Seeing Gray

I thought our Resurrection members might enjoy getting a sneak peak at the sermon plan we’ve been working on for the next 18 months. Keep in mind the titles to the series will change, and you’re missing the ideas and sermon detail that help make these sermons compelling. That information is part of the 15 page plan. Some of you will recognize your sermon series ideas in this plan. For others, your ideas may be incorporated into the sermons for 2010. Here are some of the sermon series I’ll likely be preaching in the coming year:
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Every summer the church allows me to take a week away from the office in order to develop sermon series outlines for the next 18 - 24 months. I thought those of you who are pastors or lay leaders of other churches might find it helpful to know how this process works.
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I’m reading an excellent book this week entitled, unChristian, by Kinnaman and Lyons. It looks at why so many young adults have turned away from Christianity. More on the answer to that question later. For now I’d like to pick up one of the few comments in the book with which I would take issue.

Kinnaman, who is the President of the Barna Group (a research group focused on conducting surveys of Americans related to spirituality) mentions how few “born again” Christians have a “biblical worldview” (something like 4% of “born agains” have a “biblical worldview” according to Barna’s research). Inevitably when I hear someone speak of a “biblical worldview” I find myself bristling a bit. I always wonder what they believe constitutes such a worldview.

According to Kinnaman, The Barna Group defines a biblical worldview by the following eight fundamental convictions: 1. Jesus lived a sinless life, 2. God is the all-powerful and all-knowing creator of the universe and he still reigns today, 3. Salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned, 4. Satan is real, 5. A Christian has a responsibility to share his or her faith with others, 6. The Bible is accurate in all the principles it teaches, 7. unchanging moral truth exists, 8. Such moral truth is defined in the Bible. (p. 75 of unChristian). If you hold these ideas, you get counted among the 4% who have a “biblical worldview.”

It strikes me that this is an odd list. It’s not that I disavow any of these, it’s just that it seems to be missing some of the most important elements of a truly “biblical worldview.” Here’s my list. Someone who sees the world through the lens of the teachings of scripture would hold that: 1. There is a God who created all things, and in and by and for whom all things exist. 2. Human beings struggle with sin. 3. God desires justice, kindness and love. 4. We are meant to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbor as we love ourselves. 5. Jesus is God’s definitive Word to us - he is the clearest picture of the nature and character of God and of God’s will for our lives. 6. Jesus, by his death and resurrection, brings salvation to the world. 7. Human beings are meant to display sacrificial love. 8. God, by his Holy Spirit, works in our hearts and lives. 9. Jesus calls us to acknowledge the reign of God and to seek to invite others to acknowledge God’s reign and to live accordingly. 10. This life is not all there is to our existence, but we have the hope of eternal life.

Though there is some overlap with Barna’s list, I would suggest that this list may better capture the emphases of the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus himself.

What do you think constitutes a “biblical worldview”?

Yesterday the news was abuzz with Dr. James Dobson’s comments, broadcast on his daily radio show Focus on the Family, concerning Barack Obama. Dobson was commenting on a 2006 speech Obama made regarding his own faith and the role of faith in politics. Last night I went back and listened to the entire Dobson program ( listen here) and read the transcript of Obama’s speech in its entirety ( read here).

Dobson’s associate, Tom Minnery, does most of the criticism of Obama, but James Dobson chimes in in the critique. They focus on a handful of Obama’s comments accusing him of having a “distorted theology” and a “fruitcake” interpretation of the Constitution.

There are many things that James Dobson has said and done over the course of his ministry that I have found helpful and meaningful. And though my more progressive friends dismiss him as simply part of the “religious right”, seeing gray includes finding the truth on both sides of the theological and political spectrum and recognizing that there is much good that people like James Dobson have done.

Having said that, I found Dobson and Minnery’s comments that Obama has a “distorted theology” a bit distorted themselves. They took a handful of excerpts from the speech and, I believe, missed the point.

I would encourage you, if you heard the program, to read Barack Obama’s speech in it’s entirety. I don’t agree with Obama about everything, and there are several issues with which I strongly disagree with him, but I felt this particular speech accurately captured how many younger evangelically minded Christians understand the role of church and state. I also found it disarmingly honest and helpful in understanding his own faith and how he brings it to bear on his own politics.

At the end of May I started a project that will not be completed for six or seven years. Over the next six or seven years we hope to provide a leadership, preaching and evangelism training program for all 16,000 United Methodist clergy and at least one layperson from all 32,000+ United Methodist churches. The program consists of three 90 minute sessions: Essentials of Leadership, Improving Preaching and Worship, and Evangelism and Outreach in the United Methodist Tradition.

We’re providing this training exclusively through the sessions of annual conference so that every pastor and a lay member of every annual conference must attend. There are sixty-six annual conferences in the United States and they are all held in late May through mid June, which will require speaking at 8 to 10 a year - two to three a week. To my knowledge this has not been done since the time of Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke - the first two General Superintendents of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America in the late 1700’s.

This year we took a trial run at this by presenting this material at five annual conferences: the Kansas West Conference, the Alabama-West Florida Conference, the Memphis Conference, the Tennessee Conference and the East Ohio Conference. All together 4,900 pastors and church leaders participated. It was exciting and exhausting. My aim was to encourage, equip and inspire leaders.

We’re challenging every United Methodist Church to have a written mission statement that is short but compelling and consistent with our denomination’s mission statement. We’re challenging pastors and church leaders to develop several specific and measurable goals to strengthen their churches in the following year. We’re challenging pastors to develop a preaching plan, to offer sermons that will connect with unchurched people, and to develop follow-up strategies for new visitors. And we’re encouraging lay and clergy leaders to honestly evaluate their strengths and weaknesses in the area of leadership and to focus on at least two areas they will work to improve.

Will all of this really make a difference? I don’t know. I think that for at least 20 to 30% of the pastors and church leaders this will have a positive impact on their ministry, perhaps more. I believe this because every place I go I hear stories of people and churches who have taken the ideas we’ve shared at our Leadership Institute or from my books, applied them, and seen significant results. In the last few weeks these included a church that had shrunk to 17 people a few years ago, but now has 60 in worship; a church with 22 now has 90; and a church that had 100 members ten years ago now has over 1,000.

If you are a pastor or lay leader from another annual conference and would like to see us bring this training to your annual conference, we are booking dates for 2009 and 2010 right now. Contact Debi Nixon, our Executive Director of Catalyst Ministries at debi.nixon@cor.org if you would like more information. We’re preparing to send materials out to all of the United Methodist bishops in the United States in the next eight weeks inviting them to consider including this event as a part of their annual conference sessions.

My apologies for taking leave of blogging for several weeks. I know that’s bad form in the blogosphere but I came to a point where I was out of gas and running on empty. It’s been a crazy few weeks - exciting, exhilarating and exhausting. I’ll give you a thumbnail and then offer a couple of new posts.  At the end of May I launched headfirst into a new initiative focused on taking leadership training to annual conferences within the United Methodist Church.  Each week I’d fly out of town on my day off (Monday) and then speak all day Tuesday, or all day Wednesday or both.  At night I would stay up late working on my sermon (hence no blogging).  Then fly home in time for Thursday and Friday meetings, completing writing the weekend sermons and the normal stuff I do as senior pastor.  Throw in a wedding, a funeral and a few other events and then preach five times each weekend and I found myself, by this last week, dragging.  Sunday night I did not stay to greet after worship, but instead, LaVon and I left immediately for the airport to catch a 7:50 p.m. flight for Colorado.  This week is my annual sermon planning retreat.  While it’s still work, it is a different pace - prayer, long walks in the woods, reading, studying and outlining sermon series.  Then, in the evening, just spending time with LaVon playing.  More on this in another block.  For now I simply want to say, I’m back to blogging.

“Love is patient, love is kind…” Which of us has not heard these lofty words read at weddings? But these words were written to guide a community in crisis. The Christians in first century Corinth struggled with conflict and lawsuits. They were tempted by promiscuity in a society where sex was big business. They wrestled with how to have healthy marriages. And they found no shortage of idols to command their attention. In this five-week series of messages we’ll take you back to first century Corinth to hear how Paul’s words to this community continue to speak to us in our struggles and temptations today.