To Use Scandal

by Frank Turk

Why yes: since it came up in Christianity Today yesterday, I do actually have some more to say about Louie Giglio.

Before we get to the torches and pitchforks, let me say this: in the last 20 years, Louie Giglio has been a very nice guy.  He has even been, from time to time, a preacher with some flair -- the right kind of flair and not just metaphorical or photoshoptical lens flair.  If we should give a man a little grace because of his lifetime of work, I give it here to him for that.  Overall: nice work.

That said, this showed up on my FB timeline yesterday:

Of course it's the caption that caught my eye there, which was supplied by the culture vultures* over at Christianity Today.  Giglio got something right, according to Mark Galli.  Here's what he says:

Giglio noted his priorities when he said, "Clearly, speaking on this issue [homosexuality] has not been in the range of my priorities in the past fifteen years. Instead, my aim has been to call people to ultimate significance as we make much of Jesus Christ." Giglio is exactly right. Unfortunately, in a desire to reach the world for Christ, some inadvertently reverse Giglio's priorities and make much about our ultimate significance. Jesus becomes merely the means by which we feel better about our place in the universe. Need purpose and meaning? Follow Jesus, that will do the trick. In this subtle shift, we become the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega.

Wow -- So close! So close!  What you would hope, as he says this, is that Galli would have someplace else come up with the Gospel to somehow season Giglio's idiosyncratic post-Piper rhetoric into something which does make this exactly right.  For example, maybe Galli would talk about the dire state of our sinful culture -- how sinfulness is actually the signature of this world, and that Christ's death is the only action possible to overcome it.

Well, "sin" apparently doesn't come into it -- not in this essay, anyway.  And when referring to "sinners," Galli -- a Fuller grad -- has this to say:

In the long run, we cannot gain a hearing for the gospel through our admirable ethics or social justice because in the end, we are still sinners, with hearts, as the prophet Jeremiah put it, that remain desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9). When we do live well or accomplish a social good, we will be admired for our moral success, not because Jesus died to save a rebellious world. And when we fail to live up to our values—and we invariably will--well, we will look like every other sinner on the planet. Not much of a witness there, except to our humanity.

See: the problem of being a sinner is the church's problem, not the world's problem -- though credit where credit is due that he does reprimand the social gospel as somewhat impotent.  The other mention of our problem is equally notable:

Looking at how this message scandalized the ancient world opens a window into our preaching today. When the culture takes issue with the church today, it carps about our oppressive sexual ethics (especially our opposition to homosexual behavior) and our various prosperity gospels (from the most egregious health-and-wealth messages to the more subtle but equally dangerous sermons on how faith in Christ can improve your marriage, your business, and your self-esteem). And then there is the regular complaint about our self-righteousness—our incessant habit of pronouncing judgment on our culture, which is grounded in the assumption that sinners are found mostly in that culture, outside the church walls. Thus all the sermons about how we need to reform and stand against the culture, as if the "we" is in no need of fundamental reform, or that the Lord does not have a controversy with his people.

That is: somehow the message that there is sin to be repented of (homosexuality being his example) is conflated with the prosperity gospel as co-equal absurdities, co-perpetrators of violence against either the culture or the Gospel -- or maybe both.  And just to make sure he isn't misunderstood, Galli tells us this:

The most needful and difficult task of the church today is to again preach the message of the Cross, and to do so in a way that alarms, surprises, scandalizes, challenges, invigorates, and inspires a 21st century world. What that would look like exactly is hard to say; our theologians and pastors need to help us here. In the most general terms, it has to be about Christ first and last. It has to be about the Christ who came into the world not to improve generally good people, but to resurrect the dead, not to bolster our self-esteem but to forgive us, not to make people successful but to make them loving, not to win the culture but to establish a kingdom without end. Even more scandalously, the message of the Cross is about a universe saturated with grace, where nothing we have done or can do earns us the right to participate in this stunning new reality; all has been done for us. The best we can do is acknowledge the reality (faith) and begin to live as if it is reality (repent). [empasis added]

Wow.  He sure told us.  He even told us with my key point from theNines 3 years ago.  And to be utterly fair: he does say that Christ forgives -- but forgives what?  And is repentance and faith really best described as merely "acknowledgment and living"?

In that view of things, for once mentioning that sin is actually offensive to God, no wonder Louie Giglio's resignation is the right thing to do: Giglio was actually wrong 2 decades ago.  He was part of the problem -- and now that it's exposed, he should just walk away.

That is: unless the Gospel is supposed to truly offend those for whom it is meant.

See: Galli tosses around the word "scandalize" and its apparent synonyms in his essay as if its meaning is self-evident, and we should simply nod solemnly and humbly at it because he used one of the safe words of the New Testament against the Apologetics and Expository classes of the English-speaking world.  But in fact it's not the kind of word he's looking for.

Now, I could tell you why by breaking open the dictionary or the thesaurus, but instead I'm going to do something else.  I'm going to use "scandal" in the way it was originally used in reference to the Gospel:

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block (μὲν σκάνδαλον) to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

There, the idea of something being a "scandal" does not make it "fresh" or "invigorating."  It doesn't make the Gospel a rush.  Indeed, when Paul talks of the "scandal" of the cross to the Galatians, he makes it transparently clear that he is suffering, and is persecuted, because the Gospel offends.

Now, look: I have gotten your hate mail about the griping Dan and I do and have done about the popular side of the internet lunchroom, and I receive it.  But the cool kids over at CT here are, frankly, jumping out of the apple cart and into the ditch when they say that when persecution comes, we should simply bow in apology and make much of Christ by not making a peep -- turn the other cheek and so on. Should we really see it that way?

Paul didn't see it that way.  He certainly didn't behave that way.  When the persecution came, and the chains, and being run off from the city for turning the world upside down, he didn't shut up and sit down -- or worse, tell people that they have nothing to worry about since the universe is saturated in Grace.  He preached harder. He preached in such a way that Bereans were converted -- and in such a way that the Greeks mocked him.

But: he preached -- a judgment on the living and the dead by one who was shown worthy by his resurrection.  That was the way Paul made much of Christ.

If we have forgotten that, even God will not help us.  Our lampstand is already out.

__________
*Yes, I know that a "culture vulture" is supposed to be a person who is overly-fond of high-brow culture.  Savor the irony and the sarcasm with me.

---

Before It Gets Big Enough

by Frank Turk

It's funny how topics can run together.  I was going to write a post-script this week about the response to last week's series on Passion2013, and it turns out Louie Giglio made headlines for another reason thereafter, so we'll talk about that for a bit as well.

You know, I thought that the key moment in last's week's posts was when I said this:

And I ask it for only one reason: Jeff is famous because he wanted to draw the thick black line between Jesus and Religion -- and I find myself in full agreement with that objective.  I find myself fighting that fight in my own life on a daily basis. 

It is a completely fair question -- and I think the answers are useful to all kinds of people, and not just the young person who found himself or herself filled with something which looks and feels pretty good. 

Somehow, that morphed in the minds a few people into my condemnation of young people, joy, singing … all the usual ways in which the internet turns into J. Jonah Jameson braying about a menace who must be stopped.

I was notified by many that they have personally witnessed real salvation at Passion events, and to that I say: of course you have.  Well, why not?  Piper has historically brought out the hammers and tongs at Passion; in spite of his flightiness Francis Chan almost always gets it right when it comes to traditional, TMS-oriented, exposition of the truths of faith (being a TMS guy, after all).  Some people are going to get saved or convicted when that happens.

The point of last week's posts was, frankly, to notice that even people who get the name of God right are likely to get the way to love and worship him wrong.  Nobody (well, not nobody, but …) gets their noses out of joint when it is pointed out that people who think God comes in manifestations and not persons have a religion and not a faith in Jesus.  Nobody certainly gets their noses out of joint when we heap scorn on legalistic types or libertines.  But when we find out that the young and hip crowd could possibly have a false religion, suddenly we just don't get it.  It's my fault for noticing.

Listen: if you personally can't imagine that you might possibly be the victim of your own personal idol factory, let me suggest that you don't know yourself very well -- and you'd do yourself a favor to review the bits of Scripture we ran past last week to see which of those weeds are creeping up your personal trellis of worship and devotion before it gets big enough to say to you, "feed me, Seymour."

But the other thing which needs to be clarified in the post-script is that the organizers of the Passion event(s) need to make sure they are calling people to the right thing, setting the right expectations.  It's one thing to say that some friends are going to get together to discuss the faith and offer the exchange as a way to edify like-minded people; it's the same sort of mundane thing to say that God's word is going to be laid open by men who have been tested and approved.  But it's another thing entirely to advertise your event (explicitly, or implicitly) as a place where there's something that happens that doesn't happen (or worse: can't happen) at your local church.  There's always something fishy about super-apostles, whether they are chest-kicking charlatans like Todd Bentley, or they happen to bring the light show and their catalog of CDs for sale.  The real supply-side problem is not the religion, but the celebrity which creates the religion, and I leave the rest for you to sort out.

That makes a keen segue to my concluding topic today: as I am sure you have heard, Louie Giglio walked away from praying at the inauguration for President Obama's second term because, it was discovered, Giglio preached a sermon against homosexuality once, about 20 years ago, as he puts it.

On one side, it's sign of the times we live in.  All religion but the historic Christian faith is welcome in the public square.  It's a pretty odd situation we find ourselves in when, 4 years ago, Rick Warren prayed at the inauguration in spite of his stand against sin; today, after 4 years of the post-racial President, Louie Giglio gets the side eye for one 20-year-old sermon, even if he has repositioned the Gospel away from the hard demands of God's Law since then.  And the really bothersome part of this is that there wasn't even much of a flap about it.  It came up, and Giglio folded -- didn't want to be a distraction, he said.

In that, Matthew Lee Anderson praised him in his premiere piece for CNN by saying, effectively, more Christians ought to just keep it down when they are challenged about the dividing lines of the faith.  After all, he reasoned, Jesus just took it until they put Him to death.  That's how we should suffer.  Somehow the examples of Paul and Stephen got past Matthew's radar, where we are shown that persecution is actually a place where the demands of Christ and the need for the Gospel are make crystal clear by proclamation, not by analogy.

See: what I find most troubling about Giglio's resignation is not that he was, in any way, challenged about his faith or beliefs.  Politically, I say open the marketplace of ideas and let's see who has the silver and gold and who has the filthy rags -- even if someone winds up acting like Cain when we find out that he has something unacceptable, either to God or to other people, when it is all laid out in the open.  And theologically -- that is to say, as I am instructed in my faith -- while I expect the Gospel to save many, I also expect that it may have to do so as I share in the suffering of Christ.  That might mean, on a small scale, that they don't promote me at work because I think there's one holy book which makes the others look like pulp fiction; it might mean, on a larger scale, that when it comes out that I believe this stuff, they hurl insults at me over the internet -- even and especially people who claim to believe in Jesus.  Or more spectacularly, it might mean that people who actually identify themselves with their sins will demand I be excluded from the public forum because I am turning the whole world on its head -- and in my own defense, I can therefore proclaim the true fame of Christ.

The problem really isn't that we live in a post-Christian nation.  We should accept that we do.  We should be convinced of it.  The problem is when we are therefore satisfied with that, and we find that Jesus is only our private savior, and our local comfort, and our homestyle god -- one not fit to proclaim or defend when it's His law and His Gospel which are being reproached by those who would rather see the world in tatters and in rags, headed toward a fire who will never go out. The problem is that we think the privilege of proclaiming the Gospel is that it should gain us privilege and not disrepute.  When the side-eye comes against us because the Gospel offends, we think we're the ones who have done something wrong.

Last week, I prayed for those at Passion, and for those who organized it and promoted it as something which ought to set us at least on our guard against our own native tendency to deceive ourselves.  This week, I pray for our nation which now can brand a man a bigot because he believes that sex is important enough to have inherent governing principles.  And I pray for that man, because he doesn't think those principles, and their creator and sustainer, are worth making a public fuss anymore.

Be in the Lord's house with the Lord's people on the Lord's day this week, and pray for all of us.  May God have mercy on us all.

---

Consider Your Calling

by Frank Turk

So last time: I asked the question whether the folks who turned out for Passion2013 turned out for Jesus or Religion, and I gave one answer: a Jesus-event (from the Bible) which looks like this one looks turns out people who experience a revival and not just an emotional high.  It might look like religion if what we see instead is a superficial change, a temporary emotional sweetness which, let's face it, is not self-sustaining.

How else could we tell if this was about Jesus and not merely religion?

How about this one:

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

You know: that fellow Paul is an interesting case study -- because when we think of him, somehow we think of a mash-up of Carl Trueman and Charleton Heston.  He's God's man after all, and he should be smart but not unreachable, grandfatherly in his gravitas, good-looking, and compelling.  And we think -- this is a group "we" here, not just a shot across the bow at the new young and hip crowd -- that this is how God reached the ancient world.  He sent a guy with 1st-century media saavy to write the NT and appear in live shows to get the word out.

But you know something?  That's not Paul at all.  In fact: he spends a good deal of time telling the Corinthians that one of the problems they are facing is that they want their own clever and good-looking fellows to take his place.  I mean seriously: that is exactly what they wanted, and Paul says, "well, God has already made all that stuff foolish.  You can tell because he sent me to preach to save those who believe."

Now, I know what the Passionistas accidentally reading this post are about to say: "Hey dude: we had Piper there.  Are you saying that Piper is not a good preacher?"

No dude: I am not saying that.

What I am saying is that the kid in my hypothetical example went to a rock concert -- and the headliners were the all-star talkers.  S/he went to see men (and women, right?) of huge reputation, and also some headliner bands in order to feel a certain way about his/her endorsement of Jesus -- but no human will boast in the presence of God.  And the proof, if I might say so, of what actually happened there is what is happening now, since he or she came home.

A lot of people hate it when I do this, but I'm doing it anyway: 60,000 people were there.  If we randomly distributed 60,000 loaded guns into the places all these people just came from -- just sent them back in the QTYs these people came from those places -- I'll bet you something would change in those communities.  If we sent out 60,000 lunchboxes full of $20's into those communities in the same way, I'll bet something would change -- maybe something small, but something.  If we sent 60,000 bullhorns out into those communities and just laid them down on the ground there, something would change.

In this hypothetical case, 60,000 hypothetical people are coming home to some fraction of 60,000 local churches.  Let me be as clear as possible: they are coming home to what we hope are a corresponding number of local churches.  If they are anything like their parents, they may not have a local church at all.  But if past performance is any indication of future results, they will not have the same scope of impact as 60,000 handguns or lunchboxes or bullhorns.  The show will be over.  Somehow, for them, being in the local church -- which is God's plan for the believer -- is not the same as going to an event with headliners.  Paul says that, somehow, the local church ought to be better than that -- and it seems to me that here we can see that it is not.

A year ago, Jeff Bethke said, "Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrum - See one's the work of God, but one's a man made invention - See one is the cure, but the other's the infection."  At the end of it, it is not our intention which makes something Holy: it is God's intention. And it's God's intention that the Gospel be proclaimed not from a concert stage in an arena intended for entertaining spectacles: it's his intention that it be declared from the local church.

That's why Paul also said this:

For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

Think of the plea Paul is making here to the Corinthians: the ones who are really bringing the message of Christ to the world have become like trash, like the muddy part you scrape off in a bath -- and all of you Corinthians think that you are better than that.  This is something someone like Judah Smith ought to spend a few years contemplating before he continues in the family business, but it is especially something people seeking a Cotton-Bowl sized event ought to consider fully before continuing to endorse and expand such a thing.

The problem is not that God doesn't love large churches, or doesn't want large churches.  The problem is not that God doesn't want us to glorify God and enjoy Him now, which is the starting terminal point of forever.  The problem is that when we imagine that the best way -- or even a co-equal way -- of knowing God and glorifying him and enjoying him is by the means of the world, and not the means of the Spirit, we have inverted God's plan for us.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait," objects the hypothetical example, "How is it that suddenly TeamPyro is so concerned about the means of the Spirit, and who are you to judge the way the Spirit moved in Georgia?  Aren't you biased against moves of the Spirit?  I mean: I was there. I saw it.  I felt it.  I know it was the means of the Spirit."

Well, I think I have already given 3 Biblical reasons why that's (at least) backwards reasoning: there was no revival, there was a backwards system of values driving the event, and it creates and elevates the wrong people the wrong way when it is all said and done.  But: the problem is, at the end of the day, a Holy Spirit problem.

You remember Yesterday's post, yes?  I hope so.  I quoted the end of Acts 2 in that post to show what ought to happen when there is actual revival, but there's a funny part at the beginning of Acts 2 which maybe we should review since I have dragged the Holy Spirit into this discussion:

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

You know: as we say in theses here parts, "Aha!"

Look: at the end of the day, it was the Holy Spirit which made the events in Acts 2 happen.  What that means, in the least, is this: If the means of the Holy Spirit are used, the consequences the Spirit intends will result.  And the consequences -- the necessary consequences -- of the means of the Holy Spirit will be the salvation of men, and the formation of a local church*.  In the worst case, if a local church is not formed, the very least will be that the local church will be edified or fortified or in some way improved.

The means of the Spirit are not the things which make us feel good and seem right in our own eyes -- even though they are never found or hinted at in the Bible.  They are certainly not the things which, when we see them in the Bible, an Apostle expressly condemns.  They are also not the things which, when we see them, we can rejigger into something we enjoy a little more.

So: consider your calling, hypothetical example.  Consider what it is exactly the preaching of God's word and the singing of His praises ought to do to you and for you.  I will be willing, for the sake of not consuming your whole day, to stipulate that every word spoken at Passion2013 was worth hearing**.  If it was, what are you doing with it?  Why was the experience more important than the consequences?

I leave it for your consideration, and your own edification   Be with the Lord's people in the Lord's house on the Lord's day this weekend -- because that's where the real means of the Spirit will greet you.

__________
*You know: or else, the condemnation of men and the hardening of their hearts into reprobation.
**Chris Rosebrough has some other thoughts on that, which I commend to you.

---

Those Who Received His Word

by Frank Turk

Welcome back, especially you, One Star Hater.

Yesterday, I told the story of one hypothetical kid who went to Passion 2013, got very fired up about something he could stake his life on, and who agreed with Jefferson Bethke about the event.  But then I went and spoiled the whole thing by asking a pretty simple (and it seems to me: obvious) question about the whole thing:

@jeffersonbethke How do we know they are there for Jesus and not religion, Jeff?
— Frank Turk (@Frank_Turk) January 2, 2013

I don't think it's a very tricky question, either -- it's not a no-win question.  For example, one response could be:

@frank_turk every night, kids were so moved by the preaching & worship that they were preaching and ministering in the streets.
— Gil Louigio (@GilGaMashup) January 7, 2013

Or maybe another one could be:

@frank_turk - I'm convicted on my sin, and I'm going home to discuss a new accountability plan with my pastor.
— Gil Louigio (@GilGaMashup) January 7, 2013

Or here's one:

@frank_turk - I know it was Jesus because I got convicted on my religion. I have a very middle-class view of things which Jesus exposed.
— Gil Louigio (@GilGaMashup) January 7, 2013

Something like that would have answered my question and, if possible, actually shut the mouth of the complaint.  That is: it would speak to the centerpiece of the complaint, which is Jeff Bethke's definition of a serious problem, and my reference to it.  Seriously now: are old people the only ones with a religion problem?  If you think so, I think I probably shouldn't say another word until you reconsider your answer.

The problem of religion vs. faith is a serious problem.  It manifests itself in a LOT of ways.  For example, as a blogger, I am guilty of religion when I expect that God owes me an audience of readers when I have been such a faithful blogger for lo nigh unto a decade.  I am guilty of religion when I expect even that other bloggers ought to respect me.  I am guilty of religion when I hope that I am famous, or can become famous by being a certain kind of voice in the wildness.

Right?  You can recognize my faults.  You can see them because they are so obvious.  It's a good thing you're righteous and not the kind of sinner that blogger centuri0n is over there.

So look: I think we owe it to ourselves to ask this question when we do something that looks a LOT like what the world does when it is doing what it does in the place of worshiping the true God of heaven, the Creator and Sustainer of all things, the savior of the guilty and hopeless.  You know: we can really "get it" that the Cotton Bowl is a false religion for some people, or that status at work or in the community is a false religion for some people, or that emotional voyeurism in reality TV or in concerts or in roles one plays to get the attention of others is a false religion for some people.  But can we "get it" that if we are doing any or all of these things and just putting a Jesus t-shirt on it, or tweeting it with Jesus' name, or calling it "worship" instead of "entertainment" our alleged intentions do not sanctify what's actually happening?



Let me put this another way: I think that it's wise to let the Bible -- especially the New Testament, but not exclusively there -- pour over our moments of emotional exuberance and find out if we are actually loving God and serving him, or if we are actually doing what seems right in our own eyes and then calling that God's will for us and God's work among us.

The first stop on that journey is Acts 2.  I go there because it's a big-tent revival -- it's a place where God  wasn't afraid of a crowd, and wasn't afraid of using men to preach, and people were literally cut to the heart by what happened there.  It looks like what we are told just happened at the Georgia Dome.  I go there because it dismantles the idea that I think somehow the church can only exist in small pieces.

See on that very day, 3000 people were added to the church.  They didn't start a discipleship program or nod a head to some slactivism video about a problem bigger than donations can resolve.  Here's what it says happened after that show -- in which Peter was so compelling and loud that at first they thought he was drunk, and he literally spoke with words that every person could understand, in every language -- when the lights came up:

So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

I know, I know: it's very quaint, and sort of mundane.  But it speaks to us about what happens when the word of God is actually preached in a place -- because this is the first time, after the resurrection of Christ, that the word of God is actually preached in a place.

See: the first thing that happens is that sinners repent of sin.  In Evangelical parlance, revival breaks out.  If what happened in the Georgia Dome was not merely an entertainment event but some kind of God's presence pouring out, revival would have been breaking out.

A lot of people hate it when I do this, but I'm doing it anyway: 60,000 people were there.  If we randomly distributed 60,000 loaded guns into the places all these people just came from -- just sent them back in the QTYs these people came from those places -- I'll bet you something would change in those communities.  If we sent out 60,000 lunchboxes full of $20's into those communities in the same way, I'll bet something would change -- maybe something small, but something.  If we sent 60,000 bullhorns out into those communities and just laid them down on the ground there, something would change.

But here we have people who feel like they just stood in the presence of God, and somehow: nothing will change.  Let's be as fair as possible to say that, frankly, I'm using past performance to predict future results -- but I doubt that adding a young fellow who inherited his father's prosperity-gospel church to the preaching roster will improve the net outflow of the Holy Spirit this year as opposed to last year.

Something changes when God is presented and is truly-present in a large crowd of people.  My first suggestion about Passion 2013 is that nothing, sadly, has changed.  And this is what worries me: somehow that result is being represented as being "blown away by God's presence. Shattered and rebuilt by His Word. Challenged to the core. Repaired. Wrapped in love. Awakened to raise our voices for those who have no voice."  It seems to me that the first hallmark of religion (as opposed to Jesus) -- if we take Jefferson Bethke at face value, and we magnify his complaint by looking at the real thing in Scripture -- is that the problem with religion is it never gets to the core; it's just behavior modification, like a long list of chores.  Including, if I can say this in a sobering way, the emotional chores of event-driven experiences.

More tomorrow.

---

Stake Their Lives On It

by Frank Turk

So last week, I did some house-cleaning and said that I could only post once a week in 2013, and now this week I have found myself with almost 10 pages on the subject at hand and have given Dan the week off. Go Figure.

To avoid any unpleasantry today (that comes tomorrow), I'm only going to speak hypothetically -- I'm not going to speak about anyone in particular, but about someone you probably know. I'm imagining a young person either in college or college-aged, and this person spent last week in the Georgia Dome with about 60,000 other young people his or her age. Now, when you mentally conjure this person up, I suspect you think of someone who looks like Rupert Grint, or Matt Chandler, or Angus Jones, or Elle Fanning, or Jennifer Lawrence, or Emma Stone. Not a lot of you imagining single mothers, or young adults with learning disabilities, or lower-middle-class kids who had to take a week off from work to come. Which, let's face it: that's how we want to imagine the church to be. We want the church to be full of people who are the aspirational versions of ourselves, and in some sense that is actually a good thing. It means we haven't stopped believing that the church, somehow, is supposed to be better than real life.

But this kid I'm hypothetically speaking of: he's like 90% of the guys his age on the inside regardless of what's on the outside. He's mostly-empty. I mean: if the average life expectancy of a person in America is roughly 80 years, he's only finished about 25% of the game -- and all of that under the right-minded protection and benefit of his parents. He probably doesn't understand what it means to have some skin in the game (namely: his own).  Or else she's like 90% of the girls her age -- who look like they are women, but they simply have no idea what it means to be a woman. She may have been convinced by somebody someplace that what it means to be a woman is that you have to make sure that you don't think there are any men who can do something you can't do -- even if she is self-aware enough to know that there are certainly things that women can do that men can't do.

So this hypothetical person is in a peer group which decided to go to Passion last week.  Somehow s/he came up with the $219 plus another $200 for rooms plus another $200 for food and whatever it cost in transportation to get there. I mean: John Piper was going to be there. Francis Chan was going to be there. Christy Nockels was going to be there -- I'd go to Georgia to hear Christy Nickels sing. Lecrae and Crowder were going to be there. And this is how it was billed:

At the heart of it all, Passion exists to see a generation stake their lives on what matters most. For us, that's the fame of the One who rescues and restores, and the privilege we have to fully leverage our lives by amplifying His name in everything we do.

Last year, our US gathering drew more than 40,000 students and leaders from around the world to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. We were blown away by God's presence. Shattered and rebuilt by His Word. Challenged to the core. Repaired. Wrapped in love. Awakened to raise our voices for those who have no voice.

In January 2013, we are returning to The Dome. Honestly, we want to see the place filled. Not for the sake of numbers, but as a symbol of a new generation...a new wave of Jesus followers who are trading in small dreams for a place in the story God is writing around the globe.

And for a kid like the one I described, above, that sounds like a really great place to go to try to see what it is that could happen to me if I "trade in small dreams for a place in the story God is writing".  It's a pretty serious thing to "stake their lives on what matters most."

So this kid goes to Passion, and stays for a week, and receives a lot of encouragement and emotional enhancement which, if he's honest, he doesn't get at his local church. And he's with other kids who are getting the same thing -- that's what they all say, and there's no reason to doubt them. Some of them even Tweet stuff like this:

60,000 college students, representing 2,022 universities, from 54 countries worshipping the 1 true God. #Passion2013 twitter.com/TweetingThomas…
— Thomas West (@TweetingThomas_) January 4, 2013

I have tears in my eyes as I reflect on the power of God's presence in the Georgia dome tonite. #GloryofGod #Passion2013
— Kari Jobe (@karijobe) January 4, 2013

Tonight @lecrae is preaching and @johnpiper is rapping! You wont want to miss it! #passion2013 :)
— Frank Gil (@Pastor_Tank) January 3, 2013

Yeah, OK, maybe not as much on that last one, but you see my point: there's a very positive buzz about the things which mean a lot to this demographic -- and, if we are honest, to ourselves as well. We want whatever it is we are doing for Jesus' fame and Jesus' name to make us, if I may be so bold as to say it, feel something -- and not like we have the flu, either.

So this hypothetical young person goes to Passion, and gets a very real sense of his or her feeling that Jesus filled the Georgia Dome, and that Jesus is amazing when John Piper or Judah Smith talks about Him, and he or she comes home sincerely believing they had an experience which ought to change them.

This young person feels like what Jefferson Bethke tweeted the first night of the event:

Now look: I like Jeff Bethke. I like any clean-cut kid, but especially one who is sort of famous for being clean-cut in spite of hardships. And we all know how Jeff got famous, right?

No? Wow, the internet has a short memory.



See: Jeff got famous because he was trying to make a right-minded point about the distinction between "religion" and "Jesus" (or perhaps: right faith in Jesus) -- even if he had to walk some of the ill-considered stuff back in the two weeks after this video went thru the roof. And he was there, at Passion, with Lecrae and Piper and Crowder and Chan and 59,999 other people, and he made a tweet which, when the hypothetical kid I am talking about read it, caused a feeling of good tidings and great joy, if we can borrow the phrase.

So for this hypothetical young person, he or she came away from Passion with a rather broad feeling of being part of something larger than themselves. And to this feeling, they have attached a lot of words -- either because of the talks they heard, or because of the conversations afterward: "worship," "faith," "spirit," "movement," "unity," etc.

Now look: fair enough. I am willing to say that to some extent, something happened at the Georgia Dome that felt amazing to those present. It felt amazing for the week in which it happened.

But when I read Jeff's tweet back on New Year's Day, here's what I tweeted:

And I ask it for only one reason: Jeff is famous because he wanted to draw the thick black line between Jesus and Religion -- and I find myself in full agreement with that objective. I find myself fighting that fight in my own life on a daily basis.

It is a completely fair question -- and I think the answers are useful to all kinds of people, and not just the young person who found himself or herself filled with something which looks and feels pretty good.

So how would we know?  We'll talk about that tomorrow.

---