their circumstances and help them.

This month at our church, we are “Waiting With John” to see what lessons the last prophet has to teach us.

Yesterday, during our All-Ages worship gathering, we began our Advent waiting by considering Jesus’ words: “If a homeowner knew exactly when a burglar was coming, he would keep watch and not permit his house to be broken into” (Matthew 24:43).

We helped our children (and the grown-ups) understand that one of the first lessons we learn in the waiting is how to pay attention.

We live very fast-paced lives, and the opportunity to slow down and wait provides us with the ability to pay attention to what is going on inside of us, what we notice God doing, and who we are being invited to extend compassion towards.

This kind of paying attention to Jesus helps us remain faithful to him in the waiting. It is especially hard to wait when it feels like we have been waiting long enough for God to provide, heal, restore, renew, or awaken whatever it is we have been praying for. But the lesson of waiting helps us remain faithful by keeping us attentive to Jesus.

As we continue on in this series, we will look at two stories from the life of John the Baptist before our fourth week takes us to the birth of Jesus ahead of our Christmas Candlelight Service. So if you’re joining us or following online, here’s a brief overview of what’s coming.

Week 1 - Waiting teaches us to Pay Attention

I find I am a more faithful waiter when I pay attention to what or who I am waiting for. Waiting for God to draw near is no different. Will I be faithful in the waiting season? Only if I learn to pay attention to what He is doing. As the song goes, “Even when I don’t see it he’s working…”

Week 2 - Waiting teaches us Repentance

Often in the waiting, things come up: my entitlement because I don’t feel like I should be made to wait this long, my impatience, my arrogance, my self-sufficiency as I try and shortcut the waiting. All of these become opportunities to repent while I wait for God to answer in ways more perfect than I could imagine.

Week 3 - Waiting teaches us to Expect the Unexpected

It is easy when I do not see an answer to what I need to begin to doubt God’s work. It is easy to become offended when God answers others, but not me. It is important in the waiting to become attuned to seeing “seeing in the dark.” Letting our spiritual eyes adjust to the unique and unexpected ways that God is moving and answering our prayers.

Week 4 - Waiting teaches us that God Always Draws Near

What we must never fail to remember is that waiting is never a hopeless exercise. God always draws near. Not in our timing, but in God's. And when God shows up, everything happens, not just what I want or need. It is always so much bigger than what I’ve been waiting for.

As we enter into this Advent Season, I’m praying (for you and for me) that as we wait together in anticipation of God’s coming, we will be changed to be more like the One we are waiting for.

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This is a space for me to either explain more than I have time to do on a Sunday morning or expound more on a specific aspect of the message that isn’t entirely relevant to my main point. I’m writing this mainly for those in my congregation who find these extra resources helpful, so thank you to those from my church for being here!

“It doesn’t make sense,” was the report of a young woman in our pre-service prayer on Sunday morning.

As we gathered to pray, we discussed how the Father takes care of our needs: the sermon topic for that morning.

In response, this woman shared an experience she and her husband had on a recent trip to a relatively poor nation.

They came upon a street cart vendor who sold a handful of $4 meals to tourists each day. The cart owner explained that when his son was born, he needed a significant surgery costing thousands of US Dollars.

Somehow, in that time, he was able to sell a few extra meals each day and received money from friends who didn’t have much themselves. Miraculously, he paid for his son’s surgery and carries around with him the letter confirming payment to this day.

Then he said to them, “God provided.”

“It doesn’t make sense to us,” the woman explained.

I found this statement illuminating because it shines a light on a fundamental issue American Christians face about money: God’s provision does not make sense to us.

Yesterday’s text for my sermon, Luke 12:22-34, reads in part:

And don’t be concerned about what to eat and what to drink. Don’t worry about such things. These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers all over the world, but your Father already knows your needs. v. 29-30

Yet, in a culture where, even in the church, personal economic responsibility is lauded as the highest and most important of the virtues, it becomes hard to imagine a scenario where one receives what they need from an outside source that they did not work for.

A Divine Right to Money…and Control

American evangelicalism and its earlier Protestant predecessors came to these shores, predominantly from England and Germany, with a theology that assumed financial prosperity and entrepreneurship went hand in hand with God’s favor.

Eugene McCarraher, professor of Humanities at Villanova, observes that part of what the Protestant Reformation did was rework the “sacred” around material and market metrics. Writes McCarraher, “[they] espoused a systematic theology of the divine right of capitalist property.”1

In many ways, he argues, money and material possessions have become the sacred symbols of a new religion that uses Christian language filled with health and wealth language.2

We can see one of the most extreme versions of this logic applied to the so-called “Prosperity Gospel,” in which we are told to just give God more (i.e., to that specific preacher or ministry) and God will bless us with financial blessings. In fact, when we think about how we use the word “blessing” in our vernacular, it is most often, if not always, associated with some kind of material abundance.

In addition to McCarraher’s observations about money becoming a new religion, we also live in a world influenced by what is called Neo-Liberalism. Thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises shaped an imagination for an economic system where no ethic or religious virtue would interfere with what they thought to be a perfectly objective system.

The hope was to create an economic system that “naturally” sorted out the best from the worst. “Winners” would rise to the top and “losers” would be crushed, unable to keep up. This is so much of why we feel we are doing something wrong when we do not have as much money as others, or cannot afford that trip, or don’t have a larger investment portfolio. “Winning” in a purely fiducial sense has been turned into a moral virtue, and, in the church, a sign of Christian maturity.

So when someone says the Father providing does not make sense, I get it.

Since we have been raised in a society that tells us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and make that money, if we can’t, we believe it is God’s will that we suffer.

Now I’m not advocating for laziness. That’s an unfortunate criticism that often comes back at people who make the kind of observations I mention above. God gave us work, and it is good. It gives us purpose. But it does not define us or give us a sense of security, which is what Neo-Liberalism and the “Protestant work ethic” attempt to do.

We have been raised being told we can make ourselves into whatever we want. We’ve been handed a thin illusion of control over what is actually a quite uncontrollable world.

A Cheerful Giver

We are almost insulted that we might need God’s help. That we might not actually be in control.

We cannot fathom someone making less than $20 a day, having everything they need provided for them. It smacks of laziness, “Can’t they do anything else?” We often wonder curiously. How on earth could they afford a surgery like this while living on so little?

Because of the illusion that we are the ones who are supposed to provide and make a way for ourselves in the world, it is so hard to accept that our Heavenly Father is a cheerful giver.

The Father has given us life. Our very existence is only happening because of the Father, yet we are still in disbelief that God is so pleased to provide everything we need.

I challenged our congregation yesterday to enter into Jesus’ practice of Generosity and Sacrificial Giving. I am convinced that as long as we hold onto what our culture says is most valuable, we will never be able to see how valuable we are to the Father.

It will never make sense to us that “it gives our Father great happiness to give [us] the Kingdom” unless we learn to let go of what we think makes sense.

Often, right after I publish a piece of writing in which I’ve meandered my way to making a point, I come across a book that puts what I’ve been trying to say so clearly that my immediate impulse is to delete the post and start over.

I wouldn’t actually do that (maybe). But when it happened after my series in which I traced some history of the cross taken out of context, I had to write just a few more thoughts on the subject.

What book brought about this writing crisis, you might ask?

George Lindbeck’s foundational text: The Nature of Doctrine.

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The Nature of Doctrine

For the uninitiated (like me), Lindbeck and a handful of other theologians at Yale Divinity School in the mid-1980s began to explain a way of thinking about theology that was meant to help grapple with a couple of doctrinal issues they were facing.

First was the problem of doctrinal dialogue between different Christian traditions. (He was a Lutheran who interacted with a lot of Catholics in and around Vatican II). He was very curious about how a bunch of theologians from various traditions were able to bring completely different ways of describing things about the Christian faith, and then all confirm they were basically in agreement.

Second, he was trying to make sense of two different theological streams that were at odds with each other:

1. The Fundamentalists who were committed to doctrine limited to very specific words in which no other words could ever be used to describe correct doctrine. (He would call this the Cognitive-Propositional paradigm)

2. The Liberals (not political liberals, we’re talking theology here) who were committed to the words of doctrine as symbolic of whatever was being experienced in their lives and the culture around them. (These Lindbeck would describe as the proponents of the Experiential-Expressivist paradigm.)

This second problem would make up most of what is directly addressed in the book. The first problem would function as a clue for explaining another possible way that doctrine works.

It is this third way of how doctrine is understood that I wish I’d have had in my tool belt when trying to unpack the significance of the cross taken out of context.

Lindbeck argues, I think, convincingly for a way of understanding doctrine in terms of its “cultural-linguistic” character. Religion, Lindbeck says, is like being a part of a whole new culture with its own practices, beliefs, and norms in the midst of the broader culture.

Doctrine and religion, he says, are not simply a set of propositions to which we give intellectual assent (cognitive-propositional). It is also not informed first by our experience (experiential-expressivist).

Rather, to put his concepts very simply, it is a bit of both, and neither of both. (I didn’t say easily understood, just put simply).

A Cultural-Linguistic way of understanding doctrine is akin to a set of grammatical rules in a language. This “grammar” is something one intuitively learns to grasp by taking on the practices and norms of the faith community, which are anchored to a particular story.

In the case of Christianity, it is the story of Israel that culminates in Jesus’ incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return.

In some ways, it is very much like a cross-cultural experience where a person is immersed in a totally new way of life that often conflicts with their own experience and often doesn’t seem to make sense on the surface. Yet underneath, there is a clear logic for those who have been trained in the culture of the tradition.

It is when one is deeply embedded in this new way of life that all of the rites, prayers, and symbols of this new “culture” are grasped in their full meaning. Specific words and language are used to describe this meaning, but the words only ever point to the reality that is just beyond words.

To put it another way, it is somewhat “caught” rather than “taught,” while still based on unchanging truths.

This is why, according to Lindbeck, Lutherans, Catholics, Methodists, and Episcopalians could have very different doctrinal language and still all agree they were saying the same thing and were unified.

There is a lot more to this, but that is at least a very basic way of describing what he’s doing in the book.

What Does This Have To Do With The Cross?

Truth, in a Cultural-Linguistic doctrinal framework, functions more narratively than as propositional statements that we agree with (remember words and statements can’t fully grasp the truth of the faith being practiced).

Rather, in a story, a narrative, one can read between the lines, experience the nuance and meaning in the various relationships of characters in the story. Deeper meanings can be grasped that transcend the words telling the story itself. We are moved emotionally by the story. All of this comes together to give us a narrative description that informs the way we practice the faith.

By the way, it should be noted here that “story” does not mean “made up.” It is a story that informs the way we live our lives. We all tell ourselves stories that inform our behavior. Some stories are helpful, others not.

I used to tell myself the story that I had to change who I was in different settings so I could be welcomed by the group I was with. I’ve also told myself for a long time that I wasn’t a good reader and wasn’t particularly good at school. It led to a behavior that disengaged from trying to read books for a long time.

In Christianity, we tell the story of a God who created a good world in which humans were given the opportunity to make choices, and those choices resulted in a fractured and broken world. God, however, still loves this world and revealed Godself to a family that became a people so that they could bless all the people of the earth.

The ultimate climax of this story is when God entered into this world, became human like us, and revealed what God is fully like in Jesus. The humility and gentleness of God revealed in Jesus was given its ultimate meaning in the death and resurrection of Jesus and his return to heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father.

This story, and all the layers of nuance which we read in the Christian scriptures and which come through in our prayers of confession and forgiveness, our practices of serving the least of these, and many more, reveal a God in Jesus who never violently resisted or led a military revolt but succumbed to the military and political powers of the day, laying down his life.

The cross was a repulsive sign of pathetic weakness on which only subhumans and enemies of the Roman State were executed. Roman citizens themselves would never be treated in such a way, and even the Roman elite would never wish crucifixion on their worst enemy (beheading was just fine though 🙃).

That means God in Jesus suffered the most stigmatizing kind of punishment known to both Greek and Jewish society. He was truly a man of sorrows and of weakness.

The Christian story, we believe, leads us to a set of behaviors in which we are called to model this same weakness and sorrow. Famously, the apostle Paul wrote we are to imitate Christ’s very nature, who…

“Being God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing…” (Philippians 2:6-7a)

This level of weakness and humility, while displayed in some corners of Christianity, is not often displayed by many of the so-called American Evangelicals vying for political power and attempting to dominate society through worldly means.

Here is where Lindbeck’s insights are massively helpful (and why I’m still slightly annoyed I hadn’t read this book before writing that series on the cross…pray for me).

In the “Cognitive-Propositional” model of doctrine, all that matters is saying and knowing the correct words. Saying “Jesus is Lord” is true and enough.

But is the statement “Jesus is Lord” the same when the suffering apostle Paul says it as when a crusader shouts it while he raises his sword to cut down his enemy? (That’s Lindbeck’s example).

In other words, is there something deeper than the words that matter here?

Lindbeck would say yes. The words are our best language in a particular culture to describe and point to the real thing about God that is beyond what our words can describe.

And connected to that language is a way of life, practices, and behaviors all embedded in a community that is living in the flow of the story of Jesus. The words may change at different times in history, but the core way of being, the deep “grammar” as Lindbeck calls it, doesn’t change.

When it comes to the cross, the full narrative, the full story of Jesus, including how Jesus relates his own life to the cross, needs to be utilized in our practice of being Christian to “maximum” effect. We need to be living in the fullness of all that it means that Jesus “became nothing” in order for the statement “Jesus is Lord” to mean what it means.

At the risk of dropping a long quote that might lose some people, Lindbeck writes it this way,

“If the interpretive scheme is used or the story is told without this interest in the maximally important, it ceases to function religiously. To be sure, it may continue to shape in various ways the attitudes, sentiments, and conduct of individuals and of groups. A religion, in other words, may continue to exercise immense influence on the way people experience themselves and their world even when it is no longer explicitly adhered to.”1 (my emphasis added)

To put it another way, American Evangelicalism has left behind part of the “maximally important” part of Christianity, which is to be like Jesus: humble, becoming nothing, servant of all, not taking up the means of power used by the world, but rather, clinging to the cross. We have fallen into exactly what Lindbeck described all the way back in 1984: religious language is still holding immense influence while no longer explicitly adhered to.

This is how you can get the cross lifted high with banners saying “Jesus is Lord” while at the same time attacking the US Capitol and shouting for the Capitol police to be killed.

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When the cross gets removed from the deep grammar of what Christianity really means, almost anything can happen.

On the one hand, we have this extreme version of fundamentalism, but lest some of us get too judgey, there are other things that can happen when the story of Jesus isn’t taken in the maximally important way.

In a secular society such as ours, one can pick and choose from a variety of experiences that feel good to them. It becomes like a religious buffet. Eastern meditation, for example, is on the rise in the West. But it isn’t anchored in the culture and lifestyle that accompanied those practices for centuries; it is Westernized; borrowed for our convenience because we no longer have a shared religious practice, and so many are desperate to feel grounded.

I’m not saying that because we are Westerners, we must be Christian. (Though I believe following Jesus is the best way to live). I am saying Western civilization has been formed and shaped by Christianity in all its logic and rationale, yet now we stumble around with vague commitments disconnected from their concrete purposes.

For example, we call for human rights, but do not understand that our ability to do so in the West is fundamentally rooted in the Christian and Jewish belief that every human is created in the image of God. We become unmoored from the coherent foundation that allows us to call for human rights.

When this happens, we make ourselves the center, we become our own Jesus, or God, or Ultimate Reality. We become our own arbiter of truth and fulfillment, whether we know it or not. The downside to this is that every experience on its own eventually succumbs to real life.

When this happens, we question ourselves and our own existence. We have a midlife crisis (again and again) because our experiences don’t have the resources to lead us through troubled times. This is some of what the Experiential-Expressivist framework that Lindbeck describes does to our culture.

In this paradigm, too, the cross becomes emptied to mean, “I can feel good about myself because Jesus died on it for me.” It is therapeutic and not something that I too must take up and follow Jesus with. It does not make demands on me that are too uncomfortable or extreme.

Both directions (a personal spiritual buffet, or using ‘Jesus is Lord’ to exert worldly power over others), while they might look very different, are essentially anchored in the same problem: Leaving behind an understanding of the Christian faith as an alternative culture that shapes our way of being in its totality.

This Cultural-Linguistic option is rather un-sexy. It grounds us in a community. It commits us to a shared way of being in the world with others that feels very limiting, especially for us in the Western world, who like our autonomous, radical individualistic selves. It also doesn’t try to grab power because it is informed by the fullness of the story of Jesus and our call to cling to the cross as He did.

Quite often, trying to follow Jesus in a community like this means there’s no exciting thing happening that we can get hyped about. There is no new ground to “Take back” from the enemy (which usually is just code to mean the culture around us, not actually the devil), and there are overall just too many limitations on how to live one’s life.

This version of Christianity is just too limiting.

Yet, this is the only version of Christian life that seems to have a solution to our loneliness epidemic.

It seems to be the only version of the Christian life that has a sense of meaning robust enough to last through volatile cultural change happening at increasingly rapid rates.

It is likely the only version of Christianity that leads me in love towards all people, while remaining firmly grounded in the way of Jesus without compromise.

Hype, Experience, and taking the next hill are far too overrated, and I’m meeting more and more people who are just struggling to feel grounded and have a sense of “place.”

If the Church wants to recapture what makes her so compelling, we need to become these deeply rooted kinds of communities that share a way of life together, anchored in the story of Jesus. We need to carve out a grounded way of life that creates “place” for those longing to belong.

We aren’t reinventing the wheel here. Jesus has already made the way; we just have to cling to the cross we were meant to carry and quietly follow Him.

Thanks for reading. If this was helpful, please let me know by leaving a like, comment, or sharing with a friend who would find this helpful too!

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I have had the privilege of being a student of on two occasions during my time at Northern Seminary. She has always served as a model of high scholarship, down-to-earth sincerity, and perhaps most importantly for this book: charitable critique.

Never shying away from honest critiques of Roman Catholicism in particular, she is always charitable and affirming of where all of the church is unified and where Protestantism needs to become a better version of its complex self.

All of this is why I chose to describe my brief review of her new book, Why I Am Protestant, as a “Pastoral” review.

Upon reading the opening few pages, it became clear to me (because I’m dense and slow sometimes) how helpful this volume was about to be for me as a pastor in a New York City region filled with many former and current Roman Catholics.

As a pastor, I find myself reminding some congregants with strictly Protestant experiences that both Protestants and Roman Catholics can rightly be called “Christian.” This book is helpful in giving me a firm footing for why I would say that.

But this book also gave me clarity on the opposite question: why be particularly Protestant? Felker-Jones says it best when she asks,

“If I am a convinced Christian, why go on to claim and affirm a particular kind of Christianity?” (22).

I have never had a good answer for those turning to our Protestant church, except for “that whole Mary thing,” of which I honestly have not ever had a deep understanding.

Here, I have been provided a helpful framework for why the resources of Protestantism serve the global church better, in many ways, than either Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology.

A Protestant church does not rely on a specific institution for its “Christian-ness,” it relies on God, it relies on, as her book describes it, the action of the Church and the Historic unity of the church beyond any kind of institutional coherence.

I found this helpful for our local church, which comes from a charismatic/holiness denomination. I was able to make sense of our relationship to two other Catholic churches in town, a Baptist church, a Pentecostal church, a non-denominational church, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, a Lutheran, and goodness knows who else I have missed!

Because our unity is in and through God’s action in history, I find I am better prepared to make space for my work with fellow pastors and priests. I hope you find it helpful too.

Related to this, we find in this volume a word on how Protestantism is able to meet the contextual challenges of our cultural moment.

Many are feeling the hunger pangs produced by Western Secularism and Radical Individualism, and wish to feast on an ancient tradition, especially among young people. At first glance, Protestantism does not seem to offer much, as it is often thought of as the new kid on the block.

Yet, we are given in Why I Am Protestant a rich understanding of how this tradition is deeply connected with historic Christianity, not separated from it. Yet at the same time, it has the resources to be flexible enough to meet the challenges of various contexts, just as the early church did.

Beth writes,

“Protestants and Roman Catholics share the good gospel of Jesus Christ, but Protestant ecclesiology is better equipped to embrace and empower the goods of locality, culture, and context, for Protestant theology embraced the local and vernacular four hundred years before Roman Catholic theology did the same.” (53)

This means that in an age where many people are looking for an ancient tradition but are from a cultural time and place massively different from the early church, Protestantism can offer both a historic faith and a contextualized faith that pulls the richness of the gospel into the local reality. It is a faith, simultaneously local and universal. This blend of contextual and historical rootedness is massively important in our time.

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Finally, this book will also be helpful for the education of your local church. In my church, simply giving new members a set of doctrinal statements that our denomination has approved is unhelpful and lacks context.

They are certainly true doctrines, but in an era where there are still sometimes questions over which institutional church gets it “right,” this book can act as a guide that names our location within the broader Christian faith.

I would perhaps consider pairing Why I am Protestant with Beth’s other excellent book Practicing Christian Doctrine which is a deep dive into her core idea in Chapter 1: that which all Christians have in common.

From there, diving into the specifics of Protestantism and its distinctives would help my church become more aware, not only of our uniqueness within the Christian faith, but also of our shared universal place as part of God’s people.

Overall, I highly recommend Why I Am Protestant and suggest you pick up a copy as soon as you can. You will grow in your understanding of doctrinal distinctiveness, ecumenism, and, if you’re Protestant, your conviction in the assuredness of your faith.

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This is a space for me to either explain more than I have time to do on a Sunday morning or expound more on a specific aspect of the message that isn’t entirely relevant to my main point. I’m writing this mainly for those in my congregation who find these extra resources helpful, so thank you to those from my church for being here!

Yesterday I preached about the call in Romans 12 to “be transformed by the renewing of our minds.” We took a literal approach to this command from Paul by examining how neuroscience, specifically our attachment styles, helps us understand how we need to renew our minds so as not to be tripped up in our pursuit of Christian community.

As I mentioned yesterday, I learned a great deal on this subject from a recently released book by Cyd and Geoff Holsclaw called Landscapes of the Soul: How the Science and Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection. Geoff writes on Substack at .

I’ve offered it as recommended reading to our church for our current series, “Together: God’s Vision for a Shared Life,” so in light of talking extensively about what I learned from the book yesterday, I wanted to offer a short review to encourage people in our church and my regular readers to pick up the book for themselves.

Made For Joy

As the Holsclaws explain, the incredible advances in the field of neuroscience have helped us understand how crucial joy is for our growth and development as human beings. From the earliest age, we find joy in the people, usually our parents, who are closest to us. This joy leads to secure intimacy and independence.

“Joy,” they write,

“is a relational emotion. It’s different from happiness. You can be happy all by yourself, based on circumstances. But joy needs another person - even if it is only the memory of another person. Joy is relational experience of sharing gladness to be with another person. When you are with someone who wants to be with you, it brings you joy.” (p. 20)

This idea that all of our brain development is so intricately connected to joy is revealed even more in the final part of the book, starting in chapter 10 as they depict the experiment of babies responses based on their mothers expressions (p. 126) and I could not help but immediately hear the words of Hebrews “For the joy set before Him he endured the cross…” (Hebrews 12:2).

Of course, what do I find immediately after this reference but an explanation of Jesus as the one who demonstrates what secure attachment with the Father looks like. Followed by the good news that Jesus, being in very nature God, becomes our source of secure attachment!

As we’ve been leaning heavily on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thinking about how the church community represents Christ to each other, this was such a profound insight to understand how the Christian community can extend joyful connection to help us grow in intimacy and independence.

Intimacy and Independence

When joyful connection is provided by our caregivers, we grow in both intimacy and independence. But the reality of sin in the world means that our bodies are marred by the effects of sin, and this includes the way we attach with each other.

We learn as infants to prioritize intimacy or independence which leads to various attachment strategies they describe as “survival skills” for living in different kinds of environments, or landscapes.

I found the metaphors of the four attachment styles so helpful for those who are not well-versed in the clinical terminology of attachment theory:

The Jungle (Anxious Attachment): High intimacy, low independence

The Desert (Avoidant Attachment): Low intimacy, high independence

The Warzone (Disorganized Attachment): Low intimacy, low independence

The Pasture (Secure Attachment): High intimacy, high independence

The goal of our life in Christian community and attaching to God becomes moving from the jungle, desert, or warzone, into a community where we joyfully help each other move towards life with the Good Shepherd in the pasture.

The second half of the Holsclaws book provides practical steps for moving into that life. I found the entire book incredibly insightful, accessible, and useful for both pastors and congregants.

What a powerful witness for the gospel we can be if we cultivate joyful communities of intimacy and independence!

I highly recommend picking up a copy today.

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This is a space for me to either explain more than I have time to do on a Sunday morning or expound more on a specific aspect of the message that isn’t entirely relevant to my main point. I’m writing this mainly for those in my congregation who find these extra resources helpful, so thank you to those from my church for being here!

If you are reading this and you’re a regular subscriber, welcome as well. I hope this is helpful to you as well. (Warning, this first one is way longer than my normal Substack essays 😬. Sorry, I just didn’t want to split it up!)

“2:18 The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion for him who corresponds to him.” 2:19 The LORD God formed out of the ground every living animal of the field and every bird of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 2:20 So the man named all the animals, the birds of the air, and the living creatures of the field, but for Adam no companion who corresponded to him was found. 2:21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was asleep, he took part of the man’s side and closed up the place with flesh. 2:22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the part he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 2:23 Then the man said,

“This one at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

this one will be called ‘woman,’

for she was taken out of man.”

2:24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and unites with his wife, and they become a new family. 2:25 The man and his wife were both naked, but they were not ashamed”

Introduction: Hot Coals and Tin Foil Dinners

My dad was a pastor for many years and was a particularly gifted teacher. He never missed an opportunity to see an object lesson in our surroundings to teach me about life following Jesus. One object lesson in particular has always stuck with me.

When I was a teenager, my parents were on this kick of making tinfoil dinners over a hot bed of coals. Hunks of potato, carrots, meat, cauliflower, and broccoli all made an appearance in those bland, steamy foil-wrapped meals.

One of those summer nights, after I had done what I could with my dinner, my dad took a long stick and stuck it into the coals. Slowly, he prodded a glowing lump away from the rest of the coals until it was completely isolated.

“See how the coals that are altogether keep burning hot?” He asked me. “Now look at this coal by itself over here, how quickly it goes out.”

We watched for not even a minute as the pulsing orange colors were slowly eclipsed by black until nothing remained but char.

“Christians,” my dad said, “Burn for Jesus when they stay together.” He pointed to the coals still glowing brilliantly in the fire pit.

“But when we get isolated,” he continued, “we can’t burn for Him anymore.”

This lesson has now been with me for about 25 years and has only become more relevant with each passing year. Even as a pastor, I believe it can be incredibly challenging not to isolate myself in the midst of ministry.

If being like Jesus means to become authentically human, then we cannot be fully human unless we share life together in the particular kinds of way that Jesus commands.

To say we need each other to follow Jesus is one thing. It requires us to acknowledge that if we’re going to “achieve” something, we probably need accountability or a support group. Sure, fine, we need that for anything in life that we wish to achieve, I guess.

But the second part of that claim is far more significant. Not only do we need to share life together in order to be human, but its corollary tells us that we are not fully human if we are isolated, and in particular, if we are isolated from the kind of community that helps us burn for Jesus.

A Loneliness Epidemic

This claim about isolation and our humanness takes on a different urgency when we consider the warnings that have become more and more prevalent in the last decade.

A 2018 Ipsos survey found that 54% of Americans report sometimes or always feeling that no one knows them well.

Earlier this year, Harvard’s Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership reported on findings of a study that found those saying they had no close friends had quadrupled since 1990.

Perhaps the most alarming news in this trend came when the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness a public health crisis in the United States. Some of the health impacts described in that report include increased mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and dementia, premature death, poorer academic performance, and reduced productivity.

This culture of isolation seems to be egged on more and more by technology as we can now work remotely, order remotely, be entertained remotely, and do everything else remotely from the comfort of our homes. This convenience means it is so much easier, after a long day or a hard week, to go nowhere and see no one, completely disconnecting from the world.

West Milford, where our church building is located, is known as a place where people move to find space to spread out. Yet I continue to hear stories of people who feel isolated as a result of being too far removed from people.

The Church, the people who believe that God has founded a new family in Jesus, don’t seem to have much of a solution for this. According to Barna Group’s research, those who attend church are as likely to experience loneliness as those who do not.

The number of recent high-profile scandals involving pastors has not helped anyone consider the Church as a space in which we might find a solution for the loneliness epidemic. Even if people were not part of one of those large churches where the leader fell from grace, there are countless stories that you and others have experienced where things just didn’t work out for some reason. There was hope that this was finally the church community that would heal the aching isolation, only to be hurt yet again.

As a pastor, I grieve over all of these stories. I am saddened to hear of people desperately fighting against isolation, only to leave our community or another because of an unresolved disagreement. I hate hearing of the duplicitous church leaders that have not made their church communities a refuge for the weary and lonely like Jesus demonstrated when he said “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). And I am weary of the pull of the broader cultures individualistic allure that leads us to think we can support ourselves and even do “religion” on our own.

Is there any hope for our increasingly disconnected world? Or is all of this just inevitable? Is there a solution to the constant church conflict and church change that wounds so many of us and keeps us from being fully known? Is this even worth searching for, or is it overly idealistic? And even if I wanted to share life with other Christians, where would I even start in our day and age?

Perhaps the bigger question, for those of us who want to follow Jesus, is whether or not it is possible to become a mature follower of Christ outside of shared life together?

To put it in my dad’s words, can we burn for Jesus without being tightly gathered with other coals in the fire?

Over the next 7 weeks in our church, we will be exploring many of these questions and hopefully discovering some of what God’s vision for a shared life might be. I’m hoping to share some extended notes here with some things I didn’t have time to get into on Sunday morning.

I’m primarily doing this for people in my church as a supplement, but I hope it is helpful for others as well.

I believe the Church, at its best, is called not to be perfect, but to be a powerful witness to how life together can help us meet the problems of our world. Not just by meeting the needs of a loneliness epidemic, but by shaping us into people that are like Jesus: fully human and alive in all that God created us to be.

To help get us there, we need to name and understand some of the problems we face in a shared life together.

I propose three challenges (there are probably more) that contribute to this:

1. Cultural Challenges to Belonging - The Problem of Radical Individualism

2. Psychological Challenges to Belonging - The Problem of Past Pain

3. Linguistic Challenges to Belonging - The Problem of “Religion”

These three themes will continue to emerge through the rest of this series. For now, however, I will introduce each of them briefly before finally reflecting on God’s profound observation that “it is not good for humans to be alone,” as a way to help shape our imagination for what belonging could look like in the Church.

Cultural Challenges - The Problem of Radical Individualism

Shortly after the founding of the United States, the French government became curious about this bold new experiment called “Democracy” taking shape in the Americas. They sent Alexis DeTocqueville to explore and learn what it was like for everyday people who were experiencing this brave new reality.

What DeTocqueville found was rather curious and puzzling to him. He wrote,

“The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest—his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not—he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.”1

There are striking similarities between the world that DeTocqueville described and the world in which we live today. We live apart from each other “as a stranger to the fate of all the rest…close to them but he sees them not…touches them, but feels them not…he exists in himself and for himself alone.”

America, the grand Democratic experiment, has been from the beginning also a culture that would continue to isolate individuals as we each pursued our own personal happiness.

It was the logical outflow of the broader cultural realities set in motion since the beginning of the Enlightenment. Humans were becoming increasingly individualistic in their thinking. We had left behind primarily agrarian societies in Europe that required thinking as a whole community to complete the work of tilling, planting, and harvesting.

We developed the ability to exist somewhat autonomously from each other. At least in our day-to-day lives. One could work a job in a city or town and pay for their food in the market and for a place to live. In the Industrial Revolution, factories became places where individuals became interchangeable and were further removed from any sense of community based on ties to specific land.

These increasingly individualized ways of thinking eventually transposed themselves onto how one thought about the self in relation to God and others.

Western society used to think of itself as part of a cosmos, which God had intricately made and ordered with purpose. Our connection to each other in broader society mattered, and we did not make decisions as individuals but as groups of people. Further, God was understood to be immediately present and accessible because the world and our community were charged, as it were, with the wonder of God’s handiwork. When Christians gathered in Church, they understood their time together as the joining of a sacred body together with Christ, who is its head.2

But that began to change during the Enlightenment.

One thinker who profoundly affected the way we think about ourselves and being a part of a community was Immanuel Kant. Kant believed individuals had the capability to be rational, autonomous selves, and as a result possessed the ability to decide morality for themselves on their own terms.

As a result of this, individualism increasingly took center stage in the culture of Europe and eventually North America, including within the Church. Instead of asking questions such as who we are to God or even who God is to us, Christians increasingly ask who God is to me.

This caused a profound shift in the way Christians began to operate, and eventually, as some Christian sects sought to freely practice their own forms of worship, Christians in the United States would even more so embody the ethos of finding God for “myself”.

We have become a culture that has so much freedom to be independent of each other that we no longer depend on each other. When anyone becomes desperately in need of any material or social assistance, they have no one else to turn to except the State. The State then needs to take on more and more responsibilities that used to be carried by extended families, local towns, and especially church communities.3

It isn’t that there is no possibility for relationships, but rather, while there are people all around us, we have become far too caught up in “our own thing” and now lack the imagination, the ability, or even sometimes the willingness, to break out of the individualistic lifestyle to which we have been raised.

We have begun to see relationships as inconveniences or commodities that we choose and discard as it suits us. As one survey found, many young people my age are encouraged to cut off their parents because “I just don’t need that negativity in my life right now.”4

Our whole social and spiritual existence has become a much more individual, personal, and private pursuit that, as DeTocqueville pointed out, we exist in ourselves and for ourselves alone.

Psychological Challenges - The Problem of Past Pain

Individualism in and of itself, however, is not the only problem we face.

Not only is society shaping us, but our individual upbringings have also wired our brains in such a way as to reinforce those cultural beliefs. These “wirings” of the brain present psychological or neurological challenges for us.

If you think about your own life experience for a moment, you are probably aware of past circumstances that have profoundly shaped how you make decisions about relationships and interactions with people in the present.

The decisions we make to engage or leave relationships and communities, the challenges we have allowing others to help us, and our inability to trust others, all stem from patterns that have been hardwired into our brains from our earliest development. We have been trained to believe certain things about what people will and will not do.

Our brains have developed ways of surviving these patterns, and they continue to operate well into adulthood. This means that even when things are going well, our brains might occasionally sound a false alarm!

The field of neuroscience has, in recent decades, opened up a breadth of understanding to help explain what causes this to occur. Two concepts in this field, Implicit and Explicit Knowledge, and Attachment Theory, are particularly relevant to the problem of pain that detracts from Christian community.

Implicit and Explicit Knowledge

There are two hemispheres in the brain, each with important functions.

The right side of the brain manages our strongest relational connections, our experiences of emotional connection, as well as our character formation. The left side of the brain is our analytical and conscious understanding center for facts, figures, and details.5

The reason this is all important is that when you and I have an experience with someone, all of the senses in your body send signals to the brain stem.

The brain stem begins to process all the information you are receiving through the right side of the brain first. It goes up to the front of the right side of the brain and then goes to the front of the left side of the brain, making its way to the back of the left side.

This means when you have already experienced a moment with someone, your right brain is already beginning to act based on prior experiences implicitly, before your left brain has had any time to cognitively process whether your reaction is rational or not.

The right, feeling side, of our brains can sometimes take over. Depending on how your brain has developed, well-worn paths of pain that have been wired into the brain fire up and sometimes cause new painful moments, which end up confirming previous experiences.

The implications of this are that our explicit knowledge of the left side of the brain that says “community is good for me,” can’t seem to catch up with the implicit knowledge of the right side of the brain that says “community has been bad for me.”

Attachment Theory

Related to Implicit and Explicit Knowledge is a concept known as Attachment Theory.

The simple explanation of attachment theory says that human beings are created for belonging and attachment.

Attachment starts literally within hours, if not minutes, after someone is born.

Based on how caregivers in one’s life respond and interact throughout infancy and childhood years, the brain begins to be wired accordingly.

This means that some have had their brains developed and wired in ways that actually cause them to act and believe that they are better off on their own.

While others have had their brains develop in ways that cause them to be overdependent on other people. This, unfortunately, tends to drive people away from them, making this person just as isolated as those who want to be on their own from the start.

This happens because brains develop what are essentially protection mechanisms. To help us cope, these mechanisms teach us to survive a lack of secure attachments and painful experiences by developing strategies and strengths that overcome these obstacles.

But those strengths of childhood become weaknesses in adulthood, as we try to learn how to develop close community and belonging - especially if we want to follow Jesus.

These different styles of attachment, along with understanding how Implicit and Explicit knowledge work, help us understand why, even if things are going well for a person in a church community, things suddenly go bad.

Someone has an experience that triggers one of those well-worn paths; they go into autopilot based on past experiences, and begin to distance themselves from the community. We say things like “maybe this isn’t the church I thought it was,” and we begin to look elsewhere and start the whole vicious cycle over again.

Like well-worn paths in our brains, we can’t seem to get out of the habits that cause us to press “eject” when any kind of Christian community sets off our warning systems.

Unless we find another way, we will be unable to cope with the problems of past pain.

Language Challenges - The Problem of ‘Religion’

Now to our third problem. In some ways, it is closely related to the first problem, but deserves some specific attention. This problem has to do with the word and category we call “Religion.”

When it comes to the challenges of isolation and sharing life together, the word “religion” itself creates trouble.

“Religion” typically refers to a set of beliefs and experiences that an individual chooses to adhere to or not. It is something we think of as distinctly not public, not socio-economic, and CERTAINLY not political. “Religion” tends to imply private and personal decisions. It has a sense of being separate from our day-to-day life.

The language around “what religion are you?” or “are you religious?” or “my faith got me through” creates a category that we hold alongside “What are your hobbies or interests?” As if religion is something we choose from a buffet, along with other items that are subject to our individual preferences.

While I’m not trying to downplay how God is involved in people’s lives personally to help them endure difficult situations and seasons, I do want to point out that these terms are used in an unhelpful and individualistic way.

To start, let me explain that the word “religion” did not exist in the ancient world. There wasn’t a person’s public work life, political life, economic life, and then also their “religious” life. To see any of these spheres as separated categories would have appeared to be quite odd for ancient people, including for the people who lived in the time of the Bible and wrote it.6

“Religion” is a modern idea created during the 16th and 17th centuries of the Enlightenment in order to describe what appeared to be sacred acts and phenomena in other cultures outside the European world. The word “Religion,” in English and other European languages, was then used to translate various words in the bible and other ancient texts.

When this concept of “Religion” became more common, it began to shape the way we thought about our relationship with the Divine. In Europe and then in North America, people began to think about Christianity as one having a separate private religious life or experience, and that certain things we do are “religious” and other things are “secular”.

This version of private religion has led to a belief that we have to have a private experience of God, and out of that, we can construct a version of religion that is authentic to our experience. This is much of the claim in evangelical and charismatic Christianity. We must have an experience or a moment of inner confirmation of conversion. If I’m not having that feeling or experience, I should perhaps question my salvation. This is unhelpful for so many reasons.

In a distinctly post-Christian culture, if we do not have an inner experience, then we pull back because we fear being hypocritical or inauthentic. Therefore, it begins to lead to the logic that if we feel like it, we go to church, to a life group, or serve in some way. If we don’t feel like it, we don’t guilt-trip ourselves because our inner experience is what tells us what our private religious experience should be like.

The theologian George Lindbeck describes the problem in this way:

“The structures of modernity press individuals to meet God first in the depths of their souls and then, perhaps, if they find something personally congenial, to become part of a tradition or join a church. Their actual behavior may not conform to this model, but it is the way they experience themselves. Thus, the traditions of religious thought and practice into which Westerners are most likely to be socialized conceal from them the social origins of their conviction that religion is a highly private and individual matter.”7

This private, personal “religion” makes it very hard to commit ourselves to community because, in order to truly belong to community and share life together, we have to orient our understanding of following Jesus around something outside of ourselves, apart from our inner experience. We are not able to adhere to the rules of the group; rather, we just find another group that is more in line with our inner experience, all the while completely unaware that we are not looking for a more authentic religious experience; we are simply keeping a kind of private faith separate from other people.

Often, this leads theologians and pastors to adjust the way they talk about Christianity to make it adhere to this experiential framework. We talk about “how to live your best life,” “how to find fullness in Christ.” Completely reasonable categories to find biblical support for, but it is assumed within a private a la carte spirituality, which cannot ever be authentically Christian because of the lack of the deeply communal nature of following Jesus.

These pastors, according to Lindbeck, never move us to where we need to go:

“Nevertheless, the exigencies of communicating their messages in a privatistic cultural and social milieu lead them to commend public and communal traditions as optional aids in individual self-realization rather than as bearers of normative realities to be interiorized.”8

They’ve created many models and frameworks to help people overcome their lack of authentic experience, and many of these have proved quite popular at times. Yet they always seem to come and go in fads because they are not sustainable as long as the language of “religion” is dominant.

What I want to say is that if we continue to talk about “religion” or “faith,” we will be talking about something private, which views communal life together as optional at best and completely unnecessary at worst. Or even, detrimental to being able to find my way with Jesus “authentically”.

Like the coals in the fire, we NEED each other in order to follow Jesus. It is impossible to follow Jesus while trying to keep a private religion. And so we need to think in new terms with new language. Or perhaps, old language understood anew.

It Is Not Good For Man To Be Alone

These three challenges that I’ve sketched here are surely not the whole picture. We could also include the isolation and division caused by cultural, ethnic, racial, socio-economic, and gender differences - we will get to these next time.

But these three do help us begin to see how our society pushes us away from a communal mindset, why we think so individually about following Jesus, and why it is impossible to do so outside without a shared life.

The reason why it is impossible to be a Christian without sharing life in a Christian community is not “because those are the rules.” Rather, it has everything to do with what we believe about Christian community. And, even more, what we believe about humanity.

Genesis 1 tells us all humans are made in the image of God. The theological term for this is imago Dei. To be the imago Dei means we reflect and represent the nature of God, including God’s very triune, communal nature.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God in three persons, share community perfectly within Godself. This is a profound and utterly incomprehensible reality, but it is important for grasping what it means to be made in God’s image: Fellowship and community are essential elements of God’s nature. This means we cannot model the image of God fully on our own; rather, we NEED belonging in order to image God well.

In short, being made in God’s image means we were created for belonging.

Trying to follow God and live in the will of God on our own goes completely against the very fiber of our being.

As theologian Colin Gutton puts it, “to be in relationship with God and others is an essential feature of the imago dei.”9 God is God in a way that is three persons (Father, Son, and Spirit) in relationship to each other. Likewise, we would not be human without the network of relationships that define our being.

Stanley Grenz describes being the imago dei, not as being individual possessors of it, but rather as beings who image God relationally with others and God.

In our text from Genesis 2, God makes this point explicitly. All throughout Genesis 1, God creates, and it was “good.” He created humans, and it was “very good.”

Now the Genesis 2 creation account picks up, and we suddenly hear God say that this social situation was not good!

There were so many comments that God could have made: “Ok, remember to brush your teeth.” “Remember to always pay attention to me.” “Remember to be kind to each other.” “Make sure you eat a balanced diet.”

But instead God says, “It is not good for man to be alone.”

God wanted us to see from the beginning that we have been created for belonging. It’s in our very bones.

This leads to three brief observations from the text itself that help us understand the extent and shape of the belonging that we were originally created for.

1. We were made for collaborative relationships

In verse 2:20, we see that God’s solution to isolation was “to make a helper suitable for him.” The Hebrew word ezer kenegdo, to describe the “suitable helper,” has sometimes been used to argue for a hierarchy of status where the woman serves the man as his lesser helper or is only useful for raising children.

Yet a very quick and easy survey of the phrase ezer kenegdo throughout the Old Testament shows that it is most often used to describe God as the ezer kenegdo for Israel. No one would assume that God is less than God’s people. No, in reality, what Genesis is demonstrating here is what Derek Kidner observes, that we are “social being[s] made for fellowship, not power. So the woman is presented wholly as his partner and counterpart; nothing is yet said of her as childbearer. She is valued for herself alone.10

We are invited into these kinds of relationships where we share together in the work of the world around us, where we are not dominated or ruled over, but work together toward common goals in the world. This kind of shared work helps us see a little bit of what the Church is supposed to be like. Our leaders are not meant to lord their position or authority over the community, but serve as the least (Matthew 20:25-28).

2. Humans belong to one family

When Even finally arrives on the scene, it causes Adam to proclaim in verses 23-24 that “this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” The word “One flesh” is not intercourse between sexual opposites, but of the same blood, or “kinship bond.”

Essentially, Adam is saying, this is my “flesh and blood relative.” Another like me is here, another human. We have become far too comfortable with the habit of isolating those we believe to be different or “other” instead of recognizing that we are part of one human family. We are increasingly ok with cutting each other off, as the young person described doing to his mother.

When we do create relationships, they are filled with cliques and exceptions instead of an embrace of all those who bear the imago dei. Any kind of belonging that can survive the divisions of our time will be built, in part, on our ability to see even the most distant other as our flesh and blood relative.

3. Belonging is built on trust and vulnerability

Finally, this kind of belonging requires us to develop trust and vulnerability. Verse 25 comments that Adam and Eve were naked but felt no shame. To be “naked” literally means to “have no barrier.” “No shame” tells us that there was nothing to hide or be embarrassed by, socially or otherwise.

Allen Ross says, “The nakedness of the pair suggests more than their physical condition; it stresses the fact that they were completely at ease with each other. There was no fear of exploitation, no potential for evil. Nakedness was a sign of their purity and integrity”11

This lack of exploitation or taking advantage of one another means there was an inherent trust and vulnerability in this first human relationship. What’s more, it tells us that one of the crucial keys to true belonging resides in our ability to develop trust and remain vulnerable with others.

Especially when considering how our brains learn patterns of mistrust to protect ourselves, this pattern is particularly hard to unwind. But when we do so, a deep sense of being known for who we really are is available to us. There is an ease to sharing life together where one does not feel they are constantly performing for the other. It is a rich and life-giving place from which to live life.

Conclusion - The Need for A Second Adam

This all sounds wonderful, but we are still isolated – Adam messed up – he sinned, now humanity is broken.

We kill each other, we don’t trust each other, we exploit each other, we oppress each other, this group fights against that group, vulnerability is never offered, we see people as “other” instead of belonging to God’s created family. We’re isolated by our independence, our neurological wiring, and our private religion.

The good news is that while the First Adam may have brought all this brokenness into the world, the second Adam, Jesus, redeemed and restored the possibility of sharing life together in this way. Jesus has made it possible to belong to God and to each other in the way we were created for.

Jesus is ushering in a new creation that cannot be corrupted, and the Church is the witness to this new creation. A new way of belonging together!

So as we turn towards further weeks in this series, while we name the problems, we also remember that Jesus can be Lord over our belonging. Jesus can reframe our language, heal our neurological wiring, and bring us out of isolation back towards the burning coals we have drifted away from.

My wife and I got to see Hamilton last night. It was breathtaking. Especially with Leslie Odom Jr. reprising his role as Aaron Burr!

But as the story which the play portrays tells us, it does not end well.

This story of social and political difference in America, from Burr and Hamilton to today, continues to remind us that we believe violence is the only practical solution to our problems.

As the story on stage unfolded, I began to think of the news this week of Charlie Kirk’s death. The death of Minnesota Congresswoman Melissa Hortman and her husband. The deaths of countless African Americans like George Floyd and Brianna Taylor. I watched and was grieved.

We often pretend that these acts of socially and politically motivated killings are aberrations of what it truly means to be American. Yet as I watched Leslie Odom Jr. raise a revolver to finally settle his character’s dispute with Hamilton, I couldn’t help but think: this is America working exactly like it’s supposed to work.

Righteous Violence?

A few years back, Drew Gilpin Faust, the historian and former president of Harvard, wrote a piece in the Atlantic explaining the story behind John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry and the “Secret Six” who financed the endeavor. Six Northeast Elite from Boston and New York, abolitionists, all convinced that the only path forward was violence, funded John Brown’s raid. These six elites even rationalized their decision to attack a United States armory (prior to the Civil War) as the only or best course of action to see change.

Gilpin-Faust writes,

“As a nation, we are unable to get over John Brown. And as a nation, we have not figured out what violence we will condemn and what we will celebrate. I found myself unspeakably moved as I stood before Nat Turner’s Bible in the National Museum of African American History and Culture. At the same time, I am horrified by the violence of the January 6 rioters and by what I regard as widespread threats to the rule of law. We pride ourselves on being a country with a written Constitution that sets peaceful parameters for government. Yet the Supreme Court established by that Constitution has issued rulings providing that the citizenry may be armed not just for recreational hunting, but with weapons, including assault rifles, that are frequently purchased with an eye toward resisting that very government. Lawmakers walk the floors of the Capitol with pins shaped like AR-15s in their lapels. The rule of law seems historically and inextricably enmeshed in the tolerance—even the encouragement—of violence.”

She goes on to note that even Martin Luther King Jr’s. famous non-violent action approach was contested by Malcom X, who, according to Gilpin-Faust, could claim an American tradition of the ‘right to violence’ to overthrow injustice just as the Secret Six did.

The tension between King and Malcom regarding Brown’s violence was notable:

“But, fittingly, given his defining commitment to nonviolence, Martin Luther King Jr. remained silent on Brown. Even as the keynote speaker at a centennial observance of Brown’s raid, King did not mention the man once. The place of violence in the centuries of struggle for Black freedom has been long contested, and by the mid-1960s, King faced growing demands from Black activists urging forceful resistance to white threats and assaults instead of the Gandhian passivity that underpinned his philosophy. Malcolm X regarded Brown as “the only good white the country’s ever had.” The Black Power movement that challenged King’s vision of a Beloved Community could claim deep roots.”

Her article names the fundamental American conundrum quite succinctly.

From the Revolutionary War and the slave trade, to abolition and the Civil War, to January 6, and the killings of Melissa Hortman, Charlie Kirk, and many more, we are a nation founded on violence, and we need to be more honest about the legitimacy that this foundation has in American society.

Yet despite this disturbing reality, Gilpin-Faust does not seem willing to give up the idea that there is such a thing as righteous violence, at least not in this article. Her question:

“how do we determine which violence we will condemn and what we will celebrate,”

Is absolutely fascinating to me.

I’m amazed that there is never a question asked about whether violence should enter the debate at all! It is rather a question of what kind of violence is acceptable and when.

But this is the entire problem.

One person’s righteous violence is another person’s heinous act of bloodshed. One person’s noble cause is another person’s crime against humanity. Who gets to decide which violence is justified? It seems it is only later history, written by the winners of a conflict, that gets to decide who we celebrate and who we demonize. This is far too arbitrary a line to draw in the sand and a constantly moving target based on the tastes of the time.

Violence and Its Ubiquity

There are moments when even Christians in America, whose God said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” seem to celebrate the cause of violence as the only recourse for change. I remember (in my homeschooling days) having a history book as part of our curriculum called “In God We Trust,” which told stories of faithful Christians who had taken a stand for freedom in America.

One of these entries told the story of a clergyman named John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, “The Fighting Parson,” who, during the Revolutionary War, took off his clerical robes during one Sunday sermon to reveal the uniform of an officer in the Army of the Continental Congress. This illustration was drawn in such a glorified way: Muhlenberg gallantly flinging off his clerical robes to reveal “true bravery and courage” underneath. Here was a brave Christian who knew when it was time to stand up for what was right: i.e., participating in a violent revolution.

For anyone born and raised in this country, we cannot seem to escape some version of this violent imagination as sacrosanct. The lure of violence is always nearby to ultimately solve our differences when all else fails.

Even Gilpin-Faust’s description of MLK’s “Gandhian passivity” betrays a belief that there is always a need for violent action at some point because peacemaking is ultimately passive non-action.

This line of thinking is exactly why Charlie Kirk was shot on Wednesday. It is why Melissa Hortman was killed in June. It is why countless lives have been lost in wars both foreign and domestic.

Deeply baked into the DNA of our society is the belief that if we really want change, violence is the answer. If you don’t agree with someone, violence is the answer. If their perspective is gaining momentum and you perceive it to be wrong, violence is the answer.

If you can’t beat ‘em, beat ‘em to death.

Watch, as has happened many times with gun-related deaths, as people begin talking about “one bad egg” or “mental health” issues in relation to this shooter. Some will say they were “disturbed” or “angry with Kirk’s politics,” or “radicalized” through some special process that the rest of us are immune to because “we are a country that embraces free speech.”

Those things could all be at play; more than one thing can be true. But we will not hear calls for us to also consider our national history and repent for our complete and total dependence on violence to solve our problems.

We’ve never known another way, and we need to be honest about that.

Unresolvable conflict with a King? Revolution. Unresolvable issues with indigenous groups? Wipe them out. Unresolvable differences over slavery? Send in John Brown.

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Christians and Violence

The question will be asked in reply, “What are we supposed to do, just let things happen?” Or, the question I am particularly sensitive to, “this is easy for a white guy to say whose people have not experienced unprovoked violence at the hands of authorities. Are we supposed to be a doormat?”

No. May it never be.

But violence cannot be considered the only version of ultimate action. That is what states and nations do, but I don’t believe that is what Christians do. I realize that’s not universally accepted, but there is certainly a Christian tradition and precedent for this stretching back to the early church. It is a tradition, I believe to be the most faithful to Jesus’ teaching.

The church has too often seen Jesus’ declaration, “blessed are the peacemakers,” as an optional call to do when it is practical, instead of an enduring supernatural ethic, only possible in the power of the Holy Spirit. We’ve deemed peacemaking to be the same as passivity and, when push comes to shove, not feasible in a modern society.

The Psalmist writes that “the Nations rage” against the Lord (Psalm 2:1). It is these foundations of violence that I have been addressing here, which are at work in the rage and rebellion described by the Psalmist. Killing another human is rebellion against God, who breathed life into every human body. When one human being decides when another should die or when one nation decides the fate of another, we are in rebellion against God.

In this moment, we are in need of a church that rejects all forms of this rebellion through violence and searches for more creative ways to bring about change. Violence is easy; Peacemaking is the real hard work.

As my friend has written so well,

“While the testimonies of many around us would seem to argue that violence is a last resort, it seems that violence is the seedbed from which our thoughts and actions originate. Are we, as humans, so shaped by the normality and practicality of violence to get things done that we have stopped believing there’s another way?”

Hear me, peacemaking is not passive! Nothing about Dr. King’s (or should I say Rev. Dr. King’s) peacemaking was passive. It was extremely actionable and practical. Further, it was not even primarily “Gandhian” as Gilpin-Faust describes it (though he certainly learned from and was inspired by Gandhi’s work in India).

It was first and foremost Christian because of King’s commitment to the God who, in Jesus, took on the violence of the world in himself, not resisting it with more violence. It is this obedience even unto death that has begun to make all things new in the power of His resurrection. It is out of this vision that what King called “non-violent action” is possible.

The earliest Christians knew this and took up their cross and followed Jesus in the same way, resisting all forms of violence. Christians throughout history have done so on many occasions. But sadly, many Christians believe violence still has its place at some point (After all, we need to be practical).

Until we stop being more American than Christian (to loosely quote Stanley Hauerwas), I don’t think Christians will be able to see another way.

And until Americans are truly willing to name the foundations of violence upon which this country was founded, we can expect more of the same.

I do not say this because I celebrate any kind of violence. I am grieved time and time again by the stories that continue to be reported with what seems to be increasing frequency.

No, I do not say violence will continue because I wish it to, nor because I hope to be right and thus prove my point. I say this because as humans we are incapable of doing anything else but “rage” apart from the Christ whom we often rage against.

Lord Have Mercy

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First, Some “Thank Yous”

A year ago, I moved my blog over to Substack for three reasons.

1. There was an intentional writing community that I felt would help keep me accountable to regular writing.

2. The ability to not only post my writing online, but also send it simultaneously as a newsletter.

3. *Cough* Squarespace was raising prices *Cough*

Ok, all three of those are really legitimate reasons, but if the third one hadn’t happened, I don’t know if I would have switched. But I’m so glad I did.

After one year of regular writing, I have 127 subscribers (as of the time of writing)!

I’ve learned that a regular open and read rate above 50% is a challenge - but you all read my posts at a rate of somewhere between 50%-60%!

Many of you have sent me personal messages or shared when we’ve bumped into each other in person that you’ve found my writing helpful and meaningful. This is why I do this!

I’m thankful for the high level of engagement and honored that you take the time to read, like, comment, and share.

Thank you!

Second, A Year In Review

For those of you who haven’t been here since the beginning, you may have missed some favorites here at Under the Eyes of God.

So I thought I’d share a little of the “best of” this year. What was the most read, the most liked, the most commented on, and then one or two I’m most proud of…

Most Read

At 586 views and 60% open rate, this is by far my most read piece, in which I illustrate how to disrupt ideology like Jesus through a funny story about the Global Football (soccer) star Cristiano Ronaldo.

Most Liked

A repost from my old blog, but still an important topic on knowing who we are and where our identity comes from. And Fred Rogers…That’s all I need to say.

Most Commented

Like many who grew up in predominantly White Evangelical spaces, I received a very mixed, if not negative at times, version of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy. I write a little about that and compare that version to the distinctly Christian-rootedness of the Civil Rights movement he led. I was encouraged by your comments and personal messages from this one.

Most Proud Of

I’ll highlight two…

This is one of the early pieces I published last fall. Through the teaching of and her Christian Doctrine class at Northern Seminary, I began to think about theology very differently. I wrote this to help me think through it more.

It was only this summer that I realized the influence George Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine had on her approach to theology, and now mine too! I didn’t have Lindbeck’s language of “cultural-linguistics” yet, but this piece sort of gets at that idea before I knew it was a thing.

One of the tools I’m picking up in my seminary education is how to discern how ideology works, how it is at work in churches and communities, and how to address it.

Here, I reflect on the work of Terry Eagleton in his book Ideology: An Introduction. What I’m most proud of in this post is the diagram I created to describe Eagleton’s multi-layered definition of ideology; when it is just differing opinions, and when it becomes coercive. I found the framework helpful for sorting through micro and macro-level conflicts, and I hope you do too.

Thank you for being a part of a great first year here on Substack! If you’ve found my writing helpful, would you be willing to help spread the word and share Under the Eyes of God with someone who would benefit from my writing?

Share Under the Eyes of God

This fall, our church is spending time exploring what it means to share life in Christian community through a new series called “Together”.

I’ll probably be riffing on that topic here on Substack a bit through the fall, along with the usual mix of other things I’m led to consider “under the eyes of God.”

Stick around!

So, when I decided it was finally time to go to seminary, I knew there was one book I needed to read to help me prepare:

How To Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler.

I was expecting a book to help me absorb content faster. What I got instead was an education in how to listen.

Here’s how I got to that book…

I always enjoyed school and have always been curious to learn new things. I was intimidated by most books over 150 pages or that were too complicated. And I especially did not want to pursue reading anything that was too academically rigorous.

In truth, I didn’t like reading because I was a slow reader. I still am. I tried speed reading, but I would frequently space out or just stare at the page and have no clue what the author was trying to communicate.

As college wrapped up, I read little to nothing except my Bible for the following decade. The belief that I was not a good reader sank in quite quickly, and I became more and more intimidated to read anything at all.

I really had it in my head that reading just wasn’t for me.

Shortly before our oldest daughter was born, however, a thought occurred to me:

“You’re not going to have as much time to read, and you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. What are you waiting for?”

I don’t know where it came from, but I knew I needed to start reading.

For a while, I was grasping at straws. I read a lot of bad books that didn’t teach me anything and weren’t particularly helpful. But I read a lot – at least relative to my lack of reading the ten years previous.

Eventually, I stumbled into a vein of good books in theology that surprised me. I began to realize I had questions about the world I was living in and could not find satisfactory answers.

Questions like…

What are Christians doing in this political climate?

Why are we always making a big deal over things like abortion rights, but we never seem to mention other pressing social issues?

Is our worship on Sundays still relevant to the rest of our lives?

Why is it offensive to talk about Jesus in public?

I found myself feeling frustrated that I didn’t know what to read to help me unpack questions like these until it finally hit me: this is what going to seminary would help me do (I’m sometimes quite dense, forgive me).

Going back to school seemed insurmountable, yet I knew that being taught by experienced thinkers in the field of theology would help me find a pathway to answering my pressing questions.

But that would mean I would need to read a lot more and probably faster than I had been reading up to that point.

That’s when I remembered Adler’s book.

I don’t even remember where I first heard of the book, but I knew at some point I had to read it.

So in the Spring of 2023, in preparation for my first year at Northern Seminary, I finally set out to read it.

What I thought I was getting when I first picked up the book was instructions on how to speed read. I’m so thankful that this is not what this book is about.

There were certainly some practical tips that helped a distracted reader like me focus on the words.2 But what How to Read A Book taught me more than anything was that books are places to come and listen to what others are thinking and seeing in the world.

By listening through reading, one can come to learn things one did not previously know. But to do that, I had to understand the four levels of reading.

Four Levels of Reading

The core of Adler’s book is an explanation of four levels of reading, which, when used together, help the reader listen to the author.

Elementary Reading

This is what my oldest daughter is learning to do right now: Sounding out the words on the page, putting sentences together clearly, and telling me what Gerald said to Piggy.3

Inspectional Reading

At this level of reading, one begins to comprehend the overall structure of a book and obtains the ability to summarize its content. I find even this second level of reading difficult for many people today because it requires a certain amount of synthesizing of broad arguments. When we have a hard time listening, it becomes easy to misrepresent an author at this level of reading.

Analytical Reading

This is where we get more complex in our reading and analyze the content of a book in two stages:

1. Get a sense of the type of subject, summarize a thesis statement, outline its major parts, and define the problems the author is trying to solve

2. Understand the author’s terms/key words, understanding the most important sentences, understanding the arguments and their sequence, and determine which of the author’s problems they’ve successfully solved.

In my estimation, this kind of reading is exceedingly rare in our day. Similar to Inspectional Reading, we don’t give books this kind of time and thought. If we like something, we use it, whether the argument put forth in the book holds weight or not.

I know as a preacher, I’m tempted to find a good quote and rip it from its context to use for an upcoming sermon. I credit the quote appropriately, of course, but it is tempting to just grab soundbites from books instead of reflecting on what the author wishes to communicate.

Syntopical Reading

This is reading that seeks to understand a problem or topic that is not in any book you’ve been reading. It connects thoughts, ideas, and arguments from several books and brings them together into something new. This is the aspect of reading I’ve come to love the most, but it cannot be done without a commitment to the first three levels.

When we read in the ways that Adler outlines in these four levels, we can digest even very complex books that are “above” our current reading level. If we are to grow in our thinking, reading, and writing, this kind of “reading up” is critical. We cannot continue to read those books which are completely understandable to us or that we completely agree with. We learn nothing when we do this. Instead, we need to challenge ourselves to read books that continually push us to understand in a deeper way.

This approach has helped me navigate very complex books and articles over the last two years that I probably would have never picked up if not for what I learned from Adler’s book.

I’ve been emboldened to take on books beyond the assigned reading for class and be adventurous with trying to grasp really intimidating work that is way above my head. Even though I often do not understand those books in their entirety, I have always grown so much as a result.

The reason for this growth, however, is not because I took in more information. Rather, it is because reading in the way outlined by Adler makes one a better listener to other people.

Reading As Revolution

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Harding said in an interview that when he was in his undergraduate education, he made a goal to be a better reader and really understand incredibly intimidating novels like War and Peace.

Then he made a comment that has stuck with me: “No one tries to do that anymore.”

Though a bit of a throwaway line, I found it haunting. As I continued to listen, every sentence, every anecdote, every insight seemed to be illuminated by the words, “no one tries to do that anymore,” as Harding unpacked the craft of learning to use language in new ways.

Harding, like Adler, reminds us that to be a better reader means to give oneself not only better tools for writing, but ultimately better use of language because we have learned to listen to others well.

Our use of language seems to be getting worse as a society. People bow out of difficult conversations, public discourse has become a shouting match, and no one listens to the other. Harding’s insight, that no one tries to read to understand anymore, I contend, is at least part of the problem.

Most of our reading these days is done in the form of quick posts, tweets, captions, and menus at restaurants. But this is only Elementary Level reading. Reading in any of the further levels is what helps us listen. Scrolling and quick takes now dominate the discourse as we’ve become slow to listen and quick to speak.

For those reading this who are regulars in the Substack space, I know I’m preaching to the choir. Many of you have inspired me to be a better reader, writer, and thinker. Yet at the same time, I’m noticing Substack users are increasingly given to the hot take attitude as Notes and other features have become vital if writers here want to create an engaging writing community. (I’m struggling with this honestly, and I’m not sure I like it.)

Those of us, including myself, who are frequently on Substack should consider these deeper levels of reading as practices that help us listen well.

Yet whether you are a regular in the Substack world or you just receive my newsletter via email, the task is the same: learn to listen well.

Pay Attention To Your Own Work

As this essay was brewing in my mind, I was struck by a recent reading in Galatians where Paul writes:

^“Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else.” Galatians 6:4

It sounds counterintuitive to what Paul is saying here, but I think part of paying careful attention to our own work is to listen well to what others are saying.

For example, if I read a piece by an influential writer and am thinking the entire time about why I didn’t come up with this idea, or if I am focused on how I’ll never write like this author or that author, then I have not done my work of listening, only comparing.

When I get the focus off of myself, what my response would be, or the point I want to make, and instead proceed with listening, the comparison games fall away. I am no longer caught up in anything other than being present and listening.

If our own work could be a deep attentiveness to what has been written by others, if we could be satisfied by the hard work of reading things we don’t yet comprehend, we would become more grounded people without the need to compare because we have become good listeners and thinkers.

Reading, in this way outlined by Adler, is a revolutionary practice for our cultural moment. It would equip us with skills for critical understanding and cultivate the art of listening in a world that keeps shouting past each other, desperate to be heard.

I hope that reading in this way offers a path towards meaningful connection.

How has reading shaped you to be a better listener?

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Introduction

Imagine the scene with me. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, gather as another round of bodies are set to be hung on trees outside the town. The governing officials are present, and many come by to jeer and mock those hanging there. They barely seem human at this point – their bodies mutilated.

One of them begins to pray, crying out to God, begging for mercy. They mock and laugh as they watch those hanging die that day…

This description could be mistaken for the crucifixion of Jesus, yet it is actually a description of the thousands of lynchings of black men, women, and children that took place here in the United States less than 100 years ago.

Photographs of these town-wide events would be taken and turned into postcards sent to friends and family with a note: “We had a barbecue this afternoon,” as they watched the bodies of victims burn while hanging from trees.

Theologian James Cone points to the lynching tree as the most appropriate and relevant modern picture we have for understanding the cruelty of the cross of Jesus.

Both were sanctioned by government officials, with many of them present and participating. Both were attended by large crowds. Both were a means not only of punishing the particular people being killed but also of striking fear in the rest of the local population. Both were practices reserved only for people whom those in power saw as less than human.

When we hear about the cross of Jesus, it is appropriate to think about the cruel horror of the lynching tree.

The cross was not kind. It was likely a rugged tree with another plank of wood perpendicularly anchored. It was shameful, debasing, and horrifying for both the crucified and for the onlooker.1

This was the death that Jesus died.

Yet, the symbol of the cross in the modern age has become domesticated, like a neon sign pointing the way to a nice restaurant in a quaint neighborhood.

Perhaps too far an over-generalization, but to help make the point, the cross is sometimes co-opted by suburban pieties, niceties, and fond memories, increasingly devoid of the radical nature of the God-Man Jesus hanging outside Jerusalem on a tree with all of the social stigma that would be transmitted to the world in that moment.

We rightly find comfort in the cross, but because its symbolism is no longer an anathema in society as it would have been for the earliest Christians, its meaning is often confused with our personal comfort.

In this series of essays (this final one being long overdue), I have been considering the cross as a cultural symbol and how it informs the church’s worship practice across the ages.

My argument has been that the cultural frame with which we see the cross will greatly influence how we are formed into Christian worship.

If you haven’t read the previous essays, or if you need a refresher on what I mean by “cultural frame” and “cultural symbol,” you can start here.

Here, we will bring those thoughts to a conclusion as we examine the cultural symbol of the cross in our day, the kind of worship it produces, and consider the Black Church in the United States as an example for faithfully reframing what is often lost in the meaning of the cross.

Cultural Symbols of the Cross in Modern Evangelicalism

In a lecture at Princeton University in 2018, Russell Moore said that any “evangelicalism that is worthy to face the future must be cross-shaped...must point to the cross and be about the cross.”

But which cross? That of the soft glow of a neon sign, one that carries the social stigma of the lynching tree, or another altogether? What meaning is being implied by the kind of cross we imagine?

In any culture, there are symbols, narratives, and rituals that give a culture meaning and purpose.2 Symbols like the cross are one such element that helps us make sense of the world that we live in.

Symbols can do all kinds of things in our cultural framework, but simply put, they give meaning and emotion to our lives. You can read more about this here.

I’ve previously used the example of seeing someone driving by in the car you first drove as a teenager. It is not the same one, but it represents to you something significant: a time and place in your life filled with all kinds of meaning and emotion. Some can be painful, some joyful, but that car symbolizes all of that to you.

Gerald Arbuckle explains that symbols “re-present the object.”3 The cross, too, is a symbol. Whenever we see one, it re-creates all kinds of meaning and emotion for us.

Perhaps for you, the cross represents the moment you decided to follow Jesus, or a particularly difficult season in your life when you spent a lot of time focusing on a cross.

It is reminding you of your journey with Jesus, but it is also linking back to Jesus himself on that cross, despised by society, rejected, suffering, and inviting you into His story.

What Moore was scratching at in that 2018 lecture is that the cross has taken on a cultural symbolism completely detached from the story of Jesus’ cross and what that cross meant in its original context.

As I described in the second installment of this series, since Constantine, the cross began to take on a very different symbolic meaning in some places in the Western world. “By this sign you will conquer,” is how the famed story goes, when Constantine had his soldiers paint a cross on their shields.

In an instant, the cross went from a sign of foolishness and social rejection to a sign of military power.

From disgust to dominance.

Throughout history, this alternative vision of the cross has been utilized as crusaders waved flags while attacking Jerusalem, when Klan members burned them to intimidate Black Americans, and as rioters held them high as they attacked the US Capitol Building.

These uses of the cross were possible because of what Constantine and others like him in the Western Church did to reframe the cross as a sign of Christ’s dominance over culture instead of as a sign of Christ’s humble submission and weakness.4

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My goal in highlighting this history is not to redeem the cross for all of culture. The world is still the world and will always twist various symbols to its own ends.

Rather, my goal is that Christians would see how the cross has been extracted from its original context and see it again in light of Jesus’ story:

Foolish. Embarrassing. Humiliating.

But in the midst of that social stigma still:

Powerful, Life-Giving, Freeing

Further, we should consider how this triumphalistic, dominant vision of the Cross has hindered our worship.

Many local churches have been tempted by one version or another of asserting moral dominance over the culture (this happens in both liberal and conservative churches). Much of this has become possible because of this view of the cross, which says, “By this sign we shall conquer.”

This cross is, for many in the majority culture in the United States, attractive because of this “dominant” quality. It shines like a neon light, drawing many to it, promising some modern version of prosperity, happiness, and success.

Many of our worship songs gravitate towards victory, overcoming, blessing, and individual fulfillment. These are certainly biblical themes, but it is notable that songs of lament, calls for justice, acknowledging loss and grief don’t make their way into most churches and do not get pushed by a worship industry focused on making money.

‘Sadness’ doesn’t sell. ‘Down and out’ doesn’t dominate.

This is due, in part, to a false vision of the cross.

Yet if we were to reframe the cross in its original context as a sign of utter embarrassment. humility, shame, and violence, it could aid in radically transforming our worship of the slain Lamb.

Because of the specter of the lynching tree, which has loomed for over a century over African-Americans, I suggest the Black Church Tradition offers the best way for those of us in the United States to reshape the meaning and purpose of the cross in our day.

The Cross in the Black Church Tradition

As mentioned previously, James Cone, one of the foremost Black Theologians of the 20th Century, helps us see the radical nature of the Cross for today through his comparison with the Lynching Tree of the Jim Crow South.

He writes, “Like the lynching tree in America, the cross in the time of Jesus was the most ‘barbaric form of execution of the utmost cruelty,’ the absolute opposite of human value systems.”5

Cone writes powerfully and convincingly in his book The Cross and The Lynching Tree of the parallels between what was experienced by Blacks in the Jim Crow South and its obvious connection to the cross.

So convincingly, in fact, that he is shocked that no white theologians seem to be able to make the connection.

For some White Christians, the distant and spiritual Christ could not be associated with a modern atrocity.

For other White Christians, there was no other possibility but that God had ordained Black folks to be subjugated to Whites.

That a completely different cultural framework had developed in White Churches from that of the Black Church becomes clear in the various catechisms taught by White owners to their slaves when they became Christians.

Esau McCaulley recounts one such teaching,

Who gave you a master and a mistress?

God gave them to me.

Who says that you must obey them?

God says that I must.

What book tells you these things?

The Bible.

From the perspective of the slaves, it was quite clear to them that the Christianity taught by their White slave masters was not authentic and was born out of a completely different perspective, devoid of the suffering of the cross.

Summarizing the contradiction, McCaulley concludes, “Early Black conversion entailed finding the real Jesus among the false alternatives contending for power in the culture.”6

This work of “finding the real Jesus” becomes evident as seen in the development of the Black Church, particularly in its worship tradition.

They began to talk, write, sing, and preach about Jesus differently: Jesus was alive, Jesus was real, Jesus understood their suffering in all its forms.

Eventually, they would even describe the lynching tree and the general suffering of Black Americans in “cross-shaped” language.

Their sufferings, they understood, were similar in many ways to Jesus’ suffering. His rejection and shameful persecution were theirs too.

They entered His story.

The Black Church was able to make this connection easily because they were powerless, socially and politically. They had a history of marginalization that helped them better understand Jesus as a socially and politically powerless person like them.

As the great theologian Howard Thurman would later synthesize, Jesus was a poor Jew whose people were under military occupation. Meaning he was of a people who were socially, culturally, and politically powerless, constantly watching over their shoulder to make sure they didn’t do the wrong or say the wrong thing.7

This perspective, arising from their experiences in slavery and under Jim Crow, meant that the Black Church understood that the cross was still a symbol of suffering.

Unlike Constantine’s vision of the cross as a conquering sign, Klan cross burnings, and Capitol riots, the cross of the Black church bore a resemblance to the cross of Jesus, embodying the suffering, weakness, and shame that resonated powerfully with the first Christians in their own weakness.

This did not result in a shameful association for either the Black Church or the first Christians. Rather, it shaped their understanding of Christ’s strength being made perfect in their weakness.

It helped them live the reality of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1:18, that even though the cross and the lynching tree seem like social stigmas, it was, for those being saved, the very power of God.

For the Black Church, they were comforted, empowered, emboldened, and hope-filled by the Good News that God knew the same experience of marginalization and suffering, even to the extreme of the lynching tree. And that by it, they were being saved.

The question that all of this leads to, for our purposes, however, is what kind of impact did this have on their worship practice?

Worship Practices In The Black Church

As with the previous essays, I will use the categories of the songs they sang, the liturgy they practiced, and the people included as a rubric for describing some of the explicit features of Black Church worship that were shaped by this understanding of the cross.

1. The songs they sang

It might be right to say that the Black Church has played a significant role in preserving faithful Christian witness amid the false gospels of power and exploitation through its songs.

As mentioned earlier, they preached and sang about a Jesus and a cross as real to them as the lynching tree. Their songs were filled with the reality that Jesus still works today.

Indeed, A. B. Simpson, the founder of my denomination, the Christian & Missionary Alliance, was inspired to search the Scriptures for the truth that Jesus healed today after hearing former slaves sing “Ride on King Jesus” and especially the line,

“There’s no man like Him.”

The well-educated Simpson was led to a “lost” Christian truth in part through the faithful witness of the Black Church!8

Additionally, the Spirituals of the Black Church developed without thought of financial gain, so the subjects of their songs were far more holistic than much of modern evangelical worship music is today, and much more embedded in the story of Jesus as if the singer was right there with Him through all his suffering.

The Gospel music tradition we know today comes from this heritage and is anchored in the reality that the cross is foolishness to the world because it means suffering, much like the lynching tree. But it is powerful because of the God who hung on it.

What comes through in the songs of the black church is a joining in the suffering of Jesus, because He knows what they have experienced, but still finds a way.

It has led to spirituals like a personal favorite that asks, ‘Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?’

Viewing the cross as suffering and foolishness has enabled the Black Church to write and sing songs that place them firmly in the story of scripture as participants in Jesus’ life today.

2. The liturgy they practiced

Participating in the life of Jesus today is nowhere more evident than in the practice of the Lord’s table. As theologian James Evans says, the Eucharist is still the center of all Christian worship.

In taking communion together, Christ, who was crucified and suffered on the cross just as many in the Black Church suffered on the lynching tree, is present at the center of the community.

From that place, Evans says, “Jesus Christ is the liberator who is actually present in this celebration.” And those suffering here on earth are caught up in “the celebration of the historical solidarity of Jesus Christ with the community of faith.”9

3. The people included

The Black Church was the first “Black-owned” institution in the United States. Those who were considered for much of United States history to be the “lowest of the low” were included by themselves. But in reality, they were hosted by Christ as the taking of the Lord’s supper demonstrates.

Their recognition that, despite their own marginalization, they were hosted by Christ has often led the Black Church to speak up for the needs of other weak and ignored groups. And has empowered them to lead the way in including even their perceived enemies at the table.

Theologian Nancy Lynn Westfield describes her mother, a lifetime advocate for children in the Philadelphia Public School system, as an influential woman who got things done for the good of the least of these in her city.

She was incredibly skilled at bringing together various elected officials and educators to get things done. Westfield thought of her mother’s use of her cooking and hosting skills as the tools of a smooth political operator, yet her mother insisted that “her work came out of the Christian notion of friendship.”10

When perceived as the symbol of ultimate humility and lowliness, the cross led many in the Black Church towards this kind of radical hospitality for all people, even their enemies.

Conclusion

Though not perfect, the Black Church represents a faithful Christian tradition that demonstrates how to keep the meaning of the cross in its proper context.

It truly was and still is foolishness, just like the grotesque lynching tree. But it is power for those who are being saved by it.

In our comfortable American Christianity, we have become too at home with the soft neon glow of the cross in heavily produced stage environments, being swayed by vibey electronic tones, singing songs of God’s blessing and prosperity.

In some ways, these worship fever dreams are so far removed from the visceral reality in which the cross of Jesus really sits, it can be hard to imagine the kind of Christian practice that was normal in the early church flowing from this kind of environment on its own.

We have perhaps become too entranced by watching “God move” in a musical moment, that we’ve lost the reality that to follow Jesus is as socially taboo as death on a lynching tree.

In an age where many Christians are attempting to win back cultural relevance and power, or claim the cross frees us from pain for a life of prosperity, it is vital that we recapture the meaning of the cross from a first-century perspective.

It is utter foolishness.

Many of our Black brothers and sisters have been faithful witnesses to this truth.

We would be wise to pay attention.

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Several years ago, I had the chance to connect with Nick Drake and learn from him about All-Age worship, or what they call, “Worship for Everyone.”

It’s an approach to thinking about worship gatherings that isn’t “for kids” but is intentional about engaging with every age and stage of life.

Since then, I’ve experimented with one-off Sundays where we did not have regular kids’ ministry, first when I was a worship pastor, and now, pastoring a church myself.

This 2025 calendar year has been the first year where we’ve intentionally committed to all-age worship on a regular basis, and it has been PHENOMENAL.

I don’t use that word lightly, so I’d like to explain why I say this, and then, if you have some input in your church into worship calendar planning, I’d like to invite you to consider four opportunities for your church to engage in All-Age Worship this next ministry year.

Why We Need All-Age Worship

We have had two of our four all-age worship gatherings that will occur in 2025, and they’ve been two of the most impactful and powerful services in our church. But first, a little bit of the philosophy behind why we started doing this.

As I’ve been learning more and more about how our cultural assumptions frame our Christian experience, one concept that has stood out to me is just how commodified and consumer-minded our society has become.

We have niche places and spaces for every interest and age, and stage in life. There is nothing in and of itself about this that is bad, but something I’m noticing is how we live on a kind of ‘social conveyor belt’. At least in the suburban communities in which I have pastored.

Here’s what I mean:

You are born and within a few years enter the school system, one grade after another, and possibly go to college or get a job.

If you graduate from college, you then get a job, move into an up-and-coming neighborhood in a relatively urban location. Life is fun and free (not literally free, it’s crazy expensive, but you’ve got a good job and surround yourself with similar people).

Eventually, you meet that special someone and share life in that fun urban location a little longer before marrying and finding a place in the suburban sprawl to start a family in a good school district.

You spend those suburban, parenting years being heavily involved in kids’ sports, PTA meetings, and college preparation courses. At some point, your little ones are not so little, and they venture off on their own to one degree or another.

You then enter a stage of life where the conveyor belt keeps moving, but you are less socially tied into the surrounding community. As one of my congregants of adult children put it, “Once our kids were out of the school system, we lost touch with what was going on in this town.”

Eventually, the ‘social conveyor belt’ moves so far from most of what society is doing, that one begins to feel irrelevant to what is happening around them; another feeling also expressed to me by another in our community over 70.

Why does this happen?

I think much of this is the result of the Industrial Revolution, in which a greater dependence upon skilled use of machinery became critical to one’s survival in society, as opposed to the previous agricultural emphasis in which tight-knit communities lived a more cyclical life.

With the greater dependence on using complex machines came the need to continually master the skills necessary to operate them in an ever-changing technological world, and the increased dangers of not using the machines properly.

This created three distinct groups of people based on age:

- Childhood - the stage before the ability to use this machinery safely (though child labor certainly ignored this).

- Adulthood - the stage when one is competent enough to safely and effectively use the machines of the Industrial Revolution

- Old-Age - the stage at which one was no longer able to keep up with the demands of the machines or could not learn how to use the latest technology

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but it is true to the broad historical/cultural reality that has taken place across the industrialized world.

Even though we do not work in factories to the same extent today, we still see and live with the effects of this, as shown in the ‘social conveyor belt’ to which I described above.

This has led to a framework for society where the middle stage of life is the “relevant” stage of life for the purposes of production and utility. (It’s when we are most useful.)

The early stage is for developing future adults who can contribute well and sometimes view children as an investment to protect for the future.

And the final stage, honestly, I don’t think most of us know what to do with “them…”

When the church gathers, we are subject to this same cultural framework:

The children go off into their own space, teenagers find solace in their independence, and the adults are all together to learn and hear the bible preached, and the elders among us are often tolerated, but not considered in the structure of the service or sought out for voice.

I just want to insert here that it is helpful and appropriate to have age and stage-specific space to wrestle with the unique challenges each phase of life in our culture presents as we follow Jesus.

But we’ve gone overboard, creating a consumeristic approach to church where we will choose to leave a church (especially in the suburbs) if they don’t have “programs for our kids”.

This will sound a little blunt and feisty, but I think that it is almost always a bad reason to leave a church. But I digress…

Why Has All-Age Worship Been ‘Phenomenal’?

The Church, the people of Jesus marked by the Spirit, are of a different breed than this cultural framework leads us to believe. As Joel prophesied and Peter affirmed, the Spirit is poured out on “young and old...”

We often read this in the sense that says, “we each get the Spirit…separately.” But that ignores the unifying principle at work through God’s Spirit. We are not alone in our filling of the Spirit; we are brought close and unified through the Spirit as God fills young and old together.

What all-age worship does is help disrupt the assumptions that say “we are formed separately because our seasons of life are irrelevant to each other,” and leads us into an attentiveness to the unifying power of the Spirit already at work among our community.

All-Age Worship helps those of us who are older and more experienced in our faith live obediently to the words of the Psalmist, such as,

“What we have heard and learned that which our ancestors have told us— we will not hide from their descendants. We will tell the next generation about the Lord’s praiseworthy acts, about his strength and the amazing things he has done.” (Psalm 78:3-4)

All-Age worship helps children learn to live into the calling of Psalm 8:2:

“From the mouths of children and nursing babies you have ordained praise on account of your adversaries, so that you might put an end to the vindictive enemy.”

Which Jesus himself affirmed as the calling of Children in Matthew 21:12-17

This passage in Matthew, incidentally, is when Jesus clears the commodification of worship out of the temple. I don’t think it is an accident on Matthew’s part that the removal of this commodification from God’s house coincided with the children’s worship!

We are not commodities to be plugged into various church programs.

We are not to be subject to the powerful forces of the market and commodification in our post-industrial society - in fact, this is exactly what All-Age worship disrupts.

It brings us ALL together as one people in God’s presence to enjoy God’s presence, and the children often help lead the way!

Further, All-Age Worship helps all of us become obedient to the words of Psalm 145:3-4:

“The Lord is great and certainly worthy of praise! No one can fathom his greatness! One generation will praise your deeds to another and tell about your mighty acts!”

As I said at the beginning, the space we’ve created for all-age worship in our church has been nothing short of phenomenal.

I find these Sundays, there is a different kind of joy in the room as we intentionally seek to proclaim the Lord’s greatness “one generation to another.”

The children remind the adults, the adults remind the children, the oldest among us remind us of out of their depths of experience that God is faithful beyond the highs and lows of life.

The other thing that happens is I’m forced to preach VERY differently. I’m not doing a “kids’ sermon”. But I am crafting a message that is engaging for all ages. Which means I have to distill the core message or truth in the text and find creative ways to communicate.

This has led to some of the most enthusiastic feedback I’ve received all year. “That sermon was powerful” is a common theme I hear after all-age worship gatherings.

Because I don’t try to overcomplicate things but communicate the Good News of Jesus in a meaningful way to our whole congregation, the Word of God has an impact on people’s lives far beyond what my own intelligence and insight could produce. Far beyond my most clever wordsmithing.

It is a work of the Spirit, through the Word.

Four Opportunities For All-Age Worship

I hope I’ve painted a bit of a picture of how important All-Age Worship is for our discipleship in the modern world.

How do we plan for it?

This next year presents one of the easiest on-ramps ever to try it out in your church.

Post-Easter, usually Late April through June, is when we are in the process of ministry planning for the September-August ministry calendar in our church.

We just finalized the calendar last week, including when our All-Age Worship gatherings will be happening.

Every year, we plan to do our All-Age worship gatherings whenever there is a fifth Sunday, which happens four times each year.

This year, those fifth Sundays fall on some days that might make it the best year to try this for the first time.

1. November 30, 2025 - First Sunday of Advent

Not many in my evangelical circles really understand Advent, but what a great opportunity to communicate its significance in simple terms, not to mention you have a built-in object lesson with the candles and can easily captivate a child’s attention, thinking about Christmas!

2. March 29, 2026 - Palm Sunday

In addition to the powerful quotation of Psalm 8:2 that Jesus makes after riding in on a donkey and clearing the temple, the use of real palms can be a helpful tool to engage children on the day with the story and the worship at hand.

3. May 31 - Trinity Sunday

There is no more central reality for Christians than who God is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet it does not tend to be discussed very often. This provides a helpful way to teach about who God is without overcomplicating it - just make sure your object lesson doesn’t border on modalism! :)

4. August 31 - Last Sunday of the Summer

I realize some kids in the States go back to school earlier than this, so it isn’t true across the board, but in the Northeast, school is often still out until after Labor Day. This is usually a low-attendance Sunday and provides a sometimes welcome reprieve for the kids' ministry volunteers to not be scheduled an additional Sunday, but also allows for some really creative engagement in the summertime when people might have more time to help plan and be involved.

A few things to keep in mind when planning all-age worship…

Communicate Vision - before, during, and after

• This can be as simple as the couple of weeks leading up to it, reminding people what you are doing, that it isn’t a “Sunday off” but part of how we learn to be the family of Jesus together.

• Kick off the gathering by reminding people of the importance of worshipping together and learning together across generational lines.

• Debrief and celebrate it! Share stories of how God has spoken or met people through those gatherings.

Do It As A Team

• The theme of our most recent All-Age Gathering was the Fruit of the Spirit, so I invited a couple of crafty/creative types from our kids’ ministry team to help me plan around the big idea: “When we’re close to the Holy Spirit, God grows the life of Jesus in us.”

• The result was one of our over 60 congregants using their artistic gifts and art degree that they hadn’t utilized in years! What a gift to the whole church!

Choose Engaging Songs

• Keep it light and focus on the big picture of the good news of Jesus and praising God

Keep It Simple

• The theme and the message need to be simple - (I’ll practice what I preach and leave it at that)

I think this year presents a unique on-ramp for your church to try out All-Age worship, as many of the Sundays have some built-in themes ready to assist you.

I would love to hear if you try this and what other thoughts and questions you might have.

Have fun!

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The comedian Tom Papa has a great bit about how rich people “treat summer like a verb.” They “summer,” but for him, “summer happens, and I deal with it.”

I know most of us aren’t going to the Hamptons to “summer” but I, for one, don’t want summer to just “happen.”

I want to be intentional about these beautiful two months, where things generally slow down and my children are home from school.

I want to summer like it’s a verb.

How about you?

Not Too Late For A Plan

One of my favorite things about July and August in our church is how we intentionally slow down in these two months to give our staff, leaders, and volunteers a chance to rest, recharge, and reflect on where God is leading us.

For me, that means doing different kinds of work. Work that is good for my soul and good for the future.

But in order to do summer well, I have to have a plan.

June is usually when that comes together. I’m preparing for the Fall sermon series, praying through next steps with our leaders, and discipleship.

But I’m also thinking about who I want to be at the end of July and August.

By the end of this summer, I want to be a more present follower of Jesus, husband, dad, friend, and pastor, so I’ve developed a few goals to help me.

By the way, it’s not too late to “Summer” well. Take some time in this long weekend (If you’re in the States) to reflect on who God is inviting you to be this summer and lean into it.

Here are a few of my goals this summer. Hopefully, it will help give you some vision for what’s possible.

Bye-bye, Social Media

I’m taking July and August completely off any social media.

I go through periods where I’m better at managing my relationship to social media and other times when I don’t.

I’m not having a particularly good moment with it right now. I turn to it far too frequently, so I felt called to a Social Media Sabbatical for the summer.

I’m a couple of days into it and already glad I made that decision.

Read A Lot

Our whole family went to the local library last week to sign up for the summer reading challenge. I read a lot for school and for sermon studying anyway, but this was a way for our whole family to engage in reading together.

Our oldest just finished kindergarten and is reading short books on her own, which is so fun! We want to foster that in her and help our youngest continue to enjoy books.

My wife and I also try to read as much as we can instead of being on our phones to help model that for our children as they grow.

My own personal reading plan includes preparation for a class I’m taking at Northern Seminary this August called “Christianity and Pluralism,” reading for our fall sermon series on life together in community, and some other little research-related things I’m curious about.

I think I have one fiction book lined up…I need to do better with reading fiction.

Does anyone have good recommendations?

Help me!

Write More, Post Less

Since I shifted my old blog to Substack in September, I’ve tried to post either weekly or bi-weekly. It’s been a combination of old blog entries I wanted to repost, modified essays I’m writing for seminary, and original articles.

My main goal with getting back into writing was just to do it regularly.

The public format has been a form of accountability for me to keep showing up, and I think my writing has benefited greatly from doing so.

I’ve loved interacting with new friends in the Substack space, and have been grateful for 120 subscribers who regularly read my writing!

As I think through the several draft articles sitting unfinished, I know they require a lot more thought and careful handling because of the subject matter.

I want to give time to them because they are important subjects, but it will mean I have to assume a different writing rhythm.

So this summer I’m going to try and write more, but post less. (We’ll see, before hitting publish on this, I just wrote a whole other post about All-Age Worship that will drop Monday for anyone planning their ministry calendars!)

Exercise

I try to exercise at least twice a week, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen.

The summer affords me fewer evening meetings and more space to get into a workout right after work without having to worry about going back out.

We also started a summer futsal group playing in our church gym, which has gotten me back into playing the beautiful game a bit.

We should offer more prayers of thankfulness to God for giving us bodies that can move and do amazing things, like deftly slide a ball past a defender before kicking the hell out of it into their goal. :)

There’s nothing quite like it.

Adventure

We’ve been compiling a list of summer activities with our daughters for the past couple of months, and we are ready to execute!

They want to set up a lemonade stand on our street, go to some museums in the city (they’re the best kids ever), visit my parents in Maine, and many other things.

They’re getting older. After this next year, we will have two of them in elementary school and will have them home so much less.

I’m feeling the loss a little as I write this. My kids are so fun to be with, I enjoy them immensely, but I also feel the twinge of loss with each passing day.

We want to soak up moments and be present as much as possible. Life with them is such a gift.

Silence and Prayer

Sitting alone with God for large chunks of time is one of the most profound practices in my life.

I don’t have to do anything to earn God’s love. Just show up.

There is a security in just being with Jesus, not trying to get anything done, that continues to surprise me. I need more of that.

The slowed-down ministry pace in the summer allows me to do just that. I’m looking forward to it.

Like It’s A Verb…

I hope some of what I’ve shared gives you ideas of how to lean into an intentional summer.

What are you intentionally planning this summer?

I would love to hear what God is leading you into.

Whatever it is, don’t let summer happen to you.

Summer, like it’s a verb.

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Dear Worship leaders,

We are in such unusual times as worship leaders in the American church. We have more music to choose from than at any other time in church history, with more released on an almost daily basis.

We have better production quality than I remember ever having. Churches, large and small, are bright with reverb and lighting that create such inviting atmospheres in which to worship.

We have more conferences to instruct us in the finer points of using this equipment, to help with our livestreams and photography, and to ensure that those far from God come back again to worship God.

But these very circumstances have, in some ways, contributed to some of the challenges we now face leading worship.

For example, as you all know, many in our churches make statements such as “God bless America”, but have you ever considered who the god is that they are asking to bless the country we live in?

Many others come and enjoy the sound, the lights, the music, the transcendent worship experiences of which you, my talented friends, are the architects.

They arrive with an expectation to have a personal euphoric experience, summarized well by one young “twenty-something” in the phrase, “I’m here to get rocked.”1

But again, have you considered who the god is that they are expecting to encounter?

I do not mean to imply by either of these questions that Christians do not want the God of scripture to bless the land they live in as God blesses all peoples, or that God does not meet us in powerful spiritual encounters that defy our logic and explanation.

But rather, I mean to ask, have we truly thought theologically about who the “god” is that many believe they are coming to worship?

Or are we allowing the people of our churches to slowly form a vision of a god in their own making with their own preferences?

I know, I hear your response already, “Andrew, you’re overcomplicating this again.”

Or “Sure, that is important, we can revisit this later, but right now we have to focus on practical ministry considerations.”

I contend this is highly practical.

If we do not carefully consider who our God is and help our churches understand the same, many will run off “into empty speculation,” as John Calvin put it, and, “imagine [God] as they have fashioned him in their own presumption.“2

When we allow people to assume who the god is that they worship without instruction or thought on our part as worship leaders, we can inadvertently create space for our congregants to worship some other deity or image other than the One true God.3

One may even begin to worship America or a worship experience itself! As many are prone to do these days.

This, as you all know too well, is a form of idolatry.

As my theology professor has put it,

“When caught in idolatry, we are without knowledge of God, our lives a mess, pitifully bowing before “gods” powerless to offer salvation.”4

This is not good news. Therefore, we must understand and describe God well.

How to Describe God

But how should we describe God?

Throughout church history, the doctrine of the Trinity has helped describe and name the one true God. It is how we stay most faithful to describing the God of Israel revealed to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.5

Very simply, the doctrine of the Trinity is that “The one true God – the only God – exists eternally in three persons.”6

There is only one God we worship, as Deuteronomy 6:4 states,

“Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (NLT)

In this statement, we are reminded that there is never another god to whom it is acceptable to offer our worship. It is the LORD alone we worship.

Yet this God we worship has more uniqueness than simply the title “GOD”.

Indeed, what makes God unique is the existence in three persons who are all co-equal and co-eternal.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

You are already familiar with this truth in the many songs you lead for worship.

Chris Tomlin’s “How Great is our God” names this God as “Three in One”.7

You are familiar with singing to God the Father through songs based on the Lord’s Prayer,8 and of course, as is frequent in our evangelical tradition, we often sing praise to Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God the Son.9

You will also recall it is not foreign to us, especially in recent years, to sing songs of worship to welcome God the Holy Spirit to be among us.10

Singing songs to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all perfectly valid because all three persons are God.

But there are not three Gods, there is only one.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons but all one God. It is the specificity of God being all three and all three being one that describes this specific “god” as the one we worship as Christians.

John 14 demonstrates the relationship that Father, Son, and Spirit have with each other as One God. Jesus claims that “anyone who has seen [him] has seen the Father” (John 14:9). And that after Jesus returns to the Father, “he will give you another Advocate” (John 14:16), the Holy Spirit.

Here, the fullness of God’s triune nature is displayed. There is One God, but existing in three persons.

This can be confusing, so to offer some clarity on this passage in John, let me further explain by describing what is not meant about the uniqueness of the Triune God we worship.

Who God Is Not

First, what Jesus is not saying is that when he leaves them, he will simply return in another form.11

God does not put on masks as if acting in a play, changing roles depending on the needs of each act. It is not as if once Jesus left the scene, God was able to reenter the play whilst wearing the “Holy Spirit mask”.

If this was how God’s Triune nature worked, it would be sad.

We would not ever truly meet with God, but rather God would always reveal Godself with a mask on, hiding God’s true nature from us.12 There is no good news in that.

It is exceedingly good news that God is always Father, Son, and Spirit and that when we encounter Father, Son, or Spirit, we have encountered the fullness of who God is, not just a part of who God is.

We do not find ourselves experiencing a part of, or a lesser entity within God. It is all one and the same, yet three persons.

That leads me to the second explanation of who the Triune God is not.

God is not three persons with one or two of the persons being less than the others.

At moments throughout church history, this belief gained popularity specifically in an early church heresy known as Arianism, but it has also taken other forms.13

Arius, the founder of this teaching, began to explain that “Jesus was fully human, but not fully God.”14 He argued that Jesus was created before the rest of creation.

But if Jesus, the Son of God, was created, then he was subordinate to God.

While trying to be faithful in worship to the One God of Israel, Arius actually created a problem. Jesus couldn’t be worshipped if he were not fully God!

This mistaken view of who the Triune God is was well received in the popular culture of the day through Arius’ slogans like, “there was when he was not,”15 as well as other catchy phrases and tunes.

It is this last fact that I hope drives home the immense practicality of understanding the Trinity for us as worship leaders.

The songs we sing truly matter for how we think about God. They either instruct us to direct our worship to the one true God or guide us to worship a god who is not Triune.

Popular songs have at times created problematic beliefs that either split the Trinity into unequal parts or envision God fighting against Godself: one person of the Trinity being full of wrath, another full of love in our defense.16

If we envision God against God in moments like Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, we begin to teach bad theology that:

Perhaps only one of God’s persons loves us.

Perhaps only part of God was on the cross while the other part was trying to destroy us.

It could have been an actor, wearing a mask and playing a part, not the fullness of God.

Any of these would create a considerable crisis in the gospel because it would no longer be true that God, all of God, loves the world.

Additionally, if we split God up and assume God appears differently for different functions, then we begin to learn not to seek Godself, but to seek the function that each person of the Trinity accomplishes for our benefit.

When we do this, we deny their co-equality and are simply worshipping a function or a role and not God, which again, brings us back to idolatry.17

Compelled to Sing

So, who is this God that we are called to worship?

This God is not a random god who blesses and sanitizes whatever America decides to do, and this is not a god who is here for our euphoric experiences.

These would be idols made in our image.

Instead, this is a God and creator of all people who “opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

This God, this one Triune God, is the one who created the universe and time itself.

This same Triune God is the one who has redeemed the whole creation.

This Triune God is revealed to us in scripture and is not a God we can make into our own image or simplify down to experience, function, or role.

This complex relational union between Father, Son, and Spirit is so “other” than anything created. We cannot boil down the Creator and Redeemer to the form of a created idol.

We must consider how this God, revealed in scripture, has called us to worship God in this particularity, just as God has called people to worship in very specific ways throughout history.18

In short, this is a call to live in awe and wonder towards the One we cannot fully explain.

When we begin to realize the depth of awe and wonder in who this specific God is, an invitation to worship is opened to us.

What I mean by this is that the Triune God, within God’s self, gives and receives perfect love. It is perfect and unbroken, and God within the Triune oneness does not need anything, especially from us!

Love is complete in Godself.

God did not need to create the world, but God wants the world.

God extends love from Godself to include the whole world and especially humanity. God’s unified work of redemption on the cross has made a way for us to draw near to Godself and live in Triune love.

God wants you and me in communion with the Trinity. Not because God has some unmet need or because there is an ego that needs stroking. Rather, it is because God is love.

The triune God’s generous love wants to envelope and extend open arms to all creation. How incredible is that?

As a worship leader, can you re-imagine your task of inviting the congregation to receive this kind of love? Could you rethink your role to be one who does not need to conjure up God’s love for the people, but to simply receive and enjoy this generous gift of the Triune Love?

While I realize there are still many questions you may have, it is probably best to leave you in a space of mystery and wonder.

You and I must consider this God who is one in three and three in one, and how we are moving our churches to worship God in specificity to keep us from idolatry.

Ask yourself:

Do your songs reflect appropriate truth about the Triune God?

Do they make God out to have split personalities?

Are we considering how the Triune Love of God is available for us, so that we do not need to force him to love us as we worship?

I remind you, worship leaders, that close consideration of the Trinity should never lead you to frustration, confusion, or boredom. Instead, when you and I really consider how the Triune God impacts our worship, the fullness of who God is should compel us all to sing.

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This passage is a touchy subject, especially with its opening, “submit to the governing authorities” line that leaves Christians with a lot of questions.

This text also has a checkered past, being used by the Nazi party to endorse totalitarian rule and in apartheid South Africa. It is not without its controversy!

In this series, I hope to shed some light on what Paul is trying to do here as well as point out some modern assumptions that get imported into the text that make it harder to understand.

May 2 - I’ll share a little background and my own motivation for writing this

May 16 - For you Greek nerds, this is when we will get into the nitty-gritty of the text itself.

May 30 - I’ll offer some contextual considerations and comments for helpful interpretation

In addition to the actual text of the essay I wrote, you will see addendums, which include some added elements I did not have space to discuss in the original paper.

Welcome to Part 3!

Thank you so much for joining me on this interpretive journey.

To be honest, this series has been less popular than other posts I’ve written, which may be due to the more academic tone I’ve used; that’s understandable.

But I think this is one of the most important texts to understand in our current moment.

As a pastor in the times we live in, I felt an urgency to understand this text for myself, especially to what extent Paul expects Christians to “submit to governing authorities.”

In Part 1, we explored some helpful background information for Paul and the church in Rome, especially the social location from which he was writing and why that was important.

In Part 2, we did the more tedious work of unpacking a lot of the Greek words (not everyone’s favorite, I get it, but important for this passage in particular, as we will see today).

Here in Part 3, we will pull together the insights from the first two sections to explain what Paul wants us to do with this often confusing passage.

So here we go…

Introduction

It is perhaps never truer than with Romans 13:1-7, that we “read with our interpretive predecessors.”1

There are numerous interpretive issues brought to us by the history of the Western church. I want to discuss two of these issues here.

First, we will consider the unity of the text of Romans 13:1-7 with the surrounding writing. Specifically, Romans 12 and the rest of Romans 13. We have to read this small section in the larger context to understand its purpose.

Second, we will consider the oft-made mistake of reading “the State” into this passage and explore the problems this creates for modern readers of ancient writings.

From my observations on these two issues, I will conclude this series, contending that two things need to happen:

1) Resist trying to “make” this text do more than it is doing.

2) See this text as not only about how much or little we submit, but also about a repudiation of those using Christian faith to create antagonism in wider society.

The Unity of the Text

As already explained in the analysis of Part 2, 13:1-7 is a unified whole, especially with 12:1-21, which precedes it, and 13:8-14 after it. It is an unfortunate reality that the chapters break where they do.

Paul is particularly concerned with ensuring this vulnerable church is strengthened, and Beverly Gaventa argues that if this is the case with what precedes and follows 13:1-7, this is likely the purpose of the text at hand.

Paul was concerned for the safety of this community if they were to choose to resist paying taxes. Thus, he provides a rationale for them to continue to pay what is asked of them2 and seems to do so by echoing, in his own way, the words of Jesus in Mark 12:17.3

When reading Romans 12-13 as a unified text, it becomes clear that, to whatever extent submission to governing authorities took place, this happened while the church,

• blessed those who persecuted them (12:14),

• paid back evil with good (12:17),

• did all they could to live at peace with everyone (12:18),

• never took revenge but let God instead (12:19),

• fed their enemy that was hungry and thirsty (12:20),

• and conquered evil by doing good (12:21).

Offering a longer explanation as to why a Christian should pay taxes at this point follows logically. The authorities might be the very people whom the Christian community was being persecuted by.

Instead of practicing revenge as would have been expected in Roman culture, they were participating in the humble nature of Jesus by blessing them, paying back evil with good, and feeding their enemy that was hungry, for example.

Continuing into the rest of Romans 13, Paul’s command to pay taxes as part of this humble, Jesus way of ordering society, is but a small part of what a Christian truly owes: the “obligation to love one another” and to love their neighbor which ultimately fulfills God’s laws (13:8).

It is fulfilling the higher law of God, from whom all governing authorities derive their authority, that truly matters.

To put it bluntly, Paul is not encouraging docile support of all laws within a city or nation. Paul wants them to do their best to stay within the bounds of the society they are in as long as it does not violate the higher law of God.

If there is a group of people, refugees and asylum seekers for example, that are being persecuted by governing officials and their laws, Christians still have a responsibility to care for the stranger and the needy and in so doing, conquer evil by doing good.

We are not honoring God when we submit to laws that dishonor God’s higher law.

This unified reading of 13:1-7 with the surrounding text demonstrates the limitations to which the church is being commanded to submit and the category-shattering nature of the Christ event.

It is an upside-down kind of submission. Not unto docility, but unto love for the world.

Misreading “The State” in 13:1-7

Frequently, this passage has been mistakenly framed as instructions on the Church’s relationship to “the State”.4

The extent to which this happens with this text is, honestly, mind-boggling to me and is incredibly problematic.

There is no mention of such an institution in this passage.

The State is a modern construct read into the text to which Paul was not referring. That “Rome” itself is not even mentioned emphasizes this point even more.5

Instead, only “authorities” is mentioned, which, as has been observed, seems to refer to generic officials doing jobs such as tax collection.

When moderns attempt to read “the State” into the text and its relationship with the Church, we are forced to interpret this passage with categories more akin to Thomas Hobbes than the Apostle Paul.

This, I contend, is a major reason why this passage has become so confusing and dangerous because it requires us to navigate a set of relationships to which the text does not speak.

Hobbes, in his massively influential book, Leviathan, shaped a vision of the modern Nation-State as a replacement for the church’s role to discern God’s will for living well in society.

This resulted in his conclusion that unquestioning uniformity and loyalty to the Sovereign was the only way to preserve order in society.6

Living in the aftermath of a particularly brutal English civil war, Hobbes felt that unquestioning loyalty where all conformed to the will of the head, was necessary to have peace.

Even the church could not be trusted to unify society.

It is important to note that this was a time in history that operated within a Christendom framework.

This framework assumed Church-State interdependence and did not have room for the possibility of the Church functioning as an alternative society in the midst of the world.

So naturally, in Hobbes’ mind, there would be a Christian Sovereign and a Christian State.

We are all Christians, right?

This created a complicated web of loyalty that blurred the lines between Christian faithfulness and State Allegiance.

Therefore, anytime the concept of “the State” is invoked even today, we instantly are required to wrestle with the blurred line that we owe in large part to him.

This reading requires that the State be a God given institution that demands loyalty to ensure peace. Note, this is decidedly different from what the text of 13:1-7 says, which is that governing officials are God’s servants, not that “the State” is instituted by God as Hobbes would argue.

This is why we struggle so much in our interpretation of this passage.

By reading “the State” into Romans 13:1-7, one immediately imports these Hobbesian categories of conformity to the State and creates an unnecessary dance around when we do and do not obey the State and where the “line” is for Christians to begin to dissent.

Given the context of the surrounding passage, this is clearly not confusing for Paul.

One pays the tax they are being asked to pay as well as loving and caring for all people, and owing to everyone the debt of love to one’s neighbor (13:8-9).

When this mistake is made, at worst, this passage becomes open to gross over-interpretation and coercion as was witnessed in Nazi Germany and in South Africa’s apartheid.7

At best, it forces one to negotiate a set of relationships between church and government which are beyond the scope of the passage, leaving us confused and unsettled.

Conclusion: A Surprising Corrective

In light of these interpretive considerations, I believe that the scope of this passage’s original intent is extremely limited to the immediate issue of paying taxes without resistance.8

Since the Jewish believers are returning and reintegrating with the gentiles, a reminder of how the Christ Event shapes their interactions toward the broader world, including paying their taxes to governing authorities, is the extent of Paul’s intended instruction.

This has a helpful but limited application in our own day.

We could gather that it is important to submit to local governing authorities by paying our own taxes as well as obeying traffic laws, applying for permits to do work on a home or church building, and following local health ordinances related to septic and sewage disposal.

Not doing so (wrong doing) could result in large fines, and resistance to such laws does nothing to demonstrate one’s allegiance to Jesus.

This offers a crucial corrective to those who believe they need to take a stand on issues vital to their Christian faith.

There needs to be differentiation between not submitting to laws because they violate our ability to love our neighbor, and not submitting to laws because we want to show how “Christian” we are.

This was exactly what Paul was concerned about with the Jewish communities’ return to Rome. And this is the same situation Jesus faced when presented with a seemingly impossible question of whether they should pay taxes to Caesar or not.

The surprising corrective I find in Romans 13:1-7 is that we are not to take an antagonistic stand.

Sean Feucht’s “Let Us Worship” rallies, in some ways, serve as a poignant example of this. Originally, Feucht organized these worship events to defy quarantine and gathering size orders during COVID.

The claim was that this was persecution against the church’s right in the United States to gather and worship freely.

However, it was not necessary for one to organize mass gatherings in order to demonstrate faithfulness to Jesus. In fact, Paul follows the point of submitting to authorities by paying taxes saying, “the one who loves his neighbor fulfills the law” (13:8).

If Feucht truly believed that these mass gatherings were necessary to be a faithful Christian, I would encourage a re-examination of his own ecclesiology.

By all means, take a stand to love one another and fulfill God’s law, but if taking a stand will not result in love, but rather proving a point, stop!

This means that when the law of love is violated by society and governing officials, we as Christians have no obligation to uphold and submit to those laws and governing leaders.

Further still, if the law of love is not being violated in the rulings of governing officials, we have no standing to resist those governing authorities.

The inverse is also true. This was a text directed to a church community to instruct their interaction towards the world, not a text directed to governing officials’ interaction towards the Church.

Any appeal by governing officials based on this text, that Christians should offer blind loyalty to any government, is a gross misuse of Paul’s instructions.

Thank you for reading!

If this series has been helpful, please let me know what you think or share this article with someone who needs it.

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This passage is a touchy subject, especially with its opening, “submit to the governing authorities” line that leaves Christians with a lot of questions.

This text also has a checkered past, being used by the Nazi party to endorse totalitarian rule and in apartheid South Africa. It is not without its controversy!

In this series, I hope to shed some light on what Paul is trying to do here as well as point out some modern assumptions that get imported into the text that make it harder to understand.

May 2 - I shared a little background and my own motivation for writing this series.

May 16 - For you Greek nerds, this is when we will get into the nitty-gritty of the text itself.

May 30 - I’ll offer some contextual considerations and my own comments for helpful interpretation

In addition to the actual text of the essay I wrote, you will see addendums at the end of each part, which include some added elements I did not have space to discuss in the original paper.

Welcome to Part 2, where we will analyze the Greek text itself with a few New Testament scholars as companions.

First, I want to say that the questions we have deeply inform how we interpret scripture.

In Part 1, I discussed the background of Paul’s letter to the Roman church. I especially wanted to bring to attention the social location from which he was writing.

Paul’s social location and relationship to these readers and the wider Greco-Roman world meant he had a particular set of motivations and questions he was answering in his writing.

This means that the primary concerns and questions we bring to the text may not be the primary concerns that Paul and his readers brought to the text.

So, go read Part 1 if you have not done so, and ask, ‘What kind of questions did Paul want to answer?’ as we approach today’s entry.

Introduction

Following a robust description of all that has occurred because of God’s incursion into history in and through Jesus Christ,1 the latter half of Paul’s letter will turn to the outworkings of the Christ Event for the Christian community, calling them to “be transformed” (12:2) in ways that will change all categories of living together in the world. Categories that included how they related to government authorities.

Beverly Gaventa notes the importance of the structure of this section, beginning with the imperative in 13:1, followed by supporting material in 13:1b-4, before repeating the imperative in 13:5.

This, she contends, sets up the actual Christ-shaped behavior with which Paul is motivated in 13:6-7.2

Because of the abrupt nature of the beginning of these verses, at times it has been suggested that 13:1-7 is an “interpolation” into Paul’s greater argument.3 However, this argument fails to account for the fact that there are no manuscripts that lack 13:1-7.4

Conversely, Joseph Fitzmyer argues that it fits quite well with the preceding instructions,5 and James Dunn understands this as the entire point of the surrounding text, going further to say that the church’s newfound reality in Christ requires a reframing of their relationship with governing authorities.6

13:1-2

^13:1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except by God’s appointment, and the authorities that exist have been instituted by God. ^13:2 So the person who resists such authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will incur judgment (NET)

While addressing Christians, Paul’s appeal to “everyone” describes the responsibility of all to live appropriately within the social order to which all, ruler and ruled, must submit.7

Fitzmyer sees “submit” (hypotassō) as an expression of acknowledgement that it is God who is in charge and ultimately the one to whom the church owes their obedience and submission, however society is ordered.8

Dunn notes that some have tried to diminish the strength of “submit” but in doing so, “import too much theological freight” into the Greek. However, he recognizes that Paul will limit the extent of the submission by his following words.9

Michael Gorman offers “submission” as distinct from “obedience”,10 yet Gaventa points out that “while the verb hypotassō is distinct from the verb for obedience…submission very often implies obedience.” (See the “appendix” at the end for more on submit/hypotassō)

Gaventa clarifies this statement in relation to the rest of the passage, noting that “it is God who puts the authorities in place,”11 implying there is a limit to how much God’s people submit to the authority in question.

This is consistent with Paul’s earlier example of Pharaoh in Romans 9:17: an unjust ruler who is resisted by God’s people and is used for God’s own purposes.12

“Authorities” (“Exousia”) is not used here of spiritual powers as Paul does elsewhere, but of human authorities.

Many scholars have refuted claims to the contrary,13 noting here that it is a very generic term not used as an official title nor synonymous with government.14 Rebelling (to whatever extent that would be inappropriate in Paul’s mind) against “exousia” is a direct violation of how God has ordered the present society.

13:3-5

^13:3 (for rulers cause no fear for good conduct but for bad). Do you desire not to fear authority? Do good and you will receive its commendation, ^13:4 for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be in fear, for it does not bear the sword in vain. It is God’s servant to administer retribution on the wrongdoer. ^13:5 Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of the wrath of the authorities but also because of your conscience. (NET)

“For” (“Gar”) implies continuation of the previous statements.15 Paul is still defining his terms here and has not yet provided instruction.

Two arguments are intertwined in these verses.

First, God put these authorities in place as God has done throughout history.

Second, not submitting to authorities leads to “fearful consequences.”16

To the first argument, Fitzmyer translates 13:4 as “he is God’s servant working for you,” which stresses these are delegated authorities accountable ultimately to God and that their expected role in society is for the common good.17

This means God’s definition of the common good, not the governing authorities. In light of this, the use of “if one does what is ‘wrong’” is generic language simply implying “doing wrong” in a way that harms the common good.18

To the second argument, regarding consequences to this type of wrongdoing, Paul reminds the church that the authorities “bear the sword” (13:4). Esau McCaulley describes this as a reference to police enforcement (though not in the modern sense) particularly to aid in the collection of taxes from those who lived in Rome.19

Similarly, Gorman states that this passage is referring to an ancient notion of policing and not “a blanket endorsement of any state violence.” Gorman argues that the point was to provide a warning of something that was all too real for these inhabitants of Rome: if they did not pay their taxes, they should be worried.20

Even, Origen in the 2nd/3rd century explains simply that, even though Christ is their Lord and everything has changed, if they were to act as though they owed no tax and did not need to give respect or honor to authorities beyond the church, the secular authorities would understandably “turn against them.”21

Thus, Paul encourages them not only to avoid “wrath” but keep a “clear conscience.” By appealing to conscience, Paul implies that the common good should be sought out by moral individuals as well as governing authorities.22

13:6-7

^13:6 For this reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants devoted to governing. ^13:7 Pay everyone what is owed: taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. (NET)

This is the purpose and climax of the argument, not simply illustrative of Paul’s point.23 Up to this point, no specific kind of behavior has been described that would cause things to go well or badly for the members of the church.24

These “servants” are “of God” and are working hard to serve, according to Paul, and he is concerned that taxes be paid in light of this.25 Therefore, various types of taxes, honor, and respect should be given to all to whom they are owed.

Concluding Analysis

In addition to the questions of social location discussed in Part 1, interpretation is further affected by the meaning of the words and the construction of this section.

Though I have not been exhaustive with every word in 13:1-7, I’ve tried to target the “hotspots” that have been responsible for most of the use and misuse of this text. Of particular note, “submit” and “authorities” are particularly important.

I am convinced by Dunn and Gaventa, we cannot ignore the reality of “submit” by trying to make it less than it is. But at the same time, as Gaventa points out, the submission is couched in the context of ultimate submission to God. (See addendum for more on this.)

Similarly, the word “authority” cannot have more or less made of it than it is. (More on this coming in Part 3). The Greek text here is a generic word, not connected to any official role.

The nature of who Paul is describing submission should be given to become clear in the final section of his argument in vv. 6-7. Namely, that the church should submit to those who are collecting taxes by paying their taxes.

How one constructs this passage as a whole is extremely important for landing at this conclusion. I have used Gaventa’s framework for how this argument works, but she is not alone in seeing this entire section as a long explanation building up to the simple command “pay your taxes.”

Addendum - Alternative Translation for “Submit”?

A lot has been made of the word “submit” in the scholarship and theological writing. There are a couple of recent articles discussing interesting translation possibilities that I was not able to address in the paper itself.

Bruce Winter and Najeeb Haddad examine the word hypotasso in 1 Peter 2:14-15 and Romans 13:1-7,26 respectively.

To summarize, they claim that the word was used by others, such as Epictetus, in both a positive way (virtue) and a negative way (vice).

When used as a virtue, they argue, one is to “fit in” as best as one can with the surrounding culture and the governing authorities.

When used as a vice, a person who would “hypotassō” is one willing to give blind obedience to a leader.

They argue that both Peter and Paul are appealing to the virtuous sense of the word, wherein one would never blindly obey every instruction of a governing authority, as that obviously would not work in situations where the governing authority was asking you to do something that conflicted with a divinely ordered world.27

While I do not know if changing the language from “submit” to “fit in” is the appropriate move, it does help illustrate that the use of “submit” can only be understood in ultimate obedience to God over every human authority.

Any Greek scholars who want to weigh in on this one, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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