Borrowed Light

Here are six things that we can pray that God always answers.

Five Key Steps to Reach and Retain Guests

I wonder if in our emphasis to be “go and tell” instead of “come and see” if we’ve forgotten a basic idea—inviting someone to church.

Don’t Put Your Seniors Out to Pasture

Amen!

It’s Time to Emancipate our Theology from Western Culture

All theology is contextual, perhaps we should consider how our western culture impacts our theology.

When Your Partner Is Down and Can’t Get Up

Here are ten thoughts for how to bless your partner when they are battling depression (or other mental health issues).

28 Non-Numerical Signs of A Healthy Church

These are helpful signs to consider.

A Historian’s Five Tips on Writing

The second one is an interesting one, and something I try to do.

Sexual Assault and the Scandal of Repentance

“So, if the world is shocked that we still believe in sin, let the world be even more shocked that we still believe in repentance, forgiveness, and restoration.” Amen!

Is Biblicism Bad? That’s a helpful question:

Learning the Language of Lament (Part One)

November 27, 2017Mike Leake 4 Comments

Have you read the headlines today? I’m certain they are mostly negative. I doubt the headline story was about a faithful husband who put in a good day of work, came home kissed his wife, and had an enjoyable evening with his family. There won’t be a feature story about the stay at home mom who knocked it out of the park homeschooling her kids, engaged in a good Bible study, and got the house in order for company this week.

You won’t read those stories. Of course, you might read a story about how a local pastor was accused of misogyny and gender stereotyping for writing an article and having the husband at work and the wife at home getting the house in order. And that’s because we are trained to spot flaws and try to find things to take swipes at. It couldn’t just be that it’s a reflection of that pastors actual day and that he doesn’t intend to make any comment on gender roles.

I agree with David Murray when he says, “our educational, political, and business culture rewards negativity experts, those who can pick out a single negative in a sea of positive” (Murray, 25). Our culture is bent towards complaining and grumbling. But this is not a new problem. Apparently it was rampant in Paul’s day as well when he encouraged the Philippians to “do all things without complaining and grumbling” because the result would be that they “shine like stars”. The only way you shine by not grumbling is if you are surrounded by grumblers.

It is true, we are trained to find problems when they aren’t there. It is also true that there are truly difficult things we experience. Yet even in these times, we are commanded to not complain or grumble. Grumbling isn’t defined as griping about insignificant stuff. You can be guilty of grumbling about cancer just as you can be guilty of grumbling about gas prices.

Ultimately, we grumble because of our hearts. But I’m convinced we are prone to grumble because it is the only language we know. Because we have not been taught the biblical language of suffering we resort to the language of the world; namely, complaining and grumbling. Yet, God has graciously given us a language we can employ whenever we our days are dark.

This is the language of lament. And as Christopher Wright has said, it is seriously neglected in our churches:

…the language of lament is seriously neglected in the church. Many Christians seem to feel that somehow it can’t be right to complain to God in the context of corporate worship when we should all feel happy. There is an implicit pressure to stifle our real feelings because we are urged, by pious merchants of emotional denial, that we ought to have “faith” (as if the moaning psalmists didn’t). So we end up giving external voice to pretended emotions we do not really feel, while hiding the real emotions we are struggling with deep inside. Going to worship can become an exercise in pretence and concealment, neither of which can possibly be conducive for a real encounter with God. So, in reaction to some appalling disaster or tragedy, rather than cry out our true feelings to God, we prefer other ways of responding to it. –(Christopher J.H. Wright, The God I Don’t Understand, 52)

These are the words God has given us for times when we suffer. If we do not know this language, or fail to use it, we will default to the worlds posture of grumbling and complaining. My goal for the next few days is to teach on the language of lament. I want to help us recover this language within our churches.

To be continued…

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Photo source: here

That Time I Was a Minnesota Twins Fan

November 24, 2017Mike Leake 1 Comment

The last week of the 2014 MLB season was an exciting one for me. Going into the last week of the season I knew that my beloved KC Royals could either be out of the playoffs, win the division, get a wild-card road game, or get a wild-card home game. In order to win the division the Royals had to sweep the lowly White Sox and the even more dismal Minnesota Twins had to sweep the Tigers.

Normally I’m not a fan of the Twins. They have been terrible killers of the Royals for decades. But on this weekend I cheered for them. Now I’ll still cheer for the Twins over the Tigers any day. My loathe relationship with the Tigers means that I’m always favoring the other team. However, this makes me far from a fan of the Minnesota Twins. I’m a Royals fan.

The point I’m trying to illustrate here is that you can be “on the same team” with someone for a moment without actually being on the same team with them. I can cheer for the Twins for a weekend without needing to buy a t-shirt and seasons tickets. I’m illustrating this point because our inability to make this distinction in the political realm is absolutely deadly to our witness for the gospel.

I’m reluctant to give a specific example of this because I don’t want to get side-tracked on the specifics. But I think a specific example will help me make the argument so I proceed with caution. I’ve sat on this article for about a month now, sometimes I like to do that just to make sure I’m not caught up in the heat of the moment. But I believe this still needs to be said.

On Tuesday afternoon Missouri governor, Eric Greitens, gave an address to the messengers of the Missouri Baptist Convention. In this particular speech, to a rousing applause, Greitens called on us to join him in the mission. He promised his support to people of faith. He wanted us to know that we have a friend in the Governor.

I’m happy to have a governor who is pro-life and who is pursuing pro-life causes. I’m happy to have a governor stand with people of faith and fight for our religious liberty. I’m even fine with him calling on us to help him make Missouri a better place to live. We can gladly join him on this mission.

But we can only do so in the way that I followed the Twins that weekend a couple years ago. Eric Greitens is not a follower of Jesus Christ. We are with him on issues of abortion and the sanctity of life. We can even be with him on other issues as it concerns making Missouri a better place to live. But at the end of the day our mission is different.

I’m writing this because of all the comments I heard after Greitens’ speech. One woman was overjoyed that we had such a “man of God” as our governor. But according to Scripture he is not a man of God. He is one who is actively suppressing the truth and rejecting Jesus the Messiah. People are not brought into a relationship with God, nor to be considered a man of God, simply by agreeing with us on moral issues. We can love Eric Greitens, we can pray for him, we can even join with him in pro-life causes, but we do disservice to the gospel when we assume pro-life equals gospel-fidelity.

I fear that we are often dangerously close to giving only lip-service to the power of the gospel. Do we really believe that the local church is the power that God will use to bring transformation? Do we believe that even if all the world was against us and we didn’t have a friend in the governor that we could still continue on unabated in our central mission?

If you had thirty local church pastors who were on fire for Jesus in the local church or a handful of powerful politicians on your side, which one would you place your money on for creating change in your world?

If the applause of Missouri Baptists in Raytown is any indication I’m saddened to report that we’ve chosen the latter. At the conclusion of events Monday evening we had about thirty local church pastors, new to the state of Missouri, stand to a tepid applause. Moments later two lawyers received a roaring applause and standing ovation for their work in protecting religious liberty. I think we have that backwards.

I’m not saying any of this to diminish the work of our governor or these faithful lawyers. I thank God for them. And as I said earlier, we can joyously partner with them in gospel causes even though they do not necessarily agree on the gospel. But the power of God is found in the local church. We have one main mission and it doesn’t need a seat in places of power to be accomplished. This is why I wouldn’t give up my pulpit for Sean Hannity or even the President of the United States, unless they were going to faithfully exposit the Scriptures. This is the hope of the nation. Not political power or posturing.

So partner with governors in as much as we can. Cheer for Christian lawyers who defend the cause of religious liberty. But it’s more like cheering for another sports team who can assist your team in getting to the playoffs. To lose that is to be wildly close to selling your birthright for a pot of stew.

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Photo source: here