Further Thoughts on the Shape of Women's Ministry
This week, Kate Shellnutt of Christianity Today published a piece that examines the shape of women's ministry in the white evangelical church. The article comes in the wake of the controversy surrounding popular speaker and author Jen Hatmaker's public support of gay marriage. In response to her new position, LifeWay will no longer sell Hatmaker's books and products.
While I don't agree with Hatmaker's position, I also don't think folks are necessarily seeing the big picture. Hatmaker is not one individual who suddenly and unexpectedly went rogue. She represents the larger shape of evangelical women's ministry that is very often detached from the established Church. Erin Straza and I tackled this question in a recent Persuasion podcast in which we argue that much of women's spiritual formation has been outsourced to the marketplace. We shouldn't be surprised when it's shaped by influences other than the Church.
Kate's article at CT taps several leaders in ministry and tries to set the larger frame for what's happening, particularly among white evangelical women. For example, while most pastors have probably never heard of Hatmaker, she has a FB following larger than John Piper, Tim Keller, or Gary Chapman. Kate reached out to me for her article and I asked her if I could publish more of our email exchange here:
Kate: What do you see as some of the pros and cons of having so much momentum around women’s ministry at a national level?
Hannah: Positively, I think we need to recognize that the Spirit of God is at work. Because the digital age has changed how ideas spread, women (who have historically existed in the margins of theological conversation) have an opportunity to add to the conversation without ever leaving their desks. In the past, a lack of infrastructure would have held them back; but today, women who are gifted to teach, lead, or encourage have opportunity to actualize these gifts in a public way.
The advantage, of course, is that the Church at large can benefit from these gifted women. They become a channel of the Holy Spirit’s power and blessing as they fulfill their calling for the good of the Church and the glory of God. One practical affect is that new topics come up for discussion and application—topics that male leaders simply wouldn’t know to address or can’t address. Female leaders are also uniquely positioned to apply the teachings of the Church to the needs of half her members.
On the other hand, because so many female spiritual leaders are operating in parachurch contexts, their ministries have the potential to lose the doctrinal and structural accountability that the established Church provides. The digital age may free women from the gendered constraints of traditional ministry, but this means that they also have the potential to become free agents.
Consider how few female evangelical leaders are visibly attached to an institution such as a church, seminary, or non-profit that did not grow up around their personality. Name a male leader like Rick Warren and you immediately think of Saddleback Church. Say Beth Moore or Ann Voskamp or Jen Hatmaker and most of us will draw a blank about which local church these women affiliate with. This is not to say that they aren't connected, but their local church isn't a visible or central a component to their public ministry.
Being distanced from ecclesiastical institutions also means women’s ministry inadvertently becomes shaped by market forces. Nationally known female spiritual leaders are by-and-large entrepreneurs and most often, out of necessity. Because women struggle to find space in the established Church, they end up creating their own institutions, whether as collectives or around themselves. The latter is both fed by and feeds evangelical celebrity culture.
This entrepreneurial dynamic also affects the shape and philosophy of women’s ministry, even if only inadvertently. When a woman has to create her own position and then maintain that position apart from the contribution (both financial and spiritual) of a larger institution, her target demographic can disproportionately affect the shape of her ministry. This is true of many entrepreneurial endeavors, not simply women’s ministry; but if the majority of female leaders are operating in the marketplace (as opposed to the institutional Church), women’s ministry as a whole can reach a point of critical mass where an audience-centric philosophy creates wider expectations about style, topics, and content.
Practically speaking, this broader culture locks both leaders and followers into a matrix built on audience consumption of the personal spirituality of the celebrity. The “product” is not robust spiritual formation so much as spirituality mediated through the experience and passions of the tribal leader. Of course, not all nationally known female leaders and ministries operate this way, but building “tribe” is a significant emphasis for many.
Kate: Also, the tweet from you that stood out most to me was about how female leaders don’t need to “show their work” theologically. Could you expand on that? What is the role you see theology playing? And why shouldn’t we be tempted to write off these women as overly inspirational or shallow? Hannah: I believe that market forces are unduly shaping women’s ministry. And part of what the market wants is simple, practical spirituality. In a robust learning environment, a teacher works to create a curriculum and syllabus that suits the needs (not the wants) of the learner. But teachers operating in the marketplace must always consider what the market can bear. They themselves aren’t necessarily a-theological (although some may be), but they may feel a tension to craft their teaching in a way that minimizes theological book work in favor of inspiration, lifestyle advice, or practical mission.
The problem is that if lay women don’t see their teachers modeling theological investigation or healthy engagement with the Scripture, they won’t be able to develop these abilities themselves. They won’t even know they need to develop them. It’s like learning to cook from a recipe that calls for pre-packaged ingredients like “cake mix” vs. a recipe that calls for flour, sugar, dry milk, baking soda, and salt. The shortcuts may seem helpful at the moment, but have we really learned to cook? Have we grown in our spiritual understanding?
I do not believe that all female leaders must have an M.Div. or theology degree to teach or lead. I don't have one myself. But we do need to raise the expectation for what passes for spiritual formation. In an article in the Washington Post last year, Karen E. Yates reflects on the last two decades of women’s involvement in Christian publishing and notes that “women today are publishing at an incredible rate without the title of pastor, without a seminary degree and without a traditional pulpit.”
If nothing else, this should get our attention. Not because women aren’t capable of the higher thinking associated with formal teaching ministry, but because of the very real possibility that half the Church is being trained in mission by people with a limited number of tools in their toolkits. As a woman, this also concerns me because a haphazard approach to theology could reinforce prejudices against women teachers. In some ways, we have to be better and more faithful than our male counterparts in order to overcome entrenched biases.
This doesn’t mean we should write off women leaders as uneducated, un-theological, or shallow. You do not gain the following necessary to be a nationally known leader without a great deal of gifting, self-education, and hard work. What women leaders often are, however, is isolated. Isolated from the very Church they are seeking to build. If Paul is correct that the Church is “the pillar and ground of truth,” the way forward is not to shame female leaders for using their gifts without theological credentials. The way forward is for the Church to identify and support gifted women, partnering with them via theological training and commissioned ministry positions.
If you don’t want women breaking down the doors, simply open them for them.
When God Surprises You
This Tuesday, my book Humble Roots finally released. Several weeks ago, I'd made a plea for help in spreading the word; this plea was met with overwhelming enthusiasm and support from around the country and around the world. And yesterday, one day after release, Humble Roots, with its message of finding rest through humility, topped Amazon's Inspiration & Spirituality category
I found myself needing to sit down a lot yesterday.
But this experience also reminded me of a section in Humble Roots. In chapter 9, I tell the story of a handful of green beans carelessly tossed into a pile of dirt late one summer. A month earlier, my husband had tried to cultivate these same green beans in our garden but to no avail. He planted, he tended, he watered, he staked. But after several weeks, all he had to show for his efforts was a lush vine with no fruit. A couple of weeks later, however, my son found the bag of leftover beans and "planted" them in the dirt next to our recently constructed patio. The beans sprouted, blossomed, and produced more fruit than my husband's carefully tended ones did.
Part of humility means trusting God with our plans and submitting to the possibility that they will not be fulfilled... But part of humility means trusting God with our plans and submitting to the possibility that they will be fulfilled in ways that we cannot imagine. Because we can't know the future, we also don't know when He will choose to bless us with abundance...
The fact that success can come without our efforts is testimony, yet again, to God's surpassing power and goodness. God delights to use small, out-of-the-way, unexpected means to showcase His glory... So, what if God can grow beans in a pile of unattended dirt? What if God can bring about good things without us? What if grace is true?
I never expected Humble Roots to rank so well one day after release. But I'm learning that God often does the unexpected. And sometimes the unexpected means calling us to places of leadership and influence that we did not seek. But even here, humility guides us because humility reminds us that this--all of this--was never about us in the first place.
I've often seen women struggle when their influence grows--whether it's in a church, community, or even in the home. Sociologists tell us that women often lack the confidence to assume leadership; and so when they're put in places of influence, they can doubt their own abilities, withdraw, and self-sabotage. (On the other hand, men--as a general category--do not seem to struggle with confidence in their own abilities.) I know this lack of confidence to be true in my own life. When I'm put in front of people or receive public praise, all I want to do is close up shop and hide, preferring abdication over the need to meet expectations about future growth. But as much as humility reminds us that God is the one who makes our work flourish, humility also frees us to flourish in the midst of that work. Humility frees us to become men and women of influence.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to write a short post for womensministry.net, a site devoted to supporting and encouraging women who are called to serve in position of influence in the church. I wrote about how humility is the very thing that makes our leadership effective. Instead of leading us away from growing influence, humility frees us to step into God's call on our lives by freeing us from preoccupation with ourselves. Specifically,
1. Humility rescues us from the need to make a name for ourselves.
2. Humility frees us from the paralysis of criticism.
3. Humility gives us the confidence to obey God's call.
You can read the whole article there, but ironically enough, this was the very article that I needed to (re)read yesterday. In the midst of all the excitement and busyness of Launch Week, I'm learning to take my own medicine and remember that this isn't about me.
Praise Jesus and thank heavens, none of this is about me.
Hillbilly Elegy
Many of you know that I live in the mountains of western Virginia. We're hardworking bunch, knit together by family, shared sense of community, and a particular love for this region. Here, my kids go to local schools, and my husband pastors a small church at a bend of a long country road. A graveyard sits on the right and a cow pasture on the left. A small stream runs through the pasture and is home to minnows, tadpoles, lizards, and crawdads.
But not everything is idyllic. Like many other communities, we're increasingly affected by income disparity, drug use, & the breakdown of the nuclear family, Travel just a bit farther west and you'll hit the coal fields of southern WV and eastern KY. The challenges these folks face make ours seem like child's play. It's hard to understand the challenges of rural life because outsiders tend to idealize it (Mayberry) or mock it (Beverly Hillbillies). What we don't do is take a careful look at the complexities of it.
In the recently released, Hillbilly Elegy, author J.D. Vance chronicles the story of "his people"--from growing up an Ohio factory town to returning to his ancestral home in the hills of eastern Kentucky. Vance's childhood was marked by family chaos and underachievement. It was a childhood and family that he loves deeply nonetheless. But Vance doesn't mince words: he honors the humanity of these self-described "hillbillies" at the same time he calls them to own their potential.
One of the most enlightening aspects of the book is Vance's take on how religion plays out in working class communities. There's often a deep-seated sense of faith or belief in God, but for the most part, the rural poor are detached from local churches. Vance wonders out loud how much this is their own fault and how much it is the fault of church. I've wondered the same thing myself. Many times.
Are our church's even accessible to folks outside a certain demographic? And if they aren't, how can we change that?
Here's my longer review of the book and a podcast in which I argue that it will be among the most influential books of 2016.
Learning to Speak Up
A little over four years ago, I started down a path that I thought would lead me on a relaxing Sunday afternoon stroll through the woods. Little did I know I was actually starting a hike through the mountains.
When I hit "publish" on the first post here at SAL, I had no ambitions or plan for what God might do with me. I knew that I needed to do something--that I needed to cultivate certain gifts and desires--but there was no plan. At least from my perspective. As the path has twisted and turned, I've simply taken the next step in front of me. Sometimes those steps opened onto breathtaking vistas where I could pause and marvel at all that God had done; sometimes they led me up increasingly steep and narrow paths that made me doubt the wisdom of having ever left the couch.
This year, one of those uphill climbs has been doing more traveling and speaking.
If you're a regularly follower of this blog, you've probably noticed that I've been a little... um... absent lately. But if I've been absent here, it's only because I've been present in many new places speaking and teaching on the truth of living as image bearers. And like most uphill climbs, it has been immensely rewarding--once I was able to pause long enough to catch my breath.
Despite the challenges--whether it's been covering my responsibilities at home or overcoming the strange panic that inevitably settles on me right before I leave--I've relished each opportunity. Hand me a mic and watch out. The truth of imago Dei is so large--so all of life encompassing--that I'm never at a loss for words even if it's sometimes hard to know exactly where to land. Whether we're talking about how being image bearers affects our approach to work or learning how the gospel is both the means and model of for our transformation, I feel like I could spend the rest of my life teasing out the daily realities of being made like Christ.
So that's exactly what I have and am doing. Traveling and speaking has allowed me to develop ideas that I didn't get to explore fully in Made for More. I've been able to dig more deeply into the relationship between the Creation Mandate and the Great Commission; to explore how the gospel informs and enables the process of Christlikeness; and to focus more specifically on a woman's calling in the home, church, and society. It's been wonderful.
This year has also taught me how to "speak up" through the chance to co-host a weekly podcast with Erin Straza. The goal of Persuasionis to provide a space where "fine ladies, rational minds, and the best kind of company" can gather to discuss ideas and issues. We noticed that there were a lot of Christian podcasts focused on"women's issues" and there were a lot of podcasts for women Bible teachers; but we wanted to do something different. We want to amplify women's voices and perspectives beyond the typical conversations--to apply Christian truth to the issues around us, whether it is doing chores, failed attempts at authenticity, or funeral traditions. After all "when you're a woman, all issues are women's issues."
So consider this your invitation. Whether you're cleaning house, wrapping presents for the coming holidays, or running errands, grab a pair of earbuds or download the file and listen along!
Confession and Community
"Take one sleepy seaside town in England, add a pinch of intrigue, stir in a brooding Scottish detective and his engaging local sergeant, and you’ve got the makings of Broadchurch, a British crime drama whose first series was, according to its millions of viewers, basically perfect..."
Last month, our family headed out of town for a week of vacation. We're still figuring out how to do this "family vacation" thing out because neither my husband or I grew up with "family vacation" as an annual reality. Now, before my mother and mother-in-law private message me to take issue with this statement, let me clarify: Neither my husband or I grew up with a specific week built into our families' calendars that guaranteed time away. We always took family trips; we went to visit relatives or went camping, but the idea that you could set aside an entire week at the beach to simply do nothing was not part of our experience.
This is so much outside our experience, in fact, that I didn't realize that you actually have to book a house months, not weeks, in advance. So when we finally decided to plan a "family vacation," we ended up shut out of the area we wanted to visit. Enter grandparents to the rescue. Given our predicament, my husband's grandparents graciously allowed us to use their winter home to go on "family vacation." So we packed up the kids and drove 900 miles to southeast Florida... in August. Like I said, we're still learning the ins-and-outs of this "family vacation" thing.
Thankfully, there is one aspect of "family vacation" that we became experts at very quickly--the art of doing nothing. Sleeping late, lazy days, fast food, and lots of HGTV, board games, and beach reads. This year this included binge watching the second season of Broadchurch, a British crime drama that is just disturbing enough to be perfect. My husband and I had watched the previous season a couple months ago, so when I found season two at our county library, I threw caution (and late-fees to the wind) and packed it for vacation.
Now, when I say that we binge-watched those eight episodes, I mean exactly that. We have no defense, no excuse; we sat fixated for hours in front of the television; and each time, as the credits closed the episode, my husband and I would look at each other, neither wanting to be the one to suggest pushing play on the next episode, but both of us desperate to continue the story. So after two late (late) nights of watching TV well after the children were tucked in bed, I can officially tell you, "It was worth it."
While there are one or two elements that might be uncomfortable for Christians, Broadchurch delves into the human experience in ways I don't often see in pop culture. Life, death, truth, our need for community--it's all there in one small English village by the sea. If you've seen the series, you'll know what I mean. And if you've seen it, you might appreciate this piece I wrote recently for Christ and Pop Culture about how Broadchurch season 2 shows the importance of confession of sin. And this--the importance of confession--is a profoundly Christian idea. We must confess our sin in order to be reconciled to God and each other. Proof is not enough; evidence is not enough. The wrongdoer must own his wrongdoing and speak the truth about it. Without such confession, our relationships break down and we end up isolated from God and each other.
From the piece:
Within the Church, the term “confession” has two usages. The first refers to the affirmation of a specific doctrine: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord…” So begins the Apostle’s Creed, one of the oldest and most foundational of Christian confessions. With such statements, we are able to create distinct communities based in a shared reality. Creeds and confessions don’t define reality, though. Instead, they form the bonds and boundaries of communities: If we have nothing else, at least we know the truth about these things.
Christians also use the word “confession” in a more familiar way: We confess our sins. Whether this happens within the confessional booth, an accountability group, or in the dock, when we confess our sins, we speak the truth about our actions. But often we mistake the confession of sin as an individual act. At its heart, confession—whether of faith or of a lack of faith—is about building community.
Evangelicals, who have traditionally emphasized the individual believer’s immediate relationship with God, tend to focus on the personal benefit of confession; “unconfessed sin,” as the thinking goes, will hinder your fellowship with God and strip you of your own sense of personal peace. Consequently, we’re encouraged to bring our sin into the light so that it won’t have a hold on us anymore. We’re also told that such transparency will allow others to be transparent with their own failings.
What we don’t always recognize, however, is that the confession of sin also serves a purpose similar to that of the confession of faith: It creates and maintains the bonds of community. When we confess the creeds, we speak together about the nature of God and his world. When we confess our sins, we align ourselves with a shared reality about what is right and what is wrong. We align ourselves with the truth that the community holds in common... Without shared truth, community is impossible.
One other note, there are some spoilers in the full piece so be warned--go binge watch season 1 and season 2 first.
Pulling Together: Marriage, Ministry, and Calling
Yesterday, Bible teacher, Christian radio host, and conference speaker Nancy Leigh DeMoss announced that she will marry Robert Wolgemuth this coming fall. If you’re familiar with DeMoss’s ministry, “Revive Our Hearts,” you’ll understand the significance of this news. For years, DeMoss has been an advocate for Christian women to embrace the “freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness” found in Christ, including the unique calling to home and motherhood. At the same time she has confidently and comfortably embraced her own singleness, believing it to be a gift that has allowed her to commit herself to ministry.
But as God does, just when we think we know the plan, He changes it. Recently, He has brought widowed Wolgemuth and DeMoss together in order “to continue serving Him wholeheartedly, trusting Him to make us even more spiritually fruitful together than we could be apart.”
DeMoss continues:
I love this man dearly and look forward to becoming Mrs. Robert Wolgemuth. But my life mission has not changed. It will now be our life mission to magnify the Lord together… We envision a continued robust Revive Our Hearts ministry. Our longing is for even more women (and men) around the world to experience freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.
And Wolgemuth adds:
My promise to our heavenly Shepherd, to Nancy, to her precious ministry family, and to the thousands around the world who love Nancy Leigh DeMoss, is that I will come alongside her and her ministry with my prayers, encouragement, and support.
And all God’s people said, “AMEN!” This is precisely how we should talk about married women and their calling to Christ’s kingdom.
Unfortunately, I don’t hear this language employed very often. Instead, I regularly hear Christian women being told to seek their callings through their husbands. Don’t get me wrong. I am fully convinced that a woman is called to minister to her husband and family. And I’ll be the first the trumpet the imago Dei-quality of a well-made peanut-butter-and- jelly sandwich or a properly laundered (and folded) pair of boxer shorts. What I’m concerned about is how often we confuse our prepositions—how often we misunderstand the difference between through and to.
In I Corinthians 7, Paul makes it clear that husbands and wives must cultivate and care for each other. Of all the neighbors you are called to love, your spouse is the closest one. This means that being married will naturally limit your ability to pursue other callings in the Church. But Scripture also makes it clear that the call to marry is rooted in a larger call so that even as we enter it, we remember that marriage itself is not all-consuming. It is only part of how we serve the Lord with our whole hearts and lives. This is true for men. This is true for women.
It may sound like I’m stating the obvious. Don’t Christian women understand this? No, I’m afraid that some don’t. Some, in fact, believe that the calling to help their husbands trumps every other ministry calling or desire. Sometimes they believe this because of their own immaturity; and sometimes they believe it because this is what they have been explicitly told. The result is confusion and frustration as women wrestle with their own gifting and place in the Church. They either become weak and directionless, unable to serve apart from their husbands; or they become frustrated and manipulative as they attempt to live out their own passions and gifting through their husbands.
How do I know? I used to be one.
Early in our marriage, when my husband first entered professional ministry, I honestly believed that my calling in the Church would be fulfilled through him. So whatever he needed me to do to further “his” ministry, I did. But I also ended up crossing a lot of boundaries I shouldn’t have crossed. I invested myself too deeply in his career, attempted to do the Holy Spirit’s work in his heart, and meddled in things that were not my concern—all in the name of “supporting” his calling.
What I was really doing was longing for a way to use my own gifting to serve the Church.
God was faithful despite my immaturity, and today I work beside my husband as a wife, mother, and active member of our local church. Out of the Holy Spirit’s gifting, I offer advice, counsel, and support as he needs it; but what he most certainly does not need is for me to confuse my calling with his. As I’ve found the freedom to develop my own gifts, God has led me to a place I never expected. Today, a significant part of my ministry happens independently of my husband’s. It happens through mothering and homemaking, to be sure, but it also happens through blog posts and articles just like this one.
The result? Today my husband and I are more fruitful for the Kingdom than we have ever been.
You may know that I live in the Blue Ridge of southwest Virginia. You may not know that this is railroad country. Our county and the surrounding area was built on rail and to this day, Norfolk-Southern is one of our largest employers. We also have a lot—A LOT—of mountains. So it’s not unusual to see two engines coupled together pulling a load of cars. With hills this big and loads this large, one engine simply can’t do the job alone.
In many ways, marriage is the same. Both men and women have the same basic calling: We are called to work for Christ’s Kingdom. We have to get the load up the mountain. But just like one engine can’t do it alone, neither can men nor women do it alone. “So God said that it is not good that man should be alone; I’ll give him a second engine to help him.” (That’s from the SWVA version of the Bible which also translates the plural of you as “ya’ll.”)
But here’s the thing: too often, we think of a woman as the coal car that fuels the man’s mission; in reality, she is a strong, second engine tasked with the same mission that he is. His engine may be out in front, and she may even be a different make and model, but make no mistake, they are both tasked with getting the load to the top of the mountain.
I am thrilled to see Nancy Leigh DeMoss and her fiancé confirm the work that God has called her to. I am thrilled that in God’s providence, He has brought them together to serve His Church as husband and wife. But mostly, I am thrilled that they will be able to model this for the rest of us. Because ultimately this is what a truly Christian marriage looks like—two people bound together by a mission greater than either one of them. two people bound together to love Christ and serve His people.
4 Reasons to Blog (and 4 Reasons NOT to Blog)
This post is part of a recurring series about blogging and the art of writing. Check out more here. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back in August, a friend on Twitter posted the following question:
Several folks offered good advice, but the question made me think about why I started blogging and what I've learned in the process. Here's a more extended answer to Abi's question:
I started blogging in July 2011. At the time, my husband and I were in a period of underemployment, using food stamps, and living in a 950 sq. ft. apartment with three young children. Not exactly the most prodigious setting to launch a writing career. Looking back, I realize that God used this time to provide direction for me. Because of financial constraints, I needed a marketable skill; this meant either returning to school for a technical degree or pursing writing. So I made a deal with God: I would commit 2 years to learning the industry and developing my skills if He would confirm that this was His leading in my life. Since then, He has. But it started with small steps of faith like setting up a blog and pushing “publish.” In fact, the process of blogging was invaluable because it gave me:
1.Accountability: Writers are notoriously unstructured and unscheduled. For all the books that people have inside of them, only a fraction of them actually make it out. (What is this “deadline” that you speak of?) I knew that if left to myself I would have a very difficult time actually pursuing writing. I would think a lot about it. I may even write up responses to other pieces. But without structure, I’d never really progress. A blog provided both an audience and accountability.
2. An Opportunity to Create an Online Portfolio: If you have a blog, publishers and editors can easily read through your work to determine if you are a good fit for their publications. It also shows them that you are a self-starter. Writing isn’t simply a pipe-dream for you; you are committed and have already invested time and effort to pursuing it. At the same time, using a blog as an online portfolio means that you’ll need to privilege quality over quantity. Not every post must be stellar, but you must remember that people will actually read your writing.
3. Practice: Blogging allowed me to explore ideas and become a better writer. When I look back at my first posts, I don’t exactly shudder, but I do have a healthy appreciation for what three years of consistent writing has done. Every post forced me to think better and to communicate more clearly. Especially when I wrote on more controversial topics. The bigger the issue, the more carefully I had to choose just the exact word or make sure I truly understood the issues at stake.
4. To Fill a Gap: Another reason I blog is because I want to promote ideas that have been neglected in the broader conversation. You only need to spend a few minutes on Sometimes A Light to know that I’m passionate about women finding their identity in God’s identity. Some of this passion comes from personal experience, but most of it comes from listening to the prevailing conversations and realizing that we’re missing a huge piece of the puzzle. Having a blog allows me to spread a truth that transforms how we speak about womanhood, discipleship, and service in the Kingdom.
At the same time… Blogging has also taught me that there are as many reasons why you SHOULDN’T blog. Among them are:
1. Insecurity: If you blog because you need to be heard, stop. Right. Now. Too many of us—writers, pastors, and counselors included—minister out of our own neediness. We need to be respected. We need to be affirmed. We need to feel like we are good people. And we use other people’s needs to solve our own. It’s true that using your gifting will bring a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, but our gifts were never intended to fill a void that only Christ can. In fact, if you do this, you won’t be a very good writer. Or a very good person. But when Jesus fills your emptiness, you’ll find that you’re free to serve and to serve well.
2. Escapism: In many ways, blogging is an easy form of “ministry.” As messy as the internet can be, online relationships are a whole lot more manageable than those in real life. If someone annoys me, I can simply unfriend him. If someone sends me a nasty email, I can simply block her. And if someone praises me, I can return to that comment whenever I need to re-affirm my own sense of importance. Relationships in real life are a whole lot messier and a whole lot more demanding. I do not get to choose the issues that I want to address; I do not get to control the problems that come my way. I do not get to rely on praise to maintain my emotional stability. Loving a person I see day in and day out is always harder than loving someone I do not. But these “in real life” relationships are precisely how God intends to make us like Himself.
3. Anger: Do not blog to work through your past. This is what a diary or the counselor’s office is for. Certainly, our past hurts lend us insight and the ability to write more deeply about certain issues. But don’t foist your angst on your readers unless you also give them the solution. Do not infect them with your anger and discouragement unless you also offer them the freedom and joy that is found in Christ.
4. Marketing: In the last several years, the blogosphere has been dominated by “building platform” and ‘gathering your tribe.” Writers use social media and marketing tools to promote their voice and their message. I get this. I really do. If God has given you the gift of writing, you need to make certain that your message is heard. Don’t hide your light under a bushel, etc. But for too many bloggers, building tribe has become an end in itself. We start to prioritize platform or amassing a readership over serving our readers well. And in the end, everyone suffers: readers, writer, and message. Remember: If you are gifted to write, you serve your readers best when you do just that: Write.
In the end, Abi did end up starting a blog with this lovely first post: A Handful of Broken Treasure. Also, if you've been blogging for a bit and feel the weight of staying consistent, you might enjoy this group post about why some blogs tend to "go cold." It's written specifically to women bloggers but the concepts transcend gender.
Getting Married for All the Wrong Reasons
My husband and I have been married for 13 years, and we’ve spent 10 of those years in “ministry.” During this time, we’ve seen the most unlikely relationships blossom into beautiful, fruitful marriages; we’ve also witnessed the disintegration of more marriages than I care to think about. And that’s nothing to talk of the pain and confusion we’ve experienced in our own.
It’s no secret that our society struggles with sustaining faithful, happy marriages. And yet, no one wants to go through a divorce; no one enters marriage with the goal of simply exiting it. As a result, there’s a lot of competing advice about what you should do prior to marriage in order to make yours successful. Some folks tell you to wait until you’re “sure” and others advise getting married young. Truthfully, though, I don’t think the problem is when we get married so much as why we get married. A lot of us are getting married for all the wrong reasons.
So, if you're not married already, here are a few things to consider:
1. Do not get married simply to get married. For some folks, the idea of marriage is more important than the individual they are marrying. Do not marry a woman because you want to be a "husband;" and please, do not marry a man simply because you want to be a "wife." If you want to “play house,” buy one of these instead.
2. Do not get married because you don’t know what else to do with yourself. Back in the day, we called it “senioritis”—that mysterious illness that descends late in college and leads to the unexpected pairings of those not already invested in a serious relationship. Now, I realize that trends change; fewer and fewer folks are getting married right after college. But the phenomenon still exists. Folks reach a point in life where they’re not entirely sure of the next step so, in lieu of patience, they commit themselves to the most demanding and significant decision Of. Their. Entire. Lives.
3. Do not get married because it’s expected. Maybe it’s pressure from family or a church culture that idolizes marriage. Maybe it’s the notion that says once you begin a serious relationship, you can’t leave it. In a day when weddings are a $161 billion industry; when planning one takes upwards to a year; when deposits are signed, reservations made, and announcements sent months in advance, it takes a lot of maturity to walk away from a troubled relationship before walking down the aisle. It’s also exactly the kind of maturity you’ll need once you do.
4. Do not get married simply because you’re “in love.” By “love” I mean that complicated feeling of attraction and desire that may or may not be based in reality. While I’d never encourage someone to marry without it, attraction alone is not enough because attraction can be rooted in a whole host of factors, including the fact that someone doesn’t challenge us or push us outside our comfort zone. The truth is that we tend to “love” people who “love” us regardless of whether we’re good for each other or not.
5. Do NOT get married to fix something in your own character. Over the years, I’ve discovered that this is by far the worst possible (and I mean, the very worst possible) reason to get married. Maybe you’re a man struggling with sexual temptation and you believe that marrying a “good” girl will somehow solve it, that somehow her purity will make you pure. Or maybe you’re a woman desperate for affirmation so you marry the first man who gives you a second glance. Here’s the problem: you take your issues with you into marriage. Simply changing your relationship status will not solve them; another person cannot solve them. Only Jesus can. And while He may choose to do it in marriage, He doesn’t need marriage to make you holy.
If you’re like me, you might have gotten married for some, if not all, of the wrong reasons. Thankfully, God is bigger than our mistakes and His grace is kinder than our failures. He’ll use your marriage for good. Because here’s the thing: ultimately, marriage isn’t only about us. It’s about something much bigger. Marriage is one way that God is reconciling the world to himself. It is one way he is making “every sad thing come untrue.”
So why should you get married?
You should get married if God leads you to someone with whom you can make this world a better place--a better place than you could alone.
It’ll be someone who shares your goals and values. It will be someone who complements your weaknesses and who already exhibits maturity and faithfulness. It will be someone who’ll work side-by-side with you to cultivate your place in this world and nurture the generations to come. And it will be someone you can trust to grow old with you. Because, when it comes to marriage, there's a rumor that the best is yet to be.
Made Like Him... Like Him We Rise
This year, the folks in our congregation have decided to stage an outdoor drama on Easter Morning. It's something of a tradition for our little church, and as in the past, it will take place in the neighboring cow pasture. This is the first year that my husband and I will be taking part, but I can already feel the excitement. The choir's been working on music for several weeks; I've been busy writing and rewriting a scrip; and other folks are tackling costumes, props, and sound. There are even rumors of flooding the creek to create the Sea of Galilee and setting off dynamite to reenact the Resurrection morning earthquake. I'll be sure to keep you updated.
One of the things that I love about all this busyness is that it's creating a sense of anticipation and excitement for the coming holiday. Too often, Easter can come and go without even so much as a notice. But not this year. This year, Easter is going be quite the production and it's going to require something from every member of our congregation.
Today over at Pick Your Portion, I had to opportunity to reflect on Easter and making sure that we don't miss the big picture:
To co-opt C. S. Lewis, the “deeper magic” of Easter is not simply that Christ suffered under the curse but that He overcame the curse entirely! When He emerged from the tomb, He proved that His creation was not subject to death because her Creator was not subject to death. When He emerged from the tomb, He proved that there was nothing stronger, nothing more powerful, nothing greater than the One who is Life Himself.
The One in whose image we are made.
And suddenly the words of Charles Wesley’s famous Easter anthem make sense: “Made like Him, like Him we rise. Alleluia!” The beauty of the Easter is that the God, who at that first dawn cried out “Let there be light!” once again shines light into our darkness in the face of His Son. The beauty of Easter is that the God, who stooped down into the dust to form us in His image at creation, again stoops down into the mire of our lives to transform us into His image through Jesus Christ.
You can read the rest here. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. Also, Pick Your Portion has been generous enough to host a giveaway of Made for More. Head on over and check it out!
To the Universe and Back
My seven-year-old son is a bit of a mystery to me. I’m beginning to suspect that he always will be. He’s more like my dad--a man you could easily believe just stepped from the pages of a Wendell Berry novel—than either my husband or me. Like my dad, he’s quiet. He holds his cards close to his chest, preferring to take everything in and let very little out.
His first grade teacher calls him an “old soul.”
He loves music and is the only one in our family willing to dance around the kitchen with me while Pandora crackles from the computer. But he’s also a worrier, and recently told me that he’s decided not to be President after all because the President has "a lot of problems to solve." When he shows me his schoolwork topped with 100%s and glowing comments, he flashes a crooked grin but then drops his eyes, almost embarrassed. He is proud of himself and he’s eager for me to be proud of him too, but he’s unsure. His confidence is fragile, as if he’s afraid that something will sweep in and steal it away.
If anything, these last seven years with him have forced me to think outside my own personality—to learn to love outside my own personality. My husband and I try to meet each of our children where they are, to learn them, to receive who God has made them to be. We rejoice in their uniqueness and assure them that God has made them exactly who they are for His purposes. But the other night when I was tucking him into bed, my son asked me something that made me doubt all of my parenting to this point.
“Mommy, do you love me to the end of the universe?”
I was stunned. How could he not know? How could he not know that every time I looked at him I saw my father? How could he not know that I secretly preferred the strong, silent type—the personality he intrinsically possessed? How could he not know that I had dreams of him becoming that kind of steady, stable, loyal man that any mother would be proud of? How could he not know that I loved him?
But then I realized. This was not about whether I knew I loved him but whether he knew that I loved him. And if he needed to hear it again, I needed to say it again.
“Oh honey, I love you to the end of the universe and back again. I love you more than you know. I love you just because you exist—it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do, I will always love you. No mistakes you make, no bad things you do can stop me from loving you.”
His lips slowly formed that signature lopsided smile, and he looked at me with blue eyes that seemed to beg me to confirm that what he was hearing was true. He sighed and simply said, “Thank you for telling me that.”
And then he rolled over and went to sleep.
If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you know that we talk about love a lot. When we’re young, we sing “Jesus Loves Me;” and when we grow up, we sport bumper stickers and wear t-shirts that say “God loves you!” For those of us who take love at face value, all these affirmations can easily sound a bit trite. We're bored with it. Yes, yes, I know already. God is love. God loves me. Can’t we move onto something more profound, even something more practical like five easy ways to disciple children?
But some of us… well, some of us are like my son. Some of us are still wrestling, still struggling to believe this simple truth: Jesus. Loves. Me. Not because of what I do for Him; not because of what I didn’t do. He simply loves me.
If life with my son has taught me anything, it’s that some of us need to hear this again and again. And if some of us need to hear it again and again, then the rest of us need to say it again and again. So to you--you with the lopsided grin and expectant eyes--let me say this: God loves you to the universe and back.
O Zion, Haste
I grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in a region dotted by dilapidated family farms and former coal towns. We are the second poorest county in the state and the most exotic animal we ever saw was the occasional bear or mountain lion. But within the church I discovered the world.
I met women like Amy Carmichael and Mary Slessor and learned that the measure of womanhood was not your relationship status or professional accomplishments, but whether you lived your life in service of God and others. In elementary school, I knew the flags of over thirty nations—not because of the Olympics but because we hung them from the ceiling every year during our missions’ conference week. I became versed in cold-war politics when for two summers we sent our VBS nickels and dimes to the underground church in the Soviet Union.
The story of Christian missions is a complicated one. When I was young, it was all about adventure and holy passion and converting cannibals. As I grew older, I discovered that mission efforts often ran parallel to and sometimes intersected the darker story of western colonization. I read Achebe and Paton and Forster and had to face the reality that when David Livingston was taking the gospel to free souls in the interior of Africa, the United States was embroiled in a civil war to keep their cousins enslaved.
Until recently, sorting through the complicated picture of Christian missions has been more a question of presuppositions and sanitized history. And to some degree, it always will be; but thanks to sociologist Robert Woodberry, it might be getting a bit clearer. In the latest edition of Christianity Today, Andrea Palpant Dilley writes about Woodberry’s work to find a “significant statistical link” between democracy and Protestantism. And after years of detailed research, extensive travel, and with the help of some elaborate computer models, he has.
Woodberry’s research can be summed up by this claim:
“Areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in nongovernmental associations.”
In a word, when I was learning about Amy Carmichael and Mary Slessor, I was learning about the greatest promoters of sustainable democracy.
If my childhood was shaped by the stories of missionaries and conversion, my adult life has been shaped by the stories of soldiers and violence. I was a newly-married 22-year-old on September 11, 2001, still naïve enough to believe that our response would be limited to fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. But over the subsequent decade, our attempts to “bring democracy’ to the Middle East have failed; and if this has taught us anything, it’s that we cannot win “hearts and minds” with guns and tanks. In fact, if Woodberry’s claims are correct, this is best accomplished through the gospel of peace.
But it’s even more startling than that.
According to Woodberry, the missionaries who had the most profound influence on developing democracies were “conversionary Protestants.” They were missionaries whose social work—the work of building schools and hospitals and advocating for the rights of the oppressed--was motivated directly by their evangelistic impulses. In other words, these missionaries did not go to the far-flung corners of the world in the name of social activism; they went to convert souls in the name of Jesus Christ and in the process, changed the world.
So my question is why? Why must conversion be a vital part of missiology in order to affect real and lasting social change?
I think the answer is wrapped up in what conversion is. True, gospel conversion is fundamentally about change. It changes how we understand God, ourselves, and each other. For people like David Livingstone and Amy Carmichael, the gospel so profoundly changed them that they ended up changing the world. Perhaps without even realizing it.
At the same time, Woodberry’s research also reminds us that the gospel is not simply about future flourishing. The gospel changes life here and now by reconciling us to God and each other. When the gospel teaches us to fight greed, violence, and apathy in our own hearts—when it teaches us that we are truly our brother’s keeper because God is ours—the gospel sets the foundation for societies that can flourish.
And if it isn’t doing this, you can be pretty sure it’s not the gospel.
More than anything Woodberry’s research confirms what the Scripture already teaches us. It confirms that where the Prince of Peace reigns, there is peace; where the Bread of Life grows, hunger will not; where the Great Physician is at work, disease and death flee. And ultimately, it confirms that when the Author of Life is allowed to write the story of our lives, we will finally be free to live in the abundant life that He has promised.
They Also Serve
And most of the time, I feel like I’m failing on all counts.
Every morning, I wake up with more on my “to do” list than is humanly possible, and every night I go bed having proven it. But instead of simply acknowledging my limitations, I regularly feel discouraged and overwhelmed. In fact, I have been feeling this way so often that I finally had to face a harsh reality. I am a prime candidate to join that particular type of support group that meets in musty church basements. I need to draw my chair up into the circle and when it’s my turn, bravely stand and say, “Hello, my name is Hannah and I have a messiah complex.” But I don’t think I’ll be alone there.
I’ve noticed a certain agitation among women of my age, a longing to do more. We are tempted to believe that what we are already doing is not enough, that the dishes and laundry and school lunches are not “real,” that ministry that is not global or public or exciting (like reconciling races or saving orphans) is not true ministry. We see the brokenness around us. We want to change the world. We are ready.
But I worry. I worry because if this impulse is not properly rooted, it will very quickly lead to burnout.
I've seen it in my own life. All that holy passion and zeal, the joy of finally discovering my voice, of finding my place in the kingdom can quickly be replaced by needing to save the kingdom all by myself. And when I can’t—when I’m busy with more mundane things—the guilt creeps in. I hear a voice saying, “You have so much to do. Don't you dare rest yet.” And “How selfish of you—you live a life of privilege and ease. Why aren’t you suffering for the gospel?”
I grew up in a context that, for good or bad, heavily emphasized what we needed to do for God. We were told to sacrifice this life for the next, to be sold out, to be surrendered, to be on fire, to be radical. And I was. And I am. But the older I grow and the busier I become, the more I believe that being sold out to God means first learning about my own limitations.
In order to work for Him, I must first learn to rest in Him.
Micah 6:8 has become something of a theme song for our generation. “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” The cause of justice and equality pulses through our veins. We long to “proclaim good news to the poor… to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
But can I say something? Can I ask you to stop trying to save the world? Can I encourage you to embrace your life of limitation? Because here in the weakness, in the failure, in the inability, He is strong. And here, only in your limitation, will you ever learn to walk humbly with Him.
And it is only when you learn to walk humbly with Him that you will be able to do justice and love kindness the way that He does.
Almost 400 years ago, there was a man who had a tremendous gift. He was a poet and statesman, an active political thinker and even deeper personal philosopher. But then the lights went out. By the time he was 44, he was completely blind. It seemed like a cruel joke--how did God expect him to use his talent for the kingdom when he couldn’t even see to write? “Does God exact day-labour, light denied?” he asked.
The answer he found is one that we need today:
"God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts: who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed And post o'er land and ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait."
God is inviting us to work in His kingdom. He is calling us to something more than this world can offer. But He is calling us first to Himself, to remember that He is the Messiah. Not us. And He is calling us to believe that those “who best bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.”
Even if they only stand and wait.
Teach Like a Girl
Doris Day in "Teacher's Pet" (1958)
One of the books I discovered over the holidays is a collection of vignettes about the women of the New Testament. I was prepping for this year’s women’s Bible study at church and like any good teacher (who is consistently running just shy of deadline), my first stop was the Amazon search engine. I typed in “Women of the New Testament” and one of the first entries was written by, of all people, Abraham Kuyper. Apparently in the midst of reforming turn-of-the-century Dutch society, establishing an entire branch of theology, and pastoring multiple congregations, Kuyper also had time to write on women of the Bible. (Abraham Kuyper: Statesman, Theologian, and Father of the Modern Women’s Bible Study?)
I snagged a 1933 English edition (complete with “Suggested Questions for Study and Discussion”) for a little over a $1. Presumably Kuyper wrote his Women of the New Testament in the late 1800s (I couldn’t find an exact date), and so it’s not surprising that he affirms a fairly traditional understanding of womanhood. What is surprising, however, is that his traditionalism has been thoroughly informed by the gospel and in some respects, doesn’t look like traditionalism at all.
Take this gem from the chapter about Mary of Rome. In writing about the work a woman is called to as a Christian, Kuyper says:
A woman who really loves Jesus must place all she has upon His altar… therefore Jesus may expect that those who love Him exert their energies strenuously to help His sacred cause to prosper. In this matter, too, talents are too frequently buried; gifts are allowed to lie fallow, and energies to remain latent. This does not imply that a woman must forsake her home… but a woman frequently proves to be amazingly ingenious and energetic in the care of her husband and children. She should give full expression to that same ingenuity and energy in her endeavors for the Lord. (p.86)
He reiterates the same thought in discussing Priscilla, who with her husband Aquilla, actively taught and discipled early converts:
A woman such as Priscilla was, is a potent influence in any congregation to which she happens to belong, and we might wish that we could point out ten or twenty such women in each of our larger congregations. From her position in the Word of God, she affirms that a woman, also a married woman, has another calling besides those of dispatching daily duties and engaging in activities of mercy. A woman, too, must have faith, and that faith must borrow its strength from a knowledge of the truth… In that lies the strength of a Priscilla. She knows the truth, and knows how to present it with perfect clarity. Beside, she has the ingratiating tenderness of feminine appeal, a quality no man has… (p. 105).
There is a lot of debate about the role of women in Church and society. And while I’ll quickly identify as a conservative, I’ll also quickly admit that women who use their gifts to teach the Scripture—whether through writing or speaking—can sometimes feel like their femininity is a weakness. Teaching is something they do despite being women rather than an outgrowth of their full personhood which includes being a woman. But for Kuyper at least, Priscilla’s womanhood was an asset that allowed her to communicate the truth in a distinct way—in a way no man could.
Thinking about this reminded me of another woman I read about over the holidays who “expounded the way of God more perfectly.” For Christmas, my husband gave me a copy of Laura K. Simmons’ Creed without Chaos: Exploring Theology in the Writings of Dorothy L. Sayers. (Don’t assume too much about us—he also gave me the first three seasons of Duck Dynasty, the juxtaposition of which reveals more about me than I care to admit.)
Dorothy Sayers is best known for her detective stories, but she was also an academic translator and lay theologian who actively argued for orthodox Christianity in the public sphere. Simmons writes that Sayers
had a unique combinations of talents: a keen theological sense coupled with tremendous writing skill and a concern for how ordinary people understand Christianity. In an increasingly complex and fragmented world, we need these gifts more than ever. (p.12) So to all you Priscillas and Dorothys out there who have been gifted to communicate the word of God, do so; and do so out of your femininity. Do not be afraid of your curves or what Kuyper calls the “tenderness of feminine appeal.” Do not believe that you must adopt a masculine voice or be something other than you are to be heard. At the same time, do not hide behind your femininity; do not give yourself a pass for sloppy work or careless study because you are “a woman” and less may be expected of you in theological circles. You must do the work because, in the end, logic and clarity and beauty are not masculine concerns but human ones.
Do the work because you love Jesus and you are offering Him your talents and energies. Do the work and engage in it with all He has created you to be—including your womanhood. Remember that being a wife or mother or aunt or sister or niece or daughter is as much a part of God’s calling on you as your ability to teach His Word in the first place. Because if Abraham Kuyper has anything to say about it, your womanhood might just be the very means by which you communicate it best.
Putting the "Christian" in Christian Publishing
Let me say up front that I’m new to publishing, and I come with all the innocence of freshly born babe. I’ve been given a remarkable opportunity (a gift really) to write a book with Moody Publishers which will release in April; and I have to consistently thank my editors and marketing gurus for holding my hand through whole the process. So, please understand that I write out of innocence, as the girl in the crowd who might just be able to see that the emperor’s clothes are not as magnificent as everyone claims.
In fact, they may not even be there at all.
Of course, this innocence could be nothing more than naïveté. Perhaps with time, I will understand what others already know. I’ll understand the pressures of balance sheets and payrolls. I’ll understand that while idealism may write books, pragmatism sells them. I’ll understand that this is simply “the way the world works.” Still I can’t help but wonder whether our concerns about publishing—the questions of plagiarism and ghost writing and the cult of celebrity—stem from precisely this. This is the way the world works.
In his first epistle, John warns us against being conformed to the ethos of the world. When I was growing up, I understood this “worldliness” to be certain style of dress or music; and while these things can certainly reflect the world system, worldliness is much more insidious. Worldliness is a short-sighted vision that is concerned only with this present age. Given this, we shouldn’t be surprised that pragmatism is the world’s modus operandi. If this life is the only thing that matters, then we ‘d better get while the getting is good.
In contrast, a truly Christian perspective understands that reality is not defined only by the “here and now” but also by the “there and then.” On this time table, the goal isn’t only success in this life but success that will last into the next. When we apply that to publishing, being a truly Christian publisher means more than simply producing content that is “Christian” but publishing in such a way where both means and end are guided by the timeless gospel we proclaim. To co-opt James K. A. Smith, we must never forget that the liturgy of our publishing actually shapes the things published.
With this in mind, here are a few thoughts about what should characterize our publishing efforts. Truly Christian publishing…
1. Does not disdain small platforms because it understands that God uses weak things to confound the mighty. Don’t misunderstand; having a small platform doesn’t mean you deserve to be published any more than having a large one does. (A small platform may indicate an inability to write.) But having a small platform doesn’t mean that you DON’T deserve to be published either. In God’s kingdom, size is of little importance because in comparison to Him, we’re all miniscule. 2. Will make space for unique gifting even if it is not trendy. One of the dangers of the celebrity culture is that it inevitably elevates a certain style or approach to the standard, tempting everyone else to copy it. Soon titles sound the same; graphic design becomes interchangeable; buzz words emerge; and everybody ends up quoting everybody else. It reminds me of Marcus Mumford’s frustration that every other band now sounds like Mumford and Sons: "That's kind of what we're reacting against. When we started, it was quite fun doing what we're doing, 'cause no one else was doing it. It was like our little secret." Truly Christian publishing understands that God places the members in the Body as He wills and aims to develop the unique voice of each—even if it is one crying in the wilderness.
3. Must be based in community. There’s a bit of a myth that “creatives” work best in isolation where they are free from the obligations of relationship. Within Christianity, this myth sometimes presents itself as freedom from the obligations of a local church. Now, as a mother of three, I’ll be the first to lobby for enough quiet space to put two thoughts together, but as a Christian, I also believe that my craft cannot be separated from those who live closest to me. Made in God’s image, we are designed to both create AND live in intimacy with other image bearers; these relationships lend accountability and inspiration for the work we do. So that in God’s wisdom, we actually end up doing our best work when we are doing it in context of relationships, when we are doing it in service to God and others.
4. Works collaboratively. Bringing a book to the public involves a whole host of gifted individuals using their talents to achieve a final goal—editors, marketers, publishers, and yes, even bookstores like LifeWay. Quite frankly, an author does not a book make. And as authors, we don’t have the right to say whatever the $#!@% we like because we are not the only ones involved in the process. (If you need more control, there are plenty of self-publishing options available these days.) At the same time, publishers must be willing to catch the author’s vision and let this guide the marketing, design, and distribution. Instead of forcing a book into prefabricated models of marketability, we must allow the content to shape even the delivery.
5. Moves with the Spirit. Here’s something that neither publishers nor authors will like: some of us have only one book in us. I’ve thought about this as I wrapped up final edits on my manuscript—I know God gave me this particular message but I have no guarantee that He will give me another one. Of course, I like to think He will, that this book will be the first of many, but I must be willing to submit to His plan if it is not. I cannot expect to hold Him to a timetable of a book a year or even every two years. When His spirit moves, I move—beyond that I can’t promise anybody anything and I’d be foolish to try.
6. Writes, publishes, and markets with humility. One of the biggest marks of wordliness is trusting the systems and structures of the age instead of trusting the Lord of the universe. Instead of saying “if the Lord wills, tomorrow we will do such and such,” the world whips out charts and stats and logarithms. Certainly, we must work, we must plan, we must analyze data, we must be effective; but even as we do, we must also understand that if God doesn’t build the house… well, all our effort is useless. Truly Christian publishing knows that the One who first gave the message is the same One who will carry it forward.
Publishing is risky business. It takes guts to invest this much time and money into projects that have no guarantee of reimbursement. I’m thankful for publishers like Moody who take those risks in order to honor God and further His gospel. But I’d also like to suggest that because publishing is such a risky business, it will require more faith of us, not less. Faith to follow where God leads; faith to pursue kingdom rewards instead of monetary ones; faith to believe that even the power of celebrity isn’t more powerful than God Himself.
But if we do, if we have this kind of faith, even the world can’t stop us. Because as John reminds us, this is the victory that overcomes the world—even our faith.
Walking Wounded
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the religious disposition of Millennials, but being a pastor’s wife in a rural, southern setting, I have to admit that all this angst and alienation from the Church isn’t all that unusual. In fact, if you spend any reasonable amount of time around the Church, you’re sure to meet those who have been harmed by it. My husband seems to get the lion’s share of these stories, often at the most unexpected moments; sometimes it’s when he’s out running errands or when he’s picking up the kids or making hospital visits. And more often than not, they start something like this: “I used to go to church, but then this pastor…”
Now, I’ll be the first to argue for the legitimacy of the Church. In fact, I have argued for it quite extensively; for goodness' sake, not only am I a pastor’s wife, I am a religious writer. My entire life is invested in the established religious structure. (Because as much as we hate to admit it, as much as we like to believe that we are the “independent voice,” every faith blogger, by definition, is part of the reigning religious order.)
And yet.
And yet, there’s something that those of us who embrace the Church must remember about those struggling to do so--especially those who have recently emerged from a religious context empty of the gospel. When you have been taught false things about God, when leaders have spoken blasphemy in His name, when you have endured, not simply the failures of good men, but the manipulation of bad, recovering from it will not be easy. Doubt will be strong and alienation deep.
Ironically, those of us most committed to elevating the gospel in Church practice are the first to miss this. Even as we proclaim that the gospel is life, we forget that the absence of it is death. We forget that religion devoid of the gospel starves, maims, and pummels those trapped in it so that when they are finally liberated, they walk out wounded. And just like the Allied Forces were shocked when they liberated the concentration camps of WWII Europe, we continue to be shocked when we encounter those who have been harmed by religion and struggle because of it.
Notable Christian author Latayne C. Scott writes about her own struggle after leaving the religious, but gospel-absent, context in which she grew up.[i] She recounts that even after recognizing the distortions that she had been taught to believe, even after coming to understand grace, even after committing herself to the faithfulness and generosity of a community of believers; she still could not feel its safety because “nobody knew how to address the needs of a heart broken by a church.” She writes,
The unarticulated and untargeted sense of betrayal I felt became the permanent inner garment of my soul… How, I ask, would one assess all the hours of church attendance, all the vulnerabilities of prayer and fasting and secret sacrifice? …How utter the sense of loss, how unrecoverable the hours and years, how foolishly squandered the hopes.
Who do you blame when you have been duped by a church?
For me, I couldn’t find anyone to blame. Not my friends, I knew their good hearts… I wanted to reproach myself for being suckered—but how could I hold responsible the trusting eleven-year-old? The trusting teenager? The trusting college student…
If there is no loss as great as the loss of one’s god, there are few tasks to compare with setting out to learn to serve another one. If you’ve been burned by a god, how do you learn to trust another one? Make no mistake about it, I knew I needed what only he could provide; forgiveness of sins, eternal life, church and community based on truth, not beloved fictions…[but] I knew from the beginning that I would walk with a spiritual limp the rest of my life. I came to a time when I hung on only by my fingernails and Scripture passages… I hungered so desperately for the ability to trust and be vulnerable to God that I asked him to take my life if I could not experience that…
Theologically speaking, [that church] was my first love; and it broke my heart. Nothing about leaving [it] seemed courageous or noble at the time: It was pure spiritual survival, the escape from the burning building into the arms of strangers. Some of us go still-singed into atheism or simmer in anger, or distract ourselves with other things… Some of us, through the grace of God, learn to love him. Often that one act can be the greatest sacrifice of will in our lives, to respond and surrender to his love for us. And so those of us who know the safety of the Church must learn to understand those who don’t. We must learn to differentiate between those who limp across the finish line and those who aren’t even in the race. We must remember that the fight for orthodoxy isn’t simply a fight for right doctrine or an ideological battle between legalism and grace. It is a fight for souls. It is a fight to free those who have been held captive and abused in Hell’s prison camps. And we must not be surprised when they cannot run out to meet us.
We must not be surprised when they need medical attention. We must not be surprised when they can’t trust someone in uniform. We must not be surprised when their empty stomachs cannot handle a full meal. We must not be surprised when we have to pick them up and carry them. We must not be surprised if they turn out to be the most vulnerable among us.
Because as quickly as their experience will enable them to spot a false gospel, it will just as quickly make it difficult for them to embrace the truth. This should not lead us to judge them, but to judge ourselves. To confirm that we are teaching only grace and truth. To question whether we have wept with those who weep. To ask whether, like Christ the Good Samaritan, we have stopped by the way to rescue those who have been beaten and abused, robbed and abandoned.
And above all, it must make us determined to give them Jesus. We must hold out His grace and mercy; we must hold out His truth and love. Because it is here, in His presence, that these starved, helpless souls will finally find hope. Here with the One who causes the blind to see, who makes the lame to walk, and who sets the captives free. Here, only here, will they find--will any of us find—the victory we so desperately need.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________ [i] I purposefully omitted Scott’s religious background in order to let her words speak for those caught in a variety of gospel-less, but religious, paradigms. These paragraphs are take from Scott's book, The Mormon Mirage, pp.274-276, 292.
The Grace of Scandal
This week has been a big one for scandal. Whether it’s been inside the Church, inside the Beltway, or inside a Philadelphia courtroom, it seems like our collective dirty laundry has finally spilled out of the hamper and onto the floor. And while I don’t delight in scandal, I realized this week--after being bombarded by it on every side--that scandal offers a strange kind of comfort. Perhaps it’s not the scandal itself, but that the revelation of scandal stands testimony to a God Who is faithful to His promises.
When you’ve suffered because of another person’s sin, one of hardest parts is the helplessness that comes when no one else knows or even seems to care about it. In this place, it’s easy to begin to believe that God doesn’t either. You begin to doubt, you begin to fear, you begin to worry that the truth will never be revealed. You reconcile yourself to the fact that justice will never be done—you question whether it even exists at all.
But it does. And that is never clearer than when a scandal finally breaks.
When a scandal breaks—when painful truths finally come to light—we are watching God fulfill His promise that “nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.” We are watching Him actively “bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and disclose the purposes of the heart.” We are watching Him prove that day and night are alike to him and that He sees the pain of His children and will vindicate them.
In this sense, scandal is grace. Scandal is grace because it restores our hope in God’s justice. Sin will be found out no matter how expertly we cover it or pretend that it doesn’t exist. But scandal is also grace because it reminds us of our own need to confess—of our own need to submit to this same justice. Because if we don’t voluntarily confess our sin today, it promises to be a scandal tomorrow.
You see, scandal only happens when we refuse to repent. But when we do—when we willingly uncover the hidden secrets of our heart--the only scandal left is the scandal of His mercy. The scandal of a mercy that remembers that these now confessed sins have been already been atoned for. The scandal of a justice that refuses to punish us twice. The scandal of a God who says: “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy."
And so when we confess our sin to Him and those we’ve wronged, He covers them. He does not minimize them and He does not always remove the consequences, but one thing He does not do is flaunt them. He does not hold a press conference to shame or humiliate us in the midst of them. He does not make a scandal of them.
So when the Gosnell verdict was finally announced this week, I found myself unexpectedly crying—not tears of relief so much as tears of thankfulness. Thankfulness for a God Who promises to reveal the hidden things. Thankfulness for a God who sees every time a child suffers, every time a government abuses its power, every time I convince myself that my own sin can be covered. I cried tears of thankfulness for a God who loves us too much to allow darkness to continue and Who joyfully receives us with open arms when we finally come running out of it.
Trusting the True Shepherd
And I guess we could leave well enough alone if spiritual abuse didn’t cut both ways. If ministries didn’t routinely supplement budgets by underpaying staff with the caveat that they’ll be eligible for welfare. If pastors’ wives and children weren’t targeted for the sake of simply existing. If 1,700 pastors didn’t leave ministry every month—many out of despair and discouragement.
But they do.
And so we must talk about spiritual abuse, because we must remember that the danger isn’t in how dramatic it is but in how common it is. The danger of spiritual abuse isn’t simply in the extremes but in how quickly, how easily any of us can use another person’s love of God to pursue our own goals and our own agendas.
I myself don’t have a salacious story to offer—no tragic account of childhood abuse or breaking away from some cult-like congregation. And yet, my husband and I have wrestled through the pain of working in the Church, of rejection and false accusation, of feeling abandoned by those to whom we looked for advice and care. We’ve also watched as friends have walked darker paths and still bear scars from those who wielded power over them. And we’ve watched as they have wandered from church to church—not because they’re troublesome—but because they’re looking for Jesus and He’s simply not as present in most churches as He should be.
So when I speak about spiritual abuse within the Church, I do so from a place of trying to grapple with the brokenness of Christ’s body. It is not about adding fuel to the fire or airing grievances. It’s not about “getting back.” (Although this will be a legitimate temptation for people who have been deeply hurt.) When I write about spiritual abuse, I do so with the express purpose of finding healing, of learning to be whole again.
Because while my husband and I have chosen to stay in the organized church—even to make it central to our lives--the choice didn’t come easily. It came through tears and brokenness and times of angry questioning. It came through feeling abandoned by God and wondering why He thought it was such a good idea to gather a bunch of dysfunctional people together in the first place.
Yet, for all that I don’t understand, I do know this: Jesus is the only answer to the brokenness.
Rejecting the Church will not heal the pain. Harboring bitterness will not heal the pain. Denying these stories will not heal the pain.
Only Jesus can.
A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across Ezekiel 34 in which God speaks against those who have abused and scattered His flock. He speaks against their greed and self-service and warns that He is coming against them in judgment and vengeance. But to the broken, hurting lambs, He says this:
Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out... I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered... I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.
This is where you find healing. This is where you find wholeness. This is where you learn to love again. You find it in the tears that flood your pillow as you cry out to Him. You find it in the questions that you bring to Him. You find it in His love and you find it in His justice--in arms ready to hold you at the same time that they are ready to fight to protect you. You find it in Jesus, the Good Shepherd.
And when you do, when you find His healing, you may also discover that you can return to His broken, messy flock. Because in returning to His Church, you’re not so much expressing confidence in His people as you are expressing confidence in Him. And in returning to His Church, you may also find that you can point the way for other hurting, broken, dirty sheep as well.
You can point the way to the true Shepherd of their souls.
This is what has happened for my husband and me. By committing ourselves to Jesus, we’re learning to open ourselves again to the love and beauty of His people. We’re learning to trust Him enough to walk into the arms of a congregation who loves well. We’re learning to trust Him enough to receive the healing and restoration that only His body can offer. And we’re learning that even though we may walk through dark valleys, He will always come find us, and He will always lead us home.
My Take: Chik-Fil-A Takeaway*
Now that the dust is settling a bit, I’ve been reflecting about what’s happened over the last few weeks surrounding Dan Cathy’s statements about biblical marriage and what ultimately culminated in Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day this past Wednesday. And while I’m not the first or last to make these observations, please take them for what they are: simply observations about what has become perhaps the most polarizing social/religious issue of the year. They are not meant to critique anyone who chose to participate or anyone who chose not to. There have been thoughtful opinions on both sides (here and here for example) and I think it’s safe to say that choosing to eat or not eat a chicken sandwich is truly (in a divine twist of humor) something that we can file under Romans 14.
(For the record, we did not eat at Chick-Fil-A on Wednesday primarily because we ate there last week and as much as we believe in freedom of speech, we also believe strongly in supporting a balanced family budget and lower cholesterol.)
So first things first…
- Chick-Fil-A makes a really good chicken sandwich. And waffle fries. And coleslaw. And lemonade. I wish we could settle this whole thing right there on the merits of what a company produces, but in this day and age…
- Companies are no longer just companies. Matthew Lee Anderson has an interesting explanation on why this is the case. Because we have become primarily a consumption-based society, the things we choose to consume are intrinsically linked to our identities. And because we are a society driven by the marketplace, we will naturally articulate our values in the marketplace. Unfortunately, this makes us easy prey for companies that choose to leverage social issues in the marketing of their products, and so for my part….
- I respect Chick-Fil-A for choosing to distance itself from social policy as much as I respect their decision to remain closed on Sundays. Unlike some companies (JC Penney, for example), Chick-Fil-A has decided to let their business rise and fall on the merits of their product. JC Penney, on the other hand, currently in the midst of a last-ditch effort to re-invent themselves (unofficial slogan: “This is not your Grandma’s JC Penney.”), has actively embraced controversial social issues in an effort to drum up business. Part of their make-over included featuring same-sex couples for BOTH their Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day ad campaigns; so that instead of re-inventing their products to appeal to a younger generation, it seems like they simply looked at statistics, saw that the Millenials and Xers tend to support same-sex marriage, and made an advertising decision based on a targeted demographic. To me—a member of that very demographic--it came off as patronizing and cheap. Still…
- Homosexuality is THE defining issue of this generation. As such, Christians are going to have to learn to navigate it with charity and boldness, grace and truth. We are going to have to be both wise and harmless, and that means coming to accept that…
- Public statements are likely to be misunderstood. What we mean to say (“I’m standing up for civil liberty.”) and what others hear (“I hate gay people.”) will rarely be the same thing; and while we can’t control someone’s interpretation of our actions, we better make certain that we’re not erecting extra barriers that might lead him to think that his conclusion is justified. And to do that, we must be willing to take the beam out of our own eye first, and…
- We must be honest about our own lack of God-honoring marriages and families. Every time we accept divorce as normal; every time we deny a man and woman the sacrament of marriage based simply on skin color; every time we entertain ourselves with movies that highlight heterosexual couples living together but shudder when the same movies portray gay couples; or let’s get even more personal--every time we complain about how inconvenient our children are, we are overlooking our own sin in favor of judging another’s. Because in the end, if we don’t hold biblical family values privately, we have very little ground to be promoting them publicly. And speaking of being honest with ourselves….
- We must not confuse the privilege of freely practicing our faith with the power to practice our faith. Many have rightly understood the current debacle as a threat to the basic freedoms of speech and religion. (Public officials simply have no right denying permits based on their own personal values.) But if we’re completely honest with ourselves, I wonder how many of us are standing up for civil liberties, not because we understand that they are essential to a just society, but because we have so long intertwined them with our faith that we can’t imagine how we could be Christians without them. We have confused the freedom that comes from Jesus Christ with the freedom that comes from the United States' Constitution. The first empowers us to follow Him, while the second simply makes it socially acceptable. Please don’t misunderstand. We must certainly fight to protect constitutional rights (for Christians and Jews and Hindis and Muslims), but we must not fight for them simply because we can’t envision our faith surviving without them. Because in the end…
- We need to remember what we’re really about. As of August 1, the conservative church proved that we can marshal a movement. We proved that when given a call to be part of something bigger, we will show up. So now, I’m issuing a call. Let’s have the same show of support for the Gospel. Let’s muster the same enthusiasm for the grace and power of Jesus Christ to change lives. And let’s put our energies and time and money into proclaiming that the love of Christ is by far the best solution for what ails us as a society.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________ *When my husband and I lived in NZ a couple years ago, we quickly learned that what we Americans refer to as restaurant “take out” is termed “takeaway” by our English speaking cousins. I simply couldn’t resist the pun.
My Take: Culture Wars, Millenial Angst, and a Dose of Perspective
So when I ran across the following in the preface of John Stott’s Basic Christianity, it sounded eerily familiar.
“‘Hostile to the church, friendly to Jesus Christ.’ These words describe large numbers of people, especially young people, today.
They are opposed to anything which savors of institutionalism. They detest the establishment and its entrenched privileges. And they reject the church—not without some justification—because they regard it as impossibly corrupted by such evils.
Yet what they have rejected is the contemporary church, not Jesus Christ himself. It is precisely because they see a contradiction between the founder of Christianity and the current state of the church he founded that they are so critical and aloof. The person and teaching of Jesus have not lost their appeal, however. For one thing, he was himself an anti-establishment figure, and some of his words had revolutionary overtones. His ideals appear to have been incorruptible. He breathed love and peace wherever he went. And for another thing, he invariably practiced what he preached.
But was he true?
An appreciable number of people throughout the world are still brought up in Christian homes in which the truth of Christ and of Christianity is assumed. But when their critical faculties develop and they begin to think for themselves, they find it easier to discard the religion of their childhood than make the effort to investigate its credentials. [emphasis added]
As true (and timeless) as Stott’s observations are about the relationship between young people and the church, what struck me more was the fact that he wrote them first in 1958--the generation of our grandparents—and then reissued them in 1971--the generation of our parents.
Trust me, I’m not dismissing the concerns of millennials, just trying to offer a bit of historical perspective and the caution that maybe we’re not as special as we think we are. Maybe we’re not the first generation to have metaphysical angst and maybe, just maybe, the very people we are fighting against have a bit more perspective than we think they do.
Women’s Ministry 101
an unexpected call to bring dinner over to a frazzled mother of three, invitations to join her family for Sunday lunches, the grace to overlook my children’s lack of manners at said lunches, babysitting for much needed date nights, lunch and shopping on my birthday, and Christmas presents for my family.
It grew, despite a generation's difference, until gradually I felt safe. Safe enough to open my heart, safe enough to reveal my real needs and expose the parts of me that were worried, scared, and hurting. It grew until I was finally able to say to her, “I don’t know how to trust God sometimes;” to admit, “I don’t feel so much content in His will, as resigned to it;” and to ask “How can I pray for the deepest desires of my heart when I don’t have faith that He will give them to me?” And then to be able to read this, several days later:
I have been thinking about what you mentioned about feeling resigned to an outcome we are praying for because of the reality of it and the need involved, etc. And I understand that, and have prayed feeling that at times in the past. I also am seeing how much better it is to pray for our deepest desires with hope and faith. We hold ourselves back, when we see our circumstances, and then pray accordingly. The hard part is, after not seeing change, to continue praying this way. I am at this place too. It is a choice I make daily of how to pray about life altering issues within my family. Sometimes, it seems as if things are continuing a wrong direction that I cannot turn around. But, this is what I see and feel.
We are called to go beyond that...to what we know is true....and the many Scriptures flood our minds here to equip us to pray believing.....and for God's will to be done. And we pray for sustaining grace while we wait, in large portions… I believe we pray for the unimaginable things, so we can know what God's will is. Well I have more thoughts on this, but that’s all for now...will write later.
It was just what I needed to hear and it was just who I needed to hear it from. Not from a book or an internet preacher, but from another woman who had walked the same ground I had, faced the same fears, and could offer me honesty and hope. And here’s perhaps the most surprising part--none of it happened “in church.” None of it was organized or scheduled. There was no notebook, Bible study, or special speaker. I don't even know if she had any intention of "ministering" to me or if she was just loving me the best she knew how.
There’s been a lot of conversation lately about what makes for good women’s ministry. And with my generation so eager for more depth, it'd be hard not to get excited. But if we're not careful, we may end up in exactly the same place that we started. If we're not careful, we'll easily find ourselves replacing one formulaic approach with another. Instead of tea parties, we'll meet at coffee houses, and instead of acrostics and poems, we'll rely on flashy graphics and technology.
All the time forgetting that lasting ministry only happens in relationship.
We must remember that the real work of woman to woman ministry is a lot messier, a lot more personal, and a lot more unscheduled than we’d like it to be. It means taking a moment to care, a moment to listen, a moment to feel deeply the questions and doubts of another woman. It means being honest with your own feelings and admitting that you’ve wrestled with the same thing. And ultimately it means waiting on God and trusting His Providence to build the bridge between two hearts to get to the point where this can happen.
We can schedule all the meetings we like--even those as valuable as a Bible study-- but we can't rely on them to do what only love can.
So maybe, as we move forward, the first step to developing a good women’s ministry for this generation isn't to schedule a meeting at the local coffee house to be transparent with one another; maybe, it's simply inviting another woman into your life and home. Maybe it's doubling a recipe to save some time for a working mom. And maybe it's showing up one day, watching the kids, and doing the laundry so another woman can go grocery shopping without having to use the car-cart.