Considering the 12th Anniversary

Spring 2001 from the Staten Island Ferry

I was engaged to be married when it all happened.  CavWife to be was teaching in NW NJ, and could see the smoke from the parking lot. One of her students were among the few that lost parents in the building. Thankfully my parents decided to extend their stay in NH because they were booked on the flight out of Boston to LA that day.

Many of us have stories. There are faces we see, video clips that can never be erased from our minds. But I want to consider who we are, or have become in the last 12 years.

In October 2001, we had an engagement party at my future in-laws’ home. That was the day we began the invasion of Afghanistan. We have yet to leave. We have been fighting there my entire married life, forgetting one of the great blunders: don’t get involved in a land war in Asia.

America is increasingly weary of war. We have watched too many of our young people come home in body bags or missing limbs. We seem to have an entire generation suffering from PTSD.

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Considering Implications and Applications of the Explicit Gospel

The final section of The Explicit Gospel has to do with implications and applications. The majority of the section has to do with what happens if you stay on the ground or in the air too long.

“The explicit gospel holds the gospel on the ground and the gospel in the air as complementary, two views of the same redemptive plan God has for the world in the work of his Son.”

Think of it as a cross country trip. If you drive it you easily get lost in the details. Especially in west Texas. Monotony can set in. The hours grind by and you lose sight of the big picture- why you are going there. You just want to get there.

If you fly, let’s say a small private plan like my friend Steve, you can’t stay in the air too long or you’ll run out of fuel. You see the big picture, but you miss out on the details. You see the expanse of canyons and mountains. But you miss the nuances of those same places.

Not the best illustration, but hopefully it helps. Unfortunately it does break down because the two modes of transportation are not as obviously complementary. They are often mutually exclusive. Too often people treat the gospel on the ground and the air as mutually exclusive instead of complementary. These are the dangers that Chandler wants to make explicit.

He begins with a discussion of slippery slopes. Most theological errors are the result of over-emphasizing something that is true at the expense of something else that is true. In trying to protect one thing, we go too far and deny something else. His goal is to encourage us to avoid this by holding both together.

“So it is not usually in the affirmation of a truth that someone goes down the slippery slope, but in the denial of corresponding truths.”

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Considering Culture Making

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch was one of the hot books of 2008.  It has endorsements from such people as Lauren Winner, Richard Mouw, Tim Keller and James Emery White.  As such, it is not a book for a narrow group of people but is respected by a broad spectrum of Christian leaders.  As a result, I was looking forward to reading the book as I worked through Genesis.

I was not disappointed.  I expected an interesting, challenging read.  As far as specifics, I was not sure what to expect.  It did not go in some directions I had hoped, but took me in directions I probably needed to go.

One of the main things that Crouch does is look at the cultural import of Scripture.  This takes up much of the book.  He develops the way in which Scripture traces major developments in Scripture, and how culture affects the people in Scripture.  Scripture places us in a variety of cultures (ancient Canaan, Egypt, ancient Israel, Babylon, post-exilic Jerusalem and Galilee, etc.).

Crouch begins at the beginning- how the Scriptural account of creation is very different from the myths of other cultures.  There, we find the importance of structure for creativity.  Structure creates regularity without which no creativity can happen.  There must be some type of predictability for us to manipulate creation in order to display creativity.  Too much structure though stifles creativity.

“Culture is the realm of human freedom- its constraints and impossibilities are the boundaries within which we can create and innovate.”

He lays out some of the common questions regarding culture, and a few I hadn’t thought about before.

1. What does this cultural artifact assume about the way the world is?
2. What does this cultural artifact assume about the way the world should be?
3. What does this cultural artifact make possible?
4. What does this cultural artifact make impossible (or at least very different)?
5. What new forms of culture are created in response to this artifact?

Questions 3 & 4 address the horizons of the possible and impossible in a culture.  This was some of the new material that I had not really pondered before.

“Family is culture at its smallest- and its most powerful!”

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Considering “Unsuccessful” Ministry

I made a joke on a friend’s Facebook wall the other day.  He lamented playing too much ping-pong in seminary.  I joked that his ministry would be more effective if he hadn’t.  It’d be more like mine …

I figure he’s having a pretty effective ministry.  The church I pastored closed (lots of reasons for that).  I, by no means, took Winter Haven by storm for the Gospel.  But I had some meaningful ministry over those 9 years, and in the 1 1/2 years since then as I’ve done pulpit supply.

Lest we make too much of that (failure), let’s consider the Apostle Paul.  I did while trying not to wake up this morning.  Paul didn’t take every town he visited by storm.  Yes, he saw conversions- I saw a few of those.  He saw Christians grow- saw some of that too.  But he was run out of more than a few cities.  There were riots, a stoning, death threats and more.  Being run out of town might say something about you, but it also says something about those who ran you out of town.

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