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Month: May 2021

Does Walmart Help Write Our Story?

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 31, 2021
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You want to know what time of year it is? Just walk down the aisles of your local Walmart. Or any store like it. New Year’s Day. Super Bowl. Valentine’s Day. St. Patrick’s Day. Easter/Spring. Mother’s Day. Memorial Day. Father’s Day. Fourth of July. Back to School. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Christmas Holidays. And the cycle repeats.

It’s all quite liturgical is it not? What I mean by liturgical here is that the “seasons” listed above, along with a few others, are the ceremonies by which our lives are run. You walk into Walmart and you see the chips and dips set out and you remember, “Oh yeah! It’s time to get ready for a Super Bowl party.” Or you see red, white, and blue cookies along with USA cupcakes and of course, barbecue sauces and you immediately begin to think, “So wonder what we should do for a July 4th cookout?”

I realized these days and seasons are part of our culture. It’s the things we do as folks living in America. But I want to push back a bit on these things however. Why? Because these events are forming our life story. Whether we want them to or not, these yearly habits are making us who we are. Is this a problem? Possibly. Why? Well, according to James K. Smith, our “cultural practices can be dangerous when we fail to realize that these aren’t just things we do but things that do something to us.”

Think about what Smith is saying here. Our practices are things “that do something to us.” Now Smith is specifically referring to daily habits here, but no doubt our yearly rituals are just as formational as we pattern our year by the various seasons and holidays. So the question I have for us is to what are we being formed in to? What story is being written for us by our culture? Now I realize that Christmas and Easter are in our societal milieu, but I dare write that the Christmas and Easter promoted in local stores are from a much more consumeristic mindset.

So I think we have to acknowledge that there is an “American liturgy.” One that is to make us more…well…American? Now is there anything wrong with being American? Of course not! Though I will have to acknowledge that American exceptionalism is going way too far. We as Americans should not be the people by whom we measure the success or failure of every other country or nation.

However, for those of us who follow Christ, there is another story we are to be formed by. And it’s not dictated by what’s in the seasonal section at Walmart. Nor is it the American story. It’s the story of the God who creates, sustains, rescues, restores and renews. It’s the story of a God who not only forms everything by his very word, but enters that which he has made by becoming a part of it. And why does he do this? To save it! In fact, he does the unthinkable by allowing himself to be pushed into the most heinous death and humiliation possible in the first century; death on a cross. But it doesn’t stop there. From his death comes a resurrection. New life enters the world. Heaven has come to earth. That which had run amuck is now being released from the evil that had covered the earth for centuries…no thanks to us as humanity. So this is OUR STORY! And this is what the church needs to base its yearly calendar upon.

So here’s the question: Am I saying that churches should become more liturgical? And by that I mean follow a systematic reading and study of Scripture from Sunday to Sunday that tells God’s story from year to year? Well, I’m a baptist and so I’m conditioned to get a little worried about following anything too sanctioned, but I do think we should give it some thought. And the reason why is because the story that needs to rewrite our lives is not the one on display at our local stores. But this isn’t going to happen unless we as a church learn to celebrate and give attention to “our seasons.” And I feel we must do so because if not, the story that Walmart tells might just form us more than the story of Scripture.

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Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: A Book Review

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 21, 2021

“Becoming a pastor was the worst decision I ever made.” This was Peter Scazzero’s cry to God. And to say the least, it grabbed my attention. The reason why is not only because I know pastors and ministry leaders who have prayed this kind of lament, but also because I have voiced this kind of lament to God myself.  So where do we turn? Well, for Scazzero, it led him on a journey of self-reflection in which he realized that his life with God and others was a mile-wide and an inch-deep. “I discovered that the problem wasn’t the Christian faith itself,” he writes, “but rather the way we had been discipled and were making disciples” (xv).

So for Scazzero, the way we do and think about discipleship needs to change. And the change must begin as we move discipleship to involving the whole person, specifically one’s emotional life. I feel this is a strength in Scazzero’s work. We have been rocked to sleep by our current methods which only view discipleship as a mental engagement with Scripture and have neglected the rest of our humanity. We don’t realize that when we neglect our emotions, we stunt our growth. Scazzero came to the realization that he “would remain an emotional infant until [he] acknowledged the emotional part of God’s image in [him]” (10).

Emotionally Healthy Discipleship is Scazzero’s attempt to not necessarily convince us to build a new church program per se, though that might be involved, but to change our “operating system” of how we think about and do discipleship so that it can lead us to becoming “deeply transformed by Jesus” in order to “offer our life as a gift to the world for Jesus” (26). If you are familiar with his book The Emotionally Healthy Church written some 18 years ago, this is his reworking of that book. Scazzero claims that 75-80 percent of this current book is new material. It appears that he has grown in his understanding of discipleship throughout the years.

There are seven marks of deep transforming discipleship according to Scazzero. Naturally, he devotes the majority of his time in this book defining each mark while sharing some hands-on tools to help with each. He also is careful to develop Biblical and theological premises for each mark as well. Undoubtedly there could be much written here about each of these healthy discipleship traits, but I feel that there are a couple that stand out and need to be mentioned.

First, “follow the crucified, not the Americanized, Jesus.” You can’t embrace following Jesus without the cross. For Scazzero this means that we must avoid “popularity, great-ism, and success-ism” and be willing to “embrace suffering and failure” (65). This appears counter-productive to most of us as we have been “discipled” by our culture to need to achieve the American dream (whatever that means these days). It is unfortunate that in order for ministry to be viewed as significant, it must include flash and pizzazz along with hoards of folks knocking down the doors to be a part. I’m not discrediting any such ministry. Please don’t take it that way. But what Scazzero warns us about is that when we seek success and greatness just for the sake of being successful and great, we fall into idolatry as we replace God with our work and ministry. And the end result is an emotionally shallow walk with God.

Second, Scazzero writes that we must “make love the measure of maturity.” “My focus and aim was to make disciples and to grow the church,” he writes. “But over time, it became difficult to distinguish between loving people for who they were versus using them for how they could contribute to the mission. Did I need people to come to faith in Jesus to build our church, or could I simply love them regardless of their decision to follow Jesus and serve in the ministry” (136)? I feel this is a hard question for all of us; if we are honest, we are prone to love people with an agenda that is self-serving. But the mark of maturity is to love people because they are people. Our love should come from a purity that desires others to flourish and become who God made them to be.

Now though I did enjoy the book and would highly recommend it, I have to be honest and confess that there were times in which I felt Scazzero was only highlighting another resource of his. I felt this way because in some chapters he only gave a portion or a hint towards a discipleship solution in which another tool to be purchased was needed. However, I moved past this shallow thinking as I closed the book and accepted my hastiness to judge and instead began to acknowledge that Scazzero really does want to help people and churches become truly transformed.

There is quite a bit of talk these days about church revitalization. Just google “church revitalization” and you will see what I mean. I in no way have surveyed even a majority of the literature. But the resources I have perused seem to miss what Scazzero is talking about in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. If there is going to be impact we are going to have to do more than change our vision statement (though no doubt that might be necessary). We are going to have to dive in a bit deeper. And it’s going to have to begin with you (and me).

So I encourage you to pick up Emotionally Healthy Discipleship and examine it for yourself. But be warned, as you can probably tell from the comments above, if you think the path to transformation is just a matter of plugging in some new teaching to your life or church, then you will be discouraged. Scazzero is clear that though you can read the book in perhaps 7-10 days (if you are fast reader), it might take seven to ten years to see the type of transformation he is writing about. “We didn’t get into the problem of shallow discipleship overnight,” he writes. “And neither will we solve the problem overnight” (221).

This review first appeared on Englewood Review of Books.

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A Thought Provoking Understanding of the Task of Evangelism

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 15, 2021
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Bryan Stone’s book, Evangelism After Pluralism: The Ethics of Christian Witness, has been in my pile of books to read for quite some time. Thankfully, I picked it up this week and am beginning to work my way through it. I’m only just a couple of chapters in at the moment but have already discovered what I think is a most refreshing understanding of the task of evangelism. Stone writes…

I argue that rather than an attempt to secure converts, the task of evangelism is instead to bear faithful witness to the good news as the people of God in a particular context and in such a way that it can be taken seriously and imagined as an authentic possibility for one’s life and for the world. To evangelize is to bear witness to beauty, so that the logic of evangelism is the logic of faithfulness, witness, exemplification, and embodiment rather than the logic of production, competition, or winning. (p. 17)

Since I’m just getting started with Stone’s book, I don’t want to speculate too much about what he wrote here as I’m fairly confident he is going to flesh it out a bit more throughout his book. However, there are a couple of things in his understanding of the task of evangelism that stick out to me. First is evangelism’s duty of not just securing converts. I’m not sure I’ve ever liked the word “convert.” Most likely it’s because of the image that comes to my mind when I hear this word. I link it to coercive and manipulative type tactics to get someone to say “yes” just for the sake of a number. I’m sure there are many who don’t see the word this way, but that’s the image that comes to my mind.

Unfortunately, I fear that when many think of evangelism, both Christians and non-Christians, what they only envision is the winning of souls. What counts is those that cross the line and follow Jesus. In no way am I negating the glorious decision one makes to follow Christ. Paul’s desire for the Israelites was that they may be saved (Romans 10:1). I hope that’s our prayer for those around us. However, I feel that what Stone is hinting at here is that when you make evangelism only about “securing converts,” you lean towards the exploitation of others and therefore, treat them as projects in which you no longer “love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

Second, when Stone writes that “to evangelize is to bear witness to beauty,” something seems to leap in my soul. I think the reason why this is so for me is because I have not often thought of the gospel as something that is beautiful. Or at least I have not used such vernacular. But the truth is that the gospel is beautiful. It’s the story of all stories. I am reminded of the words of Blaise Pascal when he wrote that we should “make religion attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.” At the very core of our being, we really do want the gospel to be true because it’s that beautiful of a story. And of course, it is true!

Let me quickly wrap up this short post by sharing just a few things. First, I consider the sharing of the gospel as of primary importance to the world around us. Once again, it’s the story of all stories. Second, I continue to want to learn what it means to converse the gospel with others. Growing in evangelism is important to me. Finally, I think we (myself included), based upon what I have seen and what I hear from others, are going to have to relearn some things in regards to the task of evangelism. This is why I am excited about reading Stone’s book. Am I going to agree with everything? Probably not? But is it going to push me to becoming more like Jesus in my practice of evangelism? I definitely think it will!

Just so you will know, there will be further reflections in the weeks ahead concerning Stone’s Evangelism After Pluralism. If you’ve read it, I would like to hear your thoughts. If you haven’t read, pick up a copy and feel free to chime in to the potential discussion.

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How Do We Get People To Church?

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 7, 2021
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How do we get people to church? I know this sounds like a strange question. I’m not actually sure it’s really the question we need to be asking, but I do pose it because of the continual concern of the steady decline in church attendance (or at least our worries with it in the West). In fact, just recently, Gallup recently reported that U.S. church membership has fallen below 50 percent for the first time. This is mainly due to the rise of the “nones,” that is, those who claim no religious affiliation.

So what do we do? I think our natural tendencies are to ramp up the music, develop some creative preaching techniques, create new small group environments and if possible, upgrade the online worship experience. Now I’m not against any of these things. In fact, I think they are important. However, when we wonder why people stop coming to church, or never consider attending in the first place, I think there is something larger at stake.

A couple of years ago I stumbled upon an article by Mike Glenn. In it, he addresses his personal concern about the drop in church attendance and like the rest of us, begins to wonder why. His conclusion? People don’t come to church because the church community itself has no more experienced the transforming knowledge of Jesus than the world around it. He writes:

We went to church and were entertained and impressed, but we never met Jesus. Now, when the world comes to our churches we don’t have anything that matters because, well, we don’t know Jesus either.

Perhaps instead of focusing on saving the world, the church should first focus on finding its own salvation first. I’m convinced when we find Jesus again the community will find the church again.

So I ask once again, what do we do? Well, according to Mike Glenn, we get to know Jesus. We fall in love with him once again and allow our relationship with him to change everything about us. And when that happens, church attendance will take care of itself.

Russell Moore just a few weeks ago wrote of the same concerns as Glenn. The reason he cites for the rise of the “nones” and why they are vacating the church is not because “they are secularists, but because they believe we [church attenders] are.” Moore goes on to write:

If people reject the church because they reject Jesus and the gospel, we should be saddened but not surprised. But what happens when people reject the church because they think we reject Jesus and the gospel? If people leave the church because they want to gratify the flesh with abandon, such has always been the case, but what happens when people leave because they believe the church exists to gratify the flesh—whether in orgies of sex or orgies of anger or orgies of materialism? That’s a far different problem. And what if people don’t leave the church because they disapprove of Jesus, but because they’ve read the Bible and have come to the conclusion that the church itself would disapprove of Jesus?

We are going to have to get back to knowing Jesus. I’m convinced that we don’t know him as well as we think we do. The story of Jesus talking to Zacchaeus up in a tree is not just a cute children’s story. Yes, I think we should tell it to children, but there’s much more happening in that encounter than we usually talk about. The same is true for all of the stories of Jesus. We just need to encounter them afresh. And as we do, my prayer is that they will rewrite our own life story.

So let’s get to know Jesus. Let’s allow him to change us into the people we were created to be from “in the beginning.” And let’s also talk about him with others as well. I’m sure we all know someone who needs to hear that Jesus brings life and hope and love and healing. He and his ways are good. So let’s pick up our cross and follow him for as we do, I think we might find the world realizing that its the church community where they want to be.

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What’s A Good Church Subtitle?

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 3, 2021
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I’ve noticed that some churches have subtitles now. Or at least that’s what I call them. One might refer to them as tag lines or mini vision statements. Regardless, here are some of the ones I have noticed:

-Celebrating the Gospel

-No perfect people allowed

-We preach the Bible

-Loving Jesus, Loving Others

-A Church for all people

I’ll have to confess that sometimes when I read such statements, I become a little frustrated. Maybe it’s because I lean towards cynicism. But when I read about a church who claims to “celebrate the Gospel,” are they implying that other churches don’t? Is there a bit of arrogance in such a proclamation as though they “do church” better than most? Again, most likely it’s me and my pride rearing its ugly head.

But as I’ve thought about churches identifying themselves with these small vision statements, I began to think about what if a church were a little more honest about who they were. What if they announced the following:

-Where people struggle to understand the Bible

-We don’t have all of life figured out yet

-Feel free to bring your questions

-A church where sometimes people cuss

-We are working hard to love all people

I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that we as the people of God need to be willing to be a little more vulnerable with the world around us. Perhaps that can be conveyed by what we put on our church sign or our logo, but most likely it will be known as we live lives of humility in front of others. One of the most powerful and most daring things we can do as a church is to openly share that sometimes, we are a complete mess.

I wonder if we try too hard sometimes in our worship gatherings to make sure that the greeters are remarkable, the music is flawless, and the preaching is infallible? Now don’t get me wrong, I think we need to develop a welcoming worship experience so we, along with first time attenders, can encounter God. But we can’t forget that it’s got to be more than a show. This means we have to provide more than just an “ideal” worship hour. Yes, we have to meet with God, but I feel we also have to encounter others who like us, struggle with the everyday realities of life.

When I read through Scripture, I continue to be amazed how open and honest it is about those we tend to call the “heroes” of the faith. David was mentioned to be a “man after God’s own heart.” How can that be? Have you read about his incident with Bathsheba? And of course there is Peter. He is called the “rock” and yet he denies Jesus. Later on, according to Paul in his letter to the Galatians, Peter wanted to make sure he didn’t lose face with some of the Jewish folks so he adjusted his social engagements with the Gentiles. Paul called Peter out concerning such behavior for Jesus had died for all people and Peter needed to convey that with his actions.

If the Bible doesn’t try to hide the struggles of its characters, then maybe neither should we. I can relate to these Bible personalities. And so can others! A book I read years ago by John Leonard entitled Get Real: Sharing Your Everyday Faith Every Day, mentions this very thing. Leonard writes that “we want people to see Jesus in us when it would be so much better if they instead saw someone in need of Jesus.” (Read more about Leonard’s book)

So perhaps what Leonard writes in his book is what needs to be the tag line of all tag lines for churches. “Welcome to our church! We are a place where everyone needs Jesus!” And maybe such a line will remind us just how much we as church folk need just as much grace and mercy as the world around us!

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