What If Toto IS in Kansas?

Mike Leake

I am in the wonderful position of receiving a ton of free books from publishers in exchange for a review.  Lately I have read, or at least skimmed, a good number of books on missions in a “post-Christian” world.  Many of these books are written by guys that are ministering in a bigger city.  They are encouraging us to stop trying to do ministry as if we still live in a “Christian” world.  Just as Dorothy woke up in Oz and discovered that she wasn’t in Kansas anymore, so also churches need to wake up and realize “we aren’t in Kansas anymore”. 

That is really good advice.  Helpful.  Mostly…

Unless you actually do live in Kansas*.  If that is the case such advice is really not helpful because you are being taught how to do ministry for postmodern people living in New York City and not a dairy farmer mending fences.  “Stop doing ministry like you live in Kansas”, is bad advice to some guy that is actually living in Kansas. 

Honestly, this is why I have found many of the modern books on missiology mostly unhelpful.  Very rarely do they offer even a paradigm that I am able to grab and say, “yep, that’d work in my city…I mean town…I mean village”.  If I really want to make use of the ideas I have to do some serious work to adapt them.  Of course this is okay, but if I’m doing so much work perhaps I should cross their name off the front cover and pencil in my own. 

The best of these books will acknowledge that they are not intended to be cookie-cutter solutions but to give principles to apply to your own setting.  The very best of these books will go one step further and actually help you figure out principles to apply in your own setting.  (Ed Stetzer’s Breaking the Missional Code is helpful in this regard).  Unfortunately, a vast majority of them do not offer such encouragement. 

A Black and White Kansas or a Colored Oz

The town in which I minister is weird.  It is largely German Catholic.  Yet those numbers are diminishing.  This is brought on not only by the growing ecumenical Protestant influence but also the growing atheistic population.  Jasper is beginning to feel a little more like a city.  Yet, even still it is surrounded not by suburbs but farmland and other rural communities. 

Jasper, Indiana is not largely a post-Christian community.  It is mostly a culture inundated with what Christian Smith calls a moralistic therapeutic deism.  It is a sentimental, almost folkish, version of Christianity.  But for the most part people still have their address as “Kansas”.  In other words if I went knocking on every door in our neighborhood most people would self-identify as Catholic/Christian. 

Therefore, if our church began treating Jasper, IN like Seattle, WA we would miss the boat.  Seattle, WA is probably rightly labeled “post-Christian”.  The Jasper, Indiana’s of the world are not quite there yet.  (Certainly not the New London, Missouri’s where I ministered before).  This is not to deny that the lure of the city is not present.  The city influences television, music, and many other things that rural people devour on a daily basis.  We are not immune to the post-Christian world of the city.  Yet, we are not there yet nor can we begin ministering as if we are. 

Therein lies my main concern.  Many ministers are being told “you are doing it all wrong by thinking you still live in Kansas”.  They are told that they need to start ministering to the post-Christian world in which they live.  And indeed they need to be prepared for that and that ministry to the city needs to be in their repertoire.  But if they are still living in Kansas then they need to minister like they are in Kansas. 

Listen, if we devote our times to studying the human heart through doing battle with our own we’ll be equipped to exegete any culture.  If we devote our time to knowing the Christ that transcends all cultures we will learn to lovingly proclaim him to people of any culture.  This is not to say there is no value in really attempting to understand the perspective that our neighbors are coming from.  But isn’t that just being a good neighbor and a good listener? 

This may seem overly simplistic but I am increasingly convinced that if we simply concern ourselves with truly loving people and being enamored with Jesus we’ll be able to minister in the black and white world of Kansas and the technicolored world of Oz. 

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*If you really do live in Kansas I’d offer my condolences. But I will not, because you’d never read them, since I doubt you have the internet yet. 

Preach With the Seamstress in Mind

Mike Leake

I am a fan of NBC’s Parks and Recreation.  Towards the end of last season the main character, Leslie Knope, was running for councilwoman.  In one particular episode Leslie goes bowling to win votes, particularly the vote of a guy named Derek that said he would not vote for her because she “doesn’t look like someone who bowls”.  Leslie bends over backwards to get this guys vote.  In fact she ignores every other vote in the bowling alley in the hopes of winning the vote that seems to be forbidden. 

As I think about this episode I cannot help but wonder if we preachers might be guilty of this on occasion.  Charles Spurgeon warned against something similar in his classic work Lectures to My Students.  Spurgeon reminds young preachers to “not make minor doctrines main points” as well as to “not paint the details of the background of the gospel picture with the same heavy brush as the great objects in the foreground of it”. 

I know that on occasion I have been guilty of doing this very thing.  It can be tempting to spend a majority of your sermon trying to win over that guy that you know disagrees with your point.  You become like Leslie Knope and have tunnel vision.  Your attempting to win over those in the room that hold a contrary position on a minor point and so you spend an inordinate amount of time parsing secondary doctrinal issues. 

Spurgeon reminds the preacher to keep the “godly widow woman, with seven children to support by her needle” in mind when you preach:

…if you preach to her on the faithfulness of God to his people, she will be cheered and helped in the battle of life; but difficult questions will perplex her or send her to sleep. 

Spurgeon is not saying that we ought never to preach on things that may not be of immediate practical importance to the needle-worker.  But he is saying that the greatest force of our preaching ought to be on announcing the good news of the gospel and not wading through, or creating, a theological quagmire. 

Preacher, preach with the seamstress in mind and don’t worry so much about winning theological arguments from the pulpit. 

Where is Jesus in Judges 19?

Mike Leake

I find myself reading through Judges 19 this morning and my heart absolutely breaking.  The story is one of the inhospitality and wickedness of the men of Gibeah.  Just as in the story of Sodom the men of the city desire to have sexual relations with a male visitor of the city.  Instead of allowing them to devour his guest, the Levite, the hospitable sojourner throws out the Levites concubine and “they knew her and abused her all night until the morning”.

The story ends with dead concubine grasping at the threshold of her masters door.  Actually, though her life ends there her story does not.  This Levite proceeded to take her body and cut it up into twelve pieces—one for each of the tribes of Israel.  This provoked a great civil war against the tribe of Benjamin. 

I cannot read this story without using a little imagination and thinking through the horrors of that night for this concubine.  Just days before she was in her father’s house enjoying his hospitality.  Now she endures the horrors of a world gone bad.  She is the victim of “everyone did what is right in his own eyes”. 

After reading through the story I had a chilling thought.  How would I preach this text?  Even more difficult of a question—how would I preach Christ from this text? 

Where is Jesus in Judges 19?

Nowhere.  And that is the problem. 

The book of Judges is a massive downward spiral of rebellion.  The books major theme is that “there is no king” and so “everyone did what was right in his own eyes”.  Even in Judges 19 we see the sojourner telling these “worthless men” to “violate” and “do with [my virgin daughter and this concubine] what seems good to you”.  Apparently, what seemed good to them was a night of rape and abuse. 

The purpose of Judges is to show how desperately the people needed a king.  Better still, the people  needed a righteous king that would lead people into true worship of Yahweh.  The immediate context of Judges 19 shows that the people have committed horrible religious apostasy.  This is reflected not only in this cruel case of rape but also in the lack of hospitality.  God created man to live in a loving community that reflected the Trinitarian unity.  This is the exact opposite of that.  Rather than experiencing the self-sacrificial love of the Trinity–what Tim Savage calls a “perpetual flow of boundless affection”–people in the book of Judges were self-centered and did what they figured would benefit themselves. 

Judges shows what happens when man is left to do what is right in his own eyes.  As the book of Judges closes the reader is left longing for this righteous king.  Where is the King?!?! 

We know through the rest of the Old Testament that the Israelites were eventually led by kings.  Some of them righteous and some of them worthless.  David was the best king that was a man after God’s own heart.  But even David had failures.  David was but a pale image of the glory that would be found in one of his sons; namely, King Jesus. 

Dominated by the Empty Chair

In his book, Reforming Marriage, Douglas Wilson makes the argument that the husband finds himself in “inescapable leadership”:

He cannot successfully refuse to lead. If he attempts to abdicate in some way, he may, through his rebellion, lead poorly. But no matter what he does, or where he goes, he does so as the head of his wife.

Some homes are “dominated by the empty chair at the table”.  In the same way Christ holds a position in the Scriptures of “inescapable leadership”.  Please do not read more into my point than I am attempting to make.  What I am saying is that everything in the Scriptures are about him.  When you see him present in the Gospels it is obviously about Jesus.  But even in places like Judges 19 the passage is dominated by the “empty chair”.*

The text screams out for rescue.  The dead concubine, with her hand grasping the threshold, cries out for rescue as well as justice.  That will not come through an earthly king.  Only when Christ the King comes will Judges 19 find an answer.  For he is ushering in a kingdom not only of perfect community (marked by hospitality) but also a kingdom that protects and cares for women instead of throwing them into the hands of worthless men. 

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*I am not for one second attempting to say that Christ has some how abdicated his leadership and that he is as a deadbeat father or husband.  I am only using the power of the “empty chair” to show how even in his absence the Lord Jesus dominates the Scriptures.

Today in Blogworld 10.29.12

Mike Leake

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