Always Improving Your Craft

Hugo is a beautiful movie.  I don't like 3-D much at all, but I am sorely disappointed I didn't see it in 3-D (it was, however, a great way to break in a new Blu-Ray!). It is a movie about the movies, a beautiful story set amid beautiful scenery.  It is hard to write about it without spoiling the plot line, but suffice it to say it is about a forgotten man who once was a great artist in his given medium, and how he finds redemption through the persistence of a young boy and girl.

It is, in short, a fictionalized account of the later life of Georges Melies, the early cinematographic genius, famous for his "Voyage to the Moon," in which the rocket launched from Earth hits the Old Man in the Moon in the eye.  Melies was a restless perfectionist and innovator, always driving himself to do better and be better, inventing an art where none had previously existed.

Watching those early movies is fascinating --they are primitive, yet beautiful.  We have come far so very fast in terms of technology.  Sound, then color, then Cinemascope and Panavision, then stereo, then surround, and now digital and CGI.  Hollywood has been restlessly improving itself since its beginnings.

Which makes me think about preaching...

I found a new and insightful blog, pastoralized.com, by Eric McKiddie, one of the pastors of the storied College Church @ Wheaton.  McKiddie is excellent at offering pithy and wise advice to pastors on the whole range of pastoral attitudes and practice.  His blog 12 Ways to Improve Your Preaching in 2012 started quite a lively discussion on my Facebook page.

I work with seminary interns, and one of the things I try to do is to get them to examine the "How" of preaching, in short to be thinking of delivery and how it can be improved.  Seminarians often view sermons as we might view our children --beloved little darlings-- and perish the thought that anyone might tell us we could improve them!  Those who have let me critique their sermons probably wish they hadn't, later (though some come back and thank me).  I have stressed to them that sermons are part art and part science, and, like any skill, we ought to be intent on getting better.  Preaching is part gifting, part caught and part taught.  WE also tend to know it when we hear it, even across a range of styles.

The aspiring preacher needs to find his own voice and cultivate it.  The danger of listening to good preaching is to become a mimic of a good preacher --and the mimics are never as good as the originals.  I firmly believe preachers ought to ingest a regular diet of good preaching for the good of their own souls, and also with an ear towards improving themselves, but to avoid at all costs imitating those whom you hear.

One part of preaching I think that has sadly fallen out of fashion is eliminating notes.  I am no anti-note legalist, but I know, in my case, notes do me far more harm than good.  The danger of "notelessness" is straying off topic, but really this is not difficult to remedy --know what you're going to say, and don't say anything (generally) you hadn't planned to say.  Preaching is oral proclamation, which is a very different thing from written communication, and a sermon that is read, generally, will sound stilted and fail to connect.  I say generally to all this because there are exceptions!

I say this too, because I use notes in the evening, and I know how much less enjoyable preaching is when I do it.

Friends who studied under great homileticians (Henry Bast, Haddon Robinson, Robert Rayburn) all report that it was expected of them not to take notes into the pulpit.  It seems to me that a reasonably intelligent and disciplined man should be able to speak for 25-35 minutes on a topic extemporaneously without veering too far afield.  Sometimes I wonder if this is why so many candidate sermons sound like Bible study notes, and, sadly, many preachers fail to ever advance beyond that.

The danger of all of this is, of course, that I, or any, who venture to opine about preaching may come across as regarding myself (ourselves) as experts, and as gifted preachers.  That is not my intent.  I do think, however, that I generally know what makes for good preaching, about which much more could and should be said (and McKiddie is excellent on this, as is Fred Craddock in his books Preaching and As One Without Authority.)  

The overall point is this: preachers ought to be restless and intentional about improving the "hows" of their preaching --things like structure of argument, rhetorical flow, voice and delivery.  Other preachers care to weigh in?

Church Impossible or "To See Ourselves as Others See Us"

Okay, I've become addicted to Restaurant Impossible, a kinder and gentler version of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.  The premise of the show is this:  celebrity chef Robert Irvine sets out to save a failing restaurant, given just 2 days and $10,000.  Often what you see makes you never want to eat in a restaurant again.  Dated decor, filthy kitchens, uninspiring food (often from cans and without such basics as salt and pepper), vermin, surly owners and unsanitary food storage.

It makes you wonder, "Can't these people see this?"  The truth is, quite often, they cannot see it.  Why?  They are so immersed in it.  It is their world, seven days a week and twenty-four hours a day.  Even if they wish things could be different, they have no idea how to make them better.  They need an outsider, an expert, to come in and show them the way.  Usually, what Robert finds is by teaching them a few techniques, giving them a new start, and a few pep talks, he can transform a restaurant. At the end of each show, they give a brief update from three months later.  What would be more interesting is how the restaurants are faring a year or more down the road.  Were the restaurateurs really capable of change, or will they fall back into familiar yet ultimately destructive habits?  Several of those he tried to save have indeed closed.

I have remarked to my wife that it would be great to have a Church Impossible --someone to come in from the outside and look at the facilities, the worship, the decor, the culture and demeanor of a church and its pastor.  The result would no doubt be painful, but, when we are immersed in our own world, it can be so difficult to see how others see us.  We think we are nice people, why don't more people join with us?  Or, we think we know how we need to change, but our own opinions are very much colored by our own subjectivity.  An older friend in ministry told me once to write down everything negative you notice during your first six weeks because, after that, you won't have the eyes to see it any more.

Every church has a mythology about it.  Outsiders may see us, our facilities and worship, our staff and membership, very differently than we perceive ourselves.  Often a pastor, as an outsider, can see these things, but meets great reticence to change or improve.  He doesn't have the built-in credibility of a long-time member, and fights the institutional inertia that plagues every group of men and women under the sun.

Some things we might write off as superficial really aren't.  God deserves our best, he deserves us doing whatever we do, well.  So, some questions we might ask ourselves are these:

Are we really a friendly church?  How deep does the friendliness go?  Are we quick to invite visitors over for lunch, to bring new members into our circle of friends?

Do we do our music well, whatever style it might be?  Does the congregation sing in a way that is worthy of the worship of God?

Do the sermons exalt Christ and invite others to know him, and, for those who know him, inspire them to follow him more faithfully, in every area of their lives?  Are they accessible, yet challenging?  Does the pastor seem to care about both truth and people?  What could he do better?

Is the facility inviting, well-kept, bright and easy to navigate?  Is the nursery convenient to the sanctuary?  Are the spaces open?  Are the bathrooms bright and clean?  Do the lights all work?  How is the sound?  (These things may seem mundane, but they send a message --do these people care about their facilities as the place they gather to worship God?)

There are many more questions that could be asked.  So, what would you ask?

Piety and Learning, Gentleness and Conviction

The last several years were difficult for my friend Knox Chamblin.  He seemed to have one health trial after another.  His anemia gave way to an aggressive leukemia.  He suffered well.  He suffered as a Christian.  He asked God for healing.  He came to the elders to be anointed with oil.  Last week, the Lord took him home.  His prayer for healing was answered and we will see the result at the resurrection of the just.

I loved Knox Chamblin as a professor.  I had him for Pauline Epistles and C. S. Lewis.  I did not know him well as a student.  I remember, as a brash Yankee, first hearing his gentle Southern accent.  I remember being moved as he wept at the lectern.  I loved his classes, his unique take on the text of Paul, his Calvinist's love for C. S. Lewis.

What a privilege it has been to be his pastor and his friend for these past five years.  I have yet to come to terms with the fact that he is gone.  The other delight of these past five years is coming to know and to love his dear wife, Ginger.  I have never known two people like them.  Words fail me to describe them and their relationship, and their ministry both individually and together.  They were some of my inner ring --those people to whom a pastor can go on a dark day, and confide in, and know that he was being lifted up by them in prayer.  Scripture tells us (Hebrews 13:17) that some people will be hard to pastor, and tells us not to be those people.  Knox and Ginger are the exact opposite --they have always been more of a blessing to me than I could ever be to them.)  During Knox's long hospitalization, the Lord gave me some wonderful times of prayer and reflection with him.  Many people make small talk.  Knox was not unusual in that regard.  Yet, inevitably, the conversation naturally turned to the preciousness of Christ and his word.  It was not forced, it was not artificial, it was part of the warp and woof of this man's being.

Knox Chamblin was a unique man.  He was a Biblical scholar with a poetic soul.  He was an irenic and peaceable soul of unshakable conviction.  He was a seminary professor who went to prisons to visit.  He was a minister in the PCUSA to the end of his life,  yet devoted his life for the last thirty years to a PCA congregation.  Christ has his warriors and his polemicists, and they are necessary.  But, Christ also has his gentle giants and his peacemakers, and Knox was one.

Knox was not named for the great Scottish reformer.  If memory serves, one parent was a Baptist, the other a Methodist, and, in true twentieth century fashion, they settled in their married life on being Presbyterian.  What a providential happening!  What a blessing that this singular soul was entrusted by God to perhaps the most cantankerous part of his fractious family.  For Knox there was no separation between scholarship and doxology and piety, between heart and head and hand.  So many of us have such a hard time holding those things together.  Whether it was effortless for Knox, he and the Lord know.  It certainly looked seamless to me.

Knox was brilliant beyond reckoning, certainly.  His work Paul and the Self, a masterpiece of Christian psychology (in the theological, not technical sense of that word), is no easy read.  His commentary on Matthew is as devotionally rich as any Ryle ever wrote, and far more scholarly.  God, in his grace, allowed Knox to finish that work, and I am grateful.

Knox's memorial service was the most moving service I have ever been party to in our church.  Throngs of people, "It Is Well" and "How Firm a Foundation," reading Psalms especially dear to him in his affliction, reflecting on his life and how it reflected Christ, Ralph Davis reminding us that Christ is sympathetic to us in our losses, but violently angry at death itself, and alone has the power to overcome death  --a beautiful, wonderful and awful thing all wrapped up into one.

I am thoroughly dissatisfied with what I have written.  My words fail this good man.  My grief today feels different than that of last week, or of his service.  Today it is the dreary dull reality of loss and emotional weariness.  I am grateful to God that he gave us Knox for 76 years.  I am so grateful for these last 5 years.  Yet, how I wish they could have been many more.

A Life Stranger than Fiction

I have long been taken with Walker Percy.  I am fascinated more by his life than by his novels.  I am not much of a fiction reader, to be honest, but I have learned from his profound essays.  Much of what I write below is drawn from the moving PBS special on his life.

If it were not biography, Tennessee Williams could have written the life of Walker Percy.  He was born into a prominent and tragic Southern family.  His grandfather had committed suicide.  His father was a prominent Birmingham attorney, with wealth and privilege.  He, too, ended his life.  Suicide felt like the family curse to Walker, and he wondered if he were destined to walk that same road.

Walker, his brothers and his mother went to live with his cousin, "Uncle" Will Percy, himself the author of a haunting memoir Lanterns on the Levee (a very worthwhile read).  Will was a Southern gentleman, never married, and a leading citizen of Greenville, MS.  His father LeRoy, whom he lionized, was a United States Senator who stood down the Klan.  Will himself had rather liberal sympathies.  Greenville was anything but a stereotypical Southern town.  It produced a progressive newspaper, edited by Hodding Carter.  It had a prominent synagogue.  It was wealthy beyond imagining and a cosmopolitan oasis in the Mississippi Delta.  Will entertained luminaries of every sort in his capacious estate and Walker was the beneficiary of it.  His childhood friend included another man who would become an equally prominent Southern author --Shelby Foote.

While still a young man, Walker's mother drowned.  She was driving on a treacherous road, her car came around a sharp corner and missed the entrance to a bridge.  She drowned with her younger son in the car.  He lived, but she died.  Walker was soon at the scene --he did not know it was his mother's car until he arrived.

One can understand why a young man might want to leave much of this behind.  The settled philosophy of his early life was agnosticism --he was to be a man of science.  He went to study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He settled on becoming a doctor, and studied pathology at Columbia University.  While there, working on cadavers, he contracted tuburculosis, and was forced to lie flat on his back for months in a sanitorium.

At some point, Walker began to realize that science could not account for the deeper, richer things in life --beauty, love, nor could it grapple with man's plight, blindly trying to make his way in the silent universe, sensing there is meaning, but not being able to read what that meaning was.  He awakened to the reality of God, yet not without profound and burning questions.  He had been profoundly influenced by existentialism.  He became a Christian Existential Catholic.  Existentialism prizes the individual acting decisively.  While in the sanitorium, he resolved to marry his long-time fiancee, become a Catholic and move to New Orleans.

Only he didn't quite move to New Orleans.  He settled in the nearby town of Covington, and writes movingly of why he did so.  Though becoming a literary giant through his novel, The Moviegoer, he was a regular citizen, in his later days, found at the waffle house and driving a beat-up Toyota.

He and his wife, Mary Bernice ("Bunt"), had two daughters.  They would take walks down by the river.  Because snakes abounded, Walker carried a rifle.  Once, when the younger daughter was a baby, he shot a snake.  Bernice and the older daughter winced.  The younger daughter didn't make a sound --they had just discovered she was deaf.

Percy's life was marked by tragic and difficult circumstances.  Many people's are.  Is it right to draw lessons from a person's life?  Was it Percy's circumstances that gave him so many things to say?

I wanted to introduce you to Walker Percy because he has some wonderful things to say --perhaps I'll chronicle some of those in a later post.  I am not commending him religiously or philosophically.  I am commending him because he makes me think.  Maybe he will make you think, too.

Some Random Thoughts about Doing Good while Doing Minimal Harm

There has been a lot of healthy talk in Christian circles lately about how best to go about doing good in the name of Christ.  Both Fikkert and Corbett's When Helping Hurts and Tim Keller's Generous Justice contribute much to this discussion.  Some of this is distilled from them, and some from my own experiences.  Some of it may not even be right!  Just some thoughts.

1.) You have to be willing to be "taken," up to a point, without getting jaded.  This is really difficult.  The Christian should be wise --we don't want to help in a way that winds up hurting, but neither do we want to deny aid just because a person might be playing us.

2.)  Sometimes, the best thing to offer is comfort, support and companionship.  Some financial holes are simply too deep for most individuals (or even congregations) to fill.  The apostles once said to a beggar, "Silver and gold have I none."  Of course, they promptly offered healing that is beyond most of our spiritual gifting, but we can offer the same Jesus.

3.)  When in doubt, ask for counsel.  If you are faced with a decision as to how to help, or whether to help, get some quick counsel from like-minded brothers and sisters.  They will help you avoid purely emotional or reactionary decisions.

4.) Don't be too cautious.  God is with you and you have the Holy Spirit.  Not all doing good is safe.  Don't be foolish (I was once, and am glad I escaped), but don't be reticent.  Don't let the possible worst case scenario, or all the potential contingencies, keep you from helping someone.

5.) Doing real and lasting good is very hard to do.  Many people's problems are the result of factors far out of your control (relationship issues, health difficulties, lifestyle choices).  You can often alleviate immediate needs, but more needs will present themselves because of poor choices or just the size of the predicament the person is in.  Do what you can, but realize you can't do everything.

6.)  If you don't know how to help a person in a particular situation, get to know some people who do.

7.) Be willing to say "no," while still offering support.  Sometimes people will ask you to do things that are dangerous for them (like collecting an outstanding debt).  Politely refuse and tell them why.

8.) Be careful what you pray for.  Sunday night we had a prayer service.  Since we are an urban church, I told the congregation we needed to ask God to bring us all sorts of people, and help us welcome them and meet whatever needs we can.  Immediately afterwards (actually before!) an acute need became available.

9.)  Expect unexpected blessings.  Getting involved in peoples' messy lives is hard.  You will probably get hurt and taken advantage of.  But, you will also get some really awesome unexpected blessings, too.  I've seen it --tangibly and really.  I don't want to share details because of the potential for embarrassing some involved, but let's just say it can be spectacular to help people.

10.) Build relationships, don't just write checks.  We are good at alleviating guilt by giving money.  Money is necessary, to be sure.  Look to build friendships.  Ask for God to bring you friends who present particular challenges --who aren't from your walk of life, your race, your education level, your economic class.  Take them out, invite them over (Jesus said to!).  People are people.  You will be surprised at the deep bonds that can be forged.

11.)  It's not wrong to feel good about doing good.  Kant told us that if a virtuous act made us feel good, it wasn't virtuous (or something like that).  Nonsense.  It's okay to feel satisfaction when you help somebody.  It's part of the reward.  You won't always feel it, and not feeling it is not a reason for not doing it, but when you do, enjoy it.  "I did somebody some good today" is not a bad thing.

Some Thoughts on Christopher Hitchens

I understand the truth of what the Scripture says, "The fool says in his heart 'there is no God.'"  Yet, smart atheists  serve a purpose in the life of the thinking believer, and Christopher Hitchens was a smart atheist.  Doug Wilson, his sometime sparring partner has written a fitting tribute to him over at Christianity Today.  Christians do themselves a disservice when they assume that the atheist (or any opponent of evangelical Christianity) is the product of some personality disorder or traumatic experience.  It is true that some very smart people go stark raving mad when it comes to their opposition to the Christian faith (Richard Dawkins comes to mind).  Even Hitchens went off the rails sometimes, but generally he presented smart, credible challenges to the too-easy answers with which we comfort ourselves.  I find few people on the "other side" of whom this is true (Camille Paglia would be another, but she has largely and lamentably fallen silent of late).

Many people in my circles (and I chide myself here) are satisfied with very pat answers, and are unwilling to allow their faith to be challenged by the good arguments of the other side --this is true in terms of every aspect of the Christian world-view --politics as well as religion.  So, we end up repeating mantras instead of thinking deeply.  Scripture is altogether different.  Ecclesiastes stares into the abyss and finds some discomforting things there.  Job wrangles with pain and evil and finds his ultimate answer is no answer at all --simply a call to leave it to God, and a confident resolution that God will triumph in the end.  That is faith --but we need to understand why it is not always intellectually satisfying.

The larger point is to find the best opponents of what you believe and read them or, if you have the chance, wrangle with them in person.  If your faith is too brittle to withstand those sorts of onslaughts, it needs to be strengthened.

One of my mentors in the ministry is an incredibly smart man, intellectually curious across the field of human endeavor.  A conversation with him is at once fascinating and intellectually daunting, as topics fly by in a flurry.  During his ministry in one place, a mutual friend introduced him to the notable, vociferous atheist forty-year pastor of the downtown liberal church.  Yes, I said atheist.  This man was not a "pat answers" universalist liberal --he denied the existence of God, and told his free-thinking congregation as much.  This group would meet regularly at the same spot, in an inklings-like friendship:  my friend (pastor of a large, staunchly orthodox and Calvinistic church), the acquaintance (a notable Christian Reformed intellectual), the atheist pastor, and another liberal pastor (best described as a Calvinist turned Unitarian).  I once had the temerity to ask my mentor why he did this.  His answer was simple, "He keeps me honest."

I think the confessional Reformed tradition suffers today from an insularity --the same people saying the same things to friendly audiences, and it can create a stifling atmosphere.  My answer is not, of course, that we become liberal --it's that we develop stronger answers for why we're not, and cordial relationships with those that are.  We need to have our iron sharpened, and we can only do this as we learn to intersect with those with whom we disagree.  Their arguments are stronger than we think, and sometimes ours are weaker than we think.  We can only change that by interacting with them.

A Brief Quote on the Reformed Faith and Our Mission

W. Robertson Nicoll was a well-regarded British pastor, Bible scholar and journalist in the nineteenth century. Throughout the years, he wrote a series of obituaries and brief tributes to British church notables that he had known. These are collected in the volume entitled Princes of the Church. Some were doubtless famous in their own day and are now forgotten. Some are remembered for their scholarly accomplishments (Lightfoot and Westcott). Some are remembered by their theological heirs (A. Maclaren, Alexander Whyte, Andrew Bonar). A few stand out as titans in their respective traditions: Cardinal John Henry Newman and the great Baptist Charles H. Spurgeon.

What Nicoll says about Spurgeon flies in the face of the popular myth that Calvinism can only flourish among educated, elite people (in fact the whole history of Dutch Calvinism flies in the face of that too --google Petronella Baltus, but I digress).

Nicoll writes: It may seem a hard saying, but it cannot be doubted that his theology was a main element in his lasting attraction. Why has Calvinism flourished exceedingly in the damp, low-lying, thickly peopled, struggling regions of South London(?)...Mr. Spurgeon's hearers had many of them missed all the prizes of life; but God did not choose them for the reasons that move man's preference, else their case were hopeless. Their election was of grace. And as He chose them, He would keep them. The perseverance of the saints is a doctrine witout meaning to the majority of Christians. But many a poor girl with the love of Christ and goodness in her heart, working her fingers to the bone for a pittance that just keeps her alive, with the temptations of the streets around her and the river beside her, listened with all her soul when she heard that Christ's sheep could never perish.

The very poor...are beginning to hope that councils and parliaments will do much for them. They may find it so, but Mr. Spurgeon made little of such things. He taught them...that now in the living communion of the soul with Christ, they might have all the joy they needed. A man too wise, too experienced, not to know how slowly the battles of the poor are won and how little their victories often yield --he insisted on the joy and peace in believing, which the world could neither give nor take away. Life might pursue its hard, monotonous way of obscure toil, scanty wages and a great weight of care, but over it all there might rest a soft and sacred light. The common people heard this gladly, and well they might, for it is so. Perhaps when they have had a little more experience of the politician they will hear it more gladly than ever.

I think sometimes we have a Reformed brain, but not Reformed hearts. Calvinism and affluence are strange bedfellows, sometimes, Max Weber notwithstanding. Calvinistic commitment, historically, has seemed to wane with increased prosperity (Religion begat prosperity, Mather said, and the daughter devoured the mother).

Do we, in the new Reformed movement, really believe we are the lowest of the low, and that God can reach other lowest of the low with his sovereign grace? Or, do we assume that the elect must have a certain educational level and financial means? Are we really in this for "whosoever will" or only for people like us? May God build his people from all races and income levels and walks of life!