Author: Tim Ehrhardt

I'm just a common ordinary pastor, chaplain, father, grandfather, and dog owner who loves the smell of a genuine leather Bible and the aroma of its message. I'm on a quest to track down the best Bibles, how to best read and use them, and to discover the encouragement inside.

The Christian Year

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
            You might often notice that I refer to events or significant Sundays on “The Church Calendar.”  The Christian Calendar or Christian Year refers to a yearlong calendar that marks time according to God’s activities rather than ours.  It is to live life in a rhythm with Christ at the center of our worship.
 
            Time is referenced in the Bible as both chronological and seasonal.  The Christian Year is a co-mingling of both of these kinds of time.  We as Christians celebrate events in which God acted in history for the benefit of his people.  In order to remember those moments, dates have been assigned on the Christian Calendar so that we will not forget these significant events and praise God for what he has done.
 
            So, then, to observe the Christian Year helps us as God’s people to recall and retell the story of God, especially the redemptive events of Jesus.  In doing so, it provides a guide for our spiritual growth.  The Christian Calendar is arranged in such a way as to proclaim the gospel over the course of a year.  One of the ways that helps us to remember particular seasons is through the liturgical colors:  purple signifies a time for preparation and penitence; white represents celebration, joy, and victory; green lets us know it is time to focus on spiritual growth and mission; and, red helps us recall the Passion of Christ and the fire of the Holy Spirit.
 
The Christian Year is organized and arranged with these seasons: 
 
Advent – The Christian Year begins not on January 1, but four Sundays before Christmas Day and up to Christmas Eve.  The purpose of Advent is to anticipate the incarnation and prepare us to celebrate the coming of Jesus.  We are also reminded that Jesus will return again at the end of the age.
 
Christmas – Yes, Christmas is more than just a day on the church calendar and encompasses the twelve days from December 25 to January 5 (you may recognize the 12 Days of Christmas).  Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ.
 
Epiphany – Epiphany follows Christmas from January 6 to the day before Ash Wednesday.  The term Epiphany means “manifestation.”  This is a celebration of God’s revelation, his manifestation to the entire world, not just the Jews, but the Gentiles, as well.  Epiphany emphasizes Christ’s earthly ministry of teaching, healing, and preaching.
 
Lent – There are forty days in the season of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday.  Lent is a time to recall Christ’s temptation, conflict, suffering, and death.  It is a season to contemplate our discipleship in light of Christ’s Passion, engage in repentance, and put deliberate focus on spiritual disciplines.
 
Easter – As with Christmas, Easter is not only one Sunday; it is a season of fifty days up to the day of Pentecost.  Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus; helps us recognize our new life in Christ; and, includes celebrating the Ascension of our Lord.
 
Pentecost – This season runs from Eastertide to the Sunday before Advent.  Pentecost celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the church, acknowledges our spiritual power, and calls us to rejoice in receiving God’s power.
 
Ordinary Time – This is the same season as Pentecost.  Ordinary time refers to the ongoing work of the church to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the typical, expected, ordinary work of ministry that Christ’s followers are to do.
 

 

            As we are now embarking upon the longest season of the Christian Year, Ordinary Time, we remember and realize that it is our joyful duty to follow Jesus and obey his commands in our normal everyday lives as Christians.  Wherever we go, the gospel of Jesus Christ goes with us.  May we experience together the journey in this ordinary time of seeing others come to Christ and our faith strengthened in the power of the Spirit.  Even so, come Lord Jesus.

Warming Up for Pentecost

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
The Holy Spirit is the distinguishing mark of the believer in Jesus Christ.  Christians do not earn the right to have the Holy Spirit; they are given the Spirit.  Therefore, our main responsibility as Christians is to receive.  Christianity is distinctive in this sense – it is primarily a religion of receiving.  The reason for this is that the Christian life cannot be lived by one’s own strength; it is lived by the power of the Holy Spirit.  The only function of faith is to receive what grace offers.  We are saved by grace alone through faith.  And it is equally true that the Christian life is lived by grace alone through faith.  God lives in and through us by means of his Spirit.  The miraculous and the supernatural cannot, obviously, be done by any human person.  It can, however, be accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit.
 
            We put a lot of pressure on ourselves, me included, to be a certain way and to do certain things.  The result is that we are tired.  And every time we catch our breath, someone else needs something else.  But what if Christianity were not mostly about giving, but about receiving?  What if the Christian life were really all about putting ourselves in a position to receive what God has for us through prayer and humility?  You see, the opposite of receiving is not giving but pride. 
 
            Maybe this kind of talk makes you feel uncomfortable.  I am not talking here about being passive or lazy, but about receiving grace from God by means of the Holy Spirit and allowing God the Spirit to do what he wants to do in and through us for his own purposes and glory.  Jesus said we would do greater works than even he himself with the advent of the Spirit!  The question then becomes:  Will we let God do this?  Will we participate with God, and allow the Spirit to do his work?  Will we, as individuals and churches, petition God and, in essence, write him a blank check so that he can do whatever he wants to do in and through us?
 
            The Spirit is elsewhere in Scripture described as a gentle presence, an encourager, counselor, and comforter.  But not at Pentecost – the Spirit is portrayed like wind and fire.  Not a gentle breeze, nor a warm campfire but a violent presence.  The Holy Spirit in Acts 2 is not some gentleman caller coming politely into our lives when invited.  Instead, he appears more like a drunken sailor who bursts into the room and causes and big ruckus.  There is nothing subtle about the Spirit at Pentecost.  He is electric and volcanic, causing a huge upheaval.  This is a big God with a big Word looking to expand out into a big world.
 
            Because of Pentecost, true believers are marked and defined by God’s Spirit living within them and being full of the Spirit.  So, what does God want to do?  He wants to pour out his Spirit on all kinds of people.  He wants to fill people to overflowing so that what comes out of them is “prophecy” (Acts 2:14-21).  By “prophecy” Joel and Peter do not mean predicting the future, but inspired speech and words coming from a spiritual heart full of the Spirit.  Just as an inebriated person says and does things he/she would not typically say or do because they are filled with alcohol, so the person filled with God’s Spirit says things and does things that they would not typically say or do because their inspiration and courage do not come from themselves but is a result of God within them.
 
            God transformed this little band of people in Acts 2 from learners, to ones sent out with a mission.  Being on a mission from God is not about feeling adequate; it is about being filled and sent.  First time parents may learn and read and find out all they can about parenting before their child is born, but when that little bundle comes into the world and the hospital puts this kid in your arms and sends you out you feel pretty inadequate for the task.  Parenting becomes a kind of supernatural affair where you learn and pray on the fly, finding out that you need something beyond yourself to get anywhere in raising this screaming, pooping, sleeping person who depends completely on you for everything. 
 
            God has sent us into the world to make disciples and we may feel pretty inadequate for the task.  But this has more to do with receiving the Spirit.  The Spirit comes looking to impact the world not in some small way but with turning the world upside-down with new life in Jesus Christ. 
 
            In light of Pentecost, God’s agenda for his people is not to simply have nice worship services among nice people so we can live nice lives in the world.  The Spirit came to shake things up and do among God’s people what they could never do on their own.  The church in the New Testament was not formed as a country club for people to simply enjoy the perks of membership.  The church in Acts 2 is more like a place where the people seem drunk because they are all talking with inspired speech from the Holy Spirit. 
 

 

            It all begins with receiving.  If our hands are continually making fists and fighting other believers then we are not in a position to receive the Spirit.  But if our hands are open, palms up, then we are ready to have the Spirit come and be the Wild Person he came to be, just like a tornado and a blazing fire.  If there is something the Church needs more than anything else today it is someone:  the Holy Spirit.  Come, Holy Spirit, we need you.

What Christ’s Ascension Means For Us

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            Jesus Christ ascended to heaven nearly two-thousand years ago, and since that time much in history has changed; yet, on the other hand, we are still in the situation of the early church:  Jesus is still up there, and we are still down here.  Because we still await Christ’s return, the original call and practice of the church is still in effect for us. 
 
            As far as experiences go, it would be hard to top being one of the original disciples and see Jesus ascend into heaven (Acts 1:1-10).  Christ was crucified, dead, and buried.  Then, he rose from the grave.  For forty days Jesus appeared on and off to his disciples.  Then the day came when he ascended.  All of those redemptive events of Jesus and those powerful experiences being with the risen Lord, and actually seeing him go to heaven.  Now what?  How do you top that?
 
            In the spiritual life, we move back and forth between moments of genuine inspiration and the sheer routine of our daily mundane lives.  Both the uplifting mountain-top experiences and the hard work of walking through the valley are important.  The trick is to channel the energy from one into the other.  We need to work out rhythms of grace, daily liturgies that connect expectant prayer with the action of being witnesses in the culture.
 
            Prayer and action – both are necessary to the church.  And both are closely tied to the risen and ascended Christ.  The Ascension of our Lord Jesus is important because it means that Christ is exalted above everything.  His glorification translates into our sharing with him in his glory.  The Ascension means that Jesus is in charge, by his authority he has given us a task to do, and he has given us the means of carrying-out that job.
 
            Jesus and the disciples, even after our Lord’s forty days with them after the resurrection, were not on the same page together.  The disciples were anticipating a restoration of David’s kingdom; in other words, their vision of what was going to take place is that there would be a great apocalypse in which Jesus would beat up all their enemies and set up a political kingdom just like King David of old. 
 
            But Jesus has a different agenda.  Instead of creating a Jewish-Christian utopia where the disciples would be in charge and in control of the world, Jesus bluntly told them that knowing God’s timetable is not in their pay grade.  The disciples were commanded and commissioned to do a job, and that job was not to gawk at the sky and figure-out all the blood moons so that we can anticipate when the end of the world will happen.
            Yet, we keep trying to predict the time.  Like the original disciples, who wanted to know the times and dates the Father has set by his own authority, we are tired of all the effects of sin in the world and all the people, institutions, and governments that are opposed to Christian ways of thinking and acting.  We are anxious for Jesus to return and make everything that is wrong, right again.  We deservedly want peace and justice. 
            But Jesus didn’t go there, and he essentially said to quit thinking about stuff that is none of our business.  Instead, our business is being witnesses of Jesus.  The angels came along right after Jesus ascended and nicely said to the disciples to stop standing there with their mouths open and understand that Jesus is coming back and there is a job to do – and that job is to be witnesses of Christ’s redemptive events.  The power for being witnesses will come from the Holy Spirit; therefore, prayer is a necessary and essential practice (Acts 1:14).
 
            Jesus is Lord over all creation.  He is Lord of the church.  He is Lord of our families.  He is Lord at our workplaces.  There is not one square inch of all this earth that Jesus is not Lord.  What this means for us, since Christ is Lord of all, since we possess the Holy Spirit, we can and should live our lives devoted to prayer and to being witnesses in this world for Jesus.  The kind of prayer that Jesus is looking for from his followers is prayer that expects God’s promises to be fulfilled; prayer that is united in spirit and in purpose; and, prayer that is persistent.  That kind of prayer characterized the early believers, and that same kind of prayer is required from Jesus our Lord.  Just as a cup of coffee needs a continual warm-up, so our prayers need to be frequent and constantly refreshed so that God’s purposes will be accomplished.  And his purposes are that all of creation comes, in a real and practical way, under Christ’s lordship.
 
            Prayer is not all we do.  Jesus has also told us to be witnesses.  Jesus is Lord, and so all persons must submit to his lordship through obedient action.  This task is far from finished.  According to The Center for the Study of Global Christianity, we know of 11,646 distinct people groups on this planet.  6,734 of those groups are less than 2% Christian and most of them have no churches, no Bibles, no Christian literature, and no mission agencies seeking to reach them.  That, by the way, is in the neighborhood of about 3 ½ billion people.  The Center also cites that 1 out of 5 non-Christians in North America do not personally know a single follower of Jesus.  What can we do?  We can pray.  We can witness.  We can pray for spiritual power.  We can witness by loving our neighbor as ourselves and telling a simple story of Jesus.
 
            Let me give you an example.  My wife used to work at a company in which she befriended a Hindu woman from India.  She was from the highest caste in India, and looked the part – she literally looked like an Indian Barbie doll.  Whenever I saw her I thought I should bow in her presence because she carried herself like a princess.  She had never experienced an American Thanksgiving.  So, Mary simply invited her to a Thanksgiving dinner out our house with our family.  As we typically do each Thanksgiving, we all took turns going around the table and describing what we were thankful to God for.  When it came time for this lovely Indian woman to speak she said:  “I am thankful to be here and to know you all.  It is evident that your God is very personal and precious to you, and I have never known that people could have such love for a God they do not see.”  That, my friends, is one way of being a witness – having a large enough ‘inner space’ to invite another person very different from myself into my life to see the unseen God.
 

 

            Christ’s Ascension means that Jesus is Lord, and I am not!  Therefore, we as Christians and as churches are to submit to King Jesus and do what he has commanded us to do.  And he has given the church a mission:  be witnesses to the risen and ascended Lord.  May it be so.

Love and Obedience

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry Blog1 Comment
 
 
Throughout this week, as I reflected on the lectionary text of Scripture from John 14:15-21, my thoughts kept coming back to my late brother-in-law, Todd Dawson.  In the Fall of 1992, Todd was on his deathbed in a small sterile hospital room at the University of Iowa, his body ravaged by AIDS.  At the time, I was pastoring a small Michigan congregation.  My parents came and stayed with our girls as my wife and I went to be with Todd since we were told he did not have much time left.  As it turned out we were in Iowa City for a week, spending our days at the hospital and only leaving his room to sleep for the night.  It was my habit during those days to rise about 5am, make my way to Todd’s room where we would spend some quiet unhindered time with each other for a few hours before other family members arrived.  Todd was deathly ill and could barely communicate anything above a whisper.  But those hours with him were incredible times of spiritual bonding and true Christian friendship.  To think that only a year before Todd and I had a strained, difficult, and awkward relationship as he was about as far from God as anyone could be and very much a person who had given up on the church.  Yet, here I was with him; we were now devoted brothers to one another.  Through a series of circumstances that can only be ascribed as God’s gracious hand, Todd had given his life fully to Jesus Christ just six months before his hospital stay (that conversion is a lengthy story for another time).
 
            In that week I watched in the background as day after day, cousin after cousin, and relative after relative came into Todd’s room to see him for the last time.  The majority of those cousins were much like Todd before giving his life to Jesus – having made a profession of faith as children they had long since outgrown their belief and lived for the most part as they wanted.  With each and every person, as frail as Todd was, he would grab a hold of the relative, pull them close and say into their ear:  “Look at me!  I am dying.  Is this how you want to end up?”  And then he would say this to each and every one:  “If you are really a Christian and love Jesus, obey him and live your life for him.”
 
            Love and obedience – they go together in Scripture like a hand in a glove.  Chapters 13-17 of the Gospel of John are our Lord’s final words to his followers before his crucifixion – this is quite literally Jesus’ deathbed message to those he loved.  In other words, these are the words that Jesus did not want his disciples to forget.  Those disciples were distressed and troubled over the reality that Jesus would not be with them, and they needed some words of both comfort and focus in order to live effectively with encouragement in the days and years ahead.
 
            The job of obedience is so importantly huge that Jesus did not ascend to heaven and leave us like orphans wondering where our next spiritual meal is coming from.  Instead of leaving us to fend for ourselves, Jesus left us with the Holy Spirit in order to help us have the attitudes we are supposed to have, and live the way we are supposed to live as commanded by Jesus.
 
            Jesus has given us another “Counselor” to be with us forever.  The term “Counselor” here is translated in various ways in different versions of the New Testament.  The reason for this is because the Greek term “Paraclete” is a rich word that is hard to encompass with just one English word.  So, we get terms in other versions like “Advocate,” “Comforter,” and “Helper.”  They are all accurate words to describe the Holy Spirit.  Yet, I think the best term to really portray who the Holy Spirit is for God’s people is the term, “True Friend.” 
 
            A true friend is the kind of person who you can call in the middle of the night and they will answer and listen.  A true friend is the kind of person you can contact and they will drop everything to come and be with you in a time of need.  A true friend is the kind of person that will say hard things to you in love so that you can be a better person and have a better relationship with them.  A true friend is there for you and maintains a committed and consistent relationship with you.  And, a true friend is simply a person you enjoy and are deeply thankful for having them in your life.  That is what the Holy Spirit is – He helps us when we need help; He encourages us when we are down; He comes immediately to our side when we are in need; and, He gives us good loving kick in the pants when we need it.  The Holy Spirit is our True Friend, our Best Friend in the world.  And that is the best way to understand Him as being described as “the Spirit of Truth.”  That is, the Holy Spirit is true to us and constantly speaks truth to us and leads us into truth.  It is the Spirit that will come alongside and apprentice us in the faith and guide us in grateful obedience to Jesus.
 
            Christianity, then, is neither just a warm-hearted love with obedience as optional, nor is it a life of drudgery in just gritting-out sheer obedience with no love behind it.  Instead, Christianity is both duty and delight – and they go together with perfect harmony.
 

 

            On June 18, 1993, at 29 years of age, Todd Dawson went to be with his Lord.  Not in my lifetime have I personally seen such a complete turn-around of a person so far away from God to a man in whose every thought and word reflected the Beatitudes, the Great Commandment, and the Great Commission.  And never have I had such a relationship that was totally changed from one of distance and animosity to a relationship that could be characterized as “true friend.”  Todd lived through his deathbed experience in the Fall of 1992 by the gracious hand of God who was not quite finished with him yet.  What Todd’s Christian life displayed to me more than anyone I have known is that loving assurance and trust in Jesus leads to a radical no-holds-barred obedience that is grateful and joyous despite the most awful of circumstances.  And because of his love for God he has seen Jesus.  I look forward to seeing Jesus with him someday.