Enchanted Community

BLOG 11.26.12: Y’KNOW WHAT? WE COULD CHANGE THAT!

I trust that my readers of this Blog will not consider me a total Scrooge, or some kind of a dour old wet-blanket, but I really do want to register my own protest to the consumerist-materialist orgy we have made out of the Christmas event. Here we are in the aftermath of “Black Friday,” and everything in me rebels. I really feel no responsibility to assure the solvency of the large department store chains which depend on the sales of such, nor to indulge the greed of so many. I hope you’ll forgive me.

But we (the larger Christian community) could change all of that if we had the heart and mind to. Not only so, but we could create something wonderfully creative and beautiful if we had the intention. (Some Christian communities are already into this. Cheers!).

When I say this, there comes to mind a Bible and theology conference that I was partly responsible for planning a number of years ago. We invited two gifted theologians as speakers. One was the Argentinian, Rene Padilla, who is a New Testament scholar, and a key member of the Latin American Theological Fraternity (or some such name). The other speaker was Walter Brueggemann, one of the giant Old Testament scholars of the last century. They had never met, but one would think they had planned this together. What they taught that week resonates with my reason for this Blog.

Dr. Padilla was fresh off the plane. He took as his working text: I Peter 2:11. “Beloved, I       urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which war against your soul.” In unpacking this, he interpreted the Greek word translated as “flesh” in its corporate, cultural sense, i.e., the dominant social order in which they lived. In an almost off-handed way, he observed that as a Latin American, his opinion of the United States was that its dominant religion was consumerism. He noted that even in Christian journals, for a price you could buy a program to give you a successful church! He then spent the next three days making this even more graphic. Sound familiar?

Dr. Brueggemann took a text from somewhere in the Pentateuch (I can’t find it now) in which Israel was about to go into the promised land, and were told that each year they should go back to the boundary and remember from whence they had come, and that they were a pilgrim people who belonged to Yahweh/God and were to live under his covenant, and not be like the nations around them. He made exactly the same point as Dr. Padilla did. We, Christian folk, are a counter-cultural people and so need to create a community that incarnates our values, even when it is totally counter to the popular tides.

Now I know that the Christian church, as it spread into pagan Europe and Britain, co-opted the pagan festival of the winter solstice (Yuletide) as the occasion to celebrate the incarnation. But there was still some integrity as they focused liturgically on the Advent, the birth of Jesus, and then followed it immediately in the liturgical year with the Feast of St. Stephen the Martyr, and a couple days later with the remembrance of the Massacre of the Innocents. This all gave the community a sobering and celebrative sense of its roots and the cost of being a disciple.

I hold out a vision of a church that refuses to engage in this current orgy of consumerism, and rather creates a celebration, which incarnates the wonder of what happened when the Lord of the universe took on flesh and blood, and inaugurated a new creation.

That could be exciting.

Now, … I’ve gotten if off of my chest. Thanks for bearing with me. Peace!

BLOG 11.19.12. GROSS MIS-USE OF THE DESIGNATION: “EVANGELICAL”

The definition: “evangelical” has been grossly besmirched, and made too often tawdry, by so much of the press in the recent political campaign. Of course, it is also misused by all too many unthinking folk inside the church as well. Let me explore that with you.

The adjective: evangelical, derives from the word “evangel,” i.e., a Greek word that designates a thrilling announcement. It is, yes, a thrilling word, or maybe better: a word suffused with thrill. It was used in Greek and Roman cultures to announcement great events, military victories, major accomplishments of many sorts. It was the kind of thing that a herald would shout in the marketplace as he announced to the populace some news they really needed to know.

The New Testament writers adopted it to speak of the thrilling announcement of what God had done, and was doing, in and through Jesus the Messiah. Paul would speak of this as the awesome reality that: the mystery hidden from the ages was now revealed in and through Jesus with cosmic consequences. It speaks of reconciliation of heaven and earth, of the forgiveness of sins, and of New Creation now in process in the here and now. The evangel spoke of God’s declaration: “Behold, I make all things new!”

When Jesus inaugurated his public ministry in village of Nazareth he gave content to this “evangel.” He announced his good news to the (helpless) poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, liberty to the oppressed, and the arrival of the great Jubilee of God. Toward the end of his earthly ministry he gave the criteria by which all would be judged at the end of the age, when he identified himself with the hungry and thirsty, with the stranger/immigrant, with the naked, with the sick, and with those in debtors prison. These two passages smack of Isaiah 61!

Sandwiched between those beginning announcements and that ending prophecy is the agenda of his New Creation, which is the mandate of all of those who will follow Jesus. It is called the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s account of the evangel (or the Sermon on the Plain in the Luke’s account). It talks, right up front, about identity with the poor, with the mourning, with the meek, with those passionate about righteousness, with the merciful, with the pure in heart, with peacemakers, and with those willing to undergo persecution for the sake of such.

By implication within this agenda are such things as the sanctity of life, the sanctity of sex, the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of environment and the stewardship of creation … and, ultimately the whole of life.

Such an evangelical agenda is far too radical and subversive to be fully embraced by any known political party, or any configuration of liberal or conservative folk!

Not to mention that there are all kinds and breeds of evangelicals: Protestant and Catholic evangelicals, Messianic Jewish evangelicals, fundamentalist evangelicals, progressive evangelicals, radical evangelicals, social action evangelicals, charismatic evangelicals, and Pentecostal evangelicals …. As well as composites of all sorts.

All that said: to identify “evangelical Christian” with some conservative political segment, as has been done in recent times, is an exercise in obvious mindlessness whether by the press, the politicians, or by those in the church who grab it as self-identity. The evangel, the gospel, is huge and cosmic and all embracing and transformational and fraught with joy and hope and sheer thrill!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

BLOG 11.15.12: MISSIONARIES TO THE CHURCH, YET?

In my last blog I raised the vision of a creative new generation, formed by a whole different culture, and which I have hopes will also create fruitful and imaginative new wineskins for the church.

The other part of me hangs out in coffee shops and loves to get into conversations with these same emerging generation folk, and to realize what an enigma the church is for them. You see, when you’re a working author of Christian stuff, and a veteran of 40 years in the pastorate, it’s hard to escape your identity. But over coffee in the ambience of the coffee shop, we get some good conversations going. These conversation partners are mostly what the pollsters call: “nones,” in that they do not identify themselves with any church. But what is interesting is that they will nearly always explain to me that they are, however, “spiritual.” That, in itself, can initiate some good conversations just by asking to fill me in on what they consider spirituality to be about. I find a huge spiritual hungering among these, and they will frequently want my blog-site, and will give me their business card.

But when it comes to the church, they have a: “been-there-done-that,” or have encountered some sterile, and often hurtful, experience with the church that leaves them unconvinced that it has anything to offer. Ouch!

So, what do I do with that? I know some really contagious and fruitful and convincing church communities. They tend to be smaller, and usually fairly new. These communities are still clearly focused on who Jesus is, what he taught and did and promised, and are highly motivated to fulfill the mission for which he has called them. Such church communities, I find, have a lot of these self-same “nones” turning up at worship time to “sniff-out” the community, which they have heard of from mutual friends. As a matter of fact, many of them are primarily composed of such “nones” who have finally encountered the love and grace of God in Christ in that community. Meanwhile, …

Yes, meanwhile, I also look at the vast array of traditional church institutions that cover the landscape. I’ve got a long history of attending regional church meetings, listening to reports, passing motions about this and that, and going home wondering why I wasted a day. Such meetings, amusingly, remind me of an old Irish drinking song:

“O, McCarty is dead, and McGinty don’t know it.

McGinty is dead and McCarty don’t know it.

O, both of ‘ems dead and lying in bed,

And neither knows that the other is dead.”

The tragedy is that such churches are like McGinty and McCarty in that nobody seems to notice. They are too often devoid of the vital signs, and thrill about Jesus and the gospel. Nobody seems to notice as long as traditional “churchy” activities go on as scheduled.

And yet, within nearly all of these moribund and often sterile churches, there are usually those small colonies, or villages, or cohorts, of believers who take Jesus seriously, and are formed by the word of Christ. They find each other in classes, or house churches, or around dinner tables and in coffee shops.  They share encouragement, prayers, and hopes for a refounding of their larger church community. Yes, there are often those smoldering embers waiting to burst into flame. In this blog I need to celebrate these faithful dear who also give me hope … those who are the faithful missionaries to such churches, which churches are themselves mission fields.

Come Holy Spirit!

BLOG 11.12.12: THE EMERGING GENERATION—A NEW CULTURE

The day after the recent election President Obama made a visit to his campaign headquarters in Chicago to thank those couple-hundred young volunteers, who had worked so brilliantly and tirelessly for him for many months and had produced an election that the traditional old professional “pols” couldn’t imagine.

It was an emotional Barack Obama, one we don’t often see. He was warm and spontaneous as he reminisced with them, and told them how proud he was of them, and how hopeful for the future because of them. He told them that when he first began to do community organizing in South Chicago years ago, he didn’t really know what he was doing, but the wanted to make a difference. He told them that they were so much smarter than he was, and more innovative. We saw tears run down his face as he looked at them and at the future of our national community. Then he went around and shook hands with, and hugged each of them.

What those young adults had done was to tune-in to a whole new demographic and socio-culturally different generation. Old guard campaign strategists had not computed such a different generational and ethnic culture. Those young adults with their computers in that room had been so skillful that they had predicted the outcome of the election with near perfect accuracy weeks before the election. No wonder the president was proud of them, and no wonder he took hope for a generation younger than his own who would be able to create something fresh and new in resolving major challenges before the nation.

As I watched that video I could only wish/hope that those who are responsible, and who look at the church missiologically, could have that kind vision for the capacity and potential of our own ecclesiastical emerging generation.

The patterns of the past, those of Christendom, and of its vast ecclesiastical institutions, what with formidable sanctuaries and church facilities, along with its often-unreal clergy-seminary subculture, will fade with the older generations. I firmly believe in, and foresee my emerging younger adult friends conceiving wineskins for the church that are totally fresh and contagious, church communities conceived to incarnate the true missional character of the church, i.e., equipping every participant for 24/7 mission in an increasingly post-Christian and frequently hostile daily environment so that times together are encouraging and formative and engaged with real life. I think those wineskins are not going to be encumbered with focus on place, and traditional “church programs” but will be transient, versatile, mobile, flexible, joyous, contagious and welcoming. Church planting will become a strong motivation, and every believer’s home, or condo, or apartment will potentially be the beginning place of a new church colony.

With the president, I see incredible honesty, realism, genius and creativity in my young friends. I’m excited with them and for them.

And what will become of all of the vast and expensive church real estate that dots our landscape? Did you ever watch a travelogue of Ireland, and see all of the ruins of ancient sanctuaries and monasteries? Centuries ago they were launching places for mission. Times changed. Now they are but stopping places to take photos on tours. Go figure.

The church emerging will be irrepressible, self-reproducing, missional and liturgical communities. I have hope.

BLOG: 11.08.12. “EVANGELIZING THOSE ALREADY BAPTIZED”

Comments heard in the recent presidential campaign having to do with the church, and the Christian faith, and the constituents thereof, often left me puzzled, and reminded me of the ostensible quote from the late and short-lived Pope John-Paul I (circa 1978), to the effect that: “the primary task of the church today is evangelizing those already baptized.”

The confusion of New Testament Christianity with “American values” underscores this point.

This phenomenon also reminds me of Annie Dillard’s wonderment: “Why do these people in churches seem like brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? Churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. … It is madness … we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares …” (Teaching A Stone to Talk, 1988, p. 40).

A generation ago, another significant author, Madeline L’Engle wrote that her literary colleagues hesitated to get engaged with her in any approach to the Christian faith because: “Christianity is too wild and free for the timid.” O yes!

Maybe I’m just too influenced by writers who are aware of the “sort of power,” and of what kind of trouble it can get Christians into as a counter-cultural community formed by the radical claims of the gospel of the Kingdom, and by the Sermon on the Mount. I commend, for example, Walsh and Keesmaat’s Colossians Remixed (InterVarsity Press) as a case in point, or maybe Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or (if you can find a copy) Radical Discipleship by Christopher Sugden. Then toss in a bit of the novelist Anne Lamont to spice it up a bit.

So what we tend to do is to create a subverted and emasculated version of the church, and we “devotionalize” (spiritualize?) the Sermon on the Mount, and are content to be faithful, but (I would suspect) un-evangelized church members, who never enter into the “wild and free” life that God intends for his new creation folk, … and are content with what Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes as: “religious Christianity,” which is comfortably conformed to the culture.

The demands of the gospel are as much a part of the gospel as the promises!

So what do I/we do with this? As a starting point, we must be quite certain that our own faith in Jesus Christ, and our love for Jesus Christ, and our obedience to Jesus Christ is well-informed, robust, and contagious as we then engage in conversation with our colleagues in church communities.

The church’s restoration nearly always begins by such underside pockets of Christian authenticity.

Peace!

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BLOG. 11.05.12. GOD’S KINGDOM PEOPLE VIS-À-VIS THE EMPIRE.

Tomorrow is Election Day, and though most are totally fatigued with the whole thing, it is a necessary time for God’s kingdom people to reflect on the purpose of their presence in this scene—not to mention how radical and subversive our presence is to be (which hasn’t dawned on all too many unthinking church folk).

Peter says that God’s people are an alien presence, or sojourners, in the midst of this fallen world. In his case it would have been the Roman Empire (I Peter 2:11 in loc.).

Daniel and his friends were literal exiles, but even when Daniel achieved a place at the very highest ranks of the vast Babylonian empire, he always knew who he was, and that Babylon was not his home country, though it was the place of his incarnation. There he determined that his ministry was to be such that it was only explainable by God. He learned to discern the national idols. (Thank you, Mark Labberton, for this in sight.)

The second century Letter to Diognetus, with some wonderment from a Roman official on the outside looking in, describes Christians as follows: “For Christians are not differentiated from other people by country, language, or customs you see, they do not live in cities of their own, or speak strange dialects. … They live in their own native lands, but as aliens; as citizens they share all things. Every foreign country is to them as their native country, and every native land as a foreign country. … They are passing their days on earth, but as citizens of heaven. They obey the appointed laws and go beyond the laws in their own lives. … To put it simply—the soul is to the body as Christians are to the world. The soul is spread through all parts of the body and Christians through all the cities of the world; Christians are in the world but not of the world.” (You can read this whole remarkable and much quoted letter from a Roman official evaluating the Christian phenomenon in the empire by Googling it.)

All that said: on this Election Day Christians can never identify themselves as primarily citizens of this nation. We are those whose primary citizenship is in heaven, and we are colonies of heaven who always live in missionary confrontation with our context, and within the dominant social order of our residence. To identify ourselves primarily as citizens of this American “empire” is to compromise our calling as God’s kingdom people. Whenever the church makes peace with the empire, the empire wins and the church is diminished.

Our Christian calling is not “comfort-zone” stuff.

The danger is to a split-vision worldview, a worldview: “that divides faith from life, church from culture, theology from economics, prayer from politics and worship from everyday work will always render Christian faith irrelevant to broad sociocultural forces. And that is exactly what the empire wants—a robust, piously engaging private faith that will never transgress the public square” (from Colossians Remixed, by Walsh and Keesmaat. P. 95. Highly recommended).

Yes, kingdom integrity within this empire always engages us in our confrontational role as salt and light, and we are always going to be different—weird. Accept it. Then go vote for what comes closest to our radical kingdom ethics. Peace!

BLOG 11.1.12. “ALL SAINTS DAY: ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE”

I love All Saints (All Halloweds) Day. I love to remember all of those remarkable people (saints) in my own life who have encouraged and blessed and prayed for me along the way, often in the dark nights of my soul. And I love to think of all of those from former generations and from far away places, who have impacted me, not to mention those who have written all of the hymns that so daily enrich my life and exalted Christ.

But … let me on this 2012 All Saints Day think in a different dimension. What of those saints yet unborn? The psalmist speaks of them: “Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord” (Psalm 102:18). Whom will they see, and who will be the models of robust faith and obedience and creativity—of salt and light and of transformational kingdom influence for them?

I don’t want them to see sterile and colorless and impotent and churchified “religious Christians.” I don’t want them to lament about Christian faith, as the figure in Kazantzakis’ Zorba the Greek did about life in general: “ … it all seemed bloodless, odorless, void of any human substance. Pale blue, hollow words in a vacuum. … emptied …no more seed, no more excrement, no more blood. Everything turned into words, every set of words into musical jugglery, … he sits in solitude and decomposes the music into mute mathematical equations.”

God forbid that the next generation should see such in those of us of this generation who are ostensibly Christ’s church.

I want the coming generation of saints to have their appetite whetted by my generation. I want them to see in me, and us, God’s new creation in its most robust truly human demonstration. I want them to have wholesome models, and teachers, and writings which are closer to their cultural setting.

The grand hymn for this day (to my mind) is: “For all the saints, who from their labors rest …” Allow me to propose a crude draft for another verse of this hymn:

For all the saints, who are as yet unborn,

But shall emerge and so Thy church adorn.

May we for them a wholesome model be;

May they give praise, and we examples be,

That all in them your faithful follow’rs see.

Alleluia! Alleluia!

Something like that.

For of us in this generation, we can look at those whose testimony formed us, and sing:

Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might,

Thou, Lord, their captain

In the well-fought fight,

Thou in the darkness drear,

Their one true light.

Alleluia! Alleluia!

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses …”  (Hebrews 12:1)

We did not get here by ourselves!

Peace!

BLOG 10.29.12: “THE DANGERS OF AN UNCONVERTED … WHAT?”

In 1740 a Presbyterian preacher by the name of Gilbert Tennent created something of a brouhaha in the ecclesiastical scene by preaching a sermon on: “The Dangers of An Unconverted Ministry.” This question has been revisited over the years and often hijacked to refer to all of the different components of the church (seminaries, etc.), that become pathological when they are not formed by a passion for the centrality of Jesus Christ, and for his mission to declare the gospel of the kingdom of God to every people group in all the earth.

I have a question and it has to do with an assumption behind Gilbert Tennent’s sermon, namely, that somehow we have a church that is clergy-dependent. If the church is dependent upon its church professionals, then that is a serious subversion of the essence of the church. After all, the church is probably 95+% non-clergy. If only the clergy/pastors/church professionals are the one’s responsible for the church’s integrity, life, orthodoxy, mission, etc. … then I don’t read my Bible very well.

If the pastors (the “ministry”) are unconverted, as Tennent suggests some are, then what is the responsibility of all those other baptized members of the Body of Christ?

There may have been a day when only the clergy were those educated in Bible and theology, but no longer. As I have been saying in these past several Blogs, there are Biblical resources available to any interested believer in Jesus Christ today that would have made the “giants” of the past envious. There are books, web sites, on-line resources, etc. that give any believer the information with which to engage in a fruitful and transformational life of true discipleship.

And the present crop of pastors and teachers should not be immune to the evaluations and critiques of those “laity” whom they are ostensibly equipping for their own 24/7 ministries in the daily stuff of life. Remember: every person by virtue of his or her baptism is ordained to a life of ministry as he or she demonstrates the image of the Son of God in daily life. Every believer is called to the mission of God. And if the ostensible pastor-teacher of a community is not communicating such, then he or she needs to be held accountable.

Early on in my own career, when I was confident that I was God’s gift to a large college class that I was teaching, I delivered a lesson that came fresh from some graduate studies I had done in the theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith. I was so proud of how well I did … until three of my student friends approached me with this: “Bob, We don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about.” That may have been one of the most helpful pieces of pastoral theology I ever received, like, if my folk don’t know what in the hell I’m talking about then the problem is mine, not theirs. I need to engage them in dialogue until it is clear.

The other episode was when a friend and I walked out of what had been a bewildering “worship service” and sermon, and his question to me: “What did all of that have to do with anything?” Then he said: “I think I’ll email the pastor and ask him that question.” Frankly, it would do a lot or us pastors good to get that kind of feedback.

The Christian community, which is called the church, needs to be converted, and the pastors are one part of that. There’s nothing like pastors and churches that take Jesus Christ seriously and are profoundly converted to him.

Peace!

BLOG 10.25.12. THE TIME MAGAZINE ARTICLE RE: ON-LINE LEARNING APPLIED TO THE CHURCH, PREACHING, AND WORSHIP.

The current issue Time Magazine (October 19,2012) could, potentially, render to the church a huge service, especially with its lead article: “College is Dead. Long Live College!” The focus of the article is on the emerging global phenomenon of on-line learning. Some of the significant figures in the article have tapped into the awesome recent discoveries and developments in brain-science, especially how the brain most effectively absorbs and processes knowledge.

What it has discovered is that not only does this make higher education available to huge numbers of people globally, but that it establishes networks among these people, and that it actually can be much more effective in education than traditional college lectures. It gives an example from Stanford where a professor offered his class the option of taking the traditional course with its exams, or taking it on-line with its exams. Result? Those who took it on line achieved a whole grade point higher than those who took the traditional course.

Granted, the article says that ideally education should be a combination of both on-line courses and the communal experience of a college class. I think the readers of my Blog would find the article suggestive.

What it provokes in me is the question as to whether the church, in its understanding of its inner life of worship, energizing, equipping for discipleship, and of mission … is somehow stuck in a previous century, or another era when the clergy-person was the educated person (the “parson”) in the community, so that a sermon was the primary means of such equipping. In turn that clergy person was frequently the product of a university course in divinity (whatever that is) taught by those who were academicians and not disciple makers.

But what we now know is that a lecture, or a sermon, is one of the least effective ways of transmitting information to the brain. Do we have the imagination to conceive of the task of the church in terms that are fresh and more effective? I am reminded of Walter Brueggemann’s classic comment: “The key pathology of our time, which seduces us all, is the reduction of imagination, so that we are so numbed, satiated, and co-opted to do any serious imaginative work.”

We faithful church folk “go to church” and participate in singing hymns that are rich in the church’s classic faith, but just loaded with images and vocabulary that most could not explain if they tried. We listen to brief sermons that come at us after our week of immersion in all kinds of other demands and distractions, so much so that it is difficult to relate them to our lives, and often are taken totally out of their Biblical context.

And here we sit with our iPads or laptops where we have available Biblical and theological resources unimaginable to a previous generation. What if … the church’s worship leaders and teaching pastors sent along a précis of the sermon, with references, and applications, and questions, and explanations in the week before—and do this with a place for responses and questions from us to them? The potential is mind-boggling (and also scary and demanding for the teachers … but they would profit too).

I’m just beginning with this bit of imagination, so stand by. Maybe we can get into the 21^st century yet.

Meanwhile, happy St. Crispian’s Day: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers …”

BLOG 10.22.12. DISCIPLE-MAKING: WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY? YOURS!

In the two recent Blogs, I have been asking you: Whose responsibility is that of your disciple-making? The answer to that, right up front, is that it is primarily yours if you are a follower of Jesus Christ. It is yours and no one else’s, primarily. As I have stated in those two previous Blogs, it is always a huge treasure when a larger community is so equipped that the Word of Christ dwells richly in its whole fabric. It is always a source of blessing when there are those teaching shepherds who have great skill in communicating both in word and example.

Likewise, it is even more of a blessing when you have a smaller band of those with whom you walk the path of discipleship, and for whom you are accountable, and for whom you are responsible.  God’s intent in the church is, after all, to recreate the human community into that which it is intended to be.

But, even when both of these blessings might be present, it comes down to you and me as the individual members of those bodies to be engaged in the disciplines of being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ (cf. Romans 8:29). Larger and smaller communities are made up of those individuals such as we, who by our baptism into Christ have vowed to be his faithful disciples—and that is choosing the path of transformational and obedient engagement with God’s word and Spirit. We cannot “pass the buck” to someone else!

So, where to begin? Well, let’s acknowledge that being made a disciple is work. One cannot be passive. We, who are authors, have a humorous rule that states that writing begins with deliberately putting one’s butt in the chair and beginning (the B.I.C. rule), so with the disciplines of being transformed into Christ’s likeness. You put your butt in the chair, you pray for the Spirit’s help, and you begin to absorb the content of that wonderful gift of God’s word in the Bible.

And there are incredible resources available to this generation that no one has ever had before. There are translations and paraphrases. There are accessible commentaries and study Bibles that help one over the humps. In this information age we can even download these on our iPads or computer and have at our fingertips more resources of Biblical insights and scholarship than the church before World War II ever had.

Let me suggest several such resources for those who may not have ever explored this. There are several good study Bibles with all kinds of helps, such as the NIV Study Bible. My favorite is the newer ESV Study Bible since I am attracted to the accuracy of the English Standard Version. Beyond this I would commend two larger (but worth the expense) resources: The New Bible Commentary, and The New Bible Dictionary (Inter-Varsity Press). With these at hand you have easily understandable helps to guide you through the Biblical landscape, the cultural stuff, the implications and understanding of what is being said by the Biblical authors.

It is the church’s faith that God has chosen to make himself and his will known to us in the words of Holy Scriptures. We cannot succumb to our own laziness or excuses or indiscipline and make this someone else’s responsibility. It begins with us. And you will find, with a great host of disciples from over many centuries, that it is journey rich in discovery and transformational power.

Whose responsibility? Yours!

Have you got questions? Feed them to me and I’ll try to give some answer, hopefully.