Summit Semester Take Two

I don't have the words for an eloquent post. I've already tried twice. But I do have a lot of raw emotion I want to process here. So here are some random thoughts.

• I'm back at Summit Semester, visiting for a week. It's kind of weird. Good, but oh so different. And yet, it's so similar at the exact same time.
  
  
• One year ago today, I pulled away from Snow Wolf Lodge, tears streaming down my cheeks. Today, I'm hanging out with the awesome class of 2010, watching them process all of the emotions that come with their graduation week.
  
  
• Time is a funny thing. In some ways, Semester feels like it was a lifetime ago, almost like a dream. In other ways, it seems like it was just yesterday.
  
  
• I'm glad to be back at Snow Wolf Lodge, even without all the people my memories are associated with. I've spent a good deal of time just staring at the stars. I haven't really seen those in a year. There is peace, stillness, quietness that I haven't heard in a long time.
  
  
• As much as I love the geographic location of Snow Wolf Lodge, it's really the people that make Summit Semester. I miss the community of 2009. This morning I again hugged friends goodbye as they left to return to school after a whirlwind roadtrip. I'm grateful for the opportunity to linger a few days longer, but I wasn't prepared for how very different it feels with new nametags on the doors and different faces in the halls.
  
  
• That being said, I'm glad to get to know this class of 2010 at least a little bit. There are really great kids here. In some ways, nothing has changed. Some thirty young people have again gathered, absorbing all the knowledge their minds can hold, joyfully enjoying friendships, and asking the hardest questions of life. I've already had several great conversations, and I'm looking forward to more in the days to come.
  
  
• As I walked the road and looked at the stars the first evening we arrived, I was struck by something very significant. I'm not the same person that walked down this road a year ago. I distinctly remember one particular walk down that road with Naomi as I wrestled to understand what it means to trust God. A year later, the answers to "what's next" aren't any closer. But my heart is at peace. I can say with confidence that my God is good, and I can and will trust Him when I don't know where we're going.
  
  
• I can't express the impact Summit Semester made on my life. I learned so much and experienced a lot of growth. So I was almost surprised when God showed me something as I walked along the road. I've grown more in Carrollton this past year than I did at Semester. I guess in some ways that shouldn't be a surprise, but I wasn't expecting to discover that. This past year has been hard, in many ways. But having come to a milestone of this season of my life, I can look back and see growth that definitely wasn't here when I left SWL. (I've wrestled to trust God and know God this year, and I have grown in those areas. I might add that I haven't grown nearly enough, but that's part of life. When God is infinite and I am not, there is always more to learn.)
  
  
• Finally, I random came across a quote in the church bulletin from this morning that resonated with all of this. Jeff Daley, the pastor at Grace Church in Pagosa for many years, recently moved to a different town, and the church here is in a time of transition as they look for a pastor. In the bulletin they printed: "Please remember Pastor Jeff's wise departing words for us: 'What happens to us while we are waiting is more important than what we are waiting for.'"
  
  
• I have no idea "what I'm waiting for." But that's not the point. The point is that God has a plan, and His plan is good, because He is good. And He is working out His plan in me, even when it's hard or it seems like I'm stuck or I'm just frustrated and confused. He isn't wasting the "waiting times" of my life. Rather, it is through these very times that He is forming and transforming me into who He is calling me to be.

Light Bulb!

I get it. I think I'm finally starting to get it.

For the past two years, I've known without a shadow of a doubt that I am called to mobilization - training the Church to be involved in God's global purpose for the sake of the Unreached, those who don't have access to the Gospel.

For at least the past year, I've had this acute inner struggle, wrestling with the fact that God has not called everyone to reach the Unreached. I came to grips with this fact at Semester, realizing that God calls us to different things. I'm not called to fix all the problems of America and reach the Unreached, but God will accomplish all His purposes, working through each member of the Body.

Not gonna lie, I've still been frustrated (to varying degrees) with a lot of people. I've been frustrated with the people and ministries that are focused only on reviving America. I've been frustrated with the people who do missions, but in places that already are reached with the Gospel and having a multiplying church. I've been frustrated with God, wondering why He keeps calling people to places that already have the Gospel.

(I’m very aware there isn’t (or shouldn’t be) any sacred/secular divide. The scope of redemption is the scope of creation, and therefore we are called to be agents of redemption in every area of life. At the same time, it seems we should have a particular urgency in taking the Gospel to those who have no access to it. But I digress.)

However, I'm seeing now that my whole vision and focus has been misplaced, therefore my whole perspective has been skewed. In other words, while pursuing good work for God, I've been pursuing idolatry.

My primary focus had been on the secondary motivation of missions - the people. Yeah, there are 1.7 billion who have never heard the name of Jesus. Yeah, there are 6500 people groups that are completely unreached with the Gospel. Yeah, there are tens of thousands of kids who died today because of completely preventable causes, like starvation and unclean water. Yeah, there are billions of people who are lost and dying without knowing Jesus.

BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT!

The point is this: God's glory!

I've heard that all my life. I've been taught that in a dozen different ways by all the people who have influenced my life. Somehow I've never REALLY understood it until now. Maybe I haven't really understood what it means to "glorify God." Sure, I know the catechism. The chief end of man is to glorify God and/by enjoy/ing Him forever.

It's all about God's glory! The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the seas! (Habakkuk 2:14) God's glory is the primary motivation for missions, for everything we do!

Every Christian has the same calling: to know Christ, and out of this relationship and a passion for His Name, show His glory to the world. Love God and because of that, love people.

If people were the main motivation, then my frustration with those not going to the Unreached would be rightly founded. But they're not, and it's not. God's glory is the motivation, and this calling unifies us as the Body of Christ, even though we each live this out in a different way. Therefore the person who goes into American politics is just as valid in his ministry as the person who goes to people who have never heard the name of Jesus (assuming both are obeying and glorifying God). It's not about location, going somewhere else or staying here! It's about knowing God, and out of that passion for His Name, faithfully fulfilling God's global purposes wherever you happen to be!

To be sure, God’s purposes are global. From Genesis 12 onward, we see that God blesses His people that they might bless all the nations of the earth. (Paul declares that this is the Gospel in Galatians 3:8.) Everything God does in redemptive history is for the glory of His Name, that all the nations might know Him (Ex. 9:16; I Sam. 17:46; Isa. 37:20, 49:6; Eze. 20:9; Dan. 9:15-9; Phil. 1:29; I Jn. 2:12). Ultimately, we know every tribe and tongue and nation will stand worshipping before the throne of God (Revelation 7:9).

Every Christian is commanded to be a part of this in some way. But it’s not about geography, where you live. It’s about obedience and submitting to the lordship of Christ. Whether I never leave Carrollton, Texas again, or I spend the rest of my days in Timbuktu, my calling remains the same as yours – to know and glorify God, that all the nations come to know His glory. We’ll live this out in different ways. God has given you a different focus (including location, vocation, passion, culture) than He has given me. But God will fulfill His global purpose, using each member of the Body for His glory.

Hanging Tightly to God's Calling

Phil Vischer is one of my heroes. I admire him for many reasons, some of which I shared here. Through the painful trials of his life, God has showed him many things about what it really means to follow and obey God, and not inflate God's plans into his own desires.

Anyway, I came across this interview with Phil this week, and the closing paragraph really got my attention. Recently, I've been overwhelmed with the state of the world and what I'm supposed to do about it. But God hasn't asked me to fix the world. He hasn't even asked me to attempt that. What He has called me to do is pretty simple. Just live each day to glorify God. Trust God. Obey God. On a larger scale, ultimately I know I'm to USE MEDIA TO MOBILIZE MISSIONS. What does that look like? Well, that's what I'm finding out as I live, trust, obey.

"What I’ve learned to do is to remember very specifically what God has called me to do. It’s very easy for us to put other things onto that and the calling gets very specific over time; ‘He called me to tell stories, he called me to tell computer animated stories … with my own animation studio … in a really nice building’ and so it goes on. The same thing can happen in retailing; ‘he called me to serve the church ... in this neighbourhood … in this store … to those people … with this shelving and store layout’. But what did God actually tell you to do? Serve the church? Hang on to that tightly, hold everything else loosely." - Phil Vischer

My Life and Hebrews 12

I wrote this about two weeks ago, but I haven't had regular internet access until today.

In many ways, this reflects the journey I've been on the past three years. In many ways, it specifically reflects the experiences of this summer.


Stirred dust billows high
As the cross I shouldered long ago
Scrapes the desert sand.
Falling, I scream at the cloudless sky.
"Do you know how heavy this thing is?
Have you brought me into the wilderness to die?"

The silence is shattered.
Long awaited answers come,
Not as I had hoped
But as a slap in the face.
Yet I find a gentle embrace
Awakening truth, renewing reality.

"Yes, it is heavy. I know the burden well.
But you have not yet begun
To shed your blood in this fight!
It is my blood that stained your hands.
And it is my blood that stains your heart,
Making you righteous, whiter than snow.

"I have brought you to this wilderness
Yes, you must learn to die,
But this is for my glory and your life.
Do not despise this testing.
I discipline those I love.
Strengthen your knees and run well the race."

And now the silence is all mine.
I ponder the intimacy found in the desert,
Being given what I need
But never would have chosen.
Considering the joy of Him who endured,
I fix my eyes. I will trust. I will obey.

My brother told me to blog more...

and so this is for him. He tried to bait me with something about Joel Osteen, but I'm sick of being frustrated by his type.

I'm realizing I don't really truly know anything about prayer. Which means I really truly don't understand God.

I find myself getting frustrated, overwhelmed, and helpless as I survey the world. I'm discovering these massive problems (like Pakistan) and nothing I can physically do is really going to make a difference.

I'm exhorting, begging people to pray - cause that's the only thing we really can do - and yet I have to fight myself. Part of me feels like that won't accomplish anything. I want to actually make a difference, solve the problem, do anything. And yet, for all practical purposes, my hands are tied. So I suggest we pray as a last resort.

Could my thinking be more backward?

I serve the God of the universe, who invites me to enter into conversation with Him, to petition Him to move in the earth and I'm told He will! Yet coming to Him more often than not is my last course of action, instead of the first thing my heart knows to do.

No wonder I don't know God.

God calls us to so much more - to really know Him, to walk in step with the Spirit, to pray continually. If I really understood what it meant to be in constant conversation with the most powerful and loving being in the universe, how could I not pray continually?

I have so much to learn. Lord, teach me how to pray.

Calling, Butterflies, and Fools

I'd been helping my brother collect for the biology insect collection for about an hour. There seemed to be a certain butterfly that was taunting us, as Robert made several attempts to catch it. It was man enough to not fly above and beyond the trees, but it always seemed to stay just out of reach. (This prompted Robert's status update: "Freakin' Lepidoptera! You know who you are!") Robert had chased it all the way down and back up the field for a couple of minutes. I was determined to get it, so I grabbed the net.

For a full minute or so, my full attention was completely on capturing the freaking Lepidoptera. Sprinting, pivoting, almost tripping, sidestepping back as it fluttered just ahead of my swinging, swooping net, I was oblivious to everything else - the weeds I was crashing through, my brother's tired laugh, the cars honking as they passed on their way to the soccer game. I didn't care, because I was going to catch it.

I looked like a fool in the process, but I caught it.

Driving home, I thought about the chapter I had recently read in Os Guinness' book The Call - "Everybody's Fools."

"Fools for Christ" are not actually, or literally, or objectively fools but those who are prepared to be seen and treated as fools for Christ's sake. Since the world in its pretended wisdom foolishly thinks itself wise, it sees God's true wisdom as foolishness. Those faithful to God must therefore break with the world and bear its folly. They are what I call "foolbearers," acting out of love for Christ and wearing the world's shame as a badge of allegiance and honor.

Guinness acknowledges that "Holly folly has unquestionably gained a bad name in some Christian circles and for solid reasons. Sometimes it inspired what looks like plain weirdness...sometimes it has been used to justify flagrant anti-intellectualism..."

I've spent a lot of time in the past couple of years thinking and trying to be anything but a fool. I want to be an intellectual Christian. I want to communicate with media with excellence, not at the sub-par level expected from anything with a "Christian" label. At some level, these pursuits are good. We're called to love God with all our minds and all our strength. Our work as creators made in the image of the Creator should be excellent. But the focus has to be on God and His glory, not 'engaging (read: impressing) the world' or being 'relevant' or any other catchphrase or side effect.

Christians have made mistakes in the last century when it comes to interacting with culture and being intellectual, and it's not wrong to want to move beyond these. However, I'm forced to acknowledge how often my motivation for not being foolish is purely selfish and not to glorify God. Who do I think I am? Am I better than the prophets? The apostles? Jesus?

Calling entails the cost of discipleship. The deepest challenge is to renounce self and identify with Jesus in his sufferings and rejection.

Foolbearing is essential to calling because it is the true way to count the cost of identifying with Jesus. It is the price of obeying His call, renouncing self, and taking up the cross to follow Him.

Foolbearing is essential to calling because it positions us unmistakably before the world as a counterculture, antithetical to the world's very being. In the gospel there is an antithesis to the world that we dare no relax, a cost to discipleship that we cannot waive, a challenge to obedience that we must not conceal, and a scandal to faith that we should never airbrush away. If loyalty to those truths puts us beyond the pale, so be it.

Foolbearing is essential to calling because it is Christ's way of responding to injury. All of us as followers of Christ will flinch at times from the pain of wounds and the smart of slights, but that cost is in the contract of calling and the way of the cross.

I'm called to chase greater things than butterflies. I'm called to seek God and His Kingdom and righteousness. I can't remember the last time I pursued those things with half the focus and abandonment I gave the freaking butterfly. I'm a fool!

I'm a fool who desperately needs to die to myself and take up my cross and become a foolbearer, to the glory of God alone.

Story

I've been sick, and while yesterday I was feeling to lousy to read, I started The Drama of Scripture today. Though my reading was a tad slower than normal and I was a bit quicker to doze off, it was great to finally get some good intellectual and theological reading done.

I think the biggest "theme" of Semester was the concept of seeing the Bible as one Story, as an overarching metanarrative that is all about God's redemptive history as seen in Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation - throughout 66 books and a span of several thousand years. One of the saddest trends in the church today is not understanding the Bible as it was written. God revealed Himself in STORY - not in "verse bites" or a gazillion different unrelated Sunday School lessons or systematic theology.

I had coffee with a friend around Christmas, and it was great to catch up after six months or so. I found it really interesting that she had learned many of the same things I had looked at Semester. We talked about this concept of story, which was something she had studied this semester, too. However, she learned it in her secular "Bible as Literature" class, not in church. While I'm glad she learned it and has a new perspective on Scripture, I think it's pretty pathetic that it takes college literature classes to do what the Church should be doing.

More thoughts to come as I continue to read and reflect.

Adventing: O Holy Night

Sang this twice while running sound for both Christmas Eve services tonight. Several lines jumped out at me.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.

I found this interesting. I hadn't ever really thought about this before - the soul feeling its worth with Christ's Advent. It reminds me of what Bauman and Stonestreet emphasized. In Jesus, we have the full revelation of who God is and the full revelation of what it means to be human. The psychosomatic unity we have as humans - creatures made in the image of God, being fully spiritual and fully physical - was most fully realized in the person of Jesus Christ - fully God and fully man.

The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger,
In all our trials born to be our Friend!
He knows our need—to our weakness is no stranger.
Behold your King; before Him lowly bend!
Behold your King; before Him lowly bend!

How crazy is this. The Incarnation defies all expectations. God, the King of the universe, humbles Himself, becoming as one of His creatures. And yet He goes beyond this, taking the worst of the human experience upon Himself, that we might have life in His death. He willingly chose to identify with us, that our identity might be in Him, in His righteousness, before the Father. I have no other response but to fall on my face and worship, lowly bending all I am.

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His Gospel is peace.

Last Sunday our pastor preached on love. Again, it was one of those things I should know, but that I'll be learning all my life. The oft quoted commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself" is the most basic requirement God has given. It was given to those under the Law, in Leviticus 19. Love as understood in the New Covenant demands much more - not just loving my neighbor as myself, but laying down my life for my neighbor.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other. - John 15:12-17

Adventing: As Far As The Curse Is Found

No more let sin and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground.
He comes to make
His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

This is one of those simple truths you're supposed to learn growing up. I'm sure it's somewhere back in my head, but it is these simple truths that slap me upside the head sometimes. It's something so obvious, so critical to the Christian message, and yet it strikes me as if I had never considered it before.

The concept embodied in this verse is so important, and yet I had never fully articulated it until Semester.

His blessings flow as far as the curse is found. The scope of redemption is the same as the scope of creation. Everything will be redeemed! Nothing is "secular" because everything that God created was created good! And He has come, and will come again, that EVERYTHING might be redeemed - that the world will be reconciled to Himself.

For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross. Colossians 1:19-20

Frustration and Repentence

I freely admit that I'm kind of a Scrooge about Christmas.

And I realized tonight that it's probably not a good thing.

Let me explain several things. We'll try to make this coherent.

Knowing that sloppy language makes sloppy thought possible, I seriously want two different words to distinguish between Christmas in a Biblical sense, and the materialistic sentimental consumerism that is so very rampant in our culture. As fun as it is to make up new words entirely, I'm going to go with "Advent" referring to the Biblical sense of Christmas and "Christmas" to refer to the commercial greatness. Hate me if you will, but at least we know what we're talking about now.

I ran sound for the elementary Christmas/Advent programs at school tonight. Starting rehearsals at 12, with a two hour break, I was thinking about Christmas to some degree for six hours. (Probably most of those thoughts were related to Christmas by way of adjusting the gain on the microphone to make the kids singing the Christmas carols sound better, but I did actually have some time to contemplate the lyrics and the program itself.) Both the younger kids' program and the older elementary programs were quite gospel centered, which was great. But as I blogged here last year, I still have problems with sugar-coating Advent within the church.

While it may be a great starting place for really little kids to understand Advent, I think it seems pretty trite to look at Advent as just "Jesus' birthday." It is of course (though not literally a date in December), but it is so much more than that. And it seems we lessen the glory of the Incarnation and the perfect plan of redemption and His kenosis (see Philippians 2) if all we do is talk about a birthday party in which we're the ones really receiving the presents.

Driving home tonight I was still thinking about this, and while it may be trite or devaluing to just see Advent as a birthday party, it's no different than my normal behavior. Like it or not, purposefully or not, far too often I live as a practical atheist. God is often an afterthought, rather than my raison d'etre.

My heart needs to practice the season of Advent every day. I need to constantly be reminding myself of the Truth of the Incarnation, of Immanuel, of God-With-Us, and that knowledge needs to radically transform the way I live, day in and day out. As Eric says, I have to constantly preach the Gospel to myself.

Two weeks ago, I wrote this:

I can get so distracted by what Christmas is not, or what it shouldn't be, that I forget what it is. This is why I desperately need something like the season of Advent, a time to actively remember and prepare my heart for Immanuel, God-with-us, taking the form of His creation upon Himself that He might redeem us.

I'm wrote this two weeks ago, but I've been pretty terrible about purposefully observing Advent personally. Fully realizing that Advent has been going on for three Sundays now, I'm immersing myself in it now. Better late than never, right?

Anyways, I'm not a huge music person, but I think my favorite thing about Christmas/Advent is that everybody is playing and singing hymns, which is rare the rest of the year. I'm going to blog every day, now until Christmas, looking at some of my favorite Advent hymns and a few brief thoughts.

It's an exercise in preaching the Gospel to myself, which my hard heart desperately needs.