Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi

I shared this old Latin phrase of the church with our praise team last night at our rehearsal for the Sunday morning worship service.  Roughly translated it means something like, "Law of prayer/worship, law of faith."  It's shorthand for basically, "show me how you pray/worship, and I'll show you what you believe."

So I challenged our group to think about every minute thing we do on a Sunday morning--what are we demonstrating that we believe...

...when we gather on a Sunday morning for worship instead of a Saturday night or some other day/night of the week?

...when we sing songs with lots of "I's" and "me's" in them but very few "we's" and "us's" in them?

...when we take Communion/the Eucharist/the Lord's Supper every few weeks?

...when we turn up our microphones so loudly that we cannot hear the congregation singing?

...when we welcome visitors (or don't welcome visitors) at the doors of our church building?

...when we invite people (or don't invite people) to the altar for prayer?

...when we read the scriptures out loud in the service?

...when we set up a 'stage' in front of an 'audience' for 'worship'?

...when we have a time of 'fellowship' in which we encourage everyone to say hello to one another during the service?

...when we bring drinks into the worship service?

...when we tithe and give offerings to the church and those in need?

Lex orandi, Lex credendi.  Show me how you worship/pray and I will show you what you believe.  Every little thing that we do in our worship services--even the subtle or non-conscious things, even the type of building we choose to meet in--shape our theology, shape what we believe about God and our relationship to him and others.  People often think you get theology from the sermon, and maybe occasionally from the songs you sing on Sunday morning.  The fact of the matter is that for the average Christ, most of our theology is shaped by the countless subtle, small, individually insignificant things that we do (and don't do) in worship.

When I abstain from taking my latte in the worship service, I am doing so because of a subtle already formed in me concerning reverence for God.

When I choose to welcome a visitor at the door of our church, not simply by handing them a bulletin, but by inviting them to a seat in the service, I do so because of an already formed belief about the hospitality of Christ's Church.

More passively, when I see technicians in the church who run lights, sound, and computers, but who do not participate in singing the songs of worship, tithing, or taking the Eucharist, I am sent a distinct--though subtle--message about God and his church.

The very name of the place where we meet sends a theological message--like whether or not the name has the word "church" anywhere in it, or is a bit more hip like "Crossroads" (I only use this name because I see it everywhere--not trying to bash it).

So how about you?  What credendi (beliefs) do you and your church's orandi (worship and prayer) demonstrate?

Christian Craziness

Does all of the absolute insanity and sometimes downright violence that masquerades under the banner of Jesus ever just get to you?  It's been really getting to me lately.

Harold Camping predicts the end of the world and rapture on May 21, and (for the second time) gets it wrong....

Thousands of Christians expecting to be raptured out of the world and into heaven give massive amounts of money to avowed atheists to watch over their pets during the coming tribulation....

Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona condemns men for peeing while sitting down and prays for the death of President Obama....

Premillennial dispensationalist Christians lobby and sends millions of dollars to AIPAC, CUFI, and other pro-Israeli organizations that further programs of forced deportation of Palestinians and the illegal occupation of their homes and lands....

I remember back when Jerry Falwell announced to the world that Hurricane Katrina was the result of homosexuality in America.....

You can find Youtube videos of Christians burning NIV, NRSV, and other non-KJV versions of the Bible....

The pickets at military funerals, saying the deaths are the result of pro-gay policies in the US....

I just recently saw several people on facebook lamenting that they were "still here" (i.e. the rapture didn't happen)....


I just jumped on Google's search engine and typed in "Why are Christians so" (a little trick I picked up from Leonard Sweet).  Do you want to know the options that Google gives me for finishing out that search?
...fake...
...divided...
...mean...
...ignorant...
...annoying...


These are apparently some of the most popular searches on the Inter and, you know what, it's kinda hard to blame people for asking these kinds of questions when we see such lunacy in our midst, isn't it?

How did it get this bad?  How come we have people who claim the name of Christ who obviously know so little about who he is, what he came to go, what he's about and what he's not about?

You know, I've noticed (at least) one common thread that binds much of the above-mentioned lunacy together; it's something I've only notice in recent years: All of the things that I've mentioned here are the product primarily of independent churches--churches or ministries that have broken away from or were never associated with a denomination or established church tradition--usually independent baptist or non-denominational congregations/ministries.


You might wonder why that matters at all.

When churches separate themselves from the established traditions of the classical Christian faith, they break themselves off from any theological or practical accountability.  There is no one inside the church tradition of Harold Camping to challenge him when he makes a doomsday prediction, because he has cut himself off from the body.  There is no one inside the church tradition of Steven Anderson or the late Jerry Falwell or the countless dispensationalist pastors in independent baptist and non-denominational churches across America to challenge them when they make their crazy or bigoted or down-right hateful assertions, because they have cut themselves off from the body.


There is an epidemic of independence in American Christianity today, and I have come to truly believe that much of the craziness, lunacy, and bigotry that masquerades under the banner of Jesus is enabled by the fact that our congregations and independent ministries have cut themselves off from the rest of the body that was designed to, among other things, keep them accountable to the truth.

So how do we correct this?  For one thing, stop starting new independent churches!  That phrase "independent church" ought to be an oxymoron to us anyway--if the church is anything it is an interdependent community, a body with many members (who are not just 'spiritually' connected, but who strive for actual connectedness and accountability).  Instead let's try working within (despite the many problems) our existing traditions and denominations (and there are plenty).  At least when you are a part of the Roman Catholic Church, the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the Lutheran Church, the Church of the Nazarene, etc. you have checks and balances in place.  No one independent pastor or ministry organizer can spout of craziness or bigotry without being checked by others within their tradition.

And if we can learn to work within the existing traditions and denominations (as flawed as they are), then maybe we can even start working toward ecumenical unity--it was Jesus himself, after all, who prayed "that they be one." (John 17)  Obviously there is much work to be done, but separating ourselves into ever-increasing numbers of independent churches has created the environment for lunacy and heresy to spread throughout American Christianity, and the only check for it is the body of Christ functioning as the body of Christ.  Just saying "the Bible is all we need" won't cut it (just google "Steven Anderson" to see as much proof as you will need about that).

The ancient church fathers used to say, "You cannot have God as Father without the Church as Mother."  Unless we want to see more unchecked lunacy and violence spread under the banner of the name of Jesus, we would be wise to heed these strong words.

Heaven Is For Real

So I'm still in the giddy phase with my brand new Kindle--downloading and reading books left and right--and last night I downloaded a copy of a book that I have to say I am a little embarrassed to admit that I read. The day I got my Kindle as a graduation gift, I downloaded all kinds of sample books from Amazon (a great feature of the device; you  usually get the first chapter of a book).  One I downloaded at the recommendation of a family member was this book entitled Heaven Is For Real.  I'll confess that I downloaded the sample just to be respectful, not because I seriously thought I'd read it.  That is until last night...

I picked up the Kindle to read a bit of G.K. Chesterton last night, and after reading about a chapter of Orthodoxy, browsed through some of my samples.  I read through the sample chapter of this book.  Here's the DL: A Wesleyan pastor out of a small town (2,000 people) in Nebraska tells the story of his four-year-old son who, after undergoing an emergency appendectomy on his ruptured appendix, began telling his parents of seeing and experiencing heaven during his surgery.

I know, I know.  If you're like me you exit out of this blog right now and go about the rest of your day, thinking a little bit less of me than you did before you checked out this blog.  That's OK by me; I'm still processing what I think about this book, too, but I wanted to get it out there for conversation.

I'm not sure why I bought the book (although it was pretty cheap through the Kindle): maybe it was the fact that the preface included praises from both a General Superintendent and a District Superintendent of the Wesleyan Church, and I was a little curious as to whether or not this sister denomination was falling into some pseudo-Christian fantasy; maybe it was something else--but in any case I downloaded the book, intending to skim through the first few chapters and then head to bed.

At 2AM I finished the book, and only then did I head to bed.  I couldn't put it down.

Now, I've only ever read one other book on a near-death experience and it was awful.  I hesitate to give the title because it was a book given to me by a dear Christian friend.  But the fact of the matter was that it was the most gnostic and truly anti-Christian thing I'd ever read: stories about being a floating spirit, floating throughout the universe, soaking in all knowledge (Greek = gnosis), being happy about being free from the evil body (denial of the resurrection), talking about the transmigration of souls from heaven to earth and then back to heaven again...it was just awful.  I couldn't finish it all.

This book wasn't anything like that.  I kept waiting for it to turn into that, but it didn't.  It was a rather simple account, by the pastor dad, of the kinds of things his 4-year-old son revealed to him over the course of months and years about his experience while on the operating table.  Things like: seeing Jesus, who is the only one in heaven who wears purple, and who has "markers" in his hands and feet; getting a hug from his sister, who was a miscarriage his parents never told him about; meeting his great-grandfather, Pop, who had passed away 30 years before Colton's birth, while "sitting" next to the Holy Spirit; giving his parents a detailed picture of where they were and what they were doing while he was undergoing his operation, saying he could look down on them and see them.

As the dad processed what his son was telling him (in little spurts, here and there, over the course of many months), he kept going back to the scriptures and trying to reconcile what he said with what he found there.  Perhaps more than any other aspect of the book, this kept my attention.  The dad, who as I mentioned is a pastor, did not take his son's experience and then interpret the scriptures in light of it; he kept going back to the scriptures and trying to interpret his son's experience in light of them.  At times I thought, Well if he just had a more sophisticated knowledge of that passage in Revelation, he would realize that this imagery is not to be taken literally--Jesus does not necessarily wear a crown in his exalted state, for instance.  I was checked (I think by the Spirit), though, every time these thoughts would arise.

The question kept coming back to me, and I continue to wrestle with it today: Why is it so hard to believe that this little boy had an experience or vision of what he understood as 'heaven' (and what might be more accurately referred to, as Paul referred to it, as 'Paradise,' the place where believers await the resurrection of the dead?)  Do I really believe that Paul had such an experience? (See 2 Cor. 12:1-13, where Paul is most likely using a rhetorical function ["I know  man..."] to describe an experience he himself had.)  What about John the Revelator?  Was his Apocalypse simply a literary production, or did he really see through a "door" in heaven that stood open? (Rev 4)  Why am I so quick to dismiss the possibility?

The boy's story never undermined the doctrine of the resurrection; he described distinct visions of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; after the experience, his dad describes how deeply concerned he was that people "have Jesus in their heart," because, he said, they couldn't go to heaven without having Jesus in their heart.  This was no unitarian, universalistic, gnostic portrait of the afterlife; it was something, at least in my judgment, fairly agreeable to the visions of Paul and John in the scriptures.

So, I don't know....  Now I'm just starting to ramble.  As you can probably tell (if you've even read this far), I'm just kind of processing all of this "out loud" as it were.  But I'm curious: Have you read the book or heard this boy's story in the news?  If so, what do you think?  How much credence should we give to it?  Is there something I missed that really undermines its congeniality with the scriptures?  I would truly welcome feedback as I continue to process all of this.

All I know right now is that it is as if I didn't realize I was thirsty for something like this until I had been refreshed by reading it.  Now I realize that my sensitivity to such stories--even the ones we find in the scriptures--was...well, how to put it... dry.  I read them, accepted them intellectually, but never truly considered them.  And maybe that's a good thing--not to put too much credence in these obscure passages and experiences.  But maybe I've neglected these things too much?  Maybe....

Your thoughts?