I gave up after realizing that the authors were prooftexting their model of what the church should look like, selectively choosing from 1 Corinthians 14:26-33, with no explanation about why they leave out verse 34 from their model (the women be silent verse).

I hope one day to be able to read the other chapters. I think it is interesting to know how practices developed, but the authors are simply too interesting in damning anyone who thinks they can worship or honor God through them. I guess God cannot use cultural differences or developments to honor himself, at least according to Viola and Barna.

One of the appendices in Being Leaders is a personal core values audit. It’s actually the same audit he gives for churches to use in both books. So I took it, and here’s what I discovered about myself, in the order of priority that I established for them:

1. Worship and Prayer
2. Bible Knowledge
3. Evangelism/Lost People/Missions
4. Community/Relevance
5. Mobilized Laity

The order is significant, as I perceive this is a process that someone would walk through. First, people should worship God and engage Him in prayer. This would be naturally followed by a desire to know Him more, which would happen through Bible study. While I don’t think Bible knowledge is necessarily a prerequisite for evangelism, I believe we become better evangelists the more we know about God, which is why I have it third. As we pursue evangelism, we will likely realize that we need to understand the people we are trying to reach: the people of our community (either where we were born or where we have chosen to live for work, family, or ministry). We will need to understand the community and make our message relevant, that is in the vernacular of the community so that the message can be heard and understood.  And I firmly believe that this is a task of everyone in the church, not just the lead pastor, the staff, or the church leaders (be they deacons, elders, Sunday school teachers, or some other unnamed group).

All of which can make it pretty awkward to be a pastor. Can you imagine the person I just described in the last paragraph when he enters a new church as a new minister for the very first time? Let’s just say it’s very energy-draining when I have to force myself to reach out and engage people, especially a lot of people or over an extended period of time (say once a week, every week).

I’ve excused myself from the typical role of the pastor as care giver, the pastor as the one who visits the sick in the hospital room, the pastor who leads the way in evangelism. I’ve excused myself by relying on the passage in Acts where the Jerusalem church leaders divide the work of the ministry among the deacons who minister to the poor and widows and the elders who focus on the ministry of the word. I’ve just understood my role as that of an elder rather than what was called in that passage a deacon.

So today I’m reading through the latest issue of Outreach Magazine, and I come to an article by Ed Stetzer called “Questions for McChurch.” The article is about the problems he sees with the multi-site movement among churches. (Actually, it’s rather interesting – the article leaves the impression that he’s in favor of the multi-site movement, but his contract with Outreach requires him to take the “contratrian” [his word] position, so he has to find things to be negative about the movement.) His first criticism on the multi-site movement among churches is about the pastoral role, and how the multi-site church really limits the amount of ministering the senior pastor can do in the traditional pastoral care roles such as praying over the sick, watching over the flock, and breaking bread with one another. And he goes on to say that, in the multi-site church, the senior pastor is rarely the primary care pastor.

That phrase struck me. Maybe it’s because doctors and medical care have suddenly taken on an explosive new role in the lives of my spouse and me because of the new bundle of joy we’ll be holding in a just a few more weeks, but I had never thought of the pastor in such terms. When all of those forms ask about a primary care physician, I had never thought of the idea of a primary care pastor. Who is that? Should it be the senior pastor always? Is it appropriate to have a pastor of pastoral care who handles all of that while another teaching pastor takes on the role of the sermons (like my ideal church setting would have it)? Were is the place for pastoral care in the role of senior pastor (or whatever you call that)? If the day comes for me to be a senior pastor, whose primary care pastor will I be? Do I need to be a primary care pastor for a set of people even now in my associate role?

Lots of questions. Few answers.

I am struck by a couple of aspects. One, that she praised God at all. I’m sure it was a pretty normal thing in the culture of the day to praise a deity for the gift of a child, particularly of the male variety. I guess she thought that since Rachel was barren (apparently), and she now had four sons for Jacob, that he status was secured, even if Jacob never loved her as he loved Rachel. In a way, I guess the praise feels “left over.” Like an afterthought or something. Especially since, when Rachel hands over her maidservant, the competition starts all over again with renewed vigor.

The other thing that strikes me, and contributes to the “left over” feeling, is that it took her to son number four before she gave praise to God. The first three were all about Jacob. Even her fifth and sixth sons she counted as wages due her by God for some action she had taken – something God provided for her on account of her circumstances, rather than an undeserved blessing for her simply to be thankful for.

And I guess I’m struck because I have the same tendency. God is down on the list. I eventually think of Him and even thank Him for the good things in life – the blessings. But it’s after they are here for a while, and I’ve enjoyed gloating over them or showing them off to someone else. It’s about me getting my status right first. Then I’ll give God the glory and the honor. Once I’m set up the way I want to be set up, then I’ll turn over the praise.

More ramblings that probably have little or nothing to do with what Rachel and Leah actually were dealing with in their lives. Besides, there are so many reasons that I cannot understand or comprehend what they were going through…beginning with my chromosome set.

It is titled “Train a Child; Affect the World” and the Scripture passage is Exodus 2:1-15. It’s about Moses being reared by his own mother in Pharaoh’s household. The line that gets me is this:

It was doubtlessly under his mother’s care that Moses trusted God for his salvation.

Pardon me? People in the Old Testament knew about trusting God for salvation? This is the guy who spent the first 40 years of his life as an Egyptian prince and the next forty years as a fugitive desert sheepherder for his father-in-law. It wasn’t until God encountered Moses in a burning bush – God being the actor here – that Moses’ life really took a dramatic turn. And he didn’t exactly leap at the opportunity to follow and serve God – he demanded a surrogate speaker from the God who can burn a bush without consuming it! That doesn’t exactly sound like “trusting for salvation” to me.

And I think the last forty years of Moses’ life had a lot more to do with the burning bush, ten plagues, divided sea, hand-carved commandment stones, rock-struck streams, and face-to-face conversations with a God who left his face glowing so much he needed a veil than anything from the first eighty years of his life. I think his mother’s rearing probably had a lot to do with his murdering an Egyptian guard at 40…..but personal trust in God as his Savior? That’s way too AD twentieth-century evangelistic crusade for me to believe it had anything to do with Moses’ spiritual life.

Besides, God, especially in the Old Testament, seems much more concerned with people groups (families, tribes, and nations) than with particular individuals apart from those groups.

Just my own thoughts and reactions.

Genesis 1:1

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Genesis 1:26-27

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:31

God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.

Genesis 3:6

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Genesis 3:17-19

To Adam [God] said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Genesis 6:5-6

The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

Genesis 12:1-3

The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Deuteronomy 29:10-13

All of you are standing today in the presence of the LORD your God– your leaders and chief men, your elders and officials, and all the other men of Israel, together with your children and your wives, and the aliens living in your camps who chop your wood and carry your water. You are standing here in order to enter into a covenant with the LORD your God, a covenant the LORD is making with you this day and sealing with an oath, to confirm you this day as his people, that he may be your God as he promised you and as he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Judges 2:11-13

Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals. They forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the LORD to anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.

2 Chronicles 36:1-19

Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years.

He did evil in the eyes of the LORD his God and did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke the word of the LORD. He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him take an oath in God’s name. He became stiff-necked and hardened his heart and would not turn to the LORD, the God of Israel. Furthermore, all the leaders of the priests and the people became more and more unfaithful, following all the detestable practices of the nations and defiling the temple of the LORD, which he had consecrated in Jerusalem. The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place.

But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and spared neither young man nor young woman, old man or aged. God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar. He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large and small, and the treasures of the LORD’s temple and the treasures of the king and his officials. They set fire to God’s temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there.

Jeremiah 31:27-33

“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will plant the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the offspring of men and of animals. Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, and to overthrow, destroy and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,” declares the LORD. “In those days people will no longer say, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes– his own teeth will be set on edge. “The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

Luke 2:1-7

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Isaiah 53:3-6

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Matthew 28:1-6

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.

Matthew 28:18-20

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Revelation 7:9-17

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: “Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!” Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes– who are they, and where did they come from?” I answered, “Sir, you know.” And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, “they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Isaiah 6:1-12

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” He said, “Go and tell this people: “‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” Then I said, “For how long, O Lord?” And he answered: “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the LORD has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken.

I don’t know that there is a right and a wrong as to when to have communion. I believe
the church has freedom in deciding when to practice it as best fits their worship practice.

But I was struck today by how normal it felt. Communion should never be normal.
We practice monthly here. The last church I attended served communion weekly.
It never got old, routine, or normal then. In fact, I think communion took on
more significance for me while I was at the church precisely because we practiced
it weekly. But here, at only once a month, it just seems every day. Normal. Routine.
Not all that holy, set-apart, sacred. And I don’t like that, not one bit.

Communion, Lord’s Supper, Eucharist, Table, Mass, whatever you might call it, is the
high point of worship in a church. While my tradition does not hold any place for special, saving grace from the cup and bread,  Communion is the preeminent time of worship. It is, of all times, when we remember our whole story: from Genesis to Revelation, taking long stops in Deuteronomy, Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It’s not just the Christmas story or the cross or the resurrection. But the whole bundle from creation through loss to redemption and the hope of restoration. Only communion can really capture all of that at the same time.

So it shouldn’t be routine. It shouldn’t be normal. It is anything but.

So there is an editorial from Sunday, January 14, 2007, edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer about the religious right. The article compares it to fascism. Nothing like being slammed in the face with a two by four of somebody else’s perspective of who you are, what you believe, and what you think. I’m going to let it soak in a little more – and reread it a couple of more times – before I offer any more thoughts.