• Archive of "sermon" Category

    A Quick Hop Back Into the World of Student Ministry

    February 14, 2012 // No Comments »

    As a college student at Malone University, I majored in youth ministry.  I did internships as a handful of different kinds of churches, the last of which actually led into a full-time role as a student pastor at a large church, overseeing separate junior, senior high, and college-age ministries.

    When I was a grad student at Fuller Theological Seminary, I continued to serve in the world of high school student ministry as an interim director at yet another kind of church.

    Later, after some time working in a seminary context, I launched into yet another pastoral position at a new church, this time working exclusively with college students and other young adults.

    However, I haven’t really done much in the way of student ministry since the spring of 2009.  So, after nearly a 3-year hiatus, I was excited when my college buddy, Scott, who’s been a long time youth pastor at The Chapel in North Canton, asked me to come back into town and help lead a retreat for his high school student leaders.

    As you might expect, the topic of the retreat was leadership.  There were to be three main sessions over the course of our time together Friday night and through the day on Saturday, plus a final sermon on Sunday morning.

    The theme for Friday night was, “Leadership as Followership: Jesus’ Plan to Destroy Your Life.”  Here, we focused our discussion around Matthew 20:17-28 and reflected on how Jesus’ role as a leader was located not so much in clever skills and abilities, but a central focus on following where and how God was leading him.  We talked about how a relinquishing of our personal ambition and agenda is fundamental to receiving what it is that God might have for us.  I also sought to pass on a discipleship framework for leaning how to get better and better at recognizing where and how God is at work and responding faithfully.

    On Saturday morning our theme was, “Leadership as Discipline: It’s Always Easy… Until You Have To Do It.”  We moved our attention to Matthew 26:36-46 and we spent some time talking about how, contrary to the aberrant Celebrity Culture that seems to mark contemporary Evangelicalism, Jesus-shaped leadership is anything but glamorous.  Rather, a commitment to lead like Jesus did will nearly always take you to a place of utter desperation, disappointment, and dependence upon God.  In terms of discipleship, we focused on what it might mean and look like to structure our lives around practices that intentionally root us in relationship with God, fellow believers, and others who are hurting and/or far from God.

    The final session of the retreat on Saturday afternoon revolved around the notion of, “Leadership as Mission: Death as a Way of Life.”  As we spent time working through Matthew 28:16-20, we discussed what actually drove Jesus as a missionary-leader, namely submission to the unique role he was to play in God’s mission in the world.  We also reflected on Jesus’ commitment to equip and send others as opposed to keeping everything isolated to his direct (human) endeavor.  This led naturally into presenting a process for discipling others toward maturity and mission.

    On Sunday morning, in sharp defiance to the notion the Piperian notion that, “God has designed christianity to have a masculine feel to it,” Amy and I preached the sermon, “Leadership as Partnership: Embodying a New World Order,” as partners who together, as male and female, reflect the imago Dei!  We spoke out of Acts 2 and Ephesians 4, calling attention to the primary role of the Holy Spirit in constituting a body of people who, against all worldly convention, seek to lead one another out of their unique giftedness in partnership for mission.

    Seeing some family and friends was a highlight as always, but man, getting back around high school students for a while was a blast.  I was super-appreciative of just how seriously they took our time together and how much creativity and passion they brought to the discussions.

    Shame on youth pastors (Scott’s not one of them!), who sabotage their opportunity to shape a generation of students because they are so focused on growing a huge, cool youth group.  Double shame on senior/lead pastors who, out of their own insecurity, put that kind of pressure on youth pastors to do it!

    Posted in Amy, church, discipleship, God, Jesus, leadership, preaching/teaching, sermon, travles, young adults, youth ministry

    Consuming Jesus

    January 15, 2009 // 2 Comments »

    I have been looking forward to reading Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church by Paul Metzger for some time.  For the sake of an alternative context and experience, I was even more excited to read the bulk of it amidst my time in Africa and its deep seeded tribalism.

    In Metzger’s words, his aim is to…

    confront the ways evangelical-consumer or niche-church Christianity fosters racial and economic divisions, and I wish to offer an alternative theological paradigm to the one that is often embraced in the evangelical subculture. (11)

    In my words, this alternative theological paradigm comes only by way of rejecting the version of the gospel which has led to a consumer-oriented faith/church and embracing one that prophetically strikes at the very heart of that reality.

    In John Perkins’ words,

    The only purpose of the gospel is to reconcile people to God and to each other.  A gospel that doesn’t reconcile is not a Christian gospel at all.  But in America it seems as if we don’t believe that.  We don’t really beleive that the proof of our discipleship is that we love one another.” (9)

    I love that Perkins understands the gospel by what it does.  Like love, the gospel takes on its true nature only when it is enacted.

    In the beginning of the book.  Metzger insightfully traces the various streams, characters, and events which have so vitally contributed to the dominant expression of Christianity in America.  From here, he probes into the ways in which “the dominant structure of the evangelical church today favors, fosters, and shapes its structures around the key ingredient of individual choice…” (79)  Key to understanding this tendency is his discussion of the popularization of the Homogenous Unit Principle (HUP) by Donald McGavran as a method for church growth.  The remainder of the book features insightful biblical and cultural reflections, helpful examples and a sustained discussion on the vitality of Scripture and sacraments for the formation of communities of reconciliation across racial and class boundaries.

    Of Scripture, Metzger says…

    We must move people with God’s word on Sunday mornings to move beyond their addictions to race and class affinity groups.  Authentic witness to Jesus is at stake, and we must stake our lives on it. (117)

    – a quick aside here: just as the goodness of the gospel lies in what it does, so too the sermon is only good inasmuch as it results in changed lives.  Don’t ever tell a preacher his or her message was good unless you are prepared to also tell them how it resulted in your changed life

    And I love that he includes Marva Dawn’s words on the Lord’s Supper…

    How can we share the eschatological feast if we don’t participate in displaying God’s future, in which all will be equally fed and we will all join together in universal praise?  It seems to be that if we eat the body and blood of Christ in expensive churches without care for the hungry, the sacrament is no longer a foretaste of the feast to come, but a trivialized picnic to which not everyone is invited.

    The end of the book is the author’s attempt to move into a discussion of partnerships amongst churches across racial and socio-economic lines.  His desire is for the church to…

    re-envision its understanding of communal identity in view of its communal and co-missional God as involving solidarity with society at large…. This will entail a radical break from the dominant American individualistic mindset that keeps us separate from others.  It will require that we lay down our lives and die for our enemies rather than try to take back America from them. (149)

    I found this to be a fantastic book.  A bit narrow at places where I though the discussion (at least by way of footnotes) should have been expanded, but definitely a much needed message for the American church.  I suppose the big question I am let with is how to think about local congregations that are seeking to incarnate themselves in places that are intrinsically homogeneous.  If anyone wants to weigh in, please feel free, I’d enjoy the discussion.

    Posted in africa, books, christendom, church, community, consumerism, culture, evangelicalism, gospel, individualism, love, missional, preaching/teaching, review, sermon, spiritual formation, theology

    Relational Gift Giving Ideas

    December 17, 2008 // 2 Comments »

    I mentioned before that our church community is participating in Advent Conspiracy.  While I have some of the same reservations that Ariah does, it has been incredibly encouraging to see how many Living Hopers have embraced this new approach to Christmas and I see a lot of potential for the values we have been discussing being carried forward beyond the Christmas season.

    For all my LH friends (and anyone else for that matter), I stumbled across this small list of some relational gift giving ideas that, in correspondence with what Matthew said this past Sunday (check here for the podcast of “Give More” when it’s up), would help us to give more presence – as opposesd to presents.

    Posted in church, consumerism, sermon

    Scared to Lament

    September 18, 2008 // 5 Comments »

    Our church community is spending three months wrestling in and through the Psalms.  It is our hope that this time would be much more than a simple sermon series, but a season of spiritual formation for us as a community.  As part of that desire, we have created a blog and various people are posting entries in an effort to stimulate discussion.  So, whether you are a Living Hoper or another friend, hop on over there, check out the first couple of posts and share your thoughts.  Here is my recent submission…

    Scared to Lament

    Gib spoke this past week on the idea of lament and as a community, we were led through a profound reading of lament over the circumstances in our lives, our city, and our world.  I (JR) have continued to ponder the place of lament in the life of Christian community for the last few days.  Many of you will have already discussed this in your small groups, but as mine meets tonight, I am still looking forward to the discussion.

    To be transparent, I must admit that I am scared to lament.  It makes me vulnerable and threatens the pride I take in situations being within my control.  These desires I have however, for invulnerability on the one hand and pride in my own ability to control situations on the other, are nothing shy of idolatry.  To lament then, is to blaspheme the idols in my life in the hope that God will fill the void.  The way God fills this void however, comes not by an immediate change of the situations which I lament, but by the constitution and life of a community which laments together – in hope.

    I take great solace in the biblical notion that while lamenting may threaten that which I (wrongly) hold most dear, it simultaneously grants me the opportunity to realign my vision of reality with God’s by drawing me into a community seeking to live out the reality of God’s Kingdom in the world.

    This is not a foreign concept to us; misery, as they say, loves company.  But this is where the world and the people of God part ways.  We seek solace in the arms of others not because they merely empathize with us and our grief (this is yet another form of idolatry), but because the very Spirit of God dwells in the midst of the body of Christ, strengthening us, sustaining us, and filling us with an overflowing measure of faith, hope, and love.  I would go so far as to say that lament – a God-centered cry for justice and mercy – is a divine opportunity for us to live out what it means to be the people of God – a people united not in their complaints, but in their Spirit-infused hope for the Kingdom of God to come “on earth as it is in heaven.”

    Posted in community, kingdom, living hope, sermon

    From faith (as an idea) to Faith (as a way of life)

    June 2, 2008 // 2 Comments »

    This past Sunday I had my first opportunity to address the Living Hope community. I must have had a thousand different thoughts on what to share. Ultimately, I really wanted to share some of my story and highlight something that I found relevant for where we’re at as a community of faith.

    What I decided on was the way in which God used grad school to change me from someone who placed their faith primarily in a system of belief, to someone who tried to practice faith as a way of life and to put my trust in God as one who could never be contained or exhausted by my ideas or beliefs.

    We looked at the Exodus story and the way in which even after being rescued and redeemed by God, the people of Israel wanted to relate to God from a distance, wanted to avoid the fear and unknown of continuing to follow God, and opted to worship a idol created by their own hands rather than worship the living God by living in the way he had directed them.

    These were all reactions I was tempted to embrace during some of the tumultuous times of grad school and more importantly, reactions which I often fear the average church in the United States facilitates.  To be a church which refuses to allow for a two-tiered model of discipleship (leaders and the rest of us), which constantly asks, “what’s the next fearful and risky adventure God is calling us into,” and is more concerned with passing on a way of life than a system of belief, doesn’t exactly lend itself to our individualistic, consumer-driven, instant-gratification-seeking, culture.  Yet, this exactly the sort of future I hope for our community.

    Over and above merely having the opportunity to share my story and what was on my heart and mind, I also enjoyed being able to invite some friends to participate in the service along with me.  Liz led a responsive reading, and Mike and Zach led the congregation into the Exodus story, by reading Scripture.  I shared an excellent quote from Martin Luther King Jr. that my friend Eric reminded me of, and offered our community some questions to stew on as we concluded.

    Anywho, it was a great time.  Thanks Living Hope for being awesome.

    Posted in Fuller Seminary, living hope, preaching/teaching, questions, quotes, sermon, stories

    It’s Not All About Me and Jesus

    October 3, 2007 // 8 Comments »

    Church Sign

    Corrie, a friend of mine, said something once that has stuck with me. “One of the most meaningful moments in my life was when I realized that being a Christian isn’t about making God a part of my life, but becoming a part of God’s life.” But, as evidenced by the picture above (taken today in my home town), Corrie’s sentiment is not universally shared.

    The vast majority of my Christian experience has taught me that at the end of the day, what matters most is my personal relationship with Jesus. This, I have been taught, ought to be the core of my identity as a human being.

    I no longer believe this, and I was happy to come across a recent sermon by Rob Bell where he articulates the alternative I have come to embrace.

    (Speaking of Rob Bell, I just thought I would add to the blog buzz in saying that I don’t believe Rob – or Brian McLaren or Doug Pagitt for that matter – to be a heretic. But, for largely the same reasons as Bob, I am not going to wink either).

    You can listen to Rob’s message at the bottom (43 min.), or visit the Mars Hill site directly. However, for those short on time, I will summarize below.

    Rob is taking a look at Matthew 23:23-24 and its OT background and trying to make the point that much like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, many of us boil Christianity down to personal piety and morality – the “me and Jesus” mentality. Rob goes on to explain that it’s not that personal piety and morality are unimportant, far from it, but that the Pharisees, and many today, neglect what Jesus calls, “the more important matters of the law.” Namely, justice (living equitably), mercy (showing kindness to those in need) and faithfulness (personally and corporately showing the world what God is like).

    I would say, therefore, that in terms of what it means to be a disciple and as far as what my identity as a human being ought to be rooted in – what is most essential is my incorporation into the life of a community which is seeking to do justice, show mercy, and live faithfully. Personal morality and piety have their place in relation to this vision, but only secondarily. To get them out of order is not to get it 1/2 right, but to misconstrue both. This is one more way to begin rediscovering that salvation is not something we either have or don’t have, but is a lived reality, something we participate in with God to greater or lesser extents.

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

    Posted in bible, blogging, community, Jesus, justice, salvation, sermon