church life

Have You Heard of My Pastor? Why it’s probably good that you haven’t

Lisa Spencer2 Comments

As the Mark Driscoll drama has unfolded, I continue to reflect on how this has happened and what it says about contemporary evangelicalism. Clearly, his behavior and myriad of charges against him have simmered under the surface for far longer than it should have. Now, that it’s boiled over, one thing is clear – everybody knows who Mark Driscoll is.

rock concert_man on stageIn fact, he was pretty popular even before the eruption . . . For a long time. And people praised and applauded him. They loved the splashes that he made, or more like the tidal waves he caused with machismo brand of Christianity and his (rather stunted) version of the new Reformed movement. And for me, this just further confirms the celebrity factor in evangelicalism.  Just look at how his story was displayed in Vox, Megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll was an evangelical rock star.

Yes, a rock star. Famous. Known. Applauded

I believe this was a contributing factor to the longevity of his antics. Over at Cripplegate, Jesse Johnson wrote a pointed but needed commentary, Driscoll Drama: to those who sold tickets. He rightly criticizes other notable evangelical leaders (we may be able to translate that “celebrities”) who not only gave a pass to what should have been obvious disqualifications for pastoral leadership, but actually endorsed it.

Let’s not be fooled. It’s not just the leaders but the fan base in general. Yes, fans. Because that’s what happens with celebrities. It really didn’t matter what was going on in the course of actual pastoral relationships, Driscoll drew a crowd. He got men to come to church. He wrote books (well, kind of). He spoke at conferences and challenged the status quo (or at least what he thought needed to be challenged). And, he had a big church. A really big church. And people praised him.

This is why I cringed when I saw this article on the Blaze, He Survived Brain Cancer and Now Leads a Church of 11,000 – but have you heard of him? No, not Driscoll but Matt Chandler. Now, I am in no ways comparing Driscoll to Chandler. I’ve heard him speak a few times and know people who attend the Village Church where he pastors. He certainly doesn’t have the reputation that has surrounded Driscoll. Continue reading →

We Really Do Need the Same Old Thing

Lisa Spencer2 Comments

I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense. But it does seem to me as I observe the evangelical landscape today, that what is tried and trust and true gets overlooked for the ‘new’. So many in the church today are captivated by newness – new trends, new ideas, new innovations, new buildings, new predictions, new words from God, new movements, etc that the old seems irrelevant. But really its the old that we need – what God did through his Son, how the church has been established, what God has already spoken. This is how we are refreshed, by gathering according to what has already been established, by remembering what God has already said and what he has already done to gather a body of people to himself through the work of the Son by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. But somehow that gets too boring and we get antsy for something new. Why?

It reminds me of this portion of the Screwtape Letter #25. If you are not familiar with the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, they are instructions to Wormwood on how to frustrate God’s people and get the church off track:

But the greatest triumph of all is to elevate this horror of the same old thing into a philosophy so that nonsense in the intellect my reinforce corruption in the will…The Enemy loves platitudes. Of a proposed course of action He wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it righteous? Is it prudent? Is it possible? Now if we can keep men asking ‘Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive and reactionary? Is this the way that History is going?’ they will neglect the relevant questions. And the questions they do ask are, of course, unanswerable; for they do not know the future, and what the future will be depends very largely on just those choices which they now invoke the future to help them to make. As a result, while their minds are buzzing in this vacuum, we have the better chance to slip in and bend them to the action we have decided on. And great work has already been done. Once they knew that some changes were for the better, and others for the worse, and again others again indifferent. We have largely removed this knowledge. For the descriptive adjective ‘unchanged’ we have substituted the emotional adjective ‘stagnant’. We have trained them to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain – not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

Continue reading →

On Being on a Mission from God

Lisa Spencer3 Comments

Blues_brothers3If you recall the 1980 movie, The Blues Brothers, Jake and Elwood being determined to save the orphanage where they grew up, peppered their hijinxs with “we’re on a mission for God”. They remained undaunted by all the obstacles in their way, they were to achieve their mission at all costs.

It occurs to me that Christians adopt this mentality, also. Now, I don’t mean just mean being determined to live a good Christian life, follow Jesus and be obedient to his will. But it’s finding this one particular aspect of dogma that turns into a crusade.

I was reminded of that recently after a conversation with a friend about a topic that I’m a bit passionate about – God speaking. He was telling me of this conversation with a young lady who gave little interest in the Bible, exclaiming that the Holy Spirit can just tell her what she needs to know. Anyone who knows my passion for this topic, can imagine all the sirens that were going off in my head. It fueled that already existing desire to help people be thoughtful about how God has already spoken which is compatible to how he has revealed himself. I am convinced that the main reason the Bible is treated as a secondary means of communication is because it has been treated in a very fragmented way that provides little snippets for life principles and a guide to hear more words from God instead of being the very voice of God. The 66 books must be considered holistically for the redemptive narrative that it is.

It is precisely this desire that reminds me of Christians that I’ve encountered that become so fixated on a particular area, where passion for the dispensing of knowledge has turned into a crusade. I know first hand that it’s a pretty easy line to cross, if we are not careful. It’s usually accompanied by some kind of warning or danger that the church needs to know, whether it be a particular leader or ministry, some point of doctrine or Christian practice.  Continue reading →

Refreshment for the Soul: What I Love about the Reformed Church

Lisa Spencer4 Comments

happy-woman in fieldIf you were to tell me 10 years ago that I would be a member of a Presbyterian church and love it, I would have told you that you were nuts. Especially back in my Charismatic days, I drew the typical caricature of the “frozen chosen” as Presbyterians were commonly called – dry, non-spiritual, deadpan, etc.  Even my transition into the baptistic/Bible church circle in 2006, I still carried some of that unfortunate mischaracterization in my mind.

It was not until I started seminary in 2008 that my perspective began to change. One of the main questions I started asking early on is what is the church and what is her purpose. The more I dove into Scripture and historical theology to formulate an answer, the more I learned of the Reformed church and the more attractive it became. In the context of Jesus command to make disciples, I began to see how what we do internally is just as important, if not more important than what we do externally. What we do internally must forge our identity in Christ, provoke worship to him and remind us of our covenantal relationship to one another, as the body of Christ.  But most importantly, what we do corporately must remind us of our need for Him.

Carl Trueman has written a rather lengthy piece on First Things, A Church for Exiles. He indicates that Reformed worship is a good place to get grounded in Christ in recognition of the fact that Christians are sojourners and exiles in the world. While I disagree with him on some points related to the Reformed church having no engagement with the public square, I do agree with him on his main point. Much of what he writes related to church itself that resonates with me on why I find the Reformed church so refreshing. Continue reading →

Good Music or Good Worship?

Lisa Spencer2 Comments

praise bandHere’s a question I’ve been asking lately in relation to corporate worship – does the music have to be good to worship? And by good, I been good musicianship quality.

I use to be much more involved in music than I am now (though I did join the ensemble singers recently at my church.) Several years ago,  I served on the worship team for 4 years back in my Charismatic days (keyboards/vocals). One thing that was emphasized, which I still hear quite frequently is to bring excellence in worship, i.e. make sure the music sounds good. And by good, that means professional quality.

The past several years has experienced a diverted direction though I tend to reflect on things related to corporate worship (namely from a practical theology perspective). So in reflecting on the question does the music need to be good, I wonder if that does not overshadow the purpose of corporate worship. In other words, does it detract from the primary purpose.

T. David Gordon,  thinks so. I came across his article a while back from the Aquila report, The Problem with Praise Bands. Now I’ll preface my thoughts on this article with the issue of preference. It does seem to me that we need to distinguish musical preference from its purpose in corporate worship. I find far too often music gets criticized because of issues of preference rather than function. As I wrote about in A Critique of Worship Music Criticism, we need to be careful about being too critical of music just because its one style or the other. Continue reading →