Are They Already Gone???

Most of us who have been hanging around church very long are very aware of the incredible statistics of kids who have grown up in the church (very involved in children's ministries and youth groups) and upon graduation from high school never darken the door of a church again. They have answered altar calls and gone through confirmation classes and been baptized and, then, for a significant period of time or maybe forever, they live as pagans. I was one of them.

We have always kind of thought that the problem was that the lure of the culture when they go to college or out into the world of work was too strong and they basically abandoned their faith for culture. I agree with a book that I am reading right now called Already Gone that proposes that the kids have actually basically shut the idea of the Gospel and the church down often by the 5th, 6th, 7th grade, or high school and not when they leave home. They are 'already gone.' The church has taught kids some basic lingo about 'Jesus living in our hearts' and taught them some moralism -- that they live out their faith by not drinking, smoking weed, or having illicit sex. So, we have teenagers walking around with a complete misunderstanding of what a life 'in Christ' really means. I understand this is a huge generalization as we see young people who also have truly been regenerated by God and have repented and believed the Gospel at many ages; however, for the most part these college age kids are not abandoning a true faith, they actually gave up the charade of a false conversion a long time before we thought.

What is going on? The American church has, for the most part, not taught parents or the children Biblical Christianity. We have not preached and taught the Gospel and/or repentance from sin. The reason I mention the parents is that it is a Biblical mandate for them to be the primary teachers and models of a Gospel-centered life. The church has not done its part in producing quality adult disciples who then pass that life of Jesus being the center of every area of their existence to their children. I think we have a defeatist attitude that says that 18-19 year olds are going to party and have sex outside marriage, so we quit trying -- we quit believing the power of the Gospel and the power of the transformation of the Holy Spirit. And I think we underestimate what 8-14 year olds can understand about the Bible.

I love what our Bridge Kids and Youth are doing for the young people of our church, but this topic is bothering me. I am driven to challenge our ministries to fight this trend with every fiber in our beings.
Two initial things must happen to get a start in the fight:
1. We must preach and teach the inerrant, authoritative Bible to parents and kids alike. The source is Jesus Christ; we must do our part to develop Gospel-centered lives.
2. We must continue to emphasize that the children's understanding of a Gospel-centered life is the primary Biblical responsibility of parents - not the church.
The life must be taught and modeled. This is no game. Parents #1 responsibility on this planet is to develop the Lord Jesus Christ in their children. Sports are neat -- I played them, coached them, still love them, but if they take priority over the Gospel, we have sinned. Music and dance are great, same deal. Even academic achievement can be set above Godliness. To sum this up, the world has taught us that our kids should be molded by 50 different things and we run them ragged to cover them all. We prioritize lots of things ahead of the Gospel; then, we are shocked when our kids are 'already gone' in middle school or high school, and completely gone from the faith and from church in their 20's, many never to return.

Equal With Roles

Saturday morning prayer musings --
On our "What We Believe" page at The Bridge it says this, "We believe that Jesus Christ, while existing as the Son of God, is also God; he is co-equal with the Father." Later we state, "The Bible is clear that this one and only God is revealed in three eternally distinct persons. God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit are equal yet distinct within the Holy Trinity." I believe that the preponderance of Holy Scripture supports that fact that the 3 members of the Trinity are equally God -- none superior, none inferior (John 1:1-18). So, as we read in the Gospels that Jesus willingly submitted Himself to the Father, we arrive at an interesting notion that although the three persons of the Trinity are completely equal, they have roles. Jesus prayed to the Father, worshiped the Father, and submitted to the Father. {Luke 10:21-22 John 4:34 John 5:19-28} The Holy Spirit was sent; He was obedient in His role. They are co-equal, but fulfill roles for the benefit of the Kingdom of God -- for the Glory of the God-Head. Jesus was not submitting as an inferior, but as a willfully submitted co-equal (Philippians 2:6-8).

So, when Christ asks us to fulfill our roles in marriage or in the local church as willfully surrendered servants to the Kingdom of God for the glory of the Kingdom, we just take that on with a Christ-like humility. The one that I have been given to love Kelley as Christ loves the church is a bear; as a matter of fact, it is impossible, but with Christ the impossible becomes possible. Headship is never for selfish gain, but for the edification of all. Headship never means superior. It is a role that if abused will carry some of the strongest punishments in Scripture. Accepting roles is just another sign of maturing along the path of sanctification like accepting that I have no rights or possessions.

Missional Church

We use the term 'missional church' around The Bridge all the time. We are about to use it a lot over Labor Day retreat and in the Sept. 13 sermon on "Where does The Bridge go from here?" We have defined it before, but I found this definition on Jonathan McIntosh's blog and it does a better job than I could, so here you go:

A pastor told me the other day, “I realize that we are not a missional church.” What did he mean?

Simply that, at some point, the church let something get in the way of actually bringing the transformative message of the gospel into contact with people.

Mission drift happens when a church lets something else take over: a building project, an unstated theology of “people should come to us,” or sometimes simple laziness. Often an unspoken attitude hangs like a cloud over the entire church; an attitude that those who don’t look like us, dress like us, vote like us, have the same skin color, or come from the same socioeconomic background are not really welcome here.

And the church stops. Reaching. People.

People.

Real, living, sweating, broken, sinful people.

People need hope. They need God. They need the light of the gospel. Please, for all our discussions and books and conferences and postulating and sermon prepping, let us not forget this.

And we won’t forget if we understand something simple yet surprising: God was a person (and still is!). The incarnation – God as a person – helps us understand and relate to people.
The cross provides the framework for our theology (what we believe about and how we relate to God). But it’s the incarnation, that provides the framework for our missiology (what we believe about and how we relate to culture).

The cross is our message.
The incarnation shapes & informs how we communicate that message.

And what do we see in God as a person?

We see Jesus.

And we see him loving people. Spending time with people. Sharing his life with people. We see an outcast ministering to outcasts. We see grace offered to a prostitute. An adulterer. A tax-collector.

And he looks out at them and he is absolutely moved with compassion because he sees that they are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” And he says I am here. I am here to “seek and save that which is lost.”

A missional church sees that people and culture are not enemies of the church, but broken treasures that God is restoring.

Because of this, a missional church is committed to:

• Cultural exegesis – becoming humble students of the varied people & cultures surrounding the church.

• Faithful contextualization – communicating gospel truth in ways the culture understands.

• Producing missionaries instead of consumers – equipping people to live out the gospel through their daily lives and work.

• Building a great city, not just a good church – the goal being more than a full church, but a transformed city.

• Social justice – healing real wounds and righting injustices in the community around them.

• Church planting – multiplying to new towns, cities, states and countries by starting new local churches.

Interestingly, however, Philippians 2:5-8 indicates that God came in human form so that Jesus could humble himself “by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” The man who was God was headed somewhere. The cross.

It is not enough simply that God lived among us. He also died for us.

Being “missional” is not enough. Mission fails if it does not point to the cross. The message that we are translating for culture must be “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

Of course, many churches that supposedly “get the gospel” fail to properly live out that gospel for their context; for them it is gospel in theory, not gospel in practical reality.

Because Jesus’ death has bought us life, we are now messengers of a new reality. We will faithfully proclaim and lovingly incarnate this new reality: to tell & live it for the hope of the world around us. This is the essence of mission.

So, as you can see, missional church is vastly more than just sending checks to some missionaries or even just being involved in international mission trips. The Bridge is committed to whatever it takes to be missional. HE is worth IT!

Reality

I am sitting here at MAC looking out at my beautiful surroundings and focusing on the parts of God's creation that are healthy for me to look at. I head to Farmington prison to speak tonight and I am contemplating what I can tell those men that might make a real difference in their hearts and minds as they go through their days inside the fence and then what will happen when they come back out. I will probably do what I always do -- give them the real truth about the condition of their hearts as Jesus looks at them. I will give them reality. I will tell them that they have same spiritual heart that I have (had) -- wicked, deceitful, and evil. And the only thing that can make that wicked heart righteous is the shed blood of Jesus Christ. It is difficult to make that believable and be very sweet. It also will only work if I make a connection with those men -- if they think I am real and I care. I will attempt to do so by showing that I have the same heart that they have. The only difference in us is that I have been law-abiding as I sin against God.

Just a few minutes ago, I finished reading an article in USA Today about why television had to shift shows away from "Leave it to Beaver" toward "Sex and the City" and "Grey's Anatomy." Everyone thinks it is because our society has gone to 'hell in a handbasket' in morals which may be a PART of it. But, the basic reason is that all post-boomer generations have no interest in their fiction showing a phony perfection. They require authentic; they require real. If "the Beav" was going to be redone today, it would never make it out of pilot unless we sense that Ward is struggling with the things that men really struggle with -- affirmation, fulfillment, proficiency in career, sex, and relationships. June would need to show her weaknesses as she fights the demons of aging and raging hormornes, not vacuuming in high heels and pearls. And Wally and the Beav would be considering dark thoughts as they were accepted or not by their peers.

These generations want the same things from their church. They do not have any interest in being a part of place that does not express authentic leadership and community. It is no accident that these generations respond well (I think) to my teaching, preaching, and leadership. I have always been one to lay out the whole package in everything I do. Should we not teach (including humor) about all subjects and not just the 'comfortable' ones? Should we not preach the perversion of the community at Corinth (Christians Gone Wild next summer maybe) as it relates to the current American culture or not preach the sexual intensity inside marriage from the Song of Solomon. I think we should and I am not afraid to. But,that feels weird to folks who really think that there are just some things that should not be opened up in public. So, on occasion, there are folks who think I go overboard in humor or subject material. They are probably right, but the "Leave it to Beaver" church almost destroyed the American church because it drove sin underground. Let's get it to the surface, so that we can truly 'repent and believe the Gospel.' Let's create authentic church, so that these generations may be saved.

A Great Teacher?

It is interesting as you encounter people from other cultures and other religions that they consider Jesus a 'prophet' or a great moral teacher. Well, the prophet thing always goes away when you point out that the definition of a prophet is 'one who speaks for God.' I had two Muslim basketball players from Bosnia that backed off of their 'Jesus is a prophet but not the son of God' stance when learning of the definition. I have been thinking about the 'great moral teacher' one today as I have been working on the Sermon on the Mount. These passages of Scripture from Matthew 5-7 are where people always think Jesus qualified himself as a moral instructor. This is just another cop out of avoiding his deity. While there is moral instruction to the SOTM, that is not its purpose. Its purpose is to drive a man or woman to the Kingdom of God as defined by God himself.

Let me give you an example. The general public thinks that the so-called Golden Rule found in Matthew 7:12 (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) is maybe the great moral teaching ever uttered. While that may be true, that is not the main purpose of the passage. Due to our wicked, selfish hearts, it is impossible to perform the teaching, so its purpose is to show us our need for Christ. It is impossible, so it condemns us. Only being indwelt by His Spirit would allow us to be able to truly fulfill this command.

But, the Lord did not issue the command for his people to comment on it; he issued it for it to be carried out.

Thorn in the Flesh

I do not think that I am the Apostle Paul, but I understand some more about him these days since my physical health has just hit the toilet. This has been the lost summer with 3 surgical procedures and around 20 tests, and I am a little envious of folks who have really been able to get out and enjoy the fabulous weather that God has blessed us with. I can assure you that I do not have "an Apostle Paul complex;" my wife says that she has never seen me laid lower or more 'impoverished in spirit.'
Three years ago, I was told that I had fairly significant blockage in 4 major arteries around my heart. That affected everything that I do (diet, exercise, stress) or was supposed to affect everything that I do. Now, a new culprit has shown up on the screen -- connective tissue disorder (some form of fibromyalgia). This is my version of Paul's "thorn in the flesh." Long story short and no list of the symptoms -- I can no longer do physically what I want to do when I want to do it. Pain and fatigue are a real deal here.

God has won two battles by allowing in this thorn in. I have a reduced problem with arrogance. As a matter of fact, I am fighting to stay excited about all of the incredible excitement around me. Second, I have been forced to Sabbath. That has always been my most evident sin, and now there are times when I just have to stop and rest.
"To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from 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 about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
2 Corinthians 12:7-10

I have asked in faith that He take this away, but He knows vastly more about what is best for me than I do. May His blessings flow as we seek His will.

Cardinal Culture

This is an interesting day for me. My life has always been very intertwined with baseball and the Cardinals. My first memory of this was in 1963 when my dad, upon hearing that Stan Musial was going to retire, threw me into a car and we got bleachers seats at old Sportsman's Park so that I would see Stan play before he retired. You see that is just kinda what you did in the Gray family. My Grandpa Lester took my dad, Lester Junior, to see Dizzy Dean, and the rest of the Gashouse Gang in the early 30's. My Grandpa Lester played on a traveling team with Mort & Walker Cooper who were the stars of the 42 & 44 World Series champion Cardinals. He claimed they were good buddies, who knows? But, his passion for baseball was ingrained into all the Grays. We were in St. Louis on the weekend that the Cards traded Ernie Brolio to the Cubs for Lou Brock in 1964. We had been to the game the night before and Mike Shannon had thrown a ball from second base and smashed some of the neon lights out of the giant 'A" over the left field bleachers. What an arm -- he must have won a bet! Some of the glass fell on my shirt. Dad wanted to see if this Brock kid was any good, so I saw his first game as a Cardinal. Later in the year, dad wiped out two full beer cups to garner a home run ball by Brock. We almost fought that night; luckily, for those guys the fight did not happen. Lester hit like Roberto Duran. I knew the batting averages of every Cardinal from Bill White to Ken Boyer as the Cards won the WS in 64. Which brings us to 1966 and why this is an emotional day for me. The Grays bought 22 tickets to the 1966 all-Star game at the new Busch Stadium. I just knew that I would be going since there was no bigger baseball fan on the planet. After all, I had emptied my mom's baking flour from the pantry to re-create the batter's box of the new stadium in the yard. A spanking led me to learn about buying some lime at the local Ace Hardware. After all, I had Juan Marichal's leg kick down perfectly, and Carl Yastrezemski's high batting stance, and Luis Tiant's shimmy of the ball as he pitched from the stretch. I could imitate them all. All of a sudden it was announced that one of the adult cousins had made it into town and there wasn't a ticket for any of the kids. Wow! My chest heaved as I tried to look excited for everyone else. I was told, "We promise that the next time the all-Star game comes to St. Louis, we will buy you a great ticket and take you to the game." Well, that was 43 years ago and the promisers are not around. That day is today. The game has finally returned.

The tickets that day were $8 a piece. I had an opportunity to continue the Gray tradition to experience the love of baseball and take Justin today for the cool price of $1400 for the two tickets. That would be dumb. I chose to send someone to Nicaragua to help some people who eat out of garbage bags on top of the city dump instead. I forgive my promisers also -- may they rest in peace!!! I am glad they all got to go before they went. I will be watching on TV! Go Albert! I will cry when they introduce you tonight!