Tim Keller Helps Pull the Log out of My Eye

I was flipping through channels today being my day off and I came across a preacher who was upset about something in the church.  I should have kept on flipping to ESPN, but I just had to see where he was going with the rant.  He was in the process of attacking churches who use entertainment and “worldly” methods to bring people into the church.  He did not call out any names, but it was clearly directed toward the Willow Creeks and Saddlebacks of the world.  Since I serve in one of those wicked churches, I felt a little attacked —- like I was part of a movement which did not care about God’s Word and only wanted to “tickle the ears” of the attenders.  To the preacher’s credit he did have a brief caveat that he was not saying all innovation was wrong — after all he was on TV and thought that Spurgeon would cringe at his use of the evil organ!!!

I eventually turned the channel saddened that this pastor felt like he had to take shots at churches that actually have the same Lord as the Head of their church.  But I also realized that I am guilty too of being critical of different philosophies of ministries.  I do this because I appreciate where I serve and have seen God work there in a huge way.  And if I am honest, I also can take shots to make myself look and feel better.  Pretty selfish.  Pretty wrong but we all do it just maybe not on a national televised program.

So, as I was removing the log out of my eye I read a blog post that put this all in perspective.  It was from Tim Keller and his reflections after speaking at Willow’s Leadership Summit.  Here is what he said:

This summer I spoke at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. It was an honor to be invited. No one pulls off a conference like Willow Creek. Who else could bring their content to 120,000 people?  And the three other talks or sessions that I saw were extremely high quality.

The time at Willow led me to reflect on how much criticism this church has taken over the years. On the one hand, my own ‘camp’ — the non-mainline Reformed world — has been critical of its pragmatism, its lack of emphasis on sound doctrine. On the other hand, the emerging and post-modern ministries and leaders have disdained Willow’s individualism, its program-centered, ‘corporate’ ethos.  These critiques, I think, are partly right, but when you are actually there you realize many of the most negative evaluations are caricatures.

John Frame’s ‘tri-perspectivalism’ helps me understand Willow. The Willow Creek style churches have a ‘kingly’ emphasis on leadership, strategic thinking, and wise administration. The danger there is that the mechanical obscures how organic and spontaneous church life can be. The Reformed churches have a ‘prophetic’ emphasis on preaching, teaching, and doctrine. The danger there is that we can have a naïve and unBiblical view that, if we just expound the Word faithfully, everything else in the church — leader development, community building, stewardship of resources, unified vision — will just happen by themselves. The emerging churches have a ‘priestly’ emphasis on community, liturgy and sacraments, service and justice. The danger there is to view ‘community’ as the magic bullet in the same way Reformed people view preaching.

By thinking in this way, it makes it possible for me to love and appreciate the best representatives of each of these contemporary evangelical ‘traditions.’ Nobody provides more practical help for organizing and leading ministry than Willow Creek.  I also am humbled that Redeemer is well-regarded in each of these ‘streams’ of evangelicalism, though we have our feet firmly set in our own Reformed tradition.  That is quite unusual, and it makes it possible for us to both teach and learn across the spectrum of church life today.

Click here to see this post and to read some of the comments connected with it.

Ministry Efficiency — Pick up the Pace

We are in the process of doing a lot of reevaluation around Hope along with the “excitement” of performance reviews.  It is a great time to learn and to use the evaluation process to grow personally and see my team grow.

Improvement comes with the challenge of looking at the way things are currently being done and looking for ways to be more effective and efficient.  Here is how one company is taking employee performance and accountability to another level — from the web site Ministry Best Practices:

“The president of Canon Electronics, Hisashi Sakamaki, is also the author of a book proposing the removal of all the chairs in the office and installing security so that an alarm goes off if you don’t walk fast enough. These are some of the same measures he takes with his own company. His theory is that forcing employees to stand not only saves money but increases productivity and enhances employee relationships. In the hallway, if an employee walks slower than 5 meters every 3.6 seconds, an alarm and flashing lights are set off, reminding the poor startled worker that he’s an inefficient waste of air. Even better (or worse), there’s a sign on the floor in said hallways that reads, “Let’s rush: If we don’t, the company and world will perish.” The big boss, as a reward for thinking up all this stuff, gets to lounge in a nice, relaxing chair.”

I pray our management team does not see this!!!!

Click here to see the rest of the Ministry Best Practices post.

A Child Shall Lead Them

This video is quick and classic!!

Mentors in Marriage – Warfield & McQuilken

I just read a moving post from Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds on B. B. Warfield, a theological giant and former Principal of Princeton Theological Seminary (1887-1902).

Justin had just read comments on the life of Dr. Warfield from Kim Riddlebarger. Specifically, he was touched by Warfield’s commitment to his wife in the midst of her long term illness. Here are some of the highlights:

Soon after marrying Annie Pearce Kinkead, who was also from noble stock, the newlyweds journeyed to Leipzig. . . .
During their stay in Europe an event occurred that would forever change the Warfield’s lives. While walking together in the Harz mountains, Mr. and Mrs. Warfield were caught in a violent thunderstorm. Annie Warfield suffered a severe trauma to her nervous system from which she never fully recovered. She was so severely traumatized that she would spend the rest of her life as an invalid of sorts, becoming increasingly more incapacitated as the years went by. Her husband was to spend the rest of their lives together giving her “his constant attention and care” until her death in 1915 (Allis, “Personal Impressions of Dr Warfield,” 10). B. B. Warfield could not have foreseen just how constant and difficult a demand this was to become, and how, in the providence of God, this would impact his entire career.
. . . Warfield’s remarkable literary output is, no doubt, in large measure due to the frail condition of his wife and his amazing devotion to her. With the pen he was a formidable foe, but as O. T. Allis recalls, “I used to see them walking together and the gentleness of his manner was striking proof of the loving care with which he surrounded her. They had no children. During the years spent at Princeton, he rarely if ever was absent for any length of time” (Allis, “Personal Impressions of Dr Warfield,” 10). Machen recalled that Mrs. Warfield was a brilliant woman and that Dr. Warfield would read to her several hours each day. Machen dimly recalled seeing Mrs. Warfield in her yard a number of years earlier during his own student days, but notes that she had been long since bed-ridden (Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen, 220). Read the rest of this post here.

In reading this testimony of love and commitment, my mind went back to the early 90′s, and I remembered reading an article in Christianity Today by the President of Colombia Bible College (now Columbia International University) Robertson McQuilken. McQuilken had resigned from Colombia to care for his wife who was in the throws of Alzheimer’s. Her is an excerpt from his resignation speech:

Murial McQuilken died in 2003. Her husband cared for her to the very end.

Read the article I read in 1990 from CT —- “Living by Vows” —- along with these follow-up articles — “Murial’s Blessing” & “The Gradual Grief of Alzheimer’s” (Interview shortly after her death)

Failure & Imagination at Harvard

I hate sitting through commencements but I love to read or watch some of the unique and insightful words from commencements speakers who address these excited and talented graduates.  I ran across one today that captured my attention.

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivered the Commencement Address at Harvard entitled “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,”

With wit and candor she encouraged these new graduates to make a difference in the world amid times of failure and to harness their imaginations to help the hurting and oppressed in the world. 

Here are a few quotes that stood out to me:

On the Benefits of Failure – “So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

On the Power of the Imagination – Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

On Helping the Voiceless & Powerless – If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

Click here to listen or read this address.

Hope Managment

John Ortberg, pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian, wrote an excellent reflection on hope as it relates to leaders at the blog – Out of Ur. Here is a quote:

“The church is in the hope business. We of all people ought to be known most for our hope; because our hope is founded on something deeper than human ability or wishful thinking. Martin Luther King was fond of citing Reinhold Niebuhr’s distinction between hope and optimism. Optimism believes in progress; that circumstances will get better. Hope, however, is is built on the conviction that another reality, another Kingdom, already exists. And so hope endures when hype fades.”

Check out the complete article here — John Ortberg on Hope Management

Also, you can hear some of Ortberg’s sermons here. I listen to him weekly on my ipod and love it!