Full Contact Christianity

Reflections on Catalyst One-Day Conference

10 May 2015

I had the opportunity a few months ago to attend the Catalyst one-day conference here in Denver with Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel. A lot of good things were said, especially Andy Stanley’s ruminations on autonomy and why it’s a bad idea. I can think of a couple whole movements of pastors and activists who need to hear that talk, and will refuse to listen to it. There were also some deeply stupid things said — CEO-think getting the better of following Jesus. I don’t intend to write a review of the whole thing, but here are some thoughts I wrote down just after the event.

By any biblically recognizable definition, these guys are not pastors. The organizations they lead are not churches — again, by any biblically recognizable standard. In some circles, that would be the whole critique. There was a time when that would have been my whole critique.

But these guys and their organizations are doing significant work for the Kingdom of God. They’re not pastors and not churches, but they’re not nothing either–so what are they? They are parachurch organizations that provide a variety of religious goods and services. For the purposes of the Internal Revenue Code, they happen to be organized as an entity called “church,” but let’s face it, the IRS doesn’t have the best possible grasp on spiritual reality.

Church happens within these organizations — in small groups, student ministries, other smaller cadres where there is real accountability, shared mission, and life together. And it doesn’t just happen by accident — quite often, those things are what they’re aiming for.

The organization itself, however, is not a church. It is a monastic order. Craig Groeschel is not a pastor, he’s the next Ignatius of Loyola, leading a militant, dedicated cadre of broadly Protestant monks and nuns in a rigorous program of spiritual discipline and leadership development to serve the Church and the world. It is impressive, admirable work.

There is an argument to be made, perhaps, that doing the work of a monastic order under the guise of being a local church muddies the water and causes trouble. I’ll let someone else make that argument if they can. For me, the issue is simpler than that: this is good work that ought to be done, and someone is doing it. The Lord of the Harvest has heard our prayer and sent laborers into His harvest, and we should thank Him and ask for more.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Eight Notes on the Art of Reading

27 April 2015

I had occasion to write down some reflections on the art of reading for a friend. Here are some selections:

The really big pieces of advice for readers are the same as for writers:

Finish things.
Figure out your process and stick to it.

Everything else is subordinate to those.

Accept reading into your life as a discipline that you will mostly practice in the interstices of your schedule, when other people are doing nothing. Most of my reading, prayer, and martial arts practice happens this way. It is amazing what you can get done when you attend to the “dead spaces” in your life, and put them to work for you over a long period of time. For example, I recently finished a book on spiritual direction. I read the whole thing on the toilet using the Kindle app on my phone. Took me two and a half weeks.

Pre-read. Get a sense for what’s in your “to-read” pile so you know what to pick up next. Flip through the book, skim a few pages here and there, just to learn what kind of book it is. Does it have short chapters or long ones? Are there section breaks? Books that break up into smaller chunks go into my toilet reading pile. Books that are going to take extended study mostly get saved for weekends.

Re-read. Don’t be afraid to go back and read a paragraph again, or a chapter. Or a whole book, for that matter. In fact, the whole-book re-read is often the most effective for comprehension. It’s easier to grasp the finer points after you have a rough idea where the whole thing is going.

If you drive places, use audiobooks and lectures. Even if you only live 10 minutes from work, that’s an hour and 40 minutes a week, just on your commute. You can finish a good-sized book in a few weeks that way — and if you use the rest of your drive time, it goes even faster. I use audiobooks while I’m cooking, too — my hands are busy, but it’s not complicated work, so I can listen well. I have an acquaintance who listens to audiobooks during his workouts. I can’t do that; listening takes up too much of my attention, and I’m prone to hurting myself when I get distracted during a workout. Figure out what works for you.

Read at night, before going to bed. I usually reserve that slot for popular novels or poetry, although I’ve done some heavy reading that way too. I have learned the hard way to stay away from Lee Childs at night — I wind up awake at 2 in the morning, telling myself, “It’s only another 75 pages to the end.”

One book or several? There are two schools of thought on reading in parallel. The single-book school says that your concentration is better if you focus all your reading time on a single book until you finish it. The other maintains that it’s more fun to read a few books in parallel. In case you haven’t caught it yet, I’m definitely in the latter school, but find what works for you.

Speed reading. Stanley D. Frank wrote a book about the Evelyn Wood speed reading method. I don’t do it the way they teach you to, but working through their exercises was very helpful to me.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Healing

12 April 2015

I had opportunity to speak recently on healing. You’ll find my notes below.

Our focus this month is on the resurrection.

Chesterton: “Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”

Isaiah 53:4-5

Romans 6:3-4

1 Peter 2:24-25

Our job is to live out the resurrection.

Gal. 2:20

We can’t do it alone — it’s supernatural.

How the Western Church lost healing

How I came to understand healing

How God Heals — The Story of Naaman (2 Kings 5:1-17)

Things to take away:

1. Naaman was a Syrian soldier in a time when Israel and Syria were at odds with each other. He was an enemy, and yet God healed him.

2. Sometimes God simply heals, but often He asks us to invest in our healing. This isn’t “God helps those who help themselves;” that’s garbage. How much help do you think Naaman washing himself could be? Think he’d never taken a bath before?

3. Healing is not usually a solo activity.

Luke 4:16-21

Jesus commissions us to follow Him. That means that He is sending you to do these same things.

Heal. Jesus bought it. Ask God for it, and see what He will give you.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Story of John Mark

16 March 2015

I had occasion to tell the story of John Mark in a church service recently. Here it is.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Seven Hard-Won Lessons From the Youth Group Nerf Wars

4 January 2015

1. If you’ve never had a nerf war with your youth group, you should seriously consider it. It quickly reveals who you want on your team in the event of a zombie apocalypse. You never know when you might need that information.

2. A nerf war is a GREAT way to revive the kids after a movie at a lock-in. Especially if you have a balcony to shoot from. And it’s cathartic.

3. Every nerf battle has 2 stages. In Stage 1, you expend the ammo load-out that you started the game with. In Stage 2 — which lasts a lot longer — you are scrounging darts off the floor, hoping someone will shoot at you so you can collect the dart and shoot it back. At any given time, you only have a handful of darts, unless you’re a hoarder. This 2-stage dynamic is important because…

4. In Stage 1, motorized, magazine-fed blasters are the most fun you can have. Good news: with good fire discipline and a couple high-capacity magazines, this stage can last quite a while. Bad news: when it’s over, it’s over. In a typical every-man-for-himself scenario, you’re on the run all the time. Reloading a magazine with scrounged darts on the run takes three hands, and when you’re reloading, you’re not ready to fire unless you’re juggling two magazines (which takes four hands). It’s not a ton of fun. Having one as part of a three- or four-man squad would probably be worth it, but by yourself, it’s just a pain.

5. Your best bet for Stage 2 is something small and VERY easy to reload. (Which is fantastic, because the little blasters are pretty cheap.) Single-shot is okay, but it’s better if you have the capability for at least one fast follow-up shot. For my money, a hammer-action revolver like the Hammershot is best. It shoots and cycles one-handed, leaving the other hand free for picking up darts and reloading (or wielding a sword, but we’ll get to that). It carries 5 darts in an open-front cylinder, so you can reload as you go, and you’re almost always ready to shoot.

6. In an all-out melee, nerf swords are much more useful than you’d think. You’d be surprised how much ground you can cover in a charge while your opponent is struggling to reload. There’s a serious shock-and-awe factor, and it’s mad fun. The swords are probably going to get destroyed, so get cheap ones.

7. Close-range hostage crises are best resolved with a sword. True story.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Taking It Literally

7 December 2014

So I had occasion to talk with a feller — well-educated Christian and all — who was a bit unsure about various Old Testament miracles — Joshua’s long day and so on. It got me to thinking.

As I observed in another post earlier this year, allegorizing your way over the first eleven chapters of Genesis at 30,000 feet is downright common. Once you get past the flood, most people who would think of themselves as theological conservatives settle down and swallow the supernatural texts. There are some Red Sea doubters and like that, but it’s pretty uncommon among self-professed conservatives.

By the time we get to Jesus feeding the 5,000 or doing miraculous healings, pretty much everybody has landed the plane and is prepared to take the supernatural doings quite literally. And of course, you have to land the plane sometime before the resurrection and ascension in order to remain a Christian in any meaningful sense.

But if you have the sort of sensibilities that are offended by miracles, the resurrection is just as much an offense as any other supernatural text. Once you’ve conceded the need to land the plane, is there any reason not to land it earlier? Why is the resurrection of Jesus plausible, but turning water into wine is not? Why are Jesus’ miracles plausible, but Joshua’s miracles suspect? Why believe the Red Sea crossing, but doubt the Flood? Why believe John 1’s account of creation, but doubt Genesis 1’s account of it?

If you’re going to swallow the resurrection, what’s so hard about reading the whole Story as sober history from end to end?

This is far from the only area in which we balk at the Bible because it offends our sensibilities in some way. I have begun to feel generally that taking it literally — far from being a bonehead hermeneutical move — is in fact badly underrated.

I hope to explore this idea more in upcoming posts.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Kingdom Has Come

15 October 2014

In the theology I grew up with, the kingdom of God is future, period.

We were aware that Jesus said the kingdom was near, in passages like this one, for example:

Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

We interpreted that the same way you interpret a guy on the street corner with a sign that says, “The end is near.” In other words, “near” meant that it was still future, coming soon.

There’s an obvious way in which that was true. The consummation of the kingdom promises is still future. Obviously, the knowledge of the glory of God has not yet covered the earth like water covers the sea.

I’m aware that people have issues with the eschatology, but let’s not get sidetracked onto that at the moment. For the sake of discussion, let’s grant a future literal kingdom of exactly the kind envisioned by pre- and post-mil theologians.

Granting that, is the kingdom entirely future?

No.

We know it isn’t, because it wasn’t entirely future even in Jesus’ day. Notice what He says in Matthew 12:

Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.

“Has come.” Not “will come” or “is about to come.” Has. In other words, when Jesus cast out a demon, the kingdom came right there. And this is what Jesus meant all along when He said that the kingdom was near. The old King James translation, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” is exactly right. “At hand” is where you keep your cell phone–close enough you can reach out and grab it.

The message of Jesus, from the inception of His ministry right down to the present day, is this: the kingdom of God is close enough to you, right now, that you could reach out and touch it. Do you want to?

2 Comments | Kingdom of God, Meditations | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

What Would Jesus Doubt?

31 August 2014

So the other day a feller named David R. Henson delivered himself of the passing odd conclusion that God’s Not Dead is not a Christian movie. Here, from the horse’s mouth, is the critique:

I’m not going to mince words about this.

Heaven is For Real and God’s Not Dead are not Christian movies.
They are not even religious movies. They are schmaltzy, vacuous, “inspirational” movies.

If a film leaves viewers with a fist full of answers rather than questions, with declarative reassurances that heaven is real and God is alive, then it’s not really a movie about faith and it’s certainly not a Christian movie.

Those films are little more than mindless memes.

You can read the rest of the article here. I haven’t seen Heaven is for Real, so I’ll confine my comments here to God’s Not Dead.

Twenty years ago, I had a chance to hear Billy Sprague speak on the interaction of Christian truth and art. He told us about his own grief when his fiancee died, and how angry he was at God for allowing it to happen. He described his feelings when he got in his car one day and Twyla Paris’ song “God Is In Control” came on the radio.

God is in control
We believe that His children will not be forsaken
God is in control
We will choose to remember and never be shaken
There is no power above or beside Him, we know
Oh, God is in control,
Oh, God is in control

Furious, he turned the radio off. Of course God was in control, he thought. The problem was, God just didn’t seem to care.

Later, another song, “Show the Way” by David Wilcox, got his attention.

You say you see no hope
You say you see no reason we should dream
That the world would ever change
You’re saying love is foolish to believe

‘Cause there’ll always be some crazy
With an army or a knife
To wake you from your day dream
Put the fear back in your life

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify
What’s stronger than hate
Would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late?

He’s almost in defeat
It’s looking like the evil side will win
So on the edge of every seat
From the moment that the whole thing begins, it is

Love who makes the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone

In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love can show the way

So now the stage is set
Feel you own heart beating in your chest
This life’s not over yet
So we get up on our feet and do our best

We play against the fear
We play against the reasons not to try
We’re playing for the tears
Burning in the happy angel’s eyes, for it’s

Love who makes the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone

In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love will show the way
Show the way, show the way

He sang the song for us. Then he said, “Did you notice that they both make the same point?” Both songs tell us that God is in control, that He cares about us, that it’s going to be okay in the end. But “God Is In Control” just says it straight out. It’s–Billy’s words–“a sermon set to music.” “Show the Way” isn’t. It’s a parable. It takes you down an indirect, more artistic path show the truth to someone who might not be ready to hear the sermon yet. Then he said something that I wrote down in my notebook, something I’ve never forgotten: “Art takes truth past doors where truth can’t go alone.”

Then he did something else I’ve never forgotten: he urged us not to be contemptuous of “God is in Control.” There’s nothing wrong with a sermon, he said. There’s nothing wrong with setting a sermon to music. It didn’t have the power to reach him in his deep grief, but that’s not a defect in the sermon. At that time, he needed a song that would take the indirect path, and help him to see God at work. “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.”

“God’s Not Dead” falls into the same category as “God is in Control.” It’s a cinematic sermon, and a bit of a heavy-handed one at that, telling rather than suggesting, driving home its point without a hint of self-doubt, posing questions only in order to answer them.

That’s what bothers Henson so much. “If a film leaves viewers with a fist full of answers rather than questions, with declarative reassurances that heaven is real and God is alive, then it’s not really a movie about faith and it’s certainly not a Christian movie.” In Henson’s mind, a proper Christian movie would make you struggle. It would leave you questioning, doubting.

Henson goes on in his article to talk about one such film, and I’m looking forward to watching it. I expect it to be a good experience. There’s certainly room for such films, and we could do with a few more of them.

Doubts and questions are okay–God can handle them. When we have doubts and questions, we certainly should be honest about that. And it’s true, sometimes good art can reach us in our doubts and questions when simple assurances leave us cold. Art takes truth past doors where truth can’t go alone. But it is possible to be too much the cynic, too enamored of the doubts and questions. It is possible to fall in love with one part of the process and forget the goal.

Isaiah had answers by the bucketload, not that anybody wanted to listen. Jeremiah’s answers were likewise unpopular. John the Baptist got himself tossed into jail for having one answer too many, and being a little too certain about it. If only he’d had some tolerance for ambiguity where Herod’s marital choices were concerned…. And what they did to him was nothing compared to what they did to Jesus for speaking out His answers a bit too loudly.

All these guys were sure–as God’s Not Dead is sure–that God really is not dead, that He really does sovereignly control events, that He really does find people in their time of need, and they really do respond–even people who hate Him, or think they do. Lots of answers there, no question.

That has its place. There’s a time for every purpose under heaven.

In ninth grade, I entered public high school academically well ahead of most of my peers (and lagging behind socially, just to complete the stereotype!) Predictably, I tested into honors classes in history and humanities. There were about 40 of us in my grade who were in all the same classes, and what a mad little coterie of brainy sophists we were! Now, we weren’t so far gone, back in those days, that we just celebrated all the different interpretations of a thing. We argued ferociously over whose interpretation was a better reading of the facts. But — sophisticates, we — we all understood that it was a conflict of interpretations. We would always say, “This is my interpretation,” never, “This is just how it is.”

So one day, the girl who sat in front of me in World History class–a gorgeous, willowy blonde named Danielle–turned around and said, “Tim, I have a question. What does the Bible say about having sex before you’re married?”

No rube I, I said, “I can tell you my interpretation.”

“I don’t want to hear another interpretation, Tim,” she said. “I want to know what it says.”

Now, a philosophy or a hermeneutics professor would be tempted to point out the inevitability of interpretation, and intellectually speaking, the prof would be right. Spiritually speaking, though, the prof would be an idiot to voice that notion at that moment. Danielle didn’t need a lecture on philosophy or hermeneutics. She had a boyfriend that she loved, she was making a really important decision, and she needed a clear word from God. She was asking me, as God’s representative, to give her one.
God be thanked, I was not too sophisticated to see that.

So I told her. “It says to wait until you’re married.”

She gave me a long look. “It’s that simple?”

“Yes.”

And it is.

God’s Not Dead isn’t high cinematic art. It’s direct, simple and straightforward. Perhaps even childlike. But unless you become like one of these, you will by no means enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Finding the Road

4 August 2014

Heresies, cults and new religions are the unpaid debts of the Church coming back to bite us; this is true throughout Church history and it is true today as well. The pomo/emergent phenomenon is the unpaid debts of the modernist Church coming back around. It is just not the case that the modernist Church got everything right — in certain areas, we sowed the wind and are reaping the whirlwind. The thing to do is accept the whirlwind as God’s just judgment on our sins, and repent of them.

The prevailing enemy strategy in cases where the Church has unpaid debts is to exploit our very real sins and weaknesses in order to build credibility, which credibility is then imputed to a new (often equal and opposite) set of sins and weaknesses — hence the postmodern revolution in the church, which has led to so much mush-mouthed uncertainty. The other, equally important enemy strategy is to get the old guard to level valid critiques against the new, revolutionary set of weaknesses, and then use those valid critiques to steal credibility from the call to much-needed repentance from the original set of unpaid debts.

See how it works? The young and the restless, outraged by the sins of the old guard, will hear no call to repentance from the old guard. The old guard, outraged by the sins of the young and the restless, will hear no call to repentance from the likes of them. And this, when a lifestyle of constant repentance is what following Jesus is all about.

The devil gets to sit in the corner and clap. He doesn’t even have to do anything.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Why Bother?

27 July 2014

A good friend recently asked a question I’d like to share with you. I can’t quote it exactly off the top of my head, but the gist of it was something like this: the church is an absolute disaster of silliness and dysfunction, and God often seems absent in the doings of His churches. Given that, why would we want to lead people into the church? Why bother?

Let that sink in a while before you read any further. Why do you bother with the church? Do you think it’s maybe not as bad as all that? Do you think it’s exactly that bad, but you still have good reasons for staying engaged? What are your reasons for staying engaged? It’s a question worth pondering.

I’d challenge you to take a few minutes and write down your reasons. Below, you’ll find mine.

It is a worthwhile question. Why bother?

I have two answers. Because God bothers, and because it’s the only game in town.

Because God bothers. Because He has not lost hope. How do I know? Because I watched the sun shine through the clouds today. Because feldspar is the commonest rock on earth, but when two kinds of it intergrow just right, you get moonstone, a frozen rainbow you can carry in your pocket, a portable parable to remind you of the glory that’s released when God unites the different. Because when I confessed my sin to Him at the worship service this evening, He spoke to me. (Yes, even in church.) Because He gave grace and glory to the Englewood churches to cancel their Sunday morning services and meet together on the high school baseball diamond on Pentecost Sunday. Because yesterday in a cafe in Littleton, He met my friend and opened her eyes to new dimensions of His love for her. Because a few months ago He spoke to my homeless friend Michael and helped him get off the street.

We’re badly broken, each and all. Every gathering we pull together, whether it’s a ragtag band of tie-dyed hippies in a park or a country-club demographic wearing suits under a pine-paneled ceiling, is broken. From ties to tie-dye, I have seen pathologies that stagger the mind. I have wondered how anything could possibly get done with so much brokenness. I have second-guessed inviting anybody into such a messy environment. But then, who am I to have higher standards than God?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but God’s standards are appallingly low. The two most out-there broken groups I have ever experienced have also been two of the most faithful, directly productive for the kingdom. When we walk in the light–which just means not hiding, read 1 Jn. 1–we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. I have seen Jesus cover amazing weakness with His strength, and give the gift of fellowship to people who, by all rights, should barely be capable of human speech, let alone friendship. He has not given up.

While it’s true that the Sons of Korah would be excommunicated in some churches for their “unChristlike” song lyrics…they exist. And they have a thriving ministry. As do a number of other people crazy enough to take the Bible seriously. Sure, they take a lot of flak, but they exist. God could have completely given His Church over to its silliness. Instead, He has given His Church these godly madmen. If He has not given up, then why should I?

And anyway, my second answer–it’s the only game in town. I have a friend who has worked in Iraq, Jordan and Israel building reconciliation between Christians, Jews and Muslims. He does it by introducing them all to Jesus–once they are united to Him, they find that they are also united to each other. It doesn’t erase their longstanding divisions, and the issues don’t simply evaporate. But they are united and they love one another, and they call on God together to give them the wisdom to resolve their differences. Through him and a few others I know of, there are literally thousands of Taliban and Hezbollah fighters (and many others) who are followers of Jesus seeking to live in the kingdom of God, seeking real solutions instead of just the momentary gratification of violence. Is there a better idea for peace in the Middle East? I haven’t seen one.

Here in Englewood, we’ve had a bunch of homeless folk who are busily destroying themselves and making certain parts of the city much less enjoyable in the process. Nothing that anybody tried worked. But we’ve got a dedicated corps of volunteers who have spent the last 3 years building relationships and loving our homeless people in Jesus’ name. Some of those hopeless folks have jobs and apartments now. And yeah, some of them are every bit as bad as they ever were. Some of the success stories have relapsed. One of the guys we baptized recently went back to jail for something stupid. It isn’t perfect. But it’s working, and it’s working better than anything else that anybody else has tried. It’s working so well that the mayors of the metro Denver area recently came down to see what these folks are doing–because it’s working better than any of their programs.

There are lots of days that are painful and confusing, when I don’t know what God is up to and the whole thing looks like nonsense. But even on those days, like Peter said on one painful and confusing day 2000 years ago, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life.”

He does. That’s why I bother.

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Posted by Tim Nichols