Cambridge Observations, no. 2

I'm back home after a week at Harvard University where I attended a course on "the art and practice of leadership development." The course was led by Marty Linsky and Ronald Heifetz, who co-authored Leadership on the Line. It was a fascinating week: the course served to model teaching leadership development through "case-in-point" methods. Throughout the week, the students (mainly professional leadership/organizational development trainers and faculty) struggled to figure out what "the work" was--in many ways demonstrating the same disequilibrium and disorientation that many face in the work place.

What was even more interesting was the range of people in the room. It was an international group with people from Israel, Dubai, Denmark, Wales, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Austria, Chile, Argentina, and Australia. There were three people from explicitly religious organizations (Alban Institute; the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts; and me). There were people who worked at universities and in national and state governments.

There were a number of good conversations outside the classroom. One recurring theme that came up when people starting talking religion was a fairly common distinction between "religion" and "spirituality." Once people discovered a little bit about my background--as a Presbyterian minister and Seminary dean--some would invariably say, "Well, I don't like religion because it puts me into a box; it judges me. But I value spirituality highly."

My public response, since we were engaged in polite conversation, was that the best of the Christian tradition has sought to distinguish itself from "religion." Religion typically comes with a message of moralism--do this and you will live. Biblical Christianity comes and says, your only hope and comfort is believe in Jesus Christ and you will live. Even when this was said gently and kindly, it was enough to lead them to change the conversation.

But my more thorough response would be to raise the points of Ludwig Feuerbach against their conception of spirituality. After all, Feuerbach argued strenuously that God was simply the projection of human ideals. If "spirituality" is merely a projection of myself, then it seems more intellectually honest to admit the fact, give up the charade of "spirituality," and move toward a thoroughly closed-box universe with a concomitant behaviorist psychology.

One reason most people can't make that move is because, as Calvin pointed out, there is a "seed of divinity" or a "sense of the divine" that points to something truly beyond ourselves. Feuerbach's attempt to rid the universe of reality in itself (i.e. God) fails to account for this. Even more, Christianity stands or falls on the fact that, as Francis Schaeffer put it, God is there and God has spoken. This objective reality beyond ourselves has moved toward humankind through Scripture. And this revelation offers as a comprehensive, coherent, and compelling worldview that makes sense of reality.

Another reason most people can't move with Feuerbach is that a closed-box universe supported by a rigorous Hegelian philosophy and evolutionary science can't produce an account of the apparent "randomness" and "purposelessness" of human existence. All it can logically come up with is the "will to live"; but why do humans have the will to live? And why do bad things happen? Where does evil come from? Why do we seek justice? And scores of questions besides. Only Christianity through biblical revelation can provide a compelling account of these questions.

It strikes me that if those who want to reside with "spirituality" were to take Feuerbach's challenge seriously, it would force them to reckon with the real choice: not between religion and spirituality, but between a biblical account of the world and our place in it versus a purposeless, meaningless, and deterministic universe. But these are hard things to say in polite conversation.

Cambridge Observations, no. 1

I'm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a week-long class at the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government. I got here a few hours early to wander around (after a fiasco with the cabbie; yo, Holmes, smell you later); one thing that struck me immediately was when I walked past First Church (Unitarian Universalist) and wandered through the church yard.

First Church is clearly struggling--it just called a new senior minister on April 20, but it currently had interim senior and associate ministers. Even more, it was striking to see the former church of Thomas Shepherd as a Unitarian congregation. Of course, the Unitarian division occurred 150 years after Shepherd, but I wonder whether the moralistic approach that he took--grounding justification in sanctification--contributed to the eventually move to moralistic Unitarianism.

The other sign of struggle was the church yard. Compared to well-maintained church yards like First Presbyterian Church, Columbia, South Carolina, the church yard at First Church was a mess--unmowed, broken head stones, trashed. Even more, the graves of several early Harvard presidents were poorly maintained. I was shocked that a school with a $19 billion endowment couldn't contribute a little coin to maintain the graves of early presidents.

Graduation Benediction 2008

This is the benediction I will give tonight at Covenant Seminary's baccalaureate service on May 15, 2008; it was drawn from 1 Peter 4:7-11:

Friends, families, graduates of the Class of 2008:

As those who have received God's varied grace

And as those who have been called as God's stewards,

May God grant you to be self-controlled and sober-minded,

To love God's people earnestly, and

To serve God's people with divine strength

So that in everything God may be glorified

Through Jesus Christ

To whom belong glory and dominion

Forever and ever, Amen.

Preaching the Gospel to all sorts of voices

Many readers of this blog are familiar with Martyn Lloyd-Jones' instruction to preaching the Gospel to ourselves. In his book, Spiritual Depression (pp. 20-21), Lloyd-Jones said:

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problem of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man's treatment [in Psalm 42] was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself, 'Why art thou cast down, O my soul?' he asks.

My colleague, Anthony Bradley, has also written well about this reality: these voices in our head, often the voice of our Enemy, often speaking to us with dark and negative words ("you are a loser; no one cares about you; why should you bother? etc.). I wonder, though, how often we have thought about preaching the Gospel to ourselves with the voices that we hear inside ourselves are praising, flattering, and/or boastful.

This whole line of thought--our/my great need to hear the Gospel cutting through voices of self-pity or boasting--struck me in my morning worship as I read Psalm 34 and John Piper's What Jesus Demands from the World.

From Psalm 34, the Lord confront me with my self-pity. There the singer declares, "O fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing" (34:9-10). I thought immediately of another text that has been kicking me in the pants recently, Psalm 23:1, "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want (lack)."

How often I have sat in my study in the early morning complaining to God because I lack! Calling, reputation, finances, family, and a host of other issues have caused me to complain in self-pity--yet here again, the Lord challenged the voices in my heart. He called me the preach the Gospel to myself, "O heart, you think you lack security and significance because you are wrestling with these things; but as long as you seek the Lord, you'll lack no good thing because the Lord gives you himself! Isn't that enough? Be content, rest, find your satisfaction in him--taste and see that he is good!"

The Lord used Piper to confront me from a different direction. Talking about the "righteousness of the Pharisees" which was really "tragic and ugly," Piper noted that the Pharisees really loved money, praise, and sex--that was their "righteousness." It was the middle issue--praise--that arrested me (p. 194):

The reward they sought for what they did was not the enjoyment of God’s fellowship, but the admiration of others. Jesus said, “They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others” (Matt. 23:5-7). This love affair with the praise of man made genuine faith in the self-sacrificing Christ impossible. So Jesus said to them, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44). Their hearts were not drawn to God as their reward, but to the praise of man.

It struck me with great force that at those times when I feel my heart being drawn to the praise of men rather than God as my reward, when I hear the voices telling me, "You are a rock star; you are the greatest ___ (fill in the blank); there is no one greater than you," it is another occasion to preach the Gospel to myself: "O heart, the praise of men is ultimately a drug that cannot satisfy. You know that--you've experienced the emptiness that comes from longing for praise, receiving it, and feeling empty at the end. Run to Christ--make your boast in him! Taste and see that the Lord is good, see and savor him alone! Only then will you find rest, contentment, and joy."

At the end of it all, the Spirit must use his word of gospel grace every day to confront my heart, to kill this sin of pride that manifests itself as self-pity and boasting, and to silence the voices. Only then, only then, will I hear the sweet voice of the Spirit say, "You are not a deserving servant; you are a beloved son. Rest in that and find in me the satisfaction, security, and significance for which your heart longs."

Ministerial Students, Calling, and PhD Studies

Every year, I meet with a number of seminary students who are interested in pursuing PhD studies. Usually, the first question I ask them is: "Why? Why do you believe that doctoral studies are part of God's calling for you?" And the most frequent answer falls into a pattern that I have seen at the three seminaries where I have been privileged to work.

You see, most (male) students come to pursue an MDiv degree because they believe that God has called them to ministry in the context of the local church. Most frequently, that has some connection to preaching, teaching, administering the sacraments, praying, leading, and counseling--the basic functions of either a senior, solo, or staff pastors.

Many come to seminary with a very romantic view of the ministry--having grown up in churches, many of which were strong and stable, it appeared that the senior pastor's life offered security and significance. In addition, these students may have had someone who impacted their lives in a profound way: perhaps a youth minister, campus minister, or senior minister who took time with them and discipled them in the basic practices of the Christian faith. In a response of romance, gratitude, and epiphany, these students come to seminary desiring to be used by God in a similar way.

Until they get to seminary. And then they discover several things: one is that seminary can be difficult. They struggle with Greek and Hebrew; they find that their wives and children serve as sanctifying agents in ways they hadn't before (amazing what an 800 sq. ft. on-campus apartment can do); God begins to peel back their hearts in ways that had never happened before. Their wives may go through a period of questioning them--why did you lead us away from Egypt (or Atlanta, Birmingham, Houston, Los Angeles, or wherever) to bring us to the wilderness?

Another is that ministry can be difficult. Through field education, as these students begin to spend time as interns or directors of ministries in the context of the local church, they see the other side of ministerial life: the grace-filled thorns that the Apostle Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 12. They are exposed to infighting among ruling elders or among church staff members; they engage in the less glamorous parts of ministry (one internship I had at a church led to hours spent in the church's tape room making copies of sermons for distribution to the congregation); they sometimes feel a bit ignored.

A final discovery is this reality: as one friend put it, that while they were the rising star at their local churches--the one surrendered to vocational ministry--when they come to seminary there are hundreds (at Covenant Seminary, 350 MDiv students) just like them. Suddenly, they don't feel so special any more, which can lead to profound doubts and questions about calling.

Suddenly, they begin to look at their seminary professors in a whole new light. They seem suave, secure, significant; they have time to read books and write learned essays; they control the classroom and have no one to say them nay; their families seem protected, isolated from churchly toil, struggle, and infighting--plus, the seminary profs get paid for all this. The sense of calling with which the students came--an internal call matched by the church's approbation that they had pastoral gifts for local church ministry--begins to shift.

This shift coincides with the particular interest that academic work can bring: for example, they have a faculty member whose class opens a whole new world for them in their class or discipline; they write a paper that brings genuine satisfaction, a satisfaction that the internship just doesn't match; they serve as a teaching assistant for a favorite faculty member, doing grading and even a taste of teaching. Maybe, maybe, God really called them to ministry in general and is now calling them to the academic life in particular.

All of this adds up for them and brings them to my office. Now, there are those who come for whom it seems that God may have an academic career in mind. For these, I try to be as honest as possible--you do have academic gifting, but you have to recognize that there are a glut of PhDs in the job market; that competition for jobs is ruthless; and that you are probably more likely to find a job at a college or university, which is why you should target your students as widely as possible (instead of OT or NT, go to a university for a PhD program in religious studies; instead of church history or historical theology, go to a university for a PhD program in history; etc.). In addition, I have to tell these people how unlikely it is for them to teach at a seminary that is serious about training pastors if they themselves do not have some pastoral experience (which, for some reason, always seems to surprise them). Still, for these, I encourage them, write references for them, and try to provide appropriate guidance as they walk along the path.

For others, I try to raise as many questions as possible--are you really sure you have the academic gifting or interest (for these, I usually ask them to tell me what books in the field of interest they have read outside of class in this past semester. That is an excellent barometer for gauging whether they will succeed in a PhD program)? What has happened in their lives to cause them to reevaluate their sense of calling? Do they really understand how unlikely it is for them to find a job--would they really be willing to go through the pain of PhD studies if they knew they didn't have a job at the end? Do they really understand how insecure academic life is? Will they listen to me tell them how unsatisfying academic significance turns out to be? These students tend to leave my office discouraged; some still try to do PhD work, but very few complete their programs and/or find teaching posts.

There are a (very) few who want to do a PhD in order to equip them better for pastoral ministry. For these, I simply rejoice and try to encourage them not to allow the apparent blandishments of academic life to sway them from the God-given trajectory they are pursuing. For what our churches need are pastors who can bring the critical thinking skills that PhD studies teach to their tasks. Notice that I didn't say pastor-scholars: I fear that all too often we say that and the mental picture that forms includes academic (biblical or theological) essays for sermons; thirteen hours in the study each day; and a focus on the call of the academy instead of the needs of the church. But what PhD studies do provide are critical thinking skills--the ability to discern and divide issues, the larger and more sharply honed knowledge base, and the writing skills which should translate into preaching--all of which strengthen pastoral ministry, all of which strengthen the church of Jesus.

I do wish that we had more of this last group. What I find, however, is that even these students are open to a particular struggle--the divided mind of the pastor-scholar, the tug-and-pull between pastoral ministry in the context of a local congregation on the one side and academic ministry in the context of a college, university, or seminary. As one friend has told me, for most of these students, to have to resolve the division on one side or the other often feels like death, having to close off one part of themselves to engage the other side of their gift mix and calling (there are very few churches like Tenth Presbyterian or Bethlehem Baptist, which see their senior minister's writing ministry as a significant part of his calling; and on the other side, most seminaries generally frown on extended, weekly preaching ministry on the part of their faculty).

All of this makes the Jeremiah Burroughs' quote just below this post even more apparently elusive--how to be sure of God's call in whatever engages our hands to do? I think it is probably by taking another part of Burroughs' direction for contentment to heart: "Exercise faith by often resigning yourself to God, by giving yourself up to God and his ways. The more you in a believing way surrender up yourself to God, the more quiet and peace you will have" (Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, 219). Regularly returning to the Lord and offering up our hearts to him, saying again and again, "Lord, I serve at your bidding. Guide your servant as you see fit," will grant us quiet, peace, and confidence in God's calling in our ministerial lives.

Contentment and Calling

From Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (Banner of Truth, 1964), 217:

[Directions on how to attain contentment] 3. Be sure of your call to every business you go about. Though it is the least business, be sure of your call to it; then whatever you meet with, you may quiet your heart with this: I know I am where God would have me. Nothing in the world will quiet the heart so much as this: when I meet with any cross, I know I am where God would have me, in my place and calling; I am about the work that God has set me. Oh, this will quiet and content you when you meet with trouble. What God calls a man to, in that he may have comfort whatever befalls him. God will look to you, and see you blessed if you are in the work God calls you to.

How they are to hear without someone preaching?

Today, in my morning worship, the section of scripture was Romans 9-11 and smack dab in the middle of it, of course, was these words from Romans 10:14. There were a number of thoughts that struck me:

1) While we rightly must think through all sorts of issues regarding contextualization in order to speak God's Word into this moment in time; and while we must coupled together appropriate deed ministry to incarnate the love of Jesus; and the end of the day, the Gospel comes to people through the preaching of God's Word. That was the mission that Jesus had (Mark 1:38); that is the mission that he has given to his followers (Luke 24:45-46). We are witnesses to the reality of the Gospel and we must preach that word of witness.

2) These words again confirmed for me the importance of theological education. God's means for bringing his good news to the world is through the ministry of the Word; his way of doing this is by sending preachers; and the way to equip those preachers is through theological education. That doesn't necessarily mean that we must have degree-granting seminaries to do theological education; but that does mean that we have structures to provide essential biblical, theological, historical, and pastoral knowledge that can be used and shared with others.

3) And these words come again to me and challenge my sense of calling. My heart has always been for the church and for the ministry of the Word. Am I doing the right thing as a Seminary administrator? Should I be involved in the regular, weekly ministry of the Word in the context of a local congregation? Will God send me to a particular people for this work at some point? How will others hear without someone preaching?

What NOT to buy for Mother's Day

For all of you who struggle with holidays, the top five things NOT to give to wife/mama.

Don't Waste Your Pulpit

This is a very, very good Desiring God video. Lord, send us more men who will not simply take God's Word and preaching serious, but who see it as the only means by which God sets people free and causes them to delight in God's own self.

[HT: JT]