Drift

Mike Leake 2 Comments

…the eagerness with which men engage in political disputes, take which side they may, is unfavorable to a zealous adherence to the gospel. Any mere worldly object, if it become the principal thing which occupies our thoughts and affections, will weaken our attachment to religion; and if once we become cool and indifferent to this, we are in the high road to infidelity. (Andrew Fuller)

Drift is easy.  All it takes is a mild distraction to one thing that is not the glory of God (or at least not looked at through the lens of the glory of God).  Here Fuller is mentioning political engagements.  He could have substituted anything.  Anything that isn’t Jesus that starts taking up our principal thoughts and affections will weaken our attachment to Jesus.  And when this happens we are well on the road to infidelity. 

Notice what the Apostle Paul says to the Corinthians:

For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.  But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 

Anything can quickly become our mistress. 

Jesus wants (deserves!) my highest thoughts and affections.  But there is a myriad of distractions clamoring for the attention of our minds eye.  Many times we turn our eyes to take a peek at lovers less wild.  And yet even in the midst of our harlotry Jesus still shines brighter—drawing, loving, forgiving, staying. 

But I desire to be more faithful.  I want that sincere and pure devotion of which Paul speaks.  I want to have my eyes fixed on Christ and His glory.  I truly do want all that I do to be for the purpose of making Christ the only boast of this generation.  (At least I want to want these things). 

So as to make this more than simply a neat little thought, I think it would be beneficial to come clean and confess those things that take my affections from Jesus. 

Lord, here are a few of the things (some are Your things, good things even) that have lured me away and stolen the heart that belongs to Jesus:

  • Theological questions—an attempt to figure You out instead of simply resting in Jesus and savoring that which You have clearly revealed
  • Life, worry, etc.—trying to put my life together and “serve you” neglecting that “I have nothing that you have not already given you”
  • Drive to be successful in the kingdom—this seems noble, but it is more for pride, selfish ambition, and a residual fear of man (or a need to prove myself worthy)
  • Ministry
  • Writing
  • Reading a ton of books
  • Trying to be palatable in writing, speech, etc. to the detriment of the gospel
  • Fear of Man

May You replace these that have been turned into idols with a firm and fixed devotion to Jesus.  I want the sincere and pure devotion that Paul speaks of.  Give me Jesus…let everything else be only a means to drive me to this greater end! 

Review of On the Verge by Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson

Mike Leake

If I understood the term a little better I may confess that I am what many call a neo-Calvinist. 

That means of course that I love T4G, I have a life-size poster of Mark Dever in my room, I refuse to read approvingly of books unless they have the acceptance of the “big-guns” of Reformed theology on the back, I name my children and pets things like Calvin, Piper, and Jon Jon the Edwards. 

I am also bigoted, closed-minded, and refuse to listen to other expressions of Christianity.  I like to burn things.  Like Servetus.  But I’ll defend “my boys” (the Reformed All-Star Militia otherwise known as RAM) even if I know they are wrong.  I exalt the Bible and the glory of God with my lips but truth be told I read more Piper, Packer, Platt, and the Puritans than I do my Bible. 

Guys like me don’t read books like Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson’s latest offering: On the Verge. 

That is, guys like me don’t read books like that unless God has convicted them deeply about the need to put people, books, ideas, etc. into their life that come from a different perspectives. 

One thing my homeboy J-Newt has taught me is that I should hold my theology with grace…knowing that it’s always possible that I am wrong, and also because chances are I held a faulty theology just three days ago myself.  So I know that I need to be challenged by those different than me—even those with a totally different paradigm and mindset than myself. 

So how did this 9-Marks lovin’, Piper hand-shakin, “neo-Calvinist” read On the Verge? 

Honestly, I read it with great joy.  I learned a ton.  At times I had a hard time putting the book down.  I took several notes.  It challenged my thinking in some areas and there are some aspects of the book that I will try to tweak and put into our local church. 

Difficulties

But I’m a bigot, though, remember?  So that means that I have to offer some critique before I get to the good stuff.  And there were a few things in this book that gave me pause. 

One of the difficulties that I had is that it does seem to follow the typical church growth formula.  If I do X then, of course with prayer and stuff, Y will inevitably happen…do this, get that.  We “neo-Calvinist” (again I’m not really sure who that is or what it means) follow that same formula too.  But ours is different.  We say preach the Word, be faithful in theology, expand peoples views of God and He will bring the results. 

Books like On the Verge tend to add a few things to that equation.  I am not saying they are necessarily wrong but it just causes a “neo-Calvinist” like me to pause.  We can sometimes get so distracted by attempts to “grow the kingdom” that we end up losing the King who promised He’d grow His kingdom. 

Another difficulty I had was the retelling of history.  It’s a somewhat popular retelling—but as Peter Leithart has shown it may not be the most accurate.  Hirsch and Ferguson repeat the common assumption that Christianity started going awry when it institutionalized under Constantine.  My gut wants to agree with them.  But I also felt that Leithart made pretty solid arguments in his book Rethinking Constantine.  The history of movements may not be as black and white as Hirsch/Ferguson would have us believe. 

In the hopes of being a good neo-Calvinist (what doest that mean again?) I have to tell you at least two more negative things.  The first is the language;  Not that they drop the F bomb or anything like that.  It’s more like entering into a conversation half way through.  You are a little lost about the context of some of the things they are discussing.  Oh, and the people in this imaginary conversation are also speaking Martian.  So you not only have to figure out the context of the discussion you have to try to understand what mDNA is, and apostolic genius, and verge-ination, and other words like that.

Perhaps the greatest critique that I would have is that it does not appear to be firmly rooted in Scripture.  There are biblical arguments in a few places.  Some mention is given to Ephesians 4, and there is a good amount of theology about Jesus but it does not seem to be backed up with Scripture.  Of course that’s a shallow critique because things do not have to site Bible verses to be deeply biblical—look at some of the Apostle Paul’s writing. 

Woohoo’s!

There are, then, a few important “pauses” that I have with this book.  But there is also much to consider.  I know that one critique that some other reviews had of this book is that it seemed like a formula to get your church bigger.  Actually that is the opposite of this books intention.  This book is a kingdom-focused book.  It is about growing the kingdom.  It’s fundamental idea is to combine a multiplication of church planting with putting people on mission in every sphere.  To do such a thing will create an “apostolic movement”. 

Given that fundamental point, I read this book with an attempt to an answer a key question: how do you lead people to embrace a more kingdom of Jesus mindset than a “let’s figure out how to make our church big” mindset. 

With that key question in mind I found this book very helpful.  Hirsch and Ferguson move the reader through 4 stages: Imagine, Shift, Innovate, and Move.  Essentially they hope to help leaders dream, put that dream into place, tweak that dream, then begin living it out.  But it’s not just some sort of get a vision statement and then have your people do it. 

Their vision is much broader than that.  Their vision is really that of following God on His mission of transforming the world through the gospel.  Everything that we dream must be tempered by that fundamental mission.  This is, in case you were curious, what mDNA is.  They are the fundamental these-don’t change type of values that every church must have in some way. 

I really hope that people like me do not dismiss this book out of hand.  Hirsch and Ferguson are passionate about thinking theologically.  I think my neo-Calvinist friends (whatever that means) will find quotes like this helpful and intriguing:

While it’s crucial to let the felt-needs and questions of our native culture inform our spirituality, if we aren’t deliberate about thinking theologically and systematically about beliefs, then we hand the systems story of the church over to pop culture, mere pragmatism, or the many other prevailing forces that simply co-opt our thinking and doing.  (152)

That gets a hearty “Amen” from the Piperites in the room! 

Furthermore, there are many practical ideas that real churches are doing to help their people plant churches and be on mission in every sphere.  These are helpful examples and things that many churches can begin to implement. 

Conclusion

For the most part this book is one to think through.  There are questions after every chapter—that could easily be used with a small group to begin visioning and thinking through some of their points.  The greatest benefit of this book will probably be in the conversations that it starts and seeing what the Spirit does through His people as they engage this book through the lens of Scripture. 

This book is probably not written to be New York Times best seller, but simply to get into the hands of a few key people and watch it trickle.  And that is probably okay.  After all there were probably only a few people that held to Copernicus’ theories when he died…and he turned the world on its head…or would you say he set the world in orbit? 

As for me I’m still trying to tweak some things in this book but mostly I’m allowing the many excellent things in this book to tweak me. 

—-

I got this book free from Zondervan in exchange for my review. 

You’ll have to buy the book.  And if you want to do that you can do it here.  ($13.59 is a pretty inexpensive price for this book). 

I Don’t Mean to Alarm You, But…

Mike Leake

If you aren’t already sitting down you may want to when you hear this.  Are you ready for it? 

I don’t mean to alarm you but you are moving really fast right now.  Probably something close to 1,000 miles per hour.  Seriously.  When combining all the factors this is probably a pretty good estimation of how fast you are spinning at the present time.  (And since I’m not good at science type stuff-it’s probably faster).

Why aren’t you freaking out? 

Better question…why don’t you dismiss me as a total loon?  Unless you are reading this blog post in an airplane, spaceship, formula-one race car, or riding on the back of a Pepsi drinking cheetah you probably don’t feel anything even close to 1,000 miles per hour.  So why don’t you simply laugh when those guys in white-coats tell us that we are spinning thousands of miles? 

Let’s face it we don’t feel like we are going thousands of miles but through a pretty solid amount of data we are pretty confident of this estimation…even though we do not feel it.  Even though we may not understand all the math, or don’t know the equations, or haven’t looked from the moon back at the Earth, we trust these white-coated wonders even though our sense perception tells us to believe the opposite. 

Feelings and Reality

I don’t mean to alarm you but you are absolutely secure in the arms of the Father.  The God of the universe knows every hair that is on your head.  (Which of course is an amazing feat for some people and not that impressive for the Homer Simpson’s among us). 

He knows what tomorrow is going to look like.  He knows about that day that is coming (not sure when), that is going to feel like everything is spinning out of control and your world is absolutely crushed.  He will be holding you then too.  His grace will be sufficient. 

Furthermore, if you are in Jesus there is now no condemnation for you.  All of your sin is covered.  Paid in full.  You, believer, will never drink an ounce of the wrath of God.  Why?  Jesus already drank it to the dregs.  You are reconciled to God.  You have peace with God. 

Therefore, God is cool with you.  In fact you are a treasure.  He is restoring the image of God in you.  He is ripping out idols and redeeming you.  You are constantly being changed into His image.  He is working all things together for your greatest good; namely, conformity to Christ. 

But you say.  I don’t feel loved.  I don’t feel like God is changing me.  I don’t feel like things are “under control”.  I don’t feel like everything is cool with God and me.  I don’t feel like I’m free and at peace with Jesus. 

You don’t feel like you are spinning a thousand miles an hour right now either do you? 

But if you are trusting in Jesus then these things are true whether you feel them or not.  They are true even if you aren’t consciously aware of them every second of the day.  (Don’t get me wrong part of the Christian life is living in grace and learning to be conscious of and to actively enjoy all that Christ has already purchased). 

But sometimes we need to tell our feelings to shut up.  We must believe the gospel and at the same time mourn the fact that our feelings are so jaded.  But at the same time we have to remember that the gospel is still true even for those with jaded feelings.

Calvinistic Tension Headaches

Mike Leake 2 Comments

Yep, I just dropped the C word. 

No matter what theological system you follow—or if you take the “I just follow the Bible” route—you will undoubtedly be faced with certain tensions.  Your theology will cause those that differ to say, “yeah, but…” 

At the end of the day there is much in the Christian life that is mystery.  There are many beliefs within Christian doctrine that must be held in tension.  And no theological system is free from these tensions.  Most people are Calvinist, Arminian, Calminian, whatever you want to call them not because they are idiots but because they are convinced from the Scriptures that their “system” is biblical. 

As for me I strongly lean Calvinistic, but I’m not angry or militant about it.  One reason that I lean Calvinistic is because the “yeah, but…” questions that I am faced with tend to be the same ones that the biblical writers had to address.  Paul seems to me to be facing some of the same tensions that Calvinist face today. 

One of the big “yeah, but…” questions that Calvinists have to face concerns the justice of God.  Would it be just for God to choose someone and not another?  Paul raises this tension in Romans 9:

“Is there injustice on God’s part”? 

I wish he would have answered that one.  He simply says “of course not”, and then proceeds to open another can of worms… “[God] has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.” 

This second can of worms opens up another tension question that Calvinist often are faced with:

If God has mercy on whoever he wills, and hardens whoever he desires, then “why does he still find fault”?  In other words how can God still say that somebody is guilty if He is the one that dispenses mercy and He is the one that hardens?  Good question. 

Again I wish that Paul would have answered it more fully.  But he doesn’t he mostly rebukes the “person” for asking such a question.  Oops, maybe I shouldn’t have said “good question” earlier.  God is God and we are not. 

I realize this doesn’t answer a million of the questions that you and I have about the relationship between human freedom and divine sovereignty.  In fact even though I think I have a decent grasp on the relationship I probably do not.  It’s probably way more complex (or perhaps more simple) than I even think. 

But at the end of the day I lean Calvinistic because it causes some of the same headache questions that seem to be raised by the biblical authors themselves.  Undoubtedly, my Arminian, Calminian, and my “I just believe the Bible” friends will have plenty of “yeah, but” questions.  And that’s cool because I have them too.