Greg Smith, Chaplain at The Citadel, offers this reflection on Scripture:

“HOW IMPORTANT ARE THE SCRIPTURE IN YOUR DAILY LIFE?”

Psalm 119 says that the Word of God is lamp unto our feet… Psalm 1 asserts that meditating on the Word of God is not only delightful but yields good fruit in our lives.

But do we really believe that?

In older days, to be considered literate in our society one had to have a certain Biblical literacy. Yet amongst the cadets and young adults I work with, I would guess that only 5% have even a basic understanding of ANY Biblical story or passage, let alone the continuity of the Story which is the Passion of God to rescue a lost humanity.

Recently, an awareness of the lack of Scriptural literacy became more clear to me.  I was talking with a movie producer at the airport in Ireland. She was scoping the place to shoot a movie and I was coming back from a great vacation with my wife. We had a wonderful conversation; during which she asked for my favorite part of the trip. I told her that I was in awe of the monks in AD 700 who hand copied the Scriptures into The Book of Kells. Her follow up comment floored me.  She asked, “What Scriptures”. Certainly that’s a legitimate question – other gods lay claim to other scriptures. But for most of the last century the default assumption would have been the Scriptures of the Bible!

Now, I don’t fault her. I fault the Church. We’ve all gotten lazy! To quote the two Psalms above, I had to rely on Google to find the exact reference to what I remembered. And until recently, I would come to church, preach, and go home without opening an actual Bible. (Certainly, I had my text written out – copied from my Bible software – but laying my hands on the Scriptures in worship just didn’t happen).

I’m not advocating some stone age approach to the world. I love technology and my Bible Software is important to me… as is getting newcomers into the Word of God easily. But in all my techno-seeker-geeky sensibilities… I feel I (and we) have lost something.

The Word of God is to be venerated in our lives, in our worship, and in our hearts. In the Word of God we not only find wisdom for daily life but the love of a Father who has been searching for us. We find an understanding of why Evil exists and why Good will prevail. We find all of these things because the God of the Universe can (and has) communicated to us through the Scriptures. The Word of God is our guide book for both the mundane and the profound. As Deitrich Bonhoefer once said, “every day in which I do not penetrate more deeply into the knowledge of God’s Word in Holy Scripture is a lost day for me”.

And we should show that belief in our actions… after all, actions do speak louder than words. So, I have decided to change my priorities. I now get up in the morning and work to read the Scriptures cover to cover twice each year. And I carry my Bible. And I preach, and read, and worship, with my big red Bible in my hands. And I carry it with me most places I go. Why? Because I’m trying to re-insert the importance of the Scriptures into my life in such a way that my children and friends will understand that God’s Word is important to me.

This point was driven home to me in Ireland when I saw The Book of Kells last week. The Book of Kells was a copy of the Gospels that was hand copied in the 700’s to celebrate the birthday of St. Columba. It was handwritten on calfskin vellum by monks who tediously and beautifully copied out every word of the four Gospels.  It is beautiful – and convicting. One copy of the Scriptures would have cost thousands of dollars based on the precious gems and materials used. The hours put into copying and drawing out every letter is staggering. Every letter had to be checked by a librarian for accuracy and the artwork in these books to the side of the texts is beautiful.

Why did they take so much time with this book? Because they believed that the Scriptures contained all things necessary to salvation. Salvation of their souls eternally, lives currently, and even the world around them. They believed that, as one monk wrote, they were turning, “darkness into light”.

St. Andrew’s own, Meghan Smith, daughter of Mary & Kurtz Smith (Kurtz is our Men’s Ministry Leader), was officially announced as the first ever Levi’s Girl. Well done, Meghan, congratulations!!

Today I welcome Matthew Anderson as our guest blogger.  I met Matt last month in Oxford as we, together, participated in a week-long event called, “Christian Leadership Forum.”  Matt is a writer, public speaker, educator, and editor. He is the author of Earthen Vessels:  Breathing New Life into a Broken Faith (forthcoming from Bethany House).  He can be found online most readily at MereOrthodoxy.com and is a senior editor at EvangelicalOutpost.com.  Additionally, Matt is a contributor to The New Media Frontier: Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ.  He sits on the editorial board of The City and can also be found at First Thoughtsand ConversantLife.com.   As an editor, he has edited numerous non-fiction books, including a NY Times bestseller.   As a graduate of the Torrey Honors Institute and Biola University (2004), Matthew has wide ranging intellectual pursuits. They include, but are not limited to, the Christian life (particularly justification and sanctification), Pauline theology, political theology, the history of theology and philosophy, romance, hermeneutics, the role of the body in human experience, Shakespeare and Dante.

“HUMANKIND CANNOT BEAR VERY MUCH REALITY”

That from T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets, his “answer” to the problems he raised in The Wasteland. Or at least I think it is.  I didn’t understand The Wasteland the first time I read it, and my comprehension hasn’t improved much since.

Few lines capture the central neurosis of our age better. Our relationship to reality is not an uncompromised one.  It is tarnished, marked by sin, and the refusal to bear responsibility for our actions in it.  At the end of C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, Lewis wakes in a fit of horror because he has seen a glimpse of the reality beneath the shadows, the fixed eternal that is the accumulation of a million choices distended through time, and he cannot bear the sight.  God, we hear in those pages, is the Fact to whom the universe answers, and the Fact on which all other facts depend.  It is a point worth contemplating.

My own generation, the “millenials,” love to talk about being “authentic.”  And well we should, for whatever else happens, we cannot fail in honesty or veracity to that which we are—in Christ.

But as Eliot reminds us, authenticity isn’t easy.  Rather, it is the most difficult thing of all.  Acknowledging the reality of who we are is the sort of enterprise that will inevitably fail unless aided by grace.  The moment we claim to “know ourselves” is precisely the moment when we are most prone to self-deception, especially if that knowledge is not mediated to us by the Word of God.

Our age is one of deep confusion about the nature and authority of reality, and one of endless amusements to help us avoid it. We are, to return to Eliot, “distracted from distraction by distraction,” working tirelessly to avoid God, our neighbors, and ourselves.  No generation has been able to bear reality—ours is simply the first that has been able to construct a virtual alternative that is more to our liking.

But avoiding the truth is a fool’s game, for the Fact that we avoid is one named Love.  Truth and grace have met in the person of Jesus Christ, the Beloved Disciple tells us, and inasmuch as we are in Him we will see them both in equal measure.  In Him we can bear all the reality he gives to us, for He gives it to us according to our measure.

The Very Reverend Peter Moore, D.D., was the fourth Dean and President of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. He also served as the school’s first Chairman of the Board of Trustees. In 1962 he founded the Fellowship of Christians in Universities and Schools (FOCUS), a parachurch organization which ministers to prep school students. He also served in parish ministry at All Souls’ Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Pittsburgh and as the rector of “Little” Trinity Anglican Church in Canada – a historic parish in Toronto’s downtown core.  Peter is a gifted academic and author of several books and articles.  He earned his degrees from Yale, Oxford, Episcopal Theological School, and Fuller Theological Seminary.  Currently, Peter is serving as Associate for Transformational Discipleship at St. Michael’s Church in Charleston, SC.

“A Book to Read, Treasure, and Ponder: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas (Thomas Nelson, 2010)”

Stand in front of Westminster Abbey and you will see ten relatively new statues carved into the West Wall. One of them is of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who is the subject of a new book by Eric Metaxas. Metaxas, a friend of mine, also wrote a best-selling biography of William Wilberforce entitled Amazing Grace.

But who is this Dietrich Bonhoeffer whose name most of us recognize but can’t say much about? He was a German. He was a Lutheran minister. He stood against Hitler. He wrote several important books including The Cost of Discipleship. He was hung by the Gestapo just weeks before the war ended with Germany’s surrender. But beyond that, few of us know the details of his short but highly significant life. Here’s why it’s useful – and immensely edifying – to read this new biography.

When I was a seminary student back in 1961 Bonhoeffer was a liberal hero. In his final writings, composed while in prison, he spoke of the need for “religionless Christianity.” Liberals pounced on these words as signifying that this World War II martyr was “one of them.” Did he not anticipate the “Death of God” movement? Did he not predict the end of Christendom? Liberals salivated at the prospects and touted him as their own.

Eric Metaxas has blown that myth right out of the water, but in doing so has given us not a “conservative” Bonhoeffer (save in his commitment to classical Christian doctrine), but a man of action who defied classification save as a man with a passion for God and a profound commitment to the purity of the church.

Few realize that towards the end of his short life (Bonhoeffer died at the age of 39 in 1945) he served in Hitler’s Intelligence Agency, posing as a Nazi – but in reality being a double agent. He also worked tirelessly to get the Ecumenical Movement (the World Council of Churches) to recognize the Confessing Church, the remnant of Lutheran believers he and Karl Barth pulled together, as the one and only authentic church in Germany. In these and so many other ways, he was out on a limb, desperately trying to save the Lutheranism in which he had been reared from near total extinction in its submission to the oppressive hand of the Third Reich.

But why didn’t the world-wide church recognize that the state church of Germany had been totally taken over by Hitler in the 1930’s and ceased to be a credible witness to the Gospel? The answer is that the animus towards Germans in general at that time was so strong that the Allied powers and their politicians, including even Western churchmen, wouldn’t believe that there was a reliable German anywhere to be found. Despite his many contacts in England, Bonhoeffer failed to convince Churchill that a resistance movement inside Germany actually existed. Later, of course, we learned of the many efforts to assassinate Hitler, including the famous Valkerie plot that Bonhoeffer supported from his prison cell. But even they drew yawns from the Allied Powers. Germany as a nation, it seemed, had totally capitulated to Hitler’s demonic reign.

This is why Bonhoeffer stands out and why his witness shines even brighter. He was born to a prestigious family, with connections to nobility. He was a highly educated theologian recognized on both sides of the Atlantic. He studied and taught for a time at New York City’s Union Seminary. He moved in and out of powerful circles with a growing conviction that the vast majority of Christian leaders in Germany had lost their way and no longer believed in the power of God’s Word to redeem and renew.

How Bonhoeffer came to his confidence in the Bible (albeit interpreted through the lens of higher criticism), who influenced him in his formative years, why he saw through the vapid American liberal Protestantism he encountered at Union Seminary, and why “discipleship” will always be associated with his name are yours to discover by reading this fascinating book.

I confess that as I read the book tears came to my eyes several times. There is no rhyme or reason why Bonhoeffer — given his background and comfortable upper middle class upbringing — should have become one of the few men in Germany to confront the most blatant personification of evil perhaps of all times. The only explanation seems to be that God touched him and captured his mind and then — wrapping his heart in steel — sent him out to do battle and lose. But as with so many losers, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was ultimately a winner by the Grace of God. He still speaks to you and me and asks us: “Are you prepared for the real cost of discipleship, or are you counting on cheap grace to get you through heaven’s gates by the skin of your chinny chin chin?”

Our guest blogger today is The Rev’d Canon David Roseberry, Rector of Christ Church, Plano, Texas and Chair of Anglican 1000.  He writes today of the Anglican 1000 initiative:

“THE 5 MOST EXCITING THINGS ABOUT ANGLICAN 1000″

Anglican 1000 is an initiative of the Anglican Church in North America to raise up 1,000 new congregations and communities of faith across the United States and Canada.  It began with an astonishing call from Archbishop Duncan at his installation.  Now, it is firing on all cylinders!

Here are 5 of the most exciting things that are happening by God’s grace:

1) Churches are being planted! Tim Keller says, “The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for 1) the numerical growth of the Body of Christ in any city, and 2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city.” It is so exciting to see Anglicans planting churches!  Check out a few of the latest plants on our website.

2) Speaking of Tim Keller … He will be at the next Anglican 1000 Church Planting Summit!  Save these dates: January 25-27, 2011.   Our first gathering saw 300+ church planters and leaders come together to share, dream, and pray for this movement.  The Summit is a chance for us all to come together in order to worship, to share with one another, and to be further equipped for this work.  As Anglicanism is ‘reborn’ here, this summit will be the nursery for dozens and then hundreds of new starts.  It is not to be missed!

3) Cooperation and Collaboration – While I was in my former denomination, I spend countless hours and plane rides trying to reform it and encourage new works and new growth.  But today, it is so encouraging to be able to channel our energy in a different direction!  Furthermore, in an era where splintering has been the norm, it is exciting to see Anglican 1000 be a platform for the dioceses of the ACNA, the constituent jurisdictions within the ACNA, and the Ministry Partners, such as the Anglican Mission in the Americas, to all work together for a common purpose.

4) New Leaders and Leadership Development – New leaders are stepping up to serve.  Since the website went ‘live’ in February, I have heard from almost 150 people through our website who want to “Become a Planter.”  We are averaging about one a day! Plus, I am seeing creative approaches to leadership development.  The seminaries are tailoring new programs around church planting.  Churches are starting residency programs and becoming church planting churches!  It is happening.

5) Even Bishops are getting in on the act! - It is tremendous to look around and see purple shirts right there with us on the front lines of this new movement. We are seeing missionary bishops leading church planting efforts and even planting new congregations!  For example, one of our Canadian bishops, Ron Ferris, is planting a new congregation and just shared with us what he has learned in the first year.

For more information, check us out at http://www.Anglican1000.org.

One of the most beloved men in the church today, Bishop FitzSimons Allison was born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina. He attended the University of the South and, after having his studies briefly interrupted by service in the United States Army during World War II, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949. He then studied at Virginia Theological Seminary, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1952. He was ordained a deacon in June 1952 and a priest in May 1953. Allison later studied at Oxford University and received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1956. He then taught church history at the School of Theology at the University of the South and at Virginia Theological Seminary.

+Fitz served as rector of Grace Episcopal Church in New York City before being elected as the twelfth Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina. +Fitz retired in 1990 but has continued preaching speaking, and writing since his retirement.  He sent me the below a few weeks ago in response to my request for a guest blog (information on “Carolina Day” may be found here).

“CAROLINA DAY: JUNE 28, 2010″

The dedication of the new gravestone for Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746-1825) is a crucially important opportunity for us today as we face serious internal as well as external threats to our society, culture, nation, and Western civilization itself.

Pinckney was one of South Carolina’s representatives at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, a prominent leader during and after the Revolution, a trusted friend of George Washington in war and in the early years of this country, and an outstanding military figure who participated in the successful defeat of the British in 1776 at Sullivan’s Island. He fought with Washington at Brandywine and Germantown, saw action in Florida and Savannah and was taken prisoner when Charleston surrendered in 1780. After the war he served his country as minister to France where he refused the request for a bribe with his famous reply: “Millions for defense. Not one cent for tribute.”

Courage and candor were characteristic of him from boyhood through his adult life.  Courage was clearly demonstrated when he opposed the decision to surrender Charleston to the British in spite of the prospects of defeat and death.  Also, it was demonstrated when, in spite of great provocation and offers of reward, he refused while in prison to go over to the side of the British. Too few historians have bothered to delve into the cause of his courage, character and selflessness. What produced such qualities in this man?

We need look no further than the influence of his father, a deeply committed Christian. Charles Pinckney (d 1758) wrote in his will that his son “be virtuously, religiously, and liberally brought up so that he will employ all his future abilities in the service of God and his country.” One illustration of his piety is his establishing an endowment at St. Philip’s Church for two special sermons a year, with special attention to Psalm 145: “I will extol thee my God and King.” Pinckney took his sons to England and carefully chose tutors and then schools for them. They were trained at Westminster School, Christ Church, Oxford, and at Middle Temple.

Following the War Charles Cotesworth Pinckney founded the Charleston Bible Society in 1810 and served as its president for fifteen years. This still functioning ecumenical society made bibles available to serve as a foundation for faith and morals.

Pinckney’s character and selfless leadership is markedly absent in our own times. Rarely in our history has this country been so bereft of such leadership.  We are living at a time when the old jokes about the end of Western civilization are no longer amusing, a time when our universities are in danger of losing their confidence in truth itself, when solvency of the strongest economy in the world is in jeopardy through human greed, when churches are in danger of becoming irrelevant in their accommodation to this increasingly decadent culture, when neither of our political parties seems able to show fiscal integrity, legislative wisdom, or moral leadership, when the very institution of marriage and family, without which no culture can long prevail, are in danger of disintegrating; it is at just such times that we need to recover what Charles Cotesworth Pinckney had and we are losing: a sense of responsibility and its corollary, capacity for guilt. The fact that the very mention of the word, “guilt,” sounds such a discordant note in our ears is evidence that we, too, have had our Christian faith obscured by the secular loss of transcendent forgiveness. The religion of these times is secularism.  It is neither self-evident nor scientific.  Our culture is choosing to replace Christian faith with trust in human nature and human history. Secularism is a faith and trust that there is no life beyond the grave. Reinhold Niebuhr defined it as: “This world is all there is ism.”

The pathology that results from this secular trust is the loss of transcendent and ultimate accountability and forgiveness. Only mutual  human acceptance is left as a mask for real forgiveness.  With the loss of forgiveness guilt becomes unbearable, its meaning reduced to something merely neurotic that must be denied. All guilt is reduced to neurotic guilt and false guilt. But there is also true and objective guilt that is indispensible for individuals and for society. Our times lack any appreciation of its positive function. The capacity for guilt is both an essence of personal identity and integrity, and an indispensible pillar and foundation of civilization.

The English jurist, Lord Moulton, taught us that: “The measure of a civilization is the degree of obedience to the unenforceable.”  What behavior can be counted on when no one is looking? If there is no life after death, no final accountability, no ultimate justice or mercy, the only meaningful law left is “Don’t get caught.”  There are never enough police to go around.  If there were, who would police the police? To the extent that a people obey what is largely unenforceable, to that extent one can trust banks, lawyers, clergy, police, physicians, government, and civil servants who keep our society running. When such trust is largely justified one is a most fortunate citizen of a great civilization. But this is what we are losing. It is to this very situation that the example of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney speaks to us today.

What is it that enables us to obey the unenforceable?  It is human responsibility and its corollary, the capacity for guilt. General Pinckney decided not to change sides when pressed by his captors with tempting promises where a seeker of his own happiness and his own interest might easily have succumbed. Pinckney adhered to his principles to which he held himself responsible and would have considered himself guilty had he disobeyed those principles. Every adherence to principle naturally carries with it the possibility of falling short, of disobedience and resulting guilt.  And without divine forgiveness guilt becomes unbearable.

Sigmund Freud was partly right. At the end of his book Civilization and its Discontents he writes that guilt is indispensible to a high civilization but guilt makes people so unhappy that a backlash will naturally occur to liberate its members from the rigor of obedience and duty of a high civilization to an easier permissiveness and remission that alleviates the burden of guilt. But this very permissiveness, characteristic of our times, lowers all standards. Without the capacity for true guilt civilization will crumble.  There will be no responsibility for social justice, no accountability for fairness, no protection from crime, no rigor in education law or medicine, no trust in institutions.  In short, without accountability and consequent guilt, quality civilization is impossible. Also, for individuals without accountability and consequent guilt there will be no growth, no humility, no realization of one’s potential and no fullness of humanity.

Where Freud was wrong is that he chose to discard his Judaic forgiving Deity as a mere illusion. He was left with his guilt but without any forgiveness and mercy. Guilt without forgiveness is unendurable.  Demands of a high civilization produce more guilt and unhappiness than we can bear. So, bereft of a gracious God, we lower the demands in order to lower the guilt, with disastrous results for civilization.

Aldous Huxley is a good example of this dilemma. He tried to persuade us all to resolve the dis – ease within us by taking the drug, mescaline. Why would one of the most famous and respected scholars of his generation urge us to take drugs?  It was accurately said of him that he had a Protestant conscience without a Protestant God. That is a terribly painful dilemma. But instead of returning to his Protestant God he turned to drugs to ease the restlessness. St. Augustine has taught us that “our hearts are restless and will always be until they find their rest in thee.” When there is no “thee,” no forgiving God, our hearts will naturally turn to drugs or the like.

Huxley is an icon of our secular age that turns to drugs rather than God. Freud had a Judaic conscience but no Judaic God. Freud in his genius knew that guilt in the populace was indispensable to a high civilization but could only see it as an unhappy condition. Having chosen not to trust his Judaic God  he was bereft of the hope for forgiveness. Thus guilt, although indispensable, becomes unendurable and must be forfeited even if it means eroding civilization.

To summarize, losing the capacity for guilt is eroding our civilization.  Guilt is the personal discrepancy between what we are and what we are to be. Without guilt we lose the promise of our purpose and identity as expressed in the text: “Eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor the heart of man conceived of the glory that God has prepared for those who love him.” (I Cor. 2:9)

Guilt is also a very pillar of civilization.  The measure of a civilization is its degree of obedience to the unenforceable. If responsibilities are unenforceable, a conscience capable of guilt is the only hope for a high civilization and this guilt is only endurable with the knowledge that God is not only just but forgiving. A culture that relinquishes its belief in God is impotent to save its civilization.

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney is a good and timely example and much needed inspiration for us. Unlike Aldous Huxley, who had a Protestant conscience and no Protestant God, and Sigmund Freud, who had a Judaic conscience and no Judaic God, Pinckney had a Christian conscience and a Christian God. This gave him the courage, in the face of risk, to live responsibly, acting on the highest principles he had been taught. He knew that he faced an ultimate accountability and, even if wrong, or if he failed, he knew that he had a gracious God of divine forgiveness and mercy.  The faith of his father, Charles, molded and sustained him. It can do so for us.

Let us pray for this faith, which was demonstrated in the life of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney,  and which is essential not only to our country and our civilization but to each of us.

Today’s guest blogger is Greg Kronz.  Greg is the Rector of St. Luke’s Hilton Head, SC where he has served since 1992.  My favorite bit of Greg Kronz trivia is that he coined the term, “Steel Curtain,” referring to the infamous Pittsburgh Steelers defense of the 1970′s.  Seems Greg was a ninth grader at a suburban Pittsburgh high school when he submtitted the winning phrase to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s contest.

Following is a book review he wrote in response to my request for an article:

“SPACE FOR GOD”

The book, Space for God by Don Postema, has provided me with a wonderful opportunity to grow in my relationship with the Lord in a little different way than usual. Allow me to explain.

Space for God uses Scripture verses, hymns, poetry, quotes from the “desert fathers” and art to cover each chapter’s topics. The art, though at times diverse, is primarily scenes and people painted by Vincent Van Gogh and Rembrandt. I knew of Rembrandt’s faith, as is clear from his art. I did not know about Van Gogh’s faith. Though he was troubled and his art wasn’t often overtly “Christian,” he had quite a faith. I grew to appreciate him, as well as this “devotional style” in a new, fresh, and different way. The devotional also encourages “journaling,” which I found to be a rewarding and blessed experience.

Some of the topics Don Postema addresses are: “Making Space,” “I Belong” (to God, and to His family), “Gratitude” (addressed in a couple of ways), “Prayer” (also addressed in a variety of ways), including “Wrestling with God,” and prayer regarding “Justice and Compassion” (together–a new idea for some), and “The Goal is Glory.”

Several overwhelming thoughts permeated Postema’s book, the essential nature of prayer being one of them. My prayer life was deepened using this wonderful tool. Another idea he develops is that of gratitude. Oftentimes, gratitude is a theme in sermons around Thanksgiving; but in our day and age of “entitlement,” “you deserve…” in ads, and “taking care of ‘me’ or ‘number one’,” the chapters on gratitude helped me to remember the need for gratitude even when “not everything is going the way I want;” when “I can’t control what is going on in my life.”

I read another article recently which said that in life, 10% is what happens to us, and 90% is how we react or respond; so, we do have more control than we think! A heart of gratitude, beginning with God’s gift of life, gift of love, gift of His Son, gift of salvation, gift of His Holy Spirit (and I could go on!) sets a helpful perspective as we pray and as we begin our day!

Thirdly, the whole idea of “I belong” and, in particular, I belong to God, I belong to the Body of Christ, I belong to the church, and those around me; those who love me, with whom I share community. In a day of “busy-ness”, stress, a difficult economy, relational challenges, constant activity, “entertainment” and whatever else that would cause us to become isolated or lonely, we can know and live in community because we belong first to God.

Finally, “Making Space,” Postema’s seminal chapter, is critical for our walk with the Lord, and for the other themes in his book to become a reality for us. Making space for God in prayer (so we can know Him, go to Him, draw on His Spirit for strength, comfort, peace), in worship (where we gather in community to praise and glorify God with others, and hear the Word of God read and proclaimed), for Bible Study (so that we might hear Him speak into our lives, help us grow, know Him and His will), and fellowship (where we might have encouragement, support, and yes, even accountability). This “space” even helps us in our giving (of our time, service, energy, love, and resources).

It was wonderful to “Make Space for God” in a new, deeper, and meaningful way. My prayer is that your life would be restful in a space that it devoted to Him.  I encourage you to make “Space for God,” even if you are not inclined to get Postema’s book.  You will find not only space in your heart for Him, but for those around you, for love, and for His work.

Daron is both the Coordinator for College and Young Adult Ministries with the Diocese of South Carolina and he serves part-time on my staff at St. Andrew’s, working with our college ministry.

“LOSING CONTROL”

I am learning a new way of life. Three years ago I moved my family from Lansing, Michigan to Charleston, South Carolina.  I left a Midwestern culture which had shaped my entire life and since have been learning and adopting the “Southern way”.  In addition, having not been raised in the Anglican tradition, I am learning a church paradigm that three years ago I knew very little about.  There have certainly been times when I have felt like a misfit, like when I wore my newly purchased seersucker suit in the heart of winter. And the time I chanted “Alleluia!” at the end of a worship service two weeks before the conclusion of Lent.  Even though Charleston has gradually become home for us, there certainly were those awkward times when we questioned if we were in the right place.

The story of Elijah in I Kings 17 has recently come to life for me.  God met with Elijah and told him to “go.”  He sent him from what was familiar to a land he had not yet been, to a people he had not yet met, to speak a message of hope they had not yet heard. It seems like he had little experience and very few resources.  I have to believe Elijah experienced awkward moments as he lived the life of a misfit, perhaps questioning whether God had the right guy for the job.

It’s daunting, translating the ancient and increasingly foreign message of Jesus’ offering of new life within a cultural landscape that changes by the day.  Attempting to make sense of common Christian household terms like sin, the cross, sacrifice and redemption to emerging generations will give you the sensation of being from another world. How do we do it?  How do we, as the Church, tell this ancient story in our own foreign land?

As Elijah’s story unfolds in I Kings 17:18, we find a woman whose son has just passed away.  Her poignant words to Elijah were essentially,

“Hey, man of God, is this all you have to offer? You tell me how sinful I am and then you let life be ripped away from me!”

Those words cause me to wonder if the world may not be accusing the Church of the same thing.  Somewhere along the line we have given the impression that it’s our business to inform people of their sin and require a set of lifeless obligations to fulfill.  Maybe the American Church needs to take a quick assessment of what exactly we offer that sets us apart from the Kiwanis Club and the United Way.  It seems Elijah’s response to the mother’s accusation may help the Church respond to what may be a valid accusation.

Even for Elijah, great intentions and carefully chosen words were insufficient to produce life. In the midst of his helplessness, Elijah calls on the Giver of Life to intervene in a supernatural way that only God can do.  His prayer was one that seemed to test God’s power right on the spot…

”God, either show up big, now, or my credibility is gone, along with Your reputation!”

He begged God to give life back to the boy. Elijah’s vulnerability and God’s faithfulness allowed him to speak life where there was death, and the young boy was miraculously given new life.  Elijah shows us that proclamation apart from demonstration certainly makes for a great story, but unfortunately a powerless one that gets lost in a sea of great intentions.

The mother’s conversion journey had been taking shape over the weeks and months, but it appears that the deepest redemptive act occurs after she observes God’s supernatural power.  Once true life had been restored, scripture tells us it’s in that moment she knew the truth.

I’m wondering if the American Church has made it’s home in the places that are less awkward, safe and familiar.  Like our culture, has she gained her marginal credibility by merely valuing things like excellence, ambition and strategic planning?  Allowing God to send us into the unfamiliar and awkward places may mean that we’re not in control the way we think we should be. Things may get messy.  They certainly did for Elijah. But the mess gave God the room to demonstrate the supernatural transformative power He is now waiting for his Church to demonstrate.