Remonstrance

The original James Gang wasn’t led by Jesse James. Nor was it led by Joe Walsh in the 1970s. Rather, it was led by James who was the half-brother of Jesus Christ.

The James Gang…they look tough…

James was an astonishingly powerful guy. During Christ’s lifetime he was a non-believer in effect, enduring the antics of a crazy older brother. He got fed up with Jesus and at least twice tried to set Jesus straight. First, he tried to drag Jesus back home where he belonged–in the carpentry shop! No doubt he resented the free-floating lifestyle Jesus lived and wanted him to contribute to the family’s financial welfare.

“While [Jesus] was still speaking to the crowds, behold, His mother and brothers were standing outside, seeking to speak to Him.” (Matthew 12:46)

Did they wish talk with Jesus because they missed him? Not at all. They were tired of his wacko wanderings!

“When his family heard what was happening, they tried to take him away. ‘He’s out of his mind,’ they said.’” (Mark 3:21).

Oh how bold! James was certainly the ringleader of these family ”interventions” and confrontations with Jesus — he was, after all, the oldest son since Jesus left home, and dad was dead so James was the default head of the family and running this show (so he felt).

When the James Gang (plus mom) decide to confront Jesus, how did Jesus deal with them? Did he argue like we might? Here is a classic Jesus Christ response:

Someone told Jesus, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, and they want to speak to you.”
Jesus asked, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”
Then he pointed to his disciples and said, “Look, these are my mother and brothers.
Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother!”
Matthew 12:47-50

That stung!

Later the James Gang told Jesus he was a small-time, backwoods loser:

And Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave here [small-time Galilee] and go to [big-time] Judea, where your followers can see your miracles! You can’t become famous if you hide like this! If you can do such wonderful things, show yourself to the world!” For even his brothers didn’t believe in him. John 7:3-5

The James Gang treated Jesus like he was a circus clown in search of a crowd.

Fast-forward about 10 years later and we see a reconstituted James Gang confronting Paul, as Paul tells the story:

“But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face…when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision.” Galatians 2:11-12

This James Gang created this powerful disturbance in Paul’s home church, and even more, while Paul and Barnabas were overseas! The James Gang was so effective, they convinced everyone to trash Paul’s leadership and teachings and join their gang! They not only won strong-willed Peter, but more amazing they won Barnabas, Paul’s co-leader! Nobody knows precisely how much of this division was controlled by James back in Jerusalem, but it is difficult to imagine that James was clueless. It certainly demonstrates the far reach of his influence.

Bossy James?

By all accounts, when James finally became a Christian he quickly took charge of Peter’s ministry in Jerusalem (in Acts 15), and Peter let him. Yet James never traveled with Jesus and his disciples, and James was an unbeliever until he faced the resurrected Christ. Still, for whatever reason the entire Jerusalem church was scooped into the James Gang.

It is at this point James writes his famous letter called, of course, “James.” He writes with authority, with many commands (43 imperatives in all), and his letter called for a radical change in Jewish religious orientation. After pushing Jesus and Paul around, James next tackles the rest of Christendom. This is an indication of the tough intellect and drive operating in that letter.

I am intrigued by this author and his book. This will be a great series at CT. Study material about James is accumlating at BibleNet – check it out! There are many invaluable insights to be gleaned with this colorful character. Most mysterious to me is the way so many Bible teachers try to avoid teaching this book. I wonder why?

Check out the James Gang contest page, too!

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Filed under: character by kmcc
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It’s what people need – or they drift away to look somewhere else. Small groups or large, it doesn’t matter, people enter or leave groups depending on the substance.

Kyle told me about a group he visited recently. He was struck by the lack of substance in the conversations. The topics were meaningless, but people were engaged and opinionated about upcoming changes in a parking lot. No substance.

Parties grow less-appealing as people get older. A party means sipping a martini while Mr. Jones talks about the barking dog next door, and others have barking-dog stories, and we all agree we need more barking-dog laws for a barking-dog world of chaos.

“Wasn’t the babysitter supposed to be home…?” you say with a wink to your wife.

Singing Substance

Christian fellowship needs substance, too. Why hang around? Why come back?

Someone (nameless) voiced an interesting theory on the substance of Christian fellowship: singing.

Singing Christians (at midnight, 2008!)

The conversation went like this:

[Read more →]

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Tags: events, love ethics, worship

“Driven and courageous” describes a Christian living in hope:

So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. Hebrews 6:18 (NLT)

Courageous Hope

“Great confidence” is knowing that I stand right here, held by the “unchangeable” oath of God, knowing “it is impossible for God to lie!” With “great confidence” Martin Luther stood alone against the Holy Roman Empire and stood before a throng of menacing Cardinals at Worms to declare, “Here I stand. I will not recant, so help me, God.” His hope was tied to God’s character, not the powerful armies of the Holy See.

With “great confidence” we too can stand face-to-face with whoever may persecute us for sharing the love of Christ. This includes old relationships with long histories of defeat and intimidation:

For He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,” so that we confidently say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What will man do to me?” Hebrews 13:5-6 (NASB)

This courage is the outcome of biblical faith, and the proof of faith, as I wrote earlier. Cowardly Christians are still babes floundering with the elementary issues of faith and have not yet settled the issue of who to trust. [Read more →]

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Tags: faith, hope

Christian hope turns failure into a profound mystery waiting for revelation.

With the “eyes of hope” I see the problem with failure lies in my fallen plans which were doomed from the outset, so brain-dead they were. Yet despite my fallen folly, hope says, “We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28). When I see with the hope of Christ, it produces spiritual maturity:

But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. Romans 8:25

This happened to me once…

The Tar-Pit

In 1994 I plunged into a black, sticky tar-pit and dragged my family and the poor Yoergers along. Greg and his buddies had the brilliant idea that somehow we might stop the bleeding while his little Cleveland Bible study (about 30 shell-shocked bodies) remained alive.

It was a mess, I knew that, but I didn’t notice the tar-pit or the bleached bones scattered everywhere. I plunged ahead.

The meeting was held in an old, run-down, dumpy house which was soon condemned (as pictured below).

This was ministry in Cleveland: growth that doesn’t grow.

It was mysterious. The work was fruitful and we doubled in size, but suddenly everything got stuck. We were excited by high conversion-growth, but the group stopped growing. We fluctuated around 50 to 60, stuck in a tar-pit, and we continued to see salvations. Why is this?

[Read more →]

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Tags: brokeness, hope, leadership, missions

It was a cold, rainy day, and all I could do was wait. The great migration of families and vans to Florida sunshine would begin soon, leaving behind this dreary Ohio weather. For once I was all packed and ready, but nobody else was…I lay sleep before the all-night journey began.

I slipped into a surreal dream that would haunt me the rest of Spring vacation.

We Are Stardust

Warm sunlight sprinkled through the pine forest and danced across the log-cabin floor of the lodge. Sliding-glass doors opened into a balcony overlooking an endless forest of needles dancing in the sun. Cascading stream-sounds drifted through the pine trees.

I sat in a large room filled with empty tables and chairs, all except for one: Greg, Mark, Joel and a few others were here, and we were laughing about something and sipping coffee. (It was like this Roundtable conversation…)

“I can’t believe how easy it is!” Greg said when the laughter stopped, but we all kept smiling and nodding.

“We tried so hard, so many years, but never imagined it was so easy!” someone said, chuckling. We could laugh about it now.

We were reminiscing about the church-growth movement we stumbled-upon accidentally. We were now “hopping” away from Northeast Ohio in short, 100-mile jumps, and after several years we were somewhere in the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania planting more churches.

A large Ohio-Pennsylvania map on the wall was marked with a row of big, fat dots across it. Lines radiated outwards from each fat dot, and each line ended in a small dot. The fat dots were church-planting “hubs” with emanating lines — hundreds of them — ending in small “dots” that were newly-planted churches!

“They look like star-bursts,” someone said as we were gazing at all of them. I heard distant strains of music echoing in the forest from ages ago: “…we are star-dust…”

The World’s Greatest General

“Great armies march off the map!” — Alexander the Great

One man said it, but a man named Jesus Christ actually did it: he launched a movement that marched off the map.

We were laughing because we finally discovered the secret of a church-planting movement, and it was so absurdly simple! It was so obvious, too. It was the movement inaugurated by Jesus.

A movement doesn’t grow in, fat churches, but in small, little groups spawned with maybe a dozen Christians (or less). Such simple groups! But they were strong too, because they were tied together by “hubs”. Each “hub” was a Central Teaching and other things like training, finances and other ministrations which made the little groups strong.

• It was easy to plant a church of 10 or so!

The door burst open, and a few of our young leaders came bounding in, smiling and hyped. They were leading a group 10 miles south in a town called Gettysburg.

“We had 15 people last night!” one declared. There was clapping and back-slapping for the new leaders: “Cool! …Good job! …Praise God!”

They dragged a couple chairs across the wood floor and plopped down to tell us all about it, but then…

The door burst open and a young married couple came bouncing in from our first church plant 10 miles north…

“Hey guys!” the young lady said. “Guess what? We planted another church last night!”

“Yeah, and with 11 people!” the guy said.

“Whooot! Yahoo! …Praise God!” This was a great breakthrough: the first of the “Next Generation” of churches for eastern Pennsylvania.

What conversation echoed in that lodge that sunny morning! It all made sense now…

O Sleeper!

“Awake, O sleeper!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you!” — Eph. 5:24

When I woke up it was still cold, rainy and dreary in Akron.

But now I had an interesting story to tell Darlene and all my friends, and we talked about it all the way to sunny Florida.

But the “O sleeper” verse above is followed by an good point:

Therefore be very careful how you live – not as unwise but as wise, taking advantage of every opportunity, because the days are evil — Eph. 5:25,26

March 14, 2008 set in-motion a chain of events which I must discuss next…

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It's Sublime--but is it God?

A renewal of interest in sacred space is growing  among the Gen-X and Millenial kids from Christian homes. They’re so bored with Church, and who can blame them? It seems their parents never led them into The Revolution, the way one of them tells it:

“My church tossed out windows all together. Instead the walls are grey, with strange modern designs on the canvas walls. We have chairs like those in movie theaters, minus the cup holders. The lights are typical stage lights, during the service they spot light worship leaders. In fact, the entire focus is the stage rather than the upward feel of a cathedral. It seems sometimes that everything is revolving around the stage, instead of God.” — Architecture and Faith—Photo Contest in Relevant Magazine (for Gen-X/Millenial readers).

But then she discovered The Sublime while visiting a cathedral:

“A sense of holiness hung thick in the air, my steps echoed as I walked forward. Flecks of every color caught my eye. They hung like colorful stars on the towering columns. My gaze drifted from the floor slowly upward, my neck craning. There before me was Jesus, shining in all His stained glass glory.”

Ahh! I would’ve freaked-out and run! You’re in a dark place, and suddenly, there’s “Jesus shining in all His…glory!” (But it’s only his stained-glass-glory. WHEW! Heart, settle down now...)

It isn’t nice to be so irreverent about other people’s beliefs like this, I know, I know. Well, maybe I was born that way, I’m sorry! I just can’t get to it. (And kids, whatever you do, don’t try this at home!)

Is The Sublime in any way connected to The Revolution? Does The Sublime mean anything to anyone, really? What’s the difference between The Sublime and The Sublime One worshiped in Buddhism?

Sublime means, “of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe.”  It also means something that “changes directly into vapor when heated,” but as a Chemistry term. “Changes into vapor” is a good term for the Cathedral experience.

I love art. The architecture in the picture above is absolutely stunning. I would love to own a mansion like that (maybe). But isn’t it fair to distinguish between art and spiritual life? Art is sublime, but spiritual life is Joy. Art is beautiful, and nice, but spiritual life is Revolution.

The Sublime is the product of human genius; The Revolution is God’s genius.

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• The Fountainhead, which contrasts Joy against The Sublime.
• Architecture and Faith—Photo Contest - the young lady writing about sacred space from a Gen-X perspective.

Filed under: character, folly by kmcc
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