Common Grounds Online

J.D. Greear, Pastor of Summit Church, on their Calvinistic (or not?) theology

J.D. Greear is the Pastor of Summit Church in the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina. He has written a post about the theology of their church, which some find confusing.

Excerpt:

"Pastor J.D., are you a Calvinist?"

I get this question about once a week. To be honest, I’m actually grateful that I get it, because I hope I preach in such a way that makes people ask… i.e. that I wrestle with the glory of God and the awesomeness of the Gospel to such an extent that some would infer that I’m a Calvinist, and then that I plead for people to come to Jesus in a way that makes people think I think it’s all up to my ministry, which would imply that I am not.

I am not going to answer that question fully in this blog, but hopefully just say a few things that I think Gospel-loving Christians can all agree on.

Often Calvinists will say that Calvinism is the essence of the Gospel (see Piper, Sproul, Spurgeon, etc). Unfortunately, that statement often gets translated to mean that the particulars of the 5 points are the essence of the Gospel, which they clearly are not. But I don’t think that’s what those guys mean. What they mean is that Calvinism gets at the heart of the Gospel.

PAUL YANOSY: MID-STREAM COMFORT?

I have no doubt God has a sense of humor.  Mid-stream in our start-up enterprise, I spent the early part of the week with my colleagues / friends in Washington, D.C., drinking too much coffee and hashing through the business plan.  Tuesday morning we decided to open with prayer and a Psalm.  Still waiting for the caffeine to kick in, I listened for the familiar rhythm: situation is awful / I cried out to God / God delivered me / so everyone else put your hope in God too. 

Instead, the Psalm (chosen at random) was Psalm 88.  As any Bible trivia master knows (and as I now know), Psalm 88 is the only Psalm that starts down and ends down.  Unlucky: 

1 O LORD, the God who saves me,
       day and night I cry out before you.

 2 May my prayer come before you;
       turn your ear to my cry.

 3 For my soul is full of trouble
       and my life draws near the grave.

 4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
       I am like a man without strength.

 5 I am set apart with the dead,
       like the slain who lie in the grave,
       whom you remember no more,
       who are cut off from your care.

 6 You have put me in the lowest pit,
       in the darkest depths.

 7 Your wrath lies heavily upon me;
       you have overwhelmed me with all your waves

 8 You have taken from me my closest friends
       and have made me repulsive to them.
       I am confined and cannot escape;

 9 my eyes are dim with grief.
       I call to you, O LORD, every day;
       I spread out my hands to you.

 10 Do you show your wonders to the dead?
       Do those who are dead rise up and praise you?
 11 Is your love declared in the grave,
       your faithfulness in Destruction?

 12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
       or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

 13 But I cry to you for help, O LORD;
       in the morning my prayer comes before you.

 14 Why, O LORD, do you reject me
       and hide your face from me?

 15 From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death;
       I have suffered your terrors and am in despair.

 16 Your wrath has swept over me;
       your terrors have destroyed me.

 17 All day long they surround me like a flood;
       they have completely engulfed me.

 18 You have taken my companions and loved ones from me;
       the darkness is my closest friend.

Alex Sims, The Preacher and the IRS Agent

 A Preacher and an IRS Agent both had a flight from Denver to DC. They were flying Southwest Airlines, which uses open seating: passengers board and choose their seats in the order they check in.

The Preacher was attending a conference in DC entitled Pastoral Evangelism in a Postmodern World. He was one of the first people to enter the plane. As he boarded, he passed a nursing mother and thought to himself, "I'm glad I checked in early." (In reality, his assistant had checked him in.) The Preacher walked to the back of the plane because he knew the front was more likely to fill up. He settled on a window seat a few rows from the back, but not too close to the lavatory because that also gets crowded. He placed his briefcase across the middle seat in the hopes that it would deter anyone from sitting there. As he saw the plane start to fill up, he knew someone would be sitting on his row, so he pulled out his iPod to signal: I'm not interested in chatting. After all, he had a speech at the conference to prepare for, and it wasn't like he was going to develop a meaningful relationship on a three hour flight. By the time a middle-aged woman sat in the aisle seat on his row, he had his earphones in. As he scrolled through the playlists on his iPod, he felt some satisfaction in how much he'd kept in touch culturally. He picked a playlist with Sufjan Stevens, U2, Bon Iver, and some other indy artists. Yes, he was hip, cutting-edge, relevant. The Preacher then leaned back his seat and polished up his speech.

The IRS Agent was attending a conference in DC on new tax rules for the upcoming fiscal year. The Agency had closed some loopholes, and they were training their agents to crack down on audits this year. By the time he boarded the plane, it was pretty full. Between researching March Madness and filling out bureaucratic paperwork, he hadn't remembered to check in online. He took the first open seat he saw, which was a middle seat between the nursing mother and an overweight man. The IRS Agent was a pretty big guy, so squeezing in was tough. He crammed his briefcase underneath the seat in front of him. He had planned to review some new tax rules, but with no elbow room he decided that would be too much of a pain. He was silent at first because he felt intruding and awkward striking up a conversation with strangers. But after take-off, he got bored and turned to the heavy guy next to him and asked, "What do you think about the Broncos this year?" By the time the flight descended onto DC, they'd determined that Jay Cutler would win the 2009 MVP.

Which man better understood the Gospel?

Feasting for Lent

I did not grow up observing Lent, and my first impressions of the observance came mostly from people who seemed to care more about abstaining from chocolate and TV than seeking God. I figured that Lent was either a colossal waste of spiritual time or there was something more behind the curtain of this often misunderstood Christian practice.

I know I need a primer for Lent. Maybe you do too.

Mac Richard, "IT" is the One Thing

One night after dinner recently, my wife Julie told Emily (our 8th grade daughter) to go shower, get ready for school and go to bed.  As Emily turned to heed her mother's instructions, she remembered a story that she had been holding since school got out and just had to tell us.  It looked like she had been plugged in as she lit up to begin her story.

Now, Emily frequently has stories that well up from within her and have to come out immediately.  She has a condition we've lovingly diagnosed as rambling reflux.  It's like acid reflux, only verbal.  And, it can go on for a while, which is great if you have a while.  It's part of why we love her.

On this particular night, before she could even get the first sentence out, Julie saw the tell-tale signs of rambling reflux, and stopped her cold in her tracks.  Julie said, "Uh-uh-I can't hear you because you're supposed to be heading toward the shower."

Emily said, "OK, in just a minute, I'll go, but I have to tell you this one thing..." 

"No.  I can't wait to hear that one thing after you're clean and ready for school in the morning."

"No, but seriously, you're gonna love this..."

At which point, I said, "Emily - it's over until breakfast in the morning.  Good night."

She replied, "OK...you'll just have to wonder what I would've told you."

I think a lot of us who go by the name Christ-follower could say the same thing to the people we know who are not yet Christ-followers.  We get to know them.  We work with them, coach little league, go to parents' night, work out around them, fish with them, hunt, go to the same weddings and funerals. But, too many times, the relationship never finds the focus in the one thing that Jesus left us to do.

Everyone who has stepped over the line of faith in Christ has a story to tell. And, like Emily, it is a story that should be welling up within us, like a can of Coke that's been shaken up and popped open.

When you explore the mission and the miracle of the church, the Bride of Christ, there's one thing that separates the church from every other organization, entity, club, team, family, business, school, or hospital in the world.  It's the reason we exist.  It's the reason we're still here on this earth after receiving the grace and forgiveness of God. It is leading other people to Christ.

Leading people to Christ changes everything in your life as a Christ-follower.  Look at 2 Corinthians 5:14-17...

        For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:14-17

It is the one thing that we are all compelled to do. It is the one thing that separates us from every other non-profit on the planet. It is the one thing that transcends missional, house, purpose-driven, seeker-sensitive, traditional, contemporary and everything-else churches. It is the Gospel. It is my story of Christ intervening in my life. It is the only thing that matters.

How many people in our lives are wondering?

            

Tonya Riggle, A New...Swing

  One day a number of years ago, I watched my son drag out rope and a piece of wood from the garage. I knew he had begun yet another inventive project. Thank goodness this one was more simple than the 6 foot catapult we still have in the driveway. (It’s good to know that should a medieval-style battle break out, we are prepared.) In a jiffy, he was proudly displaying a classic tree swing in the front yard. The single, thick slat was noosed at each end by a white rope. Each side of the tether stretched up over a tall pine limb and out to anchor on a nearby crepe myrtle. It was perfect. You know what happened next, it wasn’t long before the neighborhood kids were pumping and flying right outside my window.

Gary Peil, Grow Dinosaur

A couple of weeks ago, my five-year-old son Joshua got to pick a toy out of the “treasure box” at his school. The “treasure box” was filled with all kinds of novelties and toys from the dollar store. After much deliberation he make his choice: Grow Dinosaur. Grow Dinosaur was a three-inch long hard foam dinosaur that looked like a regular toy animal. However, there was something that made grow dinosaur special. If you soaked the dinosaur in water it would grow 600%. A three-inch toy would transform into a dinosaur that was almost a foot long.

Mark Driscoll on CNN

Like i said two weeks ago, no one has more fun than Mark Driscoll.

Les Newsom, Faith and Receiving

 My impression is that faithful readers of Common Grounds Online do not suffer from any want of critique from the more fundamentalistic strains of evangelicalism still dominating the religious experience of so many in America today. For most of us, the pendulum is still swinging quite in the opposite direction without too much help, thank you very much. Yet a recent Saturday morning children’s devotional I attended warrants some comment.

Halftime at my 9-year-old daughter’s basketball league is given to “devotional time,” due to the fact, I assume, that she plays in a church league. The speaker opened his message by holding a pen out in the palm of his hand. “Who would like to have this pen? It’s a free pen and anyone who wants it this morning can have it.” It took a minute or so before someone mercifully played along and walked up to take the free pen.

“You see,” he explained, “that’s exactly what the Gospel is. It’s free and it’s available. But you don’t have it until you receive it. And once you’ve received it, you need to use it.”

Again, my intention is not to nitpick what was likely a kindly volunteer at a simply country church function. Rather, the comment revived my recent quest to identify the nature and practice of this most fundamental of Christian acts: believing. The message of the Gospel, we were told growing up, was not activated in the life until it was “received” and “believed.”

My question for the gentleman speaker last weekend is simply this: when presented in this way, how do you avoid making faith meritorious? The gift of the Gospel exists, as it were, outside of me prior to my conversion. What releases the effects of that gift into my life is the simple act of “receiving and believing.” So then how is faith not a condition of salvation? How is salvation “free” if it costs me an act of reception in order to enjoy its effects?

Transition and Obey by Judy Nelson

Transitions are tough. I haven’t been through many (besides moving to college, first job, buying a home) until last fall, when I got that sense from the Lord that “I’m done here.” “Here” meaning running a magazine, having started there 18 years prior. Eighteen years in the same place, working with some of my colleagues for that many years, day in and day out.

(I have often been grateful for the ironing sharpening iron effect of the same people for an extended time, especially since I am unmarried. It would have been much easier to move around a bit, not enough to know or face some of the selfishness that takes time and pressure to be uncovered.)

 This time last year I had finished a 40-day fast, ending on my 40^th birthday. I was asking the Lord to make the second half of my life more fruitful than the first. Changing jobs was not really on my radar screen as an answer to that prayer; I wouldn’t have chosen it for myself, let’s say.

 But there I was last fall with the “done” knowing--the real knowing--not just the wondering. I felt new affection and respect for Abraham, who was called by God to “the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1), since I did not know my next move. My former transitions, as I recalled them, had been difficult but built on progressive “firsts” and future-minded. Now I was 40 and told to be done. It felt like an interruption or halt, not a progression.

 F.B. Myer’s book on Abraham became a reacquainted old friend. In 1994, I wrote in it prayers that today seem bold and scary, begging God to do whatever it takes to make me all His. Now I know how He does that, by letting dreams die, and schemes miscarry, income dwindle and children rebel (page 24). So, to the great English Pastor Meyer and Abraham I returned.

 Meyer reminded me that Abraham, by faith, obeyed (Hebrews 11:8). So I obeyed. I resigned my position without knowing what was ahead. Meyer reminded me that God’s call may not be specific, but it always has a promise, expressed or understood. “Divine commands hide promises in their heart,” he wrote.  For example:

Command: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and [promise] you shall be saved.

Command: Sell what you have and give to the poor, and [promise] you will have treasure in heaven.

Command: Be ye separate, and [promise] I will receive you and be a Father to you.

Command: Leave father and mother, houses and land, and [promise] you will have hundredfold here and everlasting beyond.

Perhaps you are being commanded to go to a place you know not of (or asked to stay in place you’d rather leave).  Perhaps you’re lonely and wandering. Take heart from our forbears Abraham and F.B. Meyer (and Elijah, Amos, Peter and Matthew).

 “Let nothing hinder your obedience; strike your tents, and follow where the God of glory beckons; and that word ‘come,’ understand that He is moving on in front, and if that you would have His companionship, you must follow.”