New blog address

I'll be posting at http://www.michellevanloon.com from now on. Come visit!

Review: With

"Christianity isn't a religion. It's a relationship."

If you've spent any time at all in the evangelical world, you've probably heard some version of those words. In his book With: Reimagining the way you relate to God (Nelson, 2011) Pastor and author Skye Jethani explains that most of us settle for an erzatz version of this relationship:

• Life FROM God: People in this category are focused on what God will do for them, rather than being interested in God himself. Word-of-faith believers and those who search for God's blessing on their success both capture the essence of this posture.
• Life OVER God: "Proven formulas and controllable outcomes" define this category, best typlifed by people like the jaded agnostic and the pastor who relies on formulas and organizational principles to build a church. 
• Life FOR God: Those in this camp are known for their drive to do great things in God's service and being a world-changer. "Full time Christian service" is the penultimate expression of faith. 
• Life UNDER God: Our role is to learn what God commands, and toil with great intensity to remain within those boundaries. Legalists personify this category. 

Jethani noted that he has spent time living in each one of these categories. (Me too.) But he makes a compelling case for learning to live life WITH God - which, he says, is the only sort of relationship God has ever intended to have with us:

The Life With God posture is predicated on the view that relationship is at the core of the cosmos: God the Father with God the Son with God the Holy Spirit. And so we should not be surprised to discover that when God desired to restore his broken relationship with people, he sent his Son to dwell with us. His plan to restore his creation was not to send a list of rules and rituals to follow (Life Under God), nor was it the implementation of useful principles (Life Over God). He did not send a genie to grant us our desires (Life For God.), nor did he give us a task to accomplish (Life For God). Instead, God himself came to be with us - to walk with us once again as he had done in Eden in the beginning. 

It is just that simple. Which is why, in our broken state, we tend to bollux it, distancing ourselves from Him as we settle for a life lived by the wrong preposition. Jethani's writing is winsome and accessible, and his message is gospel - good news - in the truest sense of the word. The first half of the book explains how our errant categories impede and distort relationship with God. The second half offers a wonderful exploration of what it means live with God - to live into the faith, hope and love that is his character and our birthright as his beloved. A couple of appendices (a brief introduction to some ancient prayer practices in order to cultivate a "with-life" and a thoughtful set of discussion questions) round out the book's 207 pages. 

One of the best-loved passages in Eugene Peterson's The Message paraphrase captures the essence of the message of With. Jesus is speaking to a crowd of people who'd lived under, for, from and over God when he offers this invitation: "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11:28-30 MSG) 

I am prone to slide to one of the unhealthy postures (from, over, for, under) in my relationship with God. It's like a bad case of gravity, pulling me downward. With is a wise, wonderful reminder that only way to experience the gravity-defying unforced rhythms of grace is by living in the reality that God is with me, and I with him. Highly recommended. 

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.    



 

Women can. Should they?

I am currently reading Carolyn Custis James' thoughtful call to action entitled Half The Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision For Women, which is an invitation for kingdom women to respond with kingdom intelligence, passion and action to the injustice in our world.  

And then yesterday, I read this this fairly detailed description of men's and women's roles by a Pastor Mark Chanski on the Gospel Coalition blog. Honestly, I am not trying to rant about the GC crew. I mentioned them in a blog post last week, so I didn't imagine I'd be talking about them again this week. But the dissonance between the kinds of women's roles described by Custis James and Chanski's prescriptive stance on masculine and feminine roles left me wondering anew how two people who would both self-identify as evangelical Christians who take their faith seriously could end up in such different places?

Someone explained to me years ago about the relationship between dogma, doctrine and opinion using the diagram above. The essence of dogma, those non-negotiable essentials of the Christian faith, can be captured in a creed like this one. Dogma is the small tip of the triangle in the diagram above. Get your dogma wrong and you end up inventing a cult. 

Doctrine, the next section of the triangle, encompasses issues that distinguish the practice of a particular religious tradition. Get your doctrine wrong and you could end up being booted out of your church.

Opinion, the biggest section of the triangle, is everything else. That includes everything from worship music to leadership structures to the color of carpet in the church narthex. Depending on the crowd you run with, getting your opinion wrong may get you kicked out of your church and being told you’re going to hell, too.

That little diagram has been a big help to me as I’ve watched how well-intentioned Christians have defined what beliefs belong in which part of the triangle. It is amazing how many opinions end up becoming doctrine (or worse, dogma) for people. If you shove too much opinion into the doctrine or dogma part of the triangle, then it’s not really a triangle any more, is it? 

Though I haven't finished Custis James' book, the one thing I've noticed is that there is a sense of empowering "can", as in, "Women can get involved in putting a stop to sex slavery". Her book appears to be about motivating her female readers to step out in faith in order to make a difference for others, no matter what life stage they inhabit. Her dogma enables her to analyze Biblical text in order to build her case, but the tone of her book most definitely falls into the category of passionately expressed opinion. 

On the other hand, Pastor Chanski's post is full of shoulds and shouldn'ts. Men should "...step up to the plate in Sunday School classes and prayer meetings in such a manner that their verbal contributions lead the way, and not leave a void, provoking the women to take over." Women should "...extend hospitality in its countless forms. A Christlike, foot-washing, servant-hearted woman is a mighty kingdom weapon...Women are the church’s infantry." I understand that the Gospel Coalition folks believe that their take on women's roles is a non-negotiable that is a marker of a person's understanding about Scripture's inerrancy. 

"Should" is the language of dogma. "Can" is the language of opinion. 

And promise. And possibility.

My question for you: Should 'should' be a part of these kinds of discussions about men's and women's roles?

What's a nice egalitarian woman like you doing...?

What's a nice egalitarian woman like you doing in a complementarian church?

When we started attending this church a year and a half ago, a friend said to me, "You know they're Gospel Coalition people, right?"

Yes, I did know. In fact, during our decision/discernment process about whether this church would be a good fit for us, we'd invited both pastors over to our home for some frank conversation about how their neo-Reformed theology worked itself out in the congregation. The conversation touched on topics including their view of Israel (an urgent question for us, since Reformed theology is typically supersecessionist in its interpretation of Scripture's story, a position my husband and I find untenable and anti-Semitic) as well as the role of women in the congregation.

The funny thing about at least one of those conversations is that neither my husband nor I brought up the subject of women's roles. The pastor did, perhaps because he knew that I am a writer and do some speaking.

He didn't know that my husband is probably more of an egalitarian than I am. Bill had sifted through the hysteria and hyperbole surrounding these issues early in his seminary days. He'd enrolled in seminary in his forties after a couple of decades of experience in the church. As a result, he was not in the market for a ticket to ride on whatever popular "issue of the week" theological bandwagon that happened to be rolling by. At Trinity, that bandwagon was a faddish devotion to Calvin-flavored fundamentalism. Bill noted that when he was an undergrad at Trinity in the 1970's, most of the faculty were dedicated Arminians - in other words, the bandwagon was heading in the opposite direction back then. 

Because I began my church life in a very conservative "non"denomination, I accepted this group's take on women's roles without question - though I never donned a head covering for worship like the really spiritual women did. Though we moved on from that church shortly after we married, I didn't really do much serious reflection on the topic of women in ministry for several years. I wrote and spoke, gradually finding my voice and embracing the ministry and gifts God gave me. When I read Dr. Sarah Sumner's Men and Women in the Church: Building Consensus on Christian Leadership a few years ago (while working at Trinity's bookstore!), I felt that she'd put words to who God had called me to be. The book launched some new conversations in my life, including a few with my husband, who had often wondered what took me so long to believe about myself what he had long believed about me - and so many other God-gifted women. Everyone's gifts are needed in order to so the church can both be and become the Bride of Christ.

It is a wonderful blessing in the truest sense of the word to have someone else affirm your ministry. Bill's ongoing blessing of my writing and speaking ministry has had an unexpected side effect: it has stripped the gears from my propensity to agitate against institutional injustice when it comes to this issue. Perhaps because I am free to step behind a pulpit on a Sunday morning or in a seminar as a guest speaker if I am asked (just as Bill, a gifted teacher in his own right, is), I don't feel any urge to fight this particular church on these issues. Or, more likely, maybe I'm just battle-weary at this point in my life.

I appreciate the preaching at this church, which thus far has been mercifully free from agendas and politics, and value the humility and service orientation I see among both men and women there. The women I've met there are smart and curious. I do feel a bit sad the church is limiting their voices in areas that could benefit this local body. But male and female members alike have chosen to affirm the complementarian position in order to structure their life together, and I can respect their choice to do so.

They've been supportive of our Jewishness, our connection to Caspari and love for Israel as well as the other ministries (Bill is a Mundelein police chaplain, I handle communications for Christ Together) of which we're a part. I am so grateful for their prayers and kindness in that way. We always have to suck it up in some area or other when we become a part of a local body, right?

So, I'm curious - what do you think? Is the issue of women in ministry a deal-breaker for you when it comes to choosing a local congregation?

Review: The Seraph Seal

I'm not much of a fiction reader, but when I saw Leonard Sweet's name on the cover of this book, I decided to give it a spin*. Co-written with Lori Wagner, The Seraph Seal (Thomas Nelson, 2011) is a genre-blurring book the authors have dubbed "engaged fiction". The meat of the book is an apocalyptic journey through the end of days that borrows in structure from barn-burners like the DaVinci code, book-ended with Sweet's trademark provocative, prophetic decoding of the often-disparate clues embedded all around us. "(I pay) attention to the signs of the times and (follow) the traces and trails that lead to places of intersection, especially where our story meets God's story," he explains. To that end, Wagner's fiction grabs signposts from all sorts of places: ancient Christian traditions and writings, Kaballah, Mayan prophecies, global warming theories, political realignments, social trends, advances in the tech world and more.

The book's 560 pages (!) follow one Peter Binder, University of Virginia history professor, as he pieces together the clues in a race against time to bring together the chosen "horsemen of the apocalypse" mentioned in Revelation before an anti-Christ figure (who happens to be the President of USAmerica) can arrive in Israel's Upper Galilee with his own anti-horsemen at 9:00 PM on December 21, 2048. There are multiple characters and plotlines, skipping all over the globe. Wagner is a capable writer, pulling Sweet's understanding of semiotics into a readable page-turner of a book. Though the first 20% of this lengthy volume was slow going for me, though eventually the mysteries and connections hooked me into the story.

The good news about this story is that it is not another Left Behind (dispensational) vision of the end times, which is not an eschatological system I embrace. Instead, Sweet and Wagner offer a vision of the last days that has many elements that feel far more faithful to Scripture than does Jenkins and LaHaye's - with a giant "but" tacked onto the end of the sentence: While The Seraph Seal leads the reader to a new heaven and a new earth at the end of the book, it is these human horsemen and the sacrificial death of their very human companion that brings us there. I understood the symbolism, but I experienced a disconnect between that symbolism and the real, recognizable world these characters inhabited so fully throughout the book. My own "through a glass darkly" reading of Revelation has Jesus at the center of these events in a more literal manner, one that matches the literal destruction of the world imagined by Sweet and Wagner. 

One of Sweet's appendices at the end of the book describes and categorizes some of the signs of the times to which the book refers (ranging from Abaddon to Zero Point Energy). This reading adds value and understanding to the story told by Wagner, and left me with some haunting food for thought as I try to do what Christ has asked each one of us to do: Pay attention to the signs of the times. The Seraph Seal, a work of fiction, offers readers a reminder that God has equipped them to do just that, if only they'll see and hear.

*I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

The taste of daily bread

"Our driver is running a few minutes late. Is that O.K.?" The voice on the other end of the phone waited for my answer.

What was I supposed to say? I'd been sitting in an office with nothing much to do except wait for the guy from the office equipment company to come pick up his copier. "Sure. I'll be here."

It is the mundane nature of days like this that threatens to numb us from savoring the activity of God in our lives. 

I diddled with some paperwork, wrote a few emails, and watched the minutes tick by like migrating geese. At last, there was a knock on the door. "Sorry about the delay." A man in his early forties wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. "Hot one out there, eh?" 

We exchanged weather-related pleasantries and I shot a glance at the clock. I could still make it out of here before rush hour starts. We talked through the logistics of how he'd get the aging copier out of the office building and into his truck, and discovered we had an acquaintance in common. He busied himself unplugging cables and readying the machine for transport, then stopped and looked at me. 

"So what do you do?" 

It kind of a funny question to be asked while I was standing in an office, though he did know that I did the bulk of my work for the organization from home.

"My primary job is writing," I told him, and explained that I have a variety of different gigs going these days, most writing-related, including the one that brought me to the office that day. 

His curiosity was piqued. "What do you write?"

When I tell people I've written two books about the parables of Christ, the conversation usually goes in one of two directions. Either they smile at me like I am a deluded fool and change the subject, or they begin to tell me a little about their own faith story.

Our ensuing conversation was in the latter camp, but with a confessional twist. For a moment, he looked like he was about to break down, then the words poured out of him like a river. "This economy has been brutal on my business. I'm the owner, but can't afford to pay a delivery driver right now. I am a person of faith and love to share it, but the first and the fifteenth of each month when I have to pay bills, I take my eyes off of Jesus. I'm scared." He paused, an attempt to dam the river. His face reddened a bit. "I don't know why I'm telling you this..."

I nodded. Maybe he thought that because I wrote a book, I'd have a solution for his fear. Honestly, I'm a little scared these days, too, in several different areas of my life. I told him briefly about my own struggles, and referenced the words we pray but sometimes struggle to believe when fear's shadow threatens to block out the truth about who God is. As we talked, the copier and the truck and the clock metering out the moments of our respective workdays faded into the background as if it was bad scenery from a high school play, and the kind of fellowship found only in the kindgom of God filled the space between two struggling strangers. A tiny fragment of eternity had invaded our now.

Our conversation came to a resting place, and the clock again came into sharp focus. "I better get going," he said, glancing at it. "Before I do, I was wondering if you'd think it was weird if we prayed together?" 

Weird? It was the only logical place we could go. As we said our Amens, each of us let out an involuntary sigh, lightened from the release of lifted weight from weary shoulders. 

"Thanks," he said. "By the way, my name is John."

"Nice to meet you, John. I'm Michelle." After he left, I stood in the office, chastised by the echoes of my grumbling just a few minutes earlier about the inconvenience of the delay to my precious schedule. I didn't deserve the grace that filled that conversation, and remembered again that these sorts of encounters are exactly what daily bread tastes like. 

At The Table: A Reading For Two Voices

Once upon a time, I used to write a lot of readings for use during church services. Some of the pieces were meant to tell a story in a unique way, other readings were simply a creative division of a Biblical text that would allow a congregation to listen to familiar words with fresh ears because 2-5 voices proclaimed them.

This summer at our church, there was a call for the congregation to bring our "Living Psalms" to one another. Below, you'll find my psalm, the first script I've written in a quite a while. If you know of a congregation interested in using this piece (about 1:30 in length), you're welcome to share it with them with my blessing!

At The Table

This psalm, to be read by two people (Voice 1, a male reader and Voice 2, and female voice), is inspired by the parable of the banquet found in Luke 14:15-24. This piece would be suitable as an intro. to communion.

Voice 1: The world says I am not invited to its party.

Voice 2: There is no place card for me at its table.

Voice 1: The world says my name is Poor.

Voice 2: Crippled.

Voice 1: Blind.

Voice 2: Lame.

Voice 1: The world calls me Loser.

Voice 2: Awkward.

Voice 1: Burden.

Voice 2: Ugly.

Voice 1: Failure.

Voice 2: Disappointment.

Voice 1: Sinner.

Voice 2: The world’s labels have branded me.

Voice 1: The identity they gave me was as comfortable as an old pair of sweats…

Voice 2: And as ill-fitting as a prom dress three sizes too small.

Voice 1: Sometimes, when I dream at night I imagine a different name for myself.

Voice 2: Those dreams are the true desire of my heart, hopes I don’t dare to voice when the world has already pronounced its verdict over my life.

Voice 1: Heavenly Father, you authored my desire.

Voice 2: You gave me those dreams.

Voice 1: Yet in the cold florescent glare of the world’s light, those dreams seem nothing more than a hazy fantasy of my own invention.

Voice 2: When I heard about invitations going out to the best party of them all, I shrugged it off.

Voice 1: I wouldn’t be invited to an event like that.

Voice 2: Why would I be?

Voice 1: Never had been invited before.

Voice 2: Never dared to dream I would be today.

Voice 1: And then, there was a knock on my door.

Voice 2: And then, a kind messenger handed me an invitation.

Voice 1: My name engraved on the envelope.

Voice 2: It was the name I’d only dreamed of hearing from you, Lord.

Voice 1: Friend.

Voice 2: Others just like me…

Voice 1: Others who’d been wounded with labels like the one I wore…

Voice 2: …received invitations that day, too.

Voice 1: Their invitations had names like ‘son’.

Voice 2: ‘Daughter’.

Voice 1: ‘Holy’.

Voice 2: ‘Beloved’.

Voice 1: Father, these were the names you gave to us before we were even born.

Voice 2: While each one of us was still in our mother’s womb.

Voice 1: You, Lord, prepare a place at your table for us.

Voice 2: You, Lord, invite us to come to your table.

Voice 1: To revel in your presence.

Voice 2: To feast on your goodness.

Voice 1: To savor your mercy.

Voice 2: To be transformed by your grace.

Voice 1: And so, we respond to your invitation here in this place.

Voice 2: Grateful.

Voice 1: Humbled.

Voice 2: In awe of all you are and all you’ve done for us.

Voice 1: We say yes to your invitation with our new name on it.

Voice 2: We come to your table.

Voice 1: And as we do, we are fed…

Voice 2: …restored

Voice 1: …and renamed.