Category: Exploring Church Ministry Blog

Twenty-Somethings and Reality

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

 

            A statistic that probably is being discussed more than any other right now in the Church is that the age group 18-29 years old is leaving in great numbers.  Depending upon the study (and many have been done!) the numbers run anywhere from 65%-80% will be gone from the Church by age 29.  As a former minister to college students, I can attest first hand to this reality.  This is a topic that well deserves a great deal of attention, and needs to be addressed from a variety of angles.  Here is just one angle I want to explore:  that of instilling a decidedly Christian worldview into the lives of college age persons through the sacraments. 
 

One of the great tasks of the church, and a vital pursuit for any believing college student, is to continually come in line with a Christian world and life view. Our postmodern and post-Christian society works against becoming spiritually formed according to biblical categories. The university, as important as it is, can be the vehicle of promoting a rival worldview to Christianity. More than one professor in my undergraduate experience told me that they enjoyed shocking freshman students into thinking in more secular terms and away from their “narrow” thinking about God and the church. Although that has been a few years ago, I continually speak with students who feel like they are swimming upstream of the prevailing attitudes on reality in our society and university culture. One of the most significant means that the church can help inform students and promote a Christian worldview is through the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Western society, and sometimes even the church, tends to hold to a cleavage between the spiritual and the material in an inherent dualism inherited from ancient Greek categories of thought. Yet, in the sacraments these two elements are firmly united. The good news of Jesus is not just proclaimed by stating propositions of truth, but, as Frank Senn has said in his book Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical the forgiveness of sins is declared “by sentences joined to a bath, the laying on of hands, and communal eating and drinking” (p.31). God is the creator of all things, both visible and invisible (Colossians 1:16). The incarnation of Jesus is where the invisible God became a visible human. There is no dichotomous reality here between the material and the spiritual, but an essential unity. Leonard VanderZee has said that this unity makes the sacraments “a place where God meets us and where the spiritual and physical come together for our wholeness and healing” (Christ, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, p.28). Now that the Lord Jesus has accomplished his great redemptive events of cross and resurrection, the sacraments serve as material signs to us of the now invisible Christ. John Calvin called this a “visible word” that declares God’s saving work in Christ on behalf of every human being.

There is certainly a profound place for didactic instruction in the church on a Christian worldview, and I would argue that it needs to take place. But this is insufficient. God himself has instituted baptism and the Lord’s Supper as means of proclaiming forgiveness and declaring the unity of reality, and the great union we have with God because of Jesus. When we partake of this, we are doing much more than remembering; we are providing and re-enacting a view of the world that is in contradistinction from prevailing notions outside of Christendom. Here is where college students can find a place of seeing life from God’s perspective.  Emphasizing the place of the sacraments in the life of the Church gives an alternate view of reality from that provided in many secular environments.  This, certainly, is not the last or only word on addressing the great slide of a whole generation of people out of the Church, but the Word proclaimed at the Table is a necessary element to help college students meaningfully connect with a Christian view of life and reality.

 
So, what are some reasons you think people ages 18-29 are leaving the Church?  What are some ways that they might reconnect with their faith?  How might you build a meaningful relationship with a person in this age group?  Do you think the sacraments are important for spiritually forming people?  How about asking those in this age group who have left your church why they did so?

An Assault of Grace

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

Getting a phone call at 4:00am is rarely good news. As a Pastor I have had my share of them over the years and it has always meant someone is in trouble. A few years ago a young man gave us one of those calls. Something was wrong with his girlfriend (I will call her “Jane”), she was upset and hostile and could not talk to him. My wife and I got out of bed and came right over. Upon arriving we found a beautiful college-age woman sitting in the driveway crying uncontrollably. Coming up to Jane, she had the stale stench of beer and could not stand or talk, but could only heave great sobs of distress. We helped Jane up, got her into our car, and took her to our house. There Jane began to sober up and began telling her story: she had been at party near campus and got pretty drunk. At midnight she decided to go home, but made the decision to walk by herself across campus to try and make it back to her place. What happened next Jane could only remember in bits and pieces, and is perhaps every young woman’s nightmare….

According to the American Association of University Women, somewhere between 20%-25% of college women are raped sometime during their college career; 65% of these attacks go unreported; and, alcohol is involved in 75% of the assaults.  The Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault reports that 14% of women over 18 years of age are raped in their lifetime, and that over 17 million women nationwide have been victims of sexual assault.  Disturbingly, 11-15 year old children are the highest victimized age group.

When a rape occurs, the victim should get to a safe place, resist taking a shower, get medical attention immediately, report the abuse, and receive counseling as soon as possible. Certainly, Jane made some bad decisions: excessive partying, having amorphous relationships (did no one try and stop Jane from leaving the party by herself?), and sexual license that was occurring at that party.

How should we respond and help in such a situation? Jane is not the only victim I have worked with, and I wish I could tell you that all the cases I have seen have a happy ending. Unfortunately, I must say that I have seen far too many believers in Jesus only add to the hurt by pointing out the bad decisions made on the part of the victim, as if they were not a victim at all but brought the assault upon themselves. Even in situations completely out of the victim’s control, guilt is sometimes applied by probing what the victim could have done differently….

To put this in perspective, let me tell a hypothetical story. When my daughter was small she rarely walked, but ran everywhere she went. In public, I always had to hold her hand so she would not run off alone. As we walk down the sidewalk I tell her to hold my hand and not let go, but she pulls away and runs into the street, and is hit by a car. What will be my response? “Well, that’s what you get for disobeying me!” No! Instead, I will have the reaction of much tears and doing everything I can to get her the help she needs, while all the time assuring her that I love her and will not leave her….

The way to handle a sexual assault of any kind is to turn it around and offer an assault of grace. All ministry is grace, and the grace of God is the thing that heals. The way people change is not through pointing out their poor judgments or finding out what could have been done differently, but through the grace of extending mercy and help in time of need, no matter the circumstance. In the novel, Les Miserables, ex-convict Jean Valjean makes the decision of stealing from the priest who extended hospitality to him. When caught by the police and brought to the priest, the man of God responds in grace by saying that the items were a gift. What is more, the old priest chastises Jean for leaving in such a rush the night before that he forgot to take the two silver candlesticks. This act of mercy and kindness changes Jean’s life forever, and in turn, changes an entire town.

The cross of Christ is scandalous simply because of its radical nature of grace to all of us who are undeserving of it. So, if God can be gracious to people who are not even victims, how much more should we, as his followers, be about the kingdom business of extending vast resources of mercy and grace to genuine victims of abuse?

Are you prepared to respond to sexual abuse when it occurs?
–Have numbers in your cell phone of state and local counseling services, and of your local rape hotline.
–Local law enforcement is ready and equipped to handle abuse situations. The victim will most likely need help filing formal reports.
–Many colleges and county services also have a comprehensive referral list of services to help the victim.
–The police are ready to respond, even if the victim does not want to pursue criminal charges, through advising victims of their options and helping to create a safety plan for the future.
–Get to know all the services, agencies, and key people in your area.
–Teach and equip church congregations in the way of grace in ministry through using the Bible to comfort a victim with assurance that God is close to the broken-hearted. Resist playing arm-chair psychologist and instead demonstrate grace through your presence and reassuring words.

What’s In a Name?

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

My family and I have lived in several diverse neighborhoods over the past twenty five years.  In one of those neighborhoods I would often go into the backyard of my house and spend time praying.  One day as I was talking to God, I turned my thoughts toward the neighbors around me.  “Lord, I pray for my African neighbor, my geeky educated neighbor across the street, my agnostic lady neighbor, my lesbian neighbors down the way….”  As I was praying, I was gently interrupted by God.  “Why do you refer to your neighbors by race, gender, religion, and orientation… they are just your neighbors.”

One of the things that sets humans apart from the rest of creation is the ability to name.  When God created Adam, he brought all the animals before him to see what he would call them.  And Adam named each and every one of them.  He even named the first female Eve (which means “woman”).  Then sin entered the world.  Ever since the Fall, people have had a knack for not only naming, but misnaming others.  The ability to name is a power unique to humans.  It can bring life or it can bring death, depending upon whether we name rightly or wrongly.

What God called me on in the backyard was the reality that I insisted on giving names to people which set them apart from me.  My naming exposed my heart.  I saw the people around me not so much as human beings created in the image of God as much as I saw them as impersonal beings, as objects which needed something.  This happens in the church as much as anywhere.  We see a depressed person, a sick person, an ornery person; we see needy people and insecure people.  We look at the world around us and see children dying, sex-trafficking, and people without clean water.  And then our misnaming comes:  “Someone should do something for them.”  In one succinct statement we have detached ourselves from others.  We keep people at arm’s length through calling them the name “someone”, and ensure our inaction through saying that “something” should be done.

The only way to cease misnaming others is by moving in a deliberate relational direction into another’s life.  Why is it that we call a group of people “those liberals” or “the ones on welfare” or “all those Hispanics”?  Because we don’t know one person from the groups we name.  We have never taken the time or effort to establish a relationship with one of “those people.”  So, we stay in our holy huddle and kick our names out, hoping that one of those people will not infect our community or influence the way we like to do things.

Jesus died on the cross for people, all kinds of people.  In God’s great mercy he gave us a new name and calls us children of God.  We are no longer strangers and aliens, but are adopted into the family of God with loads of brothers and sisters who are both alike and different from us.  And it is all good and right.

Church ministries need to get beyond heaping adjectives before the names of people.  When we name people a certain way, we arrogantly believe we know what those people need.  But when we see people as people, we will take the time to move in their direction and get to know them.  We will seek to listen and let them describe their own needs and the needs of the people they interact with every day.  Then, we will minister to them out of the context of relationship and not out of the context of distance.  In the church we will listen to one another, take the time to ask questions, and help others based on our shared humanity.

Try and become conscious of the labels and names you are inwardly assigning to people you see, especially those who are in situations of need.  Try changing the names you ascribe to them and see how it changes your perception of them.  Have you ever been wrongly named by another?  How did it affect you?  Who is someone you have wrongly labeled?  What do you think the impact of that naming has been?

A Wedding Blessing

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

My middle daughter, Charissa, recently became a new bride.  It was a joy and a privilege to both walk her down the aisle, and officiate the wedding.  It was, obviously, not just another wedding ceremony for me.  Because of this I did not want my words to be a typical kind of wedding message.  So, instead, I chose to give the new couple a marriage blessing.  In fact, the experience of focusing on a blessing rather than a standard kind of marriage message has helped me rethink how to go about doing weddings in general.

            Giving a blessing is a very important part of Holy Scripture; you can find it running through the entirety of the Bible.  In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, he placed a man and a woman together in the garden.  Everything was perfect.  There was a free and unhindered relationship with God and with each other.  But paradise was lost when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, believing that God was somehow holding out on them by telling them not to eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  The world was plunged into sin, and a relational separation happened between humans and God.  The effects of that act of disobedience were terrible, and eventually led to a flood overtaking the entire world.  It seemed perhaps all was lost forever.  But God, who is rich in mercy, whose very nature is described as love, took the initiative in reclaiming that severed relationship.  What he did was to choose Abraham as a person to bless, and to, in turn, be a blessing.  We read in the book of Genesis these words from God to Abraham:
 
            “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
 
            The rest of Scripture details an unfolding drama of redemption in which God, by sheer grace, goes out of his way to reconcile himself with his estranged creatures.  Those efforts culminated in Jesus Christ coming to this earth, living a holy life, suffering and dying a cruel death on cross, rising from the dead, and ascending to heaven so that we can experience forgiveness from our broken and twisted way of doing things and reconnect with God.  One of the New Testament writers has said:  “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
 
            I was overwhelmed by how many people I met whom my daughter Charissa and her new husband Alex have been a blessing to already in their young lives – people who had been spiritually lost and are now lovers of Jesus.  It has all been possible because God in Christ first blessed them.
 
            Just as God blessed Abraham because he wanted to love his created beings, I had the opportunity to bless a new couple just because I love them.  As I read the blessing to them, I watched the power of loving words touch Charissa and Alex.  We also have the chance to speak words of blessing into the lives of people every day – words of affirmation and love, words of hope and a special future, words of goodness and grace.  In a world where sarcasm, words that tear down, and a neglect of gracious words exists in families and even churches all around us, we can take the initiative to speak into the lives of others in a way that can truly transform people from the inside-out.
 
             Here is a portion of the blessing I gave, and perhaps you will think of incorporating words of blessing into your ministry as well:
 
            May the LORD bless you and keep you.  May the LORD make his face to shine upon you.  May God answer you on those days when life crashes around you.  May the Name of Jesus put you out of harm’s reach.  May God continually send reinforcements from heaven, and give you fresh strength from the Holy Spirit.  May your marriage together be a living offering to God, holy and pleasing to him.  May God give you the desires of your heart, and make all your plans succeed.  When you overcome the hardships of life, your parents plan to raise the roof, and lead the celebration.  May the LORD grant all your requests.  May the LORD bless your marriage, and help you keep the vows you have made together.
 
          In your church, whom are those who need to experience a blessing through a hug?  Who needs to hear words of affirmation?  Who feels hopeless and needs to hear you give them words of a special future?  How can you communicate that you are committed to helping others be successful in the Christian life?
 
          May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with us all.