Archives for July 2017

Are We Doing Church Wrong?

July 31, 2017 by Dan Olinger 8 Comments

Why?

Why do you go to church?

Because it’s Sunday, and that’s what we do on Sundays?

Or maybe because you need something to hang onto if you’re going to make it through another week? A Bible verse, a thought from a sermon, an encouraging line in a song?

I’d like to suggest that you may be doing it wrong. Bear with me here.

Let’s get back to the beginning. God has graciously gathered his people into a body he calls the Church.

Why did he pick that name?

Church. In the language of the New Testament, it means “gathering” or “assembly.”

Think about it. Of all the things God could have named his people for—forgiven ones, holy ones, loved ones, redeemed ones, known ones—he chose to name us “the gathering ones”—“the people who get together regularly.”

Apparently it’s really important to God that we assemble. And if so, then it ought to be important to us as well. Why?

Paul gives us the answer in several places; I particularly like the one in Ephesians 4:

¹¹And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, ¹²to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, ¹⁴so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. ¹⁵Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

So why do we gather? We gather so that each one of us may exercise his gifts (vv 11-12) for the benefit of everyone else, to the further benefit of the body as a whole.

Well, how about that. You’re not there to get a blessing; you’re there to be one. You’re there to give, not to get.

And when everyone gives, everyone gets. When the pastor exercises his gifts in preaching, you’ll be ministered to by the sermon. When the congregation sings praises, you’ll be ministered to by the singing. But your motivation is not to receive; it’s to minister in the way that only you can, by the gifting of the Spirit.

Let me suggest a mindset for you.

If you’re a believer, you’re gifted by the Spirit in certain ways (1 Cor 12:7, 11). By the grace of God, you can minister to those around you. Maybe your gift is teaching. Maybe it’s serving. Maybe it’s mercy: listening to others and showing them grace.

When you’re with the assembly, you’re there by God’s calling—because someone there needs what you have, and you can exercise your gift(s) in ways no one else can. If your gift is mercy, your job there is to find someone who needs mercy, and dump a truckload of it all over them.

So you don’t walk into the building, find a seat in the back, and wait to get blessed. You’re on a mission; you seek. You talk to people, asking them how they’re doing, and listening to what they say, maybe asking further questions to coax the truth out of them, demonstrating that you care and that you have time to listen. And when you find someone who needs mercy—or whatever your gift is—he’s the reason you’re here today. Give him your gift.

And you can’t go home until you’ve done that, because until then you haven’t really done church.

How different would church be If Everybody Did?

Photo by Matt McLean on Unsplash

Grateful for Grace

July 27, 2017 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash

Early in our marriage, when we were in the process of making friends with other young couples, my wife and I would occasionally notice that as we socialized in our home or in someone else’s, some people always seemed to be upset about something. They’d tell us the story of how they were wronged in some way, how some injustice was done. The next time we were together, they had their tails in a knot about something else. Always upset, always holding on to wrongs, real or imagined.

Once, we made the conscious decision to minimize our socializing with one such couple. These days the internet memes say, “You just don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.” And it’s true.

It puzzles me how some people can be so ungrateful. People don’t treat them right; they don’t get paid enough; their mother-in-law is a pain in the neck; their boss is an idiot. And on it goes.

A colleague of mine remarked to me several years ago, “You know, life’s going to happen, no matter what you do. Some of it will be unpleasant. You can be bitter about it, or you can be happy in spite of it. The choice is up to you. I decided,” she said, “to be happy.” And boy, was she.

As result of her example, I began to think about all the ways I’ve been blessed. And one day it occurred to me that everything I need—literally everything—is free. That’s the way God has arranged the universe.

Don’t believe me? Think about it.

What do you need more than anything else in the world? If you lack it for 30 seconds, it will be literally all you think about until you get some.

Yep, oxygen.

Free.

You’re swimming at the bottom of an ocean of it—an ocean that God has kindly diluted so you won’t burst into flame at the slightest spark. God’s even given you a scoop on the front of your head so you’ll get your share of the stuff. Some of you he gave a larger scoop to, and you have the gall to be upset with him about that. Shame on you.

What’s the second most necessary thing? Water. They say you can last 3 days without it—some maybe as much as 8 to 10 days under certain conditions. But not long.

Most of the globe is covered with it. And that water mass feeds a delivery system that brings it right to your feet, purified, for free. (Unless you live in the Atacama, which hardly anybody does.) And again, many of us complain when it rains. Especially at the beach.

Granted, I pay a water bill, but I’m not really paying for the water; I’m paying for someone to clean it up and bring it to my house. I choose to do that, but I have a big ol’ plastic barrel that I could use to get my water for free.

What’s next? Food. Grows right out of the ground, from plants that are already there. Free. Again, I pay for my food, but only because I don’t feel like growing my own. So I pay somebody else to grow and harvest and deliver it; and sometimes I go out to a restaurant and pay somebody else to cook it and bring it to my table. But the food? The food’s free.

And then there’s light, and heat, and all the other physical necessities. All free.

God has been remarkably good to us.

But you’re thinking (I hope), those aren’t our greatest needs. They’re just temporal. We have greater needs: forgiveness, relationship, grace, mercy, peace. Love.

What do you know? They’re all free, too.

Everything you need is free.

I don’t mean to minimize anyone’s suffering. The world is broken, and we and everyone we know here are broken as well, by sin. Suffering is real. Abuse is real. Pain is real. Death is real.

But we have much to be grateful for, and these jewels shine all the brighter against the black background of pain.

Today’s homework: read Psalm 145.

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously [freely!] give us all things?” (Rom 8.32).

The Music of the Sphere

July 24, 2017 by Dan Olinger 4 Comments

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Sundays are special.

I don’t mean to me. Well, they are special to me, of course. I get to gather with other believers who have committed to me and to one another, and we get to serve, encourage, educate, and challenge one another.

And we get to worship God together. That’s what makes Sunday especially special: it’s special to God. He sees and hears people from almost every language, people, and nation—more than we can possibly be aware of—all singing to and about him, all thanking him, all rejoicing in him, all hearing what he has said in his Word.

Does that sound self-centered and egotistical of him?

Come on, you know better than that. When you give a sacrificial gift to someone you love, is it egotistical and self-centered to be pleased when she tells you how much it means to her? How much more should God, who has given us more than we can ever know, at greater cost than we could ever pay, rejoice when we thank him?

Egotistical? What nonsense.

Because God is unique—infinite, eternal, complete, unchanging—he sees things differently from the way we do. We think of Sunday as beginning in the morning, when we get up—maybe at 6 or 7. (I suspect that most American Christians with 8-to-5 jobs actually sleep in a little longer on Sundays, since few churches have services beginning as early as 8.) And Sunday ends when we go to bed at 10 or 11—or, if you’re a college student, shortly after 4 am.

But it’s not that way for God. Days and hours aren’t a part of his nature; they’re something he invented. So he’s outside of time, though well aware of it. (And of course he entered time and space in the person of his Son, but without becoming limited by it.)

So he’s not on Eastern, or Central, or Pacific Time. He’s beyond and above all of it. And that means that Sunday lasts longer for him than for us.

It begins on Kiritimati Island (Christmas Island) in the Pacific, which has the most forward time zone on the planet, 14 hours ahead of Greenwich. If believers there start their service at 10 am Sunday, it’s only 3 pm Saturday where I live, in Eastern Standard Time. That’s when God begins to hear the chorus of praise. And yes, he has his people there. It’s a small group, barely heard above the breakers, but certainly heard and relished in the courts of heaven.

The chorus moves westward with the sun. An hour later Tonga joins, then the Marshalls, then the Solomons—and with them the easternmost reaches of Russia—then Papua New Guinea. And at 5 hours in, the chorus begins to swell as thousands—millions—of worshipers from eastern Asia—Japan, the Philippines, and soon the behemoth of China—shout their loud praise to the one who is worthy. How joyously the thundering praise must crash into the presence of Majesty!

And we’re just getting started. Vietnam, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Iran, Jerusalem—hour after hour the chorus mounts, with new, fresh voices and ever-changing accents joining the praise. With Jerusalem, Kenya has joined, and now the wave moves from Asia—the birthplace of Abraham and Moses and Judaism and Jesus and Christianity—to Africa. The voices are different now, even as they are different from those of their northern brothers in Europe, but the content and the heart are ever the same. Cape Town, Yaounde, Wa, Reykjavik, and across another ocean, to the New World, still far short of the New Earth, but praising God nonetheless.

Cape Verde; Rio; St. John’s. And then, 19 full hours after it has begun, the crescendo arrives at my church on Hudson’s Corners in Greer, SC—a place that no biblical character could ever have imagined would receive the gospel—and I am privileged to add my quavering voice to a song that supersedes time and place and culture:

See the destined day arise!
See the willing sacrifice—
Jesus, to redeem our loss,
Hangs upon the shameful cross.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Lamb of God, for sinners slain!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Jesus Christ, we praise your name!

And still we are not finished. Millions more wait to add their voices in places like Bogota and Tegucigalpa and Winnipeg and Salt Lake City (yes, some are there, too) and Spokane and Fairbanks and Adak and Honolulu and Midway. Then to Amchitka in the Aleutians, where U.S. airmen are the only human inhabitants, where at last the long shout subsides for another week. With the vagaries of time-zone organization, we’re much further west than we were when we started, but Sunday is just now arriving in the northern Pacific. And back at my house, the time is 5 pm.

The song that lasted only an hour for us has gone for more than 24—26, to be exact (or 27, if you stop counting at the end of the service). What a glorious ride it has been. And in just 6 days (not 7) it will start again.

God is worthy of much, much more. But he rejoices in this. Add your voice to the largest choir of all time. It meets every week.

What Jury Duty Taught Me about Comment Threads

July 20, 2017 by Dan Olinger 13 Comments

After 45 years living in the same town, I finally got the call for jury duty. I’ve been hoping to get one for a long time; SC law has a provision that teachers can have their assigned week changed to one in the summer, when it wouldn’t intrude on their jobs. So I’ve wanted for a long time to get the experience.

I was seated on a criminal case, and the judge appointed me foreman. I was a little nervous about that, since I’d never been on a jury before, but another jury member had been a foreman on a case earlier that week, and I asked him to let me know if I was doing anything stupid.

It was a difficult case. It involved a sex crime (I’m going to try to avoid giving identifying details), and since in sex crimes there are often no witnesses but the victim and the perpetrator, it usually comes down to which person you believe. So you look for some indication that one or the other person might be lying. If there aren’t any such indications, what do you do? Some on the jury said that they believed the victim, and that was enough for them. Guilty. Others said that they believed the victim too, but they weren’t prepared to send the defendant off to jail without better evidence than one person’s accusation—beyond reasonable doubt, and all that. Not guilty.

So there we were. Highly emotional case, strong feelings, opposing views.

What did we do?

This jury was highly diverse on every possible axis. Different races, sexes, ages, levels of education, employment statuses, economic statuses, levels of religiosity. Every reason to go nuclear.

But we didn’t. Everyone gave his opinion and the reasons for it; everyone else listened quietly and respectfully. We laid out the bases of disagreement objectively and calmly, with no harsh language and no rolling of the eyes or other visible signs of disrespect. We shared the same frustration over the evidence that we knew was being withheld from us. When someone stepped into the bathroom—during which policy requires that deliberation stop—we sat back and talked jovially and actively, without any awkward silences, and we didn’t choose to talk just with people we agreed with.

It was awesome.

And this at a time when the country is allegedly more polarized, and angry about it, than ever. You know it’s true; the comment threads on political websites prove it.

Don’t they?

Well, let’s do a little math. Let’s suppose that half the population is polarized and angry. What are the odds that we’d seat a jury of 12 with no angry people? If the odds of getting 1 non-hostile person are 1 in 2, then the odds of getting 12 in a row are 1 in 2¹², or 1 in 4096. But if only 1 in 10 Americans is angry, the odds of getting that jury increase to better than 1 in 4.

So you know what I think? I think the rage that dominates the daily news cycle is overblown. I think that our fellow citizens are better than that. I think the comment threads and Facebook newsfeeds attract the angries the way a porch light attracts bugs. If you spend a lot of time there, you’re going to think the society is in much worse shape than it really is.

If I had no other reasons to be proud of my country and its people—and I have plenty—the 2 days I spent with my fellow jury members would be reason enough.

God bless them all.

Dan Olinger

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