I said something that was a bit controversial right at the end of Sunday School class last week that prompted a murmur from the back of the room. I’m not wise enough to be able to interpret whether that murmur was approval or disapproval. But I ain’t taking it back, no matter which it was.

We were talking about interpretation of scripture in our “God’s Holy Fire” series. I said that I have a rule-of-thumb that I employ when I find myself defending my views and interpretations: Am I defending them because I believe they represent the one and only way to do or view something that is pleasing to God? Because, I pointed out, if that’s true I can get in a lot of trouble very quickly.

My example was prayer, borrowed from the class teacher (an elder of my age) from earlier in the discussion. Is there one and only correct way to pray? If so, is it in a closet? An upper room? With head bowed? With face upraised toward God? With arms upraised as well? Kneeling? Standing? Sitting? Prostrate?

How can we be absolutely certain that any scriptural alternative is the one and only way to view or do – and still please God? Are a lot of our “either-or” logical boxes really “both-and”s? Could some of them be “neither-nor”s?

So much of the “doing” questions have to do with worship. I’ve even heard defenders of a given “one way” call upon the Old Testament admonition to carry and not touch the Ark of the Covenant, and point out the penalties that resulted from disobedience.

I go back farther, to something that I’m convinced was related to worship rather than porting God’s earthly throne with due respect. I go back to Cain and Abel. As nearly as I can tell, neither was commanded to sacrifice. The urge to do so – to thank and worship God – simply welled up in their hearts and each expressed it according to his character. One expression was favored over the other – but God reassured Cain that if he did what was right, he would be accepted. And there was a warning about sin trying to master him.

The point? Worship came from the heart. There was something wrong with Cain’s heart. Nothing has changed. Worship has always taken the form of being a sacrifice of thanksgiving and recognition of God’s glorious providence. It still has to do with blood poured out. Practice became precedent. Precedent became custom. Custom became prophecy. Prophecy was fulfilled. A sacrifice was made that ended all others; yet ideally we still respond with sacrificial praise that can add nothing to God’s glory. But it comes straight from the heart.

In fact, I would venture to say that the condition of the heart is the most important factor we can contribute to worship.

Can we offer worship with a pure and undivided heart of thanksgiving and praise if we can’t perceive the good that God is doing among us in many different ways? Can we do so while appointing ourselves the feng shui experts of worship? (I believe that feng shui is Chinese for “I don’t like the way you’ve done things here.” I could be mistaken. But I’ve been one of those “experts” and I don’t ever want to go back to being one again.)

Maybe the same thing can be said about the “viewing” questions.

Is it grace that saves us? Faith? Baptism? Obedience? Or all of the above, plus a few more? Or is it Christ?

Is the Bible inspired by the Spirit word-for-word? In principle? In purpose? In completeness? In essence? In totality? In part? Or is it simply inspired?

Is God all-knowing and all-good and all-powerful? Some combination of the preceding? Mostly all three? Unquestionably perfect? Or just incomprehensibly God?

I know that inquiring minds want to know. I know I do. So I keep searching, seeking, asking, knocking, trying, stumbling, feeling myself lifted up – over and over and over. I may never know all the answers. But I will grow, and I will learn, and I will do whatever it takes to find God’s heart and draw closer to it.

And there is, without any possible fallacy in believing it, one and only one extraordinary Way to get there: His Son.

There’s a growing number of folks posting online their conviction that the emerging church is just a fad.

I was going to post a few links as examples, but you can read more than anyone needs to by simpling Googling “emerging emergent church fad”.

Some go so far as to call it a movement (most of the folks involved simply call it a conversation) and lump it in with WWJD, Purpose-Driven, Promise-Keeping, 40 Days Of, and anything else you’ve ever heard of that has enjoyed a bit of success.

My problem with being so sure about that is the same one Gamaliel had.

About the church itself.

You remember Gamaliel, don’t you? Paul’s teacher? The fellow who, in Acts 5:29-41, stood up in (and to) the Sanhedrin when they wanted to put Peter and the other apostles to death.

But the examples he gave were well-known failures, not successes: defeated revolutionaries Theudas and Judas of Galilee. Gamaliel’s advice?

“Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”

Even the Sanhedrin was wise enough to yield to that advice and let them be – even though they threatened pain of death if any of the apostles ever spoke in the name of Jesus again.

It seems to me that the people conversing in emerging terms aren’t saying that the old ways of presenting the Story don’t work anymore. They’re just saying they don’t work for everyone. They’re not trying to change the Story; just the way it’s told.

In fact, they sound to me a lot like Gamaliel’s student Paul, who said:

“Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.” — I Corinthians 9:19-23

I put a hit-meter on this blog some months ago. January 7th, to be exact.

I’m sure it was because I wanted to know how many people were dropping by so I could feel good about it in my very Diotrophesian way.

When I went to the site offering the free counter, I had a choice to make: Visits? or Unique Visitors?

The first just counts how many times someone drops by. The second counts how many new people drop by (or at least how many new computer addresses drop by, since some folks – especially dialup folks – may have a different one every time they log on to the ‘Net). If they come back with the same address assigned by their ISP (Internet Service Provider), they aren’t counted.

So I chose the second option. It’s not as informative as the first, for the reason I just described, but I was curious.

It turns out that this blog is getting visited, on average right now, by about 1,300 new “people” a month.

I don’t have a fancy stats package that tells me how many of them are robots or spiders (poking around on my site for the search engines) and how many are genuine human beings. Or ingenuine human beings.

I don’t have a clue how long the real ones stay, what they read, or where they go when they leave. I can’t tell you who’s coming and going, where they’re from or what they’re looking for. I don’t know who all the regulars are (well, among the lurkers; I can pretty much tell you who the commenters would be!).

I have no idea if they just duck their heads in and look around, sit down on a pew and absorb, skim, doze off, or do other things while forgetting that they’ve opened a window to here.

What’s really sent a chill down my spine is the realization that I have a pulpit here. A rather bully pulpit, actually. I can say whatever is on my heart here, and even if someone disagrees, I can go right on saying it.

And that there are possibly more new people checking out this cyber-pulpit each month than there are dropping in on my real-world church of 1700+ members each year.

That’s just downright scary to me.

Justin over at RadicalCongruency is starting a group blog called Emerging Evangelism. He says:

The purpose of this site is to discuss evangelism in a postmodern, emerging-church context. Why another blog?

• The need for a group of people to be thinking together on this important topic
• The need for a more neutral and anonymous place to discuss this sensitive topic other than personal blogs
• The need for a more centralized place to have this conversation

If you are interested in joining, please email me at justin at baederresources.com with your:

• Name
• Blog URL
• Church context & background (briefly)

I would like to have as many contributors as possible, but for a variety of reasons it’s going to be limited to those who already have a blog (mainly to prevent it from becoming someone’s personal blog where they start to post livejournal memes and other junk).

Why should you think about contributing?

• There has not been enough conversation on evangelism in the emerging church
• Consequently, people are often still thinking in terms inappropriate for their contexts
• Much has been learned about evangelism in postmodern/emerging contexts, and the knowledge needs to be found, shared, and discussed
• It hasn’t all been figured out yet – there remains a great theological task to be done

I hope you’ll consider joining. The site will go live in a few days; hopefully, there will be a dozen or so contributors ready to post by then.

If you’ve read Justin’s January post Evangelism Re:Mixed, you’ve got a fair idea where this idea of his is headed. To update his quote above, the site IS live already (and active and sharper than most two-edged swords).

I confess I love to read blogs that talk about a church that is emerging from old limitations and sometimes indefensible restrictions.

I crave the ideas that posit what that church might look like.

I even feast on the ones which decry the way it looks now, though I usually feel guilty afterwards (and even more guilty when I’ve written one)!

So I’m going to share some of my more recent guilty pleasures with you:

• Those Who Misunderstand and Misrepresent the Emerging Church by Fred Peatross
• Becoming Unchurched, an Introduction; Part 1; Part 2; and today’s Part 3 – an ongoing series by Chris Gonzales
• An Emerging Church of Christ? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and today’s Part 4 – by Wade Hodges

But even as I read and gobble down the extraordinary insights, dire prophecies and heavenly visions … I keep coming back to the profound observation I read last year on a long-lost blog, to the effect that “The emerging church will only happen after there are emerging Christians.”

And I have to accept the fact that all I can change is me.

Correction: All I can do is let Christ change me.

Normally, I wouldn’t repeat one of my posts from What Would Jesus Do Now?, but it also happens to be a pretty good summation of what I intend to share in chapel Monday morning at my children’s school. So if you’re curious about what I’ll say to several hundred kindergarten-through-sixth-graders, read this version:

How many of you have too much stuff? I mean you have so much stuff you can’t find a place to keep it all in your room and it’s hard to keep it clean?

How many of you have parents who have so much stuff that they have to rent a storage space to keep some of it in?

Well, today I’m going to tell you a story about a man who had too much stuff. It’s a story from the Bible, and it’s about Jesus and that man, so it’s in the New Testament. We have to put together the complete picture of this man from three different stories so we can really know what he’s like.

Mark 10:17-31 says he was a man. Matthew 19:16-29 says he was young. Luke 18:18-29 adds that he was a ruler.

They all agree that he was rich. He had a lot of wealth – a lot of money; a lot of stuff.

Mark adds a few interesting details that the others leave out, though, as they tell the story. Anxious to get into the story, Matthew and Luke leave out the fact that this rich young man ran up to Jesus and fell on his knees before Him. As if something was urgent. As if only Jesus could answer how to get the one thing he wanted most. As if he were begging, perhaps even worshipping, the One whom he intends to ask:

“Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call Me good? Why do you ask Me about good?” Jesus answered. “Only God is good. – You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother …”

And of the Ten Commandments, the Top Ten of the 613 precepts and commandments they would have both memorized for their bar mitzvahs, Jesus named only five of the six dealing with interpersonal relationships, and none of the first four about relating to God. Giving the young man the benefit of the doubt, perhaps, concerning those first ones – as if they go without saying – He omitted Number Ten and made it conspicuous by its absence: “Don’t covet.” That word “covet” means: “Don’t want what others have so badly that you feel like stealing it, or that you wish they didn’t have it and that you did.”

“All of these I have kept since I was a boy,” the young man responded.

Then Mark tells us a little something that Matthew and Luke don’t choose to: that Jesus – looking at him – loved him.

We don’t know who the man was. No one gives his name. Each of the Synoptic writers is stingy with details. And of all the people Jesus encountered, only this man is described as someone Jesus loved on sight. Wouldn’t you like to have that fact associated with your name, recorded in scripture and preserved for all time? That Jesus looked at you and loved you?

It makes me wonder if the young man was John Mark himself. As with his unique account of the young man who abandoned Jesus upon His arrest, leaving behind a (doubtless expensive) linen garment someone had grabbed, Mark does not name the “man” who ran up to Jesus and fell on his knees whom He loved at first sight. Some scholars have wondered if the young man who ran away was Mark. His mother was wealthy enough to have a house that would hold “many people” praying for the release of Peter and John from jail. Was it his money that kept drawing John Mark back home when he later became a missionary? Was he too embarrassed to identify himself as the young man Jesus loved?

Who could have more distinctly seen the look of love meant for him than the one kneeling down and gazing desperately up into the eyes of Jesus?

Whether the rich young ruler was John Mark or not, Jesus certainly did love him. And if he had followed all 613 precepts and commandments, he would have been generous in his giving and his hospitality, as the second tablets of stone required. Jesus doesn’t dispute his claim to have obeyed them all. But it was not enough. So Jesus told him:

“One thing you lack. Go sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. You’ll be perfect. Then come follow me.”

Now we discover why this poor fellow isn’t named. It would have been cruel to do so. Because his face fell, and he got up, and he went away sadly … because he was very wealthy, and had a lot of stuff.

It’s not something that Jesus tells everyone to do. Not quite. Although He does teach “Sell what you have and give to the poor,” He doesn’t include the word “all” or “everything.” It seems to be more like advice, to open one’s self to the joy of sacrificial giving.

But to the rich young ruler, He says “all” or “everything.” Why? Was it because if he tried to follow but kept all his stuff, he would always be looking back from the plow? Because he would not be able to understand Jesus’ call to perfection through sacrifice of self? And that treasure in heaven is never susceptible to moths or rust or theft? Was it because this young man’s stuff was the one thing between him and the thing he wanted most, to live forever with God?

Whatever the reason, he turned his back on the One who loved him. What a heartbreaking moment that must have been for Jesus – to see the young man turn and go! Possibly He couldn’t bear to watch. All three writers say that He turned to His followers and said: “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven! Children” – did Jesus actually call His friends “children”? Or was also He talking to the children from the verses before who were still around, hoping He would quit fooling around with the grownups and get back to playing with them? – “… how hard it is!”

How hard it is. Do you think Jesus was trying not to cry? It almost seems like He tried to lift His own spirit with a weak joke when the next thing He said was: “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God!”

Can you imagine a camel trying to squeeze through that little hole in a needle that the thread goes through?

Maybe it wasn’t a joke, though. His followers didn’t think it was funny. They believed that God blesses those who obey with riches and power and stuff – why, that rich young man would have been a prime proof for them! They were amazed and blurted out to each other, “Well, who then can be saved?”

They had no concept what they were to be saved from. Jesus did. “With men this is impossible, but not with God. All things are possible with God.”

Peter stepped up to the challenge, to reassure himself and the others of their salvation: “But we’ve left everything to follow You!” (They had: even their families; Peter perhaps left his wife and her mother behind when they traveled.)

Now Jesus was reassuring, but with a note of warning as well: “You can depend on this: No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for Me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields – and with them persecutions) and in the age to come, unending life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

Then, following up on the gloomy mood which had taken Him again, He predicted His death and His resurrection and His plan … His plan to give up everything, including His life, so that others could live forever with God.

I left out something in this story. Did you catch what it was?

Jesus told the rich young ruler – the man who had everything – that there was one thing he lacked.

He never told him what it was.

What do you think the rich man lacked?

What was the one thing he wanted most?

And what was keeping him from it?

– from the accounts in Mark, Matthew and Luke

Tomorrow is my first blogiversary. I won’t have time to blog, because of work commitments.

Today I look back on my first post, When Faith Becomes Fact, and realize I still have a long journey – Lord willing – ahead of me.