This post will be a completion of my previous post on Acts 8:28-40. It would probably be helpful to open it up and read it one time through before reading this post (reading it through won't take more than five minutes, anyways.
"And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah."
Of the many different interesting things about the Ethiopian eunuch, I find it extremely interesting that he was returning from worshiping. This eunuch wasn't a heathen, a pagan, a persecutor of the church, but he was a man who desired to worship the only true God! He wasn't a man who needed to be reminded to go to church on Sunday or to study the Word. God had already placed in his heart a desire to seek Him and to worship Him. And yet he still didn't understand what he read. Many times in our churches and fellowships, we forget that often times, those who are the most lost and are in need of guidance are those who already come to worship! We often assume that just because people come to worship, they know who Jesus is and have a personal relationship with him. This wasn't true for the eunuch, and it certainly isn't true for our churches today, so let's not forget to be reaching out to those already under the roof of the church who may not yet know Jesus.
"And the Spirit said to Philip, 'Go over and join this chariot.' So Philip ran to him..."
This is the first explicit mention of the Spirit that we find in the passage (recall that it was an angel of the Lord that had first told Philip to rise and go). So we can imagine Philip just "chillin" in the desert, walking around, trying to see what God wants him to do, and he sees a chariot and is then prompted by the Spirit to join it. What is Philip's response? Philip runs to the chariot! He doesn't complain, he doesn't ask "God, is this really your will?", he doesn't walk - he runs! We should learn to imitate Philip's eagerness to obey the prompting of the Spirit and run with joy to the tasks that he sets out for us.
[As sort of an aside, I recall from my childhood picture Bibles and Christian videos that supposedly the chariot was actually going full speed and God have Philip the supernatural foot speed (as he had given Elijah) to catch up with a chariot going full speed. I really could be wrong, but this doesn't seem like the most likely scenario to me because of the following verbal exchanges that he has with the eunuch. Philip asks the eunuch if he understands what he's reading, and the eunuch says that he doesn't. It is only after this interaction does the eunuch finally ask Philip to join him in the chariot. To me, it wouldn't really make sense for the eunuch to see a man running full speed next to the chariot without slowing down to converse. But either way, the eagerness of Philip to obey God should be imitated.]
"...and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, 'Do you understand what you are reading?'"
Not only is Philip's eagerness to be imitated, but also his method of evangelism. We see in this simple sentence that Philip did two things - he heard and he asked. In Philip's eagerness to run to the chariot, he didn't get on his metaphorical soapbox and start spewing out the Four Spiritual Laws or the bridge diagram, but he heard the Ethiopian. I am probably the most guilty of speaking before listening, but how much easier it was for Philip to minister to the eunuch because he simply listened! He was able to meet the eunuch in his place of confusion and to address the eunuch's needs instead of imposing his own evangelism strategy on him. Philip listened, and that's something that I need to learn to do. After he listened, Philip asked. Last year, I attended MAC (Ministering Across Cultures) for the second time, and one of my biggest takeaways from the training event is how effective asking questions is to opening a person up and understanding a person. By asking the eunuch a basic question, Philip was allowing the eunuch to express his own thoughts and desires, which in turn made it easier for Philip to minister to him. Many times (for me, at least), our ministry tactic is a "speak and answer questions" sort of approach instead of Philip's "hear and ask" approach. There's definitely a place for both kinds of ministry (can you imagine Pastor Chuck simply "hearing and asking" on stage on Sunday morning? That would be horrible!), but Philip's example is a good reminder for me to be more open to gauging someone else's needs.
"And he said, 'How can I, unless someone guides me?' And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him."
To me, this question that the eunuch asks is the central point of the entire passage. In my previous readings of this passage, I had always thought that the person the eunuch needed was Philip to explain the Scripture to him. While this is true, I think that God is pointing us to something much deeper than that - "the inward illumination of the Spirit of God [is] necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word. [WCF]" It is the Holy Spirit, not Philip, who is ultimately the guide of the Ethiopian! The easy takeaway from this passage that we've been taught since we were children is that we need to be like Philip and explain the Bible to those who don't understand it. We fail to realize that we ourselves cannot understand the Scripture without the guidance of the Holy Spirit! It is only through God that we ourselves can understand the Word of God and have any hope of explaining it to anyone else!
This post is really sufficiently long, so I'm just going to skip a bit of the passage and get to a few last thoughts I had on the passage.
"Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus."
This "opened his mouth" phrase seems to be used only one other time in this book, and that is in Acts 10:34, when Peter is preaching to the centurion's family. To me, it is a reminder that when we speak, we are merely using our mouths as an instrument of God, and it is really the "Spirit of our Father speaking through [us]". I may be imagining things, but I also see somewhat of a parallel between this passage and Luke 24, where Jesus explains to the two clueless fellows how all of Scripture is really about him. Obviously, Luke and Acts are both written by Luke, and it's cool to see how Luke comes back to a man explaining how all of Scripture is about Jesus.
"And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing."
I'm not sure if you've realized this, but Philip was straight up teleported away. The passage says that "Philip found himself at Azotus." Imagine that. Philip was in the water baptizing the eunuch and an instant later, was in a random town. How strange that must have been! And the eunuch also just got the most awesome baptism in the entire world. Again, this might be over-speculation, but I really think that the eunuch probably got a small feeling of the Spirit of the Lord carrying him out of the water. All of us who've been dunked know that when you're brought down into the water, you need the pastor to bring you back up, because there's really no other way you can get up out of the water from a prostrate position. Now, if Philip was teleported away as they came up out of the water, who would be there to help the eunuch completely up? I very well could be wrong, but to me, the passage seems to imply that the eunuch never saw Philip once he got out of the water, and it isn't a wild possibility to me that it was the Spirit Himself who helped the eunuch onto his feet after the baptism. That would be an awesome baptism - being baptized by God himself! But of course, that's all speculation.
To conclude this post, I really feel like this understanding that the Spirit is the guide is the central theme of the passage. The Spirit is the one who guides Philip to the chariot, the Spirit is the one who gives both Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch understanding of the Scripture, and it is the Spirit who again leads both the eunuch and Philip on their separate paths after their encounter. As Christians, we should allow the Spirit to guide us in all things - be it direction of life or our Scripture readings - and to obey quickly and eagerly when He calls.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Church Hopping Week 4 - St. Andrew Evangelical Presbyterian Church
I'm am a little behind on posting, but last Sunday, February 12th, I visited St. Andrew Evangelical Presbyterian Church. As you all know, Knox is part of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, so I wanted to check out an EPC church before deciding what church to go to. Though half an hour away, St. Andrew is the closest EPC church to where I live.
In A Nutshell: A small, familiar Knox-like church that is kind of far from home.
Church Overview
Affiliation - Evangelical Presbyterian Church (wiki, official site)
Attendance - 75-100 people
Demographics - Completely white, multi-generational with a good number of high-schoolers and male young adults.
Sunday Service
Overall, if my time at St. Andrew was extremely familiar and comfortable. As I describe below, other then an interesting candle-lighting "ceremony" before and after the service, the service was extremely similar to a Knox service. St. Andrew had a time of fellowship with some breakfast food (bagels, donuts, and orange juice) between the worship service and the Sunday school, not unlike the time in Knox hall that we have. The lady who say behind me in service, whom I introduced myself to after the service, took really good care of me and introduced me to a ton of different people in the church. I got a chance to meet the pastor, who actually had spent some time serving in Taiwan as a missionary, and learned that he actually was very familiar with Pastor Mike Frison from Knox!
The Worship
The music was simple but familiar. There was a piano, drums, and three vocalists on stage. The songs we sang were some of my all-time favorite classic Christian songs, so even though I was at a new church and didn't know anyone there, I was really able to focus on God and worship him. We sang songs like This is My Father's World, 'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus, and How Deep the Father's Love for Us, which I really enjoyed. To me, the musical worship was a great balance between contemporary Christian and traditional hymns, much like the worship at Knox!
The Sermon
The sermon, titled "Can I be Sure" from Hebrews 6:4-8, was a talk on assurance of salvation (which is a topic that seems to be popping up a lot in my life). Assurance of salvation is always a difficult topic to speak on (thought I really enjoyed John Piper's sermon series on it), and Pastor Glen really went down the "a good tree must produce good fruit" route, but I thought it leaned a little too heavily towards moralism. Again, I know it's a really difficult subject to speak on, but I wish the cross was emphasized more heavily as the means and assurance of our salvation. As I said in my last post, I recognize that pastors here are probably used to speaking to completely Christian congregations, but to me, I still think that the gospel needs to be preached every week. To be honest, I'm more willing to give Pastor Glen the benefit of the doubt, as he is friends with Pastor Mike, and the church really does seem more gospel-centered than the other ones I've been to. Talking to one of the ladies, she said that it was probably just this Sunday that Pastor Glen decided to approach assurance of salvation from this angle.
Sunday School
I was pretty excited for Sunday School when I learned that they were studying Revelation, and it did turn out to be extremely enjoyable to me. The class turned out to be more like a directed discussion, but I thought that the conversation that we had was a perfect mix between head knowledge and life application, especially when it is so easy to get caught up in over-analyzing passages in Revelation. I was pleased that I felt like I was able to contribute to the discussion and felt honored and respected, despite being the only one in the room that was under ~45 years old. I was very pleased that the members of this Sunday school really knew their Scripture and knew what they were talking about, and it was obvious to me that the members of this church were sufficiently intellectual in their approach to Scripture (which really isn't always the case, especially in this culturally Christian, more blue collar sort of city).
Reflection
What I liked
Familiar Worship - Maybe I just got lucky with the song selection, but I really enjoyed the music and found it easy to worship. Even though there wasn't really much of a praise band, and it didn't actually seem like the singing was very loud (probably because the sanctuary was around half full), but it was just a good time to commune with God privately, which is what we Asian Americans like to do!
Sunday School - Sunday school was fun, and as I mentioned before, I felt like my voice mattered and I was able to be part of a lively, well-informed discussion. If I came to this church, I would still want to have a more teaching-focused type of class, and it was obvious to me that the teacher was definitely knowledgeable enough to make the class that way if he so chose.
Conferences - After Sunday school, one of the ladies in the church asked me told me that I seemed interested in Reformed theology (I really have no idea how she knew from the limited interactions we had, and I don't think I really gave much away during Sunday school), and she introduced me to and invited me to a bunch of different conferences, such as The Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology and Together for the Gospel. I probably won't be able to make T4G because it's in the middle of the week, but I'm going to be going to the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology next month with this church! I'm super excited to go to one of these "adult" conferences, and even if I don't end up at this church, I'm sure that it will be a good experience.
What I didn't like as much
Far from where I live- The number one reason I am hesitant to join this church is that it is half an hour away, making it hard for me to really be a part of the mission of the church. I want to join a church that I will be able to invite people to and a church where I can serve during the week. I feel like it would be hard for me to really feel like I'm part of a church that I live so far away from. I wouldn't really be able to contribute to the mission of the church if the church doesn't specifically reach out to Fort Wayne. In other words, this church would probably be good for me to be fed at, but may not a good church for me to serve at.
Lack of young adults - This isn't a very new problem for me visiting churches, but after meeting the guys that I did the previous week at Providence, I was a little disappointed not to really get a chance to meet any young adults. I knew that there were one or two young adult guys, but I didn't really get a chance to talk to them.
The Verdict
St. Andrew Evangelical Presbyterian Church was a very comfortable, familiar church that I probably wouldn't mind making my home church if I can't find a good church here in Fort Wayne. I want to go back to hear another sermon to make sure that the teaching is okay, but the focus of the church seemed to be good, and the people I met really knew their stuff and were enthusiastic about the Word. I'm really glad that I'm able to go to a conference with some of the people from this church, and I see myself growing spiritually at this church. However, I would still much rather join a good, missional church with good teaching that is closer to home so I could be able to join qthe church in reaching out to the community.
Next up: Northpark Community Church (2/26/2012)
In A Nutshell: A small, familiar Knox-like church that is kind of far from home.
Church Overview
Affiliation - Evangelical Presbyterian Church (wiki, official site)
Attendance - 75-100 people
Demographics - Completely white, multi-generational with a good number of high-schoolers and male young adults.
Sunday Service
Overall, if my time at St. Andrew was extremely familiar and comfortable. As I describe below, other then an interesting candle-lighting "ceremony" before and after the service, the service was extremely similar to a Knox service. St. Andrew had a time of fellowship with some breakfast food (bagels, donuts, and orange juice) between the worship service and the Sunday school, not unlike the time in Knox hall that we have. The lady who say behind me in service, whom I introduced myself to after the service, took really good care of me and introduced me to a ton of different people in the church. I got a chance to meet the pastor, who actually had spent some time serving in Taiwan as a missionary, and learned that he actually was very familiar with Pastor Mike Frison from Knox!
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| MCCC really needs more colorful builletins. |
The music was simple but familiar. There was a piano, drums, and three vocalists on stage. The songs we sang were some of my all-time favorite classic Christian songs, so even though I was at a new church and didn't know anyone there, I was really able to focus on God and worship him. We sang songs like This is My Father's World, 'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus, and How Deep the Father's Love for Us, which I really enjoyed. To me, the musical worship was a great balance between contemporary Christian and traditional hymns, much like the worship at Knox!
The sermon, titled "Can I be Sure" from Hebrews 6:4-8, was a talk on assurance of salvation (which is a topic that seems to be popping up a lot in my life). Assurance of salvation is always a difficult topic to speak on (thought I really enjoyed John Piper's sermon series on it), and Pastor Glen really went down the "a good tree must produce good fruit" route, but I thought it leaned a little too heavily towards moralism. Again, I know it's a really difficult subject to speak on, but I wish the cross was emphasized more heavily as the means and assurance of our salvation. As I said in my last post, I recognize that pastors here are probably used to speaking to completely Christian congregations, but to me, I still think that the gospel needs to be preached every week. To be honest, I'm more willing to give Pastor Glen the benefit of the doubt, as he is friends with Pastor Mike, and the church really does seem more gospel-centered than the other ones I've been to. Talking to one of the ladies, she said that it was probably just this Sunday that Pastor Glen decided to approach assurance of salvation from this angle.
I was pretty excited for Sunday School when I learned that they were studying Revelation, and it did turn out to be extremely enjoyable to me. The class turned out to be more like a directed discussion, but I thought that the conversation that we had was a perfect mix between head knowledge and life application, especially when it is so easy to get caught up in over-analyzing passages in Revelation. I was pleased that I felt like I was able to contribute to the discussion and felt honored and respected, despite being the only one in the room that was under ~45 years old. I was very pleased that the members of this Sunday school really knew their Scripture and knew what they were talking about, and it was obvious to me that the members of this church were sufficiently intellectual in their approach to Scripture (which really isn't always the case, especially in this culturally Christian, more blue collar sort of city).
Reflection
What I liked
Familiar Worship - Maybe I just got lucky with the song selection, but I really enjoyed the music and found it easy to worship. Even though there wasn't really much of a praise band, and it didn't actually seem like the singing was very loud (probably because the sanctuary was around half full), but it was just a good time to commune with God privately, which is what we Asian Americans like to do!
Sunday School - Sunday school was fun, and as I mentioned before, I felt like my voice mattered and I was able to be part of a lively, well-informed discussion. If I came to this church, I would still want to have a more teaching-focused type of class, and it was obvious to me that the teacher was definitely knowledgeable enough to make the class that way if he so chose.
Conferences - After Sunday school, one of the ladies in the church asked me told me that I seemed interested in Reformed theology (I really have no idea how she knew from the limited interactions we had, and I don't think I really gave much away during Sunday school), and she introduced me to and invited me to a bunch of different conferences, such as The Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology and Together for the Gospel. I probably won't be able to make T4G because it's in the middle of the week, but I'm going to be going to the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology next month with this church! I'm super excited to go to one of these "adult" conferences, and even if I don't end up at this church, I'm sure that it will be a good experience.
What I didn't like as much
Far from where I live- The number one reason I am hesitant to join this church is that it is half an hour away, making it hard for me to really be a part of the mission of the church. I want to join a church that I will be able to invite people to and a church where I can serve during the week. I feel like it would be hard for me to really feel like I'm part of a church that I live so far away from. I wouldn't really be able to contribute to the mission of the church if the church doesn't specifically reach out to Fort Wayne. In other words, this church would probably be good for me to be fed at, but may not a good church for me to serve at.
Lack of young adults - This isn't a very new problem for me visiting churches, but after meeting the guys that I did the previous week at Providence, I was a little disappointed not to really get a chance to meet any young adults. I knew that there were one or two young adult guys, but I didn't really get a chance to talk to them.
The Verdict
St. Andrew Evangelical Presbyterian Church was a very comfortable, familiar church that I probably wouldn't mind making my home church if I can't find a good church here in Fort Wayne. I want to go back to hear another sermon to make sure that the teaching is okay, but the focus of the church seemed to be good, and the people I met really knew their stuff and were enthusiastic about the Word. I'm really glad that I'm able to go to a conference with some of the people from this church, and I see myself growing spiritually at this church. However, I would still much rather join a good, missional church with good teaching that is closer to home so I could be able to join qthe church in reaching out to the community.
Next up: Northpark Community Church (2/26/2012)
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Happy 1709th Anniversary, Diocletianic Persecution
Yesterday night when I was reading The Book of Martyrs, I read:
Anyways, today is the 1709th anniversary of the beginning of the Dioclitianic Persecution, a persecution of Christians that, according to Wikipedia, resulted in 3,000 - 3,500 deaths of Christians and the torture and persecution of countless more. In reading the about all of these martyrs, I've really gained an appreciation for the early church, understanding that God used the bloody sacrifice of these men and women to advance his kingdom. Again, I encourage reading at least a little bit of the book and learning a little more about church history! It's really helped me appreciate the sovereignty of God in the growth of the church, and I hope that you can be encouraged in reading the few snippets of text in this post.
[A few extra thoughts: I don't think we can be completely sure that all the records are 100% accurate, and it is totally possible that the martyrdom of early Christians is somewhat romanticized and determination and fortitude of those martyred were exaggerated, but I think that the spirit of resilience in the church is extremely obvious. Another note worth making is that I've found it easy to idolize these early Christians, but we must always remember that in the end, it is Christ who suffered the worst punishment, more than anything we would ever be able to comprehend, and it is Christ who we are to look to and worship, not the martyrs. The martyrs need to point us to Christ, not to substitute him.]
Here are some things that surprised me and stuck out to me as I've been reading the book.
The brutality of the tortures and the executions
Reading of some of the tortures really makes my stomach turn. It's some of the most horrifying things I could ever imagine, and I just try not to picture the tortures as I read the book. I'm not going to go into the details of what I read (there really weren't that many given, anyways), but it became very obvious that being beheaded was probably the most painless way to die, as many of the Christians were boiled to death, burned alive, had hooks run through their body, were beaten to death, and were killed by beasts. The human heart is immeasurably wicked, which we sometimes forget.
The martrydom of women
One of the biggest surprises to me is reading about how many women were martyred. Not only is this a sign of the utter depravity of those in authority, but also really a testament to the fortitude of the females' faiths. From the way we talk about early Christians, it's easy to think that women were marginalized and looked down upon in the early church, but I think that the martyrdom and strength of these Christian women really proves otherwise. Many women were bold in proclaiming their faith, and they paid for it with their lives. The fearlessness with which women clung on to the gospel is worthy of admiration, both from the early church and now. To all the people reading this that may not want to read any of this brutal stuff (like my mother, who is a self-admitted ostrich), this next story is a more heartwarming story that you may "enjoy".
Theodora and Didymus - A tale of two martyrs
It was quite surprising to me to hear of Roman senators and wealthy people being martyred. In the current "We are the 99%" day and age, we often think of the rich and powerful as invincible and simply untouchable, but the persecution of the Christians really seemed to be completely indiscriminate. This is a real, powerful reminder that our riches on earth will never compare to the crown of righteousness, which the martyrs so often looked forward to. It was also very interesting to me that it seemed that many, many soldiers died as martyrs. I had thought that being a military state, the Romans would have really glorified their soldiers, like we do here in the US. I had thought that the Romans would also desire to preserve their military strength, but history tells us that the Romans executed entire legions of Christians. Below are two of my favorite stories that I've read so far.
Sebastian - a man martyred twice
The conversion of executioners
Another common theme in many of the stories is that the executioners would see the strength in those they were about to be execute, and would decide to become Christians on the spot and be killed almost instantaneously. This is simply amazing - God's grace at it's best. It isn't foolish of us to pray for the persecutors of the faith. It isn't foolish of us to pray for Al Qaeda or the Chinese government. God saved Paul, a persecutor of the early church, and he saved many in the first few centuries of the church, and he can still do that today. When Jesus said, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you", he wasn't simply talking about people that gossip about you and are mean to you, he's calling us to pray for those who are actively trying to destroy the Christian religion.
The danger of being a church leader
As I read through the book, it's really astonishing to me how many times the "Bishop of Rome" (what we would now call the Pope) was martyred. Every time a Bishop of Rome was martyred, the next succeeding Bishop of Rome would probably be martyred too. In fact, according to this list on Wikipedia, 10 of the Popes from Pope 9 to Pope 28 were martyred. That's a mortality rate of over 50%! We've already seen from my previous post that all the apostles but John were martyred, but from the little church history I know, I've found that all of the prominent church leaders whose name I recognize were all martyred. I don't know why it was a surprise to me, but I was kind of shocked that these men (like Polycarp, Origen, and Ignatius), for whom I only know their theological contributions, were all killed for their faith. Nowadays, being a church leader means glory, a big name, a big church, and large book royalties. As young men, we look up to these men of wisdom and insight, for the fame and large sphere of influence that they have. Back then, being a church leader meant almost certain death. These men stepped up to serve God, knowing full well that it would probably cost them their lives. This is an incredibly great reminder to us that being a church leader isn't about glorifying ourselves but about glorifying God, even if it costs us our lives.
"Under the Roman Emperors, commonly called the Era of the Martyrs, was occasioned partly by the increasing numbers and luxury of the christians, and the hatred of Galerius, the adopted son of Diocletian, who, being stimulated by his mother, a bigoted pagan, never ceased persuading the emperor to enter upon the persecution, till he had accomplished his purpose. The fatal day fixed upon to commence the bloody work, was the 23d of February, A.D. 303."I realized that this was today! Obviously, I don't believe in coincidences, and it's amazing how God works things together like this!
Anyways, today is the 1709th anniversary of the beginning of the Dioclitianic Persecution, a persecution of Christians that, according to Wikipedia, resulted in 3,000 - 3,500 deaths of Christians and the torture and persecution of countless more. In reading the about all of these martyrs, I've really gained an appreciation for the early church, understanding that God used the bloody sacrifice of these men and women to advance his kingdom. Again, I encourage reading at least a little bit of the book and learning a little more about church history! It's really helped me appreciate the sovereignty of God in the growth of the church, and I hope that you can be encouraged in reading the few snippets of text in this post.
[A few extra thoughts: I don't think we can be completely sure that all the records are 100% accurate, and it is totally possible that the martyrdom of early Christians is somewhat romanticized and determination and fortitude of those martyred were exaggerated, but I think that the spirit of resilience in the church is extremely obvious. Another note worth making is that I've found it easy to idolize these early Christians, but we must always remember that in the end, it is Christ who suffered the worst punishment, more than anything we would ever be able to comprehend, and it is Christ who we are to look to and worship, not the martyrs. The martyrs need to point us to Christ, not to substitute him.]
Here are some things that surprised me and stuck out to me as I've been reading the book.
The brutality of the tortures and the executions
Reading of some of the tortures really makes my stomach turn. It's some of the most horrifying things I could ever imagine, and I just try not to picture the tortures as I read the book. I'm not going to go into the details of what I read (there really weren't that many given, anyways), but it became very obvious that being beheaded was probably the most painless way to die, as many of the Christians were boiled to death, burned alive, had hooks run through their body, were beaten to death, and were killed by beasts. The human heart is immeasurably wicked, which we sometimes forget.
The martrydom of women
One of the biggest surprises to me is reading about how many women were martyred. Not only is this a sign of the utter depravity of those in authority, but also really a testament to the fortitude of the females' faiths. From the way we talk about early Christians, it's easy to think that women were marginalized and looked down upon in the early church, but I think that the martyrdom and strength of these Christian women really proves otherwise. Many women were bold in proclaiming their faith, and they paid for it with their lives. The fearlessness with which women clung on to the gospel is worthy of admiration, both from the early church and now. To all the people reading this that may not want to read any of this brutal stuff (like my mother, who is a self-admitted ostrich), this next story is a more heartwarming story that you may "enjoy".
Theodora and Didymus - A tale of two martyrs
"Theodora, a beautiful young lady of Antioch, on refusing to sacrifice to the Roman idols, was contemned to the stews, that her virtue might be sacrificed to the brutality of lust. Didymus, a Christian, disguised himself in the habit of a Roman soldier, went to the house, informed Theodora who he was, and advised her to make her escape in his clothes. This being effected, and a man found in the brothel instead of a beautiful lady, Didymus was taken before the president, to whom confessing the truth, and owning that he was a Christian the sentence of death was immediately pronounced against him. Theodora, hearing that her deliverer was likely to suffer, came to the judge, threw herself at his feet, and begged that the sentence might fall on her as the guilty person; but, deaf to the cries of the innocent, and insensible to the calls of justice, the inflexible judge condemned both, when they were executed accordingly, being first beheaded, and their bodies burnt afterwards."The martrydom of the rich, influential, and soldiers
It was quite surprising to me to hear of Roman senators and wealthy people being martyred. In the current "We are the 99%" day and age, we often think of the rich and powerful as invincible and simply untouchable, but the persecution of the Christians really seemed to be completely indiscriminate. This is a real, powerful reminder that our riches on earth will never compare to the crown of righteousness, which the martyrs so often looked forward to. It was also very interesting to me that it seemed that many, many soldiers died as martyrs. I had thought that being a military state, the Romans would have really glorified their soldiers, like we do here in the US. I had thought that the Romans would also desire to preserve their military strength, but history tells us that the Romans executed entire legions of Christians. Below are two of my favorite stories that I've read so far.
Sebastian - a man martyred twice
"Sebastian, a celebrated martyr, was born at Narbonne, in Gaul, instructed in the principles of Christianity at Milan, and afterward became an officer of the emperor's guard at Rome. He remained a true Christian in the midst of idolatry; unallured by the splendours of a court, untainted by evil examples, and uncontaminated by the hopes of perferment. Refusing to be a pagan, the emperor ordered him to be taken to a field near the city, termed the Campus Martius, and there to by shot to death with arrows; which sentence was executed accordingly. Some pious Christians coming to the place of execution, in order to give his body burial, perceived signs of life in him, and immediately moving him to a place of security, they, in a short time effected his recovery, and prepared him for a second martyrdom; for, as soon as he was able to go out, he placed himself intentionally in the emperor's way as he was going to the temple, and reprehended him for his various cruelties and unreasonable prejudices against Christianity. As soon as Diocletian had overcome his surprise, he ordered Sebastian to be seized, and carried to a place near the palace, and beaten to death; and, that the Christians should not either use means again to recover or bury his body, he ordered that it should be thrown into the common sewer. Nevertheless, a Christian lady, named Lucina, found means to remove it from the sewer, and bury it in the catacombs, or repositories of the dead."The legion of martyrs
"In the year of Christ 286, a most remarkable affair occurred; a legion of soldiers, consisting of 6666 men, contained none but Christians. This legion was called the Theban Legion, because the men had been raised in Thebias...Maximian, about this time, ordered a general sacrifice, at which the whole army was to assist; and likewise he commanded, that they should take the oath of allegiance and swear, at the same time, to assist in the extirpation of Christianity in Gaul.
Alarmed by these orders, each individual of the Theban Legion absolutely refused either to sacrifice or take the oaths prescribed. This so greatly enraged Maximian, that he ordered the legion to be decimated, that is, every tenth man to be selected from the rest, and put to the sword. This bloody order having been put in execution, those who remained alive were still inflexible, when a second decimation took place, and every tenth man of those living were put to death.
This second severity made no more impression than the first had done; the soldiers preserved their fortitude and their principles, but by the advice of their officers they drew up a loyal remonstrance to the emperor. This, it might have been presumed, would have softened the emperor, but it had a contrary effect: for, enraged at their perseverance and unanimity, he commanded , that the whole legion should be put to death, which was accordingly executed by the other troops, who cut them to pieces with their swords, 22d Sept. 286."
The conversion of executioners
Another common theme in many of the stories is that the executioners would see the strength in those they were about to be execute, and would decide to become Christians on the spot and be killed almost instantaneously. This is simply amazing - God's grace at it's best. It isn't foolish of us to pray for the persecutors of the faith. It isn't foolish of us to pray for Al Qaeda or the Chinese government. God saved Paul, a persecutor of the early church, and he saved many in the first few centuries of the church, and he can still do that today. When Jesus said, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you", he wasn't simply talking about people that gossip about you and are mean to you, he's calling us to pray for those who are actively trying to destroy the Christian religion.
The danger of being a church leader
As I read through the book, it's really astonishing to me how many times the "Bishop of Rome" (what we would now call the Pope) was martyred. Every time a Bishop of Rome was martyred, the next succeeding Bishop of Rome would probably be martyred too. In fact, according to this list on Wikipedia, 10 of the Popes from Pope 9 to Pope 28 were martyred. That's a mortality rate of over 50%! We've already seen from my previous post that all the apostles but John were martyred, but from the little church history I know, I've found that all of the prominent church leaders whose name I recognize were all martyred. I don't know why it was a surprise to me, but I was kind of shocked that these men (like Polycarp, Origen, and Ignatius), for whom I only know their theological contributions, were all killed for their faith. Nowadays, being a church leader means glory, a big name, a big church, and large book royalties. As young men, we look up to these men of wisdom and insight, for the fame and large sphere of influence that they have. Back then, being a church leader meant almost certain death. These men stepped up to serve God, knowing full well that it would probably cost them their lives. This is an incredibly great reminder to us that being a church leader isn't about glorifying ourselves but about glorifying God, even if it costs us our lives.
Revelation 2:10 - "Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life."
Related post - New Insights into Suffering
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Acts 8 - Rise and Go
This post, along with the following posts is on Acts 8:26-40, which is the familiar story of Philip and the Ethiopian. (I had wanted to fit it all into one post, but I think it would just be extremely long and unfocused, so this post is just going to be on verses 26 and 27.)
Acts 8:26-27 - "Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, 'Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.' This is a desert place. And he rose and went."
I. "Rise and go"
The first thing that caught my eye was the word "rise". Why did the angel say that? Was Philip sleeping or something? I doubt it. Was he just lying down? We have no indication of that. We know from earlier in the chapter that Philip isn't just lounging around doing nothing while all the other disciples are hard at work, so it probably isn't the angel telling him to get off his tush and go do something. I don't know any Greek, so I don't really know what the significance or "rise" is, but we it isn't a completely unfamiliar phrase. We see in Jonah that God tells him "Arise, and go" and we actually see this phrase is used quite often in the Bible.
However, I have kind of a hunch about this whole "rise" thing. I've sort of noticed it used a LOT in my reading of Acts, and while it may just be a commonly used word, I think that Luke uses it intentionally. You Bible teachers out there (Pastor Bob) can correct me on this later, but my guess is that all of this business with rising has to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. After all, the book of Acts is a record of the amazing things that happen in the church because of the resurrection of Christ . We can just take a look at Luke's emphasis on "rising" in the book of Acts so far.
Jesus rose up to heaven.
Acts 1:9 - "And when [Jesus]had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight."
Peter rose up to tell of God raising Jesus from the dead.
Acts 1:15 - "In those days Peter stood up among the brothers" and then gave a sweet speech about Jesus.
Acts 2:23 - "this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.
Acts 2:32 - "This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses."
A lame man rises up to walk, and the disciples speak of Jesus raised up to explain the miracle.
Acts 3:6 - "But Peter said, "I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!"
Acts 3:15 - "and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses."
The holiness and power of God is revealed.
Acts 5:5-6 - "When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it. And young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him."
If Christ did not rise from the dead, Christianity is doomed to fail.
Acts 5:17 - "But the high priest rose up, filled with jealousy."
Acts 5:36-39 - "...Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody...He was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him Judas the Galilean rose up..He too perished and all who followed him were scattered...if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!"
Stephen sees Jesus rising from his seat at the right hand of God to receive him
Acts 7:55 - "But [Stephen], full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God."
Ananias rose to pray over Saul, who then rose and was baptized.
Acts 9:11 - "Rise and go to the street called Straight..."
Acts 9:17 - "And immediately, something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized; and taking food, he was strengthened.
Peter was commanded to rise and eat what he had thought unclean.
Acts 10:13-14 - "And there came a voice to him: 'Rise, Peter; kill and eat.' But Peter said, 'By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.'"
As I mentioned before, God's command to rise up and do stuff isn't rare in the Bible, but in the book of Acts, everything is different, because Jesus has risen from the dead! We can only "rise and go" because Jesus first did it! Jesus rose from his seat in heaven and came down into the world. He rose from the dead, then ascended back into heaven. The power of the resurrection is the power by which all the disciples did their miracles and this is the power by which we do anything that pleases God. This is the power by which we rise from the dead - the power by which we are saved. This is the power by which Jesus takes the hand of our heart and says "Child, arise", like he did for the little girl in Luke 8. This resurrection power is also the power by which we go, the power through which we can spread the gospel! As one of my favorite worship songs says, "The same power that conquered the grave lives in me!"
Christians, rise and go, for your Christ is risen!
II. This is a desert place.
It's very interesting that Luke decided to add this detail here. I think that Luke is indicating that the place where the angel told him to go wasn't an attractive place. It wasn't somewhere you would visit on vacation. There's also no guarantee that there would be people there to minister to! In essence, the angel told Philip to go to a remote location with no people, no food or water, but a lot of heat and discomfort. We know that Philip had already been doing some great ministry, but God called him somewhere that just didn't seem like it had much ministry potential! Sometimes God calls us to uncomfortable or seemingly strange places that causes us to doubt God's wisdom. "God, are you really calling me here? I think you may be misappropriating your resources, God. In case you didn't notice, I can cast out demons and all that cool stuff, and people really seem to like me, so I think it would be most wise if you put me somewhere with a lot of people and somewhere that is a little more comfortable." We lack the faith and the trust in God to go and minister in places that seem spiritually desolate. We have unspoken, subconscious barriers that we set up, marking the boundaries to our possible obedience to God. We allow our fleshly desires to limit how we serve God.
III. And he rose and went.
If only this was our attitude to the commands of God! If only we rise and go to do all that he commands us to do, even if it seems hard and even if we don't really want to! It's interesting that in chapters 8, 9, and 10, God commands three different people to rise and go, and Philip is the only one who did so immediately. Ananias initially didn't want to minister to Saul, and Peter didn't want to eat the unclean food, but Philip immediately rose and went, despite having to probably walk to the desert without a real knowledge of why God wanted him there.
As a kid, my mom always got frustrated at me for not doing what she told me the first time she told it to me. If she told me to do something like set the table or clean my room, I would always tell her "later, later, later" until she would finally just explode and yell at me after asking me nicely so many times. The moral of the story is (as is always the moral of any story of mine): Don't be like Caleb. "Obey the first time," as my mother used to say (or yell).
So let's obey God when he calls. Let's obey his call to rise out of our sin and out of our shame. Let's obey his call to rise out of self-absorption and our self-centeredness. And let's obey God's command to go - his command to go into all nations and make disciples. Let's obey God's command to go and care for the sick, the poor, and the oppressed. Let's obey when God calls us to go places, whether geographically or figuratively, that are undesirable, unappealing, and uncomfortable. Let's obey God when He calls us to go, even if not every last detail of his plan has been revealed to us.
Christians, rise and go, for your Christ is risen!
Acts 8:26-27 - "Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, 'Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.' This is a desert place. And he rose and went."
I. "Rise and go"
The first thing that caught my eye was the word "rise". Why did the angel say that? Was Philip sleeping or something? I doubt it. Was he just lying down? We have no indication of that. We know from earlier in the chapter that Philip isn't just lounging around doing nothing while all the other disciples are hard at work, so it probably isn't the angel telling him to get off his tush and go do something. I don't know any Greek, so I don't really know what the significance or "rise" is, but we it isn't a completely unfamiliar phrase. We see in Jonah that God tells him "Arise, and go" and we actually see this phrase is used quite often in the Bible.
However, I have kind of a hunch about this whole "rise" thing. I've sort of noticed it used a LOT in my reading of Acts, and while it may just be a commonly used word, I think that Luke uses it intentionally. You Bible teachers out there (Pastor Bob) can correct me on this later, but my guess is that all of this business with rising has to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. After all, the book of Acts is a record of the amazing things that happen in the church because of the resurrection of Christ . We can just take a look at Luke's emphasis on "rising" in the book of Acts so far.
Jesus rose up to heaven.
Acts 1:9 - "And when [Jesus]had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight."
Peter rose up to tell of God raising Jesus from the dead.
Acts 1:15 - "In those days Peter stood up among the brothers" and then gave a sweet speech about Jesus.
Acts 2:23 - "this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.
Acts 2:32 - "This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses."
A lame man rises up to walk, and the disciples speak of Jesus raised up to explain the miracle.
Acts 3:6 - "But Peter said, "I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!"
Acts 3:15 - "and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses."
The holiness and power of God is revealed.
Acts 5:5-6 - "When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it. And young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him."
If Christ did not rise from the dead, Christianity is doomed to fail.
Acts 5:17 - "But the high priest rose up, filled with jealousy."
Acts 5:36-39 - "...Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody...He was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him Judas the Galilean rose up..He too perished and all who followed him were scattered...if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!"
Stephen sees Jesus rising from his seat at the right hand of God to receive him
Acts 7:55 - "But [Stephen], full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God."
Ananias rose to pray over Saul, who then rose and was baptized.
Acts 9:11 - "Rise and go to the street called Straight..."
Acts 9:17 - "And immediately, something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized; and taking food, he was strengthened.
Peter was commanded to rise and eat what he had thought unclean.
Acts 10:13-14 - "And there came a voice to him: 'Rise, Peter; kill and eat.' But Peter said, 'By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.'"
As I mentioned before, God's command to rise up and do stuff isn't rare in the Bible, but in the book of Acts, everything is different, because Jesus has risen from the dead! We can only "rise and go" because Jesus first did it! Jesus rose from his seat in heaven and came down into the world. He rose from the dead, then ascended back into heaven. The power of the resurrection is the power by which all the disciples did their miracles and this is the power by which we do anything that pleases God. This is the power by which we rise from the dead - the power by which we are saved. This is the power by which Jesus takes the hand of our heart and says "Child, arise", like he did for the little girl in Luke 8. This resurrection power is also the power by which we go, the power through which we can spread the gospel! As one of my favorite worship songs says, "The same power that conquered the grave lives in me!"
Christians, rise and go, for your Christ is risen!
II. This is a desert place.
It's very interesting that Luke decided to add this detail here. I think that Luke is indicating that the place where the angel told him to go wasn't an attractive place. It wasn't somewhere you would visit on vacation. There's also no guarantee that there would be people there to minister to! In essence, the angel told Philip to go to a remote location with no people, no food or water, but a lot of heat and discomfort. We know that Philip had already been doing some great ministry, but God called him somewhere that just didn't seem like it had much ministry potential! Sometimes God calls us to uncomfortable or seemingly strange places that causes us to doubt God's wisdom. "God, are you really calling me here? I think you may be misappropriating your resources, God. In case you didn't notice, I can cast out demons and all that cool stuff, and people really seem to like me, so I think it would be most wise if you put me somewhere with a lot of people and somewhere that is a little more comfortable." We lack the faith and the trust in God to go and minister in places that seem spiritually desolate. We have unspoken, subconscious barriers that we set up, marking the boundaries to our possible obedience to God. We allow our fleshly desires to limit how we serve God.
III. And he rose and went.
If only this was our attitude to the commands of God! If only we rise and go to do all that he commands us to do, even if it seems hard and even if we don't really want to! It's interesting that in chapters 8, 9, and 10, God commands three different people to rise and go, and Philip is the only one who did so immediately. Ananias initially didn't want to minister to Saul, and Peter didn't want to eat the unclean food, but Philip immediately rose and went, despite having to probably walk to the desert without a real knowledge of why God wanted him there.
As a kid, my mom always got frustrated at me for not doing what she told me the first time she told it to me. If she told me to do something like set the table or clean my room, I would always tell her "later, later, later" until she would finally just explode and yell at me after asking me nicely so many times. The moral of the story is (as is always the moral of any story of mine): Don't be like Caleb. "Obey the first time," as my mother used to say (or yell).
So let's obey God when he calls. Let's obey his call to rise out of our sin and out of our shame. Let's obey his call to rise out of self-absorption and our self-centeredness. And let's obey God's command to go - his command to go into all nations and make disciples. Let's obey God's command to go and care for the sick, the poor, and the oppressed. Let's obey when God calls us to go places, whether geographically or figuratively, that are undesirable, unappealing, and uncomfortable. Let's obey God when He calls us to go, even if not every last detail of his plan has been revealed to us.
Christians, rise and go, for your Christ is risen!
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Acts 7 - We the Pharisees
Recently, I've been reading Acts, and God has really shown me a lot in it, so I'm just going to try and share a little of what I get out of the passages that I read. As sort of a disclaimer, I'm a noob. I'm no theologian, and I don't read the passage in the original Greek or anything super-intellectual like that, so my insights may be a little more contrived and may not actually completely and accurately reflect the author's intent, but I still hope you enjoy it.
The Build-up
I read Acts 7 as part of my quiet time last Friday. As you can figure out just by flipping your Bible open to Acts 7 (or being lazy and clicking this link), it's Stephen's last speech to the Jews who seized him before he was martyred. Now I didn't actually get to finish the entire chapter, so I finished it on Saturday as part of my quiet time, when Saturday, when Nathan, Jonny, and Cory came to visit. I had been really frustrated with not being able to finish the chapter, as Stephen's speech just sort of builds and builds, as he goes through Israel's history of disobedience and God's grace through it all. Halfway through we're all must be thinking "Okay Stephen...get to the point." The Jews that seized him, who had falsely accused him of blaspheming against Moses, must have been thinking "Yeah, Stephen. We know our history, we've all heard this before...". Stephen spends a little bit of time talking about some of the patriarchs, but actually spends more than half of his speech talking about Moses, who he was accused of blaspheming against. I don't actually think that there was anything that Stephen said that any of the Jews would have objected to. Until BAM. HE NAILS THEM.
The Pwnage
Out of NOWHERE Stephen just demolishes them. Stephen's just completely smashes them to pieces. For some reason, his speech kind of reminded me of Denzel's famous speech at the end of training day (video here), where he just lays entire sentences of insults and expletives at the people around him. Completely different situation, I know, but it just reminded me of it. In the buildup, you can almost imagine the Jew's thinking, "I hate this guy for talking about Jesus!!!!....oh okay...he's talking about Joseph...wow this guy knows his history...yay Moses! I love Moses...At least he's not talking about Jesus....OH WTF. WHAT DID HE JUST SAY. NO HE DI'INT. LET'S KILL THIS FOO." What exactly did Stephen say that so enraged them, that they "ground their teeth at him", which I guess is some sort of expression of hatred? [As a sidenote, I grind my teeth when I sleep (as Cory found out this weekend), so if you ever hear me grinding my teeth at you, please disregard it as my sleeping and not me wanting to kill you.] Let's take a look at what Stephen said.
I want to concentrate on verse 51: "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit."
"You stiff-necked people"
I'm no expert in stiff-necked-ness, but I assume that Stephen is talking about being stubborn and unwilling to change, as he will elaborate further on. Doing a quick Biblegateway search, we see that this isn't the only time that the phrase has been used in the Bible, as God had used it to describe Israel, which is exactly what Stephen was trying to point out in his speech.
"uncircumcised in heart and ears"
As you may have already guessed, this is the phrase that really caught my eye. THIS is probably what cut most deeply at the hearts of the Jews (pun intended). We know that of all that these uber-religious Jews were proud of, they were the most proud of their circumcision. They loved that they were Jews. They looked down on all with foreskins and really flaunted their circumcision and Jew-ness around. To call a Jew, especially a "religious" Jew, uncircumcised? That was the ultimate insult! Stephen was not only attacking their identity as Jews, but because the circumcision was a sign of the Jews' covenant with God, he was attacking their faith and their religiosity. He was correctly diagnosing the spiritual deadness of their hearts. But man. What a harsh rebuking.
"you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers do, so do you."
This is when all of a sudden the conviction fell on me like a bag of bricks (who carries bricks in bags, anyways?). I was all like "Haha! You Pharisees just got BURNED by Stephen so hard!", but then I realized that this passage...the Pharisees...that's ME. This verse is a great, memorable summarization of the doctrine of sin - that apart from the saving grace of God, we ALL cannot help but resist the Holy Spirit. We ALL are stiff-necked, stuck in our sin, with no hope for true circumcision of the heart. This is the problem of my heart - I cannot help but sin and resist the Holy Spirit. Not only is this my problem, this is the problem of all of creation and all of man. This has been the problem for generations and generations and ages and ages. There is none that can self-determine to not resist the Holy Spirit.
When we read stories of the Pharisees in the Bible, we almost always vilify them without realizing that we are actually just like them, if not worse! Tim Keller said in one of his sermons, "How often do we read the passage on the Pharisee's prayer and the tax collector's prayer and think to ourselves 'Thank God I'm not like that Pharisee?'" I am that guy. I'm the modern-day Pharisee who scoffs at the Pharisees. I'm the pot who called the kettle black (not that there's anything wrong with being black, of course. I lovingly accept and enjoy the diversity of kettles of all colors). Apart from God, I hate Him. And I hate people that love Him. I cannot help but sin. I have no ability to please God. To top it all off, I have no ability to not hate God, even if I tried, which I would never do, because I hate God so much. Reading this passage with an understanding that I am actually the Jew - who is absolutely dead in sin and pride and hate having my sins pointed - really opens up my eyes.
But obviously, this isn't the end of the story. There is good news, and that is that God can overcome our resisting of him, which he accomplished by Jesus' death on the cross, that we can share in the communion with God as Stephen experienced, and one day we will meet him in heaven and give him a hug and tell him "Thanks for Acts 7. That was a pretty sweet speech."
The death of Stephen
So what ultimately made the Jews so mad that they killed him? Stephen said he saw Jesus. He said he saw God. How blessed are we that we have that same privilege to know the true, living God. In his entire speech, Stephen actually barely mentioned Jesus. He alluded to Jesus when he said that their ancestors killed the prophets we predicted the coming of "the Righteous One." This was only the second time. The Jews couldn't believe their ears, that Stephen was claiming that he could see God, and that he could see the Messiah. While I highly doubt anyone reading this post has actually seen God, we have the unthinkable opportunity to know Jesus. Jesus says in John 14:9, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father". It's amazing how we can claim to know the Messiah personally and the Creator God of heaven and earth, the very things that Stephen died for.
God, I am a sinner. I cannot help but resist you. Thank you for overcoming my resistance and giving me your salvation. Reveal to me the places in my life where I'm still resisting you, and help me give those things over to you.
The Build-up
I read Acts 7 as part of my quiet time last Friday. As you can figure out just by flipping your Bible open to Acts 7 (or being lazy and clicking this link), it's Stephen's last speech to the Jews who seized him before he was martyred. Now I didn't actually get to finish the entire chapter, so I finished it on Saturday as part of my quiet time, when Saturday, when Nathan, Jonny, and Cory came to visit. I had been really frustrated with not being able to finish the chapter, as Stephen's speech just sort of builds and builds, as he goes through Israel's history of disobedience and God's grace through it all. Halfway through we're all must be thinking "Okay Stephen...get to the point." The Jews that seized him, who had falsely accused him of blaspheming against Moses, must have been thinking "Yeah, Stephen. We know our history, we've all heard this before...". Stephen spends a little bit of time talking about some of the patriarchs, but actually spends more than half of his speech talking about Moses, who he was accused of blaspheming against. I don't actually think that there was anything that Stephen said that any of the Jews would have objected to. Until BAM. HE NAILS THEM.
The Pwnage
Out of NOWHERE Stephen just demolishes them. Stephen's just completely smashes them to pieces. For some reason, his speech kind of reminded me of Denzel's famous speech at the end of training day (video here), where he just lays entire sentences of insults and expletives at the people around him. Completely different situation, I know, but it just reminded me of it. In the buildup, you can almost imagine the Jew's thinking, "I hate this guy for talking about Jesus!!!!....oh okay...he's talking about Joseph...wow this guy knows his history...yay Moses! I love Moses...At least he's not talking about Jesus....OH WTF. WHAT DID HE JUST SAY. NO HE DI'INT. LET'S KILL THIS FOO." What exactly did Stephen say that so enraged them, that they "ground their teeth at him", which I guess is some sort of expression of hatred? [As a sidenote, I grind my teeth when I sleep (as Cory found out this weekend), so if you ever hear me grinding my teeth at you, please disregard it as my sleeping and not me wanting to kill you.] Let's take a look at what Stephen said.
I want to concentrate on verse 51: "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit."
"You stiff-necked people"
I'm no expert in stiff-necked-ness, but I assume that Stephen is talking about being stubborn and unwilling to change, as he will elaborate further on. Doing a quick Biblegateway search, we see that this isn't the only time that the phrase has been used in the Bible, as God had used it to describe Israel, which is exactly what Stephen was trying to point out in his speech.
"uncircumcised in heart and ears"
As you may have already guessed, this is the phrase that really caught my eye. THIS is probably what cut most deeply at the hearts of the Jews (pun intended). We know that of all that these uber-religious Jews were proud of, they were the most proud of their circumcision. They loved that they were Jews. They looked down on all with foreskins and really flaunted their circumcision and Jew-ness around. To call a Jew, especially a "religious" Jew, uncircumcised? That was the ultimate insult! Stephen was not only attacking their identity as Jews, but because the circumcision was a sign of the Jews' covenant with God, he was attacking their faith and their religiosity. He was correctly diagnosing the spiritual deadness of their hearts. But man. What a harsh rebuking.
"you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers do, so do you."
This is when all of a sudden the conviction fell on me like a bag of bricks (who carries bricks in bags, anyways?). I was all like "Haha! You Pharisees just got BURNED by Stephen so hard!", but then I realized that this passage...the Pharisees...that's ME. This verse is a great, memorable summarization of the doctrine of sin - that apart from the saving grace of God, we ALL cannot help but resist the Holy Spirit. We ALL are stiff-necked, stuck in our sin, with no hope for true circumcision of the heart. This is the problem of my heart - I cannot help but sin and resist the Holy Spirit. Not only is this my problem, this is the problem of all of creation and all of man. This has been the problem for generations and generations and ages and ages. There is none that can self-determine to not resist the Holy Spirit.
When we read stories of the Pharisees in the Bible, we almost always vilify them without realizing that we are actually just like them, if not worse! Tim Keller said in one of his sermons, "How often do we read the passage on the Pharisee's prayer and the tax collector's prayer and think to ourselves 'Thank God I'm not like that Pharisee?'" I am that guy. I'm the modern-day Pharisee who scoffs at the Pharisees. I'm the pot who called the kettle black (not that there's anything wrong with being black, of course. I lovingly accept and enjoy the diversity of kettles of all colors). Apart from God, I hate Him. And I hate people that love Him. I cannot help but sin. I have no ability to please God. To top it all off, I have no ability to not hate God, even if I tried, which I would never do, because I hate God so much. Reading this passage with an understanding that I am actually the Jew - who is absolutely dead in sin and pride and hate having my sins pointed - really opens up my eyes.
But obviously, this isn't the end of the story. There is good news, and that is that God can overcome our resisting of him, which he accomplished by Jesus' death on the cross, that we can share in the communion with God as Stephen experienced, and one day we will meet him in heaven and give him a hug and tell him "Thanks for Acts 7. That was a pretty sweet speech."
The death of Stephen
So what ultimately made the Jews so mad that they killed him? Stephen said he saw Jesus. He said he saw God. How blessed are we that we have that same privilege to know the true, living God. In his entire speech, Stephen actually barely mentioned Jesus. He alluded to Jesus when he said that their ancestors killed the prophets we predicted the coming of "the Righteous One." This was only the second time. The Jews couldn't believe their ears, that Stephen was claiming that he could see God, and that he could see the Messiah. While I highly doubt anyone reading this post has actually seen God, we have the unthinkable opportunity to know Jesus. Jesus says in John 14:9, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father". It's amazing how we can claim to know the Messiah personally and the Creator God of heaven and earth, the very things that Stephen died for.
God, I am a sinner. I cannot help but resist you. Thank you for overcoming my resistance and giving me your salvation. Reveal to me the places in my life where I'm still resisting you, and help me give those things over to you.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Being an Asian-American Christian
I know I'm late to the party, but for those of you tired of seeing Jeremy Lin links on Facebook, this post isn't really going to be abount Jeremy Lin, I promise.
This morning, I finally read the Gospel Coalition post on "Linsanity and Asian American Christianity", and it really struck me just how much I resonated with all that the author was saying. This guy gets it. I almost cried at work because of how much he gets it. I grew up in a church with a super-conservative and fundamental head pastor with a heavily charismatic-leaning youth director. I grew up hearing more about Hudson Taylor than John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Jonathan Edwards combined. I didn't know the difference between Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists until college (and I still don't really know much about it). I've never cared too much for politics, and while I leaned right, I didn't really learn to care about abortion until just a few weeks ago, and I'm really still working through it. I wore T-shirts and shorts to church as a kid and played with all my friends, and I never really understood why so many white kids absolutely hated going to church. I've played at eaten dinner at nearly all of my family friends' houses, and I couldn't imagine a church where people (and kids especially) didn't break bread together. I now hang out with friends that have heard of but still don't really know who Pat Robertson is (Nathan, Jonny, Cory, and I were debating who/what he worked for just the other day). I grew up listening to James Dobson (or at least my parents did, much to my dismay), and I didn't really learn about his politics until college. I didn't know that cessationists even existed. I didn't know that people who didn't believe in the Trinity or in the resurrection could still call themselves "Christians". I never bought into the whole "this country is going to hell" argument of the degradation of the church. And until now, I never really realized how similar my childhood church upbringing was to so many of the Asian-Americans around the country.
Part of the recent Jeremy Lin fanatacism has made me realize how much (white) people just really don't get it. Most just don't understand what it means to be an Asian American.I was reading a Reddit thread about Lin's ethnicity, and one commenter said he was Chinese, and the next (who later revealed himself to be an Asian-American) corrected him and said he was Taiwanese-American. Then there was this storm of downvotes and comments that simply declared him "American", and that any other description of Jeremy Lin was inaccurate and offensive. Obviously, the Asian Americans on that thread tried to explain to the ignorant Redditors (kind of a redudant, I know) the dynamics of being Asian American. It's really become clear to me that people that don't regularly interact with Asian-Americans really just don't get what it means to be Asian-American. The more "progressively-minded", in their admirable desire to be inclusive, simply disregard our ethnicity, heritage, and cultural differences by welcoming us into the open arms of their proudly held identity of "American". The more segregated white, American-flag-on-their-pickup-truck types who rarely deal with us yellow people are surprised that we can speak English fluently and without accents, and immediately ask us if we were born in the States, if we speak Chinese, and what our favorite foods are.
It might just be me being second generation, and it might just be my more conservative leaning, but the former error annoys me much more than the latter. It really bothers me that there seems to be a shift towards being "color-blind" for the sake of political correctness, but in it, our culture and heritage is really lost. Preaching "American" homogeneity and being "inclusive" isn't respectful to our culture or identity, and while we don't want to be called "chinks" all the time, we want our cultural differences to be recognized and accepted as well. We are different. We know we look different. So don't pretend that we aren't. I'm not telling white people to throw rocks at Asian-Americans whenever they see us, but just like with any other cross-racial and cross-cultural interaction, trying to celebrate differences is greatly appreciated.
Moving to Fort Wayne, I've experienced a lot of people who treat me much more as an Asian than as an American, many of whom assume that I'm an immigrant. I really don't mind it too much, because most are well-intentioned and it does provide a venue for some interesting conversation (the pastor of one of the churches I visited was actually a missionary in Taiwan for some time!). That said, being Asian-American in a place like Fort Wayne really leaves me without people that worship in the same way as I do. I love great teaching, but I also like my Hillsong. Familiar hymns and classic Christian contemporary are okay, but there often just feels like something is missing for me to really feel comfortable in worship. I'm looking for a church that's interested in social justice, but I'm really not interested in mixing politics into my religion, as most of the Bible-preaching churches seem to do here. The families at the churches here seem nice, and I really don't know enough about the churches to really judge them, but it doesn't seem like "the church family" is really a family at all, compared to the tight-knit family back home in my Chinese church, with all the "Shu shu"'s and "Ah-yi's". All in all, being an Asian-American Christian here in Fort Wayne without many other Asian-Americans Christians, I feel like I'm different and alone, without others that have a similar background as me or people that worship God the same way that I do.
For those of you looking for some big new idea or grand conclusion that I'm going to make, sorry to disappoint. This was more of just a reactionary post, as the author of that GC blog post really hit the nail on the head in his description of Asian-American Christianity. I'm beginning to realize just how deep my Asian-American Christian identity is, and how it affects my worship and my church searching. I am proud to be an Asian-American Christian, and it isn't because of Jeremy Lin. Thank you God for creating me this way!
Fun, semi-related post - The Origin of the MCCC Mando/Canto Divide
This morning, I finally read the Gospel Coalition post on "Linsanity and Asian American Christianity", and it really struck me just how much I resonated with all that the author was saying. This guy gets it. I almost cried at work because of how much he gets it. I grew up in a church with a super-conservative and fundamental head pastor with a heavily charismatic-leaning youth director. I grew up hearing more about Hudson Taylor than John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Jonathan Edwards combined. I didn't know the difference between Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists until college (and I still don't really know much about it). I've never cared too much for politics, and while I leaned right, I didn't really learn to care about abortion until just a few weeks ago, and I'm really still working through it. I wore T-shirts and shorts to church as a kid and played with all my friends, and I never really understood why so many white kids absolutely hated going to church. I've played at eaten dinner at nearly all of my family friends' houses, and I couldn't imagine a church where people (and kids especially) didn't break bread together. I now hang out with friends that have heard of but still don't really know who Pat Robertson is (Nathan, Jonny, Cory, and I were debating who/what he worked for just the other day). I grew up listening to James Dobson (or at least my parents did, much to my dismay), and I didn't really learn about his politics until college. I didn't know that cessationists even existed. I didn't know that people who didn't believe in the Trinity or in the resurrection could still call themselves "Christians". I never bought into the whole "this country is going to hell" argument of the degradation of the church. And until now, I never really realized how similar my childhood church upbringing was to so many of the Asian-Americans around the country.
Part of the recent Jeremy Lin fanatacism has made me realize how much (white) people just really don't get it. Most just don't understand what it means to be an Asian American.I was reading a Reddit thread about Lin's ethnicity, and one commenter said he was Chinese, and the next (who later revealed himself to be an Asian-American) corrected him and said he was Taiwanese-American. Then there was this storm of downvotes and comments that simply declared him "American", and that any other description of Jeremy Lin was inaccurate and offensive. Obviously, the Asian Americans on that thread tried to explain to the ignorant Redditors (kind of a redudant, I know) the dynamics of being Asian American. It's really become clear to me that people that don't regularly interact with Asian-Americans really just don't get what it means to be Asian-American. The more "progressively-minded", in their admirable desire to be inclusive, simply disregard our ethnicity, heritage, and cultural differences by welcoming us into the open arms of their proudly held identity of "American". The more segregated white, American-flag-on-their-pickup-truck types who rarely deal with us yellow people are surprised that we can speak English fluently and without accents, and immediately ask us if we were born in the States, if we speak Chinese, and what our favorite foods are.
It might just be me being second generation, and it might just be my more conservative leaning, but the former error annoys me much more than the latter. It really bothers me that there seems to be a shift towards being "color-blind" for the sake of political correctness, but in it, our culture and heritage is really lost. Preaching "American" homogeneity and being "inclusive" isn't respectful to our culture or identity, and while we don't want to be called "chinks" all the time, we want our cultural differences to be recognized and accepted as well. We are different. We know we look different. So don't pretend that we aren't. I'm not telling white people to throw rocks at Asian-Americans whenever they see us, but just like with any other cross-racial and cross-cultural interaction, trying to celebrate differences is greatly appreciated.
Moving to Fort Wayne, I've experienced a lot of people who treat me much more as an Asian than as an American, many of whom assume that I'm an immigrant. I really don't mind it too much, because most are well-intentioned and it does provide a venue for some interesting conversation (the pastor of one of the churches I visited was actually a missionary in Taiwan for some time!). That said, being Asian-American in a place like Fort Wayne really leaves me without people that worship in the same way as I do. I love great teaching, but I also like my Hillsong. Familiar hymns and classic Christian contemporary are okay, but there often just feels like something is missing for me to really feel comfortable in worship. I'm looking for a church that's interested in social justice, but I'm really not interested in mixing politics into my religion, as most of the Bible-preaching churches seem to do here. The families at the churches here seem nice, and I really don't know enough about the churches to really judge them, but it doesn't seem like "the church family" is really a family at all, compared to the tight-knit family back home in my Chinese church, with all the "Shu shu"'s and "Ah-yi's". All in all, being an Asian-American Christian here in Fort Wayne without many other Asian-Americans Christians, I feel like I'm different and alone, without others that have a similar background as me or people that worship God the same way that I do.
For those of you looking for some big new idea or grand conclusion that I'm going to make, sorry to disappoint. This was more of just a reactionary post, as the author of that GC blog post really hit the nail on the head in his description of Asian-American Christianity. I'm beginning to realize just how deep my Asian-American Christian identity is, and how it affects my worship and my church searching. I am proud to be an Asian-American Christian, and it isn't because of Jeremy Lin. Thank you God for creating me this way!
 |
| Thanks for the memories, MCCC! |
Fun, semi-related post - The Origin of the MCCC Mando/Canto Divide
Friday, February 17, 2012
New Insights into Suffering
Some of you know that recently I went through certain pain that I've never gone through before (if you don't know, I would appreciate it if you didn't ask), and I understood a little better God's grace through suffering. I'm going to apologize ahead of time if this post is incoherent and scatter-brained. In truth, this post is more like a collage of different thoughts I've had in the past few weeks. There's just absolutely too much that God has done in my life these last few weeks, and it's kind of difficult to organize it nicely and make it all make sense.
After it all, the key lesson I learned is that a concern with God's glory is the only way to get through suffering. I realized that I would never make it through any pain focusing on myself, and that the only way to get through it all is to be focused on God's glory, seeing the ways he is growing me and preparing me for the future.
I read the following passage for my quiet time this morning:
Today at work, I listened to a Paul Washer sermon on my phone (which I highly recommend and you can watch here), and man was it convicting! I don't always agree with the way Paul Washer approaches things, but there is a real seriousness of his faith that he exhorts to have. It really got me thinking about the seriousness of my own faith. In a segment of his talk (starting here), Washer talks about how in Romans 10:9, when Paul says "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved", he talks about how we often take public confession of Christ extremely lightly, and how the audience to whom Paul wrote faced execution for a public confession of faith.
Brothers and sisters, we need to take our faith seriously. We need to be training ourselves now so we are equipped to serve God more fully. We need to be holy, because God our Father is holy. We need to have radical love for others and be bold in sharing the gospel. Above all, we need to be concerned with the glory of God. Whatever we do, may it be for his glory!
For those of you who took Conformed to His Likeness with me at Compelling this last fall, if you remember, Pat (the leader lady) recommended us read the Book of Martyrs. I've been wanting to read it for a while, and lucky for me, it's free for the Kindle (thanks again, Mandrew!)! Actually, the entire book is also available here in PDF format if you want to read it. I just read the first chapter, and it's incredibly difficult not to be moved. The gospel MUST be true for all of these men to die for it. It must be! I know that especially for us unschooled Asian-Americans, we don't really know much about our church fathers, so I just put the first part of the first chapter into a nice little table so we can see the suffering that our church fathers went through. I hope you are as moved as I was when I first read it, and I hope that you'll go take a look at that PDF and read some of it for yourself!
Disclaimer: For the "not sure" spots, I mainly put it there because the book doesn't say explicitly and I didn't go research it, but hopefully I can do a little better research online and come back and update them. I have added links to some artist renditions of the apostles' martyrdom if I could find them.
We see this list of great men, and we complain about having to get up early to do our quiet times!!! GOD FORGIVE US FOR OUR UNHOLINESS AND SELFISHNESS.
A great Paul Washer sermon on taking your faith seriously (thanks Mark!). The first one is good too. As I said before, I don't completely agree with the way he presents everything, but it's definitely still worth struggling through.
After it all, the key lesson I learned is that a concern with God's glory is the only way to get through suffering. I realized that I would never make it through any pain focusing on myself, and that the only way to get through it all is to be focused on God's glory, seeing the ways he is growing me and preparing me for the future.
I read the following passage for my quiet time this morning:
Acts 4:40-41 - "and when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name."The morning after it all happened, when I was driving up to Nathan's, I listened to a DA Carson lecture on suffering (which can be found here), where he presented a lot of good points to suffering, and in which he mentioned the above Scripture. He said that the apostles rejoiced in their suffering because it was their first taste of suffering, and Jesus had promised them persecution, but so far in their ministry, everything had been going their way. Jesus had told them to take their crosses up daily (which isn't a light statement) and to follow him. Carson said that the disciples must have been thinking "Hmm...everything is going awesomely. People are accepting the gospel, and everyone seems to love us. But Jesus had told us that we would suffer. Are we doing something wrong?" They rejoiced in their suffering because they knew that they were glorified God and were in his will! This is also my prayer - that God would give me suffering so that I can rejoice in serving him and having the honor of being dishonored for his name. After spending the weekend with Nathan, driving back, I for the first time in my life sincerely asked God to give me more suffering. It was the weirdest thing in the world, how the Spirit would lead me to such a prayer! I asked God, "God, if it will bring you more glory, give me more suffering. I want to suffer for you." I asked God to make me suffer more for his name's sake, praying with the faith that God will sustain me in my times of suffering. I never in a million years would have thought that after such a difficult weekend, I would ask God for MORE suffering! God is good, and his Spirit has really been working in my life. Glory to God.
Today at work, I listened to a Paul Washer sermon on my phone (which I highly recommend and you can watch here), and man was it convicting! I don't always agree with the way Paul Washer approaches things, but there is a real seriousness of his faith that he exhorts to have. It really got me thinking about the seriousness of my own faith. In a segment of his talk (starting here), Washer talks about how in Romans 10:9, when Paul says "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved", he talks about how we often take public confession of Christ extremely lightly, and how the audience to whom Paul wrote faced execution for a public confession of faith.
Brothers and sisters, we need to take our faith seriously. We need to be training ourselves now so we are equipped to serve God more fully. We need to be holy, because God our Father is holy. We need to have radical love for others and be bold in sharing the gospel. Above all, we need to be concerned with the glory of God. Whatever we do, may it be for his glory!
For those of you who took Conformed to His Likeness with me at Compelling this last fall, if you remember, Pat (the leader lady) recommended us read the Book of Martyrs. I've been wanting to read it for a while, and lucky for me, it's free for the Kindle (thanks again, Mandrew!)! Actually, the entire book is also available here in PDF format if you want to read it. I just read the first chapter, and it's incredibly difficult not to be moved. The gospel MUST be true for all of these men to die for it. It must be! I know that especially for us unschooled Asian-Americans, we don't really know much about our church fathers, so I just put the first part of the first chapter into a nice little table so we can see the suffering that our church fathers went through. I hope you are as moved as I was when I first read it, and I hope that you'll go take a look at that PDF and read some of it for yourself!
Disclaimer: For the "not sure" spots, I mainly put it there because the book doesn't say explicitly and I didn't go research it, but hopefully I can do a little better research online and come back and update them. I have added links to some artist renditions of the apostles' martyrdom if I could find them.
| Apostle | Year of Martyrdom | Place of Death | How he died |
| James the Great (son of Zebedee, brother of John) | AD 44 | Judea | "As James was led to the place of martyrdom, his accuser was brought to repent of his conduct by the apostle's extraordinary courage and undauntedness, and fell down at his feet to request his pardon, professing himself as a christian, and resolving that James should not receive the crown of martyrdom alone. Hence they were both beheaded at the same time. Thus did the first apostolic martyr cheerfully and resolutely receive that cup, which he had told our Savior he was ready to drink." |
| Philip | AD 54 | Heliopolis, in Phrygia (Upper Asia) | Crucified |
| Matthew | AD 60 | Nadabah, Ethiopia | Slain with a halberd |
| James the Less (former brother of Jesus) | Not sure | Jerusalem | Stoned by the Jews, and "finally had his brains dashed out with a fuller's club" |
| Mattias (Judas' replacement) | Not sure | Jerusalem | Stoned, then beheaded |
| Andrew (brother of Peter) | Not sure | Edessa | Crucified, with two ends of the cross on the ground. |
| St. Mark | Not Sure | Alexandria | Body was dragged to pieces |
| Peter | Not sure | Rome(?) | Crucified upside-down upon own request, as he didn't find himself worthy to die in the same way Christ did. |
| Paul | AD 67 | Rome | Beheaded |
| Jude | AD 72 | Edessa | Crucified |
| Bartholomew | Not sure | India | Cruelly beaten, then crucified |
| Thomas | Not sure | India | Thrust through with a spear |
| Luke | Not sure | Greece | Hung on an olive tree |
| Simon (the Zealot) | AD 74 | Britain | Sawed in half. (The book said he was crucified, but the great internets says differently). |
| John | Not martyred | Patmos(?) | Pulled out of a cauldron of boiling oil, then exiled to the Isle of Patmos. He was the only apostle who didn't die a violent death. |
| Barnabas | AD 73 | Cyprus | Stoned to death |
We see this list of great men, and we complain about having to get up early to do our quiet times!!! GOD FORGIVE US FOR OUR UNHOLINESS AND SELFISHNESS.
A great Paul Washer sermon on taking your faith seriously (thanks Mark!). The first one is good too. As I said before, I don't completely agree with the way he presents everything, but it's definitely still worth struggling through.
1 Corinthians 12:8-10 - "Three times I pleaded with the LORD about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong."God, make me a martyr for you. Father, bestow upon me the privilege and joy of suffering for you. Use me in any way, O God. Teach me how to serve you more fully. God, humble me. Include me in this impossible mission you have for the world. God, I want to serve you. I want your gospel to be made known. God, I want to die for you, confessing Jesus as Lord. Give me faith, give me endurance, give me love, give me patience so I can better serve and glorify you. God, help me to serve you well right now. God teach me to sacrifice. And God, I know that it's not by my strength, but by your Son, who died on the cross for me. It is only in his power that I can do anything at all.
Related Post: My Lack of Suffering
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Church Hopping Week 3 - Providence Presbyterian Church
Last Sunday, February 5th, I visited a church called Providence Presbyterian Church. After looking online, I found that Providence is the only Reformed church in the area (other than PC-USA churches, which I refuse to consider), so I decided to check it out. Providence Presbyterian is the first PCA church I've ever visited, and even though I didn't really believe that churches could be more traditional and conservative than Knox, I was wrong.
In A Nutshell: A small, very traditional church with sound teaching, decent preaching, and some new young professional blood.
Church Overview
Affiliation - Presbyterian Church in America (wiki, official site)
Attendance - Less than 75 people
Demographics - Almost all white, family church with a good number of kids and middle-aged adults, with fewer older folk and young adults.
Sunday Service
The church service was extremely traditional, much more traditional than I was used to. Because the church itself was kind of small, the sanctuary felt pretty full with just around 75 people, giving the church really a lively feeling.
Sunday School
Providence holds their Sunday School an hour before before their church service at 10:30, so I decided to go and give it a shot. The church is one of those smaller churches so that when you walk in, you're basically standing in the back of the sanctuary. I pointed at the sanctuary and asked one of the greeters if that was Sunday school, and he told me that it was, so I went in and sat down. I must have been only the 3rd person in that room other than the teacher (who kind of looked like Mad-Eye Moody from the Harry Potter movies, without the mad eye, of course) who was there. The teacher, who I assumed was the pastor, was speaking on James, and Lord bless him, I thought it was one of the most boring Sunday school classes I've ever been to. The teacher had basically compiled different commentaries for a few of the verses we were going through, and he basically talked through each commentary one by one, helping us have a full understanding of what James was saying in the passage. Now I must say that after meeting him afterwards and having a meal with him during the week, I realized how good of a man he is and how
he is really just sort of like a genius who doesn't do that well communicating his thoughts. I found out that he actually wasn't the pastor but an elder of the church that is an economics professor at a nearby Christian college, which explains his uber-scholastic approach to the Word.
While I was in Sunday school, I was surprised at how small the church was, with only around 7 people, and so I expected the Sunday worship to be tiny too, but once Sunday School ended, people just started to fill the sanctuary (which can probably hold between 80-100 people). I then realized that there was actually another Sunday school going on downstairs, which was the "family study" on the church Reformers. The class sounds super interesting, so if I went back to that church, I'd like to check that Sunday school class out.
The Worship
This was probably the most traditional worship service I've ever been to. Like Calvary Baptist, there was only one worship leader at the front, but unlike it (and all the other churches I've ever been to), there was no PowerPoint presentation. Yes, that's right. Hymnals, baby. There wasn't even any instruments visible from the pews, as the piano, the only instrument, was actually played from a balcony behind us. After visiting Providence, I now appreciate the technology in our worship services so much more. The entire service was like some sort of Christian treasure hunt, as I juggled the bulletin, and 3 books - the Bible, the hymnal, and the psalter(. "We will now be singing hymn 342 from the hymnal. Now get out your bulletin, and we will be reading this confession together. Flip to 1 John 4:9,10 and read aloud together. Now open your psalters to Psalm 133, and let's sing together. Now let's open our hymnals to page 846 as we recite the Nicene Creed together. Now let's open up to Leviticus 19:9-18 for our Old Testament reading. Let's read John 15:9-15 for our New Testament reading" This goes on for even more (4 more hymns and 2 more Scripture readings), but you get the idea. It just felt like there was so much going on, it was hard to just be still and focus on God until it came time for communion.
The Sermon
The sermon (which you can listen to here), was alright. I'm beginning to see how rare great preachers like Pastor Chuck, Tim Keller, and Mark Driscoll really are. The sermon wasn't as mind-blowing or gospel-oriented as I've become used to, but it was still a solid sermon. One of the things that I've notice in the few churches I've been to is that the sermons are extremely targeted towards Christians. I can understand how pastors who live in such a Christian-saturated area preaching in smaller churches with few non-Christians would naturally drift to only addressing Christians, but I still wish that the pastors would have that "open chair policy" kind of mentality to continue to be missional. I'm not an expert on non-Christian thinking and stuff, but I suspect that most non-Christians would have a difficult time really understanding what was said in the sermon. This all said, the sermon was pretty good, and while I wish there was a tad more gospel in it, it was still quite clear and convicting for me.
A cool thing about the whole worship service is that many of the Scripture passages that we read I had actually JUST read. For example, the call to worship was Psalm 24, which is what I was scheduled to read that night, and I had just read John 15:9-10, which was the New Testament reading, for my quiet times the day before. The Word has really been good to me recently, and this is just another example of God making everything work out perfectly for me.
Fellowship Meal
On the first Sunday of every month, the church has a potluck lunch after service, and I was lucky enough to choose the right week to go! The food was pretty amazing (after eating my own crappy home-cooking for weeks, any food tasted amazing), and I got a chance to meet new people and to sit down and talk to them. I was particularly happy to get a chance to meet the young adults of the church, of which there were three. All of them had just started going to Providence Presbyterian in the last few months, and were pretty similar to me (despite all being close to 30) - they all just came out of great, missional churches (like Tenth Presbyterian and Capitol Hill Baptist) and were facing the anti-climactic switch to a smaller church. They were all excited to be a part of a church that reached out and evangelized and fed the poor and cared for the sick. We talked about how Reformed teaching is exploding all around the country, especially with the young people, and we'd really like to see the gospel and Biblical teaching grow in Fort Wayne. It's pretty cool getting to meet people for the first time that share your vision for the church. We had a great lunch conversation about the poor, social justice, and other related topics and I got home from church at around 2:00 because we talked for so long!
Reflection
What I liked
Connection with young adults - As I mentioned, I felt a sense of unity with the young adults that were already there. Also, one of them was a Taiwanese-American (who was married to one another of the young adults), and I think it was the first time I've seen an Asian-American in any of the churches I've visited! For some reason, even though everyone else in the church was white, just having someone else that looked like me made me feel a lot more at home. Both of the young men that I met sent me emails to say hi, and I got to watch the Super Bowl with one of them and then had dinner in the middle of the week with him. They had started discussing the possibility of starting a young adult Bible study or something like that, which is definitely something I would want to be a part of.
Hospitality - It might have just been because it was fellowship meal Sunday, but it was nice having people come up to me and talk to me, and getting a chance to have an extended conversation with the pastor, who turns out to be a very interesting and funny man.
Intellectually Challenging - This isn't something I directly experienced at church yet, but having dinner with the economics professor and one of the young adults who was a lawyer, its obvious that many of the people who attend Providence are highly educated and know their stuff. If I decide to come to this church, I really could learn a lot and grow a lot in my thinking.
What I didn't like as much
Traditional Worship- I really wasn't used to the extremely traditional worship. I wasn't used to singing from a hymnal and I wasn't familiar with any of the songs that we sang. I know worship isn't meant to be to rile up emotions, but I had a hard time focusing on God amidst all the busyness of the service. If I was to come to this church, I'd really need to work to get used to this worship style.
Small Group Bible Studies on Sunday - For some reason reason, it seems like all for all the churches I've visited, small groups are always on the weekends. I would much rather have small group Bible studies during the week so I have stuff to do and more time on the weekends, and it would be nice to have church stuff spread out in the week rather than just have it all on one day.
The Verdict
Even though I'm not used to the worship style and how traditional Providence Presbyterian Church is, I'm really glad that I got to meet like-minded young adults (one of whom was Asian!) that I wouldn't mind doing ministry together with. Providence is the only Reformed church in Fort Wayne, and I'd really love to be a part of a church that could be a light for the gospel in the area. If I don't find another church that I really like soon, I very well could end up at Providence Presbyterian!
Next up: St. Andrew Evangelical Presbyterian Church (2/12/2012)
In A Nutshell: A small, very traditional church with sound teaching, decent preaching, and some new young professional blood.
Church Overview
Affiliation - Presbyterian Church in America (wiki, official site)
Attendance - Less than 75 people
Demographics - Almost all white, family church with a good number of kids and middle-aged adults, with fewer older folk and young adults.
Sunday Service
The church service was extremely traditional, much more traditional than I was used to. Because the church itself was kind of small, the sanctuary felt pretty full with just around 75 people, giving the church really a lively feeling.
Sunday School
Providence holds their Sunday School an hour before before their church service at 10:30, so I decided to go and give it a shot. The church is one of those smaller churches so that when you walk in, you're basically standing in the back of the sanctuary. I pointed at the sanctuary and asked one of the greeters if that was Sunday school, and he told me that it was, so I went in and sat down. I must have been only the 3rd person in that room other than the teacher (who kind of looked like Mad-Eye Moody from the Harry Potter movies, without the mad eye, of course) who was there. The teacher, who I assumed was the pastor, was speaking on James, and Lord bless him, I thought it was one of the most boring Sunday school classes I've ever been to. The teacher had basically compiled different commentaries for a few of the verses we were going through, and he basically talked through each commentary one by one, helping us have a full understanding of what James was saying in the passage. Now I must say that after meeting him afterwards and having a meal with him during the week, I realized how good of a man he is and how
he is really just sort of like a genius who doesn't do that well communicating his thoughts. I found out that he actually wasn't the pastor but an elder of the church that is an economics professor at a nearby Christian college, which explains his uber-scholastic approach to the Word.
While I was in Sunday school, I was surprised at how small the church was, with only around 7 people, and so I expected the Sunday worship to be tiny too, but once Sunday School ended, people just started to fill the sanctuary (which can probably hold between 80-100 people). I then realized that there was actually another Sunday school going on downstairs, which was the "family study" on the church Reformers. The class sounds super interesting, so if I went back to that church, I'd like to check that Sunday school class out.
The Worship
This was probably the most traditional worship service I've ever been to. Like Calvary Baptist, there was only one worship leader at the front, but unlike it (and all the other churches I've ever been to), there was no PowerPoint presentation. Yes, that's right. Hymnals, baby. There wasn't even any instruments visible from the pews, as the piano, the only instrument, was actually played from a balcony behind us. After visiting Providence, I now appreciate the technology in our worship services so much more. The entire service was like some sort of Christian treasure hunt, as I juggled the bulletin, and 3 books - the Bible, the hymnal, and the psalter(. "We will now be singing hymn 342 from the hymnal. Now get out your bulletin, and we will be reading this confession together. Flip to 1 John 4:9,10 and read aloud together. Now open your psalters to Psalm 133, and let's sing together. Now let's open our hymnals to page 846 as we recite the Nicene Creed together. Now let's open up to Leviticus 19:9-18 for our Old Testament reading. Let's read John 15:9-15 for our New Testament reading" This goes on for even more (4 more hymns and 2 more Scripture readings), but you get the idea. It just felt like there was so much going on, it was hard to just be still and focus on God until it came time for communion.
 |
| Look at how busy the schedule for the service is! |
The Sermon
The sermon (which you can listen to here), was alright. I'm beginning to see how rare great preachers like Pastor Chuck, Tim Keller, and Mark Driscoll really are. The sermon wasn't as mind-blowing or gospel-oriented as I've become used to, but it was still a solid sermon. One of the things that I've notice in the few churches I've been to is that the sermons are extremely targeted towards Christians. I can understand how pastors who live in such a Christian-saturated area preaching in smaller churches with few non-Christians would naturally drift to only addressing Christians, but I still wish that the pastors would have that "open chair policy" kind of mentality to continue to be missional. I'm not an expert on non-Christian thinking and stuff, but I suspect that most non-Christians would have a difficult time really understanding what was said in the sermon. This all said, the sermon was pretty good, and while I wish there was a tad more gospel in it, it was still quite clear and convicting for me.
A cool thing about the whole worship service is that many of the Scripture passages that we read I had actually JUST read. For example, the call to worship was Psalm 24, which is what I was scheduled to read that night, and I had just read John 15:9-10, which was the New Testament reading, for my quiet times the day before. The Word has really been good to me recently, and this is just another example of God making everything work out perfectly for me.
 |
| I'm beginning to realize how boring our MCCC bulletins are... |
On the first Sunday of every month, the church has a potluck lunch after service, and I was lucky enough to choose the right week to go! The food was pretty amazing (after eating my own crappy home-cooking for weeks, any food tasted amazing), and I got a chance to meet new people and to sit down and talk to them. I was particularly happy to get a chance to meet the young adults of the church, of which there were three. All of them had just started going to Providence Presbyterian in the last few months, and were pretty similar to me (despite all being close to 30) - they all just came out of great, missional churches (like Tenth Presbyterian and Capitol Hill Baptist) and were facing the anti-climactic switch to a smaller church. They were all excited to be a part of a church that reached out and evangelized and fed the poor and cared for the sick. We talked about how Reformed teaching is exploding all around the country, especially with the young people, and we'd really like to see the gospel and Biblical teaching grow in Fort Wayne. It's pretty cool getting to meet people for the first time that share your vision for the church. We had a great lunch conversation about the poor, social justice, and other related topics and I got home from church at around 2:00 because we talked for so long!
Reflection
What I liked
Connection with young adults - As I mentioned, I felt a sense of unity with the young adults that were already there. Also, one of them was a Taiwanese-American (who was married to one another of the young adults), and I think it was the first time I've seen an Asian-American in any of the churches I've visited! For some reason, even though everyone else in the church was white, just having someone else that looked like me made me feel a lot more at home. Both of the young men that I met sent me emails to say hi, and I got to watch the Super Bowl with one of them and then had dinner in the middle of the week with him. They had started discussing the possibility of starting a young adult Bible study or something like that, which is definitely something I would want to be a part of.
Hospitality - It might have just been because it was fellowship meal Sunday, but it was nice having people come up to me and talk to me, and getting a chance to have an extended conversation with the pastor, who turns out to be a very interesting and funny man.
Intellectually Challenging - This isn't something I directly experienced at church yet, but having dinner with the economics professor and one of the young adults who was a lawyer, its obvious that many of the people who attend Providence are highly educated and know their stuff. If I decide to come to this church, I really could learn a lot and grow a lot in my thinking.
What I didn't like as much
Traditional Worship- I really wasn't used to the extremely traditional worship. I wasn't used to singing from a hymnal and I wasn't familiar with any of the songs that we sang. I know worship isn't meant to be to rile up emotions, but I had a hard time focusing on God amidst all the busyness of the service. If I was to come to this church, I'd really need to work to get used to this worship style.
Small Group Bible Studies on Sunday - For some reason reason, it seems like all for all the churches I've visited, small groups are always on the weekends. I would much rather have small group Bible studies during the week so I have stuff to do and more time on the weekends, and it would be nice to have church stuff spread out in the week rather than just have it all on one day.
The Verdict
Even though I'm not used to the worship style and how traditional Providence Presbyterian Church is, I'm really glad that I got to meet like-minded young adults (one of whom was Asian!) that I wouldn't mind doing ministry together with. Providence is the only Reformed church in Fort Wayne, and I'd really love to be a part of a church that could be a light for the gospel in the area. If I don't find another church that I really like soon, I very well could end up at Providence Presbyterian!
Next up: St. Andrew Evangelical Presbyterian Church (2/12/2012)
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Church Hopping Week 2 - Calvary Baptist Church
This Sunday, January 29th, I visited a church called Calvary Baptist Church. In trying to deciding what church to go to in the previous night, and despite it's older-looking websites, after listening to a little bit of the pastor's last sermons, I decided to give this church a shot.
In A Nutshell: A seemingly Bible belt church with a small, older congregation with a passionate preacher.
Church Overview
Affiliation - Southern Baptist Convention (wiki, official site)
Attendance - Less than 75 people
Demographics - Around 90% white, with half of the congregation around 60 years of age or older
The Environment
From the outside, the church building looked modest and simple, and because the church has its Sunday School before the worship service, I walked into the church practically alone (there was only one other person walking into the church, which was an old man walking slowly to the door). It was a weird feeling, because it felt like I had arrived late because no one else was outside, when I really hadn't. But once I stepped through the doors, it felt like church again. People were talking, there were ushers outside who said hi to me, shook my hand, and gave me a bulletin. Stepping into the sanctuary, I realized how empty the church was. Each pew, which could probably sit 8-10 people, was only occupied by 2 or 3 people. There was so much empty space that I'm sure that less than half of the sanctuary was filled. I felt a little awkward because it didn't feel like the congregation wasn't really into singing but the speakers seemed to be turned up pretty loud, but given the older demographics, it didn't really bother me too much. Thinking about it, it was a very loud service overall (the pastor shouted a lot and his mic was turned way up too), and I wonder if the audio was turned up so loud because the older members could hear it better. Hmm...
Sunday Service
The service was traditional, but with a few more "modern evangelical" tweaks to it. For example, the drama team did a skit about prayer before the worship started. It was a little bit cheesy, but fairly well done, and the congregation seemed to enjoy it. The church also did the thing where the kids were there during worship and then went to the front for a short kids message by the pastor before heading off to their own worship service, something that I'm not sure is a staple in "traditional" churches.
The Worship
It was traditional in the sense that there was only one worship leader who sang in the front with only a piano being played. There was a small choir singing behind the worship leader, but it seemed kind of informal because they weren't wearing robes or anything. The songs we sang were all straight out of the Baptist Hymnal, with the only song I knew being "There's Something About That Name." Even though I wasn't familiar with most of the songs, the upbeatness of the music made it still quite enjoyable.
The Sermon
I don't know how many of you have watched Bee Movie with Jerry Seinfeld, but it's strangely one of my favorite animated movies. Anyways, the preacher really reminded me of the lawyer for the humans - a large, loud, charismatic, and expressive speaker. I had wanted to put a Youtube video of the lawyer from Bee Movie here, but unfortunately I don't think it was popular enough of a movie for people to post videos of it onto Youtube. Well anyways, Pastor Mike was seemed like one of the stereotypical Bible belt preachers - speaking with simple language and relatable stories with a lot of fire and passion. [A random sidenote about the pastor: after listening to one of his online sermons and the live sermon, it seems to me like he might be in the habit of crying during his talks. Something that's not good or bad, just interesting.] The sermon itself was on abortion and the sanctity of life (because it was sanctity of life Sunday), so it was a little bit harder to gauge what a "normal" sermon would be like. Pastor Mike brought up a lot of simple and understandable arguments against abortion that I haven't heard before. I hope to talk about abortion and the stuff that he brought up in a future post dedicated to abortion, but in general, I enjoyed his sermon, even though I wish that it was a normal exposition. Pastor Mike did touch on the gospel, but he self-admittedly didn't talk about it as much as he had wanted to. Even though I think there were definitely prime locations and spots that he could have stuck in a remark or two about Jesus in talking about abortion, I think that it was still an alright sermon, nowhere near as bad as the sermon from the previous week.
Wednesday Night Bible Study
Because I wanted to check out the church more (and because I am bored out of my mind in my apartment), I decided to check out their Wednesday night Bible study, which was on Romans. Including the pastor, there were around 10 people there, all of which were white, and most of whom were 50 or older. That said, Pastor Mike definitely knows his stuff, as we spent a bunch of our time discussing the main reasons for the Reformation (and why the Catholic church does some bogus stuff) and the origins of different denominations. To put it bluntly, Pastor Mike is blunt. He does NOT care about political correctness, which made the talk about other denominations very interesting. We didn't get to spend that much time on Romans itself, but he promised that next week it would be more straight Scripture study, as I had caught them at the beginning of their series on Romans, and he had just wanted to lay some background and some reasons why Romans is so important. The main difference between that Bible study and a Knox Sunday school was the involvement of the other members. I might be just judging a little too much, but many of those at the study seemed more quick to speak than to listen, wanting to share their own stories and experiences rather than just take in and process all the information the pastor was giving. Again, stereotyping, maybe this it's just an age thing, or maybe it's an education-level thing, where Knox is a highly-educated church and Fort Wayne is a blue-collar manufacturing town. [One guy in the Sunday school was wearing an Ohio State jacket, so you know what I'm dealing with here. Hehe.]
Reflection
What I liked
Preaching - The preaching wasn't as sensational and amazing as Pastor Chuck's preaching, but I don't think that the preaching is in any way a weakness of the church.
Nice People, Homey Feeling - The people in the church were extremely welcoming, with many coming up to me after the service to talk to me and get to know me better. Multiple people invited me to a future dinner that they were having (that sadly I won't be able to attend), and multiple people invited me to come next week and to stay at the church.
Biblical focus - The church, and the pastor especially, seem to be committed to preaching and teaching the Word. The church seems really strongly grounded and won't be easily swayed by the latest evangelical fad or liberal trend.
What I didn't like as much
Demographics - The biggest issue for me is really the lack of people around me that I can relate to. Frankly, I felt out of place when I walked into that church Sunday morning and I felt out of place when I walked into the Bible study Wednesday night. I may be the only young person in that church, and that would definitely be hard for me.
Extreme Conservatism - As I had said before, this church felt like a real Bible belt church, and to me, in this age of postmodernism and secularism, the church really isn't well-suited for evangelism to the next generation. The church can probably end up being perceived as an anti-gay, anti-choice, and anti-science kind of church, which would prove problematic for me to reach out to people that have more of a background like me.
The Verdict
Calvary Baptist Church is a nice little church with a solid foundation, and even though it doesn't really fit many of the preferences that I had wanted, if no other church seems like a viable solution, I wouldn't mind attending the church. One of the concerns for me is that I had wanted to be spiritually brought up in more of a Reformed tradition to follow in the footsteps of Bijan and Pastor Bob and Pastor Chuck, not just because they're smart people, but because everything they say about it seems right. The church holds to predestination and more Calvanist beliefs in regards to salvation, but with regards to child baptism and the end times, I've liked much of the Presbyterian position.
Next up: Providence Presbyterian Church (2/5/2012)
In A Nutshell: A seemingly Bible belt church with a small, older congregation with a passionate preacher.
Church Overview
Affiliation - Southern Baptist Convention (wiki, official site)
Attendance - Less than 75 people
Demographics - Around 90% white, with half of the congregation around 60 years of age or older
The Environment
From the outside, the church building looked modest and simple, and because the church has its Sunday School before the worship service, I walked into the church practically alone (there was only one other person walking into the church, which was an old man walking slowly to the door). It was a weird feeling, because it felt like I had arrived late because no one else was outside, when I really hadn't. But once I stepped through the doors, it felt like church again. People were talking, there were ushers outside who said hi to me, shook my hand, and gave me a bulletin. Stepping into the sanctuary, I realized how empty the church was. Each pew, which could probably sit 8-10 people, was only occupied by 2 or 3 people. There was so much empty space that I'm sure that less than half of the sanctuary was filled. I felt a little awkward because it didn't feel like the congregation wasn't really into singing but the speakers seemed to be turned up pretty loud, but given the older demographics, it didn't really bother me too much. Thinking about it, it was a very loud service overall (the pastor shouted a lot and his mic was turned way up too), and I wonder if the audio was turned up so loud because the older members could hear it better. Hmm...
 |
| Calvary Baptist Church building |
Sunday Service
The service was traditional, but with a few more "modern evangelical" tweaks to it. For example, the drama team did a skit about prayer before the worship started. It was a little bit cheesy, but fairly well done, and the congregation seemed to enjoy it. The church also did the thing where the kids were there during worship and then went to the front for a short kids message by the pastor before heading off to their own worship service, something that I'm not sure is a staple in "traditional" churches.
The Worship
It was traditional in the sense that there was only one worship leader who sang in the front with only a piano being played. There was a small choir singing behind the worship leader, but it seemed kind of informal because they weren't wearing robes or anything. The songs we sang were all straight out of the Baptist Hymnal, with the only song I knew being "There's Something About That Name." Even though I wasn't familiar with most of the songs, the upbeatness of the music made it still quite enjoyable.
The Sermon
I don't know how many of you have watched Bee Movie with Jerry Seinfeld, but it's strangely one of my favorite animated movies. Anyways, the preacher really reminded me of the lawyer for the humans - a large, loud, charismatic, and expressive speaker. I had wanted to put a Youtube video of the lawyer from Bee Movie here, but unfortunately I don't think it was popular enough of a movie for people to post videos of it onto Youtube. Well anyways, Pastor Mike was seemed like one of the stereotypical Bible belt preachers - speaking with simple language and relatable stories with a lot of fire and passion. [A random sidenote about the pastor: after listening to one of his online sermons and the live sermon, it seems to me like he might be in the habit of crying during his talks. Something that's not good or bad, just interesting.] The sermon itself was on abortion and the sanctity of life (because it was sanctity of life Sunday), so it was a little bit harder to gauge what a "normal" sermon would be like. Pastor Mike brought up a lot of simple and understandable arguments against abortion that I haven't heard before. I hope to talk about abortion and the stuff that he brought up in a future post dedicated to abortion, but in general, I enjoyed his sermon, even though I wish that it was a normal exposition. Pastor Mike did touch on the gospel, but he self-admittedly didn't talk about it as much as he had wanted to. Even though I think there were definitely prime locations and spots that he could have stuck in a remark or two about Jesus in talking about abortion, I think that it was still an alright sermon, nowhere near as bad as the sermon from the previous week.
Wednesday Night Bible Study
Because I wanted to check out the church more (and because I am bored out of my mind in my apartment), I decided to check out their Wednesday night Bible study, which was on Romans. Including the pastor, there were around 10 people there, all of which were white, and most of whom were 50 or older. That said, Pastor Mike definitely knows his stuff, as we spent a bunch of our time discussing the main reasons for the Reformation (and why the Catholic church does some bogus stuff) and the origins of different denominations. To put it bluntly, Pastor Mike is blunt. He does NOT care about political correctness, which made the talk about other denominations very interesting. We didn't get to spend that much time on Romans itself, but he promised that next week it would be more straight Scripture study, as I had caught them at the beginning of their series on Romans, and he had just wanted to lay some background and some reasons why Romans is so important. The main difference between that Bible study and a Knox Sunday school was the involvement of the other members. I might be just judging a little too much, but many of those at the study seemed more quick to speak than to listen, wanting to share their own stories and experiences rather than just take in and process all the information the pastor was giving. Again, stereotyping, maybe this it's just an age thing, or maybe it's an education-level thing, where Knox is a highly-educated church and Fort Wayne is a blue-collar manufacturing town. [One guy in the Sunday school was wearing an Ohio State jacket, so you know what I'm dealing with here. Hehe.]
Reflection
What I liked
Preaching - The preaching wasn't as sensational and amazing as Pastor Chuck's preaching, but I don't think that the preaching is in any way a weakness of the church.
Nice People, Homey Feeling - The people in the church were extremely welcoming, with many coming up to me after the service to talk to me and get to know me better. Multiple people invited me to a future dinner that they were having (that sadly I won't be able to attend), and multiple people invited me to come next week and to stay at the church.
Biblical focus - The church, and the pastor especially, seem to be committed to preaching and teaching the Word. The church seems really strongly grounded and won't be easily swayed by the latest evangelical fad or liberal trend.
What I didn't like as much
Demographics - The biggest issue for me is really the lack of people around me that I can relate to. Frankly, I felt out of place when I walked into that church Sunday morning and I felt out of place when I walked into the Bible study Wednesday night. I may be the only young person in that church, and that would definitely be hard for me.
Extreme Conservatism - As I had said before, this church felt like a real Bible belt church, and to me, in this age of postmodernism and secularism, the church really isn't well-suited for evangelism to the next generation. The church can probably end up being perceived as an anti-gay, anti-choice, and anti-science kind of church, which would prove problematic for me to reach out to people that have more of a background like me.
The Verdict
Calvary Baptist Church is a nice little church with a solid foundation, and even though it doesn't really fit many of the preferences that I had wanted, if no other church seems like a viable solution, I wouldn't mind attending the church. One of the concerns for me is that I had wanted to be spiritually brought up in more of a Reformed tradition to follow in the footsteps of Bijan and Pastor Bob and Pastor Chuck, not just because they're smart people, but because everything they say about it seems right. The church holds to predestination and more Calvanist beliefs in regards to salvation, but with regards to child baptism and the end times, I've liked much of the Presbyterian position.
Next up: Providence Presbyterian Church (2/5/2012)
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