Daniel Darling's Blog, page 71

No Balance is Necessary

Today for Leadership Journal, I had the privilege of interviewing one of my favorite pastors and authors, Kevin DeYoung of University Reformed Church in Lansing, Michigan. If you haven’t read DeYoung’s books, Just Do Something, Why We Love the Church, and Hole in Our Holiness, well then you need to read them. You should also follow his blog, where he posts excellent, balanced content on the life of the Church.

One of the questions I asked Kevin was related to the tension between grace and the pursuit of holiness:

There is a tension in the New Testament. On the one hand we are told, over and over again, that sanctification is all of grace. And yet there are a lot of active verbs which urge Christians to strive and toil and work in pursuit of holiness. How do pastors balance this in their preaching?

In one sense, no balance is necessary. We can’t work too hard and we can’t emphasize grace too much. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15:10 are instructive: “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” Pastors need to boldly preach all the indicatives of the New Testament. We are dead to sin, raised with Christ, heirs with Christ, seated with Christ, in union with Christ. And we must also boldly preach all the imperatives of the New Testament. The basic ethic in the New Testament is “be who you are.” First we know who we are positionally in Christ, and then we are told to progressively grow into that reality. The entire event—definitive sanctification and progressive sanctification—is from God’s grace. But this doesn’t nullify making every effort in the pursuit of holiness (2 Peter 1:5; Hebrews 12:14).

You can read the rest of the interview here: 

Five Common Mistakes Christian Parents Make

My wife and I are in the throes of parenting and are surrounded, in our church and among friends, with other parents in the throes of parenting. So my parenting radar is hot. I’m learning, growing, repenting everyday as I ask the Lord to make me a faithful dad.

It’s often easier to learn how to get better at parenting by observing and owning our mistakes. So here is a list of five tendencies Christian parents have. I hope it helps you think through this journey:

1) We overexpose our kids to the culture. The Bible doesn’t use the term, “culture”, but there is a very similar word, “world.” This is a loose definition of the prevailing thinking in a given society. Typically the values of the culture run counter to the way of Christ. Not always. Sometimes a culture is shaped by Christian influence. Today, we parents should be cautious in what we allow our kids to imbibe. We can be passive in allowing them to form ungodly convictions based on what everyone else is thinking and saying. What’s more, there are corrosive images that can hurt their souls. This is why we have to be wise to monitor the media they consume, how much time they spend online, and the amount of time they spend with friends.

2) We underexpose our kids to the culture. This is an equal and and opposite danger to overexposure. It is easy to adopt a fortress mentality as parents, sheltering our kids so much from the world that they have no ability to discern truth from error, ugliness from beauty. There is a tendency to overprotect our kids so much so that we fail to prepare them for their mission in this world. Our kids will one day live as adults and will require the requisite skills, both spiritual and social, to make wise choices. If our only parenting mode is protection, we fail to teach them how to apply the Scriptures to the reality of life in a sinful world. What’s more we rob them of the God-glorifying act of enjoying, consuming, and creating the best of culture: art, beauty, and grace as expressed by artists whose talent points to a masterful Creator.

3) We mediate all of their petty disputes. I wonder if there is a more difficult thing to resist than the impulse to dive in and solve all of my kids interpersonal problems with their friends. But I’ve found that when I become my child’s defense attorney, all the time, it not only harms my child’s ability to make good choices, it destroys the fragile unity among Christian parents. At times there are issues that are serious that must be addressed and there are times when a parent has to step in if a child is being bullied or abused. I’m not talking about these moments. I’m talking about the every day, garden-variety squabbles that kids have. Let’s face it, our kids are sinners in a fallen world. They will, at times, say things and do things that surprise and shock and hurt. They will at times be the recipient of hurtful words and actions. If we step in and take it personally every single time a kid calls our kid a name, we’ll not train them for life in the real world. We’ll damage their ability to work out forgiveness and repentance. And when they grow to be adults and face life in the world, wow, they will be in for a big, huge, rude awakening. It is said often in Scripture that we demonstrate our love for God by the way we treat people. So we need to let our kids learn these lessons as they interact with their friends.

4) We focus only on short-term behaviors. I’m learning this lesson as my daughter Grace gets older. She’s eight now and we’ve given her some liberty to go a few houses down and visit with her friends. These are good families with whom we have relationships. At times, we’ve gotten upset with Grace because she made poor choices, such as going past the boundaries we’ve set because her friends encouraged her. Or maybe going into someone else’s house or backyard without our approval. Sometimes it’s a simple act of disobedience. But there are other times when, frankly, she was presented with quick choices and wasn’t sure how to respond. We’ve often just reprimanded her for not getting our permission, but we have realized that we didn’t always give her the tools to choose wisely. So we’re sitting her down and running through scenarios, trying to train her how to make wise choices in the moment. We parents have a tendency to allow the frustration of the moment or just pure laziness to set a pattern of simply punishing behaviors rather than trying to set our kids up with the right information and tools to make good choices. We have to remember that there will be a time in the future when they won’t have us around anymore. And so if we make every decision for them. If we give them no space to fail and come back and figure out what they did wrong, if we don’t equip them to discern, they will be helpless when the time comes for them to be on their own. In the back our minds we have remember that we’re not simply training our children to be good, we’re equipping them for God’s unique mission in their generation. Are we doing this?

5) We overcompensate for our perceived childhood gaps. Every generation tends to react to the mistakes (perceived or real) of the previous generation. You hear it in our talk. “My parents never gave me X, so I want to make sure my kids have Y.” What we don’t understand is that our parents were doing the same thing. So the imbalance we experience was likely a reaction to their parents. We want to avoid the reactive, seesaw parenting if we can. It’s good to hilight areas where we think our parents might have missed the mark, but let’s be careful of the pendulum. So if you grew up in a legalistic environment and didn’t like that, your tendency will be toward permissiveness. If you grew up in a loose household, you’ll tend toward legalism, especially if you became a Christian late in life. We are wise to recognize the extremes and avoid them. Furthermore, let’s let the Scriptures and the influence of the Spirit of God guide us. And let’s resist the temptation to reactionary parenting based on what we experienced in our own childhoods. Because, like our parents, we’re fallen sinners in need of God’s grace. Our parenting will have huge gaps. And in twenty years it may be our children sitting on someone’s couch, lamenting the failures of their mother and father. So let’s have some humility.

Compassion for Those at the Back of the Line

I watched this message by Larry Osborne on compassion for those who may not be as spiritually developed as we’d like them to be. And, well, it convicted me in a million ways. You really should watch it. Here’s a quote: ”If our definition of a disciple doesn’t have room for a Joseph of Arimathea, then something is wrong with our definition of a disciple.”

 

 

 

 

New Book Trailer for Activist Faith

Here is the slick new video trailer NavPress produced for our new book, Activist Faith, to be released in July. This is a new project coauthored with my friends, Dillon Burroughs and Dan King. Check it out:

Resources: 

Preorder on Amazon
Activist Faith Website
Activist Faith on Facebook
Activist Faith on Twitter

Resisting the Pound of Flesh

One of the best illustrations of leadership in the Bible is King David’s refusal, twice, to kill King Saul (1 Samuel 24, 1 Samuel 26). You don’t have to be well steeped in Old Testament history to know that Saul was the jealous king who had disobeyed God and took out his anger and wrath on David. For many, many years he chased David around the land of Israel, trying hard to kill this shepherd boy-turned-King. Even Saul’s own son, Jonathan, knew his father was wrong and befriended David at the risk of his life.

And yet, when David had two chances to kill Saul, he didn’t. Many interpret this as a warning for rebelling against God-ordained authority. I’ve even heard it abused this way to justify corrupt leadership. I do think it can be applied in this context and I do think an anti-authoritarian attitude conveys a lack of faith in God’s sovereignty. However, there is another lesson here that is even more powerful, I think.

When you have been wronged or you have serious disagreements with a person or a movement, there is a temptation to not only disagree, but to nourish the desire to see your enemies pay. David himself struggled with this desire, evidenced in the many imprecatory prayers (Psalms 7, 35, 55, 58, 59, 69, 109, and 139.). In these appeals to God, David asked for the destruction of those who opposed him. I imagine he envisioned a portrait of King Saul in more than one of these prayers. And yet the scenes with David in 1 Samuel 24 and 1 Samuel 26 show us just what David did with those thoughts of revenge. He didn’t act on them. 

The desire to get back, to go for the jugular, to have his pound of flesh against the man who had tormented him and ruined his life–this desire stayed where it always should–in the space between David and his God. In other words, while David felt the urge to see real-world justice happen against Saul, David acted on the biblical truth that vengeance belongs to the Lord (Romans 12:9). And apparently God had so moved in David’s heart that when he heard the news of Saul’s death, he grieved deeply (2 Samuel 1).

We could learn a lot of from David’s example, can’t we? Whenever we are wrong or we have a very substantive disagreement with someone, there is a great temptation to not only “win the argument” (whatever that means), but also to see our enemies, both real and ideological, find a swift and embarrassing demise. And here is the scary thing, like David, there will likely be nobody in our inner circle who will counsel us away from pursuing our enemy’s last pound of flesh. Nobody to say, “Hey, wait a minute, trust the Lord, don’t seek vengeance.” We live in a culture that encourages this kind of bloodlust. Politicians don’t simply run for office, they dig and search for the one piece of dirt that will sink their opponents. We can’t simply disagree with people, we have to forward emails detailing their utter depravity and Machiavellian schemes. Church leaders do this as well. Christian bloggers do this. We can’t have civil arguments over substantive doctrine, we must wish our opponents the swiftest possible destruction.

This is why we need David’s example of leadership. When he could have ended Saul’s life in embarrassing humility (dying while going to the bathroom, can you imagine a more ignoble death?), rather David directed his thoughts upward and trusted in the Lord. This is attitude of forgiveness, repentance, and trust is vital for every follower of Christ. It makes us countercultural. It’s even more important for Christian leaders, for what we model in moderation, our followers will exhibit in excess. If we create cultures that celebrate retribution and cheap rhetorical victories, those who hang on our every word will take this to an extreme. And instead of creating disciples of Jesus, we’ll create disciples of an insular, spiteful movement. Let’s not do this.

Instead, when given the opportunity to humiliate those who have hurt us or those who disagree, let’s put the sword back in the sheath and walk away.

People Unlike Ourselves

In my weekly Friday Five interview for Leadership Journal, I had the privilege of chatting with Trillia Newbell, a prolific writer and author. One of the subjects she frequently writes about is race and the Church. I asked her how pastors and church leaders can promote racial diversity:

Pastors and church leaders can begin by relating—whether through hospitality or guest speakers—to those unlike themselves. This will send a message to their congregations. People are watching to see what their leaders are doing, and though we can and should pursue others regardless of what our leadership does, the truth is we watch, learn, and emulate them. So if the pursuit of diversity is important to a leader or pastor, they need to actively pursue it themselves. They’ll be amazed by the effect on their church environment.

via You can read the rest of the interview here:

5 Reflections on My First Year of Seminary

Even though I’ve been in ministry for several years, writing, pastoring, preaching, I made the decision last year to apply at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. By some miracle of divine providence, I got in and by another miracle of divine providence, I finished a year. Because I’m doing this while I’m pastoring and writing, it will likely take me five years to complete my degree.

So what do I think after a year of seminary? Here are five reflections:

1) To attend seminary is a privilege. One of the frequent prayers we make in our formation group is this, “Dear God, thank you for the rich privilege to study at such a good seminary.” Most pastors and ministry workers around the world are not afforded the rich theological resources available to Americans. There’s a lot of complaining going on in the Church today about seminary, lot’s of questions about higher education, etc. But those of us who have been or are being exposed to seminary, do we realize the privilege we have?

2) Seminary is merely the beginning of lifelong learning. The purpose of attending seminary is to give those called to preach and teach the Word a season of intensive study and reflection. But this learning is only the beginning of a lifelong pursuit of God. So often you hear pastors or ministry workers say things like, “I didn’t learn this is in seminary.” I think we say this because we misunderstand the purpose of our education. Yes, it is to train us in teaching the Word of God. yes it is to provide some leadership tools. But there are many things we will learn in life that cannot and should not be taught in a seminary class. And that’s okay. That’s not your school’s role. In seminary, the best and most competent pour into you what they have, the body of truth passed from generation to generation, and it is the Holy Spirit’s job to shape your character for God’s mission.

3) To really study and know God requires serious discipline. The rigors of academic study force you to ask yourself, over and over again, “How much do I want to know God.” Because serious study of the Word requires discipline and focus. It requires your heart and your soul. It takes much from you. And yet, can you think of a subject which demands more study than the study of God and His written revelation? I’ve been impressed by my fellow seminary classmates. Guys who move across the country or world with their families and get up at ungodly hours in the morning to study Greek are guys serious about God’s mission. They’re not messing around. They’re about doing God’s work.

4) As much as you know, there’s always more to learn. It’s interesting for me to balance my role as Senior Pastor, husband, father, and seminary student. At church and at home, because of my leadership role, I’m kind of the guy people look at who is suppose to know things. Yet when I sit in that seminary class under a longtime professor, I’m just a student who knows next to nothing. This kind of humility is good for me. It reminds me that as much as I think I know and as much as I have read and studied, there is always so much more.

5) Studying theology is an act of worship. If there is one thing that studying at TEDS this year did for me it was to increase my passion for God. Yes, there is a level of theological study that can be divorced from personal piety. We’re warned about that constantly at TEDS. But done right, studying in seminary can be a rich time of personal growth. Perhaps it’s because I’m in the everyday throes of ministry and family, but seminary has only allowed me to know Christ more by knowing His Word more. To make the sacrifice to study theology intensely is an act of worship.

Bottom Line: I’ve loved my time at TEDS. I can’t wait for my next year of study. I’m grateful for this rich season of intellectual and spiritual growth.

Finding Joy In a Fallen World

I’ve been deeply convicted lately, about my own writing and interaction on social media. I enjoy keeping up with current events, politics, and movements in the Church. I like writing in reaction to news stories, helping people think biblically about what is going on in the world. I’d like to think I do a fair job at doing this, but I know that because I see “through a glass darkly” even at my best, my view of the world is tainted by sin. It’s a good thing to help people size up the world biblically, but if we’re not careful (and by we, I mean me), people can assume that the Christian faith is all about cynicism, negativity, and opposition.

I recently read, afresh, Philippians 4:8:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

We typically use this verse as a guideline for what kind of entertainment we allow ourselves to view. Some tape this to their television set or computer. This is a good application of this verse, but I wonder if seeing this only as a sort of entertainment filter limits the application. I think there is more here.

Think on these things. Paul is repeating a theme common to his writing. He’s applying the gospel message to the way we think. God has given us minds with which to love him. And Paul is asking a question, “How are we stewarding our thought lives?”

There is a lot of bad in the world. There is a lot of sin. There are many injustices which demand the prophetic voice of God’s people. There is a lot of bad in the Church. There is a lot of sin. There are injustices, even in the Church, which demand the prophetic voice of God’s people.

And yet . . . should the negative occupy all we speak and write about? Should we be primarily reactionary? Or, does Paul counsel us here to operate our ministry from the position of what is beautiful instead of what is ugly? Let’s review where Paul is write now as he’s writing these words:

He’s in jail.

He’s been unjustly treated.

He lost his religious freedom.

He’s in the Roman Empire, governed by one of the most sadistic, authoritarian madmen ever put in power.

He’s got friends, Christian friends, who’ve betrayed him.

He’s probably very sickly.

And yet Paul says, to paraphrase, “In light of what we have in Christ, let’s think on these things: truth, honor, justice, purity, loveliness, what is commendable and what is praiseworthy.”

In other words, let’s not singlehandedly focus on what is bad in our world, let’s not simply react to everything negative. Even though this world is so tainted by sin and there are evil people and tragic circumstances, there is still a lot of goodness and beauty and joy in this world. Let’s find those things and rejoice in them. Let’s ponder them. Let’s revel in them.

Yes, there is time for lament and sorrow and weeping. But given that we know the Man of Sorrows who has born our grief, let’s train our minds to find what is beautiful in this world, what is lovely and pure and wonderful. Let’s rejoice in a golden sunset. Let’s revel in the beautiful laughter of our children. Let’s appreciate good art, regardless of the source. Let’s enjoy a sport event without guilt. Let’s revel in deep friendships. Let’s love our spouses and enjoy their company. Let’s admire a well-crafted piece of furniture. Let’s laugh and cry at a good theatrical production. Let’s let the best music run through the ears into the deepest part of the heart.

As a Christian, we can look at what is beautiful and we can do it to the glory of God. Why? Because anything beautiful or lovely or good can catapult our hearts into worship of the Creator who made it. Every time your child laughs and gives you joy, you can silently worship God who is the giver of all good gifts. And you can do this with a delicious meal, a glorious soundtrack, a delightful conversation, or anything that brings you wholesome pleasure. You can do this because you know each and every glimpse of beauty is a reflection of the One who is beautiful: Jesus.

What Paul is really saying, I think, is this. Don’t be cynical. Be grateful. If it was ingratitude (according to Romans 1) that turned man’s heart from Creator to creation, then it is gratitude that turns man’s heart the other way. For if we listen to Paul and think long enough about what is good and lovely and just and commendable and praiseworthy, we’ll find Jesus.

Truth Matters, But So Does Our Attitude

Today I had the chance to interview one of my favorite pastors and authors, Joshua Harris. I’m a couple of years younger than Josh, so his books on dating I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Boy Meets Girl really helped me adopt a more Christ-centered view of dating and marriage when I was in high-school and in college. I’ve been reading his books and listening to his messages online ever since.

His latest book is Humble Orthodoxy. I first heard him give this message the Gospel Coalition in Chicago in 2011. It really resonated with me. I had the chance, in this interview, to ask him what this term means. He explained:

It’s a simple idea, really. Truth matters, but so does our attitude. It’s vital that we be committed to orthodox Christian belief, but we also need to defend and share this truth with compassion and humility towards others. I want to remind believers that to glorify Jesus we need both humility and orthodoxy—we can’t choose one or the other.

You can read the entire interview with Joshua Harris here:

The Grace of Radical Ordinariness

There has been much discussion in the evangelical world about the call to radical discipleship. Perhaps it began with Matthew Lee Anderson’s corrective to books by men like David Platt, Francis Chan, and others. I thought Matt’s piece was very helpful. On other hand, I have also been encouraged by the books and movements Anderson sought to correct. David Platt and Francis Chan and others are right in pushing the American church from it’s lethargy, of echoing Jesus call to radical discipleship.

Where the conversation, I think, is unhelpful is when it devolved into a sort of mockery of some of the radical message. I felt Anthony Bradley’s piece in World was unfair and, at times, snarky and dismissive of genuine attempts at Christian faithfulness. I also disliked Erick Erickson’s piece, which demonstrated a sort of dismissive, broad-brush approach to Christian’s answer the call to go serve Christ in hard places.

The problem, sometimes, with our discussions and our movements is that we embrace some wild, reactionary pendulum swings. I’m disturbed by this. I think it reflects our inability to embrace tension. The Scriptures are full of seemingly competing ideas that are not meant to be resolved or “won.” They are meant to be embraced as they are. One of these is the two , side-by-side ideas that form the basis of the “Radical” conversation.

On the one hand, Jesus calls us to sacrificial, out-of-the-ordinary, commitment to His call. He calls us to suffer and to die. He calls us to give up what is precious. He calls us to be his emissaries to the hard and difficult places of the world, to permeate all corners of the globe with His love.

And yet, we are called to a sort of ordinariness. A sort of faithful, anonymous regular living. We are to fulfill our unique vocations, based on the set of talents, gifts, and opportunities He has given us. We’re called not simply to be pastors or missionaries in far-flung places, we’re called to faithful living at home, in ordinary vocations, because the actual work we produce honors God as the Creator. We reflect him when we do good work.

These two realities do not have to compete. So why do they? Well I think we have two problems inherent in a depraved nature. First is the temptation to hold ourselves in higher esteem than our neighbors. So the call God has given to me has to be the call God gives everyone and so we look down on those with differing vocations and choices. The guy who moves his family into the inner city might think Christians in the suburbs are not living out fully the mission of Christ. And the suburban guy might think the city-dweller is just a bit grandstanding with his big ‘save-the-city’ mission. Both suffer from judgmentalism. We can easily become legalistic and make our choices the norm for everyone around us.

Secondly, we tend to justify our own choices and comforts. So our reaction to reading a book like Radical might be to mask the conviction of the Spirit with a sort of mockery. I know this attitude well as a long-time Christian. I remember growing up and looking friends who took their Christian commitment a bit too seriously. The easiest thing, when you are seriously challenged, is to respond with mockery and self-justification.

So how should we approach our call to discipleship? First, we should it seriously. I agree with Ed Stetzer when he says that, in general, the problem in America is not that too many Christians are selling all they have and moving to far-flung places. The problem is that not enough people are. As a pastor I see, too often, a lazy approach to Christianity, where living for Christ really causes no additional sacrifice. To follow him, to evangelize, to grow in knowledge is viewed as sort of a nice option after everything else in life is taken care of. To see the gospel permeate all of life sounds a bit too, well, radical. The Great Commission  after all, is not an option. Making disciples is part and parcel of our Christian commitment. And to mock someone like David Platt who has an urgent desire to see Christians make disciples, to me, is wrongheaded. It sounds too much like the short-sighted church folks who dismissed William Carey’s burden to bring the gospel to India. I praise God for men like David Platt.

But secondly, we must understand that you can be radical in an ordinary sort of way. Radical doesn’t always mean doing what God called someone else to do. And my radicalness shouldn’t be used as a hammer against your life. The radical call to discipleship shouldn’t damage the doctrine of vocation, which gives God-ordained worth and value to seemingly “secular” endeavors. The guy who sweats Monday-thru-Friday in a low-paying factory job can be radical in that he is unusually committed to his chosen vocation, seriously about knowing Christ, wildly extravagant in his giving, and faithful to his local church. He may never write a New York Times bestselling book, may never be interviewed by Christianity Today, and will likely never appear at a conference near you. And yet, he is radical. I think of my own father, a plumber. Dad doesn’t preach sermons. Doesn’t visit AIDS orphans. Hasn’t been to a third-world country. And yet Dad has always done great, great plumbing work to the glory of God. He’s been an incredibly sacrificial giver. He’s been faithful to God and to his local Bible-believing church. And he raised his family to love Jesus. That’s radical in an ordinary way. Dad has been radically faithful in a way that few Christian men are.

My point is that we shouldn’t pit Christians like my father over against Christians who are doing more seemingly radical stuff like digging wells and helping in the slave trade. We need both kinds of people. We shouldn’t shame those who are being faithful where they are in their chosen vocation, who live in the suburbs, who have nice manicured lawns. And we shouldn’t mock those who feel persuaded to move to difficult areas of the world and live out the gospel that way.

And all of us should periodically examine our obedience. Are we being radical where God has called us?