Your mouth is a big problem. So is mine.

One of the more difficult disciplines humans have to master is practicing the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. We are taught, “there is…a time to keep silence, and a time to speak (2:7b).” We can all attest to moments when we should have done one, but instead choose the other to our own detriment.

Over the last few days, many people have spoken publicly about a tweet sent out by John Piper. A week before that, Pat Robertson sounded off about infidelity and a week before that, Mark Driscoll had some interesting thoughts on driving an SUV. Each set the Christian blogosphere and cable news.

I’m not concerned with Piper, Robertson, or Driscoll’s words here, but rather the question of why so many responded to them publicly. For many people, highlighting Piper’s quickly deleted quotation from Job, and Robertson’s and Driscoll’s words, was unnecessary and divisive. It gave them more publicity, which accentuated the negative.

Likewise, many believe that whenever a publicly known celebrity pastor or Christian group, like Westboro Baptists, spouts unhelpful words, we should ignore it. Rather we do better to focus on our own theology and the good so many Christians are faithfully saying and doing around the world.

I get that. I understand the impulse to disregard, to sweep it under the rug, and let the our brighter lights shine. There is a place for that. My difficulty with this approach, though, is that in doing so allows the most dangerous, hurtful, and damaging words and ideas to implant themselves as the norms for Christianity. My desire here is not to convince anyone to take a particular approach to dealing with these upheavals, but to articulate some of the reasoning why those who publicly voice their concerns feel compelled to do so.

A Matter of Witness

When our family lived in California we were – not surprisingly – immersed in a far less Christianized culture than exist in Central, TX. Time and again, in conversations with non-Christians, the Christian witness our non-Christian friends knew best were the harshest and most mean-spirited ones. They formed their impressions from the general media and their personal experiences. Say what you will about the media, the problem exist nonetheless. The kind of statements they heard and internalized where the kind that have been made over the last few weeks.

Without other believers calling into question the actions and attitudes of the less-than-thoughtful words of some of our publicly known figures, these impressions concretize and make it more difficult to reach the very people Jesus commissioned the church to reach.

When Pat Robertson flippantly dismisses infidelity saying, “he’s a man” or “there’s a lot of temptation,” he is simultaneously telling the world that not only do Christians not really take our calling to fidelity seriously, but men are the victims of just too much temptation. Poor us.

In my experience with non-believers, the Bible, science, and theology are hardly ever the problem. Hardly ever! Thoughtless words by well-known Christians have been.

Folks like me, who grew up in the church, have an overwhelming number of positive, healthy Christian voices which greatly outweigh the merciless and distressing words of a few. When people make public statements of question or rebuke, they do so – partly – as a countermeasure on behalf of those searching for faith. For some, there are real people receiving the arrows of malicious talk. They want those people – oftentimes close friends – to know that the callous chatter of a few does not represent the Jesus we know. As helpful as an explication of our particular beliefs or doctrine may be, Christians minister in a culture of suspicion and hurtful statements make ministry to seekers more difficult.

A Matter of Compassion

John Piper’s tweet (which was likely more compassionate than it came across) was from the book of Job. As you probably know, Job is a tale of one man, selected by God to suffer the worst the evil one could throw at him. Job lost everything. In the immediate context of Job, he suffers, is visited by friends who offer poor theology, and then Job finally has his audience with God. In the greater context, which most of us miss, Job is wisdom literature along with Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Each establishing its own parameters for “wisdom.” Proverbs sets up a predominantly “if/then” world. “If you you X, God will do Y.” This is the worldview held by Job’s friends when they arrive at ground zero. After sitting with their friend for three days, Job’s friends begin to unwrap the wisdom they know, i.e. “if/then.” Only they are wrong. They are wrong because Job has done nothing wrong. Their “if/then” system doesn’t hold. And part of the greater lesson of Job is that God does what God wants to do, so shut up. Most Christians get that.

But the beauty of the story, and the beauty too many of us forget, is that Job’s friends initially did the right thing. They came over to sit. They didn’t say anything. They were just with Job. For days they just sat there. They were in the pain.

Whenever we – and by “we” I actually mean “we” – launch into explanation before sitting in the pain, it might reveal how unoccupied our hearts are with the sufferings of others.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but when people are in pain, unless we are asking, “How can I help you? How can I pray for you?” then we all should probably shut up.

Job discovers, from the mouth of God, that he’s not going to get an answer for his pain. Why do so many of us feel compelled to give the answer God chose not to give?

When people of good-conscious publicly admonish what they deem as harmful rhetoric, part of what they are attempting is standing on the side of the suffering. We can argue whether such attempts are efficacious or not, but I do believe that is the intent. Some want to stand in the face of heartbreaking rhetoric and rebuff, “I bet you wouldn’t say that to their faces. I bet you wouldn’t tweet that standing in what used to be the pulpit of the Moore First Baptist Church” or “in the living room of a wife attempting to forgive her adulterous husband.”

People speak-up for the sake of, and on behalf of, those whose sufferings prevent them from speaking. It’s intent is a means of “weeping with those who weep.”

Again, people will disagree as to whether this works, but better to be vocally supportive when the vulnerable are wounded than not. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies…but the silence of our friends.”

A Matter of Theology

Reform and division are two sides of the same coin. One of the great strengths of the Christian tradition is its ability to reform and restore itself. Sadly, the cost of reform is division, because we’ve historically reformed poorly. I won’t skim over the deadly, heart-wrenching cost of division. It has bloodied the bride of Christ. But what church would we have if Christians had chose quiet peace instead of reform; without The Reformation, The Radical Reformation, The American Restoration Movement, or King’s Civil Rights Movement?

Because theology is done by humans, theology is often wrong. Without vigorous, public discussion of theology and its outcomes, the church would be still be imprisoned by wrong-headed theologies. We cannot forget, abolition, Women’s Sufferage, the Civil Rights Movement, and many others campaigns for which we are grateful began as theological movements. Each held their first organizational meetings in churches!

A practical theology that said, “Let’s just focus on the good stuff we say and do,” would have blunted these movements at their onset and we’d all live in a vastly different world. In the same way Martin Luther King Jr, said “ Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed,” in the theological world, damaging theologies won’t simply wither on the vine, they must be uprooted. This is done, not to win ethereal debates, but for the betterment of all parties. The church is a body. And like a body the heart, muscles, and lungs must be pushed in order to grow stronger. Of course, this must always be done in the spirit of love, which I confess, is not always the case.

It’s Difficult To Know

It’s very difficult to know when to be a voice for the voiceless when others have been hurtful, misleading, or theological bankrupt. The fundamental question is whether or not we speak out of love. When love animates our words, those utterances are much more likely to be constructive. I’m certain I don’t always do that well, but there is a place for speaking out. A needed, reputable, and, yes, helpful place. Once more to King: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

Several readers asked me to offer some practical suggestions following-up on to my post about “speaking the truth in love.” So here goes.

I actually believe it’s vitally important to speak the truth to people we love. Each of us carries a truck load of troubles and dysfunctions simply because no one dared tell us a truth we desperately needed to hear. Speaking the truth to those we love can be healthy, powerful, and transformative.

Unfortunately, as I pointed out in a previous post, we’ve shaved the glory off truth and exchanged it for personal opinions or an amalgamation of other intellectual, emotional, and political opinions and commitments and called them “truth” because we wanted them to be. This had made it difficult for others to know when the truth we speak is delivered in their best interest or merely our own attempt to force our opinions into their lives.

A Quick Story:

Two years ago, I walked into the doctor’s office after years of avoiding it. I wasn’t against doctors, but I was rarely sick and didn’t feel badly enough to go. At the urging of my wife and a family friend, herself a doctor, I made an appointment. The doctor took a lot of measurements and blood and then came in and said what no doctor had ever told me. I needed to make some changes. Big changes. Huge changes. My choices were to make the changes or have a tired, miserable, medication-filled life that would lead to a early death.

He explained to me, given my numbers, that he should put me on medication for high-cholesterol and that I was pre-diabetic.

My doctor was honest, straight-forward, and clear. But it was ultimately my decision. He’d given me the all the information with the best of his knowledge and suggested we check everything again in 3-months. He then said, “Your paperwork says you’re a Pastor.”

“Yes.”

“I bet you’re terrible at taking care of yourself.”

“I dunno.”

“If you don’t do anything else,” he said “read this book.” And he gave me The Self-Compassion Diet: A Step-by-Step Program to Lose Weight with Loving-Kindness.’

So I made the changes and read the book. I dropped 71lbs, using the greatest system in the world and have enjoyed two of the best years of my life. Now, I’m helping other people make the changes that have been so valuable to me and achieve their dreams. And it all happened because one man decided to speak the truth in love.

Good Advice:

Speaking the truth in love has  a formula, ingredients. My doctor knew them, used them, and I’m the better for it. If you want to be the kind of person who actually speaks the truth in love rather than the hot-head known for advocating your opinions, badgering others who disagree with you, and generally being a the kind of person all your friends secretly wish to block on Facebook, you might want to pay attention to the 5 ingredients necessary to speak the truth in love.

1. Irrefutable Data: My doctor didn’t give me his opinion. He gave me data that was clear and compelling. Many Christians believe when they quote scripture they’re offering irrefutable data, but we aren’t. Not in the way we think, anyways. I hate to be the one to tell you, but when we speak of the Bible, we’re speaking of our interpretation of the Bible. None of us reads scriptures in a vacuum. Our Bible reading is the product of many, many forces, therefore there are lots and lots of interpretations and we can’t possibly be right about every jot and tittle. That’s why the gospel – as I understand it – means we are saved by grace not exegesis. We offer our interpretations of scripture and God-loving, well-meaning people will disagree with us. Either that or we have to believe that everyone who disagrees with us is either insincere or stupid.

2. Clear Outcomes. When you outline irrefutable data it typically lead to clear outcomes. One of the ways you might want to test the truth you wish to speak is whether or not the outcomes are inevitable. Christians often get this wrong because we take anecdotes as evidence. If a few stories match up nicely with our faith commitments we accept them without examining the evidence to the contrary or how universal those stories can be applied. For instance, while trying to convince your friend to not live with her boyfriend, saying, “You won’t be happy,” won’t be interpreted as a solid argument. Likewise, you can’t suggest to teenaged girls that they refrain from premarital sex because, “No good, Christian man would want you.” That’s simply not true (besides being horrifying theology and a tad bit abusive). Those outcomes are not inevitable. Before you unload your truth claims, you need to make sure they’re actually true and not the straw-man arguments you heard your favorite preacher or TV or radio-show host say. If the outcomes aren’t clear, you may want to stay quiet. You risk losing credibility if you don’t.

3. About Me Not Him. My doctor’s advice to me was about me feeling better not just him feeling better. Several years ago a Godly woman invited me to coffee. She had something to tell me. For 30-minutes she downloaded what “God put on her heart” about me. When she was done, she told me, “That’s all. I thought God wanted me to tell you that.” I started to respond. She shushed me, grabbed her purse, and left. Here’s the thing: Her words were meant to be comforting to me, but I don’t remember any of them. What I do remember is that conversation was completely about her. She said what she wanted to say and left. The meeting was about her. Oftentimes, when we get around to truth-telling, it’s really about us listening to ourselves talk. I learned that day that the next time I want to spout off about other people’s lifestyles choices, politics, or whatever, I need to pull back and ask, “Who am I saying this for?” Trust me, my “blog drafts” folder is loaded with posts I wrote that I later determined were just me venting and completely unhelpful to others.

4. At A Personal Cost. My doc made it clear that, given his medical groups policies, he should write me prescriptions. He didn’t. He trusted that within the next three months I could get my numbers down. Too often, our truth-telling costs us nothing. If you’re not invested in the life of the person you’re talking too, you’re probably not friends enough to say anything at all. If you risk nothing personal, people will notice. You’ll just become a talking head.

5. Let The Other Decide. The most impressive thing my doctor did was allow me to decide for myself. He laid out the information, and asked me to primary agent in creating change. The changes were completely up to me. I’ve seen too many people have tough conversations with people they loved. Often the situation was handled well until after the conversation when someone couldn’t let it go. They kept badgering, cajoling, and bothering people. Don’t do that. If we’re not talking about your underaged children, you’re gonna have to learn to let adults be adults, even if they make poor choices. It’s easier to be a clanging gong than we think.

My doctor changed my life that day. He spoke to truth in love. 3-months later, when I had my return visit, both of us were all smiles and as I walked out of his office, he gave me a high-five. That’s what can happen when we’re thoughtful when speaking the truth in love.

Last week I was honored to present at class on creativity and worship at Pepperdine Bible Lectures. I’d hoped to make my slide – complete with the videos, music, etc…available for my blog subscribers. I created the presentation in a good program – Keynote – but Slideshare requires I turn in into a bad program – PowerPoint – so I haven’t been able to do it the way I wanted.

My apologies.

If you have Keynote you can download the full presentation here.

There’s nothing the church does so wonderfully and terribly as singing.

If you’ve spent more than 10-minutes inside an American worship service, you already know how important singing is. Regardless of the worship style of your congregation, the music is important, and usually done well. Music has power. It transforms moments and has the power to embed memories and stir emotions. We are moved by the singing and music in ways little else can or does. For most of us, the music and singing of our congregation is one of the major reasons we picked it.

And that’s the problem.

In the mid-20th century, some traveling and nationally know preachers decided that a “personal Savior” was the carrot-and-stick that would motivate non-believers to come to faith. It worked. For the last 50 years, the sales pitch for faith in Jesus has been a personal one. “If YOU were to die today, where would you spend eternity? If YOU ask Jesus into YOUR heart….If YOU accept Jesus as your personal Savior” and all of that. A measure of individualistic focus is right and good. After all, I live in a world where I cannot make faith decisions for other people. And as a good Anabaptist I would choose not to even if I could. Nevertheless, it’s nearly impossible to imagine that such a singular focus could result in much other than a self-centered faith. After all, we got into this for personal reasons.

And that’s where singing comes in.

Our corporate/common singing, regardless of the musical style of our congregation, is still viewed by too many as an individual pursuit. This is odd, because we can’t do corporate singing alone. We just wished the songs were picked and sang as if corporate singing existed for us alone.

Don’t believe me? Do you know anyone who left their church because of a change in “worship?” In truth, these changes are barely changes in worship. Most churches still celebrate the Eucharist, engage sermons, sing, pray, and – sadly – have announcements. What changes is the singing! And the reason people leave over “worship” is because they no longer “like” the singing…personally.

Of course, we rarely say that out loud. We say, “It’s not what I grew up with. This music doesn’t speak to me. I’m not being fed by this,” or we evaluate the musicality and lyrical content of the music. Don’t get me wrong. It hardly ever matters what style of music you prefer – hymns, CCM, instrumental, Gregorian, a cappella, classical, jazz – all of us do the same thing. And most us are so musically uneducated that our grumblings about musicality are mostly broadcasting our musical ignorance.

Our problem is that we enjoy, celebrate, bemoan, criticize, celebrate, and judge church life based on what we like. We are deciding on the basis of what we like because we’ve bought into the lie that our corporate singing should be personal. Personal worship for a personal savior, right?

But what would church look like if we reframed corporate singing, not in the ever-narrowing category of “worship,” but as a spiritual discipline?

If corporate singing were a spiritual discipline…

1. We Wouldn’t Expect Immediate Results. No faithful practitioner of spiritual disciplines expects to walk in, practice a discipline for an hour, and leave humming a tune and tapping their toes. In the realm of spiritual practices we know that the blessing is found in the practice itself. You could practice contemplative prayer for years without any tangible outcome, uplighting feeling, or goosebumps, but you come to love and enjoy practicing the presence of God.

2. We Could Sing On Behalf Of Others. There are songs I hate, like “Amazing Grace.” I’ve never liked it, but I know “Amazing Grace” is tremendously meaningful for others. A friend recently shared with me the place of the song “Amazing Grace” in the recovery movement. The song means a great deal for members of AA and other recovery groups. Those folks are in my church. As a spiritual discipline, I can sing that song – though I despise it – on their behalf. I sing, therefore, not because it’s efficacious for me, but those around me.

3. We Could Be Less Manipulative. I hate to be the one to tell you, but many worship experiences are designed to manipulate your feelings. That’s not all bad. Church leaders should want you to do something at the end of a service, and music is frequently used to disarm congregants toward that end. Anecdotally, Christian Rich Mullins was approached by a fan. The fan said, “I was really moved during the song, going into the third verse. I felt The Spirit.” Mullins responded, “That wasn’t The Spirit. That was just when the kick-drum came in.” Perhaps, as a spiritual practice, all of us would be more open to simply allowing God to move in our midst rather than modulating up the last chorus, jumping around, turning up the volume, and hosts of other tricks we invent to gin up the congregation?

4. We Could Hear The God of The Desert. Perhaps God doesn’t want us to sing the songs we love. Might it be possible that some of us have come to praise our worship and worship our praise and the call of God for us is to go into the desert; to experience emptiness in an area of life we have come to overly depend? If so, could all of the church-hopping and in-fighting over music over the last 20-years been our avoidance of entering the space in which God wants to lead us. Could it be possible that one of the reason we are not experiencing greater engagement with God is because we have abandoned His voice and chosen a tune we like. We must never forget, before Jesus begins His life of impact, He goes into the desert.

5. We Could Actually Praise God. We have to ask ourselves serious questions about the nature of who we worship for when we walk out of common worship upset with God-directed music and lyrics, regardless of whether or not the praise team was “singing our tune.” If corporate singing were a spiritual discipline God would be at the center of it and in God’s presence, humankind has always simply bowed.

I am coming to the belief that reframing common worship as a spiritual discipline is the only way to rescue the church from never-ending and bloody worship battles that maintain the unity of the church. What ideas do you have?

The Christian way of being mean is telling those we’ve offended that we’re “speaking the truth in love”.

Misappropriating this little gem from Ephesians 4 is popular because it allows us to be rude, condescending, and hurtful to non-Christians while simultaneously allowing us to hold on to our own privilege and self-righteousness.

There’s been a lot of talk in the last week about “speaking the truth in love.”

When we say this, what we actually mean is, “I have a belief/ commitment to X as a truth and you don’t. Therefore, I can treat you badly, assign you evil motives, and cast aspersions on your character because I ”love” you so much that I want you to come to my belief. In essence, my belief in X being true allows me to be a unkind to you until you believe X too. Because, obviously, if you don’t share my truth claim regarding X, you must be either stupid or evil.”

We’ve all done it. We’ve all blurted out harmful and harsh words that have cut someone or some group apart through rhetoric. In response we defend our failed speech by baptizing those words in the polluted waters of misrepresenting Paul’s intent regarding “speaking the truth in love.”

I do not doubt that for some of us, our version of the truth – which always happens to be God’s version of the truth – is motivated by what we consider love. But evermore frequently, it is merely a grasping attempt to force the world to bow to our preferences and interpretation of thought and behavior, regardless of whether or not the other person’s thoughts and behaviors affect us at all.

It’s not about love, it’s about power!

Whether it has to do with someone who has a different lifestyle than we do, holds political views that counter ours; it may be someone we believe to be living sinful lives, or even differs from us on matters of theology; when we want to be mean, we can. Yet, all we have to do is rub on the self-soothing salve of “truth in love” to ease what should be a guilty conscience.

Whenever we defend our actions by pulling the truth in love card, my question is this: How come the other person doesn’t feel loved? Certainly, when some hear hard truths, they won’t immediately warm to them. I’ll give you that.

But if our motivations are truly loving, shouldn’t it seem like love? Shouldn’t an impartial observer be able to look at our actions, hear our words, and easily discern that what we’ve done is loving?

The difficulty with the way we currently use “speaking the truth in love” is three-fold:

1. We judge our actions based on our feelings rather than the demonstrated effect. Our actions feel loving to us. Unfortunately, by the standard of 1 Corinthians 11, our motivations, since love is not selfish, don’t matter. Neither, by the way, do the feelings of others. The great point of 1 Corinthians 11 is that love is not about feelings. It is about actions.
2. Our speaking has little to do with speaking. Speaking the truth in love now looks like voting, blogging, tweeting, protesting, buying, signing petitions, and yelling the truth on talk-radio and cable news. Speaking means having a conversation.
3. Often our truths are rooted in other commitments beside the gospel. Whether we’re defending laws we like, the traditional this, a progressive view of that, whatever it is, rarely, as the Apostle Paul was pointing us to, are we talking about Christian maturity.

We can do better. Followers of Christ can be better truth-speakers by embracing a few important shifts about the nature of speaking the truth.

What if we spoke the truth in love…

1. ….as if we were speaking to someone we actually loved. In high school, my mother had a frank conversation with me. I didn’t like it, but any non-partisan by-stander would have recognized she was speaking with love. Why? Because it pained her to say it. If your truth-telling is closer to telling someone off, you’re not doing it in love. When you feel like speaking the truth in love, process it through the language, tone, time, location, and attitude you would use when speaking to your spouse,  son, or daughter.
2. …in the context of relationship. One of my youth ministry professors taught me, “Rules without relationship equal rebellion.” Relationships are the backbone of truth-telling. If people don’t know you, don’t know your heart and motivations, your proclamations won’t mean anything. If you’re holding picket signs, leaving a harsh comment on a blog, writing rebuttals, or shouting down people who aren’t in the building from the pulpit, you’re not speaking the truth in love. No one I know likes the protests of Westboro Baptist Church. Without relationship, the people you’re “speaking” to think about you the way you think about Westboro. If you have a “pet-issue” that you want to engage in, first engage a person who holds a contrary opinion. When you come to love them, then you’ll be in a position to speak.
3. …reminding ourselves that the context of Ephesians 4 is what Christian do for one another and not to non-Christians. If you’ve been telling yourself that you’re simply telling non-Christians the truth in love, take a step back. The witness of the New Testament for non-believers is that Jesus is Lord. Non-Christians were never expected to surrender to Christian moral standards. In Ephesians 4, Paul is speaking of Christian’s commitments to one another. If there were ever a place for the truth to be spoken in love it’s an evangelical church Bible class, where people say things that are often heretical and don’t make sense, but it’s also the last place it will ever happen.

What are your best experiences in speaking the truth in love?

I think tension is good.

It’s not fun. Or easy. Or even comfortable, but it’s good.

Think of your thumb – to use the most commonly used metaphor. The reason your hand works so effectively is because of your opposable thumbs. Your thumb allows you to grip, grab, and strangle – should you be so inclined…and homicidal. Your life would be much more of a struggle, and much less productive, without the tension your thumb creates.

The same is true when it comes to church, change, holding onto necessary and important traditions, and moving forward in other important ways. We (the church) would ultimately be less productive and useful without tension.

Why do I bring this up?

Because from time to time, the church – on the local, denominational, or universal level – has to hash things out. We have unresolved issues – women, sexuality, Neo-Calvinism, the role of leadership, politics, evangelism, etc… that we need to come to terms and deal with. And while there are many folks who would prefer the church to paper over discordant topics, if we don’t deal with them publicly and passionately, the church will never become what God intends. This is why we need tension.

A Lesson From 40 Years Ago

At the height of the Civil Right Movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested in Birmingham, AL. At the time, King was suffering under incredible criticism from the southern, white church and clergy. They thought King, and the movement he led, wanted too much, too soon. They failed to understand why the movement was causing – in their view – so much upheaval. They wanted King to move more slowly and referred to him as “an outside agitator.”

The truth is, the southern, white clergy actually wanted the status quo. Inequality. The devil’s scheme! They didn’t want change. Instead of admitting their ill-fated position was ungodly and counter to God’s ultimate aims for His people and His creation, the white clergy reacted to the tension King created with name-calling, threats, and demonization. They knew what King knew, that given enough pressure and tension, any system will change. But King knew that tension was necessary for flawed human beings to see others from a Godly point of view.

King wrote,

“You may well ask: ‘Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?’ You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”

Without tension the status quo wins.

Every.

Single.

Time.

A Lesson From 2,000 Years Ago

Pressuring the system is what Jesus did! We cannot paper over that nor domestic Him. Jesus agitated the system at every opportunity.

The Lord’s preaching ministry began with the Sermon on the Mount. Repeatedly, Jesus uses the refrain, “You have heard it said, but I say….” Jesus was reframing God’s intention; reclaiming them from a system that had gone corrupt and worldly. Throughout his preaching and teaching ministry, Jesus repeatedly returns to the simply idea that the religious system the Jews were laboring under (and bludgeoning others with) was wrong, broken, and, worse, breaking people. In response, Jesus created tension because tension creates change.

Most systems – personal, home, religious, organizational, civic, cultural – won’t change unless it has to. 

In the church, therefore, we are required to push one another away from our way towards God’s way, toward changes we might not prefer to make, but are ultimately more in line with the Kingdom of God. We are always restoring!

Had King not pressured the villainous systems of his time – like women’s suffrage, The Civil War, The Reformation and Radical Reformation, the American Revolution, and countless other movements before him – the status quo would have held and our world would look an awful lot like their old world.

Contemporary Changes

In my tribe, Churches of Christ, we are seeing an outburst of what King called, “creative tension” this week. A number of God-loving, church-serving, creative folks are attempting to move our non-denomination toward fully-embracing equal roles for women and men inside the church. This is particularly difficult in an ecclesial movement with no denominational hierarchy. What we do have, though, are annual gatherings – most notably at Pepperdine University and Abilene Christian University. The group advocating change is called “One Voice For Change” and their aim this next year is to have a woman present a keynote lecture at one or both of these annual gatherings. In terms of 2013, the slates are already set, so it won’t happen this calendar year.

Regardless of what ultimately becomes of One Voice For Change (or what any of us think about their aims), its organizers are correct in their view of creative tension. They are allowing people to have much needed conversations, not just about what happens during our annual gatherings, but how the church will view this important issue and what we will do about it in the coming years. Christians, institutions, and churches will have to make decisions about these issues, one way or another. We will have to decide whether we are for it or against it.

That’s what tension does.

Who wouldn’t love being in Malibu, CA for a week?

That’s where I am and I’m having a love/hate relationship with it. While being here is great, there’s a lot back home I miss.

Today, I’m teaching at Pepperdine Bible Lectures. I’m sharing some thoughts about church and creativity. Though I’m not naturally a creative guy, I love being around creative people and shepherding creative projects in church life. That being the case, I’m teaching about creativity in worship called, “Designing Wonder.”

If you’re here this week, please join me at 1:30pm in Raitt Recital Hall.

If you’re not here, I want to make my slides and talk available to you free of charge.

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Sean

“How will I feel after I do this?” is the most important question you’ll ever ask. And most of us aren’t asking it nearly enough.

In the last 3 to 4 years, Rochelle and I have discovered a disturbing number of friends, acquaintances, leaders, and mentors who have made awful decisions. Many have had affairs and/or left their spouse. Even at our distance from the center of these relationships, we were disappointed and hurt.

We were mostly scared! Scared because many of these people we held in the highest regard. If it could happen to them it could happen to us. In each instance, without hesitation, we confessed that our friends were folks who pursued God wholeheartedly but has made terrible and devastating mistakes.

What Were They Thinking?

Rochelle I couldn’t help but ask, “What were they thinking?” As far as we could figure, they weren’t. At the very least they weren’t thinking about the relational and emotional debris of their actions. Asking, “How will I feel after I do this?” changes our calculations about our behaviors and words.

Everyone is susceptible to momentary lapses and basic human frailty can position any of us for errors whenever our guard is down. That’s why we need constructs to help guide is when we aren’t thinking straight.

Our failures aren’t about thinking, though. They’re about asking.

We need better questions than, “Do I like this?” or “Am I happy?” guiding our lives. These kinds if questions set us up for momentary desires that will lead us to destruction. This way of thinking makes gods of our stomachs, as the Apostle Paul says (Phil. 3:19).

“How will I feel after I do this?” is a question good for any instance:

• When you don’t want to workout …how will I feel after I do this?
• When you want to post that nasty comment on Facebook or a blog …how will I feel after I do this?
• When your children have annoyed you to the point of insanity and you want to light into them …how will I feel after I do this?
• When you come up with that snarky comeback to your spouse accusation…how will I feel after I do this?
• When you want to buy that new and shinny item even though the budget is tight…how will I feel after I do this?

If you want to live a better life, start asking the most important question.

As I launch a BeachBody Challenge Group and look ahead to all the summer has in store, I’m reminded of the importance of remembering your story, your why? I’m constantly amazed by people who want to change their circumstances without changing themselves. Equally interesting is the thought that our own decisions landed us in a place we didn’t want to be, only to be offered assistance and then choose to opt for the same decision making strategies that landed us in an undesirable circumstance to begin with.

Essentially we lose our “why,” our reason, if we ever spent time discovering what it was in the first place. Today, I’m brought back to this post about James Bond and losing our ambition.

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Did you see the newest James Bond movie, Skyfall.

Acting like a 25-year-old, I took in a late showing of the film a few months ago. And even though it’s been out a few weeks, the movie is still charting at the top of the box office. There’s a reason, too. It’s good, classic James Bond. With all due respect to my namesake and the original 007, I think Daniel Craig is the best James Bond ever. (And, yes, my mother did name me after Sean Connery…seriously.)

As good as it is, there is one crucial problem with the film. It’s the same problem many of us have; the story loses itself.

Apologies to those who haven’t seen it, but the tale begins in a quest to recover a hard drive containing a list of names of covert NATO agents. Yet by the end of the movie, the plot centers on a personal vendetta against M. Admittedly, the combination of my getting older, drinking a large Diet Coke, and the length of the movie resulted in multiple trips to the restroom, so I may have missed it, but I left the theater wondering, “What happened to the list?”

Leaving aside the mind-boggling idea that a list of covert NATO agents resides on an outdated PC laptop somewhere in Istanbul, the story ignites one way but once the action gets going forgets about its own raison d’etre.

People are like that, too. We lose our reason for existence.

On January 1, many Americans will commit to a resolution, maybe multiple ones – losing weight, reading more, etc… – just like last year. Remember those promises we made to ourselves last year? To get off the couch because we know it’d be better for us. But so many of us lost the story.

We free fell into skyfall. We lost our reasons.

One of favorite scriptures is Philippians 1:6: “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ.” I like what it says about God. I like that God is a finisher. As God’s child, I want to be a finisher too!

It’s very easy in our world to lose your story. We harbor in our hearts dreams of being generous and giving; to desire to use our gifts for the blessing of God’s Kingdom and our community; to make our corner of the world a better place; but in the busyness and stress of life we lose grip of our reason.

So, go recover your reason.

Spend a day away searching your heart and the scriptures to rediscover your reason for existence. Pray. Seek. Ask.

You’re not in a movie. The script isn’t locked. The story isn’t in post-production. The credits aren’t rolling. You’re not finished! You have the ability to powerfully choose who you are going to be today. Resist the lie that life is what happens to you. Make a choice. Pick. Decide. What will your life look like in three weeks, two months, 90-days, six months?

You get to decide what story you want to tell. You get to finish what you start. You determine the heights, the horizons, and the limits. You get to aim at the stars.

Don’t let your sky fall!

There’s a reason your church isn’t more creative.

It’s not just that your pastor and worship arts director aren’t creative or visionary or forward-thinking. I’m sure that’s true in some cases, but most churches are boring because of The Olive Garden Problem.

But First a Story

A friend of mine who preaches for a fairly traditional Church of Christ recently ran headlong into a problem he hadn’t anticipated. For the uninitiated, Church of Christ worship services are typically a cappella and tend to adhere to a fairly predictable form. There’s not a lot appreciation for difference or, quite frankly, room, to explore, change, or interject creative elements into the worship service – even if those elements are historically Christian. For some, worship elements need to be historically Church of Christ (my Baptist friends tell me they have the same issue).

Anyway, my friend’s congregation went through an expensive and lengthy evaluation process and, long story short, “Inspiring Worship” ranked the lowest of all the areas evaluated. He wasn’t devastated, but he was upset. I get that.

The problem is that he’s hamstrung. Locked-in. Cornered.

Due to his particular church’s practices (some borne of belief, others borne of tradition, and still others borne out of a nonsensical allegiance to things that don’t matter), there’s nothing he could change to make his church’s worship better. There is no element of worship his church could add or take away without causing a firestorm. And as you know, upsetting people is the unforgivable sin (sarcasm mine).

That’s the Olive Garden Problem.

Last year The Wall Street Journal printed an article about the popular restaurant chain revealing what executives and chefs at Olive Garden already knew: Olive Garden is not Italian Food. In part, the article recounted this:

“The Olive Garden is at the mercy of the kind of people who eat at Olive Garden, and the chain has no choice but to bend to their wistful, suburban, and tyrannical needs. That means value (a $6.95 unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks lunch special), overcooked pasta, frosted salad bowls, and avoiding confusing words like “gnocchi.” Time to break it all down:

1) In field tests, diners wouldn’t order gnocchi. That is, “until chefs at the company’s Orlando, Fla., headquarters tried gnocchi in chicken soup, billed as a ‘traditional Italian dumpling.’”

2) Olive Garden HQ knows that their diners have limits: “Capers, with their salty, pickled flavor, are too unexpected for many customers, says a spokeswoman.”

3) And the restaurant chain will do whatever it takes to make customers happy: “At Olive Garden, pasta is served soft, not al dente or slightly firm, the traditional Italian method.”

4) So is it authentic or not? “We don’t use the word authentic,” said the president of Olive Garden. He prefers the term “Italian inspired.”

5) The chain does indeed take “inspiration” from Italy: Chefs at Olive Garden HQ went on a trip to Northern Italy and had “fresh-torn pasta dish with olive oil, garlic and herbs.” Somehow that dish was “reverse-engineered” into “baked pasta romana—a mix of lasagna pasta, rich cheese sauce, spinach and either a beef or chicken topping.” Originally it was chicken with roasted tomato sauce, but diners didn’t find it “cravable.”

6) And the chain pushes the limits of gastronomy: “Earlier this year, a pear and Gorgonzola ravioli with shrimp went too far.” The chain deemed the dish too “culinary forward.”

7) And all Olive Garden wants to do is update the damned dishware, but they can’t. The frosted, “semi-translucent, plastic, flower-shaped salad bowl” that delivers unlimited refills has been in use for decades, and every time Olive Garden tests new bowls, diners revolt. “There is a lot of love for that bowl,” said Dan Kiernan, executive vice president of operations for Olive Garden.”

So What?

Olive Garden makes food for people who want, expect, and enjoy low expectations. They don’t want food they can’t pronounce, not because they don’t like it, but because they can’t pronounce it. If it’s too foreign, too different, their customers don’t want it. What’s more, Olive Garden can’t change anything, regardless of whether those changes would be good for the company or the consumer.

Now what Olive Garden does is Olive Garden’s business. They exist to generate revenue for shareholders and their wisest course of action is to meet that end. But church is different…

Your church exists (especially it’s corporate worship) to Glorify God and edify believers. That can’t happen if both God and the church are bored…even if that boredom is created by willful decisions to remain boring.

What To Do?

Every church member should feel comfortable speaking to their preacher and worship leaders about their theology of worship? What do they believe they are trying to do? And how are they trying to do it? Why do we sing the songs we sing? Why does the sermon take the form it takes?

At the same time, if you’re a church leader stuck in an unyielding system, guess what? It’s your job to fix it. As Craig Groeschel says, “You’re in leadership. Quit complaining and fix it!” And yes, there will be a cost. Some people may leave to find another church home. People leaving is always sad and heartbreaking.

But worse is to face the God of the universe one day and have Him ask you, “I gave you the most powerful, moving, impactful message in history. Why did you treat it like you worked at Olive Garden?”

Tell us. What have been some of your most memorable and engaging moments in worship.