Barnabas Piper's Blog, page 44

New Happy Rant: Wedding Planning, Babylon Bee Controversy, and Shiplap for Days

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas suss out the following very important matters:

Wedding planning and choosing an officiant
Communication politics for sharing big news with the right people
Do weddings have to be in churches or will a barn and/or warehouse do?
The Babylon Bee does another not funny, controversial thing
Shiplap, shiplap everywhere

Sponsors

Thank you to our sponsor for this week’s episode: Dwell Bible App. Dwell is a Bible listening app that we love! If you are looking for a convenient, fresh way of spending more time in God’s word Dwell is ideal. Go to https://dwellapp.io/happyrant to get 33% off your subscription. It comes out to about $20 for the entire year!

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order your Happy Rant swag from Missional Wear (Use code RANT to get discounts on swag and/or shipping)
Connect with Ted, Ronnie, or Barnabas to speak for your church, organization, or event

Please consider supporting the podcast financially as well. We have set up a Patreon page, and your donations help us cover production costs, do live events, and grow the podcast by trying some new things. Oh, and of course there are perks for those who commit to helps us such as free books and coffee!

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #280

When Pastors Doubt

Justin pastored a mid-sized suburban church. He started as the youth pastor, weathered some leadership changes, grew in respect and influence, and was eventually called to lead the church. Justin was a passionate and gifted teacher, the people respected him, he had a beautiful family, and was, by all appearances, a bright young pastor with a great future.

But Justin had a dirty little secret. No, not that kind of dirty. He was eaten up by doubts. Justin wondered how he could be sure he was saved, could he really trust God’s promises, did he really buy all that theology he’d learned in Seminary? Over time his doubts ate away at his passion for ministry. Justin ended up stepping away from the pastorate because he just didn’t think he was qualified any longer.

Everyone doubts – besetting doubts, passing doubts, nagging doubts. The church is full of doubters, whether or not we like to admit it. We doubt God’s promises. We doubt the “joy set before us” because the temptation before us looks pretty appetizing too. We doubt our salvation. We doubt God’s goodness in the face of evil and the trustworthiness of scripture in the face of criticism. Every Sunday normal people with these thoughts file into worship centers and sanctuaries around the world.

And what does that mean? It means the pastor better have all the answers. The Sunday school teacher and small group leader needs to be rock solid. The deacons and elders better brim with confidence. No matter what comes up – crisis, tragedy, attack, debate – they must be Johnny-on-the-spot with the right response. Church goers get to doubt. Church leaders don’t.

Of course church leaders do doubt, as much as all the people you lead, in fact. Justin wasn’t an aberration. The same questions of faith, identity, crisis, culture, theology, and obedience hover and swoop around you. You feel as lost in the fog of not understanding as all they people they’re expected to enlighten. But you can’t let on, not most of the time, not to most people. So you face the specters alone, often suffer, and sometimes fall.

It doesn’t have to be this way. No, the church’s expectations won’t likely be changed in short order. It won’t grow in comfort with a leader’s doubt by next Sunday, but a few practices can both bolster you and strengthen your congregations.

1) FIND CONFIDANTS.

You only need two, maybe three. These are people you trust. You can’t process all your questions in public, on a blog, on Twitter, or with any old church member. But you need someone to process with. More than just processing, though, you need them as a plumb line to tell you when your questions have gone from fruitful to sinful. You won’t see; they will.

2) FIND AN ANCHOR.

Doubts are just questions as long as you have an anchor. Without an anchor they are waves dashing you against the shore. Mark 9:24 offers the quintessential doubter’s prayer, “I believe; help my unbelief.” The first half is the anchor, the expression of conviction, the sermon to self reminding you of who you believe in and why. With the first half firmly in place the second half becomes a guilt-free plea as you explore your doubts. Your confidants will keep you attached to your anchor. Your spiritual disciplines will keep you attached to your anchor. Your reflection and meditation on God’s character will keep you attached to your anchor.

3) DON’T BUY THE LIE OF GUILT.

Doubt is not inherently sinful. It is merely being unsure, a lack of understanding. It becomes sin when, instead of seeking truth and a deeper knowledge of God, it seeks to undermine or reject him. If your doubts are in the first category, the truth seeking kind, then they are a tool in Holy Spirit’s hands. Don’t let the long-stigmatized word “doubt” make you feel guilty, unworthy, or distant from God. In fact, those doubts might be taking you deeper into your relationship and knowledge of God than you’ve ever been.

4) DON’T SUPPRESS YOUR QUESTIONS.

You have an anchor. You have confidants. You see that doubt isn’t sinful. So ask! Search for answers. Let your questions drive your study and even your teaching. (It will give you a unique passion!) What you wonder about is precisely what God will use to grow you and to show you Himself. And isn’t that what you want more than anything?

5) ACCEPT AND EMBRACE “I DON’T KNOW.”

You still have to lead people. You still face their expectations. But you no longer see your own doubts as a badge of shame. You even see how the doubts of your people can help them grow too, and that is what you want to foster. Start with “I don’t know.” Show them your willingness to not be that Johnny-on-the-spot and that you aren’t the answer vending machine they once expected. “I don’t know” is humble. It honors God because it admits that He is beyond your (and anyone else’s) understanding. It is connects with those you lead because it’s empathetic; “I don’t know” is usually followed by “either.”

Justin wasn’t able to do these things. The expectations of ministry kept him from confiding. He had friends, but only opened up to them once doubt overwhelmed him. He held his anchor, or maybe the anchor held him, but guilt ate at him. He hid his questions and felt that not knowing was a shortcoming. That’s why he left the pastorate. The end of the story isn’t tragedy. Without the pressures of the pastorate, Justin was able to process and grow and rediscover the joy of salvation and confidence in God. But the end isn’t fully happy either because the ministry, that church, lost a good pastor to doubt.

What you will find in committing to these practices is grace. You will see the same grace Jesus showed to the man who prayed, “I believe; help my unbelief.” Imagine that, confessing your unbelief to the very Son of God! And you will see grace begin to trickle down through the people you lead as they see in you and in each other the same questions, the same need for support, the same anchor, and the same hope in the midst of all those questions.

[image error]For more on faith and how to respond well to doubts you can check out my book  Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt is Not the Enemy of Faith.

This article was originally published at LeadershipJournal.net

Our Addiction to Doubt

Chris Rock is a hilarious human, my favorite comedian. What makes Rock and other genius comedians like him so remarkable is the ability to observe and relate subtle truths through jokes. In his 1999 HBO comedy special, Bigger and Blacker (a comedic staple of my high school years), Rock riffs on people who love to “keep it real.” They love to “not know,” says Rock. Keeping it real has morphed in our nomenclature into “authenticity” over the past fifteen years. We want to be the raw, uncut version of ourselves. Where once we had to have buttoned up explanations we now are free to not know, and we revel in that freedom. Authenticity like this is precisely why doubt is so sexy today.

When I say “we” I mean younger people in the church. We are addicted to doubt — a reaction to a religious background that stifled it during our formative years. When we were growing up questions about God, any sign we lacked surety, was frowned upon either explicitly or tacitly by the greater church. Sometimes we were reprimanded, but more often we simply received canned answers to hard questions and were told to believe them. Our doubts were not resolved; they were suppressed. Many of us grew up in fundamentalist contexts where things were black and white, right or wrong, yes or no. There was no room for anything else. Anything else was sinful.

But we knew that wasn’t us. That wasn’t keeping it real. That wasn’t authentic. Authenticity doubts, and when we discovered this we gorged ourselves on it and wallowed in it. We came to love our doubts and our “real” expressions of them.

And this is not all bad. The bent toward keeping it real has generated some real progress in the church. It opened the door for dialogue instead of diatribe. Questions are welcomed and lead us to exploration and truth finding. More significantly, authenticity is willing to say “I don’t know,” and when it comes to an infinite, unfathomable God we ought to say that. We simply can’t know certain things. Christianity is full of mystery, and acknowledging that invites people in instead of putting up a wall. Our openness to not knowing nudges us toward humility. This sort of doubting authenticity takes a more patient and gentle stance toward those who struggle and welcomes them.

The coin has another side, though. Doubt can lead us deeper into truth and can keep us humble, but it is no place to reside. Our addiction to it has put premium value on vagaries and feelings. We have become so uncomfortable with certainty of any kind that we don’t present our beliefs as propositional truths. We loathe the thought of being seen as dogmatic. Our addiction to authenticity and doubt means we risk losing a grip on truths about God we can know, we must know. We love questions so much we drift away from definitive answers.

We cannot let our love of mystery cloud God’s character. When we can’t understand why or how God does things we can still know who He is. We can plant a flag on truth even as we ask questions. Is the Bible confusing and mysterious? Yes. Does it raise questions we can’t answer? Yes. Does it seem to break the rules of evidence, proof, and cultural norms? Absolutely. But it is true. We don’t have to doubt that because we can know from whom it came. It is a revelation of precisely what God wanted us to know about Himself, His character, His work, His plans. And our doubt must never undermine that.

We love to keep it real, to be authentic, but we can’t afford to be addicted to doubt. Doubting is inevitable; it can serve us and the church well when it motivates us to dig deeper for truth. Sometimes we must even come to terms with not knowing because we can’t. But when we “love to not know,” as Chris Rock described it, we have given in to an addiction that inevitably sets adrift away from truth.

[image error]For more on the subject of faith and doubt check out my book   Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt is Not the Enemy of Faith .

Originally posted at MillennialEvangelical.com.

New Happy Rant: 2020 Anticipation, Christianity Today, and The Future of Magazines

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas suss out the following:

What are our hopes or expectations for 2020? do we have any?
New Year’s Parties
Christianity Today’s Trump editorial and place in evangelicalism
The love of magazines and the future of them

Sponsors

Thank you to our sponsor for this week’s episode: Dwell Bible App. Dwell is a Bible listening app that we love! If you are looking for a convenient, fresh way of spending more time in God’s word Dwell is ideal. Go to https://dwellapp.io/happyrant to get 33% off your subscription. It comes out to about $20 for the entire year!

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order your Happy Rant swag from Missional Wear (Use code RANT to get discounts on swag and/or shipping)
Connect with Ted, Ronnie, or Barnabas to speak for your church, organization, or event

Please consider supporting the podcast financially as well. We have set up a Patreon page, and your donations help us cover production costs, do live events, and grow the podcast by trying some new things. Oh, and of course there are perks for those who commit to helps us such as free books and coffee!

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #279

Video: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

Doubt and faith seem like opposites, but are they really? In this short video, recorded at the Legacy conference in Chicago in 2017, I do my best to explain how the two are not always in opposition. In fact, doubt can even strengthen faith and that means that our questions are not off limits and mystery is an invitation to believe.

[image error]For more about the relationship  between faith and doubt, how to ask questions well, and how our questions can lead us into deeper faith check out my book, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt is Not the Enemy of Faith.

5 Characteristics of Childlike Faith

Childish and childlike are similar words with vastly different meanings. The former encapsulates all the worst things about children – petulance, immaturity, obnoxiousness, selfishness, and so on. It is antithetical to faith. The latter, though, describes all the beautiful things about children – trust, joy, innocence, curiosity, wonder, forgiveness, and so much more. This word, childlike, is the flavor our faith in God ought to have. What follows are five characteristics of childlikeness that make faith robust, rich, and full of life. Like a child.

1) Children ask honest questions.

By honest questions I mean questions that do not challenge or subvert or undermine. They simply want to know truth. Yes, children are sinful and do challenge authority, but think of their curious questions, their eager questions, their innocent question. Each one has a single motive: teach me. They simply want to know truth.

We forget this as adults because we encounter (or ask) so many loaded questions – questions with ulterior motives, meant to challenge, designed to undermine or embarrass. We become passive aggressive with our questions or just confrontational. Children are not like this. They are just eager to know truth.

2) Children ask openly.

Unlike adults, children do not fear for their reputation or image and do not care who is around when they ask a question. This can create some awkward situations when they wonder “why is that lady wearing that” or get curious in the feminine care aisle at Target. But they simply want to know and think nothing at all of who knows they have a question. There is no shame and no embarrassment until we teach them to be embarrassed.

Children also focus only on the one they are asking with complete trust that an answer will be forthcoming. This is part of the reason they ask so openly; they are only thinking of one person, the one who can provide their answer. Imagine if we prayed like this and were so singly focused on God that what others thought or who else might know of our questions, ignorance, worries, or doubts would be of no consequence.

3) Children ask from a place of vulnerability with the expectation of an answer.

When they are little children see parents as omniscient. They expect parents to know everything, but over time are forced to come to grips with all the things parents don’t know. Children instinctively know that their knowledge is limited, even if they can’t articulate it; that’s why they ask so many blasted questions. So to find out dad and mom can’t answer all their questions takes a position of vulnerability and makes it feel uncertain and tenuous. They start with total trust then grow out of it.

We don’t have to grow out of vulnerability and total trust in God, though. We can grow in it. Unlike parents, God does know everything, including so much that is beyond our capacity to ask or understand. We can be utterly dependent, or rather admit our dependence. We can be completely vulnerable, honest, and open with our questions and we can expect that God will answer us with precisely what we need. Child like faith is that which knows we don’t know, knows He does, and asks with the expectation that the answer He gives will be the right one.

4) Children do not know what is best for them most of the time, but they trust their parents.

Parents generally know what is best for kids, or at least they know better than kids do. No Candy for breakfast, don’t play in the street, don’t eat that glue, don’t poke the cat, eat your veggies, do your homework, don’t hit your sister. Children get frustrated with these commands even though they are for their good just like we get frustrated with how God knows what is best for us and commands us accordingly.

Children don’t always understand why parents say “no” or “do this.” Often the reason is simply beyond their maturity or capacity for understanding. And despite griping and moaning, if parents are loving and generally stable, kids trust them. Kids have an incredible capacity for trust.

We understand even less about God’s reasons because of the depth and breadth of His wisdom and in the infinity of His mind. And we certainly gripe and moan and outright rebel against Him and occasionally throw a tantrum too. But because of His Word, His character, His promises, and all the ways He has shown His love we can absolutely trust Him.

5) Children trust and find satisfaction with parents.

Even if children are frustrated or confused by parents, so long as the parents show love the children will trust them deeply and take pleasure in their presence. Kids are home with parents. Several years ago my family moved from Illinois to Tennessee. At the time my daughters were seven and four, and the move was pretty smooth for them. They were happy throughout the process with just a couple exceptions. That’s because they were with their parents. They were safe and loved and secure. Imagine if we had handed them each a duffel bag and a bus ticket and sent them to Tennessee. It would have killed them, maybe literally.

How much more should we take pleasure in God’s presence even when we cannot understand His reasons or His plan. We know His love, shown for us in Jesus that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. We know His promises: I will never leave you or forsake you, I will be with you always, nothing can separate you from the love of Christ, fear not for I am with you. God is the answer to our questions and doubts and the soothing for our anxieties. His presence and love is what we need, always.

Children get this. They understand so little yet they are so much more right than we are. We have grown out of faith in so ways.

[image error]This is drawn from my book, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt is Not the Enemy of Faith. If you struggle with doubts and questioning or are trying to help someone who does pick up a copy.

N.D. Wilson’s Foreword to “Help My Unbelief”

N.D. Wilson is a filmmaker and the author of several excellent books including Notes From The Tilt-a-Whirl, Death by Living, The Ashtown Burials series, and The Outlaws of Time. Wilson sees the world and truth differently than many people do. He see things in them that other people miss and expresses those things in a fresh, poetic voice. He loves stories and writes great ones; in so doing he expresses the complexities, nuances, tensions, and conflicts of belief. He was kind enough to write the foreword for my book, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt is Not the Enemy of Faith, which has been updated and expanded and re-releases on 1/1/20. I love what he wrote

This book is a tragedy. No, it doesn’t end tragically (it is filled with hope), but its very existence is tragic; the author’s firsthand experience with the subjectmatter (doubt and unbelief) is tragic. The need for this book is tragic.

Adam ate the fruit, after all, and the world is now full of broken people with broken emotions and broken minds looking at the world out of broken eyes. Every human ever born has had a broken relationship with his or her heavenly Father, all urgently in need of mending. Unfortunately, we spend a lot of our time staring at ourselves to see how we feel about Him and acting as if our feelings have any authority over truth and falsehood. As if taking our own temperature tells us anything about God’s.

We have a Father who is trustworthy and good, but we stare at His reflection in whatever carnival mirror we might generate, and we fail to connect, to trust … to truly believe. We struggle to trust Him when things get hard or, as Barnabas Piper describes perfectly in this volume, when things are totally fine and dandy, when we have good families and great churches and whole heaps of head knowledge.

It doesn’t matter what all we might have, we are still broken. We disobey. We fail. We sin. And every sinful act is an act of unbelief, a failure to truly live out what we affirm.[image error]

Thank God that our salvation is not dependent on an absence of our own fears. Our failures. Our doubts. In fact, our salvation is not dependent on us at all. It doesn’t depend on how we feel. It doesn’t depend on how well we answer challenges and questions, and it doesn’t depend on how deeply and authentically we really, really feel our answers deep down in our hearts.

Our salvation is on the cross. No matter how broken we may be, no matter how much we might struggle and fail to see and to know the truth (every truth) clearly, we can rest in the One who sees all and knows all. When we cannot see, we are still seen. Even when we stare at our own sputtering joy (and the more we stare, the more it sputters), so intently that we lose sight of the cross, the One on the cross does not lose sight of us.

We are His. We cost Him everything. And His clear eyes will never lose track—or ownership—of what He purchased. His confidence never wanes. Feel how you may, struggle how you may, once bought, once loved with His blood, you cannot slip from His hands.

For those who are His but still doubt, for those who have ever loved Him but disobeyed, the task is as simple as it is impossible for us to do on our own. We are to see as clearly, to love as surely, to rejoice as confidently, and to know the Father as fully as He does.

It is the journey of journeys, the trek we shall never finish, and it begins today, with one foot lifted. Now the other. Repeat. The answer to all your doubts and failures begins here: You are not the answer. He is.

Do you want to believe? Then you already do. And that is the beating heart of this book.

Belief is from Him. Ask for it, and in the asking, you have already received.

Do not worry about your own weaknesses. Stop fearing your own sickly reflection and your distressingly philosophical navel. Ignore your empty emotional hands. Those are your qualifications for His grace. His hands are full. And you are in them.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

And so it will be until the graves are emptied.

New Happy Rant: Ramsey Christmas Party, Weeping Men, and Toxic People

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas suss out the following pressing matters:

Barnabas gives a breakdown of the Dave Ramsey Christmas party (EXTRAVAGANZA!)
Why are so many men weeping? What’s the difference between weeping and crying?
What do we do with toxic people in our lives? How do we tell if they are toxic?

Sponsors

[image error]Our sponsor this month is Compassion International. We are excited about the opportunity to partner with Compassion because of their dedication to delivering children from poverty and showing them the love of Jesus in partnership with local churches; it is a holistic depiction and declaration of God’s care for people. We are asking that you consider sponsoring a child. What better way to finish the year and launch into 2020 than with a commitment to generosity and caring for a child in need? You can learn more, see a list of available children in need, as well as other ways to donate and support Compassion HERE.

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order your Happy Rant swag from Missional Wear (Use code RANT to get discounts on swag and/or shipping)
Connect with Ted, Ronnie, or Barnabas to speak for your church, organization, or event

Please consider supporting the podcast financially as well. We have set up a Patreon page, and your donations help us cover production costs, do live events, and grow the podcast by trying some new things. Oh, and of course there are perks for those who commit to helps us such as free books and coffee!

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #278

New Happy Rant: The Non-Famous Dad Episode

In this episode of The Happy Rant Barnabas interviews Ted and Ronnie about their exceptional and exceptionally not famous dads.

Where’d they come from?
What did they do?
How did they support creative/artist sons?
How did they handle spiritual stuff for the family?

Sponsors

[image error]Our sponsor this month is Compassion International. We are excited about the opportunity to partner with Compassion because of their dedication to delivering children from poverty and showing them the love of Jesus in partnership with local churches; it is a holistic depiction and declaration of God’s care for people. We are asking that you consider sponsoring a child. What better way to finish the year and launch into 2020 than with a commitment to generosity and caring for a child in need? You can learn more, see a list of available children in need, as well as other ways to donate and support Compassion HERE.

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order fresh roasted coffee from Lagares Roasters
Order your Happy Rant swag from Missional Wear (Use code RANT to get discounts on swag and/or shipping)

Please consider supporting the podcast financially as well. We have set up a Patreon page, and your donations help us cover production costs, do live events, and grow the podcast by trying some new things. Oh, and of course there are perks for those who commit to helps us such as free books and coffee!

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #277

New Happy Rant: The Father Ronnie Kringle Christmas Unstravanganza

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas do the same thing we do every year and let Ronnie be Father Ronnie Kringle Christmas King of the Yuletide while Ted and Barnabas play along.

Presents we wish for but would never buy
Ronnie’s Christmas book club
the best gift we’ve ever received
Vulnerability voice at Christmas parties

Sponsors

[image error]Our sponsor this month is Compassion International. We are excited about the opportunity to partner with Compassion because of their dedication to delivering children from poverty and showing them the love of Jesus in partnership with local churches; it is a holistic depiction and declaration of God’s care for people. We are asking that you consider sponsoring a child. What better way to finish the year and launch into 2020 than with a commitment to generosity and caring for a child in need? You can learn more, see a list of available children in need, as well as other ways to donate and support Compassion HERE.

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order fresh roasted coffee from Lagares Roasters
Order your Happy Rant swag from Missional Wear (Use code RANT to get discounts on swag and/or shipping)

Please consider supporting the podcast financially as well. We have set up a Patreon page, and your donations help us cover production costs, do live events, and grow the podcast by trying some new things. Oh, and of course there are perks for those who commit to helps us such as free books and coffee!

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #276