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Where Ignorant Armies Clash by Night

By Jeremy Myers
2 Comments

Where Ignorant Armies Clash by Night

Do you ever feel like you are losing your faith? You are not alone.

I encountered the following poem in NT Wright’s book, The Challenge of Jesus, and was so struck by the last stanza that this poem became my second favorite poem of all time.

It seems to describe his tumultuous struggle with faith, and the sadness, loneliness, and fear this caused. In the last line, what armies do you think he is talking about? Literal armies of governments and nations, or figurative armies of faith and religion? What is his solution? Is he right?

* * * * *

DOVER BEACH

By Matthew Arnold
1867

The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship

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Call Someone a Fool and Go to Hell?

By Jeremy Myers
30 Comments

Call Someone a Fool and Go to Hell?

Jason was one of my best friends in Junior High and High School. He and I played a lot of tennis, listened to a lot of rap, and played a lot of Nintendo. I still remember when we beat Mega Man 2 in one day.

In our Sophomore year of High School, one of his favorite sayings was, “You Fool!” When Mega Man died, he would shout at the TV, “You fool!” When I aced him in tennis (he was better than me so it rarely happened), he would shout across the net, “You fool!” When we were learning to drive and someone cut him off in traffic, he would shout at them, “You fool!” He said it in jest (most of the time), and it became his signature saying.

Until one day our Sunday School teacher at church read Matthew 5:21-22. The last part really got Jason’s attention: “Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.” When our teacher read that, everyone laughed and looked right at Jason as he squirmed in his seat and looked abashedly at the floor.

After that, I never heard him say, “You fool” again.

What did Jesus really say?
In my “core group” today, we read and discussed this passage. Not surprisingly, they were shocked at what Jesus said. How can he say that simply for calling someone a fool, they will go to hell? That’s impossible! Too difficult! Jesus is crazy!

We had a long, spirited discussion about this, and some of them remembered what we discussed last week. In the end, I had to bring in some Greek and Jewish background information (I have a love-hate relationship with doing this, which maybe I will write about someday).

I personally don’t think this passage (or the next one about adultery) has anything whatsoever to do with burning forever and ever in a lake of fire while Satan and his minions poke you with pitchforks to see if you’re done yet (“Nope? Note done yet. Put him back on the flames for another million years! Bwah-ha-ha-ha-hahahahaaa!”). Jason will be pleased to hear this.

The word that Jesus uses in 5:22, 29, 30 is gehenna. It refers to the Valley of Gehinnom outside of the city of Jerusalem which, in the days of Jesus, was the garbage dump. People dumped all their refuse and waste out there. It was probably full of rats. Lepers might have scrounged through there. And every once in a while, to try to remove some of the stench, someone would light it on fire, and it would burn andย smolderย with acrid smoke for months on end. It was a wasteland, a garbage heap, a pile of burning filth.

Jesus is saying that when you call someone a fool, when you look lustfully at women, it destroys your life. While such actions, if they are followed to their logical end, may lead to murder and adultery, by the time you get there, you will have done so much other damage to your life, your friends, your relationship, your spouse, your job, your children, your health, your finances, and everything else in life, that you life will basically be aย gehenna. A burning wasteland of filth. Or, to quote one of the other guys from today, aย $#!+hole.

Don’t put your life in the dump
We all know it’s true. What happens in your marriage when you call your spouse a fool? Or how does your boss like it? How about your children? Your friends? That’s right. Life goes down the toilet real fast.

You treat people like they are only objects to be used, stepped on, objectified, abused, slandered, cheated, lied to, and then discarded, and eventually, you look around, and find that you are the one who has been discarded. You are the one in the wasteland. You are the one in gehenna. You are in a living hell.

So I know some are going to disagree with me on this. That’s okay. But if you think Jesus is really talking about a literal torment in flames for all eternity for calling someone a fool, just be careful what you say when you disagree.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Bible Study, Discipleship

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The Missional Attractional Church

By Jeremy Myers
5 Comments

The Missional Attractional Church

Yesterday I hinted that I have seen signs of the megachurch model (let’s call it “attractional” for this post, because lots of churches use the model, but are not yet mega) being able to adopt some of the simple, organic, humble, service-oriented values that are often found in the house-church model. Let’s call these values “missional” even though not all house churches are missional.

David Fitch wrote a post today about how this could look. He says:

[The] attractional gathering is for celebration, inspiration, the creating of vision, and spurring on of momentum. Missional communities (groups of 20-50) on the other hand do community, local missional engagement, training and discipling well.

He goes on to say that

The attractional gathering is limited…to at most once every 4 weeks or once every six weeks. IT IS NOT THE CENTRAL ORGANIZING EVENT OF THE CHURCH. Indeed, the organic missional community in the local context is the local organizing force. The attractional event fulfills a unique role of celebration, inspiration, the creating of vision and spurring on that comes from the momentum. It plays its role and it is clearly subordinated to the missional community in the life of the church.

This is what I’m dreaming about! I could get involved in a “megachurch” like this where the missional communities are the core, and the attractional gathering is the optional meeting.

Alan Knox wrote something similar about two months ago in a post called “Why I’m Not a House Church Proponent.”

My hope is that each church will consider their current method of meeting together and attempt to change that method however necessary to help one another begin to encourage, teach, admonish, serve, and build up others. If this happens among a group meeting in a house, then great! If it happens among a group meeting in a school, awesome! If it happens in a church meeting in a big building with a steeple, fantastic!

So, no, I am not a house church proponent. However, I am a church proponent: I plead for the cause of allowing Jesus Christ to build up his church through all of those meeting together, not just through a few. I am a church enthusiast: I am an ardent supporter of the church gathering together for the purpose of the whole church helping one another grow in maturity in Jesus Christ.

That’s right. It doesn’t matter if you are a church of 10 or 10,000. The point is to meet together to encourage, teach, admonish, and serve, whatever the model. Currently, it seems to me that the house church model has the fewest barriers to this, but I see encouraging signs of attractional churches making genuine steps toward a more missional mindset.

Are you aware of any “missional-attractional” churches in your area that see the large-group gathering as “optional” and the missional community involvement as the focus and core of the church? I want to hear more!

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship

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The Humanizing Church

By Jeremy Myers
2 Comments

The Humanizing Church

I am a guest blogger today over at “The Ooze.” Do me a favor and go check it out. Use the Facebook plugin to comment.

I’ll see you there!

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship, Theology of the Church

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Upgrade Your Church

By Jeremy Myers
8 Comments

Upgrade Your Church

If you tried to get on my blog within the last 36 hours, or on the forum over at GraceCommentary.com, you might have noticed a lot of errors and slow load times. Why did this happen? I tried to upgrade my sites. I added some elements that I hoped would make them run faster and smoother. Instead, the sites pretty much shut down.

So, I reverted them back to the way they were. The site still loads slow… but at least it works.

All of this got me thinking about church. When the church began 2000 year ago, things were good. Disciples were made. People believed in Jesus. The gospel spread. But over time, several things happened in culture: other religions developed innovations, scientific discoveries were made, governments changed hands, and wars were fought. The Christian leaders at the time thought that to keep up with the changes they were observing in culture, they also should innovate and change.

20/20 Hindsight
Looking back now, we see all the thousands of little innovations and tweaks that got us to where we are now. The pews, the buildings, the clergy, the politics, the money, the power, the liturgy, the bells and smells, the holidays, the dress code, the rules, and everything else that we think of as “church” was at one point, someone’s minor little innovation to help them make disciples.

But, just like with my website, some of these innovations, though good and helpful and added with the best of intentions, have become unnecessary coding on the life of the church. Rather than speed things up, they slow the church down. We get bogged down in ritual, rules, regulations, none of which are biblical, but which many believe are necessary to “run the church.”

Church Plugins
As a result of all these unnecessary plugins, we have come to the place today where people get tired of waiting for the church to load, and just move on to something else. They’d like to get involved or comment, but even once the page loads, it takes too long to register, and read all the comment policies, and sign up for the openID, and then, once they finally got to write a comment, they had to squint their eyes and try to decipher some funny-shaped letters which were meant to keep out computer spammers (digital heretics), but all these letters do is frustrate those who are trying to join the conversation. Even then, after they decipher the funny code to prove they are human (true believers), they are told their comment is being held for moderation (the pastor has to approve it).

So, they utter a curse word, make a mental note to not ever read your blog again, or attend your church again, and head over to Facebook or read their favorite blog about beer.

This is one of the reasons people are abandoning the church in droves. It is not that they are unspiritual or don’t care about God, the Bible, and Jesus. They do. It is just that we have made it too difficult for them to get involved and be heard.

Two Responses
Many churches are not even aware that this is going on. They notice attendance is falling, but think it is just because the big church down the street stole all their people, or the community is dying, or people are too busy, or whatever. But some churches are realizing that things need to change. And of those who do, there are generally two approaches to change.

1. Make Church Cooler
First, some churches try to innovate more. They get nicer buildings to compete with the work-out clubs, dance parties, and beer fests that the community seems to love. They add strobe lights and fog machines and state-of-the-art sound equipment to compete with the concerts. They get funny and obnoxious speakers to compete with the political comedians and comedian politicians. In essence, these churches believe they just need to add more plugins and get a cooler layout, and their readers will return.

And let’s be honest. For some of them, it works. They become huge. They get book deals, magazine covers, and radio spots. All the churches in the country try to follow suit.

But the nagging question still remains…are they actually making disciples and advancing the kingdom in a better way…. or are they just bigger, richer, and more popular? The answer is that we don’t know yet. Time and history will tell.

2. Revert Church Back
There is another approach, however. One that is gaining strength and popularity. This is the house church movement. Those in this camp see all the innovations and plugins that have been added over the past 2000 years, and see the the load on the server that these cause, and so decide to get back to the basics, strip it all away, and start over. No technology (or very little, anyway), no clergy, no budgets, no buildings, no sound systems, no lights and fog machines. Just people getting together to live life and follow Jesus.

I am not opposed to this approach. In fact, I am currently part of it. But I get real uncomfortable with the reasoning and logic behind much of the house church movement. ย It seems that many house churches, having rejected the historical innovations of the church, simply reverted back to the way things were at the beginning. ย Just people, meeting in their homes, sharing food and fellowship, discussing Scripture, and praying for one another. The logic seems to be that if it was good enough for the church in the beginning, it should be good enough for today.

I couldn’t disagree more. I agree this is how it was in the beginning. There’s no denying it. But here’s the problem: although the Bible reports how the early church functioned, the Bible does not require us to do it the same way. The early church did what they did for hundreds of reasons, but one of them was not “This is the one right way to do things forever and ever.”

My Church Position
So why am I (somewhat) part of the house church movement? Not because Frank Viola wrote a book about the pagan roots our church practices. Frankly (pun intended), I love some of those pagan practices and see much spiritual value in them. Nor am I part of the house church movement because I dislike sermons, songs, and stained glass. To the contrary, I absolutely love all three. I desperately miss good expository preaching. And I’m not part of the house church movement because I read about house churches in the Book of Acts. I do read about it there, but so what?

I am part of the house church movement for one main reason. I believe it offers the best and most streamlined way of reaching our culture for Jesus and helping people follow Him. Let me be even more honest. Five years from now, I might realize that there are ways to plug my convictions aboutย disciple makingย and following Jesus into theย mega-churchย model, and that it offers the best way of reaching our culture and helping people follow Jesus. I actually see signs around the country of this happening already, and am optimistic that some mega churches will be able to make the transition. If so, maybe I’ll join one.

What is the best way to make disciples?
Bottom line, there is the one factor I primarily consider when looking at a church model. I ask, “Is this the best way to draw people to Jesus and make them fully-devoted followers of Him in this culture?” In Greco-Roman culture of the first few centuries, I look at house churches and say, “Yes. That was the best.” After the conversion of Constantine in 312 AD, I look at the inclusion of church buildings, liturgy, and clergy, and say, “Yes, that was the best.” And elements of that model truly were best for about the next 1700 years. Through the Middle ages, and through the Enlightenment, and the Modern era, that model worked quite well at making disciples.

But about fifty years ago, the world-wide culture began to radically change. Like it or not, the church must recognize the reality of our postmodern culture and how that impacts our mission in the world. This post is already too long, but by my analysis, the best church model in a postmodern culture is one that focuses on a few things: simplicity over complexity, service over power, humility over arrogance, generosity over greed, inclusion over exclusion, and loving relationships over faceless masses.

I think the house church model presently does the best to fit the cultural challenges. And notย surprisingly, there are lots of similarities between our culture and the Greco-Roman culture of the first three centuries, so it makes sense that the house church model, which was so effective then, is also effective now.

Don’t Revert. Upgrade!
Transitioning to a house church model is not a “revert” back to the way it was in the book of Acts. It is actually an upgrade from the institutional model to a more streamlined, service-oriented, all-inclusive, everybody-has-a-say operating system with fewer scripts, plugins, coding errors, and restrictions. And definitely no “Are you human?” codes to decipher.

So, have you upgraded your church recently? If so, how is it functioning?

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship, Theology of the Church

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