The Now and the Know

So I was watching NBC’s hit show The Office today, as I frequently do, and got to thinking about what made the show so great… and occasionally frustrating. In the one theatre class I was required to take in college we learned about something called dramatic irony. Most of you probably know what that means without being told, but I’m going to share anyway because it’s important to define your terms… or something like that. Dramatic irony refers to a moment in a play, television show, or film when a character makes certain decisions because s/he does not have information that the audience has. It’s something The Office has learned to utilize very well. The show’s claim to fame is clearly the short, often hilarious interview segments in which individual characters react to current situations or expound upon life situations.

The scene I’m of, however, doesn’t have anything to do with one of those little asides. The episode is from the third season and is called, “Initiation.” I’m going to get you all caught up, just in case of you don’t watch the program. Important characters for the purpose of this illustration are Jim and Pam. During seasons one and two it is slowly revealed to us that Jim has a serious thing for Pam. This adds a great deal of significance to certain situations, classic example of dramatic irony. Anyway, in the episode, “Initiation” Jim has transferred to another branch and he and Pam haven’t spoken in some time. Towards the end of the episode, Jim calls the office and Pam answers, unexpectedly. The two of them have a conversation that goes well into the evening, both happier than they’ve been in a while. At a certain point another character comes in to gather his things and then leaves. Pam, with the receiver uncovered says, “Okay, good night!” Jim mistakenly believes she’s trying to get off the call. The two of them have an awkward interchange and the call ends.

I’ve seen this episode a couple times and I always find myself frustrated at this point. Why? For multiple reasons. The underlying reason is that I (along with everyone else who watches the show) really want Jim and Pam to get together. (If you’re just getting into the show, I won’t ruin it.) The more immediate cause for my frustration is due to the dramatic irony of the situation. I, as the viewer, know that Pam wasn’t trying to end the call. I actually know that she was enjoying it just as much as Jim was. Not only that, but I see all of the potential. We the viewer can only dream of what might have happened if Pam and Jim had kept talking. We’ve all been a part of those conversations that go late into the night, that start off goofy and end up deep and serious. Who knows what might have happened? But we’ll never know. And that’s why it’s a great scene… and a terrible scene.

Here’s the point I’m trying to make about dramatic irony: does it ever occur to us that God feels that way? This will be the first of a three part series exploring three “all’s” of God’s character: all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present. I realize that there are big, theological words for these attributes, and I do know them, but they’re ridiculously hard to spell and we probably won’t be any smarter or better off for using them. Anyway, this will be the blog dealing with God’s all-knowing…ness. There, I feel smarter already, don’t you?

The reason that dramatic irony is so effective is because the audience often has information that would greatly affect a character’s actions or decisions. So again I pose the question: does it ever occur to use that God feels this way?

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” – Jeremiah 29:11

This is what I got thinking about this evening. God watches us make decisions that are unhealthy almost every second of every day. I don’t believe that God plans out every second of your day, which I will get to in the blog on God’s all-powerful nature, but rather that He knows how this story started and He knows how it ends. I do believe very strongly that God intends for us to interact with him and one another in a certain way. It seems pretty obvious to me that we are not that way. God has information we don’t have, He knows things that would greatly affect our decisions and actions. But just like an audience member is unable to (or at the very least should avoid…) stand up and yell in the middle of the play that Juliet isn’t really dead (that’s how it goes, right?) God doesn’t give us all the pieces of the puzzle all the time.

I wonder if in our times of hardship when we are crying out to God in frustration and anger if his heart doesn’t break for us. I wonder if he longs to tell us all of the whys and hows and whens that plague us and keep us up at night. I wonder if he looks down on us and says, “My child, I wish I could tell you… but now is not the time. But oh, if you only knew! If you only knew the beautiful and wonderful things that I have in store for you.”

Make no mistake, I am not suggesting that God is unable to do anything about our unhealthy actions. Very much the opposite, I believe that God is focused on dealing with our unhealthy existence. But I think we see God’s frustration in the words of Old Testament prophets who come to Israel pleading with them to remember what God has done for them and return to him. The Book of Hosea is a great example. The prophet Hosea brings a message of repentance and wrath to the people of Israel. God is clearly feeling frustration, and I say that God is feeling unapologetically.

But here’s the good news, no matter how many times God watches us forget what he has done for us and make decision that are bad for us, he does not turn his back on his people.

⁸ “Oh, how can I give you up, Israel?
How can I let you go?
How can I destroy you like Admah
or demolish you like Zeboiim?
My heart is torn within me,
and my compassion overflows.
⁹ No, I will not unleash my fierce anger.
I will not completely destroy Israel,
for I am God and not a mere mortal.
I am the Holy One living among you,
and I will not come to destroy.
¹⁰ For someday the people will follow me.
I, the Lord, will roar like a lion.
And when I roar,
my people will return trembling from the west.
¹¹ Like a flock of birds, they will come from Egypt.
Trembling like doves, they will return from Assyria.
And I will bring them home again,”
says the Lord.

- Hosea 11:8-11

God may feel the frustration of dramatic irony now and again, but it is not enough and it will never be enough to drive him away from us.

In the words of my good friend Tommy, I had an “EPIC” Saturday. The plan was simple enough. Switchfoot announced a last minute concert at People’s Court in Des Moines, so a few of us decided to go. Since my buddy Kevin (married with 2 kids) was “bachin’ it” on Saturday, we decided to make a whole evening of it. Dinner and beers at Johnny’s Hall of Fame at 5:00; the concert right across the street at 7:30; out for a few more beers and maybe coffee afterwards. All in all a fun and uneventful Saturday evening. The first big surprise of the evening… the concert was unbelievable. I have never seen Switchfoot live and I was a little weary for two reasons: 1) A lot of their songs sound like they would be really hard to sing live. 2) The opening bands weren’t mixed real well and I was worried that if Switchfoot sounded like that… well… ’nuff said.

Neither one of those concerns ended up coming to fruition. Jon Foreman absolutely owned the stage. He hit every note with pure tonal accuracy and the band was mixed as well as any live band I’ve ever heard or seen. During the show Jon wandered out into the crowd during the song “On Fire” and stood on a table… right in front of where we were standing. We didn’t think it could get a lot better than that…. But oh my dear friends, did it ever. We headed over to the bar attached to the concert venue to grab a couple post concert brews and talk over the show. A young man happened to recognize me from the church where I lead worship and came up and sat down with us. We got to talking with him and he informed us that his brother and sister-in-law were backstage meeting the band. Eventually they came out and joined us… and told us that Jon Foreman was heading over to Java Joe’s (a nearby coffee house and small music venue) to perform an acoustic post-show show. Count us in! We drained our beers and headed over.

We got there and found Jon and a group of about 40 or so in the back room at Java Joe’s. A sweet, intimate acoustic show followed, including some great songs like: “Learning to Breathe” and “Only Hope.” After it was over Jon stuck around and chatted, took pictures, and signed autographs. The picture to the left is from that actual show. It was great. But it was more than that… And here’s why.

At one point a young lady at the acoustic show asked Jon where he got his information about the atrocities in Africa and what we all could do to help. In the course of answering the question Jon said, “I think it’s okay to cry and feel broken about our broken world… But it doesn’t end there.” If you follow me on Twitter (@chrispetrick), that ought to sound familiar… I tweeted it right after he said it. Why? Because it profoundly impacted me right in that moment.

When I find myself in a “witnessing” situation in which I am talking to someone who doesn’t know God or has had a bad experience with the Church, I find that I don’t like to lead with heaven or salvation. Not to say that those things are important, but right off that bat they might not strike a chord with everyone. If you say, “Don’t you care about the final destination of your soul?” and the person says, “No, not really…” what happens? No instead I like to lead with something more simple and ultimately more identifiable… “Hey man, this world kinda sucks doesn’t it?”

I don’t think there’s one person out there who would deny this fact: the world is broken. I see it everywhere, from the patients I encounter on the ambulance to the people who are led to worship with us at Hope. Everyone is dealing with brokenness. Everyone hurts. Everyone needs. Everyone cries. Everyone gets their heart broken… sometimes seemingly over and over again. There is something in all of us, a little voice that says, “It’s not supposed to be this way.” That’s how we recognize this pain and broken world we see around us… because somehow we know that this isn’t the way we were meant to interact with one another. It’s not supposed to be this way.

And that leads us to another great quote from a Switchfoot song:

Crooked souls trying to stay up straight

Dry eyes in the pouring rain where

The shadow proves the sunshine, the shadow proves the sunshine

Too scared, better run away

Hold fast ’till the break of daylight where

The shadow proves the sunshine, the shadow proves the sunshine

This side of heaven we have only glimpses of the Kingdom of God. Only glimpses… and often they seem all too few and far between. And in those moments when it’s foggy and things have piled up on us and it’s hard if not impossible to catch a glimmer of hope through the pouring rain, it’s okay to cry and feel broken about our broken world. But like Jon said, it doesn’t end there. The shadow proves the sunshine… it could mean any number of things but here’s how God is speaking to me about it tonight. As we stand and cast a shadow, long and dark as it might seem, it’s only possible because there is a source of light behind us. We can look out into a broken world and feel despair, but that feeling of brokenness and desperation and sense that something just isn’t right with this picture is the light behind us.

Why can we stare brokenness in the face and recognize it as such? Why do our hearts break for children in Africa that we’ve never met? Why can I have a conversation with a woman too young to be dying of cancer on the way to hospice whom I will never see and again and cry with her? Furthermore, why are moved with a church aims to feed 1 million people and they feed 2.6 million? Why does something stir in our hearts when we hear about projects like Tom’s Shoes, who give one pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair purchased? Why do simple slogans like “Love is the Movement” resound so strongly within us?

Because God has revealed his heart to us through the Word and through the Cross and because of that we know, we know that this world is not right.

Many people expect their “God experience” to be big and life changing. They expect the flash of light and a booming voice from heaven. I don’t want to be cliche here, but I do want to suggest that more often than not it all starts in the most quiet moments when God simply whispers to your soul, “This is not the way it was meant to be.”

The shadow proves the sunshine.

It’s been 3 years now since I first got started in Emergency Medical Services. About a year in I started getting the inkling that I might want to pursue EMS as a career. As such, I started to pick the brains of the career guys that I knew to find out what it was like to be in a high-stress, high-injury probability job like this one. I’ll never forget what one of the guys said, “It’s not just a job, it’s a way of life.”

One could hardly expect to write a blog series about the Church in the 21st century without bringing up Rob Bell. If you haven’t heard by now (and my guess is most of the people who are reading a blog like mine have) Rob Bell is the founder and pastor at Mars Hill, a large (not to say, “mega”) church in Grand Rapid, MI. He’s… how can I say this… successful. Rob has published three books to date: Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith; Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connection Between Sexuality and Spirituality; and Jesus Wants to Save the Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile. He is also the mind (not to mention the star) of a series of 10 minute video sermons called “NOOMA.” There are currently 23 of them. Before I go too much further, let me say this: I’m a fan. He’s an extremely gifted communicator, a dynamic thinker, and is quickly becoming the voice of a generation. I’ve borrowed more than one sermon illustration from him and my own preaching style has been heavily influenced by watching and listening to him. (As well as Nate Noble; Richard Webb; and Mike Housholder… gotta give props where props are due.) So everything that follows is meant to be a contribution to the conversation, not a “Rob Bell Bashing” session as some writers are occasionally prone to doing.

I would classify Rob Bell as a celebrity pastor. In suburban communities where large, hip, non-denominational churches are thriving I have no doubt that Rob Bell has become a household name. Preachers are planning series based on his books. Youth leaders are showing his NOOMA videos at Wednesday nights. More importantly, people are embracing what Rob says is his primary job as a pastor, “To engage culture.” He tours the county several times a year on preaching tours, like the tent revivals of America’s past, and spreads his increasingly popular interpretation of the Gospel… not to mention his sense of style. And I don’t want to make it sound like Bell has reinvented the wheel theologically… he hasn’t. His preaching and theology does reflect a shift in how the Church approaches evangelism (more Kingdom language, less emphasis on going to or getting into heaven). As he said in a March interview with Christian Century Magazine:

We tend to think, he continues, that “there’s this chunk of reality and another chunk out there after this place. . . . We end up falling into this belief that somehow we’ll just start over, get a new driver’s license. . . . This Christian radio preacher . . . was saying that Jesus is going to come back and . . . is going to fix this place and that some great things are going to happen some day. . . . Are we just hanging around until some future date? I need a God who’s now, who teaches me how to live now. I need a faith that’s about today.”

If you want to get the full effect of a Rob Bell sermon, check out this clip from his DVD Everything is Spiritual. Note a few things: the dark, thick rimmed classes; the slick, all black outfit; the bright white shoes… Does he remind of anyone? If you are someone who attends a “young adult” church or service, there’s a decent chance he’ll remind you of a few people that you see attending the service every week, if not the pastor or preacher him/herself. He’s given Christianity a poster boy, he’s given the Church a visual upgrade. He’s hip and young and a model for churches who want to reach the “hip and young.” A lot of church leaders are asking, “Where are the 20 and 30 year olds?” Wherever they are, I’d be willing to bet Rob Bell has already been there in some way or another. He’s elevated being a pastor to almost rock star status, something that I believe we will see more and more of as mega churches continue to thrive in American culture.

During my second year of college I took a course called Jesus. (Guess what it was about.) I handed in a paper talking about a particular piece of New Testament scripture in which I believed Jesus was telling us something about the “Christian lifestyle.” I got the paper back with a big red circle and X through the word “lifestyle.” In the margins my professor had written, “I hate that word.” It took me a while to figure out what he meant, but now I believe I understand. A lifestyle to me means how you dress, where you shop, and how you talk or conduct yourself. It has less to do with what you think, believe, and put your faith, not to mention understanding the deeper motivations behind your actions.

Again, I’m not bashing Bell. There’s a good chance that if you’ve seen me preach I might remind you a little bit of him stylistically. But my big concern is that we are all (notice I include myself) falling victim to the charm of the celebrity pastor. It is undeniable that Bell is doing good things for the Kingdom. But there is a concern (and it’s not a small one) that he’s helping making Christianity a trend or fad. How many people attend services because they like the music or dress a certain way because they think that’s how Christians dress. More importantly, how many people listen or watch Bell because he’s attractive, slick, stylish, and entertaining, but don’t take the time to think about what he’s teaching. (Again, note that I don’t have a huge problem with his teachings.) It would seem that Bell himself is concerned about this too. The following quote appears on the back of his book Velvet Elvis:

We have to test everything.

I thank God for anybody anywhere who is pointing people to the mysteries of God. But all of those people would tell you to think long and hard about what they are saying and doing and creating.

Test it. Probe it. Do that to this book. Don’t swallow it uncritically. Think about it. Wrestle with it. Just because I’m a Christian and I’m trying to articulate a Christian worldview doesn’t mean I’ve got it nailed. I’m contributing to the discussion. God has spoken, and the rest is commentary, right?

And while that’s very pithy and I believe that Bell really wants us to do it, I wonder how many really are. And therein lies one of the dangers of Church marketing: people will begin to embrace it for the wrong reasons. Playing music that people will want to sing, presenting sermons in an entertaining manner, and creating clever t-shirts might all be well and good, but they are ultimately not the point. And while celebrity pastors like Bell are certainly doing more good than harm, there are certainly people who are just looking for the next trend… and that trend may be the Christian lifestyle.

To them I would give this word of warning: Christianity, true Christianity is more than a lifestyle… it’s life.

It’s nice to be back into the habit of blogging. I can’t remember the last time I posted two blogs in two days… in fact this might be the first time. Anyway, to those of you who make The Now and the Know a regular stop, many thanks. And if you stumbled upon this site by accident… welcome!

Today I will begin a series about something that’s a hot topic in a lot of ways: Church Marketing. I’m hoping to get one or two “guest bloggers” in here too because, let’s be honest, we’re all tired of listening to me rant.

Recently I was in a wedding in Missouri. One of my good friends from college got married at a small winery in the Ozarks, it was very lovely and good times were had by all. Anyway, from where I am in Des Moines it is a 5 hour drive and there’s not really no good way to get there. We took a different route coming home than we did going down and all along the road were BIG billboards that said things like: Know Jesus [above a picture of clouds and light, read: heaven] or No Jesus [above a picture of fire, read: hell]. While I am willing to give them credit for being mildly clever, I was frustrated to the point of anger when I first saw that sign. And it wasn’t the only one, I can remember seeing at least 3 more with a similar message. There was not a single sign that invited people in a relationship with Jesus that would be life-changing and fulfilling while at NOT presenting it at the sunny alternative to an otherwise gloomy after-life.

But that got me thinking about this passage from Meeting Jesus at the Bar: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Evangelism an essay by Heather Kirk-Davidoff:

As a mainline pastor I carried with me some assumptions that I inherited from the tradition in which I was formed. The outreach work I had been trained to do focused on attracting visitors to my church with flyers, programs, and advertisements, and then following up with visits, encouraging them to become members, to make financial pledges, and to agree to serve on a committee. Behind this work was an assumption that membership in a church was what the people in my community wanted and needed. My job was to recruit them into the particular church I was leading.

I think a lot of people think of their church as a product. And what’s the first thing you ask yourself when you are creating a new product… what do people want/need? Heather Kirk-Davidoff’s church was making was that people wanted committees and boards and service projects and all of the things that come along with a traditional (and cliche) church experience. If you believe that people want potlucks once a month to which no one brings an entree and everyone has a meal of salads and desserts until someone finally goes to Hy-Vee and gets fried chicken, then that’s what your church does or becomes. The job of the church leaders isn’t so much spreading God’s word and Kingdom Expansion as it is marketing a product. And that puts a sour taste in my mouth. But it goes deeper than that, was Kirk-Davidoff writes:

My evangelical colleagues were also trained as recruiters but of a different sort. Evangelism, as they were taught it, is rooted in the assumption that people are (or can easily be led to become) deeply anxious about their fate after they die. Christianity offers a solution to that anxiety because the moment that a person makes a decision to accept Jesus’ atoning sacrifice on the cross, his or her eternal fate changes from damnation to bliss. As Dallas Willard insightfully describes in The Divine Conspiracy, when Christians focus on recruitment alone, the ongoing nurture of relationships and practices in this life becomes nearly irrelevant.

Remember those signs I mentioned earlier? Let’s ask this question: what assumptions did the people who made those signs have? They were convinced that, as Kirk-Davidoff says, “… people are (or can easily be led to become) deep anxious about their fate after they die.” To put it simply: they are convinced that people don’t want to go to hell. And if they don’t believe that hell exists, they can easily be convinced that it does and they don’t want to go there. It actually reminds me of an episode of the Simpsons, the first one I ever saw. In this episode the town comes into some money and they have a meeting to try and decide how to spend it. A smooth operator of a salesman comes in and convinces the town that they need a monorail. Anyone remember that? Did the town of Springfield really need a monorail? Absolutely not. But this guy had a product to sell and he created a need for it. I really believe that some churches are doing that too. They are a certain thing or can provide a certain thing and they go out and convince people the church (not God, please note) is what they need. And that puts a sour taste in my mouth too. The focus shouldn’t creating an imagined need for a God that isn’t actually relevant, the focus should be uncovering the deepest questions of our souls and discovering through the revelations in scripture and experience that God is the answer to those questions.

Anyway, as I kick off this series on The Church Market I wanted to have some of the people I know and trust weigh on this question: what assumptions do we as the church make about “seekers?”

From Luke:

I guess my personal stereotype is that they may not have any questions at all. When I think of someone “seeking,” I think of someone who either had a reason for not going to church and has reconsidered (me), or someone who never really thought about church in the first place and had his or her curiosity sparked somehow.

I don’t think a lot of people go to church [services] to get really tough questions answered. Maybe some do, but a service is just that: a service intended for the masses. When people have specific questions, I would think that their logical move would be to ask a Christian friend, look online, do some research, etc. So, I guess it depends on the level of questions we’re assuming they have.

From a Friend of Sarah:

I won’t attempt to posit a complete answer since my words would be laden with my own personal issues with the church. But, since I often consider myself an “outsider” to the church (and have been called that by churchgoers on numerous occasions), I feel somewhat compelled to at least respond to your inquiry. I offer the following brief, personal reflections. (In other words, I do not attempt to speak for all outsiders or “seekers” or churchgoers, just myself.)

The closer churchgoers are to outsiders, the better churchgoers will understand them.

Churchgoers often criticize the views of those who hate the church without understanding that hatred ourselves.

Churchgoers often defend Christianity while forgetting that Christianity doesn’t need to be defended. Rather, Christian faith should lead the church to defend the outsider.

All parties involved need to understand “Christ” as separate from “Christianity” and act accordingly.

Churches make far too many assumptions about “seekers” that have no bearing in reality.

In our day, there is (almost) no such thing as a “seeker.” Very, very few people are simply coming to church as “seekers.” People end up at church because other people invite them. And churchgoing people earn the right to invite other non-churchgoing people to church only if they build relationships with them.

The church cannot provide “answers” to the questions of “seekers” unless it is willing to question itself.

The day of the “seeker-sensitive” church is over. If a church thinks that it can play “cool” music, open the doors, and watch the “seekers” come in, that church is already dead.

Again, I do not claim to offer anything profound here, just my own feelings and experiences. (This is me as outsider and insider, former and hoping to be future pastor, and a would-like-to-be-a churchgoer.)

From Bill:

I think I agree with a lot of what Sarah said. As a life-long “insider,” it is sometimes hard to identify what a “seeker” really is. I’m afraid that attempt to plan a “seeker” service seem to think that all those non-church-goers out there are just waiting to find the “right” church that will be comfortable to them.
Actually, Jesus said “GO make disciples,” not “plan a service and wait for them to come.” There are people “out there” who truly have spiritual needs. They may be searching for something, but unless they have a relationship with someone who knows from experience what Jesus can and has done for us, they will not, on their own, “find” him by “seeking” a church. A true “seeker” is a Christian who seeks out those who don’t know Jesus and works to develop a relationship that will help lead that person to Jesus.

From Mike:

I’ve been a seeker for over 12 years now and I’m still asking a lot of questions on this journey. I haven’t quite moved out of the seeker category yet so you better be sensitive to me and my questions. lol

Anywho…Here are some of my favorite questions I ask often…as a seeker:

Who are you God and what’s your perspective/heart on xyz ?
Who do you say I am?
How can/do/should we relate with one another?

From Sarah:

“There is a doubter in every believer, and the doubt has an almost wholly positive function, for it keeps faith from degenerating into credulity. There is also, for the most part, an openness to something akin to faith in every nonbeliever, and that openness also functions positively, for it keeps disbelief from degenerating into cynicism.”
(Douglas John Hall, God and Human Suffering, 16)

From Ryan:

I’m going to make the assumption that everyone on the list is well inundated in typical church activity and are “church-goers”.

One thing that has always bugged me about some evangelism is when people come from the perspective of, “I need you to accept Jesus the way I do, or I won’t be okay…” I’m all for faithful witnessing & challenging people, but let’s leave the approval up to God. If God sends His Spirit into the new believer, marks them and convicts them of Sin, you’ve got a follower of Christ. Let us keep to thanksgiving and prayer, lead by love in Christ. Col 3

My favorite quote on the “seeker” movement.

>> I’m for the seeker movement, I go to seeker conferences and I tell them I’m in. There’s only one problem there’s only one seeker and His name is Yahweh. He’s seeking you to keep His commands in love.

-Paul Washer (vague memory of, not exact)

All-Keep meditating on the word through prayer and comparing yourself with Christ through gathering with followers regularly.