Further thoughts on the weakness of God and the foolishness of the gospel

I have a dream for Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I hope that in the next year our average weekend worship attendance goes well over 300, and in the next few years exceeds 500.

I also hope that we will give birth to a new mission start at least each year for the foreseeable future.

These are big dreams, and I name them up front not because I'm going to share here in this post the secret of how to make it happen, but simply to share with readers the vision I have in my heart and on my mind as I head to work each day.

The only problem with this dream, minor as it may sound, is that I hope this while simultaneously believing that God's love is made perfect through weakness, and that the foolishness of the gospel we proclaim makes us, the church, odd and vulnerable, and typically on the side of the downtrodden, weak, poor and lonely.

If we are going to invite a larger number of worshippers to our congregation, and if we are going to launch new mission starts that impact Fayetteville and Northwest Arkansas and extend God's mission in the world, it makes all the difference in the world what precisely we are inviting people into, and that we are on God's mission rather than our own. So getting clear on what the weakness of God and the foolishness of the gospel entails is of central importance.

Churches that are growing often emphasize being relevant, or effecting life transformation. Transformed lives is a buzz word. So is impact. I'm not opposed to being relevant, transforming lives, or impact, but I do wonder, to what end? 

So, for example, if we take discipleship to the crucified Nazarene, Jesus, as what relevance, life transformation, and impact looks like, then we need to keep in mind that discipleship entails extending Christ's God-given mission of of shalom (God's peaceful reign) into the world. Disciples of this Jesus can expect "the same kind of opposition Jesus faced, since the reconciling reign of God continues to cross boundaries and challenge the authorities of all who resist it" (Ira Brent Driggers, Jesus' Atoning Life in the Gospel of Mark, Lutheran Forum Winter 2010). 

Perhaps the problem is that I am at risk as a pastor of confusing the dream (grow the church and launch mission starts) with participation in the reign (reconciliation, peace, health, life in Christ). We are only worthy of growing and launching missions when we are on and about Jesus' ministry of reconciliation, participating in Christ's faithfulness to God through our own faithfulness.

What this means, on a practical level, is that if our ministries flow too easily, and grow too quickly, with little resistance from the world--perhaps even without active opposition from it--then we should wonder whether we are truly living as disciples of the man Jesus whose whole public ministry was opposed by much of the world and governing authorities, and was eventually killed for his utter faithfulness to God's mission.

If we do grow, and we are successful, while at the same time causing holy trouble that brings about healing, reconciliation, love made perfect in weakness, then we can know it isn't because of our relevance, or our sweet strategic skills and winning personality, but because God has promised to enliven and empower us in the Spirit when we are about God's business in the world. And that again, that empowerment will be resisted even while it energizes.

I'm intrigued, as I begin ministry here in Arkansas, by how radically different an understanding of Christ's cross is implied by these thoughts. It seems that a dominant understanding of the cross in this (our) culture is that Jesus died on the cross to appease God's wrath. As if God needed Jesus to die, and God sent him there.

However, a more Lutheran, and actually more biblical, understanding of the atonement, will recognize that it was human beings who sent Jesus to the cross, not God. That being said, however, God did send Jesus on a mission that got him killed (Ira Brent Driggers, LF page 13). Jesus dies not to appease the wrath of God, but out of faithfulness to the mission on which he is sent.

The radicalness of this theological claim is that then the cross of Christ becomes something in which we participate as disciples, rather than as simply something done for us to make us right with God. That is no small difference, and it is precisely this difference, and the theology that attends it, that is the reason why I do think God has us on a mission to grow our church in size as well as new births, in order participate in God's weak and foolish reign in this world for the sake of the lost, the weak, and the lonely.

LIRS Ecumenical Advocacy Days

LIRS invites you to build upon your acts of advocacy by joining us at the 10th annual Ecumenical Advocacy Days in Washington, DC from Friday, March 25 to Monday, March28, 2011

Ecumenical Advocacy Days is a conference for hundreds of people of faith (including many Lutherans) to learn, worship and speak out. This year's theme is "Development, Security & Economic Justice: What's Gender Got to Do with It?"

Unfortunately, violence, poverty and other social inequities disproportionately affect women and girls, and prevent them from reaching their full potential and from contributing to social, religious and family life. As migrant and refugee women and children are particularly vulnerable, you will hear from LIRS staff and other experts in a wide variety of workshops and trainings to prepare you to speak boldly. You will also have an opportunity to meet with your members of Congresson Capitol Hill.

Register by February 19th to take advantage of the early-bird special at http://advocacydays.org and stay tuned for more updates! Student scholarships are available; email scholarships@advocacydays.org or visit the website above.

See you in March!

Regards,

P.S.: Join the Interfaith Immigration Coalition on Friday, February 4th at 4PM EST for our secondYoung Leaders' Conference Call. The goal of the call is to help develop a national community of young people of faith across the country who are building stronger, more welcoming communities and advocating for humane immigration reforms. Dial 1-218-936-4700 and enter access code657758.

Valentines Day Special

Two Great Options for Valentines Day!

Marriage Week is a creative campaign that occurs during the Valentine's Day holiday in an attempt to deepen and extend this day in the minds of couples. Instead of greeting card sentiments and candy hearts, couples are encouraged to take advantage of opportunities for honest relationship validation and enrichment. In honor of Marriage Week, Prepare/Enrich have two special offers for couples:

1. Take a Valentine's Couple Checkup during Marriage Week for only $19.95 (regularly $29.95). This special price will be offered from February 7-14 at www.CoupleCheckup.com
2. A Free Webinar for Couples, "Valentines Couple Checkup" offered by Peter Larson, Ph.D. & Ron Deal LMFT. February 13th at 7pm CT. This event is designed to help couples get the most out of their Couple Checkup. Click here to read more and register.
Please help spread the word about these two great opportunities!
“One of the great illusions of our time is that love is self-sustaining. It is not. Love must be fed and nurtured, constantly reviewed. That demands ingenuity and consideration, but first and foremost, it demands time.” —David Mace

Good Shepherd Church of the Augsburg Confession

Today and yesterday in our congregational bible study of 1 Corinthians 1:10-18, I offered an analogy between Paul's complaint that some of the Corinthians were saying, "I follow Paul," or "I follow Apollos," or "I follow Cephas," or even, "I follow Christ," and our own habit today of naming our denomination after a founding person or theological approach (in my case, Lutheran). Of course, not all "Lutheran" churches call themselves Lutheran. See, for example, the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovakia. Nevertheless, many churches name themselves after a person or an approach to church leadership, structure, or theological commitment, and even if they don't, they name themselves by their non-relationship to that approach, as non-denominational or even undenominational. 


The conundrum is deep and longstanding.


The Corinthians text indicates that often, even if we claim to not have a faction or group with which we associate, we still do. Thus he identifies a group claiming "I belong to Christ." Certainly all the Corinthian Christians would have attempted to claim that, while perhaps meaning different things. To make the claim in such a way becomes to divide Christ.


I hear something similar to this today when people say, "I don't have a specific way I read the bible--I just read the bible." Or, "We aren't a denomination, we're just Christian." Such a comment tends to elide and dismiss the historical narrative in which each of us is unavoidably situated, and the hermeneutical worldview that's operative in our lives.


This has left me thinking that perhaps we ought to begin naming ourselves by the confessional documents we use as our guiding hermeneutical approach to Scripture, rather than naming ourselves after Luther himself. An irony of calling ourselves Lutheran is that Luther himself hoped no one would use his name as the title of a movement. He wrote, “I ask that [people] make no reference to my name; let them call themselves Christians, not Lutherans. What is Luther? After all, the teaching is not mine. Neither was I crucified for anyone. St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3, would not allow the Christians to call themselves Pauline or Petrine, but Christian. How then could I—poor stinking maggot-fodder that I am—come to have [people] call the children of Christ by my wretched name? Not so, my dear friends; let us abolish all party names and call ourselves Christians, after him whose teaching we hold” (Luther’s Works, 45:70-71).


Luther’s sentiment on this point is a strong echo of John the Baptist’s declaration, “I am not the Messiah… I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal” (John 1:20, 27). Lutherans exercise a necessary humility about themselves as Lutherans in emulation of John the Baptist and Luther. Instead, “Lutherans exist primarily to do what the church catholic should seek to do in every time and place: shape the lives of Christian people in faithful obedience, and be the voice of Christ in and to the world" (Gilbert Meilaender, First Things, February 2011). That's about right, and whenever I say I'm Lutheran, what I really mean to say is that I'm catholic, small "c."

However, that being said, when I say I'm Lutheran, I think I am also celebrating some certain Lutheran distinctives, not least of which is that we are a group of Christians uniquely situated for, and passionate about, ecumenical conversation. We tend to have a lot in common with Roman Catholics as well as evangelicals, Eastern Orthodox and mainline protestant, and lots of groups in between and nearby. I love that about us, and think that by calling ourselves Lutheran, we aren't setting ourselves apart but being honestly who we are and therefore, surprisingly, more available to be Christian neighbors than if we tried to hide or disguise our Lutheran-ness.

I also kind of think Lutherans are eccentric, and there's not enough Christian eccentric-ness going around. Today I received a great bumper sticker in the mail from a Lutheran singer-songwriter, Nate Houge. It's now stuck to my laptop, and reads, "Keep Church Weird." That's just about right. Lutherans have a spiritual role in the wider eocumene of keeping church weird, not as religious as it might otherwise try to be, and therefore hopefully more honest and faithful.

But going back to the name itself, what if we got rid of "Lutheran" and honored Luther's wishes? This could be awkward, because my own congregation would have to become Good Shepherd Church of the Augsburg Confession, which is really long to write out and is unpronounceable as an acronym--GSCotAC. At some point, we'd probably have to pick a new and trendy name like "Reunion" or "New Song" or "Vintage Church" or "Prairie Home." That could become a long conversation!

Furthermore, it would be very confusing to many members of our denomination, the ELCA, because many Lutherans think Lutheranism is something like ethnicity, best served with lefse, and don't actually know that Lutherans are Lutherans because they are confessional, and confessional especially in their commitment to the unaltered Augsburg Confession together with a variety of other confessional texts located in our Book of Concord. In fact, I'd love to do an informal survey. When was the last time a congregation you know of conducted a study of the Augsburg Confession, and when was the last time you read it? My own answer: fall of 2009. And the last group I knew who studied it was the confirmation class during my internship.

All that being said, where Paul actually goes in his letter with this issue is to say that, for his money, he is going to know Christ and him crucified, and nothing else, with the Corinthians. If Paul has a denomination or confession, it is that Christ came and taught us that the foolishness of the gospel and the weakness of God is salvation and life. God is not where we expect, with the rich and powerful and successful. God is not even found through special signs or wisdom teaching us how to live our best life now. God is instead on that cross, that tired and abused man Jesus, and later continues in the world in solidarity with the weak and suffering ones through the power of that man's Spirit, the one God raised from the dead. I tend to think the flip side of this kind of confessionalism is a commitment to the Works of Mercy. But that for another post.