A Response to Some Questions Rachel Held Evans Asked Three Weeks Ago

I'm too slow for the internet age.  I've got too much to do, too many places that my kids need to be, too many meetings, etc.  I've made a number of efforts to blog with some regularity, but that always fails spectacularly.  Oh, I've got thoughts and ideas about stuff to write  - but they get moved to the side by the normal stuff of day-to-day ministry and life.  I say all that because I wrote a response to some questions that Rachel Held Evans  posted which are (I think) intended to be part of a discussion that she will be 'hosting' over the summer.  Below is my response to her first set of questions.  Not sure who will read this, but here ya go:

1. What's the difference between being prophetic and just being a jerk? 

I think it can be boiled down to two things: intent and content.  For ancient Hebrew prophets, their intention was to proclaim the message that God gave to them.  Their motivation was faithfulness to God, even in the face of hostile opposition and, for some, the very real threat of death.  The Hebrew prophets covered a wide range of approaches, rhetoric, and personalities - the delivery methods employed were not the issue.  The primary issue was faithfulness to God's call and God's message. 

I always brace myself when I hear someone label themselves or their message as being "prophetic".  There are typically two reasons they do this, in my experience: (1) they are worried that their message is somewhat controversial and so they are attempting to forestall any potential criticisms or dismissals by appealing to the so-called "prophetic" nature of their message, or, (2) they may assume that using that label gives them carte blanche to be confrontational or mean-spirited and any dissenters can just shut up and take their medicine. 

However, being a prophet means being a vessel for God's message, speaking for God, delivering God's Word.  Put simply, a prophet's job is to tell the truth as revealed by God.  Being a prophet is NOT simply telling people controversial stuff.  It is NOT crafting your message so that people will feel bad, about themselves or others.  It is NOT challenging or confronting or exposing simply for the sake of doing these things.  What many who claim to be 'prophetic' often forget is how much praise, encouragement, joy, and hope can be found in the Hebrew prophets. 

As a Christian, my conviction is that love must motivate any teaching or sermon or statement that we deem 'prophetic'.  If we are not motivated by love of God and love of our neighbors, then the claim of being prophetic is an empty one.  When our message is motivated by self-righteousness, moral superiority, or theological competition, we are not prophets, we are Pharisees.  And jerks, too. 

2. How do we advocate both prophetic challenge and grace-filled public engagement without resorting to incivility on the one hand or tone-policing on the other?

First, I wonder what is meant by "public engagement" - which public is assumed here?  Who are we advocating for exactly?  Our own public engagement, the Church's in general, Christians who claim to be 'prophetic'?  I'll assume that we're talking about Christian leaders who have the responsibility to speak and whose platform extends beyond the local church, which is a large number of people given the prominence of social media. 

Not to be flippant, but I think the answer again is love.  Not tolerance or pity or paternalism masquerading as love.  And not judgmental moralizing or warnings about damnation cruelly posing as love.  But cruciform, kenotic, Holy Spirit powered love that contains within itself both prophetic challenge and grace in abundance.  The most difficult prophetic message for our time (in my humble opinion) is that God's love revealed in Jesus Christ persistently pushes/leads/pulls/urges us towards both introspective confessional humility and towards indiscriminate, active serving of others. 

In terms of tone-policing, the difficulty in our current time and place is that so many of us feel the insistent urge to oversee other peoples' words and actions.  So many of us feel responsible to point out others' deficiencies, typically as they relate to some fuzzy notion of 'tolerance' or 'acceptance' on the progressive side of things and stridency or strict adherence to a theological program on the other side.  The mechanism (social media) makes the lure of pharisaical tone-policing almost irresistible.  And if it is a Christian who is doing the policing (which is so often the case as it relates to your content), then I typically assume that such persons have not spent much time actually wrestling with Matthew 7:1-5 or Romans 2:1-11 - of course, I could be wrong about that.

When it comes to civility, I personally think it's overrated as well as being an ambiguous standard for judging our speech.  Civility, like tolerance, is a very low bar to set for our discourse, although we should by no means strive for incivility, either.  Civility is a fine enough standard for secular political discourse, but for Christians, we are called to something much greater and much more difficult: the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ and made possible in us through the Holy Spirit. 

3. Is an online “call out” an effective way to create change, and if so, how can it be done well?

No, it's not effective mainly because it is so impersonal.  Meaningful correction/rebuke is most effective when it comes from a place of love and is bolstered by authentic relationship.  Again, I'm coming at this from the perspective of a Christian, so I have nothing to say about this outside of the Christian faith.  I am certain that Christians "calling out" non-Christians and vice versa online is a non-starter.  The same is true between persons of different denominations or theological positions.  I can't really say any way that this can be effective if there is no personal connection since anything online is so easy to misinterpret or ignore. 

Being Christians together is so very difficult because it requires work that is extremely time and attention intensive.  I must spend time getting to know people and I must listen to them patiently and with much grace before I can offer meaningful correction.  Honest, loving rebuke must arise out of a seedbed of Christ-centered love, not anonymous self-righteousness.  This, of course, demands patience and humility.  The way of Jesus is a way of self-denial and sacrifice, sacrificing even our insistent need to be right and to point out the faults and missteps of others - especially those with whom we have no relationship.  

Nikita Koloff, the Holy Spirit, and Me

Saturday mornings when I was a kid were awesome - several hours of cartoons followed by the pinnacle of the morning's entertainment: NWA Championship Wrestling (which, if memory serves, came on at 11:00).  At the time, the Cold War was still a big deal, so of course pro wrestling got in on the action with Ivan Koloff and his nephew* - a beast of a man named Nikita Koloff**.  In the mid to late 80's, Nikita was one of the top heels in the NWA and was really intimidating.  Over the next few years (coinciding with the collapse of the Soviet Union), Nikita would switch back and forth between heel and face until his retirement from wrestling in 1992 following an injury.  Shortly after his retirement, Nikita became a Christian and became active in several Charlotte-area ministries, typically of the Pentecostal/Church of God varieties. 

On a Sunday morning in November of 1992, I had an experience of God that changed my life.  The reverberations of that experience are still being felt in big and small ways in my life and a lot about who I am today can be traced back to that moment.  There were no tears, I didn't run to the altar, I actually didn't say anything.  But something 'clicked' in my head and my heart - I began to take my faith very seriously.  As we used to say in youth group, from that moment on, I was "on fire" for God.  I began trying to learn as much as I could about being a Christian, digging into the Scripture and making numerous trips to the Christian book store in Kannapolis.  Over time, I became really interested in the role of the Holy Spirit, which was not necessarily a huge topic of discussion in my church.  In the spring of 1995 (20 years ago!), I heard some friends at school talking about an awesome revival that was happening at West A Church of God.  Having attended a couple of Church of God services with a friend back in elementary school, I knew it was likely to be a little bit more energetic than worship at my church, so me and a friend decided to check it out. 

The first night, we stayed in the balcony as the preacher poured his heart out in a display of high-energy preaching (his being blind and British made the whole affair fairly exotic for us Enochville kids).  My friend and I looked around, a little bit freaked out by the hand raising and shouting, along with the snippets we could hear of people speaking in tongues.  This was definitely not my calm, laid-back United Methodist Church.  We came back the second night, bringing a few more friends with us.  After the sermon on this night, I decided to make my way to the altar to pray. I had already seen a number of people "slain" in the Spirit - the preacher would place his hand on their head, say a prayer, and they would fall down.  I was a fired up Christian, to be sure, but I was skeptical, thinking that there was no way this was going to happen to me.  I expected to be prayed over and then I would make my way back to my seat. 

I stood in a row with other expectant people - most of them other kids I went to school with.  The preacher prayed over all of us.  Some people fell down, some cried, some stood still and quietly walked away after being prayed over.  The preacher came to me and laid his hand on my head and began praying.  I can't really explain what happened, but suddenly I couldn't really feel my legs.  The next thing I remember I was looking up at the faces of the ushers who were tasked with helping people who "fell out".  The first face I saw clearly was, no kidding, Nikita Koloff.  I can't explain how truly odd this moment was.  A life-long Methodist with no experience in this kind of worship being "slain in the Spirit" and then being helped to his feet by the Russian Nightmare!  He was serving as an usher for this revival and was one of those helping people back up on their feet, which made sense given how big the guy still was.

That revival was the last time I attended at charismatic/Church of God worship service - not because I'm opposed to charismatic worship.  It's just not my preferred style of worship.  But that evening (along with a couple of other odd incidents during that revival) taught me a couple of things.  One, the Spirit is real and powerful and is not contained in any one style nor limited to our experience or understanding.  Two, God works in weird ways and through weird people sometimes.  Like me or you or Nikita Koloff...

*Not really his nephew.
**Not really his name, which was actually Scott Simpson, until he legally changed it to Nikita Koloff.  That's dedication, right there...

Unfinished Grace

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about grace.  Serving on committees that interview candidates for ordained ministry, I try to pay close attention to candidates' understanding of grace and why it's central to who we are as United Methodists.  In the ordination papers that they submit, many candidates tell some very moving stories about their ministries and the theological lessons they are learning in the trenches.  I've shared similar stories, both in my ordination papers and in plenty of sermons.  So I'm not judging anybody nor am I saying that I won't continue to tell stories that have nice and neat conclusions.

These stories, while moving and good, many times appear much neater on the page than they likely were when they were happening.  Life is usually more open-ended than the stories we tell.  So it is with grace.  This is a lesson that I'm slowly learning in my life as I realize that so much of what I do or work on or plan does not come to a point of neat closure.  Tidy narratives are the stuff of good books and movies, not necessarily our lives.  As I was thinking about this, I remembered one of those messy and unfinished stories from my past.

I met George early on in my ministry.  He was an older man who was loosely associated with the church where I served.  George had once studied religion in college for the purpose of going into the ministry and it was quickly clear that he loved to talk about the Bible.  However, as a young man, he also developed a powerful addiction to alcohol that he couldn't conquer no matter how hard he tried.  He would visit the church where I served for a few weeks and then disappear for 5-6 months or more.  When he came back, the church would always warmly embrace him and show him so much love and grace.  I remember thinking (a little naively) that maybe this would be enough to turn things around for George, to get him involved.  That we could love him and hug him and worship with him enough that he would seek to get healthy - body, mind, and spirit.  In my time at the church, it wasn't to be.

I would stop by George's house from time to time (typically after he had disappeared for a couple of months) and we'd sit and talk for a while.  During one of those visits, we talked about his college experience and his eventual turning away from faith and towards drinking.  He just couldn't see his way past the bottle, and he took to heart a phrase from I Corinthians 6:10 which says: "thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God."  I tried as hard as I could to convince George that God was waiting to forgive, to embrace, to redeem - even from a darkness he couldn't see his way out of.  To no avail - George told me, "there's no hope for me, preacher.  I don't want to stop drinking and God don't want no drunkards.  So you see, we're stuck, me and God."  I left that church no closer to a resolution than I was when I first met George. 

We like to tell stories that resolve, stories that offer redemption, completion, and come to nice, tidy conclusions.  We tell stories like that because so often, our lives are not like that.  Life's a lot messier and open-ended and unfinished, and so we long for that day when God will bring all of our stories to a remarkable, magnificent, redemptive close.  And, who knows, perhaps I planted a seed or two in George's heart that the Holy Spirit will one day bring to fruition.  My fervent hope is that God's grace is big enough for George and for all of us broken people who, on any given day, want our crutches more than we want to be healed.  I'm trying to trust God more as I see and experience more of these open-ended stories, to remember that I may not be there to witness that grace grow and flourish in someone's life.  Perhaps my part is to put seeds in the dirt, as so many have done with me...

Isaiah's Call (Isaiah 6:1-13)

This reflection was written for the upcoming IDK 2015, an event for young people exploring a call into ministry.  I've posted it here because, well, it seemed like the place to put it...even if you're not called into ministry, there might be a few things worth thinking/praying about in this post...

I've always found the story of Isaiah's call fascinating for several reasons (listed below). It's not that I can necessarily relate to Isaiah's story - I haven't seen God robed in splendor in a sanctuary and I've never had an angel put a burning coal to my lips. But there are some things about this story that I can relate to:

1. "I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips" - there have been times when I've been unfaithful to God or when I've made poor choices and I begin to wonder about God's wisdom in calling a guy like me into ministry. If you talk to a lot of pastors, they'll likely tell you something similar. Isaiah is helpful here - God didn't call Isaiah because Isaiah was perfect or because Isaiah was more awesome than everybody else. We should notice that God doesn't argue with Isaiah when Isaiah says that his lips are unclean, but God does purify Isaiah's lips/mouth (that's what's going on with the burning coal). God's calling into ministry is not about how holy or good or gifted a person is, but about God choosing ordinary people to proclaim an extraordinary Gospel and do extraordinary things for God's Kingdom.
2. Saying "ok" to God can lead to pain (but pain for a purpose) - a couple of weeks ago, I burned two fingertips on our brand-new panini press and it was painful.  It wasn't even a bad burn - barely even noticeable a few hours later.  And anybody who has endured are really bad sunburn can agree that getting burned is extremely uncomfortable.  When the angel touches Isaiah's mouth with the burning coal, it's not the physical pain that's the issue.  Having God cleanse us - our thoughts, our speech, our actions - can be a very uncomfortable experience.  Even though I recognized and accepted God's call into ministry at the age of 16, the Holy Spirit is still doing the work of cleansing and purifying in me - and at times it can be pretty painful.  While the purifying grace of sanctification is a life-long process that can be painful and really uncomfortable (and repeatedly needed), God's sanctifying grace allows us to grow in our faith and trust God more and more.
3. In verse 8, the Lord asks: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"  Isaiah quickly answers: "Me...I'll go!  Here I am!"  Sometimes you need to be careful what you sign up for, because God immediately tells Isaiah that he will prophesying to people who won't understand, won't see, and won't hear.  I love the people in my church and I love being a minister, but there are days when it feels that way.  I think that God might have been preparing Isaiah for the reality that his prophetic ministry was not always going to be easy nor was it always going to be "successful" (at least not in the way the world around us defines "success").  Saying "yes!  Here I am!" when God calls is a remarkable, wonderful thing worth celebrating.  And even when things get difficult, when the road gets steep, and when it seems that nobody's listening - God is still with us and still calling us.

When I was a junior in high school, struggling with whether or not God was calling me into ministry, reading about Isaiah's faith and his willingness to say "Here am I! Send me!" was inspiring and challenging in the best way.  It also helped to know that someone like Isaiah would face difficulty and struggle - and that God would be with him all the way.

I'm praying for all of you who are figuring out God's call in your life.  It's been (and continues to be) an amazing, difficult, joyful, exhilarating adventure following God's call and trying to follow where Jesus leads.  I'm thankful we're  on this road together!

Grace and Peace,

Wes Smith

btw, check out the IDK website or find us at callingIDK on Facebook, Twitter (@callingIDK), and Instagram...

Reflection for Monday

I've learned over time that the cliche "be careful what you ask for, you might just get it" is true, though as a Christian, changing "ask for" to "pray for" seems more fitting.  This is especially true when we ask for things like patience or humility.  We grow more patient by being asked to wait and we grow more humble by being humbled.  Experience is a great teacher when it comes to both of those. 

Yesterday, I preached a sermon that addressed the difficulties our country is facing, especially related to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.  I approached it from the standpoint of a disciple who must grapple with the prophetic word that pushes us to places we would rather not go and to hear truths we would rather not hear.  As the congregation was leaving, I received some very encouraging and complimentary words from several church members.  This made me feel good about my sermon, especially one as potentially divisive as this one.   

Last night and this morning, I felt that little voice in my head threatening to get louder.  It might start with: "I guess that was a pretty good sermon."  Then it might become: "I might be a pretty good preacher."  If left unchecked, eventually that voice begins to whisper: "Maybe I'm a great preacher", followed closely by stuff like, "I should be appreciated more" or "I'm better than so and so…"  It rarely gets to that point, mainly because I've got a wife, two children, and some good friends that help me to stay grounded.  If we allow it, parenting, marriage, and ministry are some really good ways to learn humility (in an honest-to-goodness, not-being-sarcastic way).  Pride is sneaky, however, and we need all the help we can get to stay grounded and humble.

This morning as I was praying, I asked God to help me to be humble.  I was trying to quiet the sneaky voice of pride.  So I prayed that God would help me to see where I need to grow, where I need to be more faithful, where I need to work harder, etc.  While I know to be careful about what I pray for, God's answer usually doesn't come within an hour.

Shortly after praying, a gentleman who had visited the church 2 or 3 times stopped by the office to drop something off.  He was talking with our front-desk volunteer and our administrative assistant who asked if he enjoyed worship yesterday.  His response was "Yeah, but I like the woman pastor better."  Prayers answered!  In total honesty, this does not bother me at all, since it has long been clear to us that different people will relate to us in different ways.  But it was a good (and needed) reminder and an answer to prayer that helped me to remember that I'm simply a vessel (or "clay jar", as Paul would have it) for the Holy Spirit to work through.

Grace and Peace,

Wes

Breathing and Prayer

"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." I Thessalonians 5:16-18

A few years ago, I was officially diagnosed with asthma.  It's not a particularly bad case of asthma - I don't have 'attacks' and I'm able to control it with an inhaler, exercise, and watching what I eat.  My biggest issue with my breathing is dyspnea (or "air hunger").  It's not shortness of breath exactly - at times I can't seem to get a full, deep breath.  If you take a deep breath, you will reach a point when the breath feels "complete", kind of like getting over a hump. When I'm experiencing "air hunger", I can't get that feeling of a complete, full breath.  As a result, I've become more aware of my breathing and more aware of my overall health.

Breathing is something that seems so simple and that many of us take for granted.   If we are healthy, we don't have to think too much about our breathing.  Each breath does not require a conscious decision on our part.  We don't have to understand the complex mechanics behind respiration in order to do it.  It simply happens.  But the physiology behind is amazingly complex.  Breathing requires the coordination of a number of bodily systems all working together, over and over again, all the time.  The lungs are amazing organs and the way in which oxygen is carried throughout our body to nourish our cells is nothing short of miraculous.  And if you stop doing it long enough, you cannot live.  There are a lot of connections to prayer, of course.  Praying is as natural for humans as breathing and so often we do it without consciously thinking about it.  It simply happens.  Like breathing, praying does not require strategies or space on our calendars or a special skill set in order for it to be meaningful.  Also like breathing, we are not required to understand the particularities and intricate details before we pray.  Most of what occurs when we pray and when we breathe is a mystery to most of us. 

For Christians, we pray to remain alive.  Perhaps not in the physical sense, but we pray to keep our faith alive.  We pray to keep our hope alive.  We pray to keep our relationships with others alive.  We pray because we take seriously the reality of God and God's involvement in our lives and in human affairs.  Even though the extent and nature of God's involvement is the subject of much theological debate, Scripture teaches us that the ultimate nature of God's involvement with humanity is love.  For me, prayer is an on-going, life-giving, conversation with a God Who knows me and loves me.  As a Christian, for me, prayer is "breathing".  And like physical respiration, when I am not praying, when I stop, my spiritual vitality begins to recede.  I can feel a hunger not unlike the air hunger I feel on occasion.  I can't seem to view things rightly, I can't seem to find motivation, I have a difficult time being attentive to the Spirit.  And, as with my asthma, there are triggers for my "prayer hunger" - stress, fatigue, an over-loaded schedule.  There are other triggers that are more personal  - lack of repentance, pride, apathy. 

When I was a new Christian, in my teens, I remember be very intimidated by the verse quoted above.  It's interesting that I didn't really take notice of the two commands bracketing Paul's instruction about prayer, which now seem much more difficult.  I once thought that Paul's command was out of reach, impossible.  You cannot pray 24 hours a day.  Unless prayer is not always a conscious act of speaking but rather more like breathing.  Or if prayer is not words that we say or even set apart times of contemplation (and both of those are very important), but instead our prayer to God is much more.  Perhaps it is our very lives offered to God as a "living sacrifice" to God, which in Romans 12 Paul calls our "spiritual worship".  Perhaps prayer is more than the words we say or requests we offer.  Perhaps our lives themselves are prayers - the daily, mundane things we do as well as the extraordinary, epic things we do. 

Just some thoughts I wanted to share as I seek to keep breathing well.  Grace and peace to you!

Wes

Love is Stronger Than Fear

The world finds itself in a very perilous moment.  Thinking about what led to both of the World Wars in the last century, it would not take a whole lot to set off the global powder keg once again.  And with the technological advances that we've made since the end of World War II, the amount of violence and death would be staggering in the event of a global conflict.  And it's not only about geopolitics and global religious movements - hardly a week goes by without another account of gun violence in the US.  Some days, it seems as if civilization is teetering on the edge. 

The answer to what plagues us is love, specifically the love of God revealed in Jesus.  The difficulty with that, as revealed by the cross, is that God's love in the context of a sinful world is always a sacrificial love.  This is why Jesus talks so much about the cost of discipleship - followers of Jesus have always lived in a world where selfless love and voluntary servanthood are misunderstood or cynically disbelieved, then hated and rejected, in turn giving rise to the possibility of violence and death.  So it is in our world in the present.

The good news is that the sacrificial love of God revealed in Jesus is stronger than sin and death.  This is why the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central reality of the Christian faith.  Without the resurrection, sin and death are stronger than love, the Christian faith is futile, and we are still in our sins, as Paul says in I Corinthians 15.  The reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is my conviction as a follower of Jesus.  My faith is in the God Who desires peace, reconciliation, and love for a broken world.  The God Who desires life.  

To love as Jesus loves is to risk death.  Yes, of course it also means risking discomfort, being mocked, being attacked, etc.  But, in the world as it is, loving as Jesus loves is to court death.  This is why Jesus teaches us that we should not fear human attackers.  He did not tell us this so that we might be irresponsible or careless with our lives, but rather that our love might outweigh our fear.  What is motivating all the unrest in the world right now is, at bottom, fear.  And of course it's not as simple as that.  The fears at the root of all of this - the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the barbarity of ISIS in Iraq, the continued conflict in Ukraine, the situation in Ferguson, MO - are all contextually specific.  Each situation is a tangled web of history, cultural differences, old wounds, hoped-for futures, and competing accounts of reality.  

However, if we were to dig deep enough, what is there at the center in each situation is fear.  Fear of loss and change.  Fear of "the other" and the stranger.  Fear of pain and death.  Fear of what other fearful people intend to do to you and your family if you don't strike first.  Fear of humiliation and defeat.  Fear of death.  These fears are very real, very powerful, and are not easily quelled.  

The Church around the world, in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, has an obligation as disciples of Jesus Christ to embody the love of God which drives out fear.  To live out this sacrificial love may very well lead to pain, rejection and even death.  But it is a desperately needed witness to a fearful world that love is stronger than that fear.  

Grace and Peace,

Wes