Discipline for the Disciplinarians

3 05 2012

“Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger,
in whose hand is the club of my wrath!”  Isaiah 10:5

I know I have joked (kind of) in previous posts about how theology watchdogs in the blogosphere (and in the church) are annoying in the same way as that teacher in high school who constantly corrected your grammar while you were trying to talk.  But I also do recognize that God has given us brothers and sisters whose giftedness and very calling is to help us keep our doctrine pure…they are the doctrine disciplinarians, if you will.  You know the ones I mean.  They blog about your favorite pastor, who made a horrendous, unbelievable, heretical, probably-not-saved-if-you-say-this theological error in his sermon last week.  They call him out by name, and the venom with which they attack him is, well, pretty ungodly.  Or they review the most recent book by one of your favorite authors and basically question his very humanity, not to mention his spirituality, because of the position he seems to have taken on this theological issue or on that social issue…again, with uncommon rancor.

[And, as an aside, you know what is one of my pet peeves?  That blogger almost never makes any attempt at all to actually contact that pastor/teacher/author in order to practice this "discipline" or "accountability" Biblically, which pretty quickly gets me wondering whether they are really loving this brother or rather are just a little envious of his acclaim.  But I digress.]

I know that God disciplines us.  And I know that he often uses others to do it.  I am really OK with that.  In fact, it seems like a good plan to me.  I think scripture gives us plenty of examples of God using people to discipline his children.  Sometimes, he even used a pagan, non-believing people (like the Assyrians) to do it.

But scripture seems equally clear to me that to be used by God in this fashion comes with a heavy responsibility.  God’s discipline is to be carried out God’s way and with God’s honor and God’s love in our hearts and our minds.  When God’s “tool of discipline” forgets this or forsakes it, the consequences are dire.  When God punishes the punisher, it is ugly and horrifying, filled with His wrath.  Again, the Assyrians come to mind.

So, fellow bloggers and church leaders…before your fingers hit the keyboard to release your discipline on that weak-minded pastor or that hopelessly lost author or that wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing so deserving of your harsh rebuke, will you make sure your knees hit the ground and your heart turns toward God?  We need your passion.  God’s kingdom needs your giftedness.  The church needs your laser focus on helping us keep our doctrine straight.  And we love you too much to allow you to throw it all away because of a wrong attitude or a bad motive.  Fulfill your calling…by checking your heart!

And stop correcting my grammar.  Seriously.

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Christian Accountability, Church Unity, Ephesians 4, leadership, Spiritual Gifts

We Christians and Our Starbucks

27 03 2012

 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.  And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.  Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.  Ephesians 4:29-32

Companies in the Northwest U.S. have come out in favor of a recent same-sex marriage law in Washington state, citing business reasons such as keeping quality employees (who would presumably feel compelled to leave the state, and the company, in order to live somewhere where they could enjoy their same-sex marriage).  Those announcements would not ordinarily make national news, except for the names of some of those companies: Microsoft, Nike, and (alas) Starbucks.  Actually, not even Microsoft’s or Nike’s announcements got all that much attention, despite their HUGE place in the homes of Christians all over the world.  But Starbucks…well, now the Christian world is in an uproar, to say the least.  People are calling for a boycott.  Messing with our computers and our $200 tennis shoes is one thing, but now you are messing with our coffee!   One of the better organized opposition movements is from Washington D.C.’s National Organization for Marriage, which last week launched dumpstarbucks.com.

And now, the fight within the Christian world is once again fanned into flames with a renewed energy.

IN THIS CORNER: “How can you say you believe the Bible and then support gay marriage by purchasing Starbucks coffee?!”  And IN THIS CORNER: “How can you say you follow Christ and then refuse to associate (like He did) with those with whom you disagree?!”  And with those positions, both sides dangerously agree on one contention: “If you disagree with me on this, you must not really be Christian.”

Nice.

I am a peacemaker.  This sort of conflict is what I live for!  So I am boldly wading out into this one with some words of counsel to the Christians who simply cannot resist this fight.  If you and your Christian friend are really going to debate this issue, because she is boycotting Starbucks and you don’t want to…or because you are boycotting Starbucks and she doesn’t want to, you need to follow some rules.  You know these rules, because they come from the same Bible you will no-doubt be using to support your argument.  Permit me a few paraphrases of those “rules of engagement” for our purposes here:

1. Do not overestimate or overstate what is at risk.  Neither your salvation nor your friend’s are at stake here.  I’ve searched and searched the scripture on this…there is nothing in there about boycotting the secular world’s businesses in order to be saved…nor, for that matter, even as evidence of our salvation.  Moreover, your Christian friendship is likewise not at risk here, nor your worship relationship, nor your ability to love each other, minister together, or discuss scripture together.  Keep a “ceiling” on the discussion and do not let it escalate beyond its reasonable borders.  The Christ in you and the Christ in your friend are still the same…and still very much alive!

2.  You are on the same team.  The friend with whom you are arguing is not your enemy.  We in the church do have an enemy, and he loves it when we break unity, especially over stuff like this.  Figure out whose strategy you are going to play into here…and be careful.

3. Keep your words edifying.  Quit taking the other side’s position and then carrying it out to some ridiculous “logical conclusion” just to try to make them look foolish.  That doesn’t build them up.  Understand their position, yes, but don’t misinterpret it.  Quit trying to change their minds about their own position.  Just explain why you have made the decision you have made without tearing them down for their decision.  Ask yourself what is to be gained by using words of contempt and shaming them into agreeing with you…you may have won the debate, but at what cost?

4. Keep bitterness and anger out of this discussion.  That is sometimes easier said than done.  But all of us as Christ followers need an anger gauge that sounds an alarm when we feel it rising up in us.  And then we need to find some quick, honest, relatively painless way out of this discussion until we can re-enter it with coolness and love and gentleness.  How embarrassing will it be for you to stand before the Lord one day and have to admit that you destroyed a Christian friendship which HE ORDAINED FOR YOU over a disagreement about where you buy your coffee.  Ouch!

5.  Don’t use your life experiences to interpret scripture.  Rather, use scripture to interpret your life experiences.  Be honest.  If you have an idea in mind of what you want scripture to say before you even open it, then your “research” is already tainted.

I hope these reminders help.  They always help me.  Consider yourself adequately warned now.  So, go ahead…strap on the gloves and slug it out.  And may the best Christian win.  :)

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Christian Accountability, Church Unity, conflict, Ephesians 4, Peacemakers, The Church's Influence

The Lies About Church Unity

13 12 2011

Tuesday Re-mix -

“…being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Ephesians 4:3

I am now more than a year past the half-century mark on this earth.  Quite the accomplishment, it seems to me.  When I was a teenager, I honestly never wanted to still be alive by this age.  It just seemed unbearably old to me then.  I have recently changed my mind about that.

I see a lot of things differently now.  I have developed a patience…a longer-term perspective on things.  I have learned that many of the things I thought as a young adult were just lies.  Here are some of the lies I have checked off my list as “learned” over the years:

If you can afford the mortgage payment, you can afford the house.

If you can afford the car payment, you can afford the car.

No matter how old you get, you’re never more than 90 days from getting back in shape.

You can work long and hard, or you can get lucky…lasting success can come either way.

When two good people get married, good marriages always result.

Lies, lies, lies…all of them.  In all these ways, I have learned that the same God who created the world in six days expects us to take significantly longer and work significantly harder to accomplish anything of real worth.

It makes perfect sense to me, then, that our job of “preserving the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” in the church is a tedious, difficult, long-term job which we cannot expect to happen overnight.  Because we are talking about real, human relationships, this job is messy and complicated and takes lots and lots of intentional effort.  In short, our responsibility of preserving the unity of the Spirit requires that we disavow ourselves of a few myths.  So let’s get started, shall we?  Here are the lies:

1.  That unity in the church is God’s job and He will do it magically and miraculously if we will let Him. The truth is, God has already done His part.  He gave us his Spirit…the one true source of unity.  But we also have a job: to preserve the unity He provided among us.  That job is hard and never-ending this side of Heaven.  God’s miracle has already happened.  What are you doing to preserve it?

2.  That genuine unity merely requires that we identify a common enemy or a common goal. We learned this as a nation, when the “unity” we felt after 9-11 ended up being short-lived and just a few months later our country was more divided than ever.  Similarly, any church who thinks getting together on a building program is all they need to begin experiencing some unity is fooling themselves.  There are no such “shortcuts” to the difficult and messy job of preserving the unity of the Spirit.

3.  That unity requires that we all agree with each other about everything. That is not at all what being “like-minded” meant to the apostle Paul.  The New Testament church was literally filled with disagreement, even doctrinal disagreement (see Acts 15).  But Paul always encouraged them to learn to treat each other with respect and to create an environment for growth together despite their disagreements over difficult issues.

4.  That it is more important to be right than to be unified. I believe Jesus settled this in John 17 when He prayed for the future church.  He could have prayed for anything at all, including doctrinal purity (i.e., being right) as He envisioned his future church.  He prayed for unity.  Nothing else.  Just unity.  If we will learn to live in Biblical interpersonal relationships with each other and in right relationship to God, the doctrinal stuff will take care of itself…the Spirit will see to that just as He has seen to it for some 2000 years already.  But as history has shown us over and over again, the Spirit will NOT do our job of preserving the unity.

5.  That we can achieve unity, even if we are not a praying church. Let’s face it.  God has not promised anything to the people who do not pray.  A church which does not pray together is, well…not really the church.  Being in right relationship with each other requires being in right relationship to God.  And being in right relationship to God requires prayer.  It is not rocket science.  Scripture makes this one easy to understand.

Church unity, like anything else involving human relationships, is messy work…and hard work…and lots of work.  The questions are these: (1) Are you prepared to do the work?  (2) Have you believed the lies?

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : 5 Principles of Unity, Church Unity, Ephesians 4, Genuine Community, prayer

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