One In Jesus

I get emails —

Jay,

Have you written on preacher contracts and job descriptions?  If so, could you direct me there, please.  If not, could you advise me where to find some ideas?

I thought sure I had, but I can’t find it if I did. So many posts. So few remaining gray cells. Oh, well …

Job descriptions

I have a computer folder filled with job descriptions for various ministry positions. I’ve labored over many of them. Some were handed to me by committees. Some came from previous elderships. I can’t remember much about any of them. Really. Continue reading →

I usually limit my commentary to the One True Football Team, but sometimes, matters come to my attention that demand public disclosure.

[Author unknown. Or unknowable.]

Photo / Jason Harless / The Tuscaloosa News

It’s been a good weekend. A client of mine called me Saturday morning and offered me Ivory Club tickets to the Florida game. “Ivory Club” means 40-yard line, row 1, in the fancy club room with a wonderful buffet right next to the President’s Box. Yes, I’ll be glad to take those tickets off your hands!

It’s an ever bigger deal to my wife to get to go to the game and be treated like royalty — better than royalty, really, since there’s no college football in any nation ruled by a monarchy. So getting to watch Alabama dominate Florida from the princely, pricey seats was great fun.

And we just got back from “At the Cross” at Crossbridge Church of Christ in Birmingham (about 1:15 away), where our preacher, Shon Smith spoke, and where we got to visit with old friends and meet a blog reader or two. And it was a great program, a 2-hour worship service led by Hallal with hundreds of Christians from other churches — light on the preaching and heavy on the singing — but even so, the preaching was extraordinary. It was a marvelous service.

Of course, this left no time for writing, other than the two posts on Ephesians. They’ve not generated much in the way of comments, so I figure people don’t read the expository posts like they read the topical posts. Because I said some pretty controversial things in there. I actually prefer doing the expository work. I mean, you can’t do topical material worth a flip if you don’t build an expository foundation.

But I find that modern churches of all stripes are increasingly becoming like high school classes became years ago — light on text and heavy on lessons read into the text. Rather than ask what Ephesians teaches, we figure the class members are too stupid or impatient to actually study the words Paul wrote. And so we extract a nice lesson from a passage — generally ripped out of context — and so fail to teach what is actually taught.

Of course, this has the advantage of allowing us to edit difficult teachings out of our curricula, fooling us into thinking that we understand Eph 5:19 because we have the courage to teach what Paul really wrote — all the while not bothering to read what Paul really wrote. Instead, we begin by just knowing what lessons are important, and then we read only those passages that seem to apply to what’s important. And so our teaching from books like Ephesians becomes more of a self-portrait and an affirmation of long-held positions than a confrontation with the mind of God.

Lately, I’ve found that the “uninteresting” texts, the ones that “don’t apply,” are the ones richest with fresh insights and challenges — because these are the texts we ignore, because they don’t fit our preconceived notion of what God should want to teach us. After all, the Jew/Gentile controversy of the First Century has nothing to teach us today. We need to focus, instead, on affirming our views on how to conduct an assembly.

But our failure to see the contemporary relevance of the ancient controversies shows us that we teach a watered down gospel — and sometimes even a false gospel. We can’t imagine why Paul would dedicate his career and suffer slander and hardship just to get Jews and Gentiles to form a common fellowship and worship in the same church. After all, we’d solve the problem by forming two congregations, and then move on, autonomously isolated from each other. Why didn’t Paul do that?

So, anyway, I’m starting to receive manuscripts for the New Wineskins issue and really need to read and edit them. It’s some really good material. I wish I could post it here. You see, it’s all about the instrumental music controversy, but from some fresh perspectives. Just when you thought there wasn’t anything left to say on the subject, it turns out that there’s a lot that needs to be said that hasn’t been said. So I need to be working on that.