Return to Red River

In the archives of the first year of this blog there is a post on "Monuments" in which I mention the Red River Meeting House, the site where the Second Great Awakening began in what was then the American West in 1800.  We had quit attending their annual commemorative event, in part for the reasons mentioned in that post, in part because we had moved farther away, and in part because of time pressures.

But this year my wife and I went back down, taking a weekend vacation after a year in which we've mostly been on the fast track.  It was restful (The grounds still seem a peaceful place; I've heard it is like that at Cane Ridge, where an even larger revival meeting took place the following year, but I've never been there).

The grounds looked much the same:  the gravestones in the cemetery are maybe in a little worse shape, the log replica "meeting house" still stands but needs work.  But the people who came had largely changed.  Two couples among the locals who put the event on were still there, but of the historical re-enactors who used to attend, only two of our old friends were there with us.  The historical camp was still about the same size, but with a whole new crew of people.  On the other hand, the modern camp was larger, and there were a lot of small children.

But the bigger change was in the attitude of those who were there.  I came away with the impression that these folks are no longer content with polishing the monument:  They have moved beyond that and are praying for the fire to fall again, not just in Logan County, Kentucky, but on the country as a whole.  And I am glad to see it.  The group included people from Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, and maybe some from farther away at times.  And a number of Christian groups were represented as well.

The culmination came on Saturday evening, at the end of the night's service.  The message was from one of the campers, not a professional preacher.  At the end there was an invitation to pray for the needs of some of the attendees.  This went on for a while (some in the area have been hard hit by the economic conditions the last few years).  Then it shifted into prayer for our country and for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit--not just in this place, but all over our land.

There had been some recounting of the history of this place earlier in the evening.  People in the area back then had seen the need in their locality, and had made a covenant to pray at sunrise and sunset for a year for their neighborhood.  As it turned out, they prayed for three years.  And then, at a scheduled communion service, with no special emphasis and no big-name outside speaker brought in, the fire of revival fell.  And lives, and the region, were changed.  As the Book says, "This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes."

And historically, this is how revival happens.  Major outpourings are not led by popes, archbishops, and denominational executives.  They are sparked by little people that nobody had heard of before.  The "Big Men in the Brotherhood" are always so busy doing BMITB-type things that they don't respond when God wants to do something, so He uses nobodies who are available.  And when empowered by Him, they change the world, not because of who they are, but because of Who is with them.

There was some talk that Saturday night of "organizing" the feelings present, of making lists and signing papers, of "accountability" and so on, but it did not go far.  And I'm glad it didn't.  The important thing is not creating some kind of organization to pray for revival, but to just pray for revival!  It is good to know that there are others out there who also care and are praying; but trying to organize it will just turn into a substitute for praying.  We need real prayer and real revival, not some organizational substitute (remember, a substitute is something they try to give you in place of the real thing!).

So, I'm praying, and I know there are others doing so as well.  All who want to join in are welcome.  If anyone wants to tell us they're joining us in this, that's okay; if you pray without telling us, that's okay too; because the real point is the praying, not telling other people what we're doing.

Following the Holy Spirit

I know I haven't posted anything for a long time, but I got into a Facebook discussion the other night and apparently the software did not allow enough room for what I was trying to say, so I am going to put it here for whatever good it may do. Some of the things I will say I have said in various places, maybe even in the archives of this blog, but I don't think they have all been said in one place at one time. So here it is.

The discussion didn't start there, but it ended up in a debate over following the Bible vs. following the Holy Spirit. The obvious answer is that we need both. In practice, it is never that easy. The sad truth is, through much of history, the Church at large has neglected and ignored the Holy Spirit. For hundreds of years the Christian world was dominated by a doctrine that the Holy Spirit works only through the written Word. Even Pentecostals and Charismatics have over time declined into a tendency to focus on what the Holy Spirit says through "anointed" preachers, teachers, and "prophets'' rather than each Christian learning to hear what the Holy Spirit has to say themselves. In sixty-one years of life, all but the last two spent in local congregations, I have only seen one local church that made any kind of serious effort to teach ordinary church members how to hear from the Holy Spirit themselves. And I have seen all too many members of the clergy who seem to prefer being the spokesman for the Holy Spirit rather than having Him at work among their people without their supervision. (That's about the kindest way I can put it.)

I am not trying to say we should not read the Bible. We do need a good working knowledge of it: the basic drift of the overall Old Testament story, the life and teachings of Jesus, His death and Resurrection, the life of the early Church from Acts and the Epistles, and so on. But knowledge of the Bible is not the end in itself; it is a means to the real end, knowing its Author. The Jews had hundreds of years to figure out the prophecies about the coming of the Messiah; yet when He came, the ones who had the most trouble recognizing him were the "scribes and Pharisees", the Bible scholars of the day. They had focused on the means so much they missed the real purpose of all their study.

I hate to say it, but human beings are too lazy for their own good. Our fallen human nature does not want to take the time to develop a close personal relationship with the Creator. Left to itself, human nature wants a set of hoops to jump through, so it can feel good about what it has done and then go on and live like it wants to. In church leaders, that fallen human nature tends to look around for hoops to give the members. (After all, it's easier to evaluate how many hoops a given church member has racked up than to get close enough to the person to find out how they actually live.) Read the Bible all the way through in a year? Chalk up a hoop. Memorize the most verses in a contest? Another hoop. Get a pin for a year's perfect attendance at Sunday School? One more hoop.

The problem here is the assumption that knowledge of the Bible is equal to spiritual growth. What if it isn't? One thing that has stuck with me over the years from a college class in Christian education is this quote: "Learning has not taken place until there is change in the life of the learner." If all the Bible you have absorbed does not change the way you live, you haven't really learned it. Or as Jesus Himself advised, "You will know them by their fruit." He is more interested in results in our lives than in credentials from programs and classes.

So far, I've edited out about half of what I had above this line, because I want to focus on the real point: it is possible to follow the Holy Spirit, and learn to hear Him (Yes, "Him," not "it"--the New Testament uses the masculine pronoun, not the neuter). It can be done. But it is not easy. The religious hoops seem to be the easy way, at least at first; but they only lead you to either great frustration, or self-righteousness and pride.

The first step in learning to hear and follow the Holy Spirit is the hardest for us fallen human beings. It can be summed up as "Sit down and shut up!" We want to do things; we want to be leaders; we want to have our say; we want to be in control of the situation. These desires go back to the original temptation that caused Eve and Adam to fall: "You shall be as God." We want to be autonomous; we want to be master of our fate.

And the key to learning to follow the Holy Spirit is to give all that up. "Sit down"--quit doing things on your own and in your own way. "Shut up"--because as long as you are talking, you are not listening to Him. The first thing we must do is surrender our desire to be in control and yield the control to Him. It is hard for us to do, and has to be done again and again, day by day until we learn the habit. We want so much to be in control. But as a very wise pastor I once knew liked to say, "If you can see where you're going, you aren't walking by faith." But when you give up control, you have to trust the One who is in control. The "religious" word for this is "faith." In fact, "trust" is the literal meaning of the Greek word that is usually translated "faith" in the New Testament.

When you trust someone you don't rush in and do things your way; you wait for the one you trust to do it. But most of us rush in and do things and say things without waiting to hear from the Holy Spirit what we should do and say. We have not learned to trust Him. And being what we are, it does take time to learn this pattern of doing things.

I'm going to use an example from my own life for how this can work. I have always been musical; I learned to play guitar as a teenager, I sang in choirs in high school and in church. I started "leading the singing," as we called it back then, when I was seventeen (this was still in the days of organ and piano). And I have led worship in small churches and small groups over the years. At first, I planned it all my way. I might ask the preacher what he was talking about, then sit down with the hymnal and pick songs that worked with his topic if I could. I would have some rousing stuff first, then quieter as the service went on to communion.

But in a small group we were in at the Cincinnati Vineyard, I began to learn a new way. The group met on Thursday evenings. I would start praying for the music on Friday, and keep it up for a few days. Around Monday or Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest, songs would start spontaneously popping into my mind, sometimes three or four in sequence. All I had to do was write down the list, maybe put one group of songs in front of another. And they worked as well, often better, than what I planned myself. The oddest thing of all was the occasional week when the songs did not come. If I didn't receive the music by Wednesday, I would sit down and work it out the old human away, or pull out a list from a few months ago. And invariably the same thing happened: late Wednesday night or sometime Thursday the phone would ring, and the group leader would tell me something had come up and we would not be meeting that week. The Holy Spirit didn't give me the music because we did not need it. If we needed it, He gave it. In a later group, I reached the point where I did not plan anything ahead; I just sat down with my guitar, strummed a few seconds, and the song came into my head and I played and sang as He gave it to me. (It helps if the group has a good-sized body of music they all know--this one did.)

At one time during our years at that Vineyard, my wife and I went through their training to serve on the Prayer Teams, praying for individuals at the end of the services. One of the things we were taught was not to start praying as soon as the person told us their need, but to wait a few moments and ask the Holy Spirit to show us how to pray for the matter. It felt awkward at first (remember what I said above about how we want to rush in and do) but it worked very well as we learned to rely on the Spirit.

This fits with what Jesus told the disciples: "When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not worry about how or what you are to speak in your defense, or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say." Luke 12:11-12, NASB Two things: (1) That was not just for them--we are all supposed to be "filled with the Holy Spirit." (2) It is not just for the big "life-and-death" matters; we need to learn it on the little things. If you decide to take up mountain climbing, you do not start by heading for Mt. Everest; you start with smaller mountains closer to home. When you have learned to trust Him in the little things, you will be able to trust Him when the "life-and-death" matters come up.

What about the Bible, then? For starters, it is where we begin to learn about the Holy Spirit. And it can be a way to check what we think we are hearing from the Spirit, especially in the beginning; if what we think we are hearing is at odds with the precepts of the Bible, then we need to wait for Him to clarify the matter. He inspired the human writers of the Bible, and He is available to guide us; but He will not contradict Himself. If there is an apparent contradiction, either we are hearing something else other than the Holy Spirit, or there is something wrong in our understanding of the words of the Bible at that point. Wait and see which it is. And as time goes on, you will come to walk in the reality of what Jesus said, "My sheep know my voice." It becomes easier over time. The real barrier that most of us never pass is to "Sit down and shut up" in the beginning.

What's Wrong With Gambling?

My last post drew a comment from Scott Roche: "Of course gambling is no longer seen as a sin by most Christians. Just out of curiosity, what would you use to justify that it is?" I found the comment last night, but was too tired to respond then. I also wanted time to think about it before writing about it.

It is true that gambling is not directly condemned in the Bible as some other activities are--drunkenness, adultery, and so on. And C.S. Lewis had one of his characters point out in "The Pilgrim's Regress" that God Himself could be considered an inveterate gambler--He takes risks to accomplish His purposes, risks that apparently He considers worthwhile. And on the human level, there are many risk-taking situations in business and other areas that could be thought of as gambling.

But I do think there is a significant difference between the risk-taking mentioned above and the gambling for money--poker in its various forms, slot machines, betting on the horses, numbers games, state lotteries, etc.--that go on today. (The way some people play the stock market could be included too.)

Scott, my first approach to answering your question is to do as Jesus often did and ask you a question in return: How does taking someone's money at cards or with dice fit in with "Love your neighbor as yourself"? Or "Love one another as I have loved you"? How do you seriously love someone and yet take his money? (And if you think the corporations who run the casinos and manage the lotteries are still fair game, go back and look up what Jesus said about the quibbling the scribes and Pharisees used to get around the Law at times. Corporations are a legal fiction in our culture, but they still have people involved--shareholders, employees, management--and they may punish those who lose too much of their money.)

The other conclusion I come to is that gambling for money comes under the heading of "coveting" which is the subject of the tenth Commandment: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor." (Ex. 20:17, NASB) "Anything that belongs to your neighbor" would include his cash. I was taught in a theology class that the Ten Commandments are rooted in the nature of God Himself: He is truth, so lying is wrong; He is faithful, so adultery is wrong; and because He is generous, coveting is wrong. The New Testament both condemns coveting and encourages generosity in the followers of Christ. If a Christian goes into a casino or a "friendly" card game with the expectation of coming out with more money than he carried in, he's probably coveting.
(Of course, I can only say "probably", but God knows the heart--for sure.)

One other standard of evaluation, advanced by Jesus: Look at the fruit. What has been the fruit of gambling in Dearborn County, Indiana? Well, the local governments and the state definitely have more money than before--the town of Lawrenceburg and the county have spent money like drunken sailors for the last ten years (they've also had to fend off attempts by the state to increase its share and reduce theirs). The state seems to go from one fiscal crisis to another, so the casinos have not been a real help. Lawrenceburg and Dearborn County have more problems with drunken driving and crime than they used to--they had to expand the capacity of the local court system to handle the increase. There are a lot of ads offering help for people with gambling problems. And since there are now three riverboat casinos in three consecutive counties, the one in the middle is struggling at times because the other two siphon off so much of the traffic. I really can't say the results are that impressive.

By the way, Scott's statement that "gambling is no longer seen as a sin by most Christians" fits in with something I did say in that last post: that too many churches are full of "churchgoers" rather than disciples of Jesus.

Appearances Can Be Deceiving

I have been thinking about my last post, and the comment that it came from. And I ended up looking back at one of the events that prepared me to think about the problems in today's church structures and practices.

Back in the mid-'90s we were living in Dearborn County, Indiana, on the Ohio River just west of Cincinnati, Ohio. The state of Indiana had recently decided to have riverboat gambling on the Ohio River, and various counties were deciding whether or not to get involved. Dearborn County's officials chose to pursue it, and the issue was put on the ballot.

Now Dearborn County was a changing area. The eastern part was turning into suburbs of Cincinnati, with subdivisions filling in the open spaces. The towns--Greendale, Lawrenceburg, and Aurora, were picking up some new residents from the city, but hadn't visibly changed yet. The western half- to two-thirds of the county was still predominantly rural.

It also appeared to be as religious as any other small-town/rural area. There were the usual mainline Protestant churches in the towns, and a Catholic church in Lawrenceburg. There were a couple of megachurches in Bright, up in the suburban area near the Ohio line, a Methodist one and a Christian Church/Church of Christ. And the countryside was dotted with church buildings, mostly of the traditional denominations--Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and a sprinkling of others. They weren't on every crossroads, but there were plenty of them.

There was an appearance of strength of religious faith in the area. And when the ballot issue on riverboat gambling came up, nearly all the churches opposed it. (And it wasn't often they agreed on much.) Yet when the vote came, the gambling issue sailed right through, regardless of the opposition of the churches. Within a year the casino was open. The churches of Dearborn County were not as strong as they appeared to be.

I guess this event caused me to look a little closer. I began to notice that those numerous country churches mostly had only six to ten cars in the lot on Sunday morning. I got wind of a Methodist pastor and his wife, also a pastor, who served two churches each to make a living. Former church buildings in the region ended up with new uses.

And to be quite honest, that gambling initiative could not have passed without the votes of a significant number of churchgoers. That leads me to think that many churchgoers are not living lives shaped by their faith, but by the general culture. The church system in this country has for many years been producing churchgoers, but not real disciples.

Since that time, I've seen a lot more: surveys documenting that most Christians live pretty much like their non-Christian neighbors, estimates of 20,000 churches that will close their doors in the next decade or two, church leaders who don't live and behave like Christians...the list could go on and on. But things started getting a lot more obvious to me after that election.

Bob Girard Has Gone Home

Most people may never have heard of him. He wasn't a big-name speaker or denominational executive. He didn't found a megachurch, didn't land in one of the "hot rock" pulpits. He didn't have a radio or tv show. But for many of us who read his two small books back in the 1970s, his words were a breath of fresh air, and had a profound influence on some of us.

Bob Girard was a Wesleyan pastor in Arizona who had the courage to follow God's leading out of "church as usual" and into uncharted territory. He got fed up with programs and began to look for better ways to live as Christians. He found some things out, restructured his congregation for small groups, and eventually they gave their building back to the denomination and operated as a network of house churches. The thing folded later, but their influence lives on. Bob's two books, "Brethren, Hang Loose" and "Brethren, Hang Together," are still being sold on Amazon.com. Many of us who got into small group life in churches in the 70s read his books and learned from them; his writing helped us avoid many pitfalls and saved a lot of headaches. He had to learn to let go and trust the Holy Spirit to lead through others, something many pastors never learn at all.

Anyway, many years and additional books later (and for me and my wife, quite a few churches and small groups later), Bob Girard has gone home. He left this life on June 19 of this year. I found out about it almost accidentally, because I clicked on a link to the blog of the writer of an article I had just read. That eventually led me to his obituary, the blog of one of his family members, and a website that has now been started for him. He seems to have quite a legacy: a fairly large family of children and grandchildren and their spouses (looks like quite a few of them are still strong in the faith) and an untold number of spiritual children who follow in his steps today.

More on Fruit

Last Tuesday evening our small group was discussing the weekend's sermon, which was about joy, one of the fruits of the Spirit. During the talking, something struck me. We often talk about "feeling" joy. But really, if you look closely at the various fruits of the Spirit, they aren't feelings, they are attitudes. And attitudes are something we choose. We can even change them. Sometimes we choose unconsciously, without thinking. But they are chosen, not something determined by our circumstances.

Sometimes in raising our kids we had to push them to examine their attitudes toward things, and maybe persuade them to change their attitudes in particular areas. And it often worked quite well.

But what about the feelings? Well, if you bring your attitudes around to what they ought to be, the feelings will usually come around after a while. Feelings are useful followers--they make lousy leaders.

More on Spiritual Gifts

Last night's message at church got me thinking some more on this topic.

I think there are some things that are a combination of talent and gifting. For example, being a worship leader requires a certain level of musical talent, but I've known some very good musicians who could not lead worship well. I think this may be a composite of developed skill and gifting.

I also remember Steve Sjogren, founding pastor of the Vineyard in Cincinnati, sharing that he once believed leading worship was one of his gifts, but later concluded that he was a worshipper, and when he picked up a guitar and worshipped, other people got drawn in.

There are some spiritual gifts that are not that pleasant to be involved in. For most of my adult life I've had a form of the gift of discerning spirits: I don't identify evil spirits, but if something is going on and the Holy Spirit is not in it, there's some kind of internal alarm that goes off in me. Unfortunately, when that alarm goes off, it often means I have to go talk to somebody--somebody who really doesn't want to hear it. Know what? Many of the pastors I've known do not have much appreciation for this gift, especially when they have a new pet project in the works. I do have to be careful not to mix up this with my own likes and dislikes, and not to speak until I'm sure of what I'm hearing. It doesn't happen all the time; I'd say the "alarm" has been quiet for a couple of years now, and that suits me. It's not a comfortable gift.

Gifts and Fruit

In my years in the church (fifty-seven of 'em--no, I'm not a "young whippersnapper" any more), I've seen many times when after teaching on "spiritual gifts" and talk about "discovering your gifts" and so on, a lot of people, often young but not always, get excited about them and want to start exercising them. (Especially the ones that put you up front--I have some thoughts on this, but it will have to be another post.) But what I have come to understand from reading the NT passages on spiritual gifts is that they are not given to us as individuals; they are given to the church--we are not the recipients, we are the delivery truck drivers. They are given to meet the needs of the church body in this life, and as such, they are temporary. Some may be lifelong, but by God's standards that is still temporary. And there have been times in my life when something was given through me, to meet the needs of the moment, and that particular type of gift was not given through me again--sort of a one-shot deal. (And if God wants to work that way, I'm okay with it.)

Now the fruit of the Spirit--love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control--are a different matter. We have to develop these in our lives, with the help of the Holy Spirit. (If it was up to us to generate them on our own, the church would be in a sorry mess--come to think of it, sometimes it does get like that!) But these are character qualities, not functions. So whatever we can acquire of them really does become ours, not only for life, but for eternity. In fact, acquiring these is what turns us into the kind of people who can enjoy Heaven.

I'm not saying the gifts are unimportant, but that they are God's business. If He wants me to help with some delivery now and then, I'll do what I can to oblige. But my real concern--my day job, you might say-- is developing the fruit of the Spirit in my own walk. Can't say the mission is fully accomplished, but I haven't given up yet either.