Regal in Chicago

This morning I attended a traditional worship service in Chicago with some good friends.

Upon entering the sanctuary I was greeted with an 11-piece french horn ensemble playing two numbers with booming, moving parts.

Pastors were in robes. Long passages of scripture were read (well). And the robed choir sang a fine piece from sacred literature.

The elderly minister spoke eloquently about religious pluralism, reminding us that the American tendency to dismiss religious differences is actually a devaluation of each faith tradition. "We do Jews no favor," he said, "when we tell them that the distinctives of their faith don't matter. Of course they matter."

 The implication: Actual beliefs of individual religions need to be taken seriously, not glossed over for the sake of false harmony.

I sang "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" with my eyes closed, from memory, with the horns lifting the fourth and final verse into flight: "That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them abideth . . ."

I've been on the road a lot lately, and I miss my church. Grace Church Roseville is contemporary and relevant. People are meeting Jesus there and learning to love him. Families are being transformed.

But today in Chicago God touched my heart through a different style, a different flavor, a different approach to things.

Question: Are you and I flexible enough to appreciate both old and new? Traditional and contemporary?

Option Three

K telling me his faith story

I find that many of the college students I visit with around the country don't know why they believe in the Bible and Jesus.

I guess they formed these beliefs on the authority of parents and pastors, but few students can articulate any other reasons for their faith.

The result is that they tend to shield their religious life from the critique of the university. Either that or expose their beliefs and get slaughtered.

There is both a third and a fourth option, however. I favor the third: Integrate your faith and studies, which of course means owning your faith in a deep sense and having reasons to back it up.

The fourth option isn't much good: Possess a kind of "blind faith" that, despite resistance on campus, blazes forward in strident, ignorant glory, causing much offense while taking solace in being persecuted for the Cause.

Back to option three--integration. This means inviting Jesus into every class, paper, exam and relationship. A small percentage of students I've worked with in collegiate ministry over the years (29 years, to be exact) come equipped out of high school with this mindset. 

Evangelicals should be good at this integration. How could we improve?

Think about it. . .

College students are more interested in thinking than they think they are.

For evangelical students, the subculture in which they've been raised tends to be strong on worship, devotion, service, maybe even outreach.

The missing piece? Biblical/theological grounding.

Families, youth ministries and collegiate ministries do a grave injustice to students when we withhold such grounding. We assume young people are not interested. We say to ourselves, "A.D.D. video game culture trumps theology any day. Why fight it?"

But what if we made Bible study interesting? What if theology and apologetics were made relevant?

Here's the hard part. My generation (and older) has trouble separating theological teaching from a certain form of delivery: lecture.

No wonder students are bored.

But if students are, in fact, more interested in thinking than they (and we) think they are, we need to rehab our delivery system and make scripture and theology. . . engaging.

Yeah, I'm saying the problem is as much our fault as theirs. Folks, I can tell you from personal experience that they (students) are ready to roll. But are we?

Speaking "Up"

Four letter words fly around the golf course where I play like hundreds of errant tee shots.

A river of strong drink disappears into men's guts.

Sometimes they ask me on the 10th hole what I do for work. "I'm in the ministry," I say. "I travel around the country and tell college students about Jesus."

This usually causes massive apologies for all that took place the prior two hours.


No matter. I love these guys. And as much as I "speak up" to them about what I believe, I catch myself, at times, speaking down to them, condescendingly.

Rather, I wish to speak "up" from a posture of service and humility. Or minimally, speak across the table, man to man. This is the way of Christ.

Out with the Old, in with the Old

When I was young I was a rebel and a radical.

Now I'm a radical. Or at least I aspire to be so. 

The rebel in me went the way of James Dean--dead and buried.

The reason?

I never had a cause. Well, except to establish myself as a rebel. I suppose my friends and colleagues saw through this thin motivation, but I never did, not in my younger days.

Radical, on the other hand, remains a noble aspiration for me in middle age. I wish to emulate the radical Jesus who knifed through religious and social strictures to establish the kingdom of God in our midst.

Goodbye rebel. Hello radical.

Would you care to join me?