C. S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer . . . and Larry Norman
February 26, 2008
Larry Norman, “father of Christian rock,” has gone home. After suffering a severe heart attack and other ailments, he slipped away at 61.
Larry Norman was the writer of a number of popular Christian songs, including “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” many people’s first encounter with the chilling eschatology of the Rapture. He popularized, and perhaps even invented, the “One Way” gesture of the index finger pointing straight up. He helped launch the careers of many talented artists, including Randy Stonehill (my personal favourite, from whom Norman later became estranged), the Daniel Amos band, and many others on his “Street Level” and then “Solid Rock” labels.
For me, however, Larry Norman in particular was a larger-than-life figure who, with authors C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer, helped this Plymouth Brethren teenager, in the backwoods (literally) of northern Ontario, look out onto a larger world of Christian possibilities. Indeed, he helped me to look out onto the larger world itself and feel that perhaps I could actually live there, rather than just briefly venture out into it to evangelize a soul or two and then hurriedly withdraw to the sanctuary of my sect.
Evangelical Elites Avoiding Church?
February 24, 2008
Much has been written about Michael Lindsay’s recently published study on evangelical elites in America, summarized here in a USA Today article. Among his findings: evangelical elites, by which he means those evangelicals who have attained positions of influence in culturally significant institutions, from business to politics to mass media, don’t go to church nearly as often as what he calls “populist” evangelicals.
Instead, he says, they belong to home study groups, to friendship circles, and (here’s where things get a bit sinister) to invitation-only fellowships of similarly powerful Christians.
There’s lots to dislike about this picture. It’s one thing to be elite: some people are much more successful in certain things than the rest of us, such as gaining power in mainstream institutions. It’s another thing to be elitist: to think of oneself more highly than one ought to think, to keep out the rabble and to keep oneself to fellow “right-thinking” people.
Some also think it’s bad to see all this power, talent, drive, and, yes, money being kept out of local congregations and diverted/devoted instead to parachurch organizations.
And some think that these high and mighty folks could do with a good dose of reality, with having to roll up their sleeves in an ordinary church among ordinary people and learn some common sense wisdom from common folk.
That’s one side of it, if a pretty slanted side. But then, as Lindsay himself points out, there’s another dimension to this issue: evangelical elites can’t find churches worth going to.
Church Bulletin Classics
February 17, 2008
You’ve likely seen lists such as this one before. But this is a pretty good one, and I’ve been awfully serious of late, so let’s lighten things up a bit as we find out more about our churches than perhaps we want to…
The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.
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The sermon this morning: “Jesus Walks on the Water.” The sermon tonight: “Searching for Jesus.”
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Our youth basketball team is back in action Wednesday at 8 PM in the recreation hall. Come out and watch us kill Christ the King.
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Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.
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The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been canceled due to a conflict.
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Don’t let worry kill you off - let the Church help.
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Miss Charlene Mason sang “I will not pass this way again,” giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.
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Why No One Here Is Laughing at My Jokes
February 13, 2008
I’m finishing my very brief first visit to India–Bangalore, in particular. I have given six lectures in three days, enjoyed several meals on the campus of the ACTS Institute where the week-long seminar for graduate students is being held, and driven back and forth through Bangalore’s kaleidoscopic traffic in those three days.
Everyone who comes to India for the first time records profound and moving experiences. Usually those experiences are described in terms of shocking juxtapositions: ancient/modern, Indian/British, rich/poor. I’ve had those experiences, too, but cannot think of a single original, interesting thing to say about them. They’re just real: profound and moving.
But here is something else I’ve noticed, not so profound, but disconcerting at the least. My best jokes, throughout my lectures, have flown across the room, making no evident connection with my audience, and then have silently disappeared in a far high corner where they went to die.
A Prayer of Dedication
February 6, 2008
Friends, I’m heading off to Bangalore, India, for the next week to teach pastors and graduate students at Dr. Ken Gnanakan’s ACTS Institute. I’m not sure if I can post from there, so I’ll leave you with something substantial over the meanwhile: this splendid, touching prayer of commitment from the Methodist Covenant Service, anthologized in The Oxford Book of Prayer, edited by George Appleton.
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt:
Put me to doing: put me to suffering:
Let me be employed for thee, or laid aside for thee:
Exalted for thee, or brought low for thee:
Let me be full, let me be empty:
Let me have all things: let me have nothing:
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Thou art mine and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth let it be ratified in heaven.
Do You Have to Choose between Your Brains and Your Beliefs? No, No, and Sort of, but No
February 3, 2008
In this short series, I’ve responded to the common charge by the current crop of atheists about Christians being not too bright (Richard Dawkins), if not positively dangerous and downright insane, such that one simply must choose between contemporary science and religious faith, between one’s brains and one’s beliefs. And I have replied twice in the negative.
But there is an important sense in which Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. are on to something.
They say they can’t see how someone can reasonably believe the basic tenets of the Christian faith: that God is a trinity of one being in three persons; that one of those persons became human in Jesus of Nazareth; that Jesus of Nazareth atoned for the sins of the world on the cross; that the resurrection of Jesus signifies eternal life for all who trust in him; and that all of these propositions can be believed because taught by the Bible, which is to be accepted as the Word of God written.
And they’re right to find it impossible to see how someone can reasonably believe that–if by “reasonably believe” they cling to a particular mode of reasoning, namely, inference from empirical data or self-evident propositions.
