"Physician, Heal Thyself"

We've spent much of the first half of the semester on campus talking about raw, intentional, transformational relationships. We've had some fantastic speakers cast powerful vision for authentic spiritual community, and lots of folks are at the point of holy dissatisfaction: they realize that the relationships around them are not at a truly genuine level of authenticity, spirituality, honesty, prayer.

So my job this Thursday as I prepare to speak is to give students some practical steps. The place of holy discontent is great. There is no change without discontent with the status quo. But it is also a very tenuous place--no one can stay there very long.

One of the primary issues I'm taking aim at: busyness. UNC culture promotes and encourages an activity level that is simply incompatible with genuine community. Busyness is the breeding ground of loneliness. Relationships require margin. Without margin, there is no real relating to people.

So I'm pumped about bringing this to my tired community and sounding a prophetic call and invitation to the chapter to find life outside of busyness--to break away from the herd mentality and live a life that's qualitatively better, richer, more settled, more at peace.

But then I look at my calendar. And I realize that I've booked myself to speak this week on campus and at a local church on Sunday. And I realize that I'm maxing myself out and living my life about as close to my limit as possible. And I see that I have very little margin for community...I'm barely able to serve my family and give them the time that they deserve.

So I'm in process of repenting myself today as I practice this talk that calls my students to repent. I pray that this might not only transform them, but that it might be taking root in my own soul (and my own calendar), as well as theirs. It is a good thing for me to speak as one who knows he is also on the journey, not as one who thinks he has it altogether.

Inoculation Concerns

One Piebald Life reader over dinner last night commented that "K-Love Christianity" could effectively inoculate kids/adults to Christianity. Inoculation is essentially giving someone a weakened strand of the virus so that you build up an immunity to the virus. This happens with the gospel when we/churches/Christian communities/Christian radio stations offer a watered down, cliche-driven version of it as the real deal. Some people reject it. Perhaps it is well that they should. It is not the fullness of the gospel itself.

Doing campus ministry in the south, I'm keenly aware of the opportunity for people to reject a watered-down, enculturated version of Reality. If I ask my students how many of them know someone who spent a year or more in some sort of Christian community after age 12 but are not currently pursuing faith in community, nearly every hand goes up. I have dozens of students who are active in my chapter who are in various stages of overcoming their previous inoculation in order to embrace the real thing.

And so I am torn between a realization that K-Love Christianity is what genuine faith looks like for many people (and hence desiring to celebrate and make room in my heart for a genuine appreciation for those folks) and the desire to present a more thoughtful, fully-engaged, nuanced and (dare I say?) sophisticated understanding of the gospel and how it applies to our lives.

I'm not even really close to striking that balance at this point. Perhaps for now it is enough for me to have identified the tensions and pray for the Spirit to help me to live in them.

Honoring K-Love Christianity

K-Love is our local Christian radio station. It's tag line says it all: "Positive, Encouraging, K-Love." It more or less trades on what could be called "cliche Christianity." Lots of positive, encouraging songs with positive, encouraging news stories at the top of the hour with positive, encouraging sound bytes from dj's in between songs.

I only listen to it when my kids are in the car.

I was talking with a thoughtful student last week who voiced her frustration at cliche Christianity as it was expressed in some small group Bible studies she'd visited. She felt like her desires to press deeper were not particularly welcomed. The people in the small groups seemed pretty content with cliche Christianity.

As someone who tends to be cynical about K-Love, cliche Christianity, I had much sympathy for her. I, too, get tired of easy, pat answers that can be embossed on a trinket and sold at your local Christian book store just in time for Mother's Day.

But as we talked about her/our struggles with cliche Christianity, one thing did become clear to me: just as I want my honest, hard, real questions honored, so, too, must I learn to honor my brothers and sisters who find great comfort, joy and hope in the things that I tend to brush off as trite easy answers.

Jesus has much good to say to those who were simple and pure in heart. He affirmed child-like faith. Of course he calls us to live in wisdom. But for those of us who like to think of ourselves as more nuanced and too good for the simple stuff, Jesus has disappointingly little good to say to us.

And so we must honor those for whom Christ died--all of them, even the ones that find comfort in K-Love cliche Christianity. And for those of us for whom that's not enough, we must do so without giving up on our earnest desires to press deeper into the hard places of faith, disappointments, and questions without easy answers. The Scriptures will allow us to neither despise the more simple faith-walk of another person, nor will it allow us to abandon our own journeys to the deeper ends of the ocean.

Oriented Around a Bigger Story

It's 3:30 on Tuesday. I've got the unexpected gift of an hour in the middle of my afternoon between a bunch of appointments. I head towards the library: a talk to put together for family weekend and a day and a half worth of e-mails piled up in my in-box are at the top of my agenda.

Then the nagging voice hits me: "You haven't spent time with the Lord in a day or two. What if you spent at least part of the next hour in Scripture and prayer?

The task-list voices fight back: "Are you kidding? You haven't checked e-mail in a couple days, either--there's going to be tons of stuff piled up for you if you put it off any longer. Besides, this talk on Friday is for parents, it needs to not sound stupid!"

But I already begin to see the problems with task-list voice. There are always more e-mails to be answered. There are always talks to be written or books I need to read or weekend retreats to plan. If I allow them to, this flurry of activity could become the sum total of what my life is about. I can be a perpetually busy person whose life is oriented around nothing larger than the demands on my time at this current moment.

But I long for my life to be about something much bigger, much more significant than that. I long for my life to be oriented around a story that takes all those e-mails, all that talk prep or retreat planning and actually gives it meaning. I need something to put it all into perspective. I want to be on a journey full of purpose, meaning and significance, not just jogging on the treadmill of today's tasks that I check off today only to have three new ones replace it tomorrow.

So I spent half an hour in Scripture and prayer. Not a spectacular thing in and of itself. Just a small step of faithfulness towards a larger world pregnant with meaning, power, and clarity.

"First Years" for the Sake of the Gospel

The scene was Friday night of New Student Retreat. It was 10:30. We were starting an hour late. I had spent the previous four hours trying to sort through groceries for each beach villa where the students were staying--it had been a chaotic mess, it was my fault for not organizing it a little bit better, and I was grumpy about it. And tired.

I was trying to kick off the retreat with a high-energy, excited welcome and cheesy get-to-know you intro game. As part of the game, students were to introduce themselves and tell basic info--"even what year in school you are, since not all of you are freshmen."

During the chaos of the game, one of my more liberally-minded upper-class women passed by me and said, "Hey Alex! 'First years!'" She was trying to get me to replace the old-school term "freshmen" with the new, politically-correct word, "first years."

What I wanted to say at that moment of tired grumpiness was, "Screw that politically correct crap! I'm calling them freshmen if I want to!" I think that's what the Scriptures mean by life "in the flesh."

Fortunately the Spirit caught me up and I paused for a moment. Regardless of whether or not I wanted to change my language personally, what if that would actually make a difference for a new student in the community? What if by simply using "first years" in place of "freshmen" I built a bridge of trust for the gospel and for the Lord Jesus to cross into someone's life in a new way?

What if I surrendered my "right" to say whatever the heck I wanted to and instead bent over backward to remove any hindrances to the gospel so that it might be heard and received with great joy? What if this is what it means for me to serve my students, obviously especially the women in my chapter (who comprise something like 65-70% of our community) right now in real-time?

So I'm trying out "first years" for the sake of the gospel. Honestly, sometimes I'm still tempted to be really ticked off about it. My heart is still in the process of changing. But Paul talked about becoming all things to all people in order that some might be saved. For him, he forsake home, traditions, comforts, and ultimately his life. If all it means for me is to swap out one biased-sounding word for a more neutral one, is that so much for me to lay down?

Bruising my Son

Speaking strictly in terms of work, my life is pretty much my phone. It's one of those cool PDA/phone/e-mail/back-scratcher combinations that has my calendar, phone, pictures of my cute kids, contacts, e-mail...the works.

My old pastor in Richmond once asked me why us para-church people were so addicted to these PDA things. I told him, "Maybe it's because we didn't spend our weeks sitting on our butts behind a nice desk waiting for people to come to us. We're actually out there taking care of people." Or something like that.

Anyway, me and my PDA, we're attached at the hip. Literally. I've got my little carrying holster on me most all the time.

One day a couple weeks ago I came home from work to the gladdest sound of my life: my kids shrieking with joy at my homecoming. Davis, my three-year-old, came running up to me to give me a big hug. Unfortunately, my holstered-phone is right at his eye-level and in the process of trying to give me a hug he bonked his eye and it bruised up a little bit.

It struck me as I consoled him that it was quite possible for this to be a metaphor for my relationship with all my children. My work, as symbolized by my phone, has the unique opportunity to bruise my family in a way that nothing else does. It's intensive. It requires not only nights and weekends away but plenty of emotional energy as well. It is imperative that in the process of loving on college students that I communicate to my own children that they are a much greater priority in my life.

As I have considered this metaphor over the past couple of weeks, I refuse to over-play it. Work is a blessing. It is good. Work has not only the potential to bruise my children uniquely but to bless them uniquely as well. My particular line of work has the potential of my kids seeing cooler, older kids following Jesus fitfully and faithfully.

But all work has the God-given opportunity to be a blessing to our families. It is simply a matter of pursuing it within Spirit-led boundaries and articulating the blessing that work is to our kids in the context of God's broader purposes here on earth. This is true whether you're in cube-world, a teacher in the classroom, serving in the armed forces or a venture capitalist.

In the mean time, I've developed a new habit. Upon entering my house the first thing I do is take my phone off my hip and put it aside. The work day is done. It is time for me to do some wrestling with my kids.

Retreating with Men

This past weekend I did an overnight men's retreat with my church, All Saints, with the blessing and encouragement from my super-human wife to go even with a three-week-old at home. And even still when she woke up Friday morning with emergency tooth-pain that required fixing a cracked filling that morning and scheduling a root canal for later this week.

I went looking forward to the time with men from my church as we camped out on a farm about forty minutes from Durham. I've been working with college students for twelve years now. Sometimes my wife thinks that fact has stunted my social skills in relating to men my own age.

This semester on campus we're talking a ton about the importance of relationships. We were made for community. When we don't have it (as so many students at UNC do not), we are handicapped in our ability to deal with the most important questions in life: identity (who am I?), spirituality (who is God?) and purpose (what the heck am I doing here?).

All of these questions were meant to be explored in the context of relationships where we are actually known. I've realized over the years that I spend much of my life creating community among 17-22 year olds and yet often have a hard time finding space for it in my own life.

What I was not expecting going into the weekend was to be blown away by the teaching. Our rector, Steve Breedlove, dealt masterfully with the subject of what it means to become fully human--in our specific case, what it means to become fully men.

It is so easy in discussing the issues of gender to fall off to one extreme or the other. The conservative extreme is to fall into stock stereotypes and gender roles so ridiculously specific and overly-defined that it's laughably easy to think of people who are the "exceptions" and so to dismiss their definitions. The liberal extreme is to so focus on the exceptions that they argue that it is impossible to make any statement about gender whatsoever.

Steve handled this exceptionally well. He talked in terms of "a spectrum" and "tendencies." But he was unafraid to offer up real distinctives about each gender. He talked about fallen male-ness and fallen female-ness out of Genesis 3. But he did so with utmost respect for both men and women. He cast vision for redemption and hopefulness that was not watered down in vague "try harder" humanism but rather the fact that life and hope must win in the end because of the empty tomb of Christ.

I came home Saturday night grateful to have spent time with a quality group of men, the caliber of whom I appreciate the more I spend time around them. And I came home freshly encouraged to work, husband, father, and friend more freely and joyfully--with lots more to think about as I continue to figure out what it means to be fully a man.

And I came home deeply grateful for my wife, who blessed me to go--root canal, three kids, and all.

Christianity: Hedonism, Rightly Lived

The C.S. Lewis quote from the previous post prepared me to think about my life of faith in completely different terms. Joy was the serious business of heaven. Obedience and moving into holiness was life. All sin was ultimately self-destruction. My desires were not too strong but too weak. I was far too easily pleased.

Hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure, often without regard to consequence. God is the ultimate hedonist. He is so passionate about bringing forth his goodness and bringing us into His joy that He pursued it with reckless abandon: he died to make it happen.

Christianity is leaning into the glad hedonism of God. All the great saints write of their lives in deeply hedonistic terms: joy, peace, fulfillment, laughter, a self-forgetfulness that frees them to have relationships rightly. This is a life worth losing everything for.

The passage from Weight of Glory opened me up to thinking in this way. John Piper unpacked it for me Biblically. While there are many issues where I disagree with Piper, his fundamental understanding of the power of the promises of God and the joy in our obedience continues to be fundamental to how I think about the Christian life. Check out his article: Christian Hedonism, that unpacks the Biblical foundations for thinking about the Christian life as the gateway to the joy we were designed for.

Christianity and Reward

And so we come to the question of reward. Was Mother Teresa really just selfishly piling up (in Singer's mind) imaginary treasures in heaven by living in the slums of Calcutta with the poorest of the poor while billionaire atheists/agnostics Gates and Buffet give purely altruistically in between spa treatments at luxury resorts?

C.S. Lewis deals with this issue of "reward" exquisitely, so I'll let him speak with this (for me) life-changing excerpt from his work The Weight of Glory:

"The NewTestament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

We must not be troubled by unbelievers when they say that this promise of reward makes the Christian life a mercenary affair. There are different kinds of reward. There is the reward which has no natural connexion with the things you do to earn it, and is quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural reward of love; that is why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not mercenary for desiring it.

A general who fights well in order to get a peerage is mercenary; a general who fights for victory is not, victory being the proper reward of battle as marriage is the proper reward of love. The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.

There is also a third case, which is more complicated. An enjoyment of Greek poetry is certainly a proper, and not a mercenary, reward for learning Greek; but only those who have reached the stage of enjoying Greek poetry can tell from their own experience that this is so. The schoolboy beginning Greek grammar cannot look forward to his adult enjoyment of Sophocles as a lover looks forward to marriage or a general to victory. He has to begin by working for marks, or to escape punishment, or to please his parents, or, at best, in the hope of a future good which he cannot at present imagine or desire.

His position, therefore, bears a certain resemblance to that of the mercenary; the reward he is going to get will, in actual fact, be a natural or proper reward, but he will not know that till he has got it. Of course, he gets it gradually; enjoyment creeps in upon the mere drudgery, and nobody could point to a day or an hour when the one ceased and the other began. But it is just in so far as he approaches the reward that be becomes able to desire it for its own sake; indeed, the power of so desiring it is itself a preliminary reward.

The Christian, in relation to heaven, is in much the same position as this schoolboy. Those who have attained everlasting life in the vision of God doubtless know very well that it is no mere bribe, but the very consummation of their earthly discipleship; but we who have not yet attained it cannot know this in the same way, and cannot even begin to know it at all except by continuing to obey and finding the first reward of our obedience in our increasing power to desire the ultimate reward.

Just in proportion as the desire grows, our fear lest it should be a mercenary desire will die away and finally be recognized as an absurdity. But probably this will not, for most of us, happen in a day; poetry replaces grammar, gospel replaces law, longing transforms obedience, as gradually as the tide lifts a grounded ship."

Giving Atheists Their Due

Several months ago I wrote a paper discussing various approaches to discussing the gospel with students at UNC. I noted that the campus is full of activists, so it was important for Christians to talk about issues of justice and mercy as central to the Christian understanding of making the world right. I noted that while we've done plenty that we need to apologize for throughout history (see Crusades, The) we've also got plenty to be proud of: Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, William Wilberforce. It's no coincidence that most of the greatest activists throughout history have been Christians.

One reader that I shared my paper with objected that this was a weak argument. She pointed me to an article by a man named Peter Singer who is a somewhat famous (and controversial) ethicist. His article is about charitable giving by rich folks like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and why they should give. Tucked in the middle of his article is this bit:

Interestingly, neither Gates nor Buffett seems motivated by the possibility of being rewarded in heaven for his good deeds on earth. Gates told a Time interviewer, “There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning” than going to church. Put them together with Andrew Carnegie, famous for his freethinking, and three of the four greatest American philanthropists have been atheists or agnostics. (The exception is John D. Rockefeller.) In a country in which 96 percent of the population say they believe in a supreme being, that’s a striking fact. It means that in one sense, Gates and Buffett are probably less self-interested in their charity than someone like Mother Teresa, who as a pious Roman Catholic believed in reward and punishment in the afterlife.

We'll talk some today about the generosity of atheists and tomorrow about the whole idea of reward--and the self-interest of Mother Teresa.

Singer, like most of us, is somewhat selective in his illustrations. By all means, Christians are not the only ones who give and give generously to any number of causes. Praise God that this is so. It is a mercy of God that he would use all types of people, even and especially those that do not believe in Him, to enact his redemptive purposes on earth.

However, it is certainly mis-leading to paint the portrait of the generous atheist/agnostic being disproportionately beneficial to the world. Carried to a logical but slightly over-stated position, the idea here would be if only more atheists had more money and power, they'd give generously without all this selfish reward-in-heaven stuff.

As the twentieth-century came to a close it was oft-repeated among historians that the twentieth century was (altogether now) "the bloodiest century in history." Let's talk about the wonders of atheism as a contribution to this turn of events. Stalin's devout atheism led to more deaths than Hitler's Germany did. Chairman Mao also did more than his fair share. Hitler, while he was baptized as a Christian, based his Nazi Germany on Nietzche's philosophy--certainly no friend of Christianity!

In fact, we can take Singer's argument and turn it on its' head. Atheists historically are barely a blip on the radar in terms of historical population. And yet they are single-handedly responsible for a vastly disproportionate amount of the most savage killings in all of history.

Or maybe the moral of the story is this: give atheists plenty of money, just don't give them military or political power.

The Wide-Awake Real

As I was thinking more about yesterday's post, I came across this passage from George MacDonald that really captures the essence of this idea that we've got to fight to be alert and awake to what is real, what is most true. MacDonald's olde [sic] English can take some work to really get through, but this one's worth it:

"To believe in the wide-awake real, through all the stupefying, enervating, distorting dream: to will to wake, when the very being seems athirst for Godless repose: --these are the broken steps up to the high fields where repose is but a form of strength, strength but a form of joy, joy but a form of love."

In other words our senses are dulled. What we call "our lives" or "reality" is really mostly a distorting dream. We have to fight to wake up. We have to fight to know and connect with "the wise-awake real" in the midst of all of the stuff that wars against it. Even and especially our own internal world would rather slouch towards "Godless repose" and slumber and dull distraction than search eagerly for reality, for life, for hope, for joy.

But the fight to move in that direction, whatever small steps we might take, these are the broken steps towards the High Countries. Life in the Land of the Trinity beckons us to come on. To not stop or linger or quit or give up until we've come to the end of our journey and all shall be well. All our deepest desires filled, for we have met the Source of them. All our cravings for life satiated, for we know the One who is Life.

This is the walk of faith, the fight to connect with the wide-awake real energy and Person who stands over everything past, present and future.

The Holy Present of 4:50 a.m.

So far, Emma Kate has been a fantastic sleeper. But one morning last week after Kelly nursed her, she just wasn't going back to sleep. So at 4:50 a.m. I took her downstairs to let Kelly get a little rest and see if I could get Emma Kate to sleep some more.

As I walked my little girl around downstairs, I wondered what I could do to make this time a little less bleary-eyed. Get my Ipod? Watch t.v? Come down to the office and take a look at e-mail or check the sports scores on-line? Try to read a book?

It hit me as I considered these options that media (including books) is an odd thing. What media allows us to do is create our own reality, at least temporarily. We watch a movie, read a book or listen to music and suddenly things that aren't really there become foremost in our mind. We cease to become present to the things immediately present and become more attentive to things that are far away.

What is crucial for the Christian to consider in all of this is that the present is most often the place where the Holy Spirit is at work and inviting us to enter into that work. There is a "holy now" that we are constantly being invited to enter into. Sometimes (not always) our constant clamoring to escape that now and to plug into some other temporary reality distracts us from what God would have us to do at this very moment--the driver to be courteous to, the neighbor to build a relationship with, the student sitting next to us in class, the co-worker to invite to lunch.

At the very least, our culture's obsession with entertainment and need for constant stimulation (and the Christian's buy-in to all of this) handicaps us in our ability to be tuned into the Holy Present where God is at work.

This does not mean that media or escape is always bad. It just means that we must be thoughtful, intentional, obedient, as we consider our use of and engagement with media and entertainment. It is a blessing (I enjoyed several hours of football this weekend!) that can easily turn into a curse.

So I passed on the Ipod, the morning news, e-mail, and the like at 4:50 a.m. And instead, I walked with my new little girl. I prayed over her. I asked God to bless our family and our home. I went on to pray for the retreat this past weekend and other things that were on my heart. And before long she was asleep. I laid her down in her bouncy seat, I laid down on the couch, and I entered into a very different type of holy present.

New Student Retreat

We're heading off to Sunset Beach today with a ton of new students and some great upper-classmen.

Please pray for the Lord to do his work of molding this new group of students into a people who are a missional community of grace living out Jesus' invitation to raw, intentional, and transformational relationships in order to bless every corner of campus!

Prayer

One of the most consistent conversations that I have with students in their walk with God is about prayer. Particularly, the question of trusting God when he doesn't answer or move in such a way that it seems plain a good God would want to move (i.e. the healing of a sick parent or deliverance from a sin pattern).

This is a pretty complicated question, but here are a couple preliminary thoughts:

1. We always want prayer to work like a vending machine. But it doesn’t. We don’t always get what we want, and that’s a good thing. The purpose of prayer is to cultivate a relationship with God. In the midst of that, we submit requests. And I mean that seriously: we “submit” our requests—we submit our desires to God and trust that He’s good. In his goodness he says one of three things: yes, no, or wait. To get the last two answers often makes us mad, but that’s what the walk of faith is at least partly about: will I trust God to be good to me, even when I don’t get what I want when I want it?
   
2. Some of the hardest questions about prayer revolve around stuff that it seems obvious that God would want to say yes to: a sick parent, breaking free of something in our own lives that’s keeping us down, etc. But if God’s saying no or wait on those things, the challenge and the opportunity is to consider and ask what he might want to do with this in the mean time. I had a hard break-up sophomore year of college. I wanted to be free of my feelings for her right away, but God didn’t grant me that request. Instead, I learned how to develop guy friendships that walked me through that hard time in my life. So instead of God magically waving a wand to heal me, he taught me another valuable lesson—about community and really experiencing it in places where I felt vulnerable—and that lesson has stuck with me for the rest of my life. This is a small issue compared to what many others go through, but the principle applies to many, much harder situations. Sometimes God says no to something in order to say yes to something much greater that we cannot yet see.
   

Fortunately throughout the Scriptures we've got plenty of folks who wrestled with unanswered prayers--David in the Psalms and most poignantly, Jesus in the Garden. He submits his final request and it is denied. In the end he goes the way of the cross, fully submitted to the will of the Father.

My own prayer is that I might be able to likewise be fully submitted to the will of the Father.

Marking the Spirit

In the midst of a brawl over whether or not newly converted Christians had to be circumcised in the book of Galatians, the apostle Paul plays an interesting card: "I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?"

I find this interesting because I don't think that most evangelical Christians have any idea when or if they've received the Holy Spirit at all. Paul assumes and knows that these believers have an experiential data-point that they (and he) can point to that involved an experience of receiving the Holy Spirit.

I think that most of us who are not in Pentecostal/Charismatic circles don't have a clue as to what to do about the Holy Spirit...and some of us frankly aren't sure that it matters all that much.

Jesus had a very different approach. He said that it was better for him to leave so that his followers could receive the Holy Spirit. If we've got a gift that good coming to us, we better take it.

So what to do about our lack of experience with the Holy Spirit? A professor I took last summer argued that the current evangelical church had steam-rolled over symbols and icons and markers that were important in a believer's life.

Certainly baptism, for example, is not in and of itself what "saves" you. But it is not something to be blown off or taken lightly. Jesus both did it and commanded it. Why would we dismiss something so quickly that our Lord took so seriously? He argued that a person who was unwilling to undergo the ritual of baptism was somewhat akin to someone who gets married and then is unwilling to wear a wedding ring.

He also argued for a separate ceremony after the baptism for the reception of the Holy Spirit. Laying on of hands, prayer, perhaps anointing with oil if your comfortable with cooking accessories being used as part of worship. He argued that most of us have no way of identifying with Paul's argument in Galatians because we've grown up in churches that did not afford opportunity to mark the reception of the Holy Spirit.

Again, this is not the actual event of receiving the Spirit. But it acts as a sign, a marker. And so I was most appreciative this past Sunday as my church confirmed two children who had gone through the process of confirmation. The first portion of the ceremony marked their belief in the Lord Jesus. The second part of the ceremony marked their reception of the Holy Spirit.

Plenty of people get confirmed or baptized or have some sort of experience with God and it never develops beyond that. Jesus told the parable of the seed and the sower to help us to understand that phenomenon and not be shocked. But it seems to me that incorporating a ceremony marking the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in a believer's life (what a tremendous gift! what power to transform and be a transforming agent!) would be a step in the right direction for many of us.

Doing a Great Work

I'm taking my paternity leave this week. After dropping Kelly's dad and step-mom off at the airport today, it's official: we've gone from man-to-man to zone defense.

A number of years ago this would have driven me crazy: a week not on campus with so much to do? So many students to meet with? At such a critical time of the year?

But it is evidence of the Holy Spirit's work in my life that I know (most days) that these three little people and my wife are my most important work. I love students and I love working with students. But the students come and go. My kids, my wife, these are the relationships that are most valuable.

So this week as I'm zipping around town dropping Davis off at pre-school or hitting up the park or putting together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and I'm tempted to feel anxious about other things that need to be done, I will remember this little passage from Nehemiah: "I am doing a very great work, and I cannot come down."

Family of 5(!?!)

Yeah, so a couple days ago I walked into the playroom and looked at all three of my kids and I was like, "where did you people come from? When did all this happen?"

Great first week of Emma Kate's life, thanks in no small part to Nanny and Grampy being here. We've got Poppy and Grandma here now (Kelly's Dad and Stepmom) for the weekend. Next weekend, my parents come up for a visit.

So this coming week between the visits, the family of 5 begins for real. I'll be taking my "paternity leave" next week in order to help with that transition. It's kind of like the patch. Having grandparents around this week for my two oldest kids is like smoking 18 cigarettes a day. Having me around next week is like smoking nine-ish cigarettes a day. And then after that, we go to cold turkey...and we pray!

Real-Time Gospel Articulation

I was talking with a student some time ago. He had just been summarily dumped by his girlfriend and was trying to figure out what it meant to trust the Lord, to recover and heal.

In the mean time, he had been talking with a hallmate about his faith. His hallmate was talking with him about the recent dumping--nothing too intense, just talking about dating and break-ups and how bad they stink. And the student very wisely and gently said, "And you know, I'm just trying to figure out what it means to trust God with something that I care so deeply about."

Last week I posted on the challenge and the call to live out the gospel in real-time. To actually apply the gospel to getting cut-off in traffic or snubbed by a co-worker or be passed over for a position that you wanted. This is the Christ-follower's call to a life of discipleship.

And what this student did--his real-time articulation of his faith-struggles in light of his break-up--that's real-time gospel articulation. That's the work of evangelism.

For too long evangelism has been seen as the work of experts or of presenting an abstract set of principles. What we're seeing in lots of parts of evangelicalism is an over-correction to an evangelism that serves and cares for people (which is clearly vital and has not always been as front-and-center as it should be) but never actually gets around to doing the articulation: this is what is real, this is the life that I'm living, this is why I'm doing what I do.

What must happen in our communities is that we begin to take Jesus seriously. He's invited us to a life that's recklessly different than our culture offers. It's a life of taking up the cross, dying to ourselves, loving others, living as children of God, not caring what the world thinks about us.

And as we do that in real-time, we must also learn this skill of articulation in real-time. We've got to learn how to articulate our faith as it's being worked out in our lives right now. That's our story. It's the one that God in His gracious sovereignty is working out right now. And in His sovereignty, He's put people in our lives to share that story with. This is our privilege and our joy: that we might tell of His work in our lives, even when we're not sure what it looks like yet.

Why We Don't Tell

Kelly and I picked up a little tip from some folks in Richmond when it comes to revealing baby's names: we don't tell until the baby is born. Here's why:

1. The freedom to change our minds. This is Kelly's main concern. This is particular dicey if you're thinking about using a family name, which we did with Emma Kate (Kelly's grandmother and mom). Imagine trying to have this conversation: "Mom, we were thinking about naming her after you, but Kelly Clarkson is just so much more cool!"

2. Don't want too much feedback. This is my main thing. Say I'm going to name my little girl "Clarkson." If I shop the name around before she's born, people feel tons of freedom to give me their un-edited comments. Comments which I may or may not care to hear: "Clarkson!?!?!? That's a terrible name!"

But if baby girl Clarkson is born and I present that little bundle of wrinkled cuteness and say, "And here's baby Clarkson!" ain't nobody going to say a thing at that point. They all melt immediately at the sight of her royal cuteness, even if the name's ridiculous.

3. The joy of a surprise. It's just fun to have something stashed away on the big day.

Just a little tip for all of you out there who might have kids some day.

Time-Line of a Birth

Thursday, Sept. 6:
10:00 p.m. Arrive home from a large group meeting on campus. No indication of baby on the way.

11:00 p.m. Go to bed. I fall asleep, Kelly can't. She's having contractions. She stays up reading, wondering if she's going to have a baby soon.

Friday, Sept. 7:
2:00 a.m. Kelly comes back to bed and snoozes a little bit.

4:20 a.m. Kelly wakes me up with the news that she thinks she's in labor.

4:45 a.m. Kelly calls our midwife on call and tells her that she's having contractions and might need to come in. Kelly sounds pretty controlled at the time, so the mid-wife is a bit skeptical but she agrees to meet us at the Birth Center.

4:50 a.m. We call our dear friends on stand-by, Mike and Michelle McClure, to come over for when the kids wake-up.

5:10 a.m. Head over to the Women's Birth and Wellness Center.

Sidebar/unpaid endorsement for your local birthing center: they're great, but not for everyone. The focus is on low-intervention, natural births. So no drugs, that's part of the deal--no pain meds, nothing. It tends to be fairly granola-feeling. But the beauty of it is that they don't immediately hook you up to a bunch of stuff and treat you like you're sick. You're having a baby, not going through chemo. And they get you out quick (as you'll see) which is great if you've got good help waiting for you back home.

5:30 a.m. Arrive at birth center ahead of midwife. Kelly at this point is still chatty, we pray on the way over in the car, laugh, are deeply grateful for our friends home caring for our kids.

5:35 a.m. Midwife arrives, we open the center up and upon brief examination the midwife confirms that Kelly's definitely giving birth to this baby today. We unpack our bag, put some music on, Kelly walks around the facility and we chat about various things and fill out some paperwork.

6:20 a.m. Midwife asks if we're hungry. I am, granola bars not withstanding. Midwife is too. Kelly kind of is.

Midwife asks if we're vegetarians or vegans. I shudder at the thought and shake my head. "Good," she says, "so you can go and get us all a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit from Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen." I'm shocked. Aren't you supposed to be some sort of vegan, shade-grown, organically orchestrated, fair-traded-person only? " C'mon man," she says, "it's locally owned." I heartily agree and get everyone's order and make my first ever, long-awaited trip to Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen on Franklin Street.

6:45 a.m. I return triumphant with grease and cholesterol-laden biscuit goodness.

7:00 a.m. Kelly can no longer walk around and talk through contractions. It's getting serious.

7:15 a.m. Kelly starts pushing.

I'm her coach, which means I hold her hand and tell her that she can do it when she's not sure that she can. I'm pretty good at it. Except that during one set of contractions, Kelly squeezes my hand so hard that I'm afraid she's going to break my pinkie. Being the liberated male that I am, I realize that at this particular point in global history, I'm not exactly going to get much sympathy from my wife-in-labor, the midwife and the nurse for my little finger. I subtly shift my hand position and my finger manages to emerge without any permanent damage.

7:45 a.m. Emma Kate arrives, much to the delight of her parents.

8:00 a.m. Kelly and I have both already called her "Zoe" at least once. Emma Kate goes through a couple of tests, we play and hang out and hold her and take pictures.

Noon: Nurse gives us final okay to leave.

12:30 p.m. We pull through Wendy's drive-through. Drive-through lady looks sweetly at our daughter and asks how old she is. "Five hours," we say. She's shocked, not entirely sure what to do with that information.

1:00 p.m. Arrive home to Nanny and two sweet older siblings eager to meet their new little sister.