John H Armstrong

Community Is In, Part One

The idea of community is cool these days. Everywhere you turn Christians, especially twenty-something Christians, are talking about Christian community. Most of this should be welcomed by us all. Some of it, for sure, is ill-informed. But all of it is a major correction to the loss of community that we experienced over the past thirty-plus years. As the children of the younger baby-boomers reached their twenties they came of age in a context where they had known dysfunctional family and broken homes. They had also known church as a business more than a caring family, if they knew the church at all. It is thus to be expected that community would be a deep hunger for these younger adults. But this explanation is still far too simple to my mind.

It would be helpful to define the word community before we go much further. It comes from the Latin communitas and means fellowship/community. The Latin communis means common. A community, as most of us use this term in religious contexts, is thus a smaller social unit within a larger one. It is based upon a friendly association rooted in something believed or held in common. It can take many forms but this is the basic idea. We may attend a church service, to illustrate my point, and never participate in a community.

One does not have to read the New Testament for long to realize that this idea of community is closely associated with the church we see in the Scriptures. It seems that most of the earliest Christian churches were small communities of baptized people who shared a covenant meal, at least weekly, and thereby committed themselves to Christ and one another in common life. From this community, or family, they reached into the lives of their neighbors with the love of Christ and drew in new people who were incorporated and taught to be disciples; e.g. learners and followers of Christ. After a period of catechesis these new converts became full participants in the whole life of the church.

Since the 1960s community, especially that type which was rooted in smaller churches situated in small towns or in ethnic groups that formed churches within our larger cities, has broken up. The reasons for this are too numerous to elaborate here. Along with this development came the break-up of families, fostered by no-fault divorce (one of the worst legal changes in our lifetime). By this change homes were changed in massive ways. The neighborhood church, and the ethnic community, became a thing of the past. Churches began to look and feel like places that you drove to in a car in order to attend a service and then drive back home. Mega-churches became the rage in the 1980s and 90s, something impossible without the automobile, and the result is now apparent. (Mega-churches have actually done a great deal of good and have often tried to restore community in ways that address this problem seriously while many smaller churches have simply accepted death by generational decline!)

Now we come to the twenty-first century and the Internet revolution. The twenty-something generation has dropped out of church in massive numbers. Some data says that 4% of them attend church. Whatever the precise number the decline is huge. Unless this is reversed thousands more churches will close in the next twenty years. I personally know dozens of churches that have closed in the last decade. While new churches do open each week the number of older churches closing is vastly larger.

Those younger Christians who sense a deep call to follow Christ know (instinctively) that the church is important. The problem is that they are not quite sure why. What they hunger for is authentic relationships with people that really matter to them, thus the emphasis on community has undergone a major reawakening. This is, in most cases, a very good sign. But where will this take us in the decades ahead?

The questions abound. Will this emphasis on community be the next “evangelical fad” or will it become something more mature and Christocentric? Will it lead to missional Christianity, a kind of faith and practice in which the community of disciples sees itself as the missio Dei? Or will this recovery of emphasis on community lead us to a place where burned-out fundamentalists and mega-church converts will simply seek solace in house-church groups or small cells where the end is themselves and their nurtured pain and opposition? What is needed is community joined with ancient-future faith and deeper Christ-centered worship. I think the jury is truly out on all these questions.

One of the biggest questions of all relates to the Internet itself? What role will this revolution have in the mission of the church, particularly in terms of community? Many in my generation think this revolution is not that important. They are wrong, very wrong. They are as wrong as the nay-sayers were who lived at the time of the first printing press over five hundred years ago. You do not have to agree with every thing being written about emergence of a new global culture to realize that a “great emergence” is taking place. None of us will live to see the real impact that this will have upon the next five hundred years of human history but it will change things massively. Of this I have absolutely no doubt. Curse the emergence all you want, it will not go away. And the impact of this on the church will be great, first in the West and then all over the world as globalization and the Internet spread the change. Some are already suggesting that 9/11 will someday be seen much the way October 31, 1517 is seen by religious historians. I will not live to find out but this could well be true.

One of the fastest growing realities on the Internet is social networks; e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc. Like it or not this is how people are communicating and this is altering education, business and politics. It will also alter the church and how we come to understand the faith and put it into practice, especially in terms of community. I am deeply committed to these social networks. I learn new things about them every day. I believe they are important precisely because I have seen the value they have for the kingdom of God and for mission. I have also seen how powerful they are in allowing me to create friendships of various types. I have resolved that I will do everything that I can to build wider and deeper relationships, spread my vision of missional-ecumenism as widely as possible. and thereby call the church to renewal for the remainder of my life.

Building Bridges With Our Muslim Neighbors

In a world where the fear of Muslims is very high most of us are not sure how to respond to the Muslims we meet from day-to-day. Increasingly Muslims live in our neighborhoods. You almost have to live in a small rural area or a remote place to not see Muslims on a daily bases. They live in many of our neighborhoods and I deal with them on a regular basis. What are we to do?

I suggest the first and most important thing we are to do is not be suspicious of our neighbors unless there is clear and obvious reason to become so. Most have the same hopes, dreams and fears that we do. And most will be good neighbors just like non-Muslims. Our job, as Christians, is to build bridges to our neighbors, not react with fear and enmity. Such bridges can foster harmonious community relationships based on mutual respect, which is always the starting point for our witness as believers. We best engage Muslims when we engage them as human persons made in the image of God just as we are. They have joys and trials just as we do and it is natural to share in these as fellow human persons.

We can look to Muslims as neighbors who want to solve problems just as we do. They want safety, good schools, good jobs, etc. If we know them as people we can share a great deal with them. This means we are called to practice hospitality. "Inter-faith hospitality" is always appropriate. We should allow, indeed encourage, other faiths so that they feel welcome in our midst. My friend Gerald R.McDermott  says there are striking lessons Christians can learn from Muslims, truths that are not absent in our own tradition but truths which we too easily forget. I agree.

When my friend Brian McLaren recently announced that he was going to fast during Ramadan thousands of Christians jumped on him with incredible opposition. I was not one of them. I do not always agree with Brian, especially when he speaks about social solutions to cultural problems, but I found his actions and statements in this instance completely consistent with radical hospitality and Christian love of neighbor. He did not say he fasted because he thought Islam was equal to, or parallel with, Christian faith. He clearly said he did this to show solidarity and to join his neighbors in something that was important to them. I frankly see nothing wrong in his approach unless he said or did something I missed along the way. 

I am reminded that a study undertaken by Fuller Theological Seminary revealed that the number one reason Muslims who converted to faith in Christ gave for becoming Christians had to do with the reality of the love they saw in their neighbors who were Christians. I am not surprised by this in the least. Must we turn every Muslim into a potential terrorist or enemy? Must we fear Muslims because we do not understand them or know them? What ever happened to building bridges for the sake of the gospel? Whatever happened to love, period?

Christ Alone Is Without Sin

Article 15 of the 39 Articles of the Church of England says: "Christ in the truth of our nature was made like unto us in all things, sin only except, from which he was clearly void, both in his flesh, and in his spirit. He came to be the Lamb without spot, who, by sacrifice of himself once made, should take away the sins of the world, and sin, as Saint John saith, was not in him. But all we the rest, although baptized, and born again in Christ,yet offend in many things; and if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."A modernized version says, "Christ, who truly took our human nature, was made like us in every respect except that of sin." I do not think most Christians I know actually believe this point. Or at least most do not act like they believe it. It seems that what they believe is that Christ, being divine in nature, was not really "like us in every respect."

I hear it often said: "I cannot be expected to do that. Jesus was God and I am not God so how can I be expected to conform to his will or resist such a profound temptation?" The problem with this response is that it is wrong. He was God but he was, as this creed says so simply, "like us in every respect."

But, I hear it also said, Jesus did not inherit original sin. Yes, this is true so far as it goes. But he was fiercely tempted in every way and completely and faithfully resisted sin by the power of the same Holy Spirit that he has now given to you and me as Christians. Jesus faced more temptation, real temptation not the play acting sort, than you and I will ever face. It is pointless to argue about whether or not he "could have sinned." I find that debate not only useless but one conducted by people with too much time on their hands. The very question is wrong but even if you grant the question there is no obvious biblical answer except by a strange sort of inferential logic. We simply do not know and should say we know something like this. Leave mystery as mystery. The point is clear: He did not sin and he was truly and consistently tempted to sin.

Paul says that when we are tempted God will provide a way of escape (1 Corinthians 10:13). He provided such a way for Jesus and he always took it by the Spirit's power. We should do the same. Some say this makes this model less than ideal. I find this also silly. Who would you rather follow, a person who faced real trial and stood strong, or a person who faced real trial and failed? Maybe the reason we make such silly statements is because we have forgotten what Article 15 really says.

Keep the BCS Out of Congress

There are many far more important issues for Congress to take up these days than the selection process by which college football decides who the number one football team is in America this season. With the release of the first BCS poll a few weeks ago Congress again talked about getting involved. We have two wars going on overseas, a nation still in financial crisis and a host of important things to discuss and some congressional leaders want to consider the college football bowl season. College football doesn't need any help from Congress believe me. In fact Congress would likely kill the golden goose if it got its way in this matter.

Did you know that there is a college football playoff PAC in Washington? I didn't until very recently. Now that I do I am truly amazed. Bryson Morgan, a member of the board of directors of the Playoff PAC, recently said, "All of us recognize that our nation has weightier issues to tackle. However, this issue merits attention because college football's reach extends beyond the playing field. Democratically elected leaders should devote attention to a national institution that is financially and culturally important to their constituents."

Morgan, and Washington attorney Matthew Sanderson, are two of the co-founders of this PAC. Where did they go to college? The University of Utah. Why is that important? Because these guys felt Utah got shafted last year by not getting to play for the BCS trophy. They think the Utes got jobbed so they are out to change the system for teams like Boise State this year. (Anyone who watches this sport at all knows full well that Boise State would not last for a minute, if the championship was truly on the line, with the elite teams.)

Face it, the college football system is ultimately about revenue. Millions and millions of dollars in revenue go to the various conferences and universities. But both houses of Congress held hearings on the bowl system earlier this year and thus consider this important enough to at least listen to a debate about it. The good news is nothing actually happened. Two congressmen, Neil Abercrombe (D-Hawaii) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), actually introduced a bill called The Championship Fairness Act of 2009 in January. The bill would punish universities by withholding federal funding so long as that university did not line up with their application of fairness. This goes to show that both parties like "fairness" when they can define it and use government to enforce it. These arguments do not hold legal water, as Drew Sharp noted in USA Today on October 21st. Breaking up trusts is one thing but college football is most definitely not a publicly traded trust.

Ultimately this debate is about the present bowl system. The host cities of the bowl games are not about to allow a playoff system when it would kill their games. In the present system every team plays one final game. If you have a playoff system fans can wait until the system works its way down to the final two and just stay home if their team is not in the mix. There is no way the fans of the major schools could travel for three weeks to different parts of the country to see their team work its way into the final game. The whole system would become far less important to the final rankings and how you actually finish the season, up or down.

The BCS is not perfect. Every year somebody will have an argument. This year it will likely be the same. But the system does better than what we had in the past by a long shot. And surely none of this demands the time of our congressional leaders. Tell them to stop wasting your time and money on this foolish argument. College football is fine without Congress messing with it.

How Sweet It Is: Alabama Beats Auburn in a Classic Iron Bowl

Alabama vs. Auburn is very often a classic college football game. Today was no exception. Alabama was a heavy favorite, had a perfect season and had to play Auburn on the road. Auburn had two weeks to prepare and prepare they did. They came out firing and running fast, surprising and gutsy plays. Every Auburn fan should be proud of the effort the Tigers put out this afternoon. They out played Alabama until the final 8:30 of the fourth quarter, when the Tide showed the character and determination that has made them a contender for the second year in a row to win 26-21. What can I say about two straight 12-0 regular seasons? It has never been done in Alabama's storied history. I am proud of this team. They could have lost at least three games this year but refused to lose. And to think that many people thought Nick Saban would not do this well until year four and year three is not over yet. The guy is a winner.

The Crimson Tide drove the field, consuming time and making four huge third down conversions, to win with 1:34 to go. And the play call at the end, of a pass to Roy Upchurch, was a Nick Saban classic. He decided against the call of his offensive coordinator for what appeared to be a certain running play and threw a safe and effective pass to go up by five points. A field goal might have won this game but it would have left Auburn with a serious chance to still win by a field goal at the end. Instead, Saban made the right call (with the guts of a winning coach) and proved again why he is truly a great coach. He can recruit, manage a great staff, handle the pressure and seems to always call a great game. (Consider Les Miles poor management of the LSU vs. Old Miss game last week and you can see why real LSU fans still wish they had Nick Saban.) This guy is one of the five greatest coaches in the game.

Now it is on to the SEC Championship game in Atlanta next Saturday against Florida. Like last year the Gators are the favorite but Alabama will come to play. Both teams have not yet played a truly "great" game so who knows what will happen? I would not bet against Tim Tebow but the Tide will play hard and play to the end. I can't wait but then I need the next eight days to recover from the game today and get ready for more of this kind of excitement. I expect this team is spent tonight but they will be ready when the time comes. Roll Tide. "Every Bama man's behind you, hit your stride!"

The Greatest Rivalries in College Football

Readers of my blog know I am a huge Alabama football fan. By now you can guess what I will be doing this afternoon since Alabama plays its biggest rival, Auburn, on national television. Whether you are a football fan or not the Southeastern Conference (SEC) rivalries are notorious for their show and passion. And good jokes are abundant in the SEC.

Earlier this year a special edition of Sports Illustrated featured several SEC football teams on its cover and then marketed these special editions to the fans of a particular school and region. I made sure that my brother got me the special Alabama issue and I have enjoyed it immensely.

In a feature on SEC rivalries the writer says: “SEC rivalries divide families, strain marriages, test lifelong friendships and inspire bloodless insults—many of which involve illumination.” He goes on to provide a series of light-bulb jokes about SEC schools. Here they are:

How many college students does it take to screw in a light bulb?

At South Carolina is takes 80,000. One to screw in the bulb and 79,999 to discuss how this will finally be the year that they have a decent football team.

At Vanderbilt it takes two. One to change the bulb and one to explain how they did it every bit as well as any Ivy Leaguer.

At Alabama it takes five. One to change it, three to reminisce about how Bear Bryant would have done it and one to throw the old bulb at an NCAA investigator.

At Auburn it takes 100. One to screw in the bulb, 40 to talk about how they do it better than ‘Bama and 50 to realize it’s all a lie, get looped and roll Toomer’s Corner.

At Ole Miss it takes six . One to change the bulb, two to mix the drinks and three to find the perfect J. Crew outfit to wear for the occasion.

At Mississippi State it takes 15. One to screw it in, two to buy the Skoal and 12 to yell, “Go to Hell, Ole Miss, Go to hell!”

At Georgia it takes three. One to screw in the bulb and two to phone a friend at Georgia Tech for instructions.

At Florida it takes four. One to change it and three to figure out how to get high off the old one.

At Tennessee it takes 20. Two to figure out how to screw it in, two to buy an orange lampshade and six to phone a radio call-in show and talk about how much they hate Alabama.

At Kentucky it takes 8. One to screw it in and seven to discuss how much brighter it shines during basketball season.

At LSU it takes seven—and each one gets credit for four semester hours.

At Arkansas it takes none. There is no electricity in Arkansas.

Happy Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving Day clearly has its roots in the idea of a fall harvest festival. It was traditionally, and still is, a time to give thanks for both the harvest and for life in general. In the United States it still remains the most unencumbered of all our special holidays. Little commercialization has tainted it and most of us look forward to it, unless we have painful memories of family or loss that we associate with the day. The day had religious association in American history but much of this has now been lost to secular forces of change. Still in all it retains a charm and a simplicity that most Christians can and do appreciate.

Most of us associate this day with the fall celebration of thanksgiving at Plymouth in 1621. The connection of this event with our modern celebration is as much myth as fact but the link remains in most of our minds.

Alexander Hamilton proclaimed that “No citizen of the United States should refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day” but it wasn’t until decades later that turkey became a staple of Thanksgiving celebrations. The national holiday was established by President Lincoln in 1863, at a time when the nation was badly torn asunder by war.

For the Christian each day should be a time for thanksgiving but this national holiday is a welcome time for our family and friends. Here positive memories and spiritual realities can take on special meaning for each of us. Here we can enjoy food, friendship and gratitude as God’s people. May you have such a blessed day with your family, or some family, as you give thanks for all the manifold blessings you enjoy this year. Enjoy the good food, give thanks to God and celebrate his goodness to you with great joy!

Praying for the Acts of God to Continue in Our Time

The Book of Acts is very often misunderstood, like so much of the Bible. It is a unique book. It is actually a sequel to the Gospel of Luke and continues the narrative of the early church, from the ascension of Jesus to the coming of the Holy Spirit and the early accounts of the spread of the gospel "to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). It ends with Paul's imprisonment in Rome. There is a marked parallelism between Luke's Gospel and Acts.

Christians sometimes debate how to title the book. It is rightly called "The Acts of the Apostles" though it is clearly a record of how the Holy Spirit worked through these first followers of Jesus who were the foundation of the Christian Church. The Holy Spirit is poured out in the second chapter, reversing the movement of the ascension. He becomes the major player in the drama called the church providing energy, courage and power for the mission of Jesus.

A Reformed Church missionary from Taiwan (David Alexander) has summarized some of the highlights of the first ten chapters in an April 2009 article in the Church Herald. I borrow some of his ideas, adding a few of my own, in the following reflections on the first ten chapters of Acts:

1. Risen. Christ corrects misconceptions about his role and the task he has assigned to his friends. He teaches them to live without his bodily presence and promises them the Holy Spirit.

2. The Holy Spirit comes to people in ways compared to nature's power, enabling them to hear God's word anew. Peter becomes the anointed preacher and thousands are converted in one day.

3. A lame man leaps and praises God when his mercy arrives in the person of "country bumpkins" who have heard and declare good news. Divine presence is evident and Peter preaches of a new day coming.

4. Witness moves from courtyards to courtrooms. God brings in more to hear the Word. People respond and go out to tell others. The church is strengthened and people become bold in their witness.

5. Flawed people must deal with a troubled church. Churches are all flawed and need grace and mercy. We must pray for the Holy Spirit to work if the church is to be fruitful.

6. Some who had their feet washed by Jesus come to see themselves as too important for humble service. God's power is shown in those who replace them. Pray for servant leaders in the church today.

7. The Word goes out with power but not all ears are open to it. Some cry out against the Word and stop their ears.

8. Driven out but not under the Word emerges along the roads and among foreign peoples. 

9. Enemies are won to the faith. Pray for scales to fall from the eyes of people who do not see the kingdom of God.

10. Dreams and visions trump traditions and rules. It is hard for faithful people to allow their human traditions to not get in the way of the Spirit's power and work.

Luke expands the story of the church and the apostles in the latter chapters to show how converts were welcomed from every strata of Roman and Greek society. New members become the lifeblood of the infant church. This remains the case in every age. The church that fails to listen to what the Spirit is saying and doing in the Book of Acts will soon die.

Further Ecumenical-Missional Insight from My Friend Dr. Joe Schafer

Yesterday, I told you about my very good friend Dr. Joe Schafer, a frequent commenter on this blog spot. I also told you a bit about his ministry with University Bible Fellowship (UBF) at Penn State University. Joe continues to encourage me as he responds to me as a friend, and to the kingdom vision of ACT 3. He is working hard to create a missional-ecumenical kingdom focused context for mission and unity in State College. I hope to somehow help in this process at the right time. For now I pray for Joe specifically, and in general for the body of Christ in this great university town.

One of Joe’s recent efforts has been to create a Web presence to foster this missional-ecumenism. I will tell you more about this in a moment but here is the remainder of Joe’s reflections upon our time this summer in a UBF conference at James Madison University:


As you have pointed out, the most poignant moment in this worship came when it became explicitly Trinitarian. One of our students, Greg Impink, addressed prayers of worship directly to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Each prayer was followed by a song directed to that person of the Trinity. After the song, we invited members of the audience to come forward to the microphone to offer explicit prayers to that person. No one seemed uncomfortable when praying to the Father. But praying to the Son, and especially to the Holy Spirit, seemed unfamiliar and even awkward. (Someone asked me later: “Is it okay to pray to the Holy Spirit?” I answered, “If he’s fully God, why not?”) In many cases, we lapsed into their familiar stance of praying to the Father or to the generic “Lord.” Nevertheless, the prayers were sincere, heartfelt and wide. Many of us were moved to tears. Our praise and worship lasted almost 90 minutes. When it was over, people looked different. We were refreshed. We were joyful. We spoke with kindness and love toward one another. It was not because we were riding an emotional high. It was because we had been truly united in loving and worshiping God. This was a powerful and practical demonstration of the vital role of worship in Christian community.

On Sunday morning, after you left the conference, we held our Sunday worship service. Ending a conference with Sunday worship is our standard practice. At past conferences, the Sunday worship has had the same look and feel as the other conference sessions, with prayer, hymns and an expository Bible message. This time, however, we did things a little differently. People wore nice clothes. We did not begin with contemporary praise songs but with a moment of silence followed by a Trinitarian prayer of confession and absolution. We included a celebration of the Lord’s Supper. And we ended with a benediction offered by the director of our Washington chapter, Pastor Jacob Lee. (In fact, we were consciously following the four-fold pattern of Christian worship described by Robert Webber.) The message, “I Confer On You a Kingdom,” was based on Luke’s account of the Lord’s Supper (Luke 22:7-30). It focused on the Lord’s Supper as a sign of the new covenant in Jesus’ blood and as a sign of the inheritance that Jesus will bestow on us at the final unveiling of his kingdom. The celebration of the Lord’s Supper was something that we have rarely done. Some of our members were skeptical of its value. But afterward, those doubts were gone. The worship service had no contemporary praise music, only traditional hymns. But our younger members didn’t mind. All of us, young and old, appreciated the worship and the Lord’s Supper. I am an intellectual person who is not easily swayed by emotional experience. I tended to think that Communion was “just a ceremony.” For the first time, I began to see it as much more. I could begin to see the connections between Communion and community. It is not easy to put into words. And I have much more to learn about this. But I now know that celebrating Communion in the right way (and, of course, there is no single right way) has great value for the church, more than I previously realized.

After returning to State College, I did some more reading and reflecting on what I had seen. The basic conclusion I reached is this: Worship is more basic to the Christian life than evangelism and missions. As a 27-year member of UBF, that is not easy for me to say. It is something that many of our members and leaders would probably disagree with. Evangelism and discipleship has been the hallmark of UBF, and anything that seems to diminish their importance might be seen as backsliding or losing our direction. But choosing between worship and evangelism is not merely, as President Obama might say, a false choice. It is an impossible choice. When we neglect worship:

• It becomes difficult to see the kingdom of God,
• It becomes difficult to point others to the kingdom of God,
• We easily fall into the trap of simply trying to build our own ministries,
• We lose the spiritual component of our fellowship, and
• We lack the strength and motivation to evangelize.

As Newbigin has written, evangelism does not begin with obedience to the command of Jesus. If it did, then it would be part of the Old Testament law rather than the gospel. Rather, evangelism starts with the “explosion of joy” that comes from knowing the risen Christ and experiencing the kingdom of God firsthand. And worship is the very essence of this kingdom. We have no knowledge of the kingdom if we do not worship. Finally, there is the most basic reason of all:

• God does not want our acts of service. He wants us.

This conference was truly important for me personally. It may turn out to be important for other UBF members as well. Time will tell. I do want you to know that God used you and your ministry to bless us and to teach us many things that we truly did not know.

After the conference, I went to the ACT 3 website and started reading your weekly commentaries. (I had actually read some of them before. But for some strange reason, I had forgotten that this website existed and had only been reading your daily blog.) When I saw the wealth of material that was there, I realized how valuable this resource was for a person like me who has been placed in a position of leadership but lacks systematic training in theology and church history. And my wife, who loves to read this kind of stuff, got even more excited. She wanted to wrestle me away from the computer so that she could read them first. Then she had a brilliant idea: “Let’s print out all these articles and go away someplace and read them all!” Our three boys were not at home; after the conference, they had gone to North Carolina to stay with our UBF friends there. We were free to come and go as we pleased. So I printed out
about 60 of your commentaries, including last year’s 10-week series on the Trinity. We packed up an overnight bag, got in the minivan, and drove to Gettysburg, which is about two and a half hours away. We got a room at a Civil War era bed-and-breakfast with a lovely garden. We sat in the garden for hours, reading as many articles as we could digest in one afternoon, one evening and one morning. We compared what you had written to things we have learned from our own Bible study and ministry experiences. We talked and laughed and learned from you and from one another. Over our 19 years of marriage, we have taken quite a few honeymoons. This was the best one yet.

When Anita read Joe’s comments she laughed and said I can’t imagine going on a weekend with you and reading so much of your material. I can’t either. But then I am my worst critic and she is my editor (not of these blogs so blame all these mistakes entirely on me). I am amazed that Joe found so much in them of benefit and obviously gratified by that knowledge.

Since July Joe and I have met again, at our recent Biblical Forum here in Chicago. He has recently informed me of a new venture at Penn State through a Web site for unity and mission for local groups. You can check this out at www.psuseed.com. I would love to see such sites and ministries spread all over the country around college towns and ministries. What a great application of the missional-ecumenical vision.

If you have a story about missional-ecumenism that will inspire and teach others please share it with me. I want to connect as many such faithful Christians as possible. This is a core value of my life and the mission of ACT 3. You can check out the mission and ministry of UBF at their international Web site. There you will find some of my addresses to UBF as well as links to some local presentations made to the Chicago UBF, which is the home base of the whole mission.

Dr. Joe Schafer: A Friend Who Seeks to Model the Ecumenical-Missional Vision

Long-time readers of my blog know of my deep friendship with leaders and members of University Bible Fellowship. In July of this year I spoke to a regional UBF conference at James Madison University in Virginia. My host, and dear friend, was Dr. Joe Schafer, the leader of the UBF ministry at Penn State University where he is a professor (see photo with me at left). Joe has been reading, and commenting, on my blogs for a long time so regular readers will recognize his name. When Joe invited me to speak on worship at this gathering I jumped at the opportunity because of our friendship (one of my highest values is friendship) and because of the warm reception I have received from UBF folks in Chicago. After this event in July I asked Joe to write to my board and tell them about the time we shared. With his permission I now share some of that letter with you my blog friends. There is so much here to rejoice in and to take serious note of for many Christians so I think reading Joe’s thoughtful letter is profitable. Here is what he wrote about the conference itself:

The quality of our worship has been a concern in UBF. Our local chapters have been making small changes here and there. But those changes have been cultural rather than theological. Becoming less formal in appearance and dress. Incorporating contemporary praise music in addition to traditional hymns. Trying to make the Bible messages seem less dry and more relevant to newcomers and young people. Some of these changes were helpful. However, they did not seem to solve the fundamental problem. Becoming more seeker-friendly was not the answer. Going casual was not the answer. We needed to become more holy, not less so. We could not neglect worship for the sake of evangelism. I felt that something had to change in my ministry here at Penn State, but I didn’t know what. I was hoping that, through your visit, we could learn something about worship that would really help our local UBF chapters to improve our Sunday worship services to bring greater glory to God.

What happened at the conference? Our conference began on Thursday night and ended on Sunday at noon. On Thursday, Chris Kelly delivered a message on the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:1-4). Then one of our students, Carmen (Rocky) Allinger from Shippensburg, gave a short presentation on what she had learned about prayer from two books: Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Praying With the Church by Scot McKnight. She emphasized several points which to our members seemed new: (a) Most Christians learn to pray by imitating others in their church. This tendency is not bad. But our best role model is Jesus himself. (b) Christian prayer need not be extemporaneous; using prayers composed by others can be helpful. Believers have done this for millennia. Jesus did it as well. (c) Praying the Psalms is especially helpful because this is the prayer book of Jesus. If the words of a particular Psalm do not seem meaningful or applicable to us at this moment, so what? They will be appropriate to us in the future. And they may be meaningful right now to other members of the Body of Christ, so we should be willing to pray for their sake. (d) Working prayer into our daily lives by any means possible (e.g., fixed-hour prayers) can transform one’s life.

Rocky’s presentation helped us to open our eyes to see that there is much more to prayer than what we had previously assumed. At the end of the evening, we broke up into small groups to practice praying as Jesus taught us. We tried to de-emphasize the UBF-centric aspects of our prayer to focus on the main topic that Jesus gave: “Your kingdom come.” This was a seemingly small step. It was not an earth-shattering change. However, many began to notice that something was truly different. I could see that there will be beneficial and profound effects in our ministry over the long term if we continually and intentionally pray as Jesus taught us with attention focused on the kingdom of God.

The second big difference in our conference came on Friday evening when we gathered to hear you speak on Kingdom Worship (Revelation 5). Although your message was about 50% longer than a typical UBF message, no one was restless. We listened intently to what you said, and it truly made us think. Many of us began to realize how indispensable worship is in the life of the Church. One of our younger members, Susan Hong, summarized the message as follows:

His message on Revelation 5:1-14 was a powerful message that gave praise and honor to Jesus, the Lamb of God who sits on the throne of heaven. Dr. Armstrong’s prayer for the church is unity, and it is through the collective worship of God’s people that our corporate oneness is realized on earth. When the early Christian church faced problems, they worshiped God together. The message strongly exhorted us to come together in Christ-centered worship, as worshipers in spirit and truth, praising God as a kingdom of priests who will one day reign with Him. “This is our destiny,” Dr. Armstrong said, “and it is as secure as the Lamb on the throne.”

During the message and the subsequent Q&A period, you touched on many issues that are very salient to us. The points that we heard, loudly and clearly, were: (a) Worship is vital. We are going to be worshiping at the throne for all eternity, so we ought to start now. (b) Expository Bible preaching in a worship service needs to have solid intellectual and theological content. But the goal is not to convey information or even to teach relevant life lessons. Its deepest purpose is to magnify the Trinity and draw the listeners close to God. (c) We ought to develop a theology of worship, something which is lacking in many evangelical churches. (d) The tendency of modern churches to lighten their worship to make newcomers feel comfortable is not wise. Outreach to non-believers is necessary, but it should not shape the entire character of the worship service. There is a real sense in which non-believers cannot worship, nor should we expect them to. (e) Where worship is not taken seriously, fellowship loses its spiritual dimension and the Christian community suffers.

After the Q&A session, we went into an extended period of praise and worship led by a team from our ministry that included both senior and younger members. This was something new. For a long time now, we have been including contemporary praise music before our meetings and worship services. But I now realize that we regarded praise and worship as a way to engage younger people and to prepare our hearts to receive the message, which was the true centerpiece and focus of the service. In other words, praise and worship were seen as a vehicle for the ministry of the word. This time, we included praise and worship purely for its own sake, to honor and praise God. Some members were apprehensive, thinking that it might become concert-like and emotion-driven with too little content. But our praise and worship team did a wonderful job of putting together a program that combined old and new elements of prayer, music, praise and scripture in forms that were culturally appropriate for our group. Our members did not feel uncomfortable at all. They loved it. And they were deeply moved. They sensed that they had come into the presence of God. Many were weeping as they prayed and sang.

Tomorrow: More reflections on this event from Dr. Schafer and some resources that might be useful to you as a reader.