Daniel Darling's Blog, page 62

What Does Calling Look Like?

How do we best prepare young people for their future vocation and calling? This is a question Christian parents, pastors, and influencers continually face. My friend, Alex Chediak has come out with a brilliant new book Preparing Your Kids for College. Alex is an educator who has thought through these issues in great depth. His book is a practical new resource for parents. I had the chance to ask him a few questions for this week’s Leadership Journal. Here is one of my questions:

Seems the church does a good job telling teens about following Christ, but not so well in helping them flesh out what that calling might look like. How can we be better at this?

Too many teens have a truncated view of Christianity in which prayer, Bible reading, evangelism, and worship services are important, but everything “secular” is somehow useless at best and contaminated at worst. Spiritual disciplines are vital, but Christian teens need a vision for glorifying God in the classroom, in the lab, in the library, on the sports field, in orchestra practice, in a part-time job, and everywhere else. The Bible teaches us to love God with all our minds. Teens should love learning because God gave them a brain, and he calls us to develop it in order to make the most of our talents. High school is a time to prepare for adulthood.

One idea would be for youth groups to occasionally bring in adults to talk about how they seek to glorify God and love others through their employment. High school is the ideal time for teens to identify their interests and talents (in terms of potential college majors or vocational directions). Let’s help them also find Christian adults who work in these fields—science, business, health care, and so on—who can talk to them about it, giving them accurate expectations of what college and the career would be like. For example, in the book I cite a Barna Group youth poll conducted in 2009, which found that 52 percent of teens aspire to science-related careers, but only 1 percent of church youth workers said they had addressed issues of science in the past year. If the youth pastor isn’t comfortable talking about it, a guest speaker could be invited. We don’t want to give teens the false impression that “Christians don’t do science.”

Read more here:

Christians on Computers Talking Cakes

You probably don’t want to read one more article on the religious liberty, cake-baking, gay marriage controversy. But let me diverge from the important legal and spiritual implications of this discussion and talk about the actual discussion itself. How should the discussion among Christians be driven around the public water cooler of social media? Here are a few thoughts I have in the wake of this pitched battle:

We should always assume the very best about those with whom we disagree and we should argue against their best arguments, not caricatured straw men.
We should remember that there are actual people behind the avatars. And we should remember that we are people, not avatars. As followers of Jesus we are accountable for what we do and say.
We should not assume the headline, but understand and know the facts behind the headline. Tweeting in reaction to a headline may be fashionable, but it’s not worthy of a Christian whose goal is to pursue truth (Philippines 4:8)
As much as we can, we should not talk at people, but with people.
We should remember that if someone disagrees with us, they are not necessarily being mean to us, they are simply disagreeing with us. The surest way to shut down a productive discussion is to score cheap political points by hi-lighting how unreasonable our debate partner is. A reasoned argument against your position is not an attack. Know the difference.
Christians should, as much as they can, support fellow Christians. Paul reminded us to do good to those who are of “the household of faith.” Twisting the arguments, fanning the flames of public shame, and advancing the popular narrative of Christians as bigoted, uncaring, ideologues doesn’t exactly build unity in the body of Christ. If anything discouraged me in this entire discussion it’s the willingness of Christians to throw other Christians under the bus for fifteen seconds of cultural affirmation. Sad.
It’s helpful not to throw a rhetorical bomb out there and then say, “What?, What?” denying an obvious intention to stir things up (Proverbs 26:18-19)
It’s also not helpful to come in late to an important discussion with the pious, “I wish Christians would all stop arguing and get in a circle and sing Kumbaya.” Not every argument is worth having, yes. And sometimes Christians fight unworthy fights, yes. But not every discussion is unhealthy. Until we are fully sanctified in Heaven, we’ll not stop having discussions and disagreements.
We should discern between worthy arguments with reasonable opponents and folks who only want a prolonged Twitter battle. Or as a friend tells me all the time: Don’t feed the trolls. It’s also helpful to actually not be a troll. Twitter discipline is a hard thing to maintain and all of us have had moments where we have failed.
We should be joyful warriors. There are slippery slopes, troubling signs in our culture, and an increasing marginalizing of orthodox Christian beliefs. Still, Christ is coming. He is building His Church. He is triumphant. And He will renew all things. So onward with joy.

What Pastors Owe Their People

If you are a pastor, you cannot escape the unmistakeable call of spiritual leaders, in the New Testament to “feed the flock of God”:

Jesus commissioned Peter to do “feed my sheep”, no less than three times, in that famous scene on the shores of Galilee (John 21:15-19)
Jesus commissioned the disciples, in the Great Commission passage to “teach them all things I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:16)
Paul commissioned the Ephesian elders to “tend to the whole flock” pointing this example of his unwillingness to shrink from “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:17-28)
Peter urges church leaders to “feed the flock of God among you.”
Paul instructed Timothy, in his last letter, “these things you have learned from me, commit to faithful men” (2 Timothy 2:2). He also urged him to “guard the deposit entrusted to you” (2 Timothy 1:14; 6:20). He also  reminded Timothy of the usefulness of “all Scripture” as profitable for the spiritual well-being of God’s people (1 Timothy 3:16)
Paul, in a rebuke to the Corinthians, discusses the need for people to have both “milk” and “meat” in their spiritual diets (1 Corinthians 3:2)
The writer of Hebrews reminds us that a good teacher is able to both handle the deep things of God, but also teach them (Hebrews 5:11-12

Preaching styles do differ, but it’s hard to argue the unmistakeable responsibility of pastors to take the whole counsel of God and preach it faithfully. To not give our people spiritual food, to not share with them the “all the things I have commanded you” is to commit spiritual malpractice. It’s to intentionally leave our people spiritually malnourished. And yet there is a temptation for pastors–I remember facing this weekly as a pastor–to sort of skip over or nuance the very hard passages. Or, more popularly, to not preach through issues that are at the tip of the cultural spear. Issues like a biblical sexual ethic, the dignity of human life, greed, materialism, and the prosperity gospel. It’s just easier to say things like, “We just want to love on people and be all about grace every Sunday.” But my question is this: if a new convert wants to know what it looks like to live out the gospel, where will he find it if he can’t find it in his church? We live in confused times, where the way of Christ cannot be assumed in popular culture anymore. So churches who tailor their preaching and services exclusively to not offend those they are trying to reach with the gospel will starve God’s people. I find it troubling when pastors sort of nuance or skip over passages that are counter-cultural.

We should talk about grace. A lot. Over and over and over again. But unless people see their need for grace. Unless they are confronted with the good law of God, they won’t see the bigness of the mercy God offers. They’ll assume that God loves them because that’s what God should do. That’s the Jesus they’ve been sold by much of the evangelical church, a sort of hipster, friendly, easy to digest Jesus who really isn’t all that concerned with morality and righteousness.

And those who have been restored and forgiven, made new by the blood of the cross, will never find the freedom of a life with Christ–if we never have the courage to tell them what that life looks like. Real love, Paul tells the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6, is the courage tell them they are disobeying the call of the gospel. It’s to set a brother or sister aright.

Much of this can be done in community, in one-on-one gatherings, small group studies, phone conversations, reading of good books, car rides, late night talks, etc. But if God’s people never hear their pastor discuss these difficult things, things alien to a permissive moral culture, they won’t rise in importance. Pastors must feed their sheep the good spiritual food God intends for them.

Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus

Nabeel Qureshi grew up in a Muslim home, but came to faith in Christ after a search for meaning and truth. He tells his conversion story in a new book,  Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity. I had the chance to interview Nabeel today for my weekly Leadership Journal blog. This is one of the questions I asked him:

What finally drove you to a point of decision between Islam and Christianity? What was holding you back—and what finally drove you forward?

The first thing that had to happen was that someone had to show me the truth about Christianity. Only when I saw the truth would I be able to assess whether I would follow it or not. David didn’t just tell me why he believed in the gospel, he showed me how we could be confident it is true and therefore everyone should believe it. The historical evidence he provided for Jesus’ death and resurrection, as well as Jesus’ claim to be God, made all the difference. When I contrasted the evidence for Christianity against the evidence for Islam I knew that intellectually there was no comparison. So I asked God to reveal himself to me in truth, through dreams and visions. All those things, combined with actually reading the Bible, are what drove me forward to the point of accepting Christ.

Read the entire interview here:

A word to husbands on Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is one of those holidays that sneaks up on you. Well, at least it sneaks up on me. The winter is rich with holidays for the Darling Family: Angela and I were married the week before Thanksgiving, two of our four children have December birthdays, and my birthday is in late January. It gets busy and  . . . expensive.

And I’m guessing I’m like most men. We do the Valentine’s thing sort of reluctantly. It’s a bit of an eye-rolling holiday. We feel we’re getting hosed by Hallmark. Think about it: Mother’s Day, Sweetest Day, Valentine’s Day, Anniversary. I’ve even heard some (very unwise) husbands (who apparently have a regular cot in their garages) say they ignore it and just “love their wife the entire year.”

My advice is to . . . not do that. Don’t do that at all. For one thing, your wife doesn’t want to be nor does she deserve to be the only wife on the block, in her small group, and in the office who sheepishly tells her friends that her husband “doesn’t do this holiday.” Man up, buy a card and some flowers or chocolate or whatever she likes and do it. Secondly, we should use this cultural moment as a divinely appointed opportunity to show our wives some love. After all, we are supposed to, as Paul instructs, love our wives as Christ loves His Church (Ephesians 5:22-23). You don’t very well do that by leaving the Mrs in the cold on Valentine’s Day. We need these prompts, even if created by Hallmark, to be reminded to show our wives just how we feel about them, to renew our commitment to loving them as we love no other human being on the earth. Yes, it is true that love is more than show displays of flowers and chocolate and candy and balloons and teddy bears. But loves is not less than that either. Verbal expressions of love, tangible gifts are important to communicate what we say we feel in our hearts. So we need to do this. We need to make our wives feel every bit the treasure they are. I admittedly struggle with this, to show Angela just how much I love, cherish, and respect her. Valentine’s Day is like a cultural slap upside the head to do what I should be doing more often.

So guys, let’s get it together. I’ll see you in the Hallmark aisle at Walgreen’s tonight.

The Last Week of Jesus

Even for those who know the Bible well, it can be difficult to piece together the final week of Jesus as it is chronicled across the four gospels. This is why I’m excited to see a brand-new book by one of my favorite people: Justin Taylor. Justin is a popular blogger at Between Two Worlds, a senior vice-president and

publisher for books at Crossway, and an author and scholar in his own right. He has teamed with Andreas Kostenberger on a book that is sure to be a terrific reference for Bible students: The Final Days of Jesus. Today I interviewed him for Leadership Journal. Here was one of my questions:

Did anything surprise you about the last week of Jesus?

On the one hand, the story is so familiar to many of us that there are no blockbuster surprises. But it’s one of those stories where there is always more to see in what we see. For example, it makes the doubt and skepticism of Thomas all the more poignant and ironic when we remember that he had already witnessed Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead not that long ago (cf. John 11:16).Or, as another example, take the two thieves on the cross who hung on either side of Jesus. If you only read only Luke 23:32, 39–43, you might get the impression that one starts off open to the gospel of grace, while the other is already hardened in his rejection. A close reading of Matthew 27:44 and Mark 15:32, however, demonstrates that both men started off by reviling Jesus, mocking him, wagging their heads, using their diminishing energies to hurl insults at the only man who could save them. But only one of them had his eyes opened to see himself as a sinner in need of a Savior.And as we vaguely recall the story, we tend only to remember him asking Jesus not to forget him in paradise. But if we read Luke 23:40–42 carefully, we see that this mocker turned seeker now had new spiritual eyes to see, and that in a very short while he really understood the heart of the gospel, that (1) the holiness of God was to be feared, (2) the sin in himself deserved condemnation, (3) the innocent one was being punished, (4) Jesus was the king, ruling from the cross, and (5) only Jesus could offer him mercy and eternal salvation.

Read the rest of the interview here:

Why Should We Talk About Our Racial History?

In Southern Baptist Churches this Sunday we celebrate Racial Reconciliation Sunday. At the ERLC, we’ve developed quite a few resources for churches to use in their presentations. I’m grateful our denomination celebrates this, given our racial history and given how central this issue is to the gospel. In the Great Commission (Mathew 28:16), we see Jesus command us to take the gospel to “all nations” and in John’s vision of the future Kingdom, we see a beautiful picture of all nations, tribes, and tongues gathering around the throne of God (Revelation 5:9; 7:9).

In this video, Dr. Russell Moore of the ERLC and Dr. Matt Hall of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary discuss racial reconciliation and the church. I appreciate the very frank questions answered here, such as: “Why should we talk about our past. Can’t we must move on?” and “Why should white people talk about this?” If you are a pastor or church leader or simply a faithful follower of Jesus, this is an important video to watch.

Beware of Backdoor Legalism

Last week, during an apparent display of debauchery at the Grammy’s (I don’t usually watch award shows. It’s just not my thing. Other folks feel that way about NFL football, which I love). This caused award-winning singer to walk out. She was, from all accounts, not self-righteous or judgmental about it, but just posted a simple explanation about it on her Facebook page.

Of course, this action provoked conversation online, on Twitter and in blogs. Perhaps the most prominent reaction is Laura Turner, who clearly disagreed, writing in her blog for Religion News: “But reading about her decision to leave early and then publicize that decision sounded to me just like the self-righteousness of those people who couldn’t hear a swear word without their faith being threatened.” Now I respect Turner’s instincts here and I have those same ones myself. Christians have, at times, developed an isolationist bent, a sort of fundamentalism that rejects any thoughtful engagement with the world. This inward inpulse has often put us on the same side as the Pharisees who couldn’t entertain a Savior who hung out with the very people he came to save: the sinners, the needy, the sick.

But there’s something in Turner’s blogs and in the comments of other evangelicals that gives me pause. I wonder if we’ve traded a grace-sucking isolationism for a worldly sophistication that has almost no filter for good and bad. I wonder, at what point, would evangelicals who mocked Natalie Grant, at what point would they have walked out? Is there any kind of display that would offend their sensibilities, that would cause them to feel in their heart that they could not sit and watch another minute. We might say no. We might say, “well, Jesus endured the depravity of sinners to win them.” And we’d be right about Jesus, up until the point that he called out sinners for, you know, their sin. I imagine if a Christian told an adulterous woman to “go and sin no more” the progressive blogs would consider Jesus a tightly wound fundamentalist who didn’t understand grace. But this is what Jesus did. And notice Jesus’ interaction with Zacheus, the cheating tax collector who was despised by society for his sin. Yes, Jesus resisted the hyper-spirituality of the religious leaders, yes Jesus was willing to be called a glutton and drunkard for his interaction with sinners. But here’s the difference, I think, in what Jesus did and what some evangelicals want to claim Jesus did and use for cover. Zacheus came away from Jesus repentant. He gave away all that he had stolen. In other words, there was no ambiguity, after his time with Jesus, about the depths of his sin. Jesus dinner with the tax collecting cheat wasn’t just hanging out and ignoring injustice. It was a confrontation between light and darkness. Grace only enters the soul that needs it. And so if there is no recognition of sin, there is no need for a Savior.

So getting back to the Grammys, we can disagree on what kind of displays merit walking out on. We can disagree on what kind of displays we will endure for the sake of the gospel and will use as an opportunity to take a stand. But let’s not tag Natalie Grant with a kind of unenlightened Christianity that makes those who might not have walked out a bit more hip and enlightened. Let’s apply the spirit of 1 Corinthians 8 and not flaunt our liberated hubris in the face of a deeply convicted sister in the Lord. Let’s remember that Phariseeism isn’t constrained to one side of our internecine debates about culture. There is a high-minded pride in some precincts of evangelical hipsters that is as vicious as anything the fundamentalists bring. Legalists are the last to know they are the ones in the wrong.

And in fact, what Natalie did may have been courageous for a number of reasons. For one thing, you can protest and withdraw from certain activities without being judgmental. I’m guessing even the most enlightened, permissive hipster evangelical would have a line over which he or she would not cross. You wouldn’t have to dig too far to find a display that would provoke them to walk out in protest. It’s just that they hold their line to be more sacrosanct than Natalie Grant’s line. Second, you can protest a display of debauchery out of love for neighbor and society. To truly love your neighbor is to want the best possible environment for their flourishing. It could be that it saddens Natalie Grant to see beauty and art reduced to sexual deviancy. Maybe by walking out, she’s fighting for the community she loves to embrace a more healthy, wholesome moral center. Third, there is something to keeping oneself, “unspotted from the world” (James 1:27). Even as we carry the gospel into the darkest places, where evil lurks, we must also have certain places we just cannot go for the sake of moral purity. For instance, I remember the story of an evangelist who intentionally put tracts in between the pages of pornographic magazines. His selling point was that this was how people reading those would find Jesus. But the threat of viewing the images in those magazines and shipwrecking his faith was more serious than his call to evangelize the lost and fulfill the Great Commission. In fact, you might say that his insisting on putting tracts in pornographic magazines belies a lack of faith, as if the rules have to be broken in order to obey Jesus. Better to trust the sovereign God of the universe to reach those people than to compromise your morality.

The bottom line: Legalism is a threat and Christians should avoid it’s ugly tendencies. But there is a backdoor Pharaseeism that’s just as pervasive, only it hides behind a veil of cheap grace. Let’s beware this too.

 

Beware of People-Pleasing

My good friend, Charles Stone, has written about one of the hidden temptations of leadership: the tendency to people-please. I know that I fought this as a pastor and continue to fight it as a leader today. On the one hand, your job is to love and serve God’s people. This means putting aside preference and living in community with people with whom you disagree, people different than you. And at the same time, you wear a title and carry responsibility before God. So you must lead and lead well. Charles is a thoughtful writer. His book, 7 Ministry Killers was one of the best books on leadership I’ve ever read. And he’s back with a new one, People-Pleasing Pastors. Here is one of the questions I asked him:

The job of a pastor, by nature, is to bring people together, to lead a diverse group of volunteers and staff. So how does the pastor avoid a people-pleasing mentality when, by the function of his job, he has to at least satisfy those he serves?

It is important to realize that all people pleasing is not wrong or sinful. We are to love others with Christ’s love and often that means pleasing them (i.e., being kind, compassionate, caring, and forgiving). Yet at the same time, leaders must lead. Leading requires leading people and churches/ministries to change. People don’t mind change, as long as it doesn’t affect them. But when change is necessary, we sometimes must go in directions that won’t please everybody. Unless we lead with courage (and effect change) and are willing to NOT please everyone, we will end up pleasing no one and in turn become miserable ourselves.

Read the entire interview here:

Equipping Students with the Tools of Leadership

It seems we speak a lot to young people about following Christ, but don’t often flesh out what that looks like specific to them and their unique calling. Why do you feel this is an important part of their development?

At SLU we believe that 1 Corinthians 14:8 is spot on: “Again, if the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?” We attempt to put students in a very distinctive unique environment. Since we are clear that our goal is to help them experience a 20-year quantum leap in learning how to think, dream, and lead; we deliberately put them in a corporate hotel, with world-class speakers, and a lot of behind the scenes opportunities.

This could mean a leadership session at a shark tank, whale tank, or dolphin experience at SeaWorld, or a launch pad at Cape Kennedy, or the Pentagon, White House, or Congressional Briefing, or lessons on leadership on the beaches of Normandy, Churchill’s cabinet war rooms, or walking the wall of ancient Jerusalem, or a lesson on the floor of the Roman coliseum, or serving at Give Kids the World for terminally ill children, serving in an orphanage in Kenya, or ministering in the slums of the planet.

We call this EPIC opportunities—Experiential, Participatory, Image Rich, and Community Connecting. In this environment and background we want students to be able to experience a call on their life. Since this generation is more numerous, affluent, better educated, and more ethnically diverse than any other, students want an experience. They don’t want to talk about something or hear about something—they want to do something. When students begin to hear and understand God’s call with crystal-clear clarity they tend to be quite responsive. It is a very exciting moment when the light goes on and they understand that “if God is for me who can be against me.”

It is also our conviction that the Lord doesn’t call us to a position per say—he calls us to a personal relationship with him. We believe this call is not merely a game changer—it is a life changer. We then try to equip students with the rules and tools of leadership and a biblical world-view that will allow them to live out this calling in an ever-changing society.

Read the entire interview here: