Epochalypsis

As I was smoothing out some of the wrinkles in the new blog template, I happened upon several unfinished posts in my “drafts” folder.  Actually, they were more loose outlines or reminders to write a post later on (clearly they didn’t do the job, as they were all dated in 2010). One was a partially written review of the YouTube “documentary” The God Who Wasn’t There (which, of course, made the bold choice to refute itself, leaving a bunch of Christian bloggers wondering, “What do I do now?”)

Another of these drafts was simply a copy of a blog comment that referenced me.  It was from the blog Epochalypsis: The Age of Unveiling. I vaguely remember seeing a Facebook ad featuring their glowing chi-rho logo and clicking over to check it out.  What I found was a post that referred to the doctrine of substitutionary atonement as “twisted crap.” I commented on the post, challenging some of the writer’s presuppositions, and got this response:

The Twisted Crap: (that Pastor Bartels apparently teaches his flock) God wanted us all dead for being such terrible sinners and Jesus saved us from his wrath. Also known as "substitutionary atonement" (i.e. Jesus was substituted in our place), this is one of the most vile, unfortunate and common understandings of what Jesus and his death on the cross means for mankind. It basically takes the biblical concept of a compassionate, loving, parent-like unconditional figure of God and warps and distorts God into some kind of blood-thirsty, revenge oriented God of wrath. While this understanding of God may not be true or helpful to growing as a loving compassionate believer, it sure is helpful to make believers compliant and put butts in your church pews. Much of the Empire of Christianity owes it's growth and success to this very lie. How do I know this is crap?

Think about the concept of substitutionary atonement this way: Imagine you were standing on the side of the road watching a mother and a daughter walking toward you hand-in-hand. Suddenly, a car loses control, and careens off the road onto the sidewalk right in the path of the mother and her daughter. With but a moment to act, the mother scoops up her daughter and throws her clear of the out-of-control car and then is killed instantly as the car slams into her. You run over to the scene of the accident to see if you can help. Paramedics, police and other bystanders are rushing around. Some are attending to the little girl, some are checking the mother's vitals, some are just in shock, crying at the horrible scene and the incredible sacrifice they'd just witnessed. Suddenly, out of nowhere, this wild-eyed woman walks up next to you, grabs your arm and says, "God wanted that little girl dead. The car was His wrath, and the little girl's mommy took her place."

I bet anyone of us would look that woman in the eyes and tell her she was nuts. Crazy nuts. And yet that's what millions of Christians the world over hear and believe every Sunday. The term "sacrifice" is not meant like the virgin on the altar, or the lamb at passover. It's not some kind of offering to appease. "Sacrifice" is meant like when we say a soldier "sacrificed himself" by jumping on a mine to save his platoon. Or the mother in the story above. It's an act of compassion and love. Not an act of appeasement. And that, my friends, is what Pastor Bartels finds offensive that I call "a morbid, negative and creepy doctrine" on the blog."

Not sure what I had been planning to do with that little gem. I’m guessing that the reason it just sat there a draft is because, like The God Who Wasn’t There, after a basic critical perusal, there’s little left standing to even tip over. But it might be a useful exercise to see just how many 1. false presuppositions, 2. logical fallacies / unwarranted leaps, and 3. blatant misunderstandings of orthodox soteriology we can find here. Not because it’s fun to tear someone else’s beliefs down (although the author of the above comment clearly thinks it is), but because, despite the fading away of many doctrinal-trends-formerly-known-as-emergent, the fashionable denial of substitutionary atonement is still on the rise among self-professed followers of Jesus.

And when we encounter proponents of such thought, it’s important that we listen carefully, that we search the Scriptures to analyze, validate, or debunk their teachings, and that we don’t let them get away with pulling a record number of “fast ones.”

Soli Deo Gloria,
Pastor Zach

How Old Is the Earth? (Sproul)

“I have a high view of natural revelation.” -R.C. Sproul

HT: Greg Koukl at Stand to Reason.

Stay Tuned for the Mind-Blowing Conclusion

If you look to your right, one of the many widgets you’ll see is an ad for our (Gut Check Press’s) on-going, serialized rapture-palooza of a thriller novel. I first told you about this project last February, and we were cooking right along for a while.

As of yesterday, though, the most recent entry was from January 14. But then today, I dropped the Big One.

As we say at Gut Check Headquarters / Pastor Zach’s Basement (while adjusting our wigs and looking deeply into our own souls in the mirror), It’s on now!

The aforementioned Big One:

If you want to know how it all ends . . .

Dear reader-slash-footsoldier in the Gut Check Army,

Yes, it seems that we let this project go by the wayside, as if this serialized end-times thriller is now as irrelevant as The Late Great Planet Earth. But things are not always as they seem.

True, we did have a bit of a lag there—so much so that we're having to re-work the clever “whoops, the Mayan calendar really runs out in 2011” sub-plot—but we’ve also been working on this project behind the scenes. There are now four more chapters, each building this story to a ludicrously dispen-sensational climax.

Where are these chapters, and why aren't they posted, you ask? Because we’ll be wrapping this story up as a committee in the next few weeks (somewhere in a smoke-filled back room or spark-and-steam-filled alley) and offering the whole deal as an e-book for, oh let's say, three bucks.

Stay tuned at www.gutcheckpress.com.

Honestly, this thing is a hilarious collaboration and it’s getting funnier as it gets more absurd. I’ll let you know when it’s all shrink-wrapped and ready for delivery to your Kindle or Nook.

New Look!

Check it out! I’ve got a new look here at Dispatches.

It occurred to me that, since my blogging career has involved more “comebacks” than John Travolta’s acting career, I needed to do something drastic to prove to the world that I’m really back on the blogging horse in earnest. So here it is: I actually updated my horribly ’90s-looking blog template with something (hopefully a little bit) less outdated looking.

Let’s all just take a moment to bask in the heat of the smile now spreading the mandibles of the Calvinist Gadfly.

-Pastor Zach

P.S. This is also a good time to follow my blog on blogger (or Google Friend Connect or whatever) or on Facebook (via Networked Blogs).

The Mother of All Preaching Problems

  

My fellow preachers,

I need some advice here.

The Background: I have never been the kind of pastor who lets Hallmark determine my preaching calendar. I’m singularly unwilling to allow 10-20% of my precious opportunities at the pulpit to be hijacked by secular/cultural/sentimental holidays which are not rooted in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus.

 
When such a holiday comes along, I simply continue preaching through whatever book I was working through. More often than not, I’m shocked by the clear providence involved, as the “special day” in question (particularly days that touch on biblical themes, like Veterans Day, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, etc.) fits together with the text hand-in-glove—totally unplanned, of course. Sometimes, I can even throw a bone to the holiday via a sermon illustration that serves the text.

But with Mother’s Day . . . well, let’s just look at my record . . .

• My 1st Mother's Day at Judson: Preaching through Sermon on the Mount, I landed on, “If you look at a woman to lust after her, you've already committed adultery in your heart.”



• My 2nd Mother's Day at Judson: Preaching through Joshua, it happened to be about Rahab, the harlot.



• My 3rd Mother's Day at Judson: Preaching through Luke, the text was the woman of bad reputation (prolly a prostitute) who anointed Jesus' feet. (Some finding this less cute, and perhaps beginning to wonder if it’s by design . . . )



• My 4th Mother's Day at Judson: I had just finished 63 weeks of preaching through Luke the week before and took it as a providential sign to preach a one-off expository sermon from a Mother's-Day friendly text. Okay, fine; it was a topical sermon. (Does Act of Contrition). I actually heard more negative feedback for this move than positive.



• My 5th Mother's Day at Judson: Preaching through John's epistles, it seemed that the curse was lifted, as I was able to expound on love and truth.



• My 6th Mother's Day at Judson: Didn't want to mess with it, so I took the week off and called in a real professional (Mikey Gohn) to deal with preaching on Mother’s Day.



• My 7th Mother's Day at Judson (this coming Sunday): Preaching through Revelation, and have arrived at this text . . .

Revelation 2:20-23  “But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.  I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.  Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works,  and I will strike her children dead.” [Emphasis mine, natch]


Seriously? On Mother’s Day! Come on!!

Part of me thinks it’s a test or something. Either, way (if I put it off a week or not), it'll be a great intro. But what to preach? And how to address it? 

I realize that many pastors do not choose their own text each week, or do not preach through books in an expository fashion, but let’s do a little inter-denominational-clergy-colleagues-take-part-in-a-Baptistic-style-vote a la bad ecclesiatical reality show action on this one. I’m thinking maybe going with whatever one of the major lectionaries has scheduled this week . . . ?

What say you?
    

The Jets, the Sharks, and Jesus

 
 
“They’re like Romeo and Juliet.” 

I’ve heard that said when two people are deeply in love.  What is meant, of course,  is not that the two people in question are star-crossed lovers, destined to crash and burn as a result of their passionate feelings for one another. No, it means that they epitomize the timeless, starry-eyed ideal of the romantic love story.

But is Romeo and Juliet a timeless, romantic love story?  I was reminded the other day that this uber-famous play is actually about “a relationship that lasted three days between a 13-year-old and a  17-year-old, which resulted in six deaths.” Well, when you put it that way . . .  Romantic? No.  Timeless?  Only because we’ve made it so.

In fact, Romeo and Juliet has been told and re-told in countless different ways with as many different settings and backdrops (from Nazi Germany to wherever Porky Pig lives).  One of the most famous re-imaginings of Shakespeare’s tale is the 1950s musical West Side Story (cue snapping), which is set in contemporary New York and involves street gangs, knives, and zip guns (zip guns!). Another well-known retelling was a film called Romeo + Juliet that came out when I was in college, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and set in a fictional modern-day location called “Verona Beach.” Car chases and gunfights ensue, but the story of two star-crossed lovers remains the same.

It seems that the setting is incidental to this story. It’s really about the relationship between these two families (or gangs or whatever) and how it affects two young people and their budding relationship. The rest is just backdrop, which can easily be replaced with another backdrop without harming the story.

Many other stories also remove timeless tales from their original settings: Clueless is really just Jane Austin’s Emma plopped down 180 years later in a Beverly Hills high school and O Brother Where Art Thou is a loose re-telling of Homer’s Odyssey. Both work because these timeless stories can play before any backdrop.  Georgian England or 90210 in 1995, the Trojan War or Depression-era chain gangs—these are just details not essential to the plot. Now, there certainly are stories where this doesn’t apply (for instance, Orwell’s 1984 ceases to make sense if you remove the backdrop of a tyrannical dystopia), but Romeo and Juliet easily survives a split from its historical setting.

Why do I even bring this up? Because our culture is viewing the world around us more and more in terms of narratives—stories. This is good news for Christians, since we have always viewed the world through the lens of the meta-narrative—the one Big Story of how God created us, we fell into sin, and He redeemed us through an incredible plan that climaxed with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. When we speak in terms of stories, then, we’re speaking both the language of Scripture and the language of the culture, which can make for some pretty effective preaching and some rather naturally occurring evangelism in the workplace, the family, or among friends.

But we have to be careful how we tell the Story. I’ve previously shared with you the best advice I ever got about preaching: my homiletics professor told us, “Gentlemen, when you’ve finished your sermon and think it’s just about ready to preach, read it over and ask yourself this . . . Could this message still be true and make sense if Jesus had not died and risen again for our salvation? If the answer is yes, then throw it out and start over, because it’s not a Christian sermon. It’s self-help or life-coaching or tips for family dynamics, but it’s not a cross-centered message, which is what we are called to proclaim.”

 

In other words, if you’re about to deliver a sermon or teach a lesson that is supposed to be rooted in the cross of Jesus, but you could swap out the cross of Jesus for the Koran or a book on etiquette or a self-esteem or productivity seminar (just as easily as swapping out Fair Verona for 1950s New York), then there’s something seriously wrong.

Well, the same thing applies to our very lives—our narratives.  How is it that Jesus and his cross fit into your story? Is He part of the backdrop, a detail not essential to the plot?  Is He a set-piece that could be removed or replaced without harming the overall story? Is the cross of Jesus like the setting of Romeo and Juliet (incidental and unessential) or is he more like the shark in Jaws? No shark, no story.  Then again, we could replace the shark with a tiger or a huge snake or even a hurricane (after all, it’s a basic “man-versus-nature” story) and not lose too much. The story of Scripture, though, is man-versus-God. And God Wins through His coming down in flesh to dwell amongst us and His dying for our sins, only to rise again. It’s the tale of God, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. You remove that and plug  anything else in its place and you’ve lost the whole story.

Rather than being part of the background or a supporting character in our story (a character who might be written out at any time), God calls us to become a supporting character in His story, the Big Story of redemption that he is writing. That means that our whole existence is only meaningful in relation to the plot of the Jesus Story. To remove us from that and try to find any meaning apart from it would be meaningless, like trying to create a spin-off series for the Close Talker or “Frightened Inmate #3.” When we realize that our lives have meaning only because they are part of God’s Story (and not because He is part of ours), then we can say goodbye to much of the uncertainty and doubt that so often plagues us as Christians—doubt that we’re doing enough, doubt that our story is compelling enough. It’s not. But His Story is.

Just as a sermon should pass the “Would it make sense without the cross?” test, so should our lives. When we prayerfully reflect on each day, perhaps we should ask the question, “Would today have looked any different if Jesus hadn’t died for my sins and risen again for my justification?”  If it would have been the same, take heart—God’s story carries on.  Let’s repent of our attempts to make Jesus part of the scenery and ask him every day to make us part of His Story, which is timeless—not because it can be re-imagined in a number of different times and places, but because it spans all of time. And he’s cast you in the role of disciple.

How could we possibly pass that up?

Soli Deo Gloria,

Pastor Zach

Am I God's Co-Worker in Sanctification?

Pastor Kevin DeYoung has a great piece on his blog today, dealing with whether sanctification is monergistic (an act of God alone) or synergistic (the result of God and man working together). If you're not familiar with the term sanctification, it refers to the process by which my day-to-day life becomes more holy as I am made more and more like Jesus in thought, word, deed, and heart. Justification refers to the initial declaration by God that I am legally righteous in his sight (which is decidedly a monergistic work of God alone). Glorification refers to the process (after death) by which God finally perfects us and renders us worthy to cohabit with him forever. This is also monergistic.

I, for one, have no problem calling sanctification synergistic. When we think of justification, sanctification, and glorification, it is clear that the beginning of the work of salvation and the end are works of God alone and the part in the middle—which is never quite “complete” as such (since it is finished in glorification)—is where he lets us be a co-worker. It’s like when my son was just learning to walk, and I would pick him up from the ground and place him on the little “bridge” at the playground, then hold his hands as he “walked along,” then put him on the slide at the edge of the bridge, and help him down. No one watching that process would ever think that he had gone down that slide by himself, or that we were equal partners in the slide venture. I picked him up and set his feet on the playground at slide level, I put him down the slide. What little co-working I let him do was not because I needed his help (it would have been easier for me to just carry him myself) but for his benefit and as a privilege to him, so that he could learn a little bit more how to walk. The slide thing was essentially Dad’s doing (and the first and third portion were ALL Dad’s doing), but that little piece in the middle was a co-labor. For a reason.

Why the Internet Is Awesome

The Internet has opened up communication in a billion amazing ways. People who long ago drifted apart are now back in touch. Via social media, people who grew up with you are now chatting with your college profs and your boss, whilst gathered around ironic pictures of you in drag. Worlds are colliding! to quote Castanza.

But that's okay. I like it when worlds collide. However, the Internet is actually a pretty clumsy, crappy place to have a group conversation. For example, imagine that two pastors, two seminary professors, a copywriter, a social worker, an artist, and a windmill salesman (right?) are all in someone's living room during a social event. How would conversation play out? A bunch of little discussions would probably break out around the party, right?

Well, not on the Internet. We've got everyone in the room and now everyone's involved in one conversation. Only in true Seinfeld fashion, George and Elaine are talking about one thing, Kramer is chiming in with non sequiturs, and George is looking at his hairline in the mirror, voicing his panicked concern that it is receding unevenly. And, in this conversation, people keep walking out and walking back in. Some of them are still listening when they step out, while others don't bother to catch up with what they miss and just jump right back in without missing a beat. Oh, and the subject isn't allowed to change. If the first thing someone brought up was the recent dive in the stock market, then that's what we're going with. All night. We might experience some digressions, but someone will bring it back around. Does this sound like a fun conversation? Only if you're watching it from the outside.

Case in point: I recently threw up on my wall a little quote from an article by Kevin DeYoung. Now, I loved the article; I thought it was brilliant. I was just throwing the quote up as my facebook status because I thought it was worded a little goofy and might provide a micro-second of entertainment. Like most people, I throw decontextualized, disembodied quotes on my facebook wall regularly (I usually get about five comments).

Then a couple people responded. A pretty interesting conversation started up, which was less and less about the quote. This confused (maybe even upset) some people. Only on the Internet. In real life, if you and I are talking about baseball, then it leads into the recent heat wave, and before long we're talking about our least favorite brand of pastry, no one is confounded. We roll with it. But not on the Internet.

Just for funsies, read through the below exchange (which actually encompassed more than 100 comments), imagining it taking place with a group of people at a dinner party with the very cast I described above. Let your imagination fill in when people enter and exit, what they're wearing, and what items they may be holding (spoiler alert: someone is holding a banjo). And see if the social media is doing anything to facilitate real communication.

I want you to notice how the subject upon which we quickly land is called the "touchstone issue of our faith" by a decades-long seminary professor. This conversation coulda been a contender, if it had some focus. It could have been exilerating and satisfying in real life. But the Internet likes to ruin such things. Also notice how many times the word "disconnect" is used, which is funny considering A.) the notion of a disconnect was the beginning of the "touchstone issue" discussion, before it got disconnected, and B.) this whole thread is full of epic disconnect.

Disclaimer: I've abbreviated names because I asked no one's permission, and abridged the heck out of everyone's bloated posts (my own included) so you can get the gist of things without getting all TL;DR on me.

"Yes, I do think Mormons, Arminians, Egalitarians, and Dispensationalists are wrong—not equally wrong by any means, but on certain matters wrong nonetheless."—Kevin DeYoung. (So there's that...)

 
TiffCo: This quote gets to the heart of my disconnect with certain aspects of organized faith.

RevZach: How's that?

DrGreek: TiffCo's observation is good. God has given us a perfect bible and imperfect interpreters and commentaries. The real question is whether God will judge us more on our doctrinal statement or how we arrived there and how we hold it.

RevScrib: I'm lost.I have absolutely no idea whether KDY, DrGreek, or RevZach agree with me here, let alone with each other.

Josh: Since these four views do no agree about God, at least three of them must be wrong.

RevZach: Not really; it's easy to be an Arminian, egalitarian dispensatinalist, since these refer to three different categories and aren't mutually exclusive.

DrGreek: You've touched on the "touchstone" issue of our faith ... how do we know and what is the Bible's relationship to knowing? [Makes shameless plug for book he edited]

B-Atch: Like RevScrib, I'm confused. It feels like people are sailing ships past each other.

RevZach: That's cause you and RevScrib are BOUNDED-SET. Ha!

B-Atch: Again, over my head....

RevZach: DrGreek, The book sounds great.

Josh: This whole thing was an advertisement for a book? Do we all get a stipend?

DrRick: Since there are no inspired commentaries, can we add Calvinism to KDY's list?

DrGreek: You are the folks I would love to have in a class to discuss these issues... you are honest about being confused. Keep wrestling with these issues.

RevZach: RICK! How dare you, sir?! BTW, I think we lost TiffCo in the fog.

TiffCo: No, I'm still here. My understanding of God feels like it is beyond language and intellect, much like the analogy of the four blindfolded people feeling different parts of the elephant.

RevZach: I agree that we (the Christian Church, historically) too often act as though we have a near-exhaustive understanding of an infinite God. However, since we believe that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, in order to be consistent, we must see God as knowable, rather than beyond language and intellect.

RevZach: i.e. when describing a knowable person, one *can* actually be wrong (for example, if someone described me as "thin").

TiffCo: I think we agree more than we disagree, and I appreciate when people's spirit and intellect are in communication.

B-Atch: My real confusion here is: why did RevZach bring up this quote in the first place? DrGreek, I agree with your comments. God will judge your fruit by how much he revealed to each person within the gospel of Christ. Rick, wouldn't adding Calvinism to KDY's list mean that he finds that wrong as well? I'm trying to clear everything up in one comment, since I still feel like everyone's talking past each other.

RevZach: I'm confused as to why you're confused. As far as "clearing everything up in one comment," that's kind of ironic, given the topic.

B-Atch: RevZach, sorry...I spent 40 minutes preparing my last comment, and was out of the loop. It all makes sense now.

DrGreek: I think the question is: how do we think about all the "voices claiming truth" from the same Bible, without falling victim to persuasive people or subjectivism? Since we have diversity of views within the believing community and God has not decreed a way to avoid it, he must have a purpose for it and we need to engage each other with more humility. We need to teach the "how" of handling the Scripture, not just the "what" of systematics.

RevScrib: TiffCo is right about the blind men/elephant analogy. God doesn't hold us accountable for knowledge not available to us. But when the elephant starts talking and telling the blind men about himself, they are accountable for that knowledge.

B-Atch: DrGreek, it sounds like we are on the same page, as you try to guide us through how we make sense of all of the competing doctrines within the various fields in systematics.

Turk: So is DrGreek saying that the Mormon "wrong" is different from the Arminian "wrong?" Is he saying that our faith is a blind faith, invested in a voice we might not really hear and probably don't understand, but trust anyway?

DrGreek: Turk, none of your response applies to what I said. I'm speaking of why one view might be superior to another, rather than assertions of right or wrong. Your question misses the issue of categories; Mormon is not in the same category as Arminian/Calvinist. Mormonism is outside the Christian canon; Arminians are within.I might find the Arminian view inadequate, but am very careful if I call it "wrong."

DrGreek: I would completely reject the idea of blind faith. Faith is not about not-knowing but knowing with conviction.Faith is not blind but full of light.

DrGreek: As to the question of how we know (epistemology), we have to evaluate the nature of our knowing when it comes to theological differences within orthodox Christianity. I know a lot of things that I can't prove, but can assert from a Christian worldview. When we just focus on which camp is "right," we risk missing the Truth due to poorly defined categories.

RevZach: And Turk thought he could just parachute in, drop a whole bunch of snarky questions, and escape through the storm drain.

MissusRevZach: Seriously, did KDY really equate egalitarianism with Mormonism?

RevZach: Knowing KDY, I'm sure that when he said "not equally wrong," he actually meant "not wrong in the same way," but even if he misspoke, I'm glad he did, as it gave birth to this huge theological exchange.

Turk: I thought it was over, and I'd just have to keep my Cat-5 blow to myself, but now I shall prepare a thorough response!

DrGreek: My greatest disappointment about this conversation is that no one has commented about my banjo.

MissusRevZach: Perhaps KDY didn't mean to equate them, but I would think that someone who speaks and writes as often as he does would think about the connotations of putting those things in the same sentence.

B-Atch: Speaking of which, I got to hang out with KDY today. That was fun.

TiffCo: Again, I feel God's presence so strongly, so consistently, that there can be no doubt about what I feel. Beyond that, I know NOTHING. How could I possibly have an opinion about what anybody else claims to know?

RevZach: TiffCo, would you also ask, "How can I have an opinion about what anybody else claims to know," if the claim were 2 + 2 = 4? (not that I'm saying that simple mathematical facts and Christianity are equally self-evident.) If someone says 2 + 2 = 5, can I call them wrong?

TiffCo: I'm picking up what you're layin' down. Honestly, maybe 2+2 sometimes does equal 5. I've never seen it happen, but what I haven't seen would fill two warehouses.

Turk: 2+2=Jesus, dummy.

RevZach: Okay, but you do essentially operate with the assumption that 2+2=4. In fact, every day you bet your life that you know certain things. If you didn't feel a disconnect from math class because they were dogmatic about right answers, why does it apply to the world of faith (remembering that mathematics is, at least potentially, infinite)?

Turk: You are too concerned about immediate gratification, DrGreek. Savor the anticipation.

RevZach:Turk, go ahead and build some suspense. I'm sure the Rev. Dr. Greek, M.Div, ThM, ThD won't be able to sleep tonight, worried sick that four decades of teaching seminary has left him ill-prepared to deal with a PyroManiac...

Turk: Like all the alphabet soupies before him ...

RevZach: "I'm invincible!!!" - The Black Knight

Turk: Your ironic comment misses a lot, as did your take on KDY's statement.

RevZach: I knew I should have spent a decade studying under you instead of all those "alphabet soupies..."

TiffCo: After much thought, I've determined that the disconnect originates with exclusivity of Chrstiainity, as found in John 14:6. (I actually wish this weren't so.)

RevZach: Tiff, I fully acknowledge that that's a tough pill to swallow.

Turk: Oh please -- I have dismantled all of higher education with the phrase "alphabet soupies?" Not any more than you have dismantled orthodox ecclesiology by sarcastically citing another pastor.

Turk: I don't understand how you can read KDY's essay, especially point #5 and think he lacks multiple categories and nuances.

RevZach: I've said at least twice during this conversation that I'm sure KDY did in fact mean "not wrong in the same sense" when he said "not equally wrong." But our discussion has moved rather far away from that little matter by now.

MissusRevZach: TiffCo, I agree that that is a hard passage, although I have found that Biblical exclusivity is actually far more inclusive and all-embracing than most religions. And if there were no exclusive truth claim in Christianity there would be no point in believing any of it at all.

Turk: Moved on? DrGreek's comments began and ended with sentences that contained KDY's last name. TiffCo's beef with exclusivity and DrGreek's comments can't be addressed if we don't agree that both were responding to KDY.

RevZach: So, wait. That was your cat-5 hurricane? And I thought Irene was over-hyped...

B-Atch: This thing is still going on? Holy crap! It was like '64 when I last chimed in. I wish I had some awesome snarky comment to add...

RevZach: Sure, DrGreek made reference to the KDY quote, but those were just a springboard. We're not talking about the biblicism that his article addressed, but the idea of whether and how spiritual truth is truly "knowable" (i.e. in a way that permits us to call others "wrong?")

Turk:If the conversation started out being about KDY's post, and then somehow it became about me, I missed it.

RevZach: Frank, I promise no one's talking about you. You are excused.

Turk: I'm perplexed; the RevZach I know responds with substance, not second-rate condescension.

RevZach: That's it; everyone get out of my house.

Update: Between when I copied/pasted all this into blogger (and started formatting/abridging it) and when I pasted the link into facebook, Turk had offered a kind and sincere apology (accepted and here reciprocated—sorry for the over-the-top snark, Turkish D). But this just adds further weight to my premise. I know Turk for real, not just on the Interwebs, and we've never ended a conversation with a mutual apology. I'm guessing that less than 1% of my "real life" conversations end with me needing to apologize for tone, off-the-cuff comment that went a little below the belt, etc. But on the Internet, I'd say a good 4 or 5% of longish conversations end with me apologizing that I misunderstood someone, trying to explain that they misunderstood me, or trying to backpedal where I'd gone too overboard. I wonder if Skype and the like will eventually become more integrated with social media, blogs, etc., removing these barriers, as we re-gain control over tone, nonverbals, etc.

(A) Moving Forward...

About six weeks ago, I received an e-mail forward from someone I’ve never met, with the subject line “FW: LET'S PUT CHURCH FIRST AGAIN.” Now, I usually don't read e-mail forwards, but that title (despite the author’s defiant refusal to push the caps lock key in order to stop shouting at me) connected with me at the time. You see, I’d been thinking about the very topic quite a bit myself (albeit in lower case), as I always do during the summer months when church activities go on hiatus and church attendance takes a major dip.

Here is the text of the e-mail (grammar and spelling mistakes intact):

When I was growing up (in the 60's and 70's), we went to church EVERY Sunday. We also went to church on Wednesday and whenever the doors were open. The Mom's and Dad's went to Bible Study and the kids went to AWANA and youth fellowship. The teenagers volunteered in the nursery, puppet ministry and youth choir. No one brought their phone to church (because it wouldn't have worked anyways).

Hardly anyone was open on Sundays then. It was a family day for church and for spending time together. Schools did not have tests or sports games or mandatorey events during church time, because they knew if they did no one would come anyways. If the rare occasian came up when some "event" was going on Wednesday night or Sunday morning, we didn't go, we'd already made a commitment to attend church! When we went on vacation (in a station wagon, not on a jet plane), we might miss a Sunday, but we still attended church SOMEWHERE. And when we did, we knew the songs they sang and the Bible they read from, because we used them too!

Today, however....church is an optional feature on any given Sunday. If there is a game on or a big race during church time, people stay home and watch the game. If they were up late the night before, they sleep in and skip church. If they have work to do around the house, its more important than God who told us to rest on the sabbath day. If the weather is nice, they don't go to church so they can go fishing. If the whether is bad, they don't go because it would be a bother to get there. If there is a concert or a card game or a movie or a booster club meeting at the same time as church or prayer club, then it is ALWAYS more important than church. This is the opposite of how things used to be (and how things SHOULD be)!

If we really are CHRISTIANS and we are the BODY OF CHRIST we need to turn this back round! Send this on if you think Christians need to put CHURCH FIRST in their lives once again!

After reading this message, I did not “send it on,” but I did think about it. A lot. Not because it was a well-written masterpiece or even a persuasive argument (appeals to nostalgia and emotion are generally not conducive to either), but because—even though I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s (not the ’60s and ’70s)—I could relate to this trip down memory lane, and I found myself nodding as I read, longing for the Good Old Days™ along with the author of this impassioned piece. And that actually disturbed me a little bit. Because the mindset of those few paragraphs is this: “How can we move backwards?” It assumes that everything was better “back then” and everything is worse now, so our mission is to go back to the future, in a sense.

But should that be the goal? Would the church really be better off if we revived “puppet ministries,” even with the full buy-in of the congregation? Is it necessarily a step in the wrong direction that we don’t all use the KJV as our primary translation? Is there never a time to miss church for a family event or other “secular” commitment? If we were somehow able to successfully roll back the church to the ’60s and ’70s (or even the ’80s and ’90s), would we find ourselves better able to engage the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ? I would answer no on all counts.

Remember when I coined that clever acronym G.O.D.S. (Good Old Days Syndrome) while preaching through Haggai? (Pretend that you do.) Well, too often the "Good Old Days" do become gods and idols to us, even when our intentions are good. How else do we explain the inclusion of station wagons and jet planes in this piece? What on earth does it have to do with the subject at hand, other than describing a “simpler time” in which the author was more comfortable?

While prompted by a frustration that I fully understand, I think the above e-mail forward raises the wrong questions. Instead of wringing our hands about the direction the world has taken (and its unfortunate effects on the Church) and asking how we might rewind, we ought to be asking how we can stake out a vital and effective ministry as the Church of Jesus Christ in the world and the times in which we live. How can we best play the hand we’ve been dealt?

The reality is that people’s lives are fuller, busier, and less simple than they were in the past. The way people look at time and priorities is different than it was in the past. Denying those realities is no kind of strategy. And firing off finger-waggy, we-verus-they, guilt-trip-inducing e-mail forwards is no help either. No, dealing with the reality means asking each other and asking ourselves, “In the midst of all the time commitments and all the different aspects of my life pulling me in every direction, how high of a priority is worshiping God with a body of believers, receiving Christ together, and serving in his Kingdom?”

I don’t think any Christian intentionally chooses to put Christ and his Church on the back burner; it just happens gradually. It’s not (as the man or woman who penned the above diatribe suggests) that people choose to make Church last in their lives or that they sit down and number all of their priorities and write a notation next to the word church: “Skip this if inconvenient.” People are overloaded today—mentally, emotionally, time-wise, financially, and in every other way. If the Church adds to that overload (and if the Church makes it easy to slip away unnoticed), then people will gradually find it slipping down the list of priorities. Before long, the new habit is to come every six weeks, and then not at all. Some may even find it difficult or awkward to come back once they’ve fallen out of the habit.

That is exactly why my church is planning a Back to Church Sunday on September 25. This is the time of year when we re-start all sorts of activities—new classes, new projects, new schedules, new sports seasons, new TV shows. As the summer comes to a close, people get the urge to get back into the swing of things. What better time could there be to come back to church and re-commit to making the Body of Christ a priority in your life? If you're a member at Judson, there will be information arriving in your mailbox shortly about this special Sunday, but for now, I just ask you to pin down that morning on your calendar and plan to be here for worship and fellowship that day. You won’t regret it.

If you don't live near the capital city, I encourage you to go back to church all the same. Despite what George Barna tries to tell you, you can't do this disciple of Jesus thing on your own. That's why, from the very beginning, Christians have gathered together in ordered bodies (marked by the preaching of the Word, the proper adminstering of the sacraments, and church discipline) for the apostles' teaching, the breaking of bread, fellowship, worship, and prayer. If you belong to Jesus, then you belong in church on the Lord's Day.

Or are you too busy flying around in your jet plane, talking on your cell phone, and sleeping in?

Let’s move forward together as the Body of Christ, with his cross at the center of our lives.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Pastor Zach

Speculative Faith

I had the honor of filling the Friday guest post slot at Speculative Faith today. Click here to read my article, Harry Potter, Bob the Tomato, and Genre, in which I try and subtly pimp my book 42 Months Dry and explore the weird lines-in-the-sand, which (heh...sandwich) Christians tend to draw when it comes to inventive fiction.
 

God's Simple Perfection Wins.

 
Last night, I travelled west (you know, the way of Horatio Alger and Davy Crockett, the Donner party...) back to my old stomping ground in Grand Rapids for a book signing-slash-lecture-slash-Q&A for my friend and favorite once-seminary professor, Dr. Michael Wittmer. He is promoting his latest book, Christ Alone: An Evangelical Response to Rob Bell’s Love Wins.

Although at least two other books have come out to answer Rev. Bell, I would point out that Wittmer’s was first. And, having read it, I don’t really see the need for any others. The book is uncompromising in its approach to the Gospel, and yet still respectful and gracious in that trademark-Wittmer way that once made Brian McLaren get misty-eyed.

We’ve got him surrounded...

I’m afraid that our attention span today is so short that, when Justin Taylor single-handedly propelled Bell’s book to #1 on Amazon before it even came out, many assumed it would all blow over too quickly to warrant a written response (beyond a tsunami of angry blog responses, most of which came from people who had just seen the teaser trailer). In fact, as the second and third responses to Love Wins have recently been released to little fanfare, many have more or less ignored them, since the media storm has basically played itself out. But as of this writing, Love Wins is still in the top 200 on Amazon. And, while it’s old news on the cutting edge blogs and no longer on the cover of Time Magazine, Bell’s book is just making its way into homes and libraries in smaller towns.

I wish I had a recording of Dr. Wittmer’s presentation from last night (maybe he’ll grace us with a link to the text in the comments section), but since I don’t, allow me to again commend to you the book Christ Alone, and to paraphrase Dr. Wittmer’s introduction (minus all the Taylor Swift stuff), which was itself worth the hour drive to the six-one-six.

One of the issues that Rob brings up in Love Wins is the question: how can a finite being ever do anything to deserve infinite punishment. Our lives span a finite amount of time and we have finite capacities, so how can hell go on and on and on forever?

But he fails to take into account whom we have offended. Everyone recognizes how important this is. If you walk outside tonight and slap a mosquito, no one cares. But if you pull the legs off of frogs just for fun, we start to worry. If you torture puppies, we call the authorities [tasteless joke about cats redacted]. If you kill another person, we put you in jail for life, or maybe give you the electric chair. Who you attack matters.

And we have all offended God himself with our sin, and attacked Him in order to kill (as the old hymn reminds us, we were spiritually present with the crowd who shouted “Crucify!”) an infinite and eternal being, and therefore deserve to be punished accordingly.

Like I said, that’s a paraphrase, but you get the picture. Dr. Wittmer flawlessly exposes the contradictions, hidden premises, and unbiblical teachings of Love Wins in a way that comes off positively, focused entirely on giving glory to God for the true Gospel of salvation, in which God’s holiness and love are not set at odds, but in which all of God’s perfections are one.
 

What Ted said. (About what Mark said.)

 
Sick of whiny people whining about awesome people? There's a little catharsis wrapped up in Big T's latest post.
 

Ecumenical Evanglism?!

Do me a favor and skim the Michigan Historical Marker to the left, which you can find outside a beautiful old church building in the happening Old Town district of Lansing, Michigan. I want to point out three phrases: “The First Presbyterian Church,” “prominent Methodist,” and “Gospel Preaching.” If you know anything about the history and family tree of Protestant denominations, you know that Methodists and Presbyterians are quite separated by doctrine and tradition. Methodism is very much Arminian, while Presbyterians have historically embraced the doctrine of election. And yet, here we read about a prominent Methodist providing land for a Presbyterian church under the condition that this church provide Old Town (then Lower Town) with Gospel preaching.

If my church (read: the congregation under my care) had one of those historical markers (which we could almost certainly procure, but haven’t because they cost thousands of dollars and serve as something of a pair of shackles, limiting what you can do with your “historic site”), it would tell a similar story:

Judson Baptist was the first church founded in South Lansing (which was, at the time, south of Lansing), an area that was booming with Oldsmobile employees and seeing new workers daily being added to the budding neighborhoods and farmers who had been working the land for generations. A group of several dozen women first started a non-denominational Sunday school program for the children of South Lansing, whom they feared would otherwise have no means of hearing the Gospel. In 1925, a Presbyterian man organized this effort in an old schoolhouse. Over the next few years, Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist, and Methodist churches worked to support this outreach, eventually adding preaching for adults in the afternoon. Progress was very slow.

In late 1928, a representative of the Michigan Baptist Convention offered assistance in establishing a church proper, and the group unanimously accepted the offer. By 1931 (right smack in the middle of the depression), they had laid the cornerstone for the building where Judson Memorial Baptist Church still worships every week.

So, not only did we bring Methodists and Presbyterians together, but also Congregationalists and two different Baptist churches! The name for this sort of activity is “Ecumenical Evangelism,” and for some reason this has become a four-letter word in many of the circles in which I travel and operate. For example, a while back, I was looking into using the services of www.sermonaudio.com to host the growing collection of sermons we offer online. However, I found that I could not check the box of the site’s Articles of Faith, which listed rejection of ecumenical evangelism right along side the virgin birth of Our Lord and the atonement. (This proved providential, as the free services of www.archive.org are a better match for us, anyway.) Some of the major Calvinistic “coalition” and “alliance” type groups also have similar principles worked into their core beliefs and statements of faith.

Now, I acknowledge the slipperiness of this term: “ecumenical” can mean (and, today, often does mean) “spanning all religions,” in which case ecumenical evangelism becomes a complete oxymoron, as Mormons, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus could never cooperate in their efforts to proselytize or even to proclaim good news any more specific than “Some sort of God or gods love you, so be nice to each other.” If I encountered such “evangelism,” after I finished scratching my head, I would join in condemning it.

But the meaning of “ecumenical” in the Christian church, has historically referred more often to that which pertains to the entire Church universal (e.g. the First Ecumenical Council). In that sense, I would argue that ecumenical evangelism is nothing short of the most efficient and Christ-honoring way of carrying out the Great Commission. If churches and denominations can avoid duplicating efforts, many more can be reached. Christians—true Christians— of all stripes can proclaim together the basic message of salvation by God’s grace, by the blood of Christ, through faith in Him. We can together proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name, calling sinners to repent, to confess with their lips that Jesus Christ is Lord, and to believe in their hearts that God has raised Him from the dead. Sadly, this type of “ecumenical evangelism” is often what is meant when websites, churches, and para-church organizations call ecumenical evangelism a slippery slope, an affront to the Gospel, an abomination, etc.

And yet the rolls of Judson Baptist Church are filled with the names of Christians who may never have heard the Gospel preached if it weren’t for that slippery slope. As are the rolls of North Presbyterian Church, which recently moved out of the Old Town building (left) and merged with Westminster Presbyterian. The Michigan Historic Site in question is now the home of the primarily African-American (yet diverse) congregation called Epicenter of Worship, pastored by Sean Holland and his wife Tayana. I’ve met Sean several times, heard him preach, and regularly check out the church’s video blog, which is always filled with solid Bible teaching. Also of note is that Epicenter (which, until recently, met in the building of First Baptist, downtown) shares part of their facility with the Resurrection Life East Church, a charismatic-ish congregation with unofficial ties to the mega-church in Grandville. If you're getting confused trying to keep all this straight: good.

That’s right, I don’t sweat it when the labels and brand names within the body of Christ get blurred and blurry. I acknowledge that any kind of ecumenism or Church unity always carries with it potential dangers. But so does a spirit of exclusivity and ultra-separation. And I’ll face the dangers of the former—and reap its blessings—rather than build up walls and hunker down any day.

I’m sorry I can't sign your Articles of Faith; my view of the Church of Christ as bigger, wider, and more diverse than my own little corner of the Kingdom won't let me.

Soli Deo Gloria,
Pastor Zach

Damnable Prayers, Spoken or Implied

In Mark 9, a man encountered Jesus’ power to heal and restore, and responded by bursting out,

“Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!”

What a beautiful, succinct, and honest prayer: I have some faith, Lord, but give me more. Squeeze out the pockets of darkness with your light, and help me to cultivate a living, vibrant belief in you. Yeah, those six little words (just five words in the original Greek) are pregnant with theological and personal meaning.

And, yet, it’s not enough for us today, is it? Today, we say, “Lord, help me embrace my unbelief.” Because acknowledging that you do believe is not “authentic” enough for today’s spiritual climate. Just like it’s now uncouth to claim that you know with certainty anything at all about God (even those things that God’s Word tells us with certainty). There’s a new standard for faith gaining momentum, and it is unfaith. In the last few years, pastors have even begun regularly stating and over-stating the shaky and tenuous nature of their own belief from the pulpit. (“Sure, I’m a pastor, but most of the time I wonder if there’s any God at all.”)

Lord, help me embrace my unbelief.

But that’s not the only update we’ve made to the Bible's picture of faith and how we live it out. Along with sacramentalizing a lack of belief, we’ve also baptized a lack of preparation. In describing the cost involved in following Him as Lord, Jesus said, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’” (Luke 14:28-30, esv). This is wisdom. In approaching matters of faith, we should inventory, prepare, and consider whether we will be able to follow a particular enterprise through to the end. The book of Proverbs also echoes this sentiment consistently.

But that’s not enough for us today either, is it? The new mark of faith is to rush headfirst into any endeavor, only to find ourselves unprepared, under-committed, and ultimately unwilling. Then, we say to God, “This is your work, God, so you better do something about it. Bless my impulsiveness and lack of wisdom.” And later, when we tell the story to other Christians, this is painted as stepping out “in faith.” Counting the cost is out, running up a tab and then pinning it on Daddy to bail us out with a miracle is in.

If you’ve been at my church the last couple of Sundays, you know why I’m mulling over this stuff right now. It’s because, two Sundays ago, I prayed my own foolish prayer. The gist of it was, “Lord, bless my foolishness,” but it more specifically went something like: “Well, Lord, I feel like I can barely walk into the sanctuary, but it’s about time for the sermon. So you’d better give me the strength to power through.” I don’t know that I even prayed that prayer as such (i.e. I didn’t “speak it in my mind”), but it was implied.

Of course, halfway through the sermon (if you can call it that), I mumbled something about coyotes and hit the floor like a sack of potatoes. And I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t a little miffed with the Good Lord for failing to answer my prayer. After all, didn’t it show a ton of faith and perseverance for me to throw wisdom to the winds and step up to the pulpit anyway? Wasn’t it a laudable thing to undertake a sacred duty—proclaiming God’s Holy Word—when I was completely ill-equipped to do it at the moment? In retrospect, those are pretty stupid questions. But at the time, I was operating in the categories of the “new and improved faith,” the kind of “faith” that doesn’t count the cost, but over-commits and leaves God in the awkward position of being expected to bless my foolishness.

Ultimately, I was expecting special treatment from God—an exemption from the principles of biblical wisdom—simply because I was me, or maybe because I’m on his payroll. Either way, these are principles native to the kingdom of this age, not the Kingdom of God.

Now, let me clarify. When I call this idea “new,” I mean that it’s currently experiencing a resurgence; strictly speaking, it’s anything but new. The Scriptures are full of people throwing up foolish prayers and making foolish vows to God. Remember in Jeremiah 21, when King Zedekiah asked God to set his holiness aside, overlook the sins of the people, and give them victory against Nebuchadnezzar? (Translation: “Lord, bless our sin and hardheartedness.”) Or the men who swore an oath to God that they would not eat until they had orchestrated the death of Paul? (Translation: “Lord, bless our hate because we’ve dressed it up as piety.”)

Church history has its own damnable prayers. St. Augustine (before he had the “St.”) famously prayed for some time, “Lord, make me chaste . . . but not yet!” (Translation: “Lord, bless my carnality because I have big plans to be righteous later on.”) And even after the Reformation, some über-righteous church leaders told William Carey not to go overseas, bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the precious peoples of India and beyond, because “If God wants to save the savages, he will do it without your help.” (Translation: “Lord, bless our laziness, callousness, and xenophobia, even as you make our wallets fatter.”)

The modern church continues this legacy of foolish, misplaced prayers. Big-name Christian singers and preachers, caught in compromising positions, more often publicly pronounce that they need not repent; after all, they prayed for God to “release them” from this commandment or that, and he answered in the affirmative! And even local churches, whether implicitly or explicitly, pray God’s blessings upon tactics, motives, unions, and behaviors that are clearly counter to God’s revealed Word. And yet, by the current reckoning, this just shows lots of faith and a “big view” of God’s grace.

I imagine most of these people knew their prayers were foolish as they uttered them. I sure did as I began trying to sputter my way through one of the most difficult texts I’ve ever preached, even while my vision swam. But if we know it’s foolish, why do we pray at all? Why not just leave God out of the equation, as many have, and “do what thou wilt?” I think it’s the same reason people clamor to surround themselves with false teachers who will say whatever their itching ears want to hear (2 Timothy 4:3): because, in the flesh, we want a false assurance that God is okay with our sin and foolishness, the he is in fact in favor of them and will bless them, rather than to hear God’s Word proclaimed as it is, convicting us and driving us to the cross, where we will repent, be forgiven, and be changed.

At the end of the day, praying a lot (even from motives that look super-spiritual) is no guarantor of true godliness. Selfish and misguided prayers are offered up by millions of people every day. The question is: what are we praying for, in what spirit, and especially, are we submitting the content and spirit of our prayers to God’s Word? Or are we asking God to give us our own little loophole in light of our special circumstances and our years of faithful service?

May our sanctification lead us down a path toward the former kind of prayer. May we pray, “Lord, break my pride, humble my spirit, banish my fear, convict me of sin, guide me into true wisdom, and continue to renew me day by day.” And when we fall into selfish prayer (or when we fall to the ground as a result), let us be open to the Holy Spirit, prompting us to repent and to give ourselves anew to the God of Scripture.

Soli Deo Gloria,
     Pastor Zach

Jesus, Tractor Beams, and Disintegration Rays

I’m back like John Travolta in ’96! I have been neglecting my poor blog lately, I know, but I’ll make up for it with a double-header today and tomorrow.

First up, a topic that was spawned from the Rick Warren/John Piper Interview. If you aren’t familiar with the background, John Piper last year invited Warren to speak at the Desiring God conference, and then a bunch of heresy-hunter types launched a veritable tweetgasm of charges and condemnations against Piper, 2nd-degree-separation-style.

I posted the video of the interview on my Facebook wall, encouraging hardcore critics of Rick Warren to watch it if they hadn’t. What followed was one of those meaty meta-conversations that make Facebook worthwhile, largely between me and my friends E. Stephen Burnett and Frank Turk (aside: Turk has an excellent article on the subject on TeamPyro today). Neither of these guys is a knee-jerk reactionary or a tiny-tent neo-gnostic Calvinist, which is what made it interesting.

We disagreed on the subject of whether Rev. Warren was being entirely forthcoming in the interview, but in the process, we began discussing a fascinating question, which I formed this way:

How close to Dort do you have to be before you’re allowed to carry out ministry unmolested by the Truly Reformed?

Turk answered, in true Turk fashion, “You cannot be too close to Dort. It’s like the Theological Starbase Batcave.” Yet the question remains: how far does one have to drift before the starbase begins a sequence of either tractor-beaming him in, or blowing him to smithereens?

Are we New Calvinists supposed to despise Billy Graham? (I sure don’t!) If so, is it just old, quasi-universalist Billy or young, Finneyistic altar-call Billy too? Do we tolerate and cooperate with Methodist pastors at the local level, but then launch missiles when a preacher with run-of-the-mill Arminian theology and methods gets “big enough” to have a national platform?

Do we trust any other traditions to maintain their own star bases and determine when their own ships have strayed too far?

This is probaly really optimistic, given the fact that I haven’t blogged in like a month, but...[waaait for it]...DISCUSS.

And check back tomorrow for reflections on last Sunday, when I passed out and fell to the chancel like a sack of potatoes halfway through my sermon.